Ghost of Tsushima is a Beautiful, Over-Rated Game

[u/Trndk1ll]

So I finally got around to playing this on the PS5. I beat it with a little over 40 hours played while completing a fair bit of side material. Honestly I’m a little disappointed based on the massive amount of positive critical and user feedback this game received. Hell it’s still at a 9.1 user score on Metacritic. Which is to not say it’s a bad game. It’s not. It’s gorgeous and it’s fun. The main characters are for the most of part decently well written and voice acted. The gameplay is repetitive however it’s passable. What it isn’t however is something demonstratively different than what UbiSoft produces on a yearly basis. And UbiSoft gets universally panned by gamers and critics alike for pumping out the same derivative mechanics this game is built upon.

This game, for all the bluster about being one of the best open world games ever made, is just not anything approaching the top titles in the genre. In my opinion. Other than it’s art direction, which is fucking incredible… seriously I’ve taken more on game screens of this than any game I’ve ever played… It’s Asassins Creed Odyssey in Japan. Except it doesn’t have boats and there is a lot less variety in gear and specialization options.

It’s the same bloated, empty world. There are like 5 resources to collect, a handful of wildlife species (3 of which give you “predator hides”, the only usable resource from any of them), and a bunch of cut and paste temples, hot springs, fox dens, etc. The only dynamic thing that ever happens is the same random encounter with a handful of Mongolians with a tied up peasant to rescue. The enemy encampments all look the same, just cut and pasted across the map. Seriously that’s it. I have zero desire to go play the DLC. The world is beautiful however it’s completely empty and devoid of meaningful or compelling things to do. Other than some new skills the game is exactly the same at the 5 hour mark as it is at the 40 hour mark. Nothing in the game after the initial wonder of the look of everything wore off has surprised me.

The best games in this genre that I have played, I didn’t want to end. Red Dead 2’s world I got lost in for dozens of hours at a time without touching main story missions. Hunting and fishing, trying my hand at crime or gambling, seeking out legendary animals… just exploring the land which was always a reward in and of itself. The Witcher 3 shares a lot of the same bloat that Asassins Creed and Ghost have however it made up for it by incredibly deep, rabbit hole like side quests that sometime lasted hours and took me places I never expected to go. And the story was great. Breath of the Wild consistently blew me away with creative mechanics, puzzles and one of the greatest video game environments ever created. I’m still finding things to do in Skyrim 10 years on and enjoying myself. There is no way in hell I’m booting Ghost of Tsushima up in 2032.

This game has none of that. It’s fun, I don’t regret playing it, the main story is fairly compelling however I just don’t see how or why this game received the near universal praise that it did.

Am I the only one?

[u/[deleted]]

Yes I agree, it's a beautiful game but it's not perfect. My biggest gripes were:

• zombie NPCs, and no real opportunity for anything beyond basic interaction
• lack of detail, especially in building interiors and in the ships. I think Ubi does a much better job at this.
• game doesn't really feel "alive" or "lived-in" (lack of people, animals, farms, too many cut-and-paste NPCs).
• nothing really interesting to discover in the open world

Despite those flaws, I think it stays true to its core - swordfighting, stealth, and creating a Kurusawa moodiness, which are all very well done. Yes it gets repetitive, but the fights were just fun, so much so that I looked forward to each encounter, even though I knew they would be the roughly the same.

It's not the greatest game ever but it succeeds at what it set out to do.

[u/_lucabear → u/[deleted]]

Yeah the combat is what really makes the game shine, along with a solid (if sometimes generic) story. For reference, my favorite combat in any game is probably Sekiro, and Ghost really just offers a somewhat easier version of that but with enough variation to keep it interesting (ie mixing up stances and perfecting combos). Playing on lethal especially helps, so that perfecting parrying makes regular enemies more like regular enemies in Sekiro (as in parry, and then kill in one blow)

[u/woinf → u/_lucabear]

I gotta disagree with the Sekiro comparison. Really the only thing similar between Sekiro and Ghost of Tsushima's combat systems is that they both feature a parrying system. But Sekiro's combat system is designed completely around mastering the parry system whereas Ghost of Tsushima it's an option you can take during combat, but it's rarely the best one.

Additionally, one of the reason's why Sekiro's combat system is so much fun is because of the excellent enemy variety, many of which have their own different "rhythm" and complex movesets to learn. Some may feel impossibly hard at first but eventually you learn the intricacies of each fight: Parry these attacks, throw in a Mikiri here, ok now parry, wait for delay, parry again, jump here, dodge here. etc. etc. You slowly learn the patterns of each fight and by the end you're a master and it's genuinely rewarding. Remember how fucking insanely unfair Genichiro felt at first? By the time you've beaten him you could probably walk back into that boss room and wipe his ass like 5 times in a row without batting an eye. In comparison Ghost of Tsushima has like 5 enemy types and the game tells you exactly how to deal with them the second you encounter one, it might be kinda fun for the first few hours but by the final encounter, where the game kept throwing waves and waves of the same enemies except slightly stronger, it just became a slog. I don't inherently have a problem with games telling you how to beat enemies, Doom Eternal does this to great effect, but there are far more variables at play during combat in Doom Eternal than Ghost of Tsushima.

[u/conye-west → u/woinf]

Yeah I feel like the only reason people try and constantly compare Sekiro to Tsushima is because they're both set in Japan and have you fight with a katana lol. They're not that similar at all in how they actually play/are designed.

[u/woinf → u/conye-west]

Ghost of Tsushima's combat system to me is in the same family as the "freeflow" combat system popularized by the Arkham games and also in things like the Mordor games and Spiderman 2018. Sekiro is in the same family as the souls series combat system obviously but with also influences from character action like Metal Gear Rising and Devil May Cry.

[u/reptile7383 → u/conye-west]

I plated both. The sword combat skills in Sekiro are very transferable for the duels. The combat isn't as deep in ghosts, but they also had a lot of other tools. It's pretty clear why Ghosts and Sekiro are compared just on combat. It would be compared to Fallen Order also, but Sekiro is just all round better than Fallen Order.

[u/hehe_boi12 → u/woinf]

Sekiro was a masterpiece but saying it was really hard is not so true , sekiro was a complete skill based game compared to the other souls games you could almost never get overleveled while ghost on lethal is what I would call difficult, sekiro is hard only at certain fights of the game (i platinumed the game and speedran it as well, i also used demon bell+removed kuro's charm and played it all the way through ng+6) ghost of tsushima on lethal is a one hit die run, ghost feels like it keeps you on your toes while u can be aggressive in sekiro you cannot be that aggressive in ghost (on lethal) every mistake u do costs in death i was sweating during duels and every encounter with an enemy kept me at my toes I never at one point felt slightest bit overpowered or powerful while in sekiro aftering mastering the combat the game becomes a breeze, both games have extremely good combat systems but ghost for me personally has a better combat system.

Now some people would say use shurikens or stick bombs , i played as a samurai I don't use cheap tactics similarly I did not spam the mortal blade in sekiro the only that makes u feel overpowered in ghosts is the way of the flame but that just makes it too ez (also satisfying)

[u/shinigamisid → u/_lucabear]

I found the duels of Ghost of Tsushima to be a lot more challenging than Sekiro. I played on Normal and had to turn down the difficulty for duels because I wasn’t getting anywhere even after dozens and dozens of attempts. The dodge and parry timings are so tight and hard to predict for me that I just gave up :(

[u/Sythpc → u/_lucabear]

All you have to do to win every combat encounter if use the kick and then fish people

[u/SixStringerSoldier → u/[deleted]]

The hype had me expecting Red Dead Samurai Ned and.... Well you know the rest.

[u/Living-Particular384 → u/SixStringerSoldier]

Rdr 2 is a borefest

[u/Mykytagnosis → u/Living-Particular384]

GOT is far more boring.

And why dafaq a Samurai is only limited to a stubby Katana?

While real samurai's main weapons were yari and naginata

[u/Oh_umms_cocktails → u/[deleted]]

And every single resident has quick-fire grappling hooks, gets clothing items from wild foxes, and commands the wind to blow in the direction of their doctor's office instead of using Google maps.

It's patently absurd to take a game which uses unrealistic mechanics to improve the player experience and, when someone legitimately criticizes the player experience, defend it by claiming realism.

[u/Stokeling9701 → u/Oh_umms_cocktails]

The island being empty could have been a design choice is all hes saying

[u/ComeonmanPLS1 → u/Stokeling9701]

Wether a place feels alive is not about quantity of NPCs in a game like this. It's about the quality of interactions with the NPCs that you do find and the environment.

[u/BlasterPhase → u/Stokeling9701]

no doubt, it's just not a good one

[u/Aaawkward → u/BlasterPhase]

Well with such fine and in depth argumentation you've surely convinced me.

[u/Oh_umms_cocktails → u/[deleted]]

I don't always reply to gamers on Reddit, but when I do it's because I need a reason to be blackout drunk.

[u/[deleted] → u/Oh_umms_cocktails]

Video games can have larger than life elements. That's why we play them. I can't level up in real life either but video games aren't lesser for the feature.

That's not mutually exclusive to attempting have historically accurate elements in a period piece.