+ Aesthetically incredible; visually and sonically cohesive and beautiful. I used the photo mode in this game, and I stopped to look around pretty regularly
+ I liked the size of the map a lot. If it was any larger I'd have had issues with it.
+ I played this game on Hard difficulty and I frankly think that's what kept me playing. The combat system of this game, when it's challenging to the player, is really engaging, with good variety, rewarding skill, and a pretty nice skill tree/progression system. I did not change the difficulty down even when failing a bunch, I never felt like the game was unfairly hard -- my failures always felt like a me problem and it was a compelling challenge.
+ The push and pull of the resolve system is an interesting positive feedback loop. In order to heal, you need resolve, and in order to get resolve, you need to fight well. Mechanics like standoff mode have the tradeoff of filling a lot of resolve, but alerting a lot of enemies to your location -- whereas assassinations reward you with a little resolve but you remain the Ghost.
+ The parts of the main story concerned with Jin's growth and his personal journey are really excellent and well written, I think the storytelling is paced really well and the way that this storytelling tied into the game progression was a successful attempt at cohesion in my eyes.
+ The side characters are compellingly written and fun to engage with. Lady Adachi's storyline or the relationship between Yuna and Taka are great.
- Boring and repetitive side quest design, lots of copy-pasted encounters that I ended up skipping/avoiding entirely. I did maybe one lighthouse and cleared out two forts outside of quests.
- Unbalanced lack of rewards for completing side content vs main content (it feels like i'd need to do a disproportionate amount of side content to level up compared to main story)
- Unnecessary crafting system that bogs down the progression of the armor and weapons to wandering around the map and collecting items. I don't like crafting systems unless they're a core part of the game (e.g. Minecraft).
- The main story is rather cliched in its storytelling, heavy handed with the foreshadowing, and does a poor job at really making some elements of the core conflict truly feel engaging or real. For example, the relationship between Jin and Lord Shimura feels really poorly established for the stakes that the relationship carries throughout acts 2 and 3 of the story. One or two flashback cutscenes to "prove" their relationship didn't really work for me, unfortunately. Act 3 was certainly the best written of the three acts, but the lead up to it was not good enough for the narrative payoffs that act 3 rewarded the player with.


All in all: I'd definitely say you should check the game out if you want a 3rd person parry-based melee combat game, or if you want to cosplay with samurai aesthetics in a beautifully rendered Tsushima Island. Don't try to expect to get more out of it than just that, though.