Ghost of Tsushima DIRECTOR'S CUT

personally i think the whole "rules are rules regardless of nuance" thing synonymous with japanese culture is cringe asf and it never seemed to escape that until the very very end of the story. the "oh mister hero-san we love you!!!1!!!11" everywhere you go was also super cringe and made it extremely difficult to enjoy. there were no comedic breaks or really any other tonal breaks from that in the story that being said the gameplay loop is extremely fun. lots to do, side quests feel natural and not like a chore, reward system makes for unique upgrades and overall makes up for the japan fatigue. 9/10

The game is well made, HOWEVER. From a gamer's perspective, it takes abosultely 0 risks. Combat is simple and not skill based, just paper/rock/scissors. The characters are not likeable. You barely see them for a mission or two, before moving to the next one. The open world doesn't bring interesting gameplay. It's just there to make the game longer. Where you capture outposts one by one, without any gameplay variantions. I suspect a lot of good ratings for this game come just because it's stable, well designed and feels polished, and perfect for the average joe who plays 1h a week. From a historical persepctive there's zero interesting things, given it's a fictional world. Sadly even the enemies don't speak their languages, which is a really, really lazy decision. I do recommend the game because it's good. But that's it. It's good. Not exceptional. It reminds me a lot of Mad Max by Avalanche Studios. It sort of feels like someone deliberately gave zero freedom to developpers and followed a book to the letter. The same book many companies follow. It's hard to describe.