Ghost of Tsushima

The best samurai game in a long time and a great fun for all, who love action. Love for Japan and its history is a big plus, but its knowledge is not necessary to enjoy every minute of this beautiful game. [Issue#305]

The world is enormous, filled to the brim with rich content to explore. It can be a bit much sometimes with the number of artefacts you can find or haikus to sit and devise bloating things a little bit, but players will be blown away by the deep storytelling and unbelievable style and personality that Ghost of Tsushima brings to the table.

Ghost of Tsushima ends the current generation of consoles on a high note. A fantastically gorgeous world sets the stage for high-stakes close quarters combat, with multiple enthralling stories told over many chapters that keep the player moving across the island. Core combat is rewarding, and while enemy AI is disappointing outside of combat, all other aspects of Ghost of Tsushima have been lovingly crafted, and will be thoroughly enjoyed by players of all types. It’s not Sekiro or Dark Souls/Bloodborne difficult, but challenge can be found for those who seek it. Ultimately, Ghost of Tsushima allows you to pick up a sword and become one badass samurai, and have fun while avenging your fallen brethren.

A smattering of small niggles ultimately prevents Ghost of Tsushima from reaching the upper echelons of PS4 folklore, but it's still an absolute must for your game collection, and a fitting end to the PS4's line of exclusives. Ghost of Tsushima is a fantastic journey through the trouble and strife of 13th Century Japan and is complimented perfectly by a set of great characters, a likable main character, and a loathsome villain. Some repetition in the game's side-missions and a lack of polish in some areas just bring the score down a tad, but these issues can be overlooked in favor of the jaw-dropping visual dessert that will keep you coming back for more.

Ghost of Tsushima offers an amazing open-world experience and satisfying combat, only mildly held back by its writing and characters.

I was hoping for an original take on the open-world genre, but I got Assassin’s Creed in samurai drag. If that sounds like a blast to you, it will be, especially if you go into it with the knowledge of the game’s design missteps. It’s not that it’s bad - it’s just bad for me.

As appropriate as it would be to knock Tsushima for being the same sort of boilerplate open-worlder that Ubisoft tosses out every few months, the truth is that I still got some entertainment out of roaming the pretty landscape and engaging in repetitive tasks at my own pace. That said, every time Tsushima subjected me to its dreadful story and the tedious critical path missions, my patience wore thin. Ghost of Tsushima is positioned as PlayStation 4’s last hurrah, and while it’s an underwhelming note to end on, perhaps a game that pushes technological boundaries while taking zero creative risks is a fitting bookend for this generation.

Enjoyable story, and gameplay. Adjustable to the level of challenge one wants.

My favorite Assassin’s Creed game, Ubisoft Montreal have done it again! Gets a bit tedious and repetetive after a while.

Yet again, another example of the streamlining disaster story of a developer who once was known to put effort into their videogames as opposed to making another derivative, 3rd person, cinematic, action open-world, and honestly a little racist title where you carry a sword and ride on a horse. Oh boy. Do you clear enemy camps, having trailing missions, and meet cardboard cutout NPC's to perform meaningless fetch quests for? How exciting and nuanced! General grievances for formulaic open-world design aside, it's actually not a "bad game" by any means, the combat is easily the best feature, it has a fairly intricate system that opens up somewhat like "Nioh" and allows you to utilize everything at your disposal, but that's pretty much the highlight. Everything else? Well the story is pretty dumb, historically inaccurate to an almost insane degree, not particularly interesting and honestly has that same "girl boss" problem with all of it's female characters almost from the get-go. You know that pervasive problem that plagues many modern games? Apparently nobody can solve it by introducing an actual honest-to-goodness female warrior who actually existed in the Mongolian Army: "Khutulun." Representation this, representation that, but where is her game? Much more interesting material there to be frank. Case-in-point, when I met the first female character, who looks like she is easily 40 years old with stiff facial animation and limited expression. She "saved" the protagonist, but that's not enough. Her character introduction is playing a Mongolian trooper like a fiddle, sneaking up on him while he's in full armor, and then stabbing him to death with a pocket knife. I had to smack my own gob to loosen my gaping jaw from the disbelief at how stupid the entire scene was. I almost dropped the game entirely because I knew it was going to be more of this later on. Boy it really takes all the wind out of the sails from the MAIN male protagonist when you have characters that can just straight up murder people three times large than they are with a toothpick. You know who really should've been the one to kill that first soldier in the house? The main freaking character. It would've tied more into his character development and made him question what was the moral way to go about defeating his enemies. Something the game later admonishes after his plan is to brainlessly waltz up to the enemy stronghold, knock on the door, take on the whole army and take on the 20,000 HP Mongolian boss in the first 30 minutes. It's utterly terrible writing. Other than that, the technical wizardry used to make the game actually perform quite well on the PS4 is admirable, even if it pales in comparison to the PC port which controls much more smoothly at 60 fps plus. If you liked Breath of the Wild or Horizon Zero Dawn, then you'll probably find this easier to play than Sekiro or something. Another movie game with a made-up fantasy aesthetic. Ride your horse, take some photos, fight with brain dead enemies. 7/10 Game.

It was a good game that could have been great. Unfortunately a lot of the gameplay was clunky and characters like the old lady were so unlikable it made the story hard to stay engaged with. On top of that the inability to skip cutscenes was ridiculous.

The game is boring looks great combat is overrated it's just gamers are favorable of ghost of Tsushima Ubisoft assassin's creed but its Japan