Ryse is a very polished game that I enjoyed. It's origin as a Kinect game shows through as the gameplay and difficulty appear to be tuned for the casual crowd. Gamers who have thrived on the difficulty of Demon/Dark Souls like games will likely find Ryse lacking, though setting a campaign on higher difficulty settings will help. Those interested in a graphically beautiful, not too taxing on the difficulty and plain mindless fun game will enjoy what's on offer here.
The game takes you through many, varied environments and lighting conditions. The graphics are excellent and I think this bodes well for future games built on the Crytek engine. Many times I found myself stopping to just look around. Lighting effects in particular stood out. Based on Ryse, which runs at 900p, I've been surprised to conclude that lighting effects contributes more to the overall appearance of a game than raw resolution. Who knew? One thing I should point out is that it's been many years since I got off the expensive PC upgrade treadmill. So my enthusiasm for the graphics on display here is based purely on comparison to xbox 360/ps3 games. Those who've done a lot of recent PC gaming may be less impressed than I.
Most of the story is told through graphically impressive cut scenes. Story-wise it's fine. Not rich enough to be memorable but good enough to motivate playing each level. If you expect a story roughly on par with a God of War or a typical shooter, that's about what's on offer here.
Much derision seems to come from the combat system and the final death animations. The combat system reminds me of the Batman Arhkam Asylum/City series with a dash of God of War QTE thrown in. This is where I think it's Kinect-based lineage hinders it - there isn't much variety in terms of weapons and moves which will frustrate some. If you expect a large variety of timing-sensitive-button-presses-to-trigger-combos like, say, God of War or Devil May Cry, you are likely to find the gameplay repetitive. Ryse depends a lot on perfect timing but the variety of combos is lacking. The combat variety on offer here more through death animations (which can be levelled up and definitely do feel pretty bad ass.) To some, the death scenes they appear as nothing more than QTEs that have no impact on the game but it's a little more than that. The accuracy of your button presses determine how much reward you get. Almost, but not quite, like the active reload system in Gears except that you can't fail outright only do poorly. In general, I tend not to like a lot of QTE (a little bit is nice because they tend to have great animations that aren't seen during regular gameplay) but the twist used here allowed me to enjoy their use in Ryse. I would say that the tuning of the reward payout as small/medium/large instead of none/small/large shows again that the game is oriented more to the casual gamer than the serious gamers.
My feeling is that most folks who are interested in games enough to be reading gamespot will likely want to set the difficulty a notch higher than the default. I play most games on the normal difficulty but having heard that Ryse was tuned more for the casual gamer, I played through on the next higher difficulty and found it to be just right.
There's kind of a pile on mentality happening to Ryse on the forums. Most of the extreme negativity you read is from people who haven't actually played it. Of those I've come across who've actually played it, most seem to rate it overall between ok and very-good. Hence, the user review average around 7 or just below.
In all, I enjoyed the game - it feels very polished and I'm still going back for the multiplayer. As long as you're not expecting a complex experience such as what GTA V offers and can enjoy some beautiful, mindless fun then you are likely to find something to enjoy here.