Ghost of Tsushima Is Astoundingly Good (Review – Spoiler Free)

This video is brought to you by raycon true wireless earbuds stick around to hear more about them and also a special discount they’re offering through my channel what a game just like what a game wow okay ghosts of wait singular ghost of tsushima oh man i went into this excited being

Like cool we’re going to be a samurai we’re going to have some fun this is going to be great i did not expect to play what is i believe one of the best open world games i’ve ever played one of the best if not the best samurai game ever made

And just an absolutely incredible swan song for the ps4 this thing completely blew me away it’s not perfect like there’s a few things that you know you can complain about and it is an open world game which a lot of people will roll their eyes and be like

Open world sucks i just don’t care about any of that i just think this game is absolutely phenomenal and i loved it and you have to play ghost as schumer you just you have to play it Ghost of tsushima is the most beautiful video game i have ever played it doesn’t necessarily have the best graphics it doesn’t have the best facial animations it doesn’t have the best lighting i’m sure you could pick apart each of its features and find fault with them

But as a package this game is so breathtakingly beautiful so often that i just had to stop sometimes and put the controller down and just be like wow man i i just took so many screenshots while i was playing wanting to make all of them my 4k desktop

Wallpaper whatever because this game is so unbelievably striking with the way that it frames this rendition of sushima obviously color is at the forefront of that the contrast that is created in each of the biomes through their use of color is it’s just so arresting you know you you emerge from

A thicket into a rolling field of red flowers and then you move into the next space and cherry blossoms are falling everywhere and you move to another and you’re seeing the most golden sunset you’ve ever seen in your life every frame is just soaked in so much color

But used so judiciously it’s not like this game is overwhelming you it’s not like it’s just some jackson pollock painting with color thrown everywhere messily it all feels so ordered and structured this really speaks to the design intent that the developers had when they designed sushima they specifically said that they wanted to

Create a world of natural moving beauty set against the structured world of japanese architecture and i guess that’s another feature of this game’s beauty the rendition of japanese villages and towns and temples are all just as beautiful as the landscapes themselves and when you combine the two of these things it’s just

Yeah i mean i know i’m using a lot of hyperbole here but i mean you’re seeing it for yourself man just tell me i’m wrong tell me tell me i’m not what adds to this visual splendor is the movement that exists in everything every space moves it’s almost never still

You’ll see flowers swaying in the breeze you’ll see the petals of those flowers floating about and circling at your feet as you walk through them you’ll see the fireflies buzzing at night you’ll see the ember of flames dancing you’ll see rain falling and pooling and you’ll see tree branches

Groaning as you move through this world and what’s particularly remarkable about all of it is that it sort of responds to you in a way because most of this movement is driven by the wind and you actually control the direction of the wind by virtue of your

Objective marker so in ghosts of sushima when you set a target on the map the wind will blow in that direction so you can just move that way and you will see the entire world kind of move with you toward that direction it’s strangely powerful to feel the very winds of sushima

Carrying you towards your objectives and the entire world seems to sort of lean towards your goal you just never get tired of it you never get tired of seeing that wind blow and seeing this entire world moving this way it’s just so so so breathtaking so often

The beauty of this world is so perfectly meted out as well because there’s so much to explore but not so much that it becomes redundant or repetitive the map is divided into three parts and there are 40 different biomes within those three regions you’re never really seeing the same stuff twice

I mean other open world games i’ve played obviously assassin’s creed comes to mind they’re just so preoccupied with creating space that they’re copying and pasting huge sections of the map in order to give you more square miles that doesn’t exist here in sushimar every new region that you enter every

New biome you discover is genuinely rewarding and genuinely new and i just took so much pleasure in walking around these spaces riding around them just soaking them up because of how beautifully they were constructed and how unique each of them were funnily enough there is actually a kurosawa mode in

This game and what that is is a mode that is a tribute to akira kurosawa who’s the you know famed japanese filmmaker this game is essentially a love letter to him stylistically narratively in so many ways and so they actually worked with his estate to create a game mode where you can

Basically play everything in black and white it also down mixes the sound so the sound sounds a little bit more tinny and it has a much harder stereo mix as opposed to kind of 3d audio hats off to sucker punch for creating this game mode that really shows dedication however it

Is the most useless feature ever implemented in a video game because if you rob yourself of the color of this world and it sounds you’re crazy you know what i mean so i used the kurosawa mode for like 20 minutes or something and i was like there’s no way i can continue doing

This uh because the world is simply too gorgeous to shade or to to to put in greyscale you know so again hats off sucker punch absolutely beautiful work love the gesture but uh yeah guys don’t play in kurosawa mode the game is just yeah it’s it’s too beautiful to do that Let’s talk now about the open world aspects of ghosts of sushi this is a game that took me about 30 to 35 hours to finish i actually finished every single side quest by the way but i didn’t tick off every marker on the map and there’s also collectibles after that

Which could even further lengthen this out so at a minimum you’re going to spend 25 to 30 hours on the main campaign probably 25 hours if you do every side quest it’s probably going to take you to around 35 if you want to do every marker you’re

Probably talking 45 and if you want every collectible you’re probably talking 60 hours or so to do absolutely everything in this game i am someone that is naturally quite skeptical of the open world formula at this point i don’t dislike it but i also do get bored with it eventually you know

Unless you’ve got some really interesting hooks to keep me engaged i’m probably gonna get bored and like tap out i remember feeling that way once or twice with goshima where i was like uh there’s a lot of open world stuff here am i having fun i’m not so sure

But then i realized that i don’t need to be doing any of this open world stuff okay open world [ __ ] really only becomes a problem when i’m forced to do it in other games or where the open world stuff is so boring that you’re like oh this this

Sucks ghost of sushima doesn’t suffer from either of those problems and i found that when i wasn’t enjoying the side content it was really because i just was sort of missing the main quest which i was enjoying far more because there’s no level gating

In this game i can go back to that main quest whenever i like you can be like that main quest should you choose you’re not forced to grind there’s no level gating so any exhaustion that you might experience with open world sort of stuff is uh essentially your own fault you

Know what i mean and you can just choose to play it another way having said that i really enjoyed most of the open world content in this game structurally it is similar to what you’ve experienced in the past which is that there’s a main quest there are side quests there are markers

On the map to climb things and unlock things and find things and whatever else that’s all quite familiar but i do believe that sucker punch has put a lot of effort into creating really interesting unique fun side activities to help pace the adventure one of them involves you know chasing a

Fox you go to a certain location there’s a little fox guy he’ll lead you to a location off you go another involves training your sword skills where there’s a bamboo thing in front of you and you have to strike through it the kind of like mortal kombat test your might moment one

Of the really interesting ones is a traversal challenge there are a number of shrines that are essentially like mini uncharted temples and you need to climb around them and figure out a way up to to get to where you need to get to you know there’s a whole bunch of others as well

But i think all of them are actually pretty good i never remembered thinking oh this stuff really sucks i often remarked hey they’ve really put a lot of work into this stuff i like it i didn’t clear the entire map because i’m just not into the whole like hey

Let’s clear every map marker thing but i think those of you that are into that will really enjoy it and those of you that don’t like that stuff can just skip it within this whole open world formula and this exploration thing one thing i really respected was

How much the game was actually getting me to use my eyes and actually look around a lot of open world games fall into the trap of just having your entire ui filled up with map markers and you don’t have to think or look you just walk over to where the map marker is

Or the icon is in the ui you click the thing and you’re done go sashima will lead you to where the quest begins but it will very often just let you find your way after that there’s one absolutely beautiful quest that i played towards the middle of the game

In a place called old yarikawa where there’s a demon around somewhere right the the villagers believe there’s a demon in the in these parts and they leave offerings to him and i sort of suspect maybe it’s not a demon maybe there’s something else going on here

And rather than just give me map markers to find where to go next i kind of need to look for smoke in the sky you know or or i get told hey you know this this this is where you’ll find that next thing in an area surrounded by flowers and i

Kind of need to look around the world there’s no markers to tell me where to go i need to ride around i need to use my eyes and that’s great you know there are quite a few quests that fall into that category even just world exploration itself while i’m riding around

The golden birds of sushima will sort of like swoop in above my head and start singing and then i can choose to follow that bird and he’ll lead me to you know another secret location or whatever or i can just choose to ignore him and just go about my business you know

It’s not all about following that markers in ghost sushima it’s not all about following icons on your screen it’s about genuinely exploring and genuinely finding things and i just found that so refreshing in a genre that is way way too dependent on ui to carry things forward One area where i did not love the game is the writing now this is a very kurosawa inspired samurai tale where you are a dude and there’s a mongolian invasion and you need to stop it from happening but at the same time there’s all this sort of family drama

There are people that you meet that have their own revenge plots there’s the the samurai code and honor and all that stuff it’s very sort of generic dare i say uh you have seen a lot of this before i think it would have been possible to lean into those tropes while also providing

Something a little bit more compelling and i don’t really think it does that here there are many allies that you meet who have their own stories of suffering and loss and what have you but a lot of it just kind of feels the same the the writing i think is something

Like the witcher 3 has these incredible highs and also some lows when it gets a bit whatever i think goes to sushima just feels entirely flat all the way through it’s somewhat hard for me to remember a lot of the stories that i went through some of them do stand out absolutely but

On the whole the writing between the main quest and the side quests is just generally flat it’s not bad and i definitely prefer it to a lot of other open world games that i played because it has a sort of maturity to it that i think other games lack

It’s taking itself seriously but perhaps it’s taking itself a little bit too seriously because as i said it does feel a little bit flat jin in particular as a protagonist a bit of a wasted opportunity there he really has almost no personality whatsoever and you could have had

A really cool samurai guy that we really loved and you know he’s not that unfortunately so uh definitely room for growth on the writing and characterization front next game while i didn’t much like the writing i really appreciated the game’s approach to side quests in other games you just bump

Into a random npc somewhere do something with them for 10 or 15 minutes and then forget they ever existed in go sashimi what happens is that i will meet allies and i will have multiple side quests with them that kind of span a story arc of about eight or nine quests

So i might meet someone in act one and i will do two or three quests with them there and then i need to progress to act two before i can continue their saga and it might wrap up at the end of act three or what have you this was a really

Great way to keep me invested in that side content because i got to know these characters well i became invested in their stories and i was excited to reach the next act because i could see where their stories led as i said the writing isn’t top tier but just the

Effort that’s gone into these side quests was i think really commendable and i think if you combined this approach with top tier writing you have a winning formula for future open world games for sure so writing is like the one you know okay thing let’s talk about the best thing combat So i never in like 35 40 hours playing this game i never ever got tired of combat in this game it’s incredible i just cannot believe that sucker punch have done as good a job as they have with combat in this game so firstly some of you will be wondering whether or not

This is really hard like skiro or neo uh i have played and finished both of those games i can tell you this is nowhere near that in terms of difficulty and i actually prefer this one the most of all three of those games i’m not saying it’s better i’m

Just saying i prefer it now sakiro is obviously a fantastic game the range of enemies in that game and the complexity of their move sets is just incredible uh and also the different sort of combat schools available to you do provide you with genuine depth if you spend the time to master them

Which takes a long time given the structure of that game then there’s neo2 which just has some of the best melee combat ever really the flexibility inherent in every weapon type across three different stances is just mind-blowing but there’s also a lot of [ __ ] baked into that with like you know enemies

One-shotting you or what have you ghost of sushima just exists at this perfect equilibrium i think of really great fundamentals of combat combined with the ability to really sort of play the game how you want to play it allowing for player expression and freedom without having to rigorously study it to

Get good at it as you would something like sakura and also without any of the [ __ ] one shots that you get in neo it’s just a really nice middle ground that i think is perfectly accessible while still making you feel like a [ __ ] badass the fundamentals of this combat are

Really what struck me the most uh again i know i’m talking about assassin’s creed a lot here but it’s there’s a lot of similarities between these games i recently played valhalla i commented there that the combat is very animation-led and it’s quite janky and you see these teleporting limbs and whatever else so

Hit registration and all that sort of stuff is quite poor there this is like the opposite of that hit registration and collision detection is perfect it’s just astounding to watch the precision when it comes to you know two weapons clashing or something being parried or deflected but in conjunction with that the animations

Are also flawless you know the way that my character will use different parry animations depending on the angle of an attack that he’s that he’s deflecting or what have you it’s just so consistently impressive to see that in action there are obviously comparisons to be made here to something like

Arkham where you do have six or seven people standing around you and they’re all sort of taking turns to come at you and yes it is a little bit like that there is no lock on here you are constantly just pressing in the direction that you want to attack

Uh that is fantastic by the way i think a lock-on really would have hurt this game a lot without that lock-on combat just becomes truly free form and fluid as i said much like batman arkham asylum the central conceit of combat are the stances there are four different stances

To use and you switch between them very quickly by holding right trigger and then pressing a corresponding button each stance works best against a different type of enemy there are going to be swordsmen there are going to be people with shields there are going to be pikemen people with spears

And there are going to be bruises and as you are fighting you are doing this delicate dance to deflect their attacks and when you want to break their guard you need to switch stance into something that’s going to be really effective and then use the right attacks against them

To stagger them and you know find your moment of opportunity in addition to that there are also plenty of tools there are smoke bombs and kunai the throwing knives that you use and uh there’s poison darts and all this other stuff that you can mix up with it

I didn’t use a lot of that stuff because i found it a little bit finicky to use some of it sometimes but you don’t have to use it you just ignore that if you like and i think you’re going to see some incredible montages coming out in the future

From super dedicated players who do use all of these tools simultaneously and they’re going to make some really beautiful music with that [ __ ] trust me what i expect to be one of the unsung successes of this game is enemy variety there’s a lot of enemy variety here i described four types of enemies

But within that there are many different subtypes so there’s different types of swordsmen they’re your basic bandits who barely know how to swing a sword up to your really heavily armored mongolian warriors who you know can really take a beating um through to your straw-hatted ronin who have a completely different fighting style

And even within the hat at ronan there are different difficulty types for those ronin and they fight with different levels of complexity when you’re facing off against one of the sort of boss encounters you’ll see all new combat moves that you’ve never seen before i’m just i was so consistently impressed

With the way that combat was always being ratcheted up in terms of difficulty and complexity not hp i mean yeah the enemies do have a little bit more hp but combat does not become harder because enemies become more spongy it becomes harder because they fight better they are better combatants

Against you and you need to be a better samurai to take them down and i was like hell yes i’m here for that thank you that is how you make a good game don’t just add more hp to the target you make the cop the target smarter and better

And that was so good it was so brilliant like suck a punch i [ __ ] love you you guys are amazing all right so i’m going to finish this video on the biggest meme i could possibly finish it on okay you ready gosu makes you feel like a samurai okay now i

Know that sounds [ __ ] and we joke about it but the reality is this game makes you feel like a samurai i think when we think about samurai like the popular notion obviously whatever let’s let’s put history aside for a minute let’s talk about what we think about when we think about

Samurai we think of these sort of spiritual warriors who are one men armies who are capable of this kind of like quiet stillness exploding into this devastating ferocity and i think they’re a very unique warrior in history in that way like if you think of the roman centurion

He’s nothing without his army if you think of a viking it’s kind of like rage personified you know this flailing limbs and and just you know red-faced anger samurai you just imagine them sitting there meditating until the moment to strike and then they unsheath i i think that is what this game is

It is that moment of quiet meditation when you are literally going to a hillside to compose haiku i’m not even joking you compose haiku in this game Foreign and then in the next moment you encounter bandits and you challenge them to a standoff and you sit there holding down the button waiting for them to strike and they’ll try to fake you out and you have to wait and you wait and then when they come at you you unsheath It’s that explosive transformation from poet into warrior from spiritual entity into the spirit of death it just happens so fast and this game so perfectly captures that duality in my own gameplay experience i could take in those quiet moments at a hillside just remarking how beautiful everything was

And riding my horse through a field i could explore this open world just for the sake of exploring it or i could just go into a occupied camp and murder absolutely everyone i saw either through stealth and subterfuge or through just merciless butchery that is all available to me and i think this

Game so perfectly nails that feeling of being a [ __ ] samurai so guys go sashimi is astoundingly good you have to play this game i think you’re going to love it i hope you love it and um that’s all i got thanks sucker punch you guys are really good i’m gonna go

Back and play infamous because i feel like i’ve been sleeping on sucker punch now i play a little bit of infamous but not enough obviously to really recognize how good these guys are because these guys have made a phenomenal game anyway that’s the video if you liked it don’t forget to hit the

Subscription button and the notification bell and uh hit the like button as well and drop a comment do all the things that help out the youtube algorithm i love you guys thank you very much and see you next time bye guys thank you for watching the video

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