Ghost Of Tsushima (PS4)

I really really enjoyed this game! It has similarities to AC Odyssey and Witcher 3, two others I’ve enjoyed (and Far Cry types). It’s a story driven open world explorer with interesting combat and yet, peaceful serene moments. Plus, it’s a beautiful world to explore with fields of grasses and woods of all sorts of colours. Occasionally our protagonist whilst riding will lean down to glide his hand through the grass at a canter – a lovely touch.
The real beauty of this game is, other than some key moments for the story, it doesn’t demand how you play it. Want to relive Tenchu and sneak around everywhere assassinating? Crack on. Want to stand and fight in glorious combat? Go for it. How about sniping as an archer? All yours.
The skills trees are 90% yours to upgrade in direction such as swordsmanship or (speak the word quietly) ninja magic! By magic, I mean tools and tradecraft – there is no magic. Ninja is never expressly said in the game but if you’re playing it you’re thinking it and really you’re looking for a black costume to put on to make it so visually.
Some missions will demand sneaking, archery or frontal assault though, so you cannot ignore those tactics. Combat I found enjoyable(played on hard), challenging at times – especially early on, and at latter points when new enemies arrive and use new weapons or patterns. It felt smooth and controlled- no hacking or slashing. Sometimes the array of options made it difficult to remember how to find a particular weapon; right trigger opens stances and thrown weapons (plus fire sword much later), left trigger thrown tools, bows (2) and blow pipe. Bows have different ammo and uses. There’s also sword moves on R1+L1 and L3+R3 and circle and square. All that said I did enjoy combat and was able to use a variety of tactics to overcome enemies in amongst my sword strikes.
Assassination was straightforward but I’d like to have seen some different animations, such as in Tenchu or Halo (I forget – was it 3 or 4 or something else). It got a little similar but once weapons upgraded they were quite swift.
Mercifully this isn’t a climbing game. There is some but it’s mostly straightforward, and unless you really want to find everything not too tricky to find paths.
In a lot of other open world games I’ve often felt its much a lot of; Go here, collect this, carry it here. I didn’t get that with this and can’t put my finger on it. Maybe there were more fights involved.
Penultimatly, I want to say this isn’t all about rushing around solving problems. The game encourages our character to find hot springs and take relaxing baths, meditating on events. There are also Haiku to be written, moments where he puts down his sword and reviews his surroundings to craft a poem. The character can bow and play a flute. The game wants you to pause and relax.
The game could do with more wildlife. There are birds all around but mostly they take off nicely, circle points of interest if you’re looking out for them, or just 2 breeds are relevant in the game. Little yellow ones guide you to obscure things, enemies have birds of prey as lookouts. The land mammals are largely irrelevant and easily despatched. I’m not saying I want to be bitten by snakes or chased but there are only pigs(not big enough to be boar), bears, deer and dogs. I saw lots of fishing, don’t recall seeing fish. The game instead is about the visuals and colours of the landscapes, which do change in different locations.
Finally the duels. I loved the duels. One on one, just swords or whatever the enemy had, a statement piece of cinematography to setup and then fight to the death. I felt that they were a great boon to the game and leant to the variety of things going on, as the ultimate challenge in swordsmanship.
And I couldn’t end without mentioning the ending. I loved it. I bought into it. It encapsulated the game, the story, the characters, and I was engrossed. A feast for the eyes and manna for the spirit.

Overall the game was good – smooth game play, large open world, enjoyable story line. I didn’t find Jin, the main character, super likeable though. I felt like a lot of the side quests were some variation on “I heard someone talking bad about me in another village! Let me go set them straight!!”
Overall fun though. It’s a really long game so if you are into that, like I am, it’s a good choice.

Ich hatte einen guten Kontakt zum Hndler. Der Versand war schnell und das Produkt wie beschrieben.

This is the best game I have played this year. Great atmospherics.