Ghosts of Tsushima Review thread

Phoenixmgs

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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
 
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happyninja42

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I might take a gander at this game again once this update drops.
Yeah I'll definitely give it a look. Not sure about the multiplayer content, or how it will work. I mean they say there is an actual 2 player story part, but...I mean do I HAVE to have another person playing? Or can the AI just run that one for me so I can play the story. The 4 player stuff makes me think PD 2 or L4D2, but with demons instead of zombies/cops. That I will probably enjoy a lot, though if the game forces you each to pick a different class, so there is no redundancy, it might be annoying, if I get stuck with say, the archer type. Not a fan of aimed combat down a sight with a controller. never been good at it, need a mouse/keyboard. So, that could be an issue.

But yeah, definitely looking forward to this.
 

SckizoBoy

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Finally playing it, and I have nothing to say (so far) other than... why the hell does Khotun Khan remind me of Shakriyar Mamedyarov (even though I know his VA is also the mo-cap actor)?!
 

happyninja42

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Finally playing it, and I have nothing to say (so far) other than... why the hell does Khotun Khan remind me of Shakriyar Mamedyarov (even though I know his VA is also the mo-cap actor)?!
I would assume it's the puffy cheeks and overall similar shape of facial features. After quickly googling Shakriyar for comparison.
 

happyninja42

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....eh, I'm not sure how I feel about this? I'm always kind of iffy about movies being adaptations of games, that are themselves, adaptations of movies. It feels a lot like a google translate chain of lost in translation to me. And while I think the first RE movie is actually pretty decent , and hits a lot of the more surface level details of the game, the series itself just sort of goes off into crazy town very quickly.

And while I don't worry that Jin will suddenly start burning flocks of messengers crows from the mongols with his psychic powers, I do think something might be off with this adaptation of an adaptation.
 

BrawlMan

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....eh, I'm not sure how I feel about this? I'm always kind of iffy about movies being adaptations of games, that are themselves, adaptations of movies. It feels a lot like a google translate chain of lost in translation to me. And while I think the first RE movie is actually pretty decent , and hits a lot of the more surface level details of the game, the series itself just sort of goes off into crazy town very quickly.

And while I don't worry that Jin will suddenly start burning flocks of messengers crows from the mongols with his psychic powers, I do think something might be off with this adaptation of an adaptation.
I have a wait and see approach. I admit, that I was not expecting this news earlier today. I get what you mean, but I am willing to give it a chance.

And while I think the first RE movie is actually pretty decent
Decent for its time, in my case. I can still watch it, but I find it boring at this point. When you read what was in Romero's original script, you realize he mostly kept true the games (and realize what was lost), despite some odd changes. For some reason Chris Redfield part Native American and works on a farm. Other than that, it's almost 1-to-1. The only difference being he kept the zombie sharks, I don't remember if he left the Hunters in though. No spiders not chimeras either. It's I am looking forward to the reboot movie. They can still deviate and get creative, but no more of this Martix bullshit. At least save it for when start adapting RE4 and beyond. You know something is wrong when films like Dog Soldiers, and .REC franchise are better RE films by comparison to the WS Anderson series.
 

happyninja42

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I have a wait and see approach. I admit, that I was not expecting this news earlier today. I get what you mean, but I am willing to give it a chance.
Oh I'm willing to give it a chance too, I just hope all they try and do is...you know, just make a samurai movie. I think the problems will come in if they try and "video game" it, if you know what I mean. The game is basically a movie anyway, minus the 20+ hours of wandering around and sidequesting, and at least one of the cast is an established actor that I know from multiple films for decades. If they just play it smart and say "Ok so let's just make this a samurai movie, with this basic plot, and these supporting characters, go." Then it will be great. I just fear they will try and "be true to the source material" in some insane way, that will make things bad.

I'm optimistic though, because there is nothing really "out there" in the game. It's all purely mundane, real world stuff (except maybe the Ghost Stance stuff, though that could just be "dramatic flare"), so it will be easy to stay accurate.
 
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Catfood220

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You know, with the story stripped of all the needless open world bloat, it could actually be good. But what is with Sony trying to make everything into either a TV show or a film at the moment?
 
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BrawlMan

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You know, with the story stripped of all the needless open world bloat, it could actually be good. But what is with Sony trying to make everything into either a TV show or a film at the moment?
Money and the whole, "GAMEZ CAN BE ART AND SUPER SIRIOUS, EVERYONE! JUST LIKE DA CINEMA!" It's them overcompensating to try and please people who would not otherwise bother.
 

Casual Shinji

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You know, with the story stripped of all the needless open world bloat, it could actually be good. But what is with Sony trying to make everything into either a TV show or a film at the moment?
At the moment? This has been going on for a long time. God of War and Shadow of the Colossus had movie rumblings back in the day. I think you can even find cliff notes of a really, REALLY bad script that was written for SotC.
 
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CriticalGaming

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You know, with the story stripped of all the needless open world bloat, it could actually be good. But what is with Sony trying to make everything into either a TV show or a film at the moment?
What's funny about that is that you call it open world bloat, and you're right it is, but all that bloat is often what makes a game great. We don't think about it much because we are often lost in the world and focused on the game itself, but often times if you got rid of all the bloat in a game like Ghosts then the game would be a much lesser experience for it. Without all that extra stuff to do and didn't have things to see or explore, even if you only do it passively, then a lot of the sense of world is gone and you end up with a shallow experience.

One thing I think isn't much considered when we talk about open world games is that, more often than not, the game doesn't expect you to do EVERYTHING. They scatter a ton of shit around for you to do and they do that because it not only adds to the feeling of "stuff" in the world but they also figure that the player will do at least SOME of it. While very few people will complete all of it, the vast majority of players will engage with at least a certain percentage of it and what they dont bother with still does a lot to make the world feel "real".

It also does wonders for environmental storytelling as well.
 

stroopwafel

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I had all but completely forgotten about the game as soon as I reached the credits. Like any open world game it ultimately became very formulaic and repetitive and it also didn't have a very compelling story that motivates to keep playing but I did really like the beautiful environments and more than serviceable combat. I think I would have liked it more if it cut like 30% of it's runtime. That last area felt redundant and incongruous with the rest of the island(atleast the sudden seasonal shift). Also once you unlock all stances and have fought the same four enemy types a million times before the combat becomes kind of a chore. But still the last open world game I actually played to the credits was The Witcher 3 so atleast I enjoyed it more than 99% of other open world games. Oh wait I also completed Horizon Zero Dawn but I really rushed that one towards the end.

The haikus in Ghost really stood out to me as particularly fun side content. What gibberish 'deep' nonsense is Jin going to come up next with these three random words really made me laugh at times.
 
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CriticalGaming

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I had all but completely forgotten about the game as soon as I reached the credits. Like any open world game it ultimately became very formulaic and repetitive and it also didn't have a very compelling story that motivates to keep playing but I did really like the beautiful environments and more than serviceable combat. I think I would have liked it more if it cut like 30% of it's runtime. That last area felt redundant and incongruous with the rest of the island(atleast the sudden seasonal shift). Also once you unlock all stances and have fought the same four enemy types a million times before the combat becomes kind of a chore. But still the last open world game I actually played to the credits was The Witcher 3 so atleast I enjoyed it more than 99% of other open world games. Oh wait I also completed Horizon Zero Dawn but I really rushed that one towards the end.

The haikus in Ghost really stood out to me as particularly fun side content. What gibberish 'deep' nonsense is Jin going to come up next with these three random words really made me laugh at times.
I thought it was weird that I maxed my stances, my resolve, and the maxium number of charm slots all in the first area. I was like, "What the hell is all the shit in the other sections for?" So I've stopped exploring and I'm just moving from story mission to mission just to get to the end because there is no further point of extras at this point.