In Rise of the Argonauts you play Jason, the king of Iolcus. The story starts on the wedding day of you and your beloved Alceme. An arrow, however, spoils the fun by killing your girl and you go after the bad guys who appear to be Blacktongues, some sort of evil kind. This is the start of your big quest of bringing Alceme back to life.

From the very beginning of your journey you get the help of familiar people from Greek Mythology. Hercules is your first Argonaut, heroes that travel along on your ship - the Argos - to help. Each Argonaut has his own personality and you'll get to know them during conversations. Sadly enough you usually have to leave a couple of them on the ship all the time so that they can't all have their say during missions. Throughout the game you'll also encounter other Greek myths, even if only in name. Those that have some knowledge of Ancient Greece will enjoy the story even more.

The conversations teach you a lot in Rise of the Argonauts so the fact that they don't go all too well is a big downpoint for this game. After a sentence has finished you'll have to wait a couple of seconds for a reply and also facial expressions seem to be unknown to the ancient Greek heroes. Quickly reading the subtitles and moving to the next dialogue, I've done it too often to my liking.

The choice between answers in the conversations is quite vast and each answer favors your relation with a certain god. Also by doing certain things, living saving someone or making sacrifice to certain gods, will allow you to score points with the respective upper beings. With this you can buy powers that make you stronger or do special attacks.

The liberty in what you reply is a good thing but some freedom of where you go wouldn't have been a bad thing either. You can for instance choose which island to visit first but the areas consist mainly out of squares connected by streets. To reach a certain square there's usually only one road which makes you feel like you're just running forward a bit. In these streets you'll also often run into objects that stick out further than they are visible and also your Argonauts seem to suffer from this.

The action part is simple but therefore not less entertaining. There are two basic attacks and next to that a couple of special ones as well. As the game progresses you get better weapons and gear that constantly looks nice and detailed. Your weapons exist out of a sword, spear and mace and it's important to choose correctly on the ship which to take along as some give that little extra that can come in handy during combat.