Ghost of Tsushima is a really good game that's worth your time and money... in perhaps the most oversaturated genre of its console generation.
That's the elephant in the living room when it comes to it and games like it; that in the years it took Sucker Punch to make it and make it good, Ubisoft released five or six games like it every single year. At a conservative estimate. So, while I enjoyed it, as someone who only tends to play one game like this a year, if that, well, I am also aware that there're people so burnt out on what it has to offer that everything I'm about to say won't matter to them.
Story-wise, as you probably know, it's about Jin, one of the last samurai left alive on the island of Tsushima after a disastrous first battle during the first Mongol invasion, and his adventures battling across the war-torn countryside and trying to stitch together a halfway competent resistance with which to counterattack, embracing tactics and strategies at odds with his caste's way of life in the process. The individual side stories work very well to this end, with that "period epic" feel and a consistent tone of tragedy mixed with the resolve to carry on in the face of it. They're further buoyed up by strong cinematography and aesthetics that bookend "missions" and emphasize the feel of each one.
The tone is generally pretty dark and serious, so if you prefer your video game stories light, wacky, and campy then you will probably come away disappointed. But, speaking as someone who tries to take serious stories on their own merits, I appreciated it enormously. I particularly liked the protagonist, someone I've often seen dismissed as boring, as an example of the best of his class, but who has to come to terms with thinking deeply about hierarchical class systems for the first time in his life and wrestle with their implications and how to live an honest life in the face of them. Similarly, the side cast all represent failures of the rigid caste systems and honor codes of medieval societies. It's not strictly historical, but, honestly? I don't mind not letting history get in the way of a good story.
The biggest missteps are a rushed third chapter with half to a third as much content as the other two, with resolutions to long-running character stories that feel either absent or too short (only Norio's is really well-handled in this regard), and a mission at the end of the second chapter that feels, as other reviewers have commented, railroad-y. The game first forces you to have Jin display a hateful, angry attitude potentially at odds with the way he's been played and all-but badger his elderly nursemaid into teaching him to make poison, then to trying to infiltrate a castle during a siege to poison the inhabitants. It can be played for character growth via the game's responsive dialogue system, but in a story that mostly works it's the major part that doesn't.
Which leads into the gameplay. Masterfully, Changing Gameplay Priorities are in full effect, but without brow-beating the player. In the first chapter, as Jin is pulling himself together, it's best to take a few sneaky kills or engage in a lot of duels for easy wins. In the second, once you've learned to use all the stances and fight any kind of enemy, it's instead easiest to just confront enemies in an upfront fashion, but by the third, winning duels is nigh-impossible and extra benefits are offered for kill-streaks that're most easily achieved with stealth combo-kills.
And the melee combat system deserves great praise here. While the ranged combat is perfectly-functional, and can even be rewardingly specialized in with the right special gear, it's more fun to just charge into sword-fights, using heavy attacks to shatter enemies' guards and then finishing them off, while rapidly changing stances and targets. The lack of lock-on is a bit of a problem, and takes some getting used to, as do powerful enemy arrow attacks that need to be listened for until the arrow-block is learned. But once you get in the swing of it, it feels great, and makes charging into enemy camps spoiling for a fight feel like a perfectly-valid strategy in a genre where straight-up fights often instead feel like a punishing failure for flubbing stealth.
Finally, the exploration takes the bold step of largely eschewing excessive UI and minimaps. Instead, the player can follow the wind towards marked objectives, with the odd detour when a golden bird flies by to lead them to a secret or side mission. This results in less clutter and more focus on the beautiful scenery. The climbing-horse riding-parkour is nothing you haven't seen before, but it's competently executed, even if sometimes Jin's confidence in slim little branches holding his weight feels misplaced, and the grappling hook feels gratuitous and poorly-animated.
And I appreciate the little touches, like letting Jin play the flute moodily as he travels, or unwind by composing a haiku or soaking in a hot spring. The former offers no benefits, but it still feels really good, like both the player and the character are just decompressing a little. Similarly, the collectible hats and gear generally look pretty good, bizarre proliferation of interchangeable headbands when there're bitchin' straw hats on tap aside.
In summation, Penny Arcade released a comic where one character complains he'd heard that this is "one of those games where you fuck a map," and his partner agrees that it is... but it's a beautiful map, and it feels sooooo good to fuck it.
...Man, I can't top that. Why'd I bring it up? Now it just feels like what I said in a whole review could be summarized in two or three lines of dialogue. Oh well.
VideoGame A Really Good Open World Action Game... But, You Know, an Open World Action Game
Ghost of Tsushima is a really good game that's worth your time and money... in perhaps the most oversaturated genre of its console generation.
That's the elephant in the living room when it comes to it and games like it; that in the years it took Sucker Punch to make it and make it good, Ubisoft released five or six games like it every single year. At a conservative estimate. So, while I enjoyed it, as someone who only tends to play one game like this a year, if that, well, I am also aware that there're people so burnt out on what it has to offer that everything I'm about to say won't matter to them.
Story-wise, as you probably know, it's about Jin, one of the last samurai left alive on the island of Tsushima after a disastrous first battle during the first Mongol invasion, and his adventures battling across the war-torn countryside and trying to stitch together a halfway competent resistance with which to counterattack, embracing tactics and strategies at odds with his caste's way of life in the process. The individual side stories work very well to this end, with that "period epic" feel and a consistent tone of tragedy mixed with the resolve to carry on in the face of it. They're further buoyed up by strong cinematography and aesthetics that bookend "missions" and emphasize the feel of each one.
The tone is generally pretty dark and serious, so if you prefer your video game stories light, wacky, and campy then you will probably come away disappointed. But, speaking as someone who tries to take serious stories on their own merits, I appreciated it enormously. I particularly liked the protagonist, someone I've often seen dismissed as boring, as an example of the best of his class, but who has to come to terms with thinking deeply about hierarchical class systems for the first time in his life and wrestle with their implications and how to live an honest life in the face of them. Similarly, the side cast all represent failures of the rigid caste systems and honor codes of medieval societies. It's not strictly historical, but, honestly? I don't mind not letting history get in the way of a good story.
The biggest missteps are a rushed third chapter with half to a third as much content as the other two, with resolutions to long-running character stories that feel either absent or too short (only Norio's is really well-handled in this regard), and a mission at the end of the second chapter that feels, as other reviewers have commented, railroad-y. The game first forces you to have Jin display a hateful, angry attitude potentially at odds with the way he's been played and all-but badger his elderly nursemaid into teaching him to make poison, then to trying to infiltrate a castle during a siege to poison the inhabitants. It can be played for character growth via the game's responsive dialogue system, but in a story that mostly works it's the major part that doesn't.
Which leads into the gameplay. Masterfully, Changing Gameplay Priorities are in full effect, but without brow-beating the player. In the first chapter, as Jin is pulling himself together, it's best to take a few sneaky kills or engage in a lot of duels for easy wins. In the second, once you've learned to use all the stances and fight any kind of enemy, it's instead easiest to just confront enemies in an upfront fashion, but by the third, winning duels is nigh-impossible and extra benefits are offered for kill-streaks that're most easily achieved with stealth combo-kills.
And the melee combat system deserves great praise here. While the ranged combat is perfectly-functional, and can even be rewardingly specialized in with the right special gear, it's more fun to just charge into sword-fights, using heavy attacks to shatter enemies' guards and then finishing them off, while rapidly changing stances and targets. The lack of lock-on is a bit of a problem, and takes some getting used to, as do powerful enemy arrow attacks that need to be listened for until the arrow-block is learned. But once you get in the swing of it, it feels great, and makes charging into enemy camps spoiling for a fight feel like a perfectly-valid strategy in a genre where straight-up fights often instead feel like a punishing failure for flubbing stealth.
Finally, the exploration takes the bold step of largely eschewing excessive UI and minimaps. Instead, the player can follow the wind towards marked objectives, with the odd detour when a golden bird flies by to lead them to a secret or side mission. This results in less clutter and more focus on the beautiful scenery. The climbing-horse riding-parkour is nothing you haven't seen before, but it's competently executed, even if sometimes Jin's confidence in slim little branches holding his weight feels misplaced, and the grappling hook feels gratuitous and poorly-animated.
And I appreciate the little touches, like letting Jin play the flute moodily as he travels, or unwind by composing a haiku or soaking in a hot spring. The former offers no benefits, but it still feels really good, like both the player and the character are just decompressing a little. Similarly, the collectible hats and gear generally look pretty good, bizarre proliferation of interchangeable headbands when there're bitchin' straw hats on tap aside.
In summation, Penny Arcade released a comic where one character complains he'd heard that this is "one of those games where you fuck a map," and his partner agrees that it is... but it's a beautiful map, and it feels sooooo good to fuck it.
...Man, I can't top that. Why'd I bring it up? Now it just feels like what I said in a whole review could be summarized in two or three lines of dialogue. Oh well.