Been meaning to sit down and write a bit of my feelings toward this game on digital paper. Not sure where to start so let's just dive in.
I'm a big Sucker Punch fan, let's get that out of the way first. I count Infamous among my favorite series and the Sly Cooper franchise is a prime example of technical fun ass refinement. Most can probably guess that GoT leans more into the Infamous engine than the SC, and the more I played the more obvious those tricks became. Don't take that as a fault though, I loved Infamous precisely because it created such a fun sandbox to mess around in. GoT has similar open worlds, activities and quests, though with a bit more detail and perhaps a little less vigor.
I think the main fault that I can level at GoT is simply that the story is a plot I've seen A LOT before. Especially for someone like myself whose main love lies in the realm of films. I've seen every Kurosawa film, I'm a major martial arts/samurai cinema fan in general, and I just have a bit more knowledge of the time period thanks to my college pursuit of history. All these things made the game more like a motif of homages than a mold-breaking adventure, which isn't so much bad, but I feel like I dig it because it reminded me of other, better things, opposed to creating it's own feeling of individuality.
All that said I did find a lot of the side quests, especially ones centering on specific side characters, to be great by and large. Even if the story is somewhat predictable I was glad to have a cast of vagabonds running around.
The high point is easily the gameplay. Running around in Tsushima just playing missions, fighting bandits or exploring was a ton of fun. I could easily sink several hours just working to unfog the map and fucking around with whatever I found along the way. In this sense the gameplay runs like a combination of Infamous inspired skill-point systems and Far Cry 3-5 types of activities. Granted once you've found your 30th Fox Den things might be running a little repetitive but these things are hardly essential and if you want to focus more on combat/plot advancement that's totally a rewarding way to approach it.
The combat itself is refined to a T with an emphasis on parrying or dodging depending on a situation. The games stance system reminds me of the first Nioh though much more essential to success. By the time I was hitting the end game stuff though I was so overpowered it wasn't even a challenge on Hard anymore, I though about bumping to Lethal when they updated it but decided I was too lazy.
I'm excited for the upcoming multiplayer expansion which is the main reason I've held onto my physical copy opposed to selling it off but thats probably why I don't rate it higher, I basically did and saw everything you could on my initial runthrough so my yearn to return to the game in general just isn't there, but i'm hoping the Legends add on (I think thats the name?) will bring me back for some more Samurai action!
Personally I prefer something like Sekiro overall but the general influx of Samurai games recently (and in different genres to boot) has been a welcome style for me since I've been into the history and lore of Samurai for as long as I can remember.
I'm a big Sucker Punch fan, let's get that out of the way first. I count Infamous among my favorite series and the Sly Cooper franchise is a prime example of technical fun ass refinement. Most can probably guess that GoT leans more into the Infamous engine than the SC, and the more I played the more obvious those tricks became. Don't take that as a fault though, I loved Infamous precisely because it created such a fun sandbox to mess around in. GoT has similar open worlds, activities and quests, though with a bit more detail and perhaps a little less vigor.
I think the main fault that I can level at GoT is simply that the story is a plot I've seen A LOT before. Especially for someone like myself whose main love lies in the realm of films. I've seen every Kurosawa film, I'm a major martial arts/samurai cinema fan in general, and I just have a bit more knowledge of the time period thanks to my college pursuit of history. All these things made the game more like a motif of homages than a mold-breaking adventure, which isn't so much bad, but I feel like I dig it because it reminded me of other, better things, opposed to creating it's own feeling of individuality.
All that said I did find a lot of the side quests, especially ones centering on specific side characters, to be great by and large. Even if the story is somewhat predictable I was glad to have a cast of vagabonds running around.
The high point is easily the gameplay. Running around in Tsushima just playing missions, fighting bandits or exploring was a ton of fun. I could easily sink several hours just working to unfog the map and fucking around with whatever I found along the way. In this sense the gameplay runs like a combination of Infamous inspired skill-point systems and Far Cry 3-5 types of activities. Granted once you've found your 30th Fox Den things might be running a little repetitive but these things are hardly essential and if you want to focus more on combat/plot advancement that's totally a rewarding way to approach it.
The combat itself is refined to a T with an emphasis on parrying or dodging depending on a situation. The games stance system reminds me of the first Nioh though much more essential to success. By the time I was hitting the end game stuff though I was so overpowered it wasn't even a challenge on Hard anymore, I though about bumping to Lethal when they updated it but decided I was too lazy.
I'm excited for the upcoming multiplayer expansion which is the main reason I've held onto my physical copy opposed to selling it off but thats probably why I don't rate it higher, I basically did and saw everything you could on my initial runthrough so my yearn to return to the game in general just isn't there, but i'm hoping the Legends add on (I think thats the name?) will bring me back for some more Samurai action!
Personally I prefer something like Sekiro overall but the general influx of Samurai games recently (and in different genres to boot) has been a welcome style for me since I've been into the history and lore of Samurai for as long as I can remember.