Ghost of Tsushima - PlayStation 4

First things first, I’ve got to say that I purchased this video game based on word of mouth and recommendations by online gaming personalities that I trust. I hadn’t really heard much about the game until it came out. I bought it on Amazon when it had a 3 week estimated wait time until it would be in stock. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait that long and the game was at my door within a few days of ordering it. I’ve now been playing it for a couple of weeks and am loving every bit of it. It reminds me of an Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry game but set in Fuedal Japan. Many people have hoped for an Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan during that time period, but I think this game is better than any AC game. The game consists of a great story of a samurai attempting to repel a Mongol invasion. This is played out through a variety of missions spread across a large open world of the island of Tsushima. There are the usual quests to find items, climbing and platforming to isolated shrines, retaking bases and liberating farms. You don’t have to travel far on the map to find something else to experience. Combat plays a huge part of the game and there are frequent battles spread around the world as you retake bases or come across Mongol patrols & bandit ambushes. The combat is slick and challenging, but does a good job of letting the player feel powerful as you level up and gain new abilities. You would probably have a hard time simply button mashing your way through the fights, but I find it quite satisfying and challenging to patiently wait to perfectly time a block that then leads to a one hit kill on your opponent. You unlock multiple combat “stances” that are more effective against different types of enemy weapons, and can easily switch through them as you cut & slash through a group of enemies. The combat is varied and challenging enough that I’ve yet to grow tired of it. The game is also beautiful. The island has a variety of landscapes, from beaches and mountains to grasslands and fields of flowers. All look amazing, and I don’t grow tired of traversing the world. The game is also very cinematic. The set up to many fights is what the game calls a standoff, where your samurai meets and faces off against the enemy like in an old samurai movie or western duel. These moments are great for fans of those movies and similar cinematic set ups are found throughout the main story and side quests. Overall the game looks better than most any other I’ve played. I’ve only made it into the second of 3 acts in the game, even though I’ve put 30 or more hours into it. I’ve still got a ways to go before I finish and I’ve heard from some sources that ,if you play as a completionist like I do, then you can spend 90-100 hours on the game. Either way you play, be it a quick run through the main story or a slow complete play-through, I think you will be very pleased by this game. Pick it up and immerse yourself in the story and world.

Best game so far I’ve played

One of my favorites and I've played lots

I was quite impressed with the game right from the start. You begin with a rather traditional hack and slash sequence but then the story unfolds and the changes in the main character are handled subtly and superbly so that by the time he embraces what has happened to him, it feels like a natural progression. Yuna is a great character and with you from the beginning. She's well rounded and in no way sexualized. In fact, none of the women in the game, main or background, are overtly sexualized, and all feel appropriate to the time period. For a game about a samurai, it doesn't hyper romanticize the idea of the samurai. You can see all the strength and all the weaknesses of the characters you interact with, which give a very real-life experience interacting with them. LGBTQ is represented here, as much as the time period allows, but the representations are good and give you the sense that even though it's never talked about, LGBTQ people did exist back then and they were normal people who loved each other even if they couldn't show it openly. Mechanics-wise, if you are a melee person, you like the game from start to finish. If you are like me and prefer to stealth and snipe your way through a game, the beginning will feel a bit restrictive, but once you get your longbow and more of the Ghost's abilities unlocked, it just as enjoyable as it is for melee fighters. VERY FEW FETCH QUESTS! If you're a story person like me, side quests are usually boring and only distractions from the main plot. And the worst side quests are just fetch quests. Tsushima has a few, but it doesn't overwhelm the side quests. A lot of go kill things, but at least they're not fetch, and they do a decent job of giving a story to them, or at least trying. Multiplayer. I'm not wholly impressed by multiplayer. I'm very disappointed that you can only play with one other person in the story multiplayer, while in survival you can have four. Survival isn't that much fun if you have a group of friends all starting together and who want to play together, because with a team of all brand new players, even the easy mode is pretty much impossible to beat. You do gain experience if you lose, but it incredibly frustrating to not be able to survive more than one or two waves unless you don't play with people you know and hope there's someone strong in your group. The difference classes are useless, since survival is set up to only have one useful attack style, and that's hack and slash. So Hunters can't really use archery skills well, and Assassins can't go around hiding in the grass to kill people. Everyone just has to attack the same way in order to survive. And all survival matches are basically the same thing. Overall, main game is amazing, bu multiplayer needs serious work. Why have one option with four people and one with two? I play with two other friends, so we can't play the story missions together without dropping one of us. And the story is the best part of the game.

Good game

Ghost of Tsushima does a number of things quite well, and a lot of other things very mediocre or predictably. Visually, it's ridiculously pretty. The Japanese island of Tsushima that they've created is spectacular and looks incredible in motion. Screenshots and even video don't do it justice; playing the game in real-time looks spectacular especially when traveling on horse through a huge field of pampas grass or through a foggy forest. Character models look incredible and are well detailed, although animation sometimes feels a little stiff or rudimentary (only when stacked against incredible mo-cap work like The Last of Us). In terms of gameplay, it's honestly a bit shallow and sometimes frustrating. It uses a very standard open-world non-linear quest setting not unlike Assassin's Creed or Far Cry. The map slowly opens up over the course of 3 distinct story acts, with those 3 acts taking place in 3 separate 'sections' of the whole map, each with distinct and recognizable geography or weather. The moment-to-moment combat and core gameplay loop comes at a reasonable pace and introduces new concepts, skills, and enemy types to keep combat engaging up until the end. It uses a pretty standard light attack, heavy attack, parry, and dodge system. The combat can be frustrating if you aren't used to or adept at quick reactions. Although not strictly crucial a lot of the combat relies on quick button presses to parry or dodge enemy attacks leaving them open for counter-attacks. You can also break enemy defenses without parries, although it leaves you more susceptible to counter-attacks yourself. Stealth is also often a viable option for a lot of confrontations, but I think the level design isn't always well-suited to engaging stealth gameplay, although it's serviceable. The story is painfully predictable in a number of sections, although I was a bit surprised toward the end. Essentially, the Mongols invade Tsushima island in preparation for a raid on mainland Japan. They wipe out all the samurai except the player character Jin, who vows to drive the Mongols away and stop their plans. As he does this he slowly loses his grip on the honor that drives what it is to be a samurai. He starts to become the Ghost of Tsushima and take on a new identity that clashes with the well-established lineage of his family. You're introduced to handful of supporting characters over the story's progression and they each have their own mini story arcs that can be optionally followed and help flesh them out and provide more context to how the Mongol war has affected the population. A neat aspect of the supporting character side missions (called Tales in-game) is that a lot of them can be done out of sequence without affecting that story's structure. Obviously some need to be first and last, but a lot of the Tales in the middle can fill out the story without relying on others before or after it. Each one wraps up well and feels like care was taken to make the stories stand on their own. Voice acting is between great and good; broadly speaking the main characters are all acted very well, but not all sequences and cutscenes are animated as naturally as others. Ambient music and sound effects are fantastic and 3D tracking is incredible; this is a joy to listen to on a proper 5 or 7 channel system. Where I take most of my issue with Ghost of Tsushima is in it's pace and choice of open world. Open-world games will always inherently have pacing issues because you lose the ability to guide a player along a tightly constructed path. It doesn't suffer the way other games like Assassin's Creed can where the map turns into a huge icon-filled collect-a-thon, but there's still too much stuff to be distracting from what could have been a tighter story. Some folks love roaming open worlds, but I love being drip-fed a brilliant story with tight pacing and insane attention to detail. Ghost of Tsushima strikes a pleasant balance that kept me engaged, but ultimately I feel as though the open-world wasn't necessary. The game also has RPG-lite elements. Performing story quests, liberating areas of the map, and meeting bonus objectives earns you "technique points" that can be spent to unlock or upgrade abilities. Some I found useful or at times compulsory, others are far less practical and are just there to make 100% game completion easy. Weapons and armor can be upgraded by finding common and rare supplies in the world (and yeah, they are actually just called "Supplies") and spending them at vendors throughout the world. Abilities can be augmented with 'charms' that can be found in the world - take less damage, deal more damage, stealth is easier, etc. It's all a very "fill out the skill tree" type of thing, but it gives the player choice of where to put their points. Overall it's a very good game and is incredibly pretty. It controls reasonably well, and I encountered very few visual bugs and no game crashes on a PS4 Pro and PS5.

Ghost of Tsushima is an extremely fun game. From the exceptional graphics, to the storyline and the challenging yet seamless combat and stealth system to master, Ghost of Tsushima offers a satisfying gaming experience for those looking for an open world game that focuses on developing different samurai techniques to defeat hordes of Mongol invaders and Ronin alike. Duels are very cool, liberating locations is a blast and even the mini challenges for increasing Resolve (special attack meter) can be a fun challenge. Some of the side quests are a little slow and boring, but others are interesting and the main campaign story is very well written. In conclusion, this game is impressive and I highly recommend it.

Possibly obscurity, an odd one for sure to pull off the shelf by happenstance. Piqued my interest in content alone, where I’ve always had a penchant for all things ninjitsu, stealth being the one trait I do not and cannot attain in physical stature so of course, it's what I aspire to. Though, more recently a renewed interest in the benign childhood whims and an urge for something new in my Sixaxis bare palms yearning for that vibration. Originally I purchased this alongside one of the many Assassins famed games. As good as they are, they lack all things that truly offer this game space to shine. Amidst the chaos of hacking and slashing, this game felt clumsy, awkward, and unforgiving. But 2 months after a backburning cooldown with reflexes stopped, I attempted to pick up where I had left off into this Gem, luckily just at the start of things to flow, before any bridges were truly crossed initially and I relearned how to play responsively. Once that threshold crossed, the world inside this box began to bloom. Slow at first as things tend to, but before too long I'm finding myself stopped by a waterfall or cloudy hillside, or walking slowly through the woods to find a possible flower and just to see what all there is unfolding to me. Fireflies and ancient spirits gilding by, souls weigh the mist of war-torn Japan. stark white ethereal, oceans on stone translucent doe floating in a backdrop of the serene inner calm this game begs. Though, seemingly, this game is about killing -- it isn’t. It is truly about sacrificing and understanding how precious each moment is, the true cost that a person can bear. You are not savagely anything, but rather a sentinel of persistence, endurance for Tsisiham to feel the powerful strength that cannot be broken because he is not fighting. He is peacing. And if one is not fighting, then there is no fight, where if one is peaceful there will always be peace. ‘Posits come, as I am sure they must, for a samurai. It is not my pain that is savaging the world. And it is not my pain that will fight it. But instead, a loving endurance to stand and risk everything for what is truly sacred. I find myself growing and learning alongside Jin as he grows from a young-hearted ready for revenge fighter, to an enduring heart calm at peace, who accepts that it is easy to fight bloodthirsty into a battle you know you cannot win. But it is not the ease of things that define us. And it is not for us to spare ourselves the hardship of becoming what we must nor deafening the struggle with which we must survive. And it is not anyone else choices that hurt me. They take a life, that is on them to take that life and cannot blame righteously anyone, even if it is their own. If I cannot save someone it isn’t my blade hurting them nor my hurt to endure. Each character has their own weakness and while everyone has their faults that does not “make everyone a murderer.” And as we shadow Jin on this self-fulfilling journey toward inner peace we see just how much the world can try to burden him, blaming everything that goes wrong on him, their suffering, torment, betrayal, sacrifice, and anger on him, while he must battle the quiet from his own mind where, in silence, his sword is what screams.

TL;DR If you enjoyed Uncharted 4, the Ezio trilogy of Assassin's Creed, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the Batman Arkham series, or the Witcher 3, then you'll enjoy Ghost of Tsushima! The world feels alive with real characters, the story is excellent, and the combat is amazing! REVIEW There are lots of things to love about this game. The world-building is properly fleshed out and the different characters you meet all feel like real people. The story is full of inner conflict and growth, and the main character has a really interesting journey (no spoilers!) – like Uncharted 4, this feels like a cinematic masterpiece that you can play. The UI is pretty minimalistic, so you can enjoy the brilliant visuals. From snowy mountains and dense forests to bright purple lavender fields and foggy beaches, this game is absolutely beautiful in every setting. I often found myself exploring new regions on the map just to see more of the world. Combat is probably the best part of this game. It's fluid and strategic, but easy to master. There are 4 main stances when fighting. Depending on the enemies you're fighting, you'll have to switch between different stances pretty quickly. The game challenges your speed and reactions, but it's so satisfying when you cut through hordes of enemies without taking a single bit of damage! If you prefer to go the stealth route like Assassin's Creed or Batman, you can do that here as well! You can use things like smoke bombs or kunai or sticky bombs to take out enemies on by one. You can take out entire bases without anyone realising you were even there! The game offers a great blend of different combat styles that stay true to the overall story/character (no spoilers!) and let you play how you want to play. You can upgrade your character's weapons as the story progresses (enemies get harder!) but it's never overwhelming or annoying. It's a simple and clean UI that keeps you focused on the story and mission at hand. There are collectibles with interesting facts as well as lots of side missions that provide interesting backstories for some of the other characters in the game. I cannot recommend this game enough and am eagerly looking forward to the next one!

Um dos melhores jogos que já joguei. Jogabilidade, história, paisagens e gráficos, tudo nesse jogo é sensacional. Entrega chegou super rápida.

So great game. Including various languages

Amazing game to play , specially on a PS5

Es un gran juego, me llego bien empacado y todo estoy satisfecho 😁 lo pude adquirir a un buen descuento