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LttP: Ghost of Tsushima: Great main story, but the rest....not so much.

A.Romero

Member
Not that varied but I found it to be good. Wouldn't compare it to an Ubi game at all.

As every game: not for everyone.
 

hemo memo

Gold Member
I disagree. I loved it from start to finish and the side stuff are actually fun and the world is the perfect balance between bloated and empty. It was the perfect balance. Didn’t care about the story much but the gameplay is amazing. Funny as I remember my negative reaction watching that awful State of Play.

I have a relative who is the typical Cod and FIFA player and he told me that GoT is his first platinum. This is how great the game is attracting this type of player.
 
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Best new IP in awhile imo. I bet the sequel will be even better with the groundwork laid. I was surprised at all the new stuff in the iki island expansion. That almost felt like a whole new game.
 

tmlDan

Member
i've played every ass creed and the combat is much better than those games, its more varied in tool usage and the animations are a tier above.

I've never felt satisfied killing anyone in ass creed and the combat, especially in valhalla, is very poor compared to it.

On top of that, the visuals in GoT are a million times better than any Ubi game, hell, pretty much the prettiest open world game ever created (stylistically, RdR is not creative it's just a copy and paste from a western) the story is on par with Ubi games, i would say - prob the weakest part of it.

People also forget the DLC adding horse combat and the MP, which is fantastic. Those should be added to the score cause they're amazing.

for me its a 9/10
 
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kyussman

Member
I enjoyed it enough for what it was......but honestly the art design carried it for my entire play through......probably my favorite looking game ever.
 

Sleepwalker

Gold Member
I didnt find it entertaining at all, felt like a pretty but cookie cutter open world game.

I gave up during a stealth mission iirc.
 

Melfice7

Member
It's a good game that suffers from being too long. This need of developers to make everything an open world should fuck off
 

EDMIX

Member
Honestly one of the most overrated games of the gen. Highlight was the grass. Everything else was done better in other games.

Combat was weak, same death animations for literally every kill, all standoffs identical. Bland boring empty open world. Horrible cutscenes... Auto-fail stealth missions in 2020. Didn't capture the brutality of the era with its atmosphere.

Agreed.

I like Ghost Of Tsushima, but felt a massive amount was done better by other teams, even with how amazing it is. How the world looked and how it was designed was amazing, but the combat was just horrid. Great sword play, but stealth stuff for a character literally called "ghost" felt like it was an after thought, like they already called it "GHOST" yet tried to apply it to the stealth, yet it feels like that portion got little attention.

In regards to best stealth games last gen, MGSV, The Last Of Us 2...Ghost can't be in that conversation with all the issues it had lol I never felt like going behind some enemy was some massive deal, they had this robot pattern, the AI didn't respond to many things going on around them and the dogs seem slow compared to something like The Last Of Us 2 where they literally can smell you and track you.

So I hope Ghost 2 corrects all of that (if they even call the sequel Ghost, that shit might be Shadow Of Osaka) lol


Don't even get me started on them not being able to capture that brutality. What went on in that period was just horrible, from rape, murder etc and it seems the game tries to make some PG type shit about this, yet is rated M.... I'd rather have them go 100%, balls deep and bask in that horror to truly support this "honor" meter to really judge your actions. I find that it rarely amounted to much, in a time frame where lawlessness could clearly allow for another path. So like RDR2, its like they had a set story, but wanted to entertain this fucking fake "good or bad" bullshit that literally does NOTHING in the actual game. I love Sucker Punch, but they don't seem to want to really, really make a story about good and evil regarding choices of the player.

I had to force myself to complete it. It was an average to good game for me. Glad others enjoyed it though.

I wouldn't go as far as to say I had to force myself to beat it, but I felt a lot of missions like that weird "save meh farms" filler type quest overstayed their welcome.

I think its a great game, but I think in many areas its more average then many care to admit. If Ubisoft did this game, you wouldn't see this exact type of reaction by some gamers, granted....they did a great job for a new IP as it took several AC titles to even get them doing the series they way they did, so hats off to them for doing such a great job with their first outing. I'm ok with a new IP being average, if they can correct that with a sequel. I'm willing to give a pass with new IP as maybe average is better then unplayable or broken lol
 

Mr Hyde

Member
It was a fun romp. Main quest was good, I liked the characters and the setting (not really into samurais usually) but it was too much filler, ie the foxes and shit like that. But overall I enjoyed it. Platinumed it just because I had a good time running around the beautiful world. Not really sure if I'm up for a sequel though. Haven't bothered with the Iki-expansion either. I rate it a 7/10.
 

Roberts

Member
There is nothing particulary wrong with it - it is a polished, beautiful game, but it never clicked for me. Every time I got back to it, i felt more and more disconnected from it to the point where I simply lost interest. The beauty of open world games is to discover new areas, new characters, new stories and this game’s world simply didn’t feel interesting enough to do all that. Confession time: I think all three latest AC games do a better job at this.
 

EDMIX

Member
There is nothing particulary wrong with it - it is a polished, beautiful game, but it never clicked for me. Every time I got back to it, i felt more and more disconnected from it to the point where I simply lost interest. The beauty of open world games is to discover new areas, new characters, new stories and this game’s world simply didn’t feel interesting enough to do all that. Confession time: I think all three latest AC games do a better job at this.

Same.

I like Ghost Of Tsushima, but I also like the last 3 AC titles too and feel in many of those titles Ubisoft's teams do many things better.

For Ghost being a new IP, I think its still pretty fucking good to even be compared to such a series after 1 title. So if I feel Ubisoft does a better job in those areas, they also have a longer history with that type of thing and Sucker Punch did pretty good for their first outing.

Funny, I thought it was the other way around. Story was just OK, but the combat and exploration was fun.

The story imho was pretty tame, it gets even more bad when you factor that whole Ryuzo storyline

Who the fuck betrays their country for food? Oh you mean the shit they are running past with bores, bears, entire fucking fishing villages, foxes and wildlife? kind a dumbass story is this? lol It was soooo bad, I was laughing cause I thought he just lied to his friend, like his real goal is to get power, like the Mongols promised him some whole area or something, that MUST be it and he is just asham-....oh really? Oh it really is for food? the fuck? lol Nahhhhhh lol
 
Ghost-of-Tsushima-3.jpeg


Finished the main story yesterday after finally getting to play this (I had been waiting until I got a Ps5 to play at 60fps and with Japanese lip sync).
While I overall enjoyed my time with it, I have to say I was surprisingly underwhelmed by the game. I love the setting, the visuals are often quite nice, the main story is enjoyable and the combat is simple yet fun. But a very Ubisoft-like open world design, lack of challenge and terrible side content really hold it back.



eZlpeE0.jpg

Even though the textures and animations aren't the best out there, the often nice lighting, wind and leaves flying around do a lot to turn this into one of the nicest looking open world games out there

They could have done so much more with an open world, while the same old Ubisoft design (and it’s VERY Ubisoft like) is a bit boring after games like Elden Ring earlier this year, it’s what they’ve filled it with which I found mostly bad . Almost every side quest is extremely basic and plays out the same: Watch a short conversation, either follow a character or follow footprints, fight the same 4-5 enemy types as always and get some minor passive upgrade as a reward, that’s it. They do almost nothing to shake things up and when they do it’s even worse stuff like a tailing mission. They don’t tell interesting stories, you don’t reach unique locations or well designed "dungeons", there’s no interesting setups or choices, etc.. It’s a short conversation → follow a path → samey fight with the same handful of enemies in samey locations over and over again.
I eventually dropped the regular sidequests and decided to only do the ones that focus on specific characters, assuming those would be more interesting, but aside from slightly more engaging plots they are virtually identical in their design. Only the blue quests that unlock new gear and or abilities are somewhat more unique and varied, but there’s only a small handful of them.
The side “activities” aren’t much better. Do random Haikus to unlock headbands, reach temples in autopilot platforming that makes the platforming in Uncharted seem engaging, clear nearly identical enemy camps that get old after you’ve done 5-6 of them and follow foxes around.

oGDUiI2.jpg

"Someone must have left footprint around here....for the 50th time!"


At least the main quest is good. I liked the characters, I liked how the story focused on honor vs doing what is needed, I thought the characters were pretty good (as a side note there's some great examples of cool non woke female characters), it's well paced and not bloated like other games and even though the mission design also involved a lot of following a trail and fighting the same handful of enemies, at least they have bigger and more complex locations, more interesting setups, more setpiece moments, etc that make it varied enough to not outstay its welcome.
To an extent I can't help but think this might have been better as a more linear game. The visuals are great, the core of the combat is really fun and the story was enjoyable , but this came out 6 years after Infamous Second Son and it still feels like Sucker Punch makes open world games just for the sake of it and still haven't figured out how to actually put worthwhile content in them.
Still sad it won’t get vrr support
 
I absolutely loved it...been waiting on some good samurai games so in a way they both did way more than what I even expected/hoped for. Excited for the yakuza spinoff too since I beat kenzen back in the day and barely understood anything lol, hoping Isshin is great too.
 

Fbh

Member
The combat was just too easy. You can become overpowered very quickly and it becomes boring. Still a very good game though.

This too. By the end you have so many OP tools it's really easy even on lethal difficulty.

You can take down like 4-5 enemies with a standoff, then slow down time and headshot 2-3 more, then throw a smoke bomb and chain assassinate 3 more.

That's like 11 enemies in a couple of seconds with zero effort.
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
I liked AC Odyssey better. Nice visuals and the story was cool on the first map. Never did finish it but I’ll probably get it on PC.
 

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
but the gameplay feels good though, it feels like you are actually using a sword and slice up people.

Valhalla gameplay feels awful once I played GOT.
 
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FritzJ92

Member
Yup started the game and stopped playing it. Its nothing special and the issue is that people made it appear to be a special game so my expectations were high.
God of war is the best game from Sony by far.
 

Fbh

Member
How is this compared to Assassins Creed?

Haven't played Valhalla but compared to Odyssey I think this one has better combat, a better main story and nicer art direction.

But I found the world of Odyssey more fun to explore and I thought the side content was much stronger.
 

Batiman

Banned
I couldn't finish it. Bailed in Act III.

I still rate it a 9/10, and it's a fantastic game. Amazing graphics, setting, pretty solid combat gameplay similar to the old Assassin's Creed games. Stealth is not very good because there's not enough architecture to really make any of the approaches interesting. That was the biggest disappointment for me is that there's really not much of a notable transition from samurai to ninja. He just kind of does it all, and the story transition was extremely rapid. When I delve into a martial arts centered story, I expect much more substantial training segments to completely change your fighting style like that. I also didn't really feel anything at all in regards to the story. All side quests are also about as barebones as they can get, but I expected that from inFamous SS devs and it met my expectations of what they would make. I think the lack of alternate weapons also really limits the game, especially for someone improvising and experimenting with stealth tactics.

It's a fun action game modeled after the old Pre-Origins Assassin's Creed games, with beautiful visuals. There's definitely room for improvement.
I’m not sure why you would rate the game a 9/10 after reading your post. Especially after saying you couldn’t finish it. Something doesn’t add up
 

Pimpbaa

Member
I loved it. Although I found the visuals in the last area of the game kinda lacking. It really could have used some snow deformation. Also environmental textures were kinda low res. Disappointed they never fixed that for the PS5 version (Insomniac did with Spider-Man).
 
I enjoyed it enough for what it was......but honestly the art design carried it for my entire play through......probably my favorite looking game ever.
same. really loved the gorgeous environments, but i thought that the game itself was both way too long, & way too earnest/serious for its own good - i mean, even kurosawa himself knew that, no matter how serious the subject matter of your story, if you want it to feel authentic, then you need to occasionally lighten things up a bit & allow some humanity to shine through now & then...
 

Roberts

Member
For Ghost being a new IP, I think its still pretty fucking good to even be compared to such a series after 1 title. So if I feel Ubisoft does a better job in those areas, they also have a longer history with that type of thing and Sucker Punch did pretty good for their first outing.

You are right. I didn’t think of it that way. If SP is fully aware of all its flaws and shortcomings, the sequel should be a banger.
 

EDMIX

Member
You are right. I didn’t think of it that way. If SP is fully aware of all its flaws and shortcomings, the sequel should be a banger.

Agreed. I'm willing to give a pass to many shortcomings if a sequel is very progressive with changes.

We need heads coming off at will, I never understood that being some rare thing just for the sake of it lol

The dogs need AI that can smell. After The Last Of Us part 2, i just don't think any stealth game can really have dogs and NOT have them smelling for your location.

The Enemies in general need that same type of group, pack AI like in The Last Of Us Part 2 calling out names, looking for fellow samurai or noticing when someone is missing as going from Part 2 to Ghost Of Tsushima, you feel those flaws 10x as you just played something with superior AI and stealth.

Prone. I want to hid in MO grass lol I was surprised they didn't have this considering it is a stealth game and ability to do this creates all sorts of amazing situations, playing dead, covering yourself with mud, rolling.

So I want to see what they do in the future with all of this and maybe its a tall order to ask a game to beat like a dozen games its first outing lol I feel strongly though that for a sequel I'm not asking for much imho. Those sound like expected features.
 

SpokkX

Member
Honestly one of the most overrated games of the gen. Highlight was the grass. Everything else was done better in other games.

Combat was weak, same death animations for literally every kill, all standoffs identical. Bland boring empty open world. Horrible cutscenes... Auto-fail stealth missions in 2020. Didn't capture the brutality of the era with its atmosphere.
This summarises the game well. It is an uninspired ubi clone with boring and repetative combat (which should be great in a samurai game).. and it doesnt even have ragdolls but canned animations (this is such a facepalm design in a sword combat game)
 

GymWolf

Member
Story was ok, not sure about great, the evolution of jin is well made, but the whole honor thing is just pure cringe, i'm sorry, especially when we know how samurai fought in the past, his uncle being a retarded was just maddening, not entertaining.

The main villain is cool in the first 5 hours when he defeat jin in the bridge, then he become a school girl with the only objective to make jin's uncle mad by telling him what his nephew does (without success because the uncle doesn't believe a word) and then in the end, he run scared like a little bitch, it was extremely anticlimatic killing him (also the game is pretty unbalanced so when you reach him you are a god on earth and he last like 30 sec)

Some secondary characters were pretty good like lady masako, the bow master and the funny guy.

A good 7/10 like days gone with big margin for improvements in all areas.

I did 2 runs and bought the dlc so definitely liked enough (but less than days gone tbh, mostly because i'm not really a feudal japan samurai stuff fanboy)
 
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Kokoloko85

Member
Combat itself was solid. but felt like it was a shell of its own potential. coming right off TLOU 2 I was extremely disappointed in the lack of brutality in a game about war. felt like Childs play. and I absolutely hated how the death animations were the same for every. single. enemy. no matter how I killed them.

as much as I was disappointed in the game, Ghosts 2 could be fucking epic if they do a few things.

I wish part 2 would go wide-linear Ala God of War/Last of Us but it'll never happen

It could be better for sure. I need more world interaction and better NPC’s. Some better side quests too.

Combat was was better than anything outside of Playstation studios when it came to open world. And Story was decent.
Looking forward to see if they take it to the next level for number 2. Good start but not on the level of a Naughty Dog or Santa Monica yet
 

Fbh

Member
Story was ok, not sure about great, the evolution of jin is well made, but the whole honor thing is just pure cringe, i'm sorry, especially when we know how samurai fought in the past, his uncle being a retarded was just maddening, not entertaining.

The main villain is cool in the first 5 hours when he defeat jin in the bridge, then he become a school girl with the only objective to make jin's uncle mad by telling him what his nephew does (without success because the uncle doesn't believe a word) and then in the end, he run scared like a little bitch, it was extremely anticlimatic killing him (also the game is pretty unbalanced so when you reach him you are a god on earth and he last like 30 sec)

Some secondary characters were pretty good like lady masako, the bow master and the funny guy.

A good 7/10 like days gone with big margin for improvements in all areas.

I did 2 runs and bought the dlc so definitely liked enough (but less than days gone tbh, mostly because i'm not really a feudal japan samurai stuff fanboy)

Yeah the Khan was a bit disappointing too
I loved his introduction in the first trailer:

Seemed like he could turn into one of the great villains of modern gaming. But in the game he is just ...there. The story is more about Jin and his uncle, the mongols are there as an overall threat and a common goal but aren't really the focus of the story.
 
Yeah, the open world exploration left a lot to be desired, but I quite liked the character specific side quests. They were far more involved than your typical Ubisoft side quest, and I just fucking love the main quest. Those two things made me fall in love with the game and helped set it apart from every Ubisoft game in existence.

I think the problem with last gen open world games is that they are lacking that dynamic element which makes it more rewarding to explore. Those stupid foxes were terrible. The poems were god awful. And outpost felt like Far Cry 3 on PS3.

And GoT isnt the only game to have this issue. Every game from Red Dead to Horizon and Ass Creed has the same issue. These vast open worlds have nothing to do except for killing things and while the combat system in GoT is fun, at the end of the day, the world and mission design simply hasnt changed from the PS3 era. TBH, Thats why I liked the Arkham games so much. They saved the open world for riddler puzzles but all of their story missions were held indoors and still followed the metroidvania design with puzzles mixed in with combat encounters.

Im hoping that with the new next gen CPUs and SSDs, the devs are able to come up with something better than the blueprint Ubisoft came up with in the PS3 era because these games have begun to feel very tedious. I have Elden Rings, Cyberpunk, Mafia, AC Odyssey, and several other open world games installed and ready to be played, but I just cant get into another 40-60 hour committment where im doing the same thing I did in the first 10 hours over and over again.
The blue print of current open world games have very little to do with the hardware and everything to do with game design. Ubisoft is financially successful and their game design makes things easier for game devs to fill the game with "content".

The real difficult thing in open world games is to design a whole set of fun side activities that actually bring in new mechanics and gameplay which doesn't revolve around the primary combat mechanics and encounters, but is integrated into the world somehow, and not only fit the tone of the game but to make you feel more of an inhabitant of that world/culture. The best ones even have their own metagame. Lots of games today are missing that entirely, and the ones who have something like that just aren't developed to be worth it. Successful examples including Witcher's Gwent, Yakuza's hostess bar/property management sim (or just about any other mini game), Red Dead's hunting/fishing, GTA's property management, and Saints Row's insurance fraud/septic avenger. Again, it's not hardware restricted, look at the engrossing empire building/racketeering of Scarface and Godfather games. Ideally, any open world game should be filled with these immersive side activities, but I imagine it's very time consuming to create a bunch of tonally relevant fun mini games outside of your primary game.

Ghost of Tsushima's haiku strings and fox shrines are just not deep or interesting enough, and the sidequests aren't interesting enough to make up for a lack of engaging side activities.
 

amscanner

Member
It has some nice tight combat for ubi-sque open world game. But everything else is inferior to even AC origin. I agree that it’s way overrated.
 
I found the story to be its weakest aspect, tbh. Its perfectly fine, but the world and gameplay are its real strengths.

Ironically people shat on TLoU2s story for being a generic revenge story, then praised this game for... being a generic revenge story. Ah well, you like what you like.
 

kiphalfton

Member
Was extremely burnt out by the end of the game, and just wanted it to be over with. BUT I would say that's true of any game I play that's longer than 10 hours.
 
I’m not sure why you would rate the game a 9/10 after reading your post. Especially after saying you couldn’t finish it. Something doesn’t add up

Also, why do people keep saying it's like the old assassin's creed? Because they are both 3rd person and have a sword? The similarities end there. You can't even free climb in tsushima.
 
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Fredrik

Member
Thanks for reminding me that it’s 60fps on PS5. How long is it? I’ve played maybe 20 hours, should go back and finish it. I mostly liked it, the combat was really unique. It felt super limited with no free climbing though, should’ve been like AC Odyssey, I hope they add that for the sequel.
 

ikbalCO

Member
I finished this game a week ago.

Main story and side stories all together.

Main narrative was quite strong, aspecially the last act was quite impactful. Wasn't expecting the story to go that way, that hard.

I think this games proves that there is still a lot of qualities to traditional open world formula. Since elden ring, pretty much everyone says open world games have to adabt what er has brought. Mind you, i put in 120+ hours in elden ring and love that game with all my heart but once you nail the combat and overall atmosphere, classic open world games can be still amazing hence the ghost if tsushima.

Its a wonder how gameplay never gets boring and you feel badass through out the whole campaign.

One thing though, worst looking water i have seen in recent video games at a level where i think in one specific envoirment, "this is just emberassing"
 
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Drizzlehell

Banned
I barely got a paragraph into the OP and I already couldn't disagree more with everything you said about this game lol.

Seriously, you couldn't be farther off the mark than this. Side quests in this game are anything but boring and flesh out the game world nicely aside from being just interesting and varied rather than repetitive and generic. The combat is also pretty great and its only hindrance was the annoying camera work (at least upon the release, I haven't played too much of the DC yet) but apart from that it had decent variety to it and it was impactful, visceral, and fun.

I also really hate how people fall back on this shitty argument where they compare everything to "Ubisoft open world" just because the game has an open world. Bitch, you don't know shit about dick. The thing that characterizes Ubisoft's games is that they're bloated with meaningless and painfully repetitive content, as well as game mechanics designed around predatory monetization. The vast majority of open world games that do not roll out of Ubisoft's production line are anything but that. They're just open world games that happen to be much wider in scope than games from previous generations, which means that there may be more stuff to do in them. But they rarely pad out everything to such an absolute extreme that Ubisoft's games do. Ubisoft is just a whole 'nother level of extreme bloat in video game design and games like Ghost of Tsushima or Horizon Forbidden West simply pale in comparison.

Like, seriously, how can you even compare a game like Assassin's Creed Valhalla to Ghost of Tsushime, when you could easily 100% Ghost of Tsushima in the same amount of time that it would take you to barely grind through only about half of AC Valhalla? Literally every open world game that's not produced by Ubisoft is like 10 times more compelling and fun to play so seriously, shut up about it already.
 
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Skifi28

Member
My biggest two issues with the game were:

1) The world felt really lifeless. Other than the occasional Mongol patrol there was nothing really going on outside of quests, maybe you'd very rarely stumble upon some rebels fighting a bear and that's about it. They could have done so much more with the setting.

2) 99% of cutscenes were people standing still moving their lips. You'd think it was some unknown studio with a tiny budget and not a major Sony production.

Everything else was mostly great (maybe minus the very basic stealth.)
 

Warablo

Member
I really liked the game even if it seemed somewhat basic open world design. Still want to play the DLC, hopefully in a PC package.
 
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Agent_4Seven

Tears of Nintendo
Can't think of any reason to call story (character related missions as well, which are not even tied to the main story in any way) in this game great, it's just as below average and boring as the rest of the game, minus visual design and art - the same can be said about the rest of the games from SP, except maybe Sly series. I couldn't even force myself to play story expansion. Hopefully the next game will be better, but somehow I doubt it.
 
Game has so much style it’s worth playing but it does all the played out design conventions of open world Ubisoft games. I think it’s 82 metacritic is a proper rating. It is a bit overstated since it’s an exclusive.
 
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