I feel like a played a different game.
I've been tempted to buy this the past two years but didn't because "it will receive a price cut with PlayStation Hits" before I realised that's no longer a thing. The price actually increased. I never caved though because despite all the positive discussion about this game. I never heard anything good about it other than how gorgeous it is - meaning it's probably not that good overall. And I don't think it is. So, I really appreciate this was on PS Plus Extra.
I put 50+ hours into it and got the platinum so it's not like I disliked it. The combat, although after that amount of time can feel repetitive as you basically just mash △ and then ▢, is the highlight. It was a lot of fun and I fucking loved the duels. I just found the story quite lacklustre and I don't believe they achieved what they set out to do regarding its themes and how they connect to the gameplay. I feel the game did feel up itself at points.
Perhaps it's cos I'm a side-quest bitch and upgrade everything before main missions but the final fight against the Khan was so anti-climactic. And the proper ending was obviously gonna happen once you complete the first act and it didn't have the emotional effect on me that I think the score wanted me to.
Now some minor nitpicks cos I don't wanna make people who like this game angry and instead they can read this and go "haha". Although I'm annoyed at it being called 'Kurosawa Mode', I loved it. I played most of the game with it on (atleast 30 out of my 50 hours). But it's not perfect as button prompts are still coloured even though the menu isn't. And when it goes to a cutscene with the 2:35 aspect ratio, the film scratch and grain overlay they put over it also goes over the black bars which isn't how film works (would've been nice if they had more attention to detail and with it on the cutscenes would be in 1.85:1 aspect ratio like most of Kurosawa's films are but I understand why not). And talking about the cutscenes themselves, most of them have the worst cinematography. I don't understand why most shots were wides. In addition, the titlecards shouldn't be there for every fucking tale, just the main ones in Jin's Journey and maybe the last ones of the character-focused ones.
Overall, this is a generic open-world game which I did have fun with but I don't understand the hype for. I would say that this is another case of Animal Crossing: New Horizons where it's a game that takes up a lot of time that came out at the perfect time so people were just happy to sink time into something and have a long distraction from the world ending. But people have played it for the first time since then and still love it. I really don't understand why. It's not challenging with its storytelling or gameplay and not everything has to be as It's nice to have simple shut-your-brain-off-fun every now and then. But I think this tried to be more than that and failed.
It's a perfectly fine game that can be a lot of fun but don't expect anything new or anything super well-written. I would rather buy a DVD boxset of the Netflix series 'The Crown' than spend 70 quid on this. Clearly, a lot of people have spent that much to buy this game and that's fine if it gave them £70 worth of happiness but if I bought it for that price, I'd ask for a good portion of it back.
I've been tempted to buy this the past two years but didn't because "it will receive a price cut with PlayStation Hits" before I realised that's no longer a thing. The price actually increased. I never caved though because despite all the positive discussion about this game. I never heard anything good about it other than how gorgeous it is - meaning it's probably not that good overall. And I don't think it is. So, I really appreciate this was on PS Plus Extra.
I put 50+ hours into it and got the platinum so it's not like I disliked it. The combat, although after that amount of time can feel repetitive as you basically just mash △ and then ▢, is the highlight. It was a lot of fun and I fucking loved the duels. I just found the story quite lacklustre and I don't believe they achieved what they set out to do regarding its themes and how they connect to the gameplay. I feel the game did feel up itself at points.
Perhaps it's cos I'm a side-quest bitch and upgrade everything before main missions but the final fight against the Khan was so anti-climactic. And the proper ending was obviously gonna happen once you complete the first act and it didn't have the emotional effect on me that I think the score wanted me to.
Now some minor nitpicks cos I don't wanna make people who like this game angry and instead they can read this and go "haha". Although I'm annoyed at it being called 'Kurosawa Mode', I loved it. I played most of the game with it on (atleast 30 out of my 50 hours). But it's not perfect as button prompts are still coloured even though the menu isn't. And when it goes to a cutscene with the 2:35 aspect ratio, the film scratch and grain overlay they put over it also goes over the black bars which isn't how film works (would've been nice if they had more attention to detail and with it on the cutscenes would be in 1.85:1 aspect ratio like most of Kurosawa's films are but I understand why not). And talking about the cutscenes themselves, most of them have the worst cinematography. I don't understand why most shots were wides. In addition, the titlecards shouldn't be there for every fucking tale, just the main ones in Jin's Journey and maybe the last ones of the character-focused ones.
Overall, this is a generic open-world game which I did have fun with but I don't understand the hype for. I would say that this is another case of Animal Crossing: New Horizons where it's a game that takes up a lot of time that came out at the perfect time so people were just happy to sink time into something and have a long distraction from the world ending. But people have played it for the first time since then and still love it. I really don't understand why. It's not challenging with its storytelling or gameplay and not everything has to be as It's nice to have simple shut-your-brain-off-fun every now and then. But I think this tried to be more than that and failed.
It's a perfectly fine game that can be a lot of fun but don't expect anything new or anything super well-written. I would rather buy a DVD boxset of the Netflix series 'The Crown' than spend 70 quid on this. Clearly, a lot of people have spent that much to buy this game and that's fine if it gave them £70 worth of happiness but if I bought it for that price, I'd ask for a good portion of it back.