"I have no honour, but I will not kill my family."
As if Sucker Punch didn't already put Ubisoft to shame with last year's release of GoT, they went and did it twice in a row this year with a cut that added an expansion and more things to the game in a way that made it better than last time how Ubisoft wish they could with all of their DLCs as of late.
Started and finished the Iki Island story line on day one of release it was that good, dare I say the story was even better than that of the Tsushima story in some areas. Seeing an in depth analysis of Jin's father and the people who killed him was exciting to see and something I wanted in a potential sequel.
Aside from that, the Director's Cut improves on everything else. There's now lock-on in combat which will make the combat that more easier for people who had struggles with the camera work beforehand. There are new animations and ways to do things in combat and in parkour/stealth, and personally the colour scheme aesthetic for me is also improved, everything fits the black, white and gold theme now in the button prompts. You are also able to replay camps/duels which is something fans wanted for awhile, giving you more to do in your free time when there's nothing else to do.
Other additions I really liked was the ability to charge at enemies on your horse, the addition of the flute as a duel sense mechanic and being able to pet deers, cats and monkeys alike.
Overall, a solid cut and DLC expansion. Hope Sucker Punch continues with this franchise because it's definitely one of the magnum opus for PlayStation exclusives in my opinion.
As if Sucker Punch didn't already put Ubisoft to shame with last year's release of GoT, they went and did it twice in a row this year with a cut that added an expansion and more things to the game in a way that made it better than last time how Ubisoft wish they could with all of their DLCs as of late.
Started and finished the Iki Island story line on day one of release it was that good, dare I say the story was even better than that of the Tsushima story in some areas. Seeing an in depth analysis of Jin's father and the people who killed him was exciting to see and something I wanted in a potential sequel.
Aside from that, the Director's Cut improves on everything else. There's now lock-on in combat which will make the combat that more easier for people who had struggles with the camera work beforehand. There are new animations and ways to do things in combat and in parkour/stealth, and personally the colour scheme aesthetic for me is also improved, everything fits the black, white and gold theme now in the button prompts. You are also able to replay camps/duels which is something fans wanted for awhile, giving you more to do in your free time when there's nothing else to do.
Other additions I really liked was the ability to charge at enemies on your horse, the addition of the flute as a duel sense mechanic and being able to pet deers, cats and monkeys alike.
Overall, a solid cut and DLC expansion. Hope Sucker Punch continues with this franchise because it's definitely one of the magnum opus for PlayStation exclusives in my opinion.
The Iki Island content reminded me that
A) the combat in this game is extremely satisfying
B) Sucker Punch have done really solid character work with GoT plot lines with strong 'characters get what they need, not what they want' conclusions.
A) the combat in this game is extremely satisfying
B) Sucker Punch have done really solid character work with GoT plot lines with strong 'characters get what they need, not what they want' conclusions.
the Iki storyline is not that interesting but god DAMN it's so good to be back in this game again. Iki island is just Sucker Punch showing off -- it's so gorgeous in ways even the original game wasn't, which I didn't even know was possible. The dialogue is strong, and there's lots of exploration on this new island which extends out a decent chunk of what is otherwise an extremely short story. Great new outfits, enemies are more difficult, and the new challenges are fun! Probably worth the money!
uhhh... eh? i don't know, the combat is still great, but the story is so weak and stiff. it's starting to devolve into a checklist now, too, and while i honestly enjoy that to an extent, i don't think i've got the patience to 100% this
This review contains spoilers
"You have no honor..."
"And you are a slave to it..."
"And you are a slave to it..."
Enjoyed the hell out of Iki Island it's more Ghost of Tsushima for ya
Uh-oh, it's contrarian time! Yeah, I just don't like Ghost of Tsushima that much. I'll do a full review and analysis at some point, but just so this negative blurb gives people something to chew on:
Ghost of Tsushima is a slap in the face to anyone who has a legitimate love of samurai cinema rather than an aesthetic fascination that rarely goes beyond straight up Orientalism. The Director's Cut does not amend any issues I have with its launch day counterpart. In fact, locking the cutscenes at 30FPS is a laughable blunder on the part of Sucker Punch that adds even more scrutiny to their already mangled cinematics, especially in the same console generation where Spider-Man can run at a consistent 60FPS with ray-tracing. Ghost of Tsushima is a slightly more stylistically competent Assassin's Creed that lacks the heart, soul, and production value of its contemporary PlayStation Studios counterparts.
2.5 out of 5.
Play Nioh instead, you cowards!
Ghost of Tsushima is a slap in the face to anyone who has a legitimate love of samurai cinema rather than an aesthetic fascination that rarely goes beyond straight up Orientalism. The Director's Cut does not amend any issues I have with its launch day counterpart. In fact, locking the cutscenes at 30FPS is a laughable blunder on the part of Sucker Punch that adds even more scrutiny to their already mangled cinematics, especially in the same console generation where Spider-Man can run at a consistent 60FPS with ray-tracing. Ghost of Tsushima is a slightly more stylistically competent Assassin's Creed that lacks the heart, soul, and production value of its contemporary PlayStation Studios counterparts.
2.5 out of 5.
Play Nioh instead, you cowards!
Wowee. Honestly just the best way to play this game. The haptics feel great, trigger feedback feels great, the audio and 60fps framerate is incredible. Just a blast of a game. 100%ed the main game, NG+ and Iki Island, but Legends is maybe just a bit too much of a commitment to totally complete (but it's still great fun!)
Mission structure is often repetitive, animations can feel robotic at times, but the narrative grows to be fantastic after a slow start, the characters are very well-written and feel real, the gameplay is fun and unique, the open world is gorgeous, the soundtrack is great, the haptic feedback is a nice touch, the progression system is satisfying and the side activities are solid thanks to the characters they center on. There’s also a solid multiplayer mode with both PvE and Pv(Ev)P. A fantastic package with some flaws that are drowned out by its successes
I just find this game to be so shallow and dull, the story is really nothing to write home about, and the combat is average. I came back to the director's cut from the multiplayer which I would like to give a 7/10, it was surprisingly fun.
Um jogo lindo, incrível, mecânica muito boa e ótima história. Tudo nesse jogo é muito bom e bonito, as referencias asiáticas, os contos, músicas, etc.
Beautiful ending, even though the pacing is a little bit off for me. But holy shit the ending is beautiful.
Combat is very very well done, maybe enemy variety could help.
Overall I really liked it!
Combat is very very well done, maybe enemy variety could help.
Overall I really liked it!
Easily one of the best open-world games next to Breath of the Wild. Complex characters with understandable dilemmas, tight and brutal combat, fantastic sidequests and extra content, and probably the most beautiful-looking game I've ever played.
The story can be a bit wobbly and most of your playtime will be dedicated to side content, enemy AI isn't fantastic and there are occasions where platforming can be a bit unresponsive and stiff. But at its core, this is a stand-out title among the deluge of open-world action games. It made me tear up a couple of times, which I need to give it credit for.
The story can be a bit wobbly and most of your playtime will be dedicated to side content, enemy AI isn't fantastic and there are occasions where platforming can be a bit unresponsive and stiff. But at its core, this is a stand-out title among the deluge of open-world action games. It made me tear up a couple of times, which I need to give it credit for.
This review contains spoilers
First things first: I went into this game hyped as all get out. I wasn’t tracking any of its development, but I was keyed in closely once it came out and got rave reviews. It sounded like a game very firmly in my wheelhouse, what with feudal Japan and samurai and my living in Japan and loving the culture.
Things started heating up as I got a PS5 and three weeks later went on a five month long deployment. During said deployment, the Director’s Cut for GOT got announced for PS5, and it dominated my game thoughts and Google searches from the awful aircraft carrier internet for months. I knew I would play it as soon as I got home, and before I ever touched it, I kind of decided I would love it. As it turns out, I loved it more than I thought I would. What follows are my usual loosely assembled notes taken throughout gameplay with not very much structure, edited for clarity.
Okay so for those who don’t know, the wind is the in-game pointer for how you get to your next objective. Whereas normally there’s some tacky onscreen prompt showing you exactly where to go, this keeps the screen clean, and the effect is moody and artistic. Watch the occasional wind line or note the leaves, grass, or snow blowing to stay on track.
When you first encounter the mechanic, you’ve washed up on a beach. You see a flashback where your uncle hands you your now deceased father’s sword and says his spirit is in the sword. Your uncle says your father’s spirit will guide you from the afterlife. Back in the present, you face the island, back to the water, and the wind blows in from the ocean onto the land.
In Japan, there is a holiday that is vaguely Día de los Muertos-like, where spirits of your ancestors can cross into the physical realm and interact with their living descendants. And the spirits come in from the ocean onto land. Just like the wind that comes in, as if your dad’s spirit is telling you where to go.
Freaking insane. I don’t know that they did that deliberately or not, but the connection is astonishing. This happens very near the beginning of the game, and as it turns out, this was just a taste of what was to come.
+++++++++++++++++++++
That title card. That reveal. Omg. The presentation in this game is top tier.
The story. The set up. The characters. Jin’s resolve and his failures and his hurts and his ghosts are poignant and personal. His devotion to honor and duty and defending the defenseless and dying for a cause and everything. All of it resonates so much. Being haunted by the ghosts of his failures but wanting to fight and succeed and rise above them is just so emotionally rich and moving to me.
Loving the discourse about breaking the code vs. bending it, making the society better by bringing order and delivering justice in the open. And isn’t living to fight the Mongols better than dying by a code? It’s all really meaty stuff and dovetails with kind of broader ethics of war discussions.
The controller has a little touch pad thing with a button and also swipe gestures. It took me a minute to figure out the swipe gestures besides up for wind, haha. The game even tried to tell me but I wasn’t picking up what it was putting down.
I love that there’s draw and sheath sword commands and that there are so many different animations for them.
Also I did not realize the dismount button was circle for a long while. Kept jumping off the horse like a buffoon and wondering why they designed it that way 😂
I am absolutely absorbed in this game. It takes its cues from a lot of the best of the genre, so I’m catching on quicker than I have in some of the more daunting games I’ve played recently. And the atmosphere/presentation is simply astonishing. I want to do everything, see everything, take in everything.
There’s a pleasant amount of unexpected humor and good characters in this game. The stories of each one are compelling and take some interesting turns. More than once, you’re blindsided with some news that Japanese have defected to helping the Mongols, or a lady who you’re helping get rice back from bandits actually lied to you about the situation. It’s all pretty interesting, and we’ve come a long way from the Spider-Man 2s and Assassin’s Creeds of the world where you do the same four overworld missions over and over again.
One thing is, I turned off enemy status indicators and put the game on hard from the outset, at my brother’s recommendation. This gave the game a bit of a steep learning curve. Putting it on hard meant at first, you die fast, so you die a lot, and it made it hard to get in sync with the game’s combat, so there was a bit of a vicious cycle of dying because I wasn’t getting good, and not getting good because I was dying.
At first, I kept wanting to compare this game/play it like Shadow of Mordor, but I couldn’t. Enemies do NOT attack you one at a time, and you cannot interrupt many of your attacks in order to parry or even guard, unlike Mordor when you can hit counter at any moment and it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. This combat is going to require a lot more mastery, which I think fits and makes its combat a little less cheap, but more demanding.
I remain impressed by the level of detail that goes into so many of the would-be throwaway side missions. Some of them unravel into these multi part mini missions that have the same level of care put into them as main missions.
One gripe with this game: the various gadgets and tools and abilities you progressively unlock get kind of lost in the sauce. It’s true of Spider-Man and Batman as well, but both those titles give you marginally better quick fire options and less dense sub-menus for assigning slots or equipping things. Tsushima has a lot, and they’re sort of confusing. I often don’t even end up using what’s available to me since equipping it before you need it is hard to do before you know you need it, and equipping things on the fly isn’t always feasible, as the game doesn’t fully pause to let you choose.
I will note as the game went on, I got a little better at this and more used to its different menus for this. (Even calling them menus isn’t accurate. More like interfaces.) But at the end of the day, you can assign one ranged weapon at a time and one quick fire weapon/gadget at a time, and you almost have to just pick one and commit to it rather than trying to produce the appropriate one in the heat of battle. For instance, if you’re in a pinch and want to throw a smoke bomb to make a getaway, it’s kind of too late to use it if it’s not already assigned. Again, once I got the hang of the interface, it became a little more manageable, but what this often boiled down to for me was either living or dying by the sword. Half the time I didn’t even use whatever quick fire gadget was assigned because I wasn’t thinking about it.
I think one of the keys to making the Arkham combat systems work lies in this concept. Arkham combat is about making you feel like Batman: invincible, unstoppable, untouchable, resourceful, unflappable. The highest gratification comes from flawless free flow, effortlessly dancing from one enemy to the next, chaining strikes, counters, stuns, dodges, and a variety of special gadgets and combo moves to be the Bat. The game rewards you for mixing up your repertoire and spreading your energy across the diverse web of abilities.
Where Arkham seemingly rewards players for straying to the periphery of Batman’s abilities to become increasingly more capable and resourceful, I find myself pulled to the core of the combat in Tsushima: swordplay. I occasionally dip into the periphery of items, but whether it’s my preference or the game’s intent, it seems embodying a samurai and going whole hog in this feudal Japan simulator means wielding the blade—and that is what I generally do.
I’m still finding out so many beautiful things about this game. I just checked the wind direction and Jin produced a red maple leaf (momiji 🍁) and released it gently into the wind.
Every time I think I’ve seen all the game has to offer, particularly I mean environmentally, it keeps throwing new things at me. It’s mind blowing how diverse the environments are and how seamlessly the game stitches them all together. You can look at the map and see a patch you haven’t explored before, go there to explore it, and find something truly special, and you’ll ask yourself how you missed it. In that way, it reminds me of Breath of the Wild, whose map has countless diverse, beautiful areas which all manage to have a distinct feel and identity. You can drop me into a place on Tsushima or in Hyrule, and I’ll know whether I’ve been there or not, which is more than you can say for many open world games whose environments may look samey even as they look nice.
++++SPOILERS++++
THEY DID NOT JUST KILL KAGE NFW. Omg. He has his own burial scene and his own gravesite you can revisit 😭 It’s a testament to Sucker Punch’s storytelling that I was more emotionally invested in MY HORSE than in most other movie or game characters I’ve seen die recently. Naughty Dog is not the only studio out there doing great storytelling, y’all.
++++END SPOILERS++++
One thing I really appreciate about this game is 1) they put in the work and make every single side quest and mission unique and part of the overarching narrative for either the characters or the island as a whole and 2) the main characters you pal around with all have serious doubts and struggles and flaws and find themselves at odds with Jin sometimes.
I wish Jin’s onsen meditations lasted longer.
It would be stellar if you could sort or filter items on your effing map. The game gives you zero control over this.
Okay so I am writing this outro after 82 hours of gameplay. 662 screenshots. Every quest and collectible and trophy. By the time I finished, I had seen the entire island, maxed out my legend, gotten every ability, and basically did/bought/unlocked every thing in the game except a number of cosmetic items. I have absorbed Ghost of Tsushima into my soul. I love it. I live and breathe it. It’s the only game I played besides some Phoenix Wright for almost three months.
I think it’s fair to say I’ve mastered it. By the time I finished, I could actually hold my own against enemies on the Lethal difficulty mode, which advertises that you will die in about one strike, but what I didn’t realize the first time I tried it is that your enemies die faster, too. It creates exhilarating combat when the stakes are so high, and your enemies die so fast that you feel extremely accomplished after even a mundane encounter.
I have more to do. I want to play Iki Island and some of the cool multiplayer features, and some day (maybe soon) I will do a new game+.
I have endless good things to say about this game. I adore its story, its characters, and its presentation. It’s one of the tightest, most meaningful, well realized stories I’ve seen in a game. I found it moving and powerful. The game is pornographically beautiful, with both nature and Japanese culture being represented in dumbfoundingly gorgeous ways. Painfully beautiful to look at. It’s also an amazingly fun game. I got absorbed by the island and all its secrets and things to do, but I can see where some people would yawn and get tired of it. Didn’t bother me in the slightest though. I wanted to scour the island and suck the marrow out of it.
Tsushima is very much a character in the game, a stand-in for the people you’re defending and sacrificing for. It helps that it’s stunning to behold and be a part of, and I feel similarly about Tsushima as I felt about Arkham Knight’s Gotham City, which is to say, the laundry list of exploring tasks on offer give me a sort of guided tour through the whole island and its hidden nooks and crannies, which I love.
In fact, I realize now I haven’t really discussed the graphics at great length. Bottom line, it’s probably the best looking video game I have ever played. What’s astonishing about it is not that its lighting and weather look so good, it’s that they’re dynamic and look so good. It’s a categorical difference to see a gorgeous vista in, say, Uncharted, which was scripted and always looks the same at that part of the game, versus Tsushima, whose weather and time of day constantly change and must perform anywhere in the game world. And they DO perform, to my often slack-jawed amazement.
Graphic flourishes abound. There are leaves to kick up as you run, footprints to leave in the snow, blood on clothes, armor, blades, and the ground, light penetrating leaves and paper shoji doors, sweat and tears on faces, and so much more. Some of the animal animations are a few clicks into janky territory, but the character animations are amazing, and it looks terrific at 4K and/or 60 FPS (which on PS5 it basically maintains both). I can’t get enough of the combat animations, and the team is to be commended for how they made the fighting look both brutal and elegant.
The soundtrack is great, and the sound design too. It has one of the greatest photo modes I’ve seen yet, although every game I’ve played has some photo mode features unique to it or done way better by it than the competition, and Tsushima’s could use some of those features. I wish it had a motion blur setting, and I would’ve enjoyed a little more variety from the color filters. (We don’t all have to be Spider-Man though.) I also wish it gave you more control over disappearing characters out of frame. Uncharted particularly gives you a lot of control over this.
Okay this part was supposed to tie the notes together, but as I looked at the notes, I realized that I quickly stopped taking notes and just guzzled down the gameplay, so I’ll wrap it up here for now. I may add another review here once I do Iki Island and some of the other features, but till then, I’ll just say that Ghost of Tsushima has claimed a place in the pantheon of my favorite games of all time.
+++SPOILERS++++
Jin, upon hearing that the shogun disbanded Clan Sakai and that he is no longer samurai: “I sacrificed everything for my people. And I would do it again.”
“You have no honor.” “And you are a slave to it.”
++++END SPOILERS++++
Things started heating up as I got a PS5 and three weeks later went on a five month long deployment. During said deployment, the Director’s Cut for GOT got announced for PS5, and it dominated my game thoughts and Google searches from the awful aircraft carrier internet for months. I knew I would play it as soon as I got home, and before I ever touched it, I kind of decided I would love it. As it turns out, I loved it more than I thought I would. What follows are my usual loosely assembled notes taken throughout gameplay with not very much structure, edited for clarity.
Okay so for those who don’t know, the wind is the in-game pointer for how you get to your next objective. Whereas normally there’s some tacky onscreen prompt showing you exactly where to go, this keeps the screen clean, and the effect is moody and artistic. Watch the occasional wind line or note the leaves, grass, or snow blowing to stay on track.
When you first encounter the mechanic, you’ve washed up on a beach. You see a flashback where your uncle hands you your now deceased father’s sword and says his spirit is in the sword. Your uncle says your father’s spirit will guide you from the afterlife. Back in the present, you face the island, back to the water, and the wind blows in from the ocean onto the land.
In Japan, there is a holiday that is vaguely Día de los Muertos-like, where spirits of your ancestors can cross into the physical realm and interact with their living descendants. And the spirits come in from the ocean onto land. Just like the wind that comes in, as if your dad’s spirit is telling you where to go.
Freaking insane. I don’t know that they did that deliberately or not, but the connection is astonishing. This happens very near the beginning of the game, and as it turns out, this was just a taste of what was to come.
+++++++++++++++++++++
That title card. That reveal. Omg. The presentation in this game is top tier.
The story. The set up. The characters. Jin’s resolve and his failures and his hurts and his ghosts are poignant and personal. His devotion to honor and duty and defending the defenseless and dying for a cause and everything. All of it resonates so much. Being haunted by the ghosts of his failures but wanting to fight and succeed and rise above them is just so emotionally rich and moving to me.
Loving the discourse about breaking the code vs. bending it, making the society better by bringing order and delivering justice in the open. And isn’t living to fight the Mongols better than dying by a code? It’s all really meaty stuff and dovetails with kind of broader ethics of war discussions.
The controller has a little touch pad thing with a button and also swipe gestures. It took me a minute to figure out the swipe gestures besides up for wind, haha. The game even tried to tell me but I wasn’t picking up what it was putting down.
I love that there’s draw and sheath sword commands and that there are so many different animations for them.
Also I did not realize the dismount button was circle for a long while. Kept jumping off the horse like a buffoon and wondering why they designed it that way 😂
I am absolutely absorbed in this game. It takes its cues from a lot of the best of the genre, so I’m catching on quicker than I have in some of the more daunting games I’ve played recently. And the atmosphere/presentation is simply astonishing. I want to do everything, see everything, take in everything.
There’s a pleasant amount of unexpected humor and good characters in this game. The stories of each one are compelling and take some interesting turns. More than once, you’re blindsided with some news that Japanese have defected to helping the Mongols, or a lady who you’re helping get rice back from bandits actually lied to you about the situation. It’s all pretty interesting, and we’ve come a long way from the Spider-Man 2s and Assassin’s Creeds of the world where you do the same four overworld missions over and over again.
One thing is, I turned off enemy status indicators and put the game on hard from the outset, at my brother’s recommendation. This gave the game a bit of a steep learning curve. Putting it on hard meant at first, you die fast, so you die a lot, and it made it hard to get in sync with the game’s combat, so there was a bit of a vicious cycle of dying because I wasn’t getting good, and not getting good because I was dying.
At first, I kept wanting to compare this game/play it like Shadow of Mordor, but I couldn’t. Enemies do NOT attack you one at a time, and you cannot interrupt many of your attacks in order to parry or even guard, unlike Mordor when you can hit counter at any moment and it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. This combat is going to require a lot more mastery, which I think fits and makes its combat a little less cheap, but more demanding.
I remain impressed by the level of detail that goes into so many of the would-be throwaway side missions. Some of them unravel into these multi part mini missions that have the same level of care put into them as main missions.
One gripe with this game: the various gadgets and tools and abilities you progressively unlock get kind of lost in the sauce. It’s true of Spider-Man and Batman as well, but both those titles give you marginally better quick fire options and less dense sub-menus for assigning slots or equipping things. Tsushima has a lot, and they’re sort of confusing. I often don’t even end up using what’s available to me since equipping it before you need it is hard to do before you know you need it, and equipping things on the fly isn’t always feasible, as the game doesn’t fully pause to let you choose.
I will note as the game went on, I got a little better at this and more used to its different menus for this. (Even calling them menus isn’t accurate. More like interfaces.) But at the end of the day, you can assign one ranged weapon at a time and one quick fire weapon/gadget at a time, and you almost have to just pick one and commit to it rather than trying to produce the appropriate one in the heat of battle. For instance, if you’re in a pinch and want to throw a smoke bomb to make a getaway, it’s kind of too late to use it if it’s not already assigned. Again, once I got the hang of the interface, it became a little more manageable, but what this often boiled down to for me was either living or dying by the sword. Half the time I didn’t even use whatever quick fire gadget was assigned because I wasn’t thinking about it.
I think one of the keys to making the Arkham combat systems work lies in this concept. Arkham combat is about making you feel like Batman: invincible, unstoppable, untouchable, resourceful, unflappable. The highest gratification comes from flawless free flow, effortlessly dancing from one enemy to the next, chaining strikes, counters, stuns, dodges, and a variety of special gadgets and combo moves to be the Bat. The game rewards you for mixing up your repertoire and spreading your energy across the diverse web of abilities.
Where Arkham seemingly rewards players for straying to the periphery of Batman’s abilities to become increasingly more capable and resourceful, I find myself pulled to the core of the combat in Tsushima: swordplay. I occasionally dip into the periphery of items, but whether it’s my preference or the game’s intent, it seems embodying a samurai and going whole hog in this feudal Japan simulator means wielding the blade—and that is what I generally do.
I’m still finding out so many beautiful things about this game. I just checked the wind direction and Jin produced a red maple leaf (momiji 🍁) and released it gently into the wind.
Every time I think I’ve seen all the game has to offer, particularly I mean environmentally, it keeps throwing new things at me. It’s mind blowing how diverse the environments are and how seamlessly the game stitches them all together. You can look at the map and see a patch you haven’t explored before, go there to explore it, and find something truly special, and you’ll ask yourself how you missed it. In that way, it reminds me of Breath of the Wild, whose map has countless diverse, beautiful areas which all manage to have a distinct feel and identity. You can drop me into a place on Tsushima or in Hyrule, and I’ll know whether I’ve been there or not, which is more than you can say for many open world games whose environments may look samey even as they look nice.
++++SPOILERS++++
THEY DID NOT JUST KILL KAGE NFW. Omg. He has his own burial scene and his own gravesite you can revisit 😭 It’s a testament to Sucker Punch’s storytelling that I was more emotionally invested in MY HORSE than in most other movie or game characters I’ve seen die recently. Naughty Dog is not the only studio out there doing great storytelling, y’all.
++++END SPOILERS++++
One thing I really appreciate about this game is 1) they put in the work and make every single side quest and mission unique and part of the overarching narrative for either the characters or the island as a whole and 2) the main characters you pal around with all have serious doubts and struggles and flaws and find themselves at odds with Jin sometimes.
I wish Jin’s onsen meditations lasted longer.
It would be stellar if you could sort or filter items on your effing map. The game gives you zero control over this.
Okay so I am writing this outro after 82 hours of gameplay. 662 screenshots. Every quest and collectible and trophy. By the time I finished, I had seen the entire island, maxed out my legend, gotten every ability, and basically did/bought/unlocked every thing in the game except a number of cosmetic items. I have absorbed Ghost of Tsushima into my soul. I love it. I live and breathe it. It’s the only game I played besides some Phoenix Wright for almost three months.
I think it’s fair to say I’ve mastered it. By the time I finished, I could actually hold my own against enemies on the Lethal difficulty mode, which advertises that you will die in about one strike, but what I didn’t realize the first time I tried it is that your enemies die faster, too. It creates exhilarating combat when the stakes are so high, and your enemies die so fast that you feel extremely accomplished after even a mundane encounter.
I have more to do. I want to play Iki Island and some of the cool multiplayer features, and some day (maybe soon) I will do a new game+.
I have endless good things to say about this game. I adore its story, its characters, and its presentation. It’s one of the tightest, most meaningful, well realized stories I’ve seen in a game. I found it moving and powerful. The game is pornographically beautiful, with both nature and Japanese culture being represented in dumbfoundingly gorgeous ways. Painfully beautiful to look at. It’s also an amazingly fun game. I got absorbed by the island and all its secrets and things to do, but I can see where some people would yawn and get tired of it. Didn’t bother me in the slightest though. I wanted to scour the island and suck the marrow out of it.
Tsushima is very much a character in the game, a stand-in for the people you’re defending and sacrificing for. It helps that it’s stunning to behold and be a part of, and I feel similarly about Tsushima as I felt about Arkham Knight’s Gotham City, which is to say, the laundry list of exploring tasks on offer give me a sort of guided tour through the whole island and its hidden nooks and crannies, which I love.
In fact, I realize now I haven’t really discussed the graphics at great length. Bottom line, it’s probably the best looking video game I have ever played. What’s astonishing about it is not that its lighting and weather look so good, it’s that they’re dynamic and look so good. It’s a categorical difference to see a gorgeous vista in, say, Uncharted, which was scripted and always looks the same at that part of the game, versus Tsushima, whose weather and time of day constantly change and must perform anywhere in the game world. And they DO perform, to my often slack-jawed amazement.
Graphic flourishes abound. There are leaves to kick up as you run, footprints to leave in the snow, blood on clothes, armor, blades, and the ground, light penetrating leaves and paper shoji doors, sweat and tears on faces, and so much more. Some of the animal animations are a few clicks into janky territory, but the character animations are amazing, and it looks terrific at 4K and/or 60 FPS (which on PS5 it basically maintains both). I can’t get enough of the combat animations, and the team is to be commended for how they made the fighting look both brutal and elegant.
The soundtrack is great, and the sound design too. It has one of the greatest photo modes I’ve seen yet, although every game I’ve played has some photo mode features unique to it or done way better by it than the competition, and Tsushima’s could use some of those features. I wish it had a motion blur setting, and I would’ve enjoyed a little more variety from the color filters. (We don’t all have to be Spider-Man though.) I also wish it gave you more control over disappearing characters out of frame. Uncharted particularly gives you a lot of control over this.
Okay this part was supposed to tie the notes together, but as I looked at the notes, I realized that I quickly stopped taking notes and just guzzled down the gameplay, so I’ll wrap it up here for now. I may add another review here once I do Iki Island and some of the other features, but till then, I’ll just say that Ghost of Tsushima has claimed a place in the pantheon of my favorite games of all time.
+++SPOILERS++++
Jin, upon hearing that the shogun disbanded Clan Sakai and that he is no longer samurai: “I sacrificed everything for my people. And I would do it again.”
“You have no honor.” “And you are a slave to it.”
++++END SPOILERS++++
it's pretty good. aggressively longer than in it needs to be, repetitive for its length and does a lot of things Pretty Good but not Really Good and falls into the same trappings of ubisoft inspired open world games, but i'd get a pretty cool kill every once in a while and seeing things to tick off a map does something to my brain that keeps me playing.
Combat is MORE than just press X and dodge/parry when glowing light shows up, but sometimes it doesnt feel like that. It's obv no DMC but you have a lot of extra weapons, and technically stances but stances are basically identical outside of your chraged heavy attack and that stances break the guard of certain enemies better. You aren't really swapping stances for the moves, but because that guy has a shield and this is the stance that's good against shields. You dont really need to push the combat system to beat the game, and if you do push it you're not getting cool combos or w/e, but if you do have a lot of tools to play with if you want to push it.
The game, even on hard, is pretty easy all the way through with the exception of some spikes, which doesn't help the repitive feeling you get as you go about another mongol occupied camp and clear them out in the same way, and this was with that I used the Iki perfect parry only armor for most of the game which def made it harder. But I guess there's also a one hit death if you want the game to be really fuckin hard.
Also I actually don't really like stealth in video games in general and I've played very little stealth games so I wont pretend I have experience with stealth systems but it's also okay. Like combat, you do a lot of the same hidding in the tallgrass and assassinating people for stealth segments, or just walking around them. AI stealth detection is actually really bad, enemies will only peruse you if they see you if you hit red detection, if you run into grass at yellow or below you're basically invisible. Turns out the mongols cant turn their head upwards and can't hear anything if it happens behind them.
The open world is... an open world. You got a map dotted with things, and most of them are atleast pretty. There is territories are side things with cool design, but it's a large (and long, did i mention this game's fuckin long?) world, you can only make so many actually design intensive things. 90% of the mongol camps are basically the same, and the non fight objectives offer little variance from each other. I thought the Shrines were cool tho, even though the only hard part about them was figuring out where's the entry part.
Story is bland. It's got good moments but for the most part it's pretty unmemorable (a running theme with this game), a lot of characters I can't pretend to care about and some side missions are straight up bad, and 90% of them are "oh my god thing kinda interesting sounding is happening... no wait it's just mongols or bandits lol". God I wish that one quest had me actually fight a Kappa.
Decent combat, looks very pretty, but absolutely bloated with open world repetitive tripe, and the things around the open world isn't really interesting and you'll do them a hundred times.
I heard legends is pretty good actually but I didnt try it. Island of Iki is also neat, probably the "most interesting" story aspects but it's still not mind blowing. Also it introduced those fucking shamans which are the lamest enemies in the game and they're in like every encounter because they added a new enemy type and gotta show it off.
Combat is MORE than just press X and dodge/parry when glowing light shows up, but sometimes it doesnt feel like that. It's obv no DMC but you have a lot of extra weapons, and technically stances but stances are basically identical outside of your chraged heavy attack and that stances break the guard of certain enemies better. You aren't really swapping stances for the moves, but because that guy has a shield and this is the stance that's good against shields. You dont really need to push the combat system to beat the game, and if you do push it you're not getting cool combos or w/e, but if you do have a lot of tools to play with if you want to push it.
The game, even on hard, is pretty easy all the way through with the exception of some spikes, which doesn't help the repitive feeling you get as you go about another mongol occupied camp and clear them out in the same way, and this was with that I used the Iki perfect parry only armor for most of the game which def made it harder. But I guess there's also a one hit death if you want the game to be really fuckin hard.
Also I actually don't really like stealth in video games in general and I've played very little stealth games so I wont pretend I have experience with stealth systems but it's also okay. Like combat, you do a lot of the same hidding in the tallgrass and assassinating people for stealth segments, or just walking around them. AI stealth detection is actually really bad, enemies will only peruse you if they see you if you hit red detection, if you run into grass at yellow or below you're basically invisible. Turns out the mongols cant turn their head upwards and can't hear anything if it happens behind them.
The open world is... an open world. You got a map dotted with things, and most of them are atleast pretty. There is territories are side things with cool design, but it's a large (and long, did i mention this game's fuckin long?) world, you can only make so many actually design intensive things. 90% of the mongol camps are basically the same, and the non fight objectives offer little variance from each other. I thought the Shrines were cool tho, even though the only hard part about them was figuring out where's the entry part.
Story is bland. It's got good moments but for the most part it's pretty unmemorable (a running theme with this game), a lot of characters I can't pretend to care about and some side missions are straight up bad, and 90% of them are "oh my god thing kinda interesting sounding is happening... no wait it's just mongols or bandits lol". God I wish that one quest had me actually fight a Kappa.
Decent combat, looks very pretty, but absolutely bloated with open world repetitive tripe, and the things around the open world isn't really interesting and you'll do them a hundred times.
I heard legends is pretty good actually but I didnt try it. Island of Iki is also neat, probably the "most interesting" story aspects but it's still not mind blowing. Also it introduced those fucking shamans which are the lamest enemies in the game and they're in like every encounter because they added a new enemy type and gotta show it off.
Jin has some daddy issues to sort out in the new DLC for Ghost of Tsushima. It was awesome being back in this world and getting a feel for the combat again. More great content for an already great game.
Me surpreendi com a dlc. Não sou o maior fã do GOT, mas a historia da dlc foi muito legal e a batalha final foi muito melhor do que a do próprio jogo. Porém a historia é muito curta (+/- 4 horas) e os conteúdos adicionais não são muito diferentes dos já encontrados no jogo. Além do preço absurdo e cobrar pra colocar MOVIMENTO LABIAL EM JAPONES. A história é muito maneira, porém a dlc é muito cara para o que ela entrega. Numa super promoção vale a pena.👍
Played GoT for 49 hours on ps4. Just got the platinum trophy (only my 5th platinum ever too!) today at 58 hours. I'm gonna start the dlc and log that separately. I love this game I really do.
A versão director's cut de got é o melhor de got num só lugar, missões incríveis, personagens maravilhosos, melhorias muito bem vindas, exploração absurda (provavelmente o core do jogo) e um modo online bom porém maçante algumas das vezes, é um dinheiro que vale muito a pena se você curtiu GOT ou se quer jogar, mais de 25 horas de jogo no total, peguei 100% do jogo todo e zerei a história do legends, versão excelente, vale muito a pena.
E da um ótimo fechamento para a história, a missão final é lindíssima.
E da um ótimo fechamento para a história, a missão final é lindíssima.
I don’t think I’ve played a game this perfect in a very long time.
Finished Game: Ghost of Tsushima (PS5)
Rating: 5/5
I’ve had…emotional experiences with video games before, but Ghost of Tsushima is the first time I ever sobbed my way through a boss fight. I felt connected to Jin Sakai, his companions, and his bold, reflective Journey in a way that even films rarely achieve, but the most impressive thing is in how every element of this open world embraces a level of quality and attention that many devs in the genre would simply scale back. Sucker Punch has crafted a true labor of love for Samurai culture, spanning a brilliantly precise combat system, boss duals offering almost near-fighting-game mechanics in terms of control and intensity, a breathtaking, beautiful story of conflicting ideologies, and an impeccably designed world chock full of sights to see and badass armor to unlock. This thing is HUGE, and even the most mundane side missions always offer surprises you just don’t see coming.
Shrines are a blast, bringing back the sort of platforming challenges that Assassins Creed abandoned after the Ezio trilogy. Building haikus and simply bathing to meditate are things that shouldn’t be as interesting or immersive as they are here. I love hunting down different headpieces and sword cosmetics. One of very favorite things is how stealth is just as satisfying as the brutal combat, and it never feels like you’re punished when you break stealth and get a little aggressive.
Mostly, I’m just stricken by the story. The voice work and animations are so good, but that narrative just hits so hard. Sucker Punch is known for their work on the Infamous franchise, and interestingly enough those games explored the moral compass too, but on such a superficial “game” level where Tsushima feels like arthouse cinema in comparison. To me, the experience here elevated my expectations once again of what video games can be. This is Mass Effect, Red Dead level storytelling, and it’s truly a sight to see the devs delve into such maturity for a change.
GHOST is the MOST effective video game story I’ve ever played. It’s fantastic supporting characters make up most of the side quests, and the last couple of each are emotional tidal waves on their own. I love building those relationships. I love the central relationship between Jin and his uncle. I LOVE the beautiful, textured score. I love the fucking particle effects that overwhelm me and force me to set my controller down.
I adore this game.
Rating: 5/5
I’ve had…emotional experiences with video games before, but Ghost of Tsushima is the first time I ever sobbed my way through a boss fight. I felt connected to Jin Sakai, his companions, and his bold, reflective Journey in a way that even films rarely achieve, but the most impressive thing is in how every element of this open world embraces a level of quality and attention that many devs in the genre would simply scale back. Sucker Punch has crafted a true labor of love for Samurai culture, spanning a brilliantly precise combat system, boss duals offering almost near-fighting-game mechanics in terms of control and intensity, a breathtaking, beautiful story of conflicting ideologies, and an impeccably designed world chock full of sights to see and badass armor to unlock. This thing is HUGE, and even the most mundane side missions always offer surprises you just don’t see coming.
Shrines are a blast, bringing back the sort of platforming challenges that Assassins Creed abandoned after the Ezio trilogy. Building haikus and simply bathing to meditate are things that shouldn’t be as interesting or immersive as they are here. I love hunting down different headpieces and sword cosmetics. One of very favorite things is how stealth is just as satisfying as the brutal combat, and it never feels like you’re punished when you break stealth and get a little aggressive.
Mostly, I’m just stricken by the story. The voice work and animations are so good, but that narrative just hits so hard. Sucker Punch is known for their work on the Infamous franchise, and interestingly enough those games explored the moral compass too, but on such a superficial “game” level where Tsushima feels like arthouse cinema in comparison. To me, the experience here elevated my expectations once again of what video games can be. This is Mass Effect, Red Dead level storytelling, and it’s truly a sight to see the devs delve into such maturity for a change.
GHOST is the MOST effective video game story I’ve ever played. It’s fantastic supporting characters make up most of the side quests, and the last couple of each are emotional tidal waves on their own. I love building those relationships. I love the central relationship between Jin and his uncle. I LOVE the beautiful, textured score. I love the fucking particle effects that overwhelm me and force me to set my controller down.
I adore this game.
Ghost of Tsushima already stood as one of my favorite PS exclusives when I played it on PS4, so getting to stare at it in 4k then switch over to 1800p/locked 60fps (save the cutscenes) is real nice. The environmental storytelling is wholly immersive, and the combat is some of the most satisfying open world action/adventure games have to offer. Could the story be deeper? Yeah, absolutely. I would have loved for more of Kurosawa's "Samurai culture was bad, actually" perspective here. I'm not going to complain at a story that still left me in tears though.
and I don't even really like open world games
Pues me ha encantado. La ambientación y la historia están muy guapas, pero definitivamente el punto fuerte es el combate. Quitando alguna cosilla injusta el combate es super satisfactorio y tiene muchas posibilidades.
Masterpiece, samurai simulator with deep rich story, and amazing combat and open world.
10/10 combat. especially 5hit triangle combo on water stance I believe.
TOO FKIN LONG
Don't remember when I beat this, but I think it was some time in October. Anyway, this was a really fantastic expansion for a game that was probably my fav of 2020. Sarugami Armor is broken ngl.
I really don't know what to say about this game. The environments are the beautiful, the world in general is, the sound design is on point... Everything relating to the world is great. However, this game is a very generic open world game. This may seem weird, given that most people have claimed that it strived for originality, tried to introduce a few interesting twists on the cliché mechanics of the genre: there is no more minimap, simply the wind guiding you. Birds guide you to close side objectives. The goal is to make you feel immersed in Tsushima, for this not to feel like a game. For me, it kinda fails at this, simply because these aren't new mechanics, they're just a different way to implement the same old mechanics. It doesn't "hide the strings" of said mechanics, for me it makes them even more obvious. The bird mechanic especially really takes me out of it, because he gets stuck everywhere, and because you have to follow him really closely for him to move.
As for gameplay, it's good, but it's all deja vu. The stealth isn't the best, which is a shame given it's supposed to be a key factor of the story. The "form" mechanic is good, it can make the combat against large groups of varied enemies exciting, and I will say the swordfighting overall is pretty awesome. However, all the accessories, like the kunai, the grenade or the bow, aren't exciting to use, I much prefer slashing through my enemies.
As for the story, it suffers from ludo-narrative disconance. The stealth gameplay is bad, so I avoid using it, which makes Jin's "fall from honour" that's detailed in the cutscenes incoherent from my experience with the game. But, the story is pretty good, it has decent characters, an interesting moral complex (doing whatever it takes to win VS doing what's honourable), and a very emotional ending that I won't spoil.
The side activities are not all that interesting, even though there are way too many side missions (some characters give you 9 side missions as a part of single story-arc that could've been done in just five or less), that it can sometimes feel like a collecta-thon, which is fine in a 3D platformer, but not really in an action-adventure game. Most of the activities are just "click R2 here", the only thing changing between activities being how you find the place to click R2. Also, dishonorable mention to the "Liberate Tsushima" missions. I do however have to praise the legendary tales (which are cool side-missions that are interesting and use the beautiful open world to their advantage), the shrines (which offer a great view of the beautiful world), the duels (which use the great swordfighting) and the haiku's (which use the game's interesting setting of a feodal japanese world). Basically, when the side-activities play to the game's strentghts, their great, and when they don't, they aren't all that good.
This game is good, but it feels same-y. Most of the acclaimed originality of the game just feels like a new coat of paint on already tried and tested open-world mechanics. It has some really amazing stuff in there, the visuals, sounds, swordfighting, some side-activites, but there's way too much average stuff to be considered a great game.
As for gameplay, it's good, but it's all deja vu. The stealth isn't the best, which is a shame given it's supposed to be a key factor of the story. The "form" mechanic is good, it can make the combat against large groups of varied enemies exciting, and I will say the swordfighting overall is pretty awesome. However, all the accessories, like the kunai, the grenade or the bow, aren't exciting to use, I much prefer slashing through my enemies.
As for the story, it suffers from ludo-narrative disconance. The stealth gameplay is bad, so I avoid using it, which makes Jin's "fall from honour" that's detailed in the cutscenes incoherent from my experience with the game. But, the story is pretty good, it has decent characters, an interesting moral complex (doing whatever it takes to win VS doing what's honourable), and a very emotional ending that I won't spoil.
The side activities are not all that interesting, even though there are way too many side missions (some characters give you 9 side missions as a part of single story-arc that could've been done in just five or less), that it can sometimes feel like a collecta-thon, which is fine in a 3D platformer, but not really in an action-adventure game. Most of the activities are just "click R2 here", the only thing changing between activities being how you find the place to click R2. Also, dishonorable mention to the "Liberate Tsushima" missions. I do however have to praise the legendary tales (which are cool side-missions that are interesting and use the beautiful open world to their advantage), the shrines (which offer a great view of the beautiful world), the duels (which use the great swordfighting) and the haiku's (which use the game's interesting setting of a feodal japanese world). Basically, when the side-activities play to the game's strentghts, their great, and when they don't, they aren't all that good.
This game is good, but it feels same-y. Most of the acclaimed originality of the game just feels like a new coat of paint on already tried and tested open-world mechanics. It has some really amazing stuff in there, the visuals, sounds, swordfighting, some side-activites, but there's way too much average stuff to be considered a great game.
i played this game for 50 hours
it's okay.
it's okay.