With the Ghosts review thread being all over the place, I wanted to create a new thread where we can sort of give our final verdicts about the game. So let's try our best to keep things directly related to personal reviews on the game here. Hopefully ya'll can give me your final thoughts on Ghosts of Tsushima. Here is mine:
I'm going to be up front with all of you going into my "review/final verdict" I could NOT finish this game. I found it incredibly incredibly boring. I got through Act 1 barely, and when Act 2 began with pretty much the exact same set up as Act 1, I was out.
So let's break this down. Ghosts of Tsushima is an incredibly good looking game, at least in terms of the world. The island of Tsushima is stunning most of the time and even in its ugliest areas it still looks great. The grass and trees all move with the wind which not only becomes important to gameplay, it makes the land itself feel alive. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the characters in the game, I found the character models looked okay, but their movements felt stiff and robotic. I don't think this is a problem with the animation though, I think it's a problem of the games overall tone. The story is very very serious, Mongols have invaded and killed most everyone you and the NPC's have ever known, and everyone is pretty cross about it. This makes all the dialog in the game serious and stoic, especially when piled on with the code of honor and how everything must be done with nobility. It leads to every character feeling stiff, and the story becomes very dry because of that, making it hard to push through.
The story being dry wouldn't be a problem if the game was good though right? Well, the game on offer here is just okay. Sucker Punch put so much effort in making a serious genuine Shogun-esque experience, that i don't think they put the same effort in making the game fun or interesting to play. Combat is extremely simple, you have four stances and each stance works on a different enemy type. So long as you are in the right stance for a given enemy it's very hard to lose a fight. Spam heavy attack in the right stance and you'll break enemies down like bowling pins. Even if they surround you, they wont attack you often enough to stop you from breaking them apart one by one. In fact many combat sections feel like cheesy martial arts movies where the hero is surrounded by guys that all have weapons but the bad guys only attack him one by one and he picks them apart easily.
Combat can be more interesting if you want it to be though. There are loads of upgrade trees in the game. Every stance, every Ghost weapon (like Kunai, and bombs) have their own tree. These skill trees unlock different moves. That probably do something if you try to use them, but like with God of War 4, they all require special situations or special button combinations to execute and it's too complicated to pull off or remember especially since heavy attack spam gets the job done far faster than trying to be fancy about it. So upgrading your character feels like a waste and also probably why the game showers you with skill points, I have almost unlocked everything by the time Act 1 was finished. So I had seen all the evolution the combat was going to make.
Then there is the open world exploration and typical open world guff. There are towns to liberate, there are collectibles to find, shrines, to visit, foxes to follow, all of them play out exactly the same as the other. Follow a fox to a shrine, pray at it. Climb a mountain to a shrine, pray at it. Find a hot tub, pray at it. See prayer mat, pray at it create Haiku. As you run around you might encounter Mongols or bandits, and you'll fight them for a little exp. But that's it. The problem here is that none of the open world things are interesting. As pretty as the world is, it is very static and doesn't feel lived in or even really threatened by the Mongol invasion. You'll never encounter townsfolk fleeing from a patrol, you'll never meet a roam merchant though they exist in town and camps you will never see any roaming the map.
At least when you play a Ubisoft game, there is always some flavor to the open world check list. But here there isn't. All the fox dens and shrines in the game play out exactly the same. No dialog, nothing unique about any of them. The haiku's don't really mean anything, and pondering a random thing in a hot tub also never has any baring on recent story events. I liberate a town and then Jin thinks about his favorite food in a hot tub.....like why? Have him reflect on the mongol assault, or question himself more about stealth killing since it's not the honorable thing to do or whatever. Make him ponder things that reflect how the player has been doing in the game. But no, the hot tubs and haikus are meaningless.
Ghosts takes itself far too serious, and therefore makes itself way to dry to keep anyone except diehard Shogun fans interested. The gameplay and the world around the story are not exciting enough to keep me going forward.
The game works and the world looks good, so it's probably a 6/10 for me though honestly I would have to give it a 3/10 because I will never finish it. It's boring as fuck.
How do you guys rate the game? How does the combat feel for you? The story? Give me your reviews.
I'm going to be up front with all of you going into my "review/final verdict" I could NOT finish this game. I found it incredibly incredibly boring. I got through Act 1 barely, and when Act 2 began with pretty much the exact same set up as Act 1, I was out.
So let's break this down. Ghosts of Tsushima is an incredibly good looking game, at least in terms of the world. The island of Tsushima is stunning most of the time and even in its ugliest areas it still looks great. The grass and trees all move with the wind which not only becomes important to gameplay, it makes the land itself feel alive. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the characters in the game, I found the character models looked okay, but their movements felt stiff and robotic. I don't think this is a problem with the animation though, I think it's a problem of the games overall tone. The story is very very serious, Mongols have invaded and killed most everyone you and the NPC's have ever known, and everyone is pretty cross about it. This makes all the dialog in the game serious and stoic, especially when piled on with the code of honor and how everything must be done with nobility. It leads to every character feeling stiff, and the story becomes very dry because of that, making it hard to push through.
The story being dry wouldn't be a problem if the game was good though right? Well, the game on offer here is just okay. Sucker Punch put so much effort in making a serious genuine Shogun-esque experience, that i don't think they put the same effort in making the game fun or interesting to play. Combat is extremely simple, you have four stances and each stance works on a different enemy type. So long as you are in the right stance for a given enemy it's very hard to lose a fight. Spam heavy attack in the right stance and you'll break enemies down like bowling pins. Even if they surround you, they wont attack you often enough to stop you from breaking them apart one by one. In fact many combat sections feel like cheesy martial arts movies where the hero is surrounded by guys that all have weapons but the bad guys only attack him one by one and he picks them apart easily.
Combat can be more interesting if you want it to be though. There are loads of upgrade trees in the game. Every stance, every Ghost weapon (like Kunai, and bombs) have their own tree. These skill trees unlock different moves. That probably do something if you try to use them, but like with God of War 4, they all require special situations or special button combinations to execute and it's too complicated to pull off or remember especially since heavy attack spam gets the job done far faster than trying to be fancy about it. So upgrading your character feels like a waste and also probably why the game showers you with skill points, I have almost unlocked everything by the time Act 1 was finished. So I had seen all the evolution the combat was going to make.
Then there is the open world exploration and typical open world guff. There are towns to liberate, there are collectibles to find, shrines, to visit, foxes to follow, all of them play out exactly the same as the other. Follow a fox to a shrine, pray at it. Climb a mountain to a shrine, pray at it. Find a hot tub, pray at it. See prayer mat, pray at it create Haiku. As you run around you might encounter Mongols or bandits, and you'll fight them for a little exp. But that's it. The problem here is that none of the open world things are interesting. As pretty as the world is, it is very static and doesn't feel lived in or even really threatened by the Mongol invasion. You'll never encounter townsfolk fleeing from a patrol, you'll never meet a roam merchant though they exist in town and camps you will never see any roaming the map.
At least when you play a Ubisoft game, there is always some flavor to the open world check list. But here there isn't. All the fox dens and shrines in the game play out exactly the same. No dialog, nothing unique about any of them. The haiku's don't really mean anything, and pondering a random thing in a hot tub also never has any baring on recent story events. I liberate a town and then Jin thinks about his favorite food in a hot tub.....like why? Have him reflect on the mongol assault, or question himself more about stealth killing since it's not the honorable thing to do or whatever. Make him ponder things that reflect how the player has been doing in the game. But no, the hot tubs and haikus are meaningless.
Ghosts takes itself far too serious, and therefore makes itself way to dry to keep anyone except diehard Shogun fans interested. The gameplay and the world around the story are not exciting enough to keep me going forward.
The game works and the world looks good, so it's probably a 6/10 for me though honestly I would have to give it a 3/10 because I will never finish it. It's boring as fuck.
How do you guys rate the game? How does the combat feel for you? The story? Give me your reviews.
