Boggles my mind that they didnt announce this next to the PS5 Pro.
Mind you im not interested in picking up a PS5 or a Pro but I miiight check this out when it comes to PC in 2-3 years.
Pretty sure two longswords was one of Musashi’s things and he would have been ~ 20 at this time. Be fun to have him show up, dude was an absolute terror when he was a kid.
Did you like/play Ghost of Tsushima ? Seemed cool but I got Ubisoft open world vibes (and while I can do those once in a blue moon im kinda tired of them)
It’s the ubi-soft model of go to point of interest and do thing but one a gameplay, design, aesthetic, and story level it’s much, much better than ubisoft’s games.
The gameplay is rock solid. Swordfighting is incredibly satisfying. There’s no “press a to win” stuff like ass creed. You have to actively parry, use your tools, counter specific enemy styles, and fight smart. There are no i-frames at all - any attack animation that touches your characters hurtbox will damage you. The difficutly goes from forgiving all the way up to “lethal” where you and the enemies die in a few cuts.
Design wise there’s plenty to do. The pois - traversal puzzles, enemy camps, playing flute for cats, composing haiku, have good variety.
Aesthetically it’s gorgeous. The game goes for a hyper-realism where the game world reflects the narrative - betrayals happen in dim, misty swamps, huge fields of vibrantly colored flowers denote areas of special interest. The game has has important diegetic, like actually part of the game world, ui. Instead of a quest marker the wind blows you towards your destination. Literally winds of fate. When you approach a poi a mystical golden bird will appear and chirp to gain your attention then lead you to the poi. When you’re not fighting there’s generally no ui on your screen so you don’t get the ubi thing where your screen is covered in different icons.
Story wise the game builds a character arc for your dude as he starts off as a stereotypical honor bound warrior dude and grows to become an insurgent leader. There’s a good assorted cast of characters who represent people from across the social strata. I did have an issue with the story presenting an overly rosy view of samurai, but then the dlc expansion specifically addresses that and examines it.
Two things I really like
-
when you complete a poi the game will reveal a few nearby undiscovered pois. This lets you just bumble across the map from adventure to adventure organically instead of climbing a tower and knowing where everything is
-
the game gives you most of your core toys and abilities by the end of act I so you can make use of them for most of the game. You continue to amass tools and abilities throughout the game, but progression is front-loaded so you don’t end up in a situation where you only get to play with the cool stuff at the very end.
It’s also got drip for days and no mtx, just the one expansion pack that adds, idk, 10-20 hours of stuff to do (and really powers up your bow skills if you want to be archer guy)
Thanks for the response Frank. Have a nice day/night
Agreed all around. I think it’s a great game. I love the direction here to go different era, location, and protagonist. We’re in pre-settlement Ezo/Hokkaido, so in theory most people you’re dealing with should be non-Japanese Ainu when they were easily powerful enough to maintain rough parity with the Japanese. Settler-colonialism here wouldn’t kick off for more than 200 years. If SP delivers on this, it would be amazing.
Agreed, it’d be really cool to see Ainu people centered at a time when they weren’t under the boot of the Japanese state.
Is it widely known that Japan colonized Ezo/Hokkaido and the kingdom of Ryukyu/Okinawa? And maybe a few other places prior to Imperial Japan’s imperialist phase?
I mean everyone understands that Japan’s dominion over those territories is relatively recent. Anything more than that, I have no idea.
I haven’t watched the trailer so I dunno, but I think Atsu is an Ainu name, so I’m optimistic for that.
mild spoiler regarding a costume
the game gives you most of your core toys and abilities by the end of act I so you can make use of them for most of the game. You continue to amass tools and abilities throughout the game, but progression is front-loaded so you don’t end up in a situation where you only get to play with the cool stuff at the very end.
I was super surprised that you don’t get the costume from all the promo art until pretty late in the game lol
Once act ii opened up i mostly went around the map collecting clothes for several hours! : )
That was what the final stretch of Zelda TotK was like for me. Defeating Ganon took a back seat to sleuthing and dungeon diving to finish out my outfit.
Yeah, fantastic dress up potential in that game. I’d be constantly swapping outfits for towns/exploring/different kinds of missions.
I also particularly enjoyed seeing all the indigo-dyed fabric drying in one of the late game towns.
I legit wish the game had a sorting option for hats. Japanese hat technology is unimaginable in most of the world.
Agree, also the duels are incredibly satisfying on lethal difficulty
-
In addition to what Frank said, Ghost of Tsushima didn’t feel like it outstayed its welcome. A lot of the Ubisoft sandbox games, especially the more recent ones, have this overloaded bloated feel that usually keeps me from completing them.
Given the mix of history and fantasy I’d say there’s upwards of a 90% chance he’ll appear in some capacity even as a throwaway sidequest. When he does I hope they portray him as an absolute giant. I feel like most of the media portrayals I’ve seen almost downplay that part of the reason he was such a terror is that he probably had a good arm and a half’s reach over whatever idiot was brave/stupid enough to challenge him.
How tall was he? I didn’t know he was a real tall dude.
6’ or nearly just so…in a country and time where the average height was like 5’4ish. He absolutely towered over everyone around him and its one of the things to keep in mind when you consider his duels. No doubt he was a skilled fencer also but sheesh…despite what master yoda tells you size does indeed matter folks.
Word. I’m over six foot and did a lot of larp fighting. Having a long wing-span is absolutely a cheat code in fighting.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
