Finally bit the bullet.
Soulless and boring intro. Why can't devs copy westerns or the old samurai movies that copied westerns by saying so much by having the characters say so little?
I sneaked upright through almost the whole opening sneaking area with the boss lady, while she crouched low in front of me, because the low crouch walk offends me. At least they can't hear you upright, they can only see you better. When one soldier finally did spot me and I failed the linear scripted sequence, the game let me continue just ahead of where I failed.
Ultra wide wasted, just like in RDR2 and so many others. The black cutscene bars that are pointless in 16:9 mode stay in 21:9 mode, making the cutscenes much too wide and surrounding the characters with empty space. 21:9 could have been a way to maintain the aspect ratio of the cutscenes and NOT have the black bars. But dumb developers keep thinking players won't know the difference between gameplay and cutscene or that the black bars make it feel cinematic somehow.
No manual targeting system, which I know for sure will cause problems later.
The biggest source of my bad opinions on this game stem from the lack of any growth from Tsushima, and I compare to other games like Horizon or God of War both of which had sequels that drastically expanded the experiences.
Yotei feels disjointed and bare bones. The story is all over the place, quite literally, as you have to go around to collect the story parts, and that means the player lacks investment in Atsu's motivations or even characterization. Who the fuck is this lady? I understand she's out for revenge of her family, and she mentions going to war sometime between when her family was killed and when we get to play her. But like....why are we not shown this in a way that gets us invested? How many hours can you sink into this world before stumbling across new bits of potential story pieces.
I also really don't like the lack of character build up from a player standpoint. Jin had to save people and earn his grappling hook, Atsu just starts with one. Jin had to earn his rep as the ghost in which makes his screams strike supernatural fear into the enemy. Atsu gets it in the first cutscene of the game. Which makes it feel like Atsu doesn't earn anything, she's just given shit for the sake of speeding up the game. Even when I went to get my duel katana's, there was no convincing the master to train us, we ask...he says no...we say please...he says fine. Then the training isn't missions or skill checks using the duel blades, it's just a couple mini games that you don't even have to be good at.
Which also points out that the playstyle of duel katanas doesn't feel any different. It's so transparently a rock/paper/scissor's system that it is just feels pointless. It's a new skin over the same stance system the last game had and it feels insulting. It's a new clown trying to convince me that he is a new clown, and honestly I would be less upset if the combat system got zero changes from the first game and instead just got new tools and refinements.
The open world activities are also the same, which I'm fine with, painting instead of haiku's are fine even if they're the same thing ultimately. The world is beautiful, but it sort of feels hollow this time around because I suppose it just lacks the looming threat of invasion that the first game had.
Tsushima felt like it had stakes and the fate of a whole country in it's hands. Yotei doesn't really feel like anything matters. If Atsu wins or dies, it doesn't feel like it will mean anything to anyone in Japan at the end of the day.
