Ghost of Tsushima

(Available for PlayStation 4 only)

After being apart of so many Sony E3 press conferences and state of plays, Sony is finally releasing what could be the last big PlayStation 4 exclusive game on a platform that is already loaded with tons of exclusive games (even more if you say console exclusive and include ones which got ported to PC). Ghost of Tsushima, developed by Sly Cooper and Infamous developers Sucker Punch, bears a resemblance to many games set in 13^th century Japan with Samurai but when shown in trailers in both graphics and the way that game would play it looked set to stand out. now in practice it hasn’t entrily been the case, comparisons have been made to Assassins Creed which are not unwarranted this game is very similar to Assassins Creed in many ways though I personally think it’s combat style and setting does separate it out enough to be it’s own thing. Ghost of Tsushima is a game set during the Mongolian invasion of Japan with a group of Samurai defending the island of Tsushima only to be foiled by the forces of Khotan Khan Grandson of Gengis Khan and results in the capture of main character Jin Sekkai’s uncle. The game follows him traveling the land dealing with the Mongol invasion and recruiting an army of new samurai to save his uncle and retake the island of Tsushima. If you’ve played any open world game the last few years you know what to expect.

Pros

• Gameplay: from stealth to sword combat to straight up sword duels, Ghosts of Tsushima has excellent gameplay. The game has a mix of the gameplay styles of Assassins Creed and Sekiro taking a lot of the mechanics of the later especially in boss fights. There’s a real skill n balancing the different stances for different enemies and experimenting with different weapons to find your best way of taking down enemies. The use of wind is also excellent helping you find many different things to aid you on your quest
• The story: it’s starts off not to well being rather generic but it gets really good and pretty interesting by the time you get past act 1. It’s a genuinely excellent story of Honour, Revenge and how much of yourself you’re willing to sacrifice for the greater good and constantly has you questioning if the choice is right or not. Not to mention an abundance of multichapter side stories that add excellent side characters. the game has about 18-20 hours of content if you do the main story but the side quests add on more and completing it will give you a long lasting game. the game also is well paced and I really didn’t have the feeling of it overstaying it’s welcome by the end like I did with Last of Us 2
• Graphics: the environments of this game looks very good especially using a PS4 Pro. It’s excellent use of Japanese countryside really makes you want to explore and take in everything something they definatly took inspiration from Breath of the Wild making this. There’s not much issue I found with rending either or load times either which is astounding given the size of the world map.
• Controls: they take some getting used to but if you keep at it functions well for the gameplay and feel very fluid making you feel every strike and blow
• Use of PS4 controller’s speaker: not many games outside of the recent Resident Evil remakes are using the speaker in the controller very well, but Ghost of Tsushima uses it to good effectiveness with features like the wind effects

Mixed

• The AI is Smart when it wants to be: the AI is generally clever but I found on stealth missions there were portions that I was getting away with things that any other stealth game would get me caught instantly. It does improve as the game goes on and was only really an issue early on though it did lay me into a false sense of security which got me killed a few times in the middle
• The camera: I’m not the first reviewer to bring this up but the camera has some issues that got me killed a few times. I either missed or couldn’t see an enmies as a result of it on occasion but I got the hang of it and it worked most of the time

Cons

• The glitches: there’s not to many but some environments did have some weird glitches that had my character doing things like floating against walls. It’s nothing major, I got out of them quickly, they weren’t frequent and I encounter nothing that was game breaking or required me to reload a save file but it bears mentioning.
• Side quest tracking issue: now you can’t miss any side quests in the game but I was surprised to find that they were labelled at one point as if I had or could skip ahead a few chapters. Now this might be a glitch that gets patched up but to avoid it I would suggest before you move ahead with a major story beat which is well telegraphed do all the side stories you care about.

Overall thoughts

Ghost of Tsushima is a fine swansong to the PS4 and really works for being a sword combat game with some amazing stance mechanics weaved into it , a stealth game and an open world game all in one. what holds it back for me is that for whatever reason by the time I got to the third act I lost incentive for the side quests and I will say throughout some felt like busy work which is more a me personal thing rather than a larger criticism of the game. But it looks amazing and has a story that really gets good as the game goes on and it really is joining the list of excellent PlayStation 4 exclusive games.

Score: 9/10