Ghost of Tsushima - PlayStation 4

This game arrived new, shrink wrapped. The game installed fine and completed the updates. This is the most beautiful, cinematic game I've ever played. The stand off duels are the best. The different landscapes are breathtaking. Great product.

I was quite impressed with the game right from the start. You begin with a rather traditional hack and slash sequence but then the story unfolds and the changes in the main character are handled subtly and superbly so that by the time he embraces what has happened to him, it feels like a natural progression.Yuna is a great character and with you from the beginning. She's well rounded and in no way sexualized. In fact, none of the women in the game, main or background, are overtly sexualized, and all feel appropriate to the time period.For a game about a samurai, it doesn't hyper romanticize the idea of the samurai. You can see all the strength and all the weaknesses of the characters you interact with, which give a very real-life experience interacting with them.LGBTQ is represented here, as much as the time period allows, but the representations are good and give you the sense that even though it's never talked about, LGBTQ people did exist back then and they were normal people who loved each other even if they couldn't show it openly.Mechanics-wise, if you are a melee person, you like the game from start to finish. If you are like me and prefer to stealth and snipe your way through a game, the beginning will feel a bit restrictive, but once you get your longbow and more of the Ghost's abilities unlocked, it just as enjoyable as it is for melee fighters.VERY FEW FETCH QUESTS! If you're a story person like me, side quests are usually boring and only distractions from the main plot. And the worst side quests are just fetch quests. Tsushima has a few, but it doesn't overwhelm the side quests. A lot of go kill things, but at least they're not fetch, and they do a decent job of giving a story to them, or at least trying.Multiplayer. I'm not wholly impressed by multiplayer. I'm very disappointed that you can only play with one other person in the story multiplayer, while in survival you can have four. Survival isn't that much fun if you have a group of friends all starting together and who want to play together, because with a team of all brand new players, even the easy mode is pretty much impossible to beat. You do gain experience if you lose, but it incredibly frustrating to not be able to survive more than one or two waves unless you don't play with people you know and hope there's someone strong in your group. The difference classes are useless, since survival is set up to only have one useful attack style, and that's hack and slash. So Hunters can't really use archery skills well, and Assassins can't go around hiding in the grass to kill people. Everyone just has to attack the same way in order to survive. And all survival matches are basically the same thing.Overall, main game is amazing, bu multiplayer needs serious work. Why have one option with four people and one with two? I play with two other friends, so we can't play the story missions together without dropping one of us. And the story is the best part of the game.

First things first, I’ve got to say that I purchased this video game based on word of mouth and recommendations by online gaming personalities that I trust. I hadn’t really heard much about the game until it came out. I bought it on Amazon when it had a 3 week estimated wait time until it would be in stock. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait that long and the game was at my door within a few days of ordering it.I’ve now been playing it for a couple of weeks and am loving every bit of it. It reminds me of an Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry game but set in Fuedal Japan. Many people have hoped for an Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan during that time period, but I think this game is better than any AC game. The game consists of a great story of a samurai attempting to repel a Mongol invasion. This is played out through a variety of missions spread across a large open world of the island of Tsushima. There are the usual quests to find items, climbing and platforming to isolated shrines, retaking bases and liberating farms. You don’t have to travel far on the map to find something else to experience.Combat plays a huge part of the game and there are frequent battles spread around the world as you retake bases or come across Mongol patrols & bandit ambushes. The combat is slick and challenging, but does a good job of letting the player feel powerful as you level up and gain new abilities. You would probably have a hard time simply button mashing your way through the fights, but I find it quite satisfying and challenging to patiently wait to perfectly time a block that then leads to a one hit kill on your opponent. You unlock multiple combat “stances” that are more effective against different types of enemy weapons, and can easily switch through them as you cut & slash through a group of enemies. The combat is varied and challenging enough that I’ve yet to grow tired of it.The game is also beautiful. The island has a variety of landscapes, from beaches and mountains to grasslands and fields of flowers. All look amazing, and I don’t grow tired of traversing the world. The game is also very cinematic. The set up to many fights is what the game calls a standoff, where your samurai meets and faces off against the enemy like in an old samurai movie or western duel. These moments are great for fans of those movies and similar cinematic set ups are found throughout the main story and side quests. Overall the game looks better than most any other I’ve played.I’ve only made it into the second of 3 acts in the game, even though I’ve put 30 or more hours into it. I’ve still got a ways to go before I finish and I’ve heard from some sources that ,if you play as a completionist like I do, then you can spend 90-100 hours on the game. Either way you play, be it a quick run through the main story or a slow complete play-through, I think you will be very pleased by this game. Pick it up and immerse yourself in the story and world.