Ghost of Tsushima Reviews
Ghost of Tsushima embraces many of the addictive-but-unrewarding elements endemic to the Assassin’s Creed series while telling a story about characters who are genuinely interesting until their dramatic arcs become cartoonishly melodramatic. It’s a passable, often lovely ride, but poor camera controls, awful physics, and terrible mission design frequently spoil the fun.
The attempt to tackle both stealth and combat creates a game that never really quite manages to fully get a grasp on either.
Ghost of Tsushima bravely steps into a genre that contains some of the generation’s most cutting-edge experiences. While it forges its own identity and doesn’t make any major mistakes, it’s not bold enough to escape their shadows.
Ghost of Tsushima is an artistically creative game that often feels like a realistic Zelda game. The minimal UI, clever use of wind and beautiful environmental details make exploration rewarding on its own. When it comes to combat, the game falls short. With a huge number of combat games to draw inspiration from, it is a shame this game is more like button mashy Dynasty Warriors game than it is a precision, high speed action game like Ninja Gaiden. You never feel like the powerful warrior the story tries to make you believe you are.
A wild misfire with every narrative element it attempts, and it boils down to this: Sucker Punch decided to do a historical epic inspired by Kurosawa… and produced something that fails as both history and as a pastiche of Kurosawa.
There is more I can delve into, but I'm at a loss for words. Ghost of Tsushima is something I was drawn to because of its inspiration from classic Samurai cinema. What I ended up getting was a Hollywood interpretation of that. It isn't bad in the strictest sense, but it truly fails to live up to the films that inspired it.
Visually rich design brings cinematic scope to this historical action game, but when sword-fighting brings diminishing rewards, console yourself with a haiku
Sucker Punch's PS4 tribute to Akira Kurosawa is gorgeous to behold but its sparse open-world and bloated mechanics has it falling short
Like the samurai, Ghost of Tsushima feels like a relic of a bygone era.
Ghost of Tsushima feels like a tech demo–a showcase of the PlayStation 4’s graphical capabilities, especially through its hefty photo mode and the sheer amount of things you can have on the screen at the same time.
Despite being infatuated with all sanbox tropes and mechanics possible, Ghost of Tsushima is polished and rewarding experience. It does justice to feudal japanese culture and bows to master Kurosawa with style.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Ghost of Tsushima tries to surpass Sucker Punch itself and drag it into its new era, also displaying design minimalism at times, which is absent from many open-world games, namely major titles of the genre.
Review in Greek | Read full review
As an earnest, respectful tribute to jidaigeki dramas and the films of Akira Kurosawa, Ghost of Tsushima fares well enough. It creates a fictionalized account of the Mongol Invasion and weaves the tale into the most videogamey of videogame things – an open-world sandbox filled with straw-hat wearing ronin, mischievous foxes, hot springs, and meditative haiku. It’s easily the most ambitious output from Sucker Punch Productions to date.
Ghost of Tsushima is an enjoyable but muddled experience: its strong gameplay fundamentals are hampered by a lack of originality and weak storytelling.
If you wanted Assassin’s Creed set in feudal Japan, Ghost Of Tsushima will scratch that itch. The aesthetics and atmosphere are so beautiful and striking that it carries and elevates the generic, design-by-committee open-world gameplay.
Like the initial entry in Assassin’s Creed, the franchise it unashamedly copies, Ghost of Tsushima is good but not great.
Ghost of Tsushima just wants you to play a game you’ve basically already played many times, while also telling you about that cool old samurai movie it watched the other day. Which one sounds more interesting to you?
The game has the look of a thoughtful samurai epic, but the façade flakes under scrutiny.
Ghost of Tsushima is pretty similar to other open-world games, but a strong combat system and a solid samurai story give it some staying power.
Ghost of Tsushima has some dull edges, but strikes a lot of highs with its cinematic stylings.