Played on hard difficulty, PS4, completed the main story and most side tales.

At first I thought this game was stellar, but things quickly went down hill as Act II continued. At first the side activities were interesting, but after following a fox for the 60th time I was dreading them. The only one I didn't despise was the bamboo strike and even that got boring towards the end. Combat was amazing at first, but soured as time went on. During boss battles, I felt the AI cheating a bit - locking onto you with heavy attacks no matter what you did.

My biggest issue with Ghost is the story and writing. Holy hell the writing is absolutely atrocious. If I have to hear "Mongols" one more f*$%ing time I will commit harakiri. The characters are flatter than discworld and Jin is the most boring protagonist I've seen in a long time across all media. He is so boring and one dimensional I couldn't take it anymore. The only comic relief we get is a sake merchant who was annoyingly unfunny. Aspects of the story made absolutely no sense to me, especially one side tale that unfolds throughout the entire game. Be prepared to hear the same overly serious boring dialogue over and over again with such hits as: "I do this for my people," and the classic "ThIs Is NoT tHe waY of a SaMuRai." Don't forget the classic, "Don't ever question me again!" and "Mongols, Mongols, Invaders, Mongols, Mongols..."

The gameplay isn't bad by any means, but it's extremely repetitive. Tracking is terrible and boring af. And every quest either ends with "I must kill these Mongols" or "Bandits..." The waypoint system is okay, but when you're trying to move on past a tracking/investigative part of a quest, it's so frustrating not being able to find the last thing to investigate. Usually there is no marker at all and you have to stumble upon it.

Collecting flags, artifacts, and records just isn't my thing. If you like to collect these things in games more power to you, but I never understood it and think it's a waste of time. Running into Mongol patrols became extremely boring after the 100th time and I avoided them at all costs after awhile.

It's not all negative. I gave it two stars because I liked how things are somewhat streamlined and focused. No currency, no inventory, no complex leveling system with perks and attributes. I don't think that would have suited this game. The environment is nice to look at and combat is a lot of fun during the first section. Other than that I am shocked that this received the reviews it did. I came in expecting a stellar narrative with new and interesting things to do as the game progressed. Nope. I'm glad to have finished Ghost of Tsushima and never have to play it again.

Ghost of Tsushima is an incredible achievement. It is a perfectly engineered game, optimized to an almost unparalleled degree, that deeply respects the player and their time. I thoroughly enjoyed a good majority of my time playing Ghost of Tsushima. For someone who plays their fair share of open world games, I have to admit that this game repeatedly took my breath away, visually, atmospherically and mechanically. The world of Tsushima is a very full one, complete with secrets, collectables, enemy camps and side quests. Yet as full as it is it never feels overwhelming nor bloated.

Ghost of Tsushima’s map similarly never feels crowded or overrun with icons or information. Instead, Ghost of Tsushima employs organic systems that help gently guide the player to various locations and collectables, systems built upon simple UX elements like the direction of the wind, or gear that signals you are close to something worth picking up. These simple systems are both unobtrusive enough that they never become annoying and conversely direct enough that I was able to ignore unlocking skills that rendered collectables even easier to find. No matter where I explored I constantly found myself able to collect and tap into the various upgrades and tools that enhanced my play without ever having to scrutinize my map or dig into a guide online.

Ghost of Tsushima’s combat is similarly intuitive and satisfying. Four simple stances allow you to quickly adjust to the exploit the weaknesses of disparate enemies. Diverse armour sets allow you to play in almost any way that suits you. While I certainly did love stealth aspects of the game, it was also enjoyable to tackle a group of enemies head on. Ghost of Tsushima does a wonderful job providing you with a vast array of tools and explaining when and why those tools are useful. It also provides enough variation in gameplay scenarios that you never feel that one approach is heads-and-shoulders superior to another. The game justifies all of it’s combat options, be they stealth, face-to-face or ranged. I never once felt one approach was hamstrung where others were artificially bolstered. I have a lot of respect for a company that can make me feel like I want to try each approach or tactic equally. There is a lot of thought and consideration that must drive that kind of effective game design.

Ghost of Thushima’s world is one of intricate details, beautiful hidden nooks and crannies and fairly vibrant village and city spaced. It feels simultaneously like a lived in space and one that is constantly under the pressure of war. Its zones encompass several different seasons and provide what is at once both deep verisimilitude and an almost myth like fantasy space. It feels both real and expertly crafted, like a perfect vision of Japan through the eyes or an artisan. Of course much of this comes from an attempt to translate the visual fabric of films but Akira Kurusawa. And while I don’t think Ghost of Tsushima is particularly successful at emulating the full nuances of a director like Kurosawa, I will admit that the game has a hauntingly cinematic aesthetic that is easy to get lost within.

But not all is perfect within the game. As expertly designed and respectful it is of the player’s time, Ghost of Tsushima failed to fully capture me from start to finish. To a large degree the last third to half of the game feels a bit disappointing from a mechanical standpoint. I found that by the end of the game, the skills and tools that you are provided render you far too powerful. I found the sweet spot of the game to be around the first third to middle, when several skills are undeveloped and more effort is required in combat. By the end of the game, when you have a full compliment of skills and charms, it very hard to lose to your opponents unless you cease fighting back. Jin’s skills are so thorough, the charms and armour so powerful that you are able to tear through enemies without a second thought. There is never a moment when you can find yourself on the back foot against an opponent. Not that I advocate that games lie Ghost of Tsushima strive to be Souls-like in any way, but I do enjoy when even the lowliest enemy in a Soulsborne game can push you to your limit if you’re not always on your game. I think I would have enjoyed a bit more challenge in the late game than I find Ghost of Tsushima had to offer.

I also found levelling to be uneven toward the end of the game. It’s very easy to to pick all of the very best skills up front and turn yourself into a combat powerhouse before you hit the last third of the game. By the time I was almost done the second area of the island, I had filled out most of the skill trees available. Aside from leaving me feeling overpowered, as I mention above, I felt it left me with less enjoyment. By the time I had reached the final section of the island, I will almost maxed out in skills and had an overabundance of supplies in my inventory with nothing to spend them on. This was partially due to the charms that let me double the supplies I collected and also another that increased the supplies dropped by enemies. In hindsight I would probably chose not to equip those charms for a second play through because I grew too rich, too fast. It would have been nice to have additional items during the final chapters to spend my supplies on, even if they were cosmetic.

Lastly, and this is something I’ve touched on in other posts about the game, I struggled with the story and themes of the game. Ghost of Tsushima feels like a game that was made by a western studio that idealizes mythical qualities of an almost mystical Japan. A game made by people who can’t quite delineate between reverence for and fetishization of a culture and a people. I don’t believe it is malicious, but I do think it is a game that leans too often on stereotypes about historical Japan and Samurai. I know counter arguments will cite that the Japanese reception of the game was very positive or that they pulled ideas directly from Kurosawa to construct this game. While both true, there is more nuance to both of those that needs to be considered. More on that subject in a moment.

From the start I was bothered by the dialogue and V.O. choices available. I wrote another post early on in my Ghost of Tsushima adventure:

I find all of Sucker Punch’s dialogue and voice acting choices deeply off putting. The game gives you a choice of Japanese or English dialogue. I chose Japanese and quickly learned that Sucker Punch did nothing to match the voice acted dialogue to the facial animations. It turns out only English matches up. This seems like a significant oversight, one that relegates Japanese spoken dialogue to a secondary, less important position in the game.

Nonetheless, I switched to English and then quickly learned that Sucker Punch’s direction to its Japanese voice cast mirrors that of a lot of western representations of Japanese speech. The choice feels less driven by a desire for Japanese representation than it is rooted in western orientalism. It’s an unsettling and unfortunate first impression that colours my feelings about the game, and my desire to want to continue playing.

It’s also telling that when setting the game up at the start, the English language mode is called “Standard” and Japanese is “Japanese Cinema”, rather than the far more simple English and Japanese. The game positions its questionable English voice direction as the standard way to play the game.

It feels as though, for a studio who made a game that supposedly reveres Japanese culture, they did little to actually reflect that reverence when it comes to the dialogue and voice over direction.

This is an aspect of the game I had to learn to live with despite my reservations, and that soured my overall enjoyment of the game a tiny bit. I chose to play with Japanese V.O. and decided to ignore the mismatched visuals. It something I wish Sucker Punk had attended to with the same level of care and thoughtfulness they put into other mechanical aspects of the game.

Once deeper into the game I was bothered by another aspect of Sucker Punch’s choices, the decision to focus on a profoundly stereotypical depiction of Samurai honour and the Bushido code. I constantly felt at odds with a narrative that rigidly pitted notions of honour against a critical and thoughtful approach to serving one’s people. The game also repeatedly reinforced the notion of the Samurai as honourable warriors that protect the people, rather than the powerful arm of Japanese lords and landowners employed to maintain dominant power structures in historical Japan.

While the game introduces characters and actions that attempt to portray alternative perspectives, the game repeatedly reduces the discourse to a binary between honourable and dishonourable practices. That even when abandoning rigid and dated ideals seems like the thoughtful and intelligent, even progressive, thing to do, the game constantly reminds us that while the honourable path might seem antiquated, in the long run it is the right choice. One of the most significant examples is Jin’s choice to use poison on the Mongolians. It is the dishonourable and deceptive choice that Jin determines necessary because it saves lives compared to his uncle’s frontal assault. But the game illustrates soon after that this dishonourable choice leads to the mass poisoning of whole sections of Tsushima’s population. Jin’s choice, albeit made to save lives, ends up costing far more lives. Such is the price of dishonour.

Similarly, the end of the game sets up another dichotomy between honour and dishonour providing Jin with an opportunity to follow one path or another in his final dealings with his uncle. The game frames the honourable choice, killing his uncle, as the right and ultimately righteous decision. There is an attempt to illustrate that despite all of Jin’s difficult decisions that led to what his uncle frames as dishonour, there is still an honourable way to resolve the final conflict. And that is by realigning himself with the ideology of his uncle. The game tasks you to take up the honourable path by accepting the uncle’s code. And by doing so you undermine any of the criticism the game lightly aimed at its depiction of the Samurai.

Ironically, for a game made by self described Kurosawa fans, Ghost of Tsushima misses or misinterprets a lot of the critical discourse that Kurosawa embedded in his films about historical Japan and the Samurai. In his piece Ghost of Tsushima, Kurosawa, and the political myth of the samurai for Polygon, Kasuma Hashimoto writes

[I]n embracing “Kurosawa” as an eponymous style for samurai adventures, the creatives behind Ghost of Tsushima enter into an arena of identity and cultural understanding that they never grapple with. The conversation surrounding samurai did not begin or end with Kurosawa’s films, as Japan’s current political forces continue to reinterpret history for their own benefit.

Hashimoto goes on to discuss the murky ways Ghost of Tsushima attempts to navigate its depiction of Samurai, a depiction that often draws from modern nationalistic conceptions of Japan’s past rather than it does its actual past. That ultimately casts a shadow over many of the excellent things that Ghost of Tsuhima does. By not approaching these themes critically, and by failing to see that very criticism within Kurosawa’s own films, Sucker Punch failed to deliver on a story that is more than a Samurai power fantasy. This is best put by Hashimoto who goes on to write:

In an interview with The Verge, Fox said that “our game is inspired by history, but we’re not strictly historically accurate.” That’s keenly felt throughout the story and in its portrayal of the samurai. The imagery and iconography of the samurai carry a burden that Sucker Punch perhaps did not reckon with during the creation of Ghost of Tsushima. While the game doesn’t have to remain true to the events that transpired in Tsushima, the symbol of the samurai propagates a nationalist message by presenting a glossed-over retelling of that same history. Were, at any point, Ghost of Tsushima to wrestle with the internal conflict between the various class systems that existed in Japan at the time, it might have been truer to the films that it draws deep inspiration from. However, Ghost of Tsushima is what it set out to be: a “cool” period piece that doesn’t dwell on the reasonings or intricacies of the existing period pieces it references.

A game that so heavily carries itself on the laurels of one of the most prolific Japanese filmmakers should investigate and reflect on his work in the same way that the audience engages with other pieces of media like film and literature. What is the intent of the creator versus the work’s broader meaning in relation to current events, or the history of the culture that is ultimately serving as a backdrop to yet another open-world romp? And how do these things intertwine and create something that can flirt on an edge of misunderstanding? Ghost of Tsushima is a surface-level reflection of these questions and quandaries, sporting a lens through which to experience Kurosawa, but not to understand his work. It ultimately doesn’t deal with the politics of the country it uses as a backdrop. For the makers of the game, recreating Kurosawa is just black and white.

Ghost of Tsuhima is a deeply contradictory game. It strives for a meticulous approach to game design that it essentially achieves on every front, but it rests on a system of simplistic and stereotypical depictions of a historical period and people for it story, employing none of the thoughtfulness is story that can be found in the mechanical aspects of the game. Sucker Punch wants to deliver an homage to a favourite director through their game, but they overlook and exclude the very critical elements that make his films as important as they are. On the one hand I absolutely adored playing this game for most of its run time. On the other, I was constantly butting heads with its ideological discourse.

Ghost of Tsushima is the perfect example of why we should be critical of the media we consume, but also how it's possible to be critical and still enjoy that media. I regret nothing about my time playing Ghost of Tsushima but I will always have lament its potential as something that could have been, but ultimately failed to be, a true homage to Japanese history and culture and to the stories and images of Akira Kurosawa.

If there's two things I love, it's open-world adventure games and 13th-century Japan. Given that, it was bound to either be a slam-dunk with me, or a huge disappointment. Fortunately, it was the former!

First thing to know - as my review title suggests - is that the game is GOT DANG GORGEOUS. OK, I may be biased because the world's aesthetic is right up my alley. But, one has to appreciate that they constructed beautiful landscapes, did a very good job with blending distant/near objects smoothly, and made the absolute BEST natural lighting, mist/fog, and falling/swirling leaf effects I've seen in any game. I've seen much better water effects in other games, but its flaws are only really noticeable when you're in the water, which isn't much. It also helps that the game has an integrated screenshot tool that allows you to pause and move the camera, alter camera zoom and focus, alter time of day/weather, apply filters... basically do whatever you need to make your perfect screenshot at any point you pause the game. Perhaps the most innovative thing they've done for the genre is go very minimalist with UI. There's no mini-map, with directional guidance given by following gusts of wind or various animals which appear near objectives. Weapon/tool selections only appear in UI when the relevant button is pushed. Health & Resolve meters only appear during combat. So there's much less to distract you from the gorgeous scenery.

On Normal the combat was not challenging enough, so I had to turn it up to Hard to get the satisfying-but-not-frustrating challenge level I wanted. This kept the combat feeling deadly and non-trivial... although I'll admit I still wasn't pushed as far as I could have been. (good news; there is a higher difficulty setting!) With all the abilities, tools, and weapons available, there is a whole panoply of ways to approach every encounter. I never felt like any option was over- or under-powered; if anything I felt like I couldn't make full use of every possible strategy, which made it very possible to develop my own mix which felt satisfying, efficient, and fun, without feeling like it was the ONLY way to do it.

The plot, while not boring, was pretty predictable for the first 2/3. After that there were a couple unexpected turns, though it still ended up pretty much where it was telegraphing the whole way. I was surprised to find that many of the side quests were poignant tales in their own right, and many of them with more surprises and twist endings than the main story. I felt they nailed the Kurosawa style in the storytelling and cinematography. While the overall plot wasn't particularly inspiring or revelatory, there were a few key moments that packed enough emotional punch to make up for it.

Unlike most open-world games, I never felt that trying to collect/finish everything got monotonous. Perhaps because the world was a pleasure to behold, and it seems like everywhere you go you discover some lovely spot that's worth admiring (especially when finding the Inari & Kami shrines). Also helps that there are tools in the game to guide you to the things, so there's never the frustration of spending lots of time not finding that very last collectible and having to go to the internet to figure it out.

Hands down, this is one of the greatest games I've ever had the pleasure to play. It's a masterpiece by all means of the word. It pulled me in from the very beginning and it was one of those games that I couldn't put down - and when I knew I was getting to the end, I was SAD!

First off, the graphics are unlike anything I've experienced. GORGEOUS. I never fast travelled anywhere because it was so beautiful to ride to my destination. I also love how the seasons changed throughout the game so you got the full effect of Japan throughout a full year. It just added so much to the game - I can't rave about it enough.

The storyline is another highlight. The main story is one of loss and revenge, but also internal conflict about honor and being a samurai. Their are moments that actually gave me the feels and made me tear up - both throughout the story and at the end (WOW). The side quests were good as well and gave me enough variety to stay glued to the game. I loved finding the mountain temples, sanctuaries and running down all the different katanas and outfits as well. I hardly every try to get 100% completion, but one this one I did because I just didn't want it to end.

The weapons were fun and imaginative, the increased skills is something I always love and those big, badass moments when time slows down and everything goes black and white and red - so cool!

This one will be in my top 5 games of all time for a looooonngggg time to come. It's one of those that I wish I could forget so I could play it again and again. Perfection.

Do you Like Kurosawa movies? yes? then you're going to be thrilled to pieces with everything about this game. It's very much a cinematic game before anything and the visuals are the focus. To this end, the draw distance is incredible, the environments are breathtaking, with perfectly smooth particle effects for leaves and blossoms that blow in the wind. There is no HUD just an empty screen while you wander, just your view, you navigate by following the wind, which blows in the direction of your destination. this is a neat feature and i applaud the innovation. It works well enough, though at times you'll be squinting at the leaves calling up the wind over and over trying to figure out what its doing before just pausing and looking at the map. Everything in this game is a pleasure to look at from the very grass under your feet to the water, the buildings, the combat. Wandering around the world of Tsishima island is the greatest joy and the game makes it work to the best possible advantage. there is much to discover and collect, there are encounters and side quests festooned about every inch. Many are repetitive. activities boil down to go here, follow these foot prints, kill these guys, sometimes be sneaky, sometimes save these people while doing it.

The game takes a bit to find it's footing. you won't feel the full weight of it's potential right away. The combat evolves slowly, from simple to deep and varied. Your tools and abilities are many, and many more than you'll ever need. even at the highest difficulty, your foes are helpless against your full arsenal. In stand up combat face to face, enemies can be intense and unrelenting, those encounters are a real challenge and a real blast, particularly the one on one duels. these can be the most varied, most interesting moments in the game. If you sneak in though, and use your projectiles and tools, they're helpless. They bumble around uselessly while your slaughter them. It's still fun, but don't expect to be working hard to succeed.

The story is fine. it's nothing remarkable. you'll never be surprised at it. It won't win any awards. But it has it's moments. everyone in the cast is super serious all the time and they brood and hurumph and act solemn. There's little to no wit and the serene environment contrasts with the constant sadness and anger of the characters and story. Every so often there is a truly thrilling moment where you can get into the emotions and the intensity of battle. Usually it's just cheese. If you've seen a Kurosawa movie , it's like that. it's trying it's best to be exactly that.

If I had to nitpick something, the game glitches noticeably. It's nothing game breaking but objects will clip into walls sometimes or characters will bumble around trying to navigate, dialogue with stutter or cut off abruptly. This isn't constant. it's not even often. It didn't bother me really. But it needs some patching. The other thing I would complain about is there is no new game plus, and there badly needs to be one. There's plenty of game to get through, the story is long even if you hurry straight through it without exploring or side questing and that would be a mistake, but it does end and there's no new challenge, nothing to face with your abilities you've earned. Maybe it's a credit to how truly fun the game is that my biggest problem with it is that it ends.

Some of my fondest memories gaming were in my gap year between Secondary and College. Under the weight of an across the board unexceptional academic performance and therefore uncertain future I spent hours, days, months with my laptop, illegally downloaded music (shout out Fall Out Boy’s Folie a deux) and illegally downloaded games like; Far Cry 3 and 4, Batman Arkham City, Assassins Creed 3 and Black Flag, not because they were compelling feats of game design (which they were), not because they spoke to me and my struggle to ‘come of age’(they usually did that too) but because, quite simply, they shut my brain off.

There’s a lot to criticize about Ubisoft’s game design and how it has ushered in an age of maximalist consumerism that, paired with monetized in-game items and a business model geared towards keeping their audience as far away from their family and friends for as long as possible, has near objectively made gaming as a whole worse for everyone involved… except of course the billionaire executives who designed it. There’s a lot to criticize about intent, and actual value provided, and the ‘why’ of gaming; games as product or art. Regardless, I would hesitate to call games like these ‘badly designed’… in the same way that I wouldn’t call a John Wick film badly written . 17 Year old me found solace in the grind, in mindlessly satisfying tasks on a checklist that I could reliably do for hours on end, in the same way that a 9 to 5 salary man pays to watch Keanu Reeves stylishly murder nameless goons for two hours straight, no subtext, no moral justification, just a blind, violent power fantasy. Just pure vibes.

Around the same time I was gliding through Arkham City, I was playing with the idea of taking my dream of becoming a filmmaker more seriously because I didn’t have much of an alternative. As a Ugandan this was, and honestly still is, laughably ambitious for a long list of reasons, chief among them the fact that my country hasn’t managed to release a film that I’d consider noteworthy in any way, shape or form in the last 30 Years. To make a film in my country is to start from scratch., financially, functionally, culturally, you have nothing to pull from, nowhere to really learn from beyond music videographers and NGO contractors. This forced me to look to other industries, cultures beyond the West for a version of Cinema that spoke to me on a level deeper than just spectacle. In the comfort of my bedroom and with a broadband connection of less than 5mb I found myself in South-Korea, in India, China and Japan, conversating with artists like Amir Khan, Park Chan-wook, Wong Kar-wai and frequently Akira Kurosawa, the latter’s movies built like filmmaking 101 courses; Rashomon a study on point of view and the defining nature of character in relation to story, Seven Samurai a study of motion, Kurosawa placing at least one moving subject in every frame, distinguishing the canvas from the camera, composing paintings and then having them come to life at a scale that no other medium was capable of at the time. Kurosawa was like a guide to me in a moment when I felt lost in a world that expected me to simply know how to move through it.

All of the above will hopefully emphasize the point when I say that Ghost of Tsushima was ‘Made for Me’, I’m not being hyperbolic, it literally was. I’ve wondered for the longest time why a Japanese Assassin’s Creed did not already exist, as the franchise’s dedication to historical accuracy, stealth mechanics and open world freedom felt destined for a feudal Japanese setting, but as the years went on and Ubisoft pivoted towards a more arcade/casino slot machine driven approach to making games I started to hope that they wouldn’t make it, because the version that existed in my head was perfect and I wanted it to stay perfect. Ghost of Tsushima is the version of that game I had in my head, with a dedication to motion only rivaled by Kurosawa himself, as petals rise from the ground with each step you take through the war ravaged country side, epic blood stained samurai narratives unravelling right in front of you, some of the most fascinating studies on honor and duty again, rivaled only by Kurosawa himself.

More than it’s endless tributes to classic Samurai films, Ghost of Tsushima feels like both an homage to and iteration on the great videogames of my childhood specifically. The Far Cry franchise’s world design, The Witcher’s narrative design, Assassin’s creed vertical traversal, Sekiro’s combat and parry system. Skill up from Youtube described it as the PlayStation 4’s swan song and I can’t help but agree, this feels like a polishing and merging of ideas that only decades of iteration can amount to. It’s the most visually stunning game I’ve ever played, with biomes that I hesitate to describe because I just don’t have the lexicon for it, but mostly its reminds me of the hours I wasted as a kid gleefully doing ‘in-game chores’, climbing towers and taking bounties in order to avoid thinking about my life, and now as a 28 year old writing his own film scripts, directing and assistant directing his own movies and series, this game has inspired such a wave of nostalgia.

I’m low-key in love with this, but I’m clearly very biased. Highly recommend though.