But these relative successes are marred. Phaedon's philosophical jousting, for example, is the other side of a crude memory game, and followed by a dull boss fight, while decisions about how to treat the people you encounter are often trivial. You simply pick the response that serves whichever god you're currently trying to get some powers out of, aware by this stage that the structure of the game is rather more linear than it lets on. Choice is generally an illusion, if it's even offered, as it isn't when you're invited to either bludgeon your wife's murderer to death, watching on from his perspective after ten minutes of playing, or stand there motionless and not play the game any longer.
[...]
But if this is a cautionary tale, it's one of this player's misplaced, increasingly desperate hope to derive some greater meaning. There is only one path, and while you meet a few interesting people and solve a few worthy problems on the way, the fundamental paradox at the heart of Rise of the Argonauts is never explored or resolved. Instead, the game concludes disagreeably, as virtually everyone Jason is supposed to protect is left tortured and dead by his original departure, and he simply has a party because he got what he wanted. For an action RPG elevated beyond its serviceable components by the allure of rich mythology to end in such a desperate contradiction is comprehensively self-destructive.​