Ghost of Tsushima (2020)

Ghost of Tsushima is what happens when style and passion collides with safe, bland, AAA gaming.

I can’t comment on whether or not the upgrade from PS4 is worth it as this release was my first experience with Ghost of Tsushima. Although I can say that the Iki Island expansion is just more of the same.

Ghost of Tsushima commits the same sins as a lot of other recent games - open world with a bunch of unnecessary, uninspired side activities, side missions, resource collecting, upgrades, light RPG stuff, collectables and camps to clear. Basically it’s a big map that’s really a repetitive checklist. It is bloated, goes on too long and does not respect the player’s time.

The gameplay is fun, especially in the early hours of play, but it doesn’t have enough depth or variety to last the games run time. Standoffs are cool at first but get old. Combat is simple but satisfying and they give you just enough options to keep things fun for a while. Stealth is shallow and enemy AI is poor. For some reason there is too much linear, tedious climbing and you feel too floaty when jumping about. Exploration doesn’t feel very rewarding and riding about starts to drag.

The story is enjoyable but doesn’t really do anything interesting or get you heavily invested. The game starts off and ends pretty well but of course most of the game is drawn out. The characters are good but not super memorable. I enjoyed that the game had some humour from time to time which certainly helped break things up a bit.

So what really elevates Ghost of Tsushima above the competition? First of all I think people really wanted an open world, historical, Japanese, Samurai game and this definitely got my attention. Then there is the style. This game looks beautiful and not because it tries to push the limits of technology. It’s the art direction, the colours, the constant beautiful views, the wind and weather, the commitment to the time period while also not being dedicated to realism.

The other thing that comes across is the developer’s passion for the location, time period, Samurai culture and other media that has done this before. It’s clear that a lot of research was done when creating this game. I enjoyed it so much that I found myself looking up Tsushima, Iki and Mongol and Japanese history. The inspiration from Samurai films shines through as well and I appreciated the visual options. I played this in Japanese with English subtitles and had a good time soaking it all in.

Overall I enjoyed my time playing Ghost of Tsushima but there was plenty of monotony. I am not in any hurry to play it again or get a sequel. If you’re looking for an open world, AAA, PS4 era game I would probably recommend Ghost of Tsushima over the competition.

7.3/10

Ghost of Tsushima was developed by Sucker Punch, and I really liked their inFamous series (except the latest one). I'm fascinated that they created the completely different game about samurais and it's a really good one.

Basically, it's an open world game with a main story, side quests and other collectible activities. In the beginning it reminded me about Assassin's Creed, but GoT felt more serious. First of all, there is an interesting story about invasion of mongols, well written characters and dialogues, so I actually cared about the plot. Secondly, the combat system is more complex than in ACs, it's hard to win there by smashing one or two buttons only, so you need to find a way to every enemy and use different techniques. Also there are plenty question marks on the world map, but the amount is still reasonable, so I didn't get bored by visiting all of them.

My special admiration to the graphics or art style, to be specific. This game looks absolutely gorgeous, while it doesn't have all the latest graphic technologies (like ray tracing or something else).

There is a one DLC about Iki Island and it offers about 10 hours of additional gameplay with another interesting story and new territory. If you enjoy the original game, you'll like this one too.

In my opinion it's the one of the best Playstation exclusives in the previous generation and I recommend to play it to everyone.

This game is really good, the atmosphere is beautiful, the fields of flowers, and the weather affects were amazing I really love games that have thunderstorms done great. The exploration of the world is done right too, I had so much fun actually exploring Tsushima and finding all the collectables, Like searching the Mongol camps and finding artifacts or records about them historically or in the game, it just really made me want to learn all about what the Mongols did during the Genghis khan era. The exploration was very well done and probably was my favorite part about this game And I'm not even a fan of open world games so that's extremely impressive. The fields were all very well made with vibrant colors.

The story was pretty good too, we start right when the Mongols have already invaded and we know we're charging into a losing battle when we have like 100 samurai to their thousands of Mongols and our main character, Jin Sakai in the beginning is as loyal as can be to his uncle, ready to die in this battle alongside his uncle, only for him to come close to death and his uncle to be taken hostage by the Mongol leader Khotan khan. then Jin wakes up to find out he's been saved by a thief girl named Yuna, Eventually he ends up having to learn that the only way to deal with these Mongols who do some terrible stuff, is without his code of honor that has been taught to him by his uncle in which ends up with conflicting ideas of how to deal with the Mongols later on.

The game has a bunch of side missions and honestly, a lot of them were kind of boring to me, and easy to tell after a few that most of these missions weren't going to have happy endings. then there are side missions for a cast of the side characters which i didn't care all too much about, most of the side characters were pretty boring for me, Masako, Ishikawa and the monk guy who popped up out of nowhere in act 2, I just didn't care about those three, but I did find Ishikawa's story interesting at least because of Tomoe. But other than that, the story characters were pretty good or hateful in a good way, like Khotan khan, when he popped up he definitely had a sense of "oh shit" about him where you knew you didn't want him near your characters at any time. Taka was interesting, Yuna, Ryuzo, another character they did pretty good at building up a love-hate feeling towards him, knowing he wasn't really a bad person and was trying to do right by the people he had to protect and having to deal with painful consequences.

This game also gave me a appreciation to the art of Haiku's lol. Honestly this game probably is a one time playthrough for me where I wouldn't really find the pleasure of doing everything a second time in the future but for a single experience the game was pretty enjoyable.

Some Negatives I had with the game was the camera, like when I'd be doing a Standoff with the Mongols and killed one as the next one rushes in in slow motion, the guy I just killed is falling in front of the second guy so I can't even see the second guy swinging his weapon for when I'm suppose to strike and then I end up getting a unfair hit. and even in regular battle, the camera would keep screwing me over. the battles also started to feel a bit repetitive for me at some point.

The different stances were a really well thought out idea, it took me a while to actually pick up on what was good against what but I eventually grasped it and got better. The boss battles though, while it's always a awesome moment when we see the duel about to begin and that health stuff, honestly there wasn't any unique boss battles in the game besides the final boss, everybody pretty much fought the same with 4 different stances. swords users, sword and shield, lances, or brutes.

It was definitely a great game to play, the story was pretty quick if you went just for the story and it actually exceeded what I thought I'd think of it, also thankfully the world wasn't as massive as other games try to make their open world games which ends up making me feel overwhelmed with exploring the world or having too much to find or too much to do. this game was just right with it's open world feeling. and the Skill screen too, it wasn't anything too crazy like certain games do with their skill trees and stuff, by the end I was able to unlock all my skills no problem and not be confused with what every skill did.

I also want to add that the games loading was amazing! like when i would quick travel to a different camp, a second or two right after, i'm there. that was impressive, i wish more games did that that quickly, that's like some ps5 stuff lol.

In the end, I'd Rate this game a 8/10, Great world and story, but the side characters and combat could've been Improved Upon at least for me. I'd have like to see more Unique boss battles too.

A couple of years back, my brother was enjoying Red Dead Redemption 2. He knew I wasn’t a big fan of Rockstar’s other games, but he thought this game was different and recommended it to me. I confessed to having zero interest in cowboys or westerns. “If you replaced the American frontier with feudal Japan and the cowboys with samurai,” I suggested, “then I’d definitely be interested.” We laughed and wondered why that wasn’t already a thing.

Last month, my brother gifted me Ghost of Tsushima. Turns out “interested” was a bit of an understatement. I love this game.

The biggest draw for me is its landscape. This is a beautiful game with a thorough sense of place that extends to every element of its presentation, including its wayfinding UI (which is so clever I’m amazed it hasn’t been done before). It had a similar rhythm for me as Breath of the Wild, where I’d start a play session, pick a direction and tackle whatever challenges lay in wait. In Tsushima, that may involve rescuing farmers, platforming to a shrine, writing a haiku or petting a fox… whatever the case, I was always in for a good time.

The biggest surprise for me was its combat. Despite my love for Hollow Knight and Marvel’s Spider-Man, combat can sometimes feel like a chore I have to get through to return to exploration. But I looked forward to it in Ghost of Tsushima: Stances and parrying in particular made fights feel a bit more like puzzles than the test of reflexes I would normally tire of.

I also found it refreshing for such lush production values to be spent on something that feels like such a video game at heart. A lot of triple-A titles I try can feel a bit desperate to justify their expense, with discordant story sequences, bloated mechanics and/or entire sections I never care to play. Tsushima is an island populated with classic objectives and collectibles… that straightforwardness won’t appeal to everyone, but it greatly appealed to me.

That's not to say I don’t have any criticism. Although it’s been incredibly well-received in Japan and discussed with some envy among industry veterans there, the lack of a full-fledged Japanese language mode with lip syncing feels like a tremendous oversight (especially considering all of the energy spent on the game’s Kurosawa Mode). Though I compared it to Breath of the Wild in terms of gameplay rhythm, it’s a fair bit more repetitive and less grand in scope. And its first couple of hours can be a bit of a slog till you escape Early Game Hell.

But none of those complaints came close to souring my experience. I loved getting lost in Tsushima the same way I did Hyrule, Arkham City and Shenmue II’s Hong Kong.

(Now how about that more stylized, open world Usagi Yojimbo game I’ve been dreaming of??)

My quick scores: Gameplay - 8/10 Story - 7/10 Visuals - 9.5/10

Ghost of Tsushima feels like a game that was build around a single innovative feature/concept. The guiding wind is fantastic and is something I hope to see more in the open world RPG genre. Or at least in some form. Same thing with the foxes and birds you find as you travel, but I'm not as bullish on that. The hours upon hours of staring at a checkpoint marker in a game like Assassin's Creed is getting tiresome at this point. But much like that series, Ghosts continues with the "checklist per region" trend with not a lot of noteworthy things. Some are unique to the game, obviously, but feels much more like a paint-by-numbers approach to the genre than creating something new in that aspect. Not a bad thing, but just didn't leave an impression after fifty hours of gameplay.

Speaking of impressions, let's get it out of the way now. Yes this game is incredibly gorgeous and it plays it up a lot with little things. Highlighting trees that house Fox Dens, the meadows of flowers and seeing Jin reach down as your horse goes full sprint through them, and the minimalist HUD creates such an immersive feel as you wander.

Exploration in this game is rewarding on so many levels. Standoff vs the bandits and save the civilian, learn of an encampment near the coast, clear it out and gather plenty of materials, then go upgrade your stuff, along the way hear a bird and let it lead you to a pillar, etc. Ghost of Tsushima might have perfected the pull to explore for the open-world RPG genre with so many fun ways to explore. Instead of checking your map every three minutes and setting a new waypoint, you can let the wind flow you towards certain locations and discover things along the way. Everything about this game feels like it's screaming for you to not do the main quests and just explore the island.

For combat, the stances caught my attention quickly and kept me involved throughout the game, especially in the latter half of the game when it felt more imperative to play thoughtfully. Or at least more so than early on. Special attacks and secondary weapons felt like good ways to spice up the combat, or turn the tide if you were feeling overwhelmed. That said, the AI and combat flow felt mediocre at the best of times with plenty of hiccups along the way. Combat gets messy quickly with too many enemies since there's no real lock-on, it's just directional with the left stick. And as silly as it sounds, I couldn't stand having to angle the camera to cue assassinations properly. Even without that issue stealth was a dull experience, clunky, and more troublesome than it was worth at times. Hide, stab, hide again, unlock double stab, hide. This felt like a bit of a step back from games that feature stealth as of late. The only good with it late game was a combo, smoke bomb with multi-assassinate in combat.

My issues with the game didn't necessarily take away from the fun of it all, but it definitely took me out of it at times. The weirdest one was essentially, a popup that paused combat until I switch to the "appropriate" stance for the enemy I'm facing. For a game that is all about the open exploration, playing it with your style and imprint on Jin, it seemed very weird to place this failsafe in the middle of a combat encounter. It drove me wild that it happened so often and jarring every time. Other issues that were pretty regular were character glitches that forced restarts, some armour looked janky and wouldn't fit with it's full set at times for me, regular camera pan issues in standoffs, and my biggest issue was the story.

SPOILERS AHEAD: The game's story is weak and not just in a sense of you know how it'll end or whatever. Whether it's that Jin is hindered by boring characters, tropes, writing, or the games mechanics around those characters is sort of like a chicken or the egg debate for me. Because all in all Jin doesn't offer much to others as a character either. For as much on screen time Yuna gets, it felt like the weird interactions with her and Jin were endless. I just couldn't get past it at times. Lady Masako and Norio were the two that gave me some sort of interest in completing their storylines and seeing the development. Even though all of the character missions are very cookie cutter. Meet the person, they talk about the new situation, you travel to said location of thing, there's some dialogue on the way with a possible option between X or O, combat sequence at the destination, cutscene after combat, and voila. Once you started to follow the formula, you sorta had an idea how everything was going to play out. That doesn't even really cover the plot of the game, which follows one note the whole way through to its inevitable conclusion. It's passable at best and weighs the game down at other times. There isn't much to it beyond that.

Look, all in all the game disappointed me on a few levels. I was hoping for a better story, I was hoping to truly enjoy the stealth aspect, and I was expecting better character development based on how people treat Sucker Punch. It sets out to be one of the most fun open-world RPGs to date, but trips itself along the way in almost every other aspect.