[i]"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one." - Marcus Aurelius[/i]
One of the most beautiful games out there, and the best combat of any melee game I've played. 9/10
It's what Assassin's Creed always wished it could be.
Switching stances, parrying and dodging feel tight and responsive, and the progression system is nice too. It's fast paced and rewards u for getting mechanically good, which is exactly what I want. It's not a soulslike tho, the parry timing is pretty forgiving, which is fine.
Visually it's one of the best looking games I've ever played, with an emphasis on the vibrant color scheme. Fields of red flowers, golden forests, white and purple everywhere, the whole game looks like a painting and pretty much every area is screenshot worthy. The wind guiding u instead of a hud marker is a really nice touch too.
The sound design, like the ambient sounds and voice acting, is great as well, and a big part of why the game feels so immersive.
The story is a good, classic samurai story, and more intriguing than I expected. It has a calm, stoic tone to it and makes u think about stuff like what honor really means and whether it's worth holding onto when it gets people killed. Jin's arc between the samurai code and becoming the ghost is the heart of it, and it works really well.
The Iki Island DLC is a great addition too, it adds more story about Jin's past and how he deals with who he became. It unlocks at the start of Act 2, but I'd play it around the end of Act 2 since the enemies are noticeably tougher, just don't save it for after the main story.
My main problem is that the gameplay loop gets repetitive at times. U mostly go from camp to camp doing the same kind of encounters, and the side activities like fox dens, hot springs, haikus and bamboo strikes kind of felt like a monotonous checklist. Not a game I'd bother trying to 100% or anything, but ofc its always up to u to do what u enjoy and skip the rest.
The side quests aren't bad, but they don't really shine either, a lot of them follow the same structure and u can see where they're going pretty early. Nowhere near Witcher 3 level.
I played on a controller as it's the obvious choice for this game, at 4K with maxed settings and DLSS 4.5L Balanced, capped to 80 fps. PC Specs attached.
Really disappointed that Sony scrapped the Ghost of Yotei PC port, especially after how well this one did on here.
