Ghost of Tsushima is a competent open world game, and the high point of the game is definitely the sword play and combat. The most fun I had playing the game was when I was surrounded by enemies, switching furiously between stances and beating down a bunch of mongols. The scenery and camera mode are also notable: I imagine GoT’s camera mode will be the gold standard for the next decade. Gone are the days where you take a single still. The camera lets you track shots, move from point to point, change the focal length and depth of field. The scenery is beautiful, too, so capturing exceptionally good shots is a breeze. The rest of the game is pretty average. The story tries to embody the samurai films that inspire it, but is mostly filled with classic video game cliches and forgettable characters—it even feels really forced and overly simplistic. The quest and level design are both competent, but not something to really write home about—the camps are all reasonably the same, the quests all have the same trajectory (and normally two or three fights) with different characters and stories that are almost entirely forgettable or interchangeable. Even the main quest lines conclude with a siege. Twice. In a row. It felt like they ran out of ideas. The biggest disappointment is the stealth component. In a game whose story purportedly attempts to pit the honor code of the samurai against “dishonorable” stealth tactics, you’d think they’d actually put some time in the stealth mode. The AI is just awful—to test it, I one time walked back and forth across the view cone of a guard from one patch of tall grass to another. 20 times. Never once did they look through the grass. The terrible AI really makes the middling level design feel a lot worse than it really is. It’s just plain boring. I found myself just wanting to stick to the samurai honor code because the combat is so much better than stealth.