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Ghosts of Tsushima

Started by Bazooka, July 17, 2020, 11:12:40 PM

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wasp_f15ting

Absolutely loved this game, hope everyone has a go at it!



My first ever platinum I enjoyed the setting so much, didnt mind doing the extra quests.

wooders1978

This is very very good, yes, it's not groundbreakingly original in its gameplay (wind blowing in quests direction aside), but all the elements it's nicked it does very very well - clearing base camps, climbing radio towers, soulsesque boss fights are all glorious fun

Seems to be getting crit for being too serious, but I'm a miserable bastard and they can keep nerdy gamer humour to themselves, couldn't stand outer worlds coz of that shite tbh

wasp_f15ting

It does have some quirky moments, but considering its a game about invasion I don't know what they expected :P

You are right, it has multiple things from other games, the shadow of mordor / war thing similarity stood out to me too. However the implementation of the world design is sublime. I haven't seen a game look this pretty in a long time:-


Harpo Speaks

Something I wondered today while playing this - are the Inari Shrines already in the game world but non interactable if you find one without following a fox, or does triggering a Fox Den spawn them into the world?

wasp_f15ting

I found one without the fox, the fox appeared after he does his chant / clapping thing.

Mobius

I'm enjoying this more in Act 2. More varied, more moves and cool stuff to do in combat. Start to care about the side characters more and the bloke you play as gets more edge and less of a do-gooder.

Harpo Speaks

Quote from: TrenterPercenter on July 20, 2020, 12:47:41 PM
The combat for the main works great though, it is just the simpering "It's far from perfect but..." from critics that were apoplectic about TLOU2 transgressions.

Presume that there isn't going to be an Angry Joe video about this game where he's yelling like a cunt because of the scene where
Spoiler alert
Khan has Jin captured and doesn't kill him
[close]
etc.

Enjoyed this, got the Platinum today as I wasn't far away from it by the completion of the main story, so thought I might as well.

All opinions, but I must admit I've been slightly taken aback by just how highly some people rate this game elsewhere - I've seen comments calling it a 10/10, labelling it a masterpiece, saying it was in their favourites of all time etc - it never got close to approaching that level for me. Undoubtedly one of the most beautiful open worlds of all time though.

C_Larence

No interest in playing this for some reason, but this video really tickled me. I imagine it's not representative of the gameplay.
https://twitter.com/viviflorea/status/1289229892874190854?s=21


Mobius

That sounds pretty cool. Glad to hear they're doing more.

It's really impressive that the last game of the dying embers of the PS4, which has lovely graphics and a big open world somehow has next to no loading screens and the ones they do have are about 3 seconds long. Too bad you can't skip the cutscenes though, how many times do you need to watch a peasant thank you?!

Thursday

I'm playing this and it's quite good but also a bit boring.


Bazooka

I've only played this twice since release, I've been trying to clear a few games in my backlog like Days Gone, and I'm kind of burnt out on open map collect a thing here, upgrade this, games.

Harpo Speaks

Quote from: Thursday on August 17, 2020, 11:38:57 PM
I'm playing this and it's quite good but also a bit boring.

It's quite good, and I enjoyed my time with it, but I think ultimately it's rather forgettable. I think that's kind of why I'm somewhat surprised to see people making favourable comparisons elsewhere to games like RDR2 and Witcher 3.

I did find it improved for me a bit once I focused more on the main story/major character quests, rather the minor side quests and activities. I recall it feeling like things picked up a little towards the end of Act 2, even if structurally Act 2 felt like a bit of a retread of the first. I think there's the skeleton of a decent main story in there, it just needed more doing with it. As it is, despite a couple of good moments, I never felt particularly emotionally engaged or any strong incentive to see how the narrative would unfold.

It's a stunning world visually, albeit with an odd sense of lifelessness. I found little reason to explore it that wasn't purely driven by completionism. That question mark is probably going to be a Fox Den or a Pillar of Honour, of which you've already seen dozens of. I did however love the minimalist HUD and particle effects blowing towards your next objective, that's a brilliant touch. I also love the stylistic flourishes you get with the telling of the Mythic Tales, and pre and post-quest title cards.

I actually really enjoyed the combat, though upgrade progress through the various stances wasn't all that interesting. The
Spoiler alert
one-on-one duels
[close]
remained one of my favourite elements of the game throughout - the cinematic presentation of these never got old for me, and I always found them thrilling. I think
Spoiler alert
Ghost Stance should be automatically disabled for these however
[close]
, but that's a minor criticism.

wooders1978

Pretty much spot on with my assessment harpo - it's not as good as Witcher 3 or read dead, nowhere near to be honest - it does do several things very well and visually the island is stunning but it is very limited in its scope - as you say, the question marks are usually one of three things, pillar, fox den or an onsen - occasionally you might get a new hat but overall the open world is not overly rewarding for exploration

The shrines are fun little puzzlers & we all love the destruction of a mongol camp - the game would have gone from good to great if it had a few more surprises such as more (and more varied) random events - the world just feels a bit empty really

Thursday

Only issue is, ignoring sidequests and exploration means you start to lose out on upgrades for everything which makes things harder. I've basically just put things down to easy, because enemies were getting too strong and taking me down too easily. I want their AI to still be smart, but I don't want them to be taking an age to take down and destroying me so easily. 

wooders1978

I thought the side quests were good and ran pretty well in concurrence to the main story - not sure why you wouldn't want to play them to be honest

Thursday

I'm doing some, but the game's long enough.

Harpo Speaks

Quote from: Thursday on August 19, 2020, 01:58:05 PM
Only issue is, ignoring sidequests and exploration means you start to lose out on upgrades for everything which makes things harder.

That's true, there's definitely a balance to be struck. Bamboo Strikes for resolve were quite useful for example. I just think I was originally in the mindset of doing the vast majority of what I could see on the map before progressing the main story, but that was actually unnecessary and lessening my enjoyment of the game.

oustropique

I just beat the main story. I'm a bit burnt out on open world games so won't be pursuing the massive amount of side content left to do, but I liked what was there.

In racing through it, I found I had to turn it down to Easy early on. Part of that will be the lack of available upgrades, stances, and abilities (which you need to have any decent attempt at stealth or a fight) but another is the unforgiving parry window at anything above that difficulty. Then it became a pleasant enough, not overly long, Assassin's Creed title.

A minor gripe would be that
Spoiler alert
Ghost Stance and the Ghost Armour
[close]
are very useful and satisfying to use but come in very late in the game.

Bazooka

I've still yet to finish it, played it twice after starting this thread, I too am burnt out on the open world genre.  I just started Horizon ZD back up, after a year I've still not finished it, and I'm struggling with it, it's not bad at all, looks great and has some fresh combat, but it's all masked by the same systems I've played countless times in every 3rd person open world.  I only finished Days Gone after a long slog, because it's too long.

Non Stop Dancer

Have borrowed this and going to give it a crack tomorrow. Is there anything I should know going in? Tips etc? Will put it on the easiest setting as I don't play games anymore.

wooders1978

Quote from: Non Stop Dancer on October 04, 2020, 04:56:48 PM
Have borrowed this and going to give it a crack tomorrow. Is there anything I should know going in? Tips etc? Will put it on the easiest setting as I don't play games anymore.

I don't reckon you'll need to vis-à-vis easy setting but I think you can swap to it later

I think spend your upgrade tokens on buffing your fighting XP initially is the only thing I'd say you ought to do - it's a fairly forgiving game

kalowski

Just got this for £30 so looking forward to playing it properly. Just done the whole intro and got to act 1.
Looks beautiful, but let's see exactly how open world it is...

Bazooka

I've returned to this in an effort to clear my ever increasing backlog, and I still think it's 'ok' honestly. It looks lovely(that wears off) and plays fine, but I've been ruined by open world collectathons, this just has a feudal Japanese skin on it.  Every mission is the same, wow another fox to follow,but the combat upgrades give it some enjoyable meat.

magval

Should gaming be an effort mate?

Just a thought that maybe you're wasting your time if you're playing something that's just 'OK' when you've so many things to get through. I had a backlog recently too and in sitting down to play RDR2 for the first time since the day it came out, I realised after an hour or two of clunky controls, boring gameplay and awful dialogue that there's better things to do in life than wait for a game to get good. Deleted it, stuck on Guacamelee 2 and was so instantly engaged that I ended up finishing it in 2 sittings.

That really reminded me of why I play games at all, and of the terrible sense of debt that I (and apparently others too) have to games I've paid for, even if the truth is I don't really want to play them.

Chedney Honks

Running at 4K60 on the PS5, it's outstanding in motion.

Bazooka

Quote from: magval on November 26, 2020, 06:57:15 AM
Should gaming be an effort mate?


No, but I spent £40 quid on it, so might as well get it done, it's not that hard, well the hardest part is getting through the unskippable cut scenes and countless muddy footstep following simulations. 

Bazooka

Finally finished it, and platinumed it like a scumbag, I'll give more thoughts on later, just to say I've never played a game that could result in such a massively different verdict if you only stuck to the main story.