Ghost of Tsushima - PlayStation 4

First things first, I’ve got to say that I purchased this video game based on word of mouth and recommendations by online gaming personalities that I trust. I hadn’t really heard much about the game until it came out. I bought it on Amazon when it had a 3 week estimated wait time until it would be in stock. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait that long and the game was at my door within a few days of ordering it. I’ve now been playing it for a couple of weeks and am loving every bit of it. It reminds me of an Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry game but set in Fuedal Japan. Many people have hoped for an Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan during that time period, but I think this game is better than any AC game. The game consists of a great story of a samurai attempting to repel a Mongol invasion. This is played out through a variety of missions spread across a large open world of the island of Tsushima. There are the usual quests to find items, climbing and platforming to isolated shrines, retaking bases and liberating farms. You don’t have to travel far on the map to find something else to experience. Combat plays a huge part of the game and there are frequent battles spread around the world as you retake bases or come across Mongol patrols & bandit ambushes. The combat is slick and challenging, but does a good job of letting the player feel powerful as you level up and gain new abilities. You would probably have a hard time simply button mashing your way through the fights, but I find it quite satisfying and challenging to patiently wait to perfectly time a block that then leads to a one hit kill on your opponent. You unlock multiple combat “stances” that are more effective against different types of enemy weapons, and can easily switch through them as you cut & slash through a group of enemies. The combat is varied and challenging enough that I’ve yet to grow tired of it. The game is also beautiful. The island has a variety of landscapes, from beaches and mountains to grasslands and fields of flowers. All look amazing, and I don’t grow tired of traversing the world. The game is also very cinematic. The set up to many fights is what the game calls a standoff, where your samurai meets and faces off against the enemy like in an old samurai movie or western duel. These moments are great for fans of those movies and similar cinematic set ups are found throughout the main story and side quests. Overall the game looks better than most any other I’ve played. I’ve only made it into the second of 3 acts in the game, even though I’ve put 30 or more hours into it. I’ve still got a ways to go before I finish and I’ve heard from some sources that ,if you play as a completionist like I do, then you can spend 90-100 hours on the game. Either way you play, be it a quick run through the main story or a slow complete play-through, I think you will be very pleased by this game. Pick it up and immerse yourself in the story and world.

Ghost of Tsushima is an extremely fun game. From the exceptional graphics, to the storyline and the challenging yet seamless combat and stealth system to master, Ghost of Tsushima offers a satisfying gaming experience for those looking for an open world game that focuses on developing different samurai techniques to defeat hordes of Mongol invaders and Ronin alike. Duels are very cool, liberating locations is a blast and even the mini challenges for increasing Resolve (special attack meter) can be a fun challenge. Some of the side quests are a little slow and boring, but others are interesting and the main campaign story is very well written. In conclusion, this game is impressive and I highly recommend it.

I was quite impressed with the game right from the start. You begin with a rather traditional hack and slash sequence but then the story unfolds and the changes in the main character are handled subtly and superbly so that by the time he embraces what has happened to him, it feels like a natural progression. Yuna is a great character and with you from the beginning. She's well rounded and in no way sexualized. In fact, none of the women in the game, main or background, are overtly sexualized, and all feel appropriate to the time period. For a game about a samurai, it doesn't hyper romanticize the idea of the samurai. You can see all the strength and all the weaknesses of the characters you interact with, which give a very real-life experience interacting with them. LGBTQ is represented here, as much as the time period allows, but the representations are good and give you the sense that even though it's never talked about, LGBTQ people did exist back then and they were normal people who loved each other even if they couldn't show it openly. Mechanics-wise, if you are a melee person, you like the game from start to finish. If you are like me and prefer to stealth and snipe your way through a game, the beginning will feel a bit restrictive, but once you get your longbow and more of the Ghost's abilities unlocked, it just as enjoyable as it is for melee fighters. VERY FEW FETCH QUESTS! If you're a story person like me, side quests are usually boring and only distractions from the main plot. And the worst side quests are just fetch quests. Tsushima has a few, but it doesn't overwhelm the side quests. A lot of go kill things, but at least they're not fetch, and they do a decent job of giving a story to them, or at least trying. Multiplayer. I'm not wholly impressed by multiplayer. I'm very disappointed that you can only play with one other person in the story multiplayer, while in survival you can have four. Survival isn't that much fun if you have a group of friends all starting together and who want to play together, because with a team of all brand new players, even the easy mode is pretty much impossible to beat. You do gain experience if you lose, but it incredibly frustrating to not be able to survive more than one or two waves unless you don't play with people you know and hope there's someone strong in your group. The difference classes are useless, since survival is set up to only have one useful attack style, and that's hack and slash. So Hunters can't really use archery skills well, and Assassins can't go around hiding in the grass to kill people. Everyone just has to attack the same way in order to survive. And all survival matches are basically the same thing. Overall, main game is amazing, bu multiplayer needs serious work. Why have one option with four people and one with two? I play with two other friends, so we can't play the story missions together without dropping one of us. And the story is the best part of the game.

This game plays amazing. They achieved better movement and smoother fighting than any of the AC games so far. Not only is gameplay phenomenal but the story is incredible.

My wife ordered this for me originally as a Christmas present. However her knowing how patient I've been she relented and gave it to me early. Now with that out of the way, let's get to the review. First off it shipped very early. Talk about being prompt! It was shipped flawlessly. Not a single imperfection on the case, game, or the cover art. The game itself... Oh. My. Goodness. This game is absolutely stunning. I'm playing on a PlayStation 4 Slim, and still!!!!! The overall presentation is through the roof! The combat feels very weighty. And not in a bad way. You can FEEL the sword slashes with each strike! The controls are very well done. The camera like to be in an odd spot here and there; but hey. It happens. The story thus far (for me) is really compelling! I won't go into spoiler territory; so I'll just simply say for me it's pretty compelling. The world you inhabit is absolutely jaw dropping! Each are you explore has a different feel to it. Really helps with the immersion factor. Speaking of immersion. The HUD is VERY bare bones; and I couldn't be happier! You don't have all the tropes that most games have. No compass. No mini maps. No waypoints. Heck! Even the health bar only shows up when in combat. The guiding wind mechanic has to be my all time favorite. I really wish more devs had the same mindset. Now. I will be honest. You will probably die a number of times. But it's not without purpose. Why will you die? These Mongolians can be pretty viscous. But you're even more dangerous. If you take your time with the combat. Master the art of parrying and dodging, you should be just fine. Now. Some people will probably complain about there not being a lock on option. However, this really isn't an issue if practice enough with the combat All in all I cannot simply recommend this game enough. Side note: the lack of no lock on while in combat makes combat more tense. You do miss it at first; but once you start getting used to the way the game plays you start asking why you missed it in the first place.

Ghost of Tsushima does a number of things quite well, and a lot of other things very mediocre or predictably. Visually, it's ridiculously pretty. The Japanese island of Tsushima that they've created is spectacular and looks incredible in motion. Screenshots and even video don't do it justice; playing the game in real-time looks spectacular especially when traveling on horse through a huge field of pampas grass or through a foggy forest. Character models look incredible and are well detailed, although animation sometimes feels a little stiff or rudimentary (only when stacked against incredible mo-cap work like The Last of Us). In terms of gameplay, it's honestly a bit shallow and sometimes frustrating. It uses a very standard open-world non-linear quest setting not unlike Assassin's Creed or Far Cry. The map slowly opens up over the course of 3 distinct story acts, with those 3 acts taking place in 3 separate 'sections' of the whole map, each with distinct and recognizable geography or weather. The moment-to-moment combat and core gameplay loop comes at a reasonable pace and introduces new concepts, skills, and enemy types to keep combat engaging up until the end. It uses a pretty standard light attack, heavy attack, parry, and dodge system. The combat can be frustrating if you aren't used to or adept at quick reactions. Although not strictly crucial a lot of the combat relies on quick button presses to parry or dodge enemy attacks leaving them open for counter-attacks. You can also break enemy defenses without parries, although it leaves you more susceptible to counter-attacks yourself. Stealth is also often a viable option for a lot of confrontations, but I think the level design isn't always well-suited to engaging stealth gameplay, although it's serviceable. The story is painfully predictable in a number of sections, although I was a bit surprised toward the end. Essentially, the Mongols invade Tsushima island in preparation for a raid on mainland Japan. They wipe out all the samurai except the player character Jin, who vows to drive the Mongols away and stop their plans. As he does this he slowly loses his grip on the honor that drives what it is to be a samurai. He starts to become the Ghost of Tsushima and take on a new identity that clashes with the well-established lineage of his family. You're introduced to handful of supporting characters over the story's progression and they each have their own mini story arcs that can be optionally followed and help flesh them out and provide more context to how the Mongol war has affected the population. A neat aspect of the supporting character side missions (called Tales in-game) is that a lot of them can be done out of sequence without affecting that story's structure. Obviously some need to be first and last, but a lot of the Tales in the middle can fill out the story without relying on others before or after it. Each one wraps up well and feels like care was taken to make the stories stand on their own. Voice acting is between great and good; broadly speaking the main characters are all acted very well, but not all sequences and cutscenes are animated as naturally as others. Ambient music and sound effects are fantastic and 3D tracking is incredible; this is a joy to listen to on a proper 5 or 7 channel system. Where I take most of my issue with Ghost of Tsushima is in it's pace and choice of open world. Open-world games will always inherently have pacing issues because you lose the ability to guide a player along a tightly constructed path. It doesn't suffer the way other games like Assassin's Creed can where the map turns into a huge icon-filled collect-a-thon, but there's still too much stuff to be distracting from what could have been a tighter story. Some folks love roaming open worlds, but I love being drip-fed a brilliant story with tight pacing and insane attention to detail. Ghost of Tsushima strikes a pleasant balance that kept me engaged, but ultimately I feel as though the open-world wasn't necessary. The game also has RPG-lite elements. Performing story quests, liberating areas of the map, and meeting bonus objectives earns you "technique points" that can be spent to unlock or upgrade abilities. Some I found useful or at times compulsory, others are far less practical and are just there to make 100% game completion easy. Weapons and armor can be upgraded by finding common and rare supplies in the world (and yeah, they are actually just called "Supplies") and spending them at vendors throughout the world. Abilities can be augmented with 'charms' that can be found in the world - take less damage, deal more damage, stealth is easier, etc. It's all a very "fill out the skill tree" type of thing, but it gives the player choice of where to put their points. Overall it's a very good game and is incredibly pretty. It controls reasonably well, and I encountered very few visual bugs and no game crashes on a PS4 Pro and PS5.

Best graphics I’ve ever seen in a video game. The environments were stunning on a base PS4. Really fun game to platinum. Expect to get 50-60 hours of gameplay. Legends co-op was also fun from what I played.

This is my first RPG game of this type (using PS4 Slim) and I am amazed how good it is. Beautiful, elegant scenery, I find myself just standing around in the game looking around at it. The game play is excellent, lots to explore and the fights are amazing, there is so much to explore and accomplish with this game I have been playing this for a month with several hours per day and finally finished the first lower part of the island. Keeps me wanting more, it's so realistic and very captivating. I would give this a 10 star rating!!!!!!! This game really draws you in emotionally as well, connecting with the other characters to help in the conquest. Truly love this game, can't say enough good things about it. I am used to playing FPS games mostly like Call of Duty, Wolfenstein ect. I thought I would get bored with it but this is not the case for me. I wish I would have purchased this sooner. Sucker Punch hit a multiple home run with this game!