Jin’s journey is fascinating, as we are not going down the well-worn road of “should heroes kill?” here, but rather the story is one about honor, and a constant conflict between Jin and his uncle over the tactics they should be using to fight the Mongols. As such, Ghost of Tsushima can feel a bit easy compared to rivals, but the power fantasy is worth the trade, if you ask me.įinally, a third pillar of the game is one I was not expecting, an incredibly well-written, emotionally impactful story. This is exactly how I wanted my overpowered, hyper-skilled samurai to feel, a whirlwind of death and destruction, rather than someone constantly trying to avoid getting one shot in more difficult games. Sucker Punch has done the same here, but with a samurai.

I am constantly reminded of how Insomniac mastered Spider-Man combat in that game, making you feel more like that hero than ever before. And yet the thing is, combat is so good that you don’t really care if the 85th side mission you’re doing is to go to a farm and kill 12 Ronin because combat is just that damn fun. If there is one criticism you can make of Ghost of Tsushima it’s that it is rather long and can get repetitive.

From the first time you win a standoff with a one hit kill, to when you’ve perfected your stagger build that allows you to win 1 v 6s in open combat with ease. Rarely have I found a game where I just constantly stand there in awe of a given landscape, and Tsushima elicits this feeling roughly once every ten minutes, depending on where your mission takes you.Įverything about combat feels excellent. And the game lets you do just that, with one of the best-in-business photo modes, which is how you’re seeing the gorgeous snaps threaded all throughout this piece. But it’s the art design here, the gorgeous, sweeping landscapes of rich, vibrant colors, and the use of sunlight, wind and weather effects to make practically every frame of the game something you want to snap a photo of. In fact, environments and characters in games like God of War or The Last of Us are certainly more graphically intensive. I have made the case that Ghost of Tsushima may be the most beautiful game ever made, and given the past generation of releases, that is not something I say lightly. It is impossible to talk about Ghost of Tsushima without first mentioning its beauty.

Ghost of tsushima screenshots