Ghosts of Tsushima Review thread

[FakeSympathy]

Yeah, I am going to throw in my two cents here.

For the story, it actually taught me a lot about the virtues that the samurais held. They are portrayed to be honorable and enforces the idea of facing the enemy in the open, and on give or receive honorable death. I like to put myself in the shoes of the characters I'm playing as, and I had the dilemma of whether stealth killing was the right thing to do. This has never happened to me before. It's funny because in my country of origin South Korea, Samurais are depicted as evil, heartless, monstrous warriors, but here they seem like the knights in shining armor, helping the weak and fighting for their lands. I was always fascinated by the Mongol empire and its legacy, for both their good and their bad side. It's interesting to see that Mongols are depicted as monsters here.

For the voice acting, I found both English and Japanese to be good, but it pains me to see that for the Japanese dub the lip sync is off. It really is off-putting, because the cutscenes are on par with all the samurai movies complemented by the game's beautiful visuals, but you see the lips flapping and don't match the Japanese dub. I have tried the Kurosawa mode, and I WANT TO LOVE IT, but that lip sync animation is preventing me from enjoying the game to the fullest. Unless there is a way to play in Kurosawa mode with English dub?

The game's visuals are gorgeous, and I am still just in the beginning area; For all the photo mode enthusiasts you guys are in for a real treat, because you'll be taking photos every five seconds. I am not quite familiar on Japanese history, but the details I've seen so far have been nothing short of amazing. The way the forests and grass fields waves against the wind is quite spectacular, and you'll be using the guiding win a lot to see an incredible animation, and also to guide to your destination.

I kinda have to agree with other reviews on the actual gameplay; It's kinda of....mundane. I mean I wasn't expecting something like Sekiro, but in attempts to be as grounded as possible, it seems that dev has sacrificed the liberty to be more creative with the combat. Maybe I need to unlock more stuff, but so far the tools and combat have been something that i've seen in dozens of other games. The parry timing seems to be off (maybe it'e because I am playin on hard mode?), and I feel the dodge roll should've been double-tap, not holding-down the button.

Someone mentioned this game being like AC: Odyssey, but I'd say this game does things better on certain aspects. The entire island seems digestible and not daunting, proving that a bigger map isn't always the good thing when it comes to open-world games. There are no RNG loots, which I love. At least from what I experience so far, the loots seems to be fixed, which means I don't have to grind too much.

8/10 from what I experienced so far.

 

[Nick Calandra]

Still on Act 1, but I'm not super impressed with the game. I'm enjoying it, but so far all the missions have been the same thing over and over again. Go to point, kill some things, end mission. Some very low bar click on icon to investigate, follow trail, kill thing at end of trail, repeat.

Very by the numbers open world stuff, though I do love the world and the characters so far which is enough to keep me going, not to mention I'm a sucker for historical epic pieces like this.

Also as I pointed out on Twitter, the animations outside of combat are a little rough...especially coming right off The Last of Us Part II. I totally get they toiled and crunched to make all those animations as good as they look, but it raised the bar so high it's impossible not to compare with another Sony exclusive here.

Little things like not walking up stairs correctly, characters floating in cutscenes off the ground, bodies not ragdolling, blank facial animations etc. All VERY noticeable now.

Overall enjoying it though.

 

[Ezekiel]

Ghost of Tsushima's Shockingly Short Load Times Were Originally Even Quicker

That's the long and the short of it

www.pushsquare.com

"Amazingly, loading after death was once so fast that it would've been impossible to read any of the tooltips that appear while you wait. Bentley says the team had to artificially extend this downtime to allow people to take in at least one of these tips."

AAA gaming is so stupid, Jesus Christ.

If the whole point of loading tips is to utilize the loading time and your game is too fast for them, then don't use them. Teach it or make it available to the player some other way. Your game doesn't have to be like every other game.

 

[Dalisclock]

The most scathing I’ve seen was from Eurogamer, basically saying it’s pretty but also pretty generic. They said the combat was interesting when there were big set piece battles that incentivized changing stances, but those instances were too few and far between. The side quests felt tacked on and not given the same attention as the main story. Pretty much the opposite of something like The Witcher 3, where many side quests felt even more interesting than the main ones.

As for the visuals and extraordinary use of color, they said it was excessively done to the point the effect was lost.

Spoiler

In fact, if you pick at the surface of Ghost of Tsushima it all starts to quite worryingly unravel. The world as a whole is beautiful - utterly, undeniably, oppressively beautiful. Such colour! Everywhere you look, it's crimson, windswept fields and forests of golden yolk. Sunsets and oceans, beaches and snowy mountain peaks - environments of improbable range for a temperate island of Tsushima's kind, set to broad, enrapturing splashes of orange and teal. The vivid green bamboo jungles, the ephemeral fireflies, the swirling, milky petals that rise and fall with the wind - a wind that could be a game of its own, a magic thing bending everything around you. It's a sign of a studio that's mastered the tech, with a console generation's worth of experience behind it, but what it's missing is the maturity or restraint to put it to use. Ghost of Tsushima's bursting with undeniable beauty, yes, but beauty of the obvious, in-your-face kind, the kind that doesn't offer much thematic or tonal subtlety but makes a great ad for HDR OLED televisions. It's an odd thing to find a problem with - an excess of sumptuousness - but Sucker Punch is best imagined here less as master painter than overexcited barkeeper, serving up shot after shot of wincingly concentrated emotion, slamming the table and pouring out another - bigger moon! more falling leaves! make it a double! - before you've gulped the last one down. It's a bit much.

Also their sister site’s tech analysis mentioned the camera was frustrating -

Spoiler

In playing Ghost of Tsushima, the camera quickly became my arch-nemesis. This comes down to two issues - a narrow field of view and no real lock-on option. The latter point was a constant issue for me during combat: when engaging enemies, Ghost of Tsushima feels like a cross between multi-enemy Batman-style combat with some of the elegance of a From Software title, but the key factor is that actions are assigned to the face buttons while camera movement uses the right stick. Put simply, you're constantly shifting your thumb between actions and camera control and it's distracting. This could be alleviated by simply allowing the players to lock on to an enemy and engaging a more dynamic camera system or simply allowing users to assign attacks to the shoulder buttons.

Sounds like they don’t have an option to customize inputs, which is odd for an action game. Probably need to do that from the PS4 system options.

I saw the first one earlier and if that's a bad review, I'm not sure what a bad review is anymore. At worst, it makes the game sound like it's like every other Open World game out there but with Samurai. And as someone who generally waits until an open world game is really something I'm in the mood for before jumping in(like why I'm just now getting around to playing RDR for the first time after everyone and their mom has long since played it), that's hardly the same as saying it's dogshit.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Ghost of Tsushima's Shockingly Short Load Times Were Originally Even Quicker

That's the long and the short of it

www.pushsquare.com

"Amazingly, loading after death was once so fast that it would've been impossible to read any of the tooltips that appear while you wait. Bentley says the team had to artificially extend this downtime to allow people to take in at least one of these tips."

AAA gaming is so stupid, Jesus Christ.

If the whole point of loading tips is to utilize the loading time and your game is too fast for them, then don't use them. Teach it or make it available to the player some other way. Your game doesn't have to be like every other game.

Or simply have a button prompt when ready if it’s done loading like GoW or TLoU2

 

[CriticalGaming]

Still on Act 1, but I'm not super impressed with the game. I'm enjoying it, but so far all the missions have been the same thing over and over again. Go to point, kill some things, end mission. Some very low bar click on icon to investigate, follow trail, kill thing at end of trail, repeat.

Very by the numbers open world stuff, though I do love the world and the characters so far which is enough to keep me going, not to mention I'm a sucker for historical epic pieces like this.

Also as I pointed out on Twitter, the animations outside of combat are a little rough...especially coming right off The Last of Us Part II. I totally get they toiled and crunched to make all those animations as good as they look, but it raised the bar so high it's impossible not to compare with another Sony exclusive here.

Little things like not walking up stairs correctly, characters floating in cutscenes off the ground, bodies not ragdolling, blank facial animations etc. All VERY noticeable now.

Overall enjoying it though.

I think the setting of this game is what has won people over. Because the gameplay is just generic straightforward open-world game tat.

It's fine, I mean the game works, and the gameplay itself works and in short bursts is fun enough. But there isn't really anything remarkable about the game. Many games look just as good, so that doesn't really stand out to me.

It's certainly more fun that TLOU2 for sure, and the story is better if also generic.

 

[Casual Shinji]

It does kinda feel like Witcher 3-lite. And it doesn't have the fun factor of the first 2 Infamous games, probably because they were going for more of a historical drama. There's just not any real interaction with the gameworld other than fighting the same 5 enemy types, riding your horse, and the context sensitive climbing. I'm glad it doesn't throw busy work at you, as it does make the world feel as relaxed as it looks, but there really should've been more versatility in how you interact with the world.

Like, I think it's nifty that you can play your flute whenever, but it does nothing. It would've been cool if playing your flute attracted animals and birds, and if it had an effect on people in mourning. There's a scripted scene where you need to play your flute for Masako, but that's the game telling you to do it in order to progress.

Maybe if the game could fall back hard on the combat this wouldn't be an issue, but unfortunately the combat isn't that great. It's not bad and I do like fighting - I never skip it or anything - but it doesn't have the same level of satisfaction as Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War '18, or Spider-Man. The combat would've been totally fine as is if the game was more like Infamous, where you can jump and climb all over the place, there's big bombasting setpieces, and you're fighting a variety of people and monsters of various sizes. But in a realistic setting this combat should've been much better.

I still like the game - it's freaking gorgous, I quite like how some of the side quests are written, and now that I have the Heavenly Strike technique combat is more fun - but it falls just a bit short.

 

[Ezekiel]

Or simply have a button prompt when ready if it’s done loading like GoW or TLoU2

That would be fine too. I wonder what they're gonna do next gen, with the PS5 having extremely fast loading. Put artificial loading screens in every other game for the tips? It would negate one of the system's selling points. I repeat, dumb.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I gotta say, ive put about 8 hours into the game and im still in act one and the game is really losing me now.

The stories are not interesting enough to push me forward, and they remind me of Mass Effect where you are like, "Help me literally save the word." And the person goes, "Feed me first." It just isnt good.

The world itself is pretty but after a few hourz it becomes boring. Has anyone else noticed how empty the world actually is? I know it makes sense for the story but there are actually very few traveling encounters that pop up, unlike in recent open world games. The encounters that do appear are just fighting some dudes.

Speaking of fighting, i have unlocked perfect parry and spear parry and now nothing can hurt me. So i guess i just win now.

Anyway i still wanna grind it out through act 1 but if shit doesnt pick up or change, i might not be able to finish this one.

 

[Catfood220]

The world itself is pretty but after a few hourz it becomes boring. Has anyone else noticed how empty the world actually is? I know it makes sense for the story but there are actually very few traveling encounters that pop up, unlike in recent open world games. The encounters that do appear are just fighting some dudes.

Yeah, I've played for about the same amount of time and I've noticed the same thing. Other than some Mongols turning up for an impromptu battle and chasing a fox or a bird, there is precious little else to do. This feels like a open world game from about 15 years ago when they were just finding their feet, but even so I think they felt more lively than this one. In fact, outside of missions when you are with a partner or is battle. Do the NPC's actually move from where they are stood or sat?

Yeah, it looks really nice, in places. In other places, it looks a pretty normal for a current gen game. And some of it doesn't look good at all, there is something weird about the human characters in this game and I can't put my finger on it. I also have a gripe about the combat and that is the fucking archers. Almost every combat encounter has at least one or two of these fuckers and they really get on my tits. I'm paying attention to the enemy in front of me, waiting for my opening and these bastards just keep pelting me with arrows. Put it down to my lack of skill, but when I'm waiting to get past an enemies defenses my attention is on them, not on someone a few meters away. And they do so much damage, I think I need to unlock the deflect arrow skill.

But yeah, its alright, but I can see myself getting bored of it sooner rather than later unless it really picks up soon. The Infamous games are better than this, I applaud Sucker Punch for wanting to do something different but when your new IP just makes me wish for more Infamous, maybe you did something wrong.

 

[happyninja42]

Like, I think it's nifty that you can play your flute whenever, but it does nothing. It would've been cool if playing your flute attracted animals and birds, and if it had an effect on people in mourning. There's a scripted scene where you need to play your flute for Masako, but that's the game telling you to do it in order to progress.

I've only got one song so far, but it does have an effect on the world. I've used it a few times to remove strong storms that I didn't want around. I assume the other songs will do something similar to give slight alterations to the landscape for your advantage, but I could be wrong.

OT: I'm still in Act 1, and I'm enjoying it so far, though I feel terrible for how many times I've hacked my horse in the throat trying to mount him, because Sucker Punch made the "interact with the world" button be right trigger (serious when has that ever happened before??), instead of the more common Triangle, and instead has Triangle be "take massive swing of your katana!!" so I call my horse, he winnies happily as he approaches, and then I hack his throat!!! he runs away crying, and I feel like shit...EVERY....TIME. Thankfully they gave me a Bow button, so I go and profusely apologize to my horse every time, and it happens multiple times a day when I'm playing.

I did noticed something subtle that makes me want to do a different playthrough, and that was with stealth kills. At a point, on just a random mook guard, in the middle of a group of them, I got a flashback to the first conversation you have with your uncle about his thoughts on assassins, and their bravery. And so it seems like there might be a hidden "morality" system, though honor system might be more appropriate, where if you do too many sneaky kills, it will have an impact on the narrative going forward. Because it definitely felt like a "you've crossed a line" kind of moment, given the game paused entirely to show me that bit.

So now, I want to play again, in Kurosawa mode, and just go Pure Samurai, only doing stealth kills where the game mandates it (which I think is just once, at least so far). That could be fun.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I did noticed something subtle that makes me want to do a different playthrough, and that was with stealth kills. At a point, on just a random mook guard, in the middle of a group of them, I got a flashback to the first conversation you have with your uncle about his thoughts on assassins, and their bravery. And so it seems like there might be a hidden "morality" system, though honor system might be more appropriate, where if you do too many sneaky kills, it will have an impact on the narrative going forward. Because it definitely felt like a "you've crossed a line" kind of moment, given the game paused entirely to show me that bit.

Don't bother. I do stealth kills as much as possible and the flashback only happened the one time.

 

[CriticalGaming]

And some of it doesn't look good at all, there is something weird about the human characters in this game and I can't put my finger on it.

Their Japanese people, be nice .

On a serious note, I've only had some problem with the mouth movements of dialog. Otherwise the characters look fine to me. I think it's maybe made to look like their speaking japanese even when the game is in english. They put so much emphasis on making the game feel like an artsy Japanese movie, that maybe they wanted to make the mouth's look offsync like watchign a real Japanese film with dubs.

So that could be it.

 

[happyninja42]

Don't bother. I do stealth kills as much as possible and the flashback only happened the one time.

Yes but my point is that I feel it's a turning point in the narrative, like a Renegade/Paragon style ending difference for the character.

 

[happyninja42]

Their Japanese people, be nice .

On a serious note, I've only had some problem with the mouth movements of dialog. Otherwise the characters look fine to me. I think it's maybe made to look like their speaking japanese even when the game is in english. They put so much emphasis on making the game feel like an artsy Japanese movie, that maybe they wanted to make the mouth's look offsync like watchign a real Japanese film with dubs.

So that could be it.

I've noticed with a few of the more recent mocap titles Jedi Fallen Order, Days Gone, Ghosts of Tsushima, Control (which I love) that there is some Uncanny Valley with some of the rendering. I think some of the actors are given direction to possibly exaggerate their facial expressions? I suspect, if this is the case, it's because it makes it easier for the software to capture the different expressions, and render them. But the end result is people who look like they are mugging for the camera.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I've noticed with a few of the more recent mocap titles Jedi Fallen Order, Days Gone, Ghosts of Tsushima, Control (which I love) that there is some Uncanny Valley with some of the rendering. I think some of the actors are given direction to possibly exaggerate their facial expressions? I suspect, if this is the case, it's because it makes it easier for the software to capture the different expressions, and render them. But the end result is people who look like they are mugging for the camera.

It's budget I think. The developers are trying to go for more animation than they can handle, and then you end up with that uncanny look. Like Naughty Dog clearly has the money and the time to make everyone look great. TLOU2 has amazing animations for the cut scenes.

Games like Horizon Zero Dawn and The Witcher 3 did it right I think. They knew they couldn't be hyper realistic in the cut scenes so instead they just perfected a few set animations for dialog that basically always work, and then cut and paste where needed.

Games like the ones you mention i feel just overreach, trying to make every dialog unique but not having the ability, money, or time to make such a thing work.

 

[Eacaraxe]

For the story, it actually taught me a lot about the virtues that the samurais held. They are portrayed to be honorable and enforces the idea of facing the enemy in the open, and on give or receive honorable death. I like to put myself in the shoes of the characters I'm playing as, and I had the dilemma of whether stealth killing was the right thing to do. This has never happened to me before. It's funny because in my country of origin South Korea, Samurais are depicted as evil, heartless, monstrous warriors, but here they seem like the knights in shining armor, helping the weak and fighting for their lands. I was always fascinated by the Mongol empire and its legacy, for both their good and their bad side. It's interesting to see that Mongols are depicted as monsters here.

Without having played the game, what I'm picking up is the game has a more-or-less RDR revisionist take on samurai fiction, and its general theme seems to be "are principles a worthy price to pay for victory?" and "was the samurai lifestyle really that realistic to begin with?". The caste in feudal Japan that consistently acted least like samurai, were the friggin' samurai. We're talking about a caste that ruled with calvinball-like precision for 700 years punctuated by brief periods in which the whole country went violently bugshit for decades on end, held together by quite possibly one of the most stupid economic systems in human history which all but guaranteed complete economic implosion at least once a decade.

Hell, the political and cultural importance of Chushingura had less to do with the 47 dudes who waited two years to revenge kill a bureaucrat, than the monetary crisis that was going on at the same time making it a point of interest for spinning anti-bakufu propaganda on artisans' and merchants' dime.

 

[happyninja42]

Without having played the game, what I'm picking up is the game has a more-or-less RDR revisionist take on samurai fiction,

I think it's easier to just say 'Hollywood Samurai" as one of the ways you can play the game, is Kurosawa mode, and it turns everything black and white, and film grain, and everything, to try and capture the feel of Kurosawa films. Yes it's a highly romanticized depiction, but I mean, that's pretty much ALL depictions of the samurai culture in modern media, outside of a historical documentary, which this is definitely not. It's not trying to be historically accurate, it's trying to tell a dramatic story with tension and..well drama. YMMV on if it hits or misses in the execution of it.

OT: I will say that having played more of it now, I am impressed by how torn I am on whether to play Bushido or Ninja. Normally I'm a stealth junky, and ANY option that allows me to stealth my way around, I jump on it. But....the open fighting system is SO much fun! I LOVE calling out the enemy forces to open battle, facing off with one of them, doing a critical strike as they rush me, and then follow up on 2 of their buddies (upgraded the skill to let me chain it twice). Then proceed to attack and dominate them in open combat. It's just so fun. I'm genuinely torn on how to take on any particular engagement. So far I've opted for open battle if I just run into a group on the road, as those are generally just 3-4 mooks who can go down fast. But encampments, I try and stealth as much as I can. I've already crossed a line with how many stealth kills I've done, based on some of the narrative indications, so I might as well continue. I'll play again, likely in Kurosawa mode, and go for minimum stealth kills, only when forced by the narrative. Japanese dialogue with english subtitles, the works. I think it will be fun.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm having a lot more fun the further I get into the game. Probably because I have a lot more moves to play around with. Most of these moves likely aren't even a necessity for combat, but it just makes you feel f-ing cool. It feels awesome to kick a dude into the air with wind stance and then go in for an assassination once he's on the ground, or to unleash a flurry of strikes in water stance, or to break through a guy's defense and then Heavenly Strike his ass. And with the upgrade to my resolve healing I can get a second wind if I fuck up and get mortally wounded.

 

[happyninja42]

I'm having a lot more fun the further I get into the game. Probably because I have a lot more moves to play around with. Most of these moves likely aren't even a necessity for combat, but it just makes you feel f-ing cool. It feels awesome to kick a dude into the air with wind stance and then go in for an assassination once he's on the ground, or to unleash a flurry of strikes in water stance, or to break through a guy's defense and then Heavenly Strike his ass. And with the upgrade to my resolve healing I can get a second wind if I fuck up and get mortally wounded.

My favorite is using Water Stance to break one of the big boy's with the shields, then finishing them off with Heaven's Strike, and having their allies freak out. Invariably one of them falls down on their back, crab crawling away..while I sloooooowly advance towards them...then plunge my sword into them to finish them off. The flick the blood from the blade and sheathe it, while the world is painted gold with the setting sun. It's got some damn fine visuals when incorporated with the combat.