Despite having some of the same fatigue inducing open world aspects as its other, far more tedious and bloated peers, Ghost of Tsushima stands as an example that the "genre" (read: structure) of story based open world games does not have intrinsically awful. First and foremost, Tsushima is about its core gameplay loop first. The combat IS the point of the game, and if it weren't so well done the entire thing would collapse, since that is what you principally do 80% of the time. Like really, other than finding little baubles and light, guided platforming, you will just be killing mongols for the majority of this game. Story, kill mongols, story. Almost all of the sidequests outside of the epic tales are just killing mongols in camps, in squads, etc. But GoT also does some things differently, mercifully. None of the typical tedium is here. Instead of constantly opening your map to look where you're going, or maybe worse, looking at a compass, the wind guides you. Instead of a 15 second animation to pick something up, it's automatic, including when riding your horse. Instead of not being able to travel where you want to go, your house basically teleports behind you when you call it, and it cannot die. These few elegant solutions to typical open world problems reduce almost all of the (bad) friction that games like Horizon, Red Dead, and Assassins Creed refuse to do anything about. They're so ingrained one would think they're inherent to do the genre. Furthermore, the gampleay of Tsushima is actually integrated into its story. Instead of a hackneyed stealth system, you are told to use stealth because the mongols are vicious and do not care about the honor system samurai use as warriors. You have to debase yourself to free yourself from your enemy, and this core theme is taken to its logical extreme all the way to the end of the game. It's really well done. Because of this, GoT elevates itself to the top of that sort of open world adventure game, something Horizon refuses to do. And because of this, it's the best one. Not the best open world game. Those would go to games where the exploration are the POINT of the game (BOTW and Elden Ring), but very few developers do that because it's hard to do, and because this is easier and will sell a ton. That being said, I had a really good time other than some repetitiveness of just constantly being in combat and nothing else, but when I realized I should just ignore a bunch of the side quests since I was already so leveled up (thankfully combat was still challenging) and go see the story, I enjoyed it much much more, though that didn't happen until about 45 hours in. Really good game. I hope the sequel can learn and make discovery and adventure the point, while still maintaining an engaging story.