Ghost of Tsushima - 6/10
I recently finished and Platinum-ed the game and rather enjoyed it but the game does have quite a bit of bloat along with many flaws. The very very core combat is really good but just about everything that you unlock is basically pointless or equates to an "I win" button. The stances are basically pointless because they aren't tied to parries and dodges so there's no reason to change stances unless you want to make triangle an "I win" button. Every thing from the kunai to the heavenly strike to the ghost stance upgrades/unlocks are literally all "I win" buttons. None of them are interesting or satisfying to use from a game mechanics standpoint and you only ever do them just for the looks honestly. The environment and world is a standout but also a great detriment; it's way bigger than it needs to be. Something like the size of new God of War's world would've been just about perfect as it's big enough to go from great looking biome to great looking biome while being able to house the major sidequest Tales that Ghost has. All other sidequests that weren't main Tales could've been dumped.
There several other issues the game has. The game kept making me switch stances in the middle of combat because I wasn't using them, basically repeatedly tutorializing stances. Also, when I would have a duel the game would almost always change my stance to something other than the Wind stance and then triangle would no longer kick enemies and I had to switch back. The AI and pathing of the enemies is pretty damn poor. The enemies don't know that horses physically exist; I had an archer get off his horse to shoot it with a fire arrow. The enemy AI has trouble navigating the environment. The AI even breaks at times, I've had several enemies circle around me and none of them would attack, not even the archer that was outside the circle. Speaking of archers, they just totally break the flow of the combat quite often as you either got to "pause" the battle to shoot them or run up to them to take them out. I just want to have also samurai melee fights. There should've been some cool way to catch the arrows and sling it back at them or something.
The story was solid (7/10) but horribly paced because open world and all. The shrines were pretty awesome. The use of wind to lead to the right place is an awesome "fix" to the dreaded mini-map and white dotted line.
Here's a short video of some of the fights I had
I recently finished and Platinum-ed the game and rather enjoyed it but the game does have quite a bit of bloat along with many flaws. The very very core combat is really good but just about everything that you unlock is basically pointless or equates to an "I win" button. The stances are basically pointless because they aren't tied to parries and dodges so there's no reason to change stances unless you want to make triangle an "I win" button. Every thing from the kunai to the heavenly strike to the ghost stance upgrades/unlocks are literally all "I win" buttons. None of them are interesting or satisfying to use from a game mechanics standpoint and you only ever do them just for the looks honestly. The environment and world is a standout but also a great detriment; it's way bigger than it needs to be. Something like the size of new God of War's world would've been just about perfect as it's big enough to go from great looking biome to great looking biome while being able to house the major sidequest Tales that Ghost has. All other sidequests that weren't main Tales could've been dumped.
There several other issues the game has. The game kept making me switch stances in the middle of combat because I wasn't using them, basically repeatedly tutorializing stances. Also, when I would have a duel the game would almost always change my stance to something other than the Wind stance and then triangle would no longer kick enemies and I had to switch back. The AI and pathing of the enemies is pretty damn poor. The enemies don't know that horses physically exist; I had an archer get off his horse to shoot it with a fire arrow. The enemy AI has trouble navigating the environment. The AI even breaks at times, I've had several enemies circle around me and none of them would attack, not even the archer that was outside the circle. Speaking of archers, they just totally break the flow of the combat quite often as you either got to "pause" the battle to shoot them or run up to them to take them out. I just want to have also samurai melee fights. There should've been some cool way to catch the arrows and sling it back at them or something.
The story was solid (7/10) but horribly paced because open world and all. The shrines were pretty awesome. The use of wind to lead to the right place is an awesome "fix" to the dreaded mini-map and white dotted line.
Here's a short video of some of the fights I had
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