Ghost of Tsushima - Reviews

Yeah, some of the faces seem a little, just okay, but the idea that ANYTHING looks PS2 era is...a little outright crazy?

@sethmode: The faces are just slightly better than Horizon (which had just awful side character faces), but the rest is on par and sometimes better. I'm playing it on PS4 Pro with 4K and HDR and it looks incredible, and runs super smooth. I can see how things might get samey over time, but I'm really enjoying the fighting and exploring. I guess I'll see in ten hours or so.

Query: ALEXA - WHY AREN'T ALL VIDEO GAMES HISTORICALLY ACCURATE? Answer: Video games are paradoxical objects in the sense that they are the newest medium of storytelling, but also the quickest to become obsolete.

This doesn't answer my question, but I don't care. This thread is turned into a life regret about... 1.5 pages back. If you read this before reading the last two pages on why people are theoretically upset about GoT not being historically accurate despite nobody claiming it should be, nor anybody actually being upset, please just assume this answer from Alexa is more interesting and move on with your day.

Anyway, this game looks fun!

@north6: I learned that if a game doesn't look like Fortnite or Borderlands, attempts relatively realistic visual fidelity and is based on real world settings it will be critiqued within an inch of its life and the act of doing so will be couched as virtuous. I can appreciate the full spectrum of voices that can talk about the industry and the art with authority. I also agree that a work can be fully valued the more we analyze it. But I roll my eyes a little when some say they uplift the medium they critique by tearing it down with no regard to the work's intention.

I'm not talking about the GB crew BTW. I don't think anyone here has ever made the claim.

Thanks, read some of the previous page and was confused.

Game looks pretty, but if every scene is super dramatic fields of flowers and cherry blossoms and conveniently timed lighting strikes I could see how that stops being interesting after some time. It's crazy that Japan was really like that back then.

I'm about 5 hours into this game

I'm enjoying it somewhat, engaged enough to keep playing. I will say though that this game does look really good in areas and combat takes time to get use to and a few upgrades to really flow well

The Open world design is quite simple though and a little bit outdated in terms of its design and structure.

Its just early impression but i can see why some of the lower scores exist. Its not not at the level of other top tier open world games.

I really enjoy the combat in this game, it's quick and decisive. It's just about the only thing I miss from older Assassin's Creed where you'll just take someone out immediately if your timing is right.

I put about one five-hour sitting into it last night into the morning. I like it. The biggest issue so far comes down to the 1800p resolution as it can look kind of blurry, and some of the environmental detail off into the distance isn't great. Also, as good as the sound design is as well, some sound effect qualities are surprisingly low, like ocean water. There are other issues, like lip sync (I am playing in Japanese) that I, to my surprise, find negligible. The story is somewhat simple, but I find it intriguing nonetheless and well-written.

I like the characters and Jin's struggle from being a samurai, but having to change his tactics into a more ninja-like way is cool. It's also supported by its gameplay which is always good. It does do what open-world games generally do, but I'm finding it to be different enough and arguably done better that I don't feel bothered by it. The combat is a lot of fun too. This is one of the most colorful games I've seen in recent memory, and the lighting is really good. It almost reminds me of Breath of the Wild.

@ntm: 1800p is blurry?

@csl316: Probably not the resolution itself, just how it's implemented. Whatever the case may be, yes it's somewhat blurry. I was wondering if I had the wrong setting be it in-game or on my system, but that's not the case. Also, as colorful as the game is, and I do like it, I do think that adds to the blurriness. I don't know what it is, but when I was playing games like Spider-Man and Shadow of the Colossus on base PS4 on my 4k screen, those games were kind of blurry too and I chalked that up to not just the resolution, but the HDR. I can't pinpoint what it is, but it's almost like oversaturation mixed with a lower than 4k resolution that makes it blurry. I'd be very interested to see this game on PS4, maybe with 4k at 60fps? I don't know if that's possible.

I am playing again. It's probably something many will do anyways, but there are those out there I'm sure, like myself, that like to do the side stuff first before moving onto the mainline quests. I recommend doing the first two main quests that unlock stealth and the use of bow and arrow. This is a game that starts fun and challenging (playing on hard) and gets slightly easier but more fun as you get more upgrades and equipment. Also, in the accessibility options, don't turn on the 'toggle button holds' as it's not the same as it is in most games.

@ntm: Still sounds like its the upscaling...I cant immagine ghost of tsushima running natively at 1800p, its probably stilll internaly upscaling with some reconstruction artifacting like most ps4pro games.....but maybe the hdr is bad too haha I know practically nothing about hdr. I havent played the game or watched the digital foundry analysis yet either so.... :P

@efesell: What, you don't want to climb and parry and climb some more?

Kidding aside I am quite liking this game so far, although I am only like 4 hours in.

@sethmode: I will parry forever it's one of my favorite mechanics.

This games got a whole skill tree associated with it so it's already on my good side.

Got to have a little extended play session tonight after only doing the intro last night. Got the bow, opened up some story beats...and immediately drifted into side story territory because who ever advances the plot until there's no other choice? Some random thoughts:

• I love how the world leans into what you want to do. It's such a small detail, but I've always A) never really been bothered by Rockstar-type minimap reliance and B) found other alternatives, like on-screen GPS lines, ultimately corny and uninspired. This reminds me of The Getaway's turning signals, just a really cool (if, lore-wise, corny) way of guiding the player without occupying screenspace.

• The combat is lovely. I'm definitely catching myself in mash mode more than I'd like, and I think the control scheme is a little unintuitive overall (I'm often accidentally throwing kunai when I'm just out in the open world for example) but I think once my shift tomorrow is over and I have three full days to push ahead on this game I'll sync up with it. The sword hits thud like God of War attacks but they have consequence like Bushido Blade once stamina is broken.

• I do hate archers quite a lot already, though. They're all over the place and they seem designed solely to be annoying. Primarily because arrows hurt, a lot. There's an early side quest consisting solely of archers that's a real pain.

• This game feels...not very inspired in its construction. I'm playing with Japanese language, but not necessarily because it's "authentic". As I read the dialogue, and during a few interstitial cutscenes, I feel like something got cut but the game wasn't reworked around that change, or alternatively the narrative of any given quest was an afterthought to the quest itself. The Japanese voice acting helps remove me from the dialogue and pretend it's a bad translation rather than the primary source material.

• In some ways it feels very PS2-era Grand Theft Auto in its open world design also, I feel totally aimless and like I'm just going towards stuff because it's close (also, primarily following healing winds and chasing after whatever comes up in the in-between). This isn't a complaint, by the way - it's sort of what I want right now. But it definitely has an amateurish quality - if Horizon is the most direct comparison to make, that game felt more specific, for lack of a better word.

• As a small example, an early quest line takes you to a village to meet some vendors and whatnot, but by that point I'd found three villages and already toyed with upgrading a little. It's hard to tell if the game expected that or not; obviously, Jin knows these lands so these places aren't unknowns to him, but I'm just a little interested whether the designers felt the player should know them already. Coming off The Last of Us 2, in which every step felt like it was intentionally built around the player falling more and more into the mentality of the avatar, I feel really separate from Jin and his journey so far.

• I suppose "authentic samurai type beat" is what it is at this point so it's hard to screw up, but Ilan Eshkeri and Shigeru Umebayashi nailed it. I can't pinpoint what movie I think of whenever that rushing rise to the battle music kicks in during faceoffs (or whatever) but man does it release the dopamine.

• I find the concept of this game's concept of "money" simply being labeled "supplies" weirdly endearing. Especially because I think I've heard "mon" (Japanese currency of the time) mentioned once or twice in passing.

• This game's version of "towers" is real silly. For a team that's been a pioneer of terrain traversal for over a decade now, it's pretty wild that they closed this generation out with the mechanical equivalent of "fuck it, let's get you where you want to go." I can't see how they'd move past this with future shrines, but the one I completed so far had a real auto-complete sort of feel to it. Nice of them to let you just skip back to the base of the summit, I guess.

@efesell: I suppose I did forget for a moment how much you loved Sekiro lol

Archers are weird and extremely dangerous but only for a couple hours until you learn deflect arrows and then they’re so trivial as to make you wonder why they even bother.

@someoneproud: @efesell: Famitsu also gave Death Stranding a perfect score. take that fact however you want to :)

It's fucking WELL HARD. I just unlocked the abil to pick either the two missions from the main story or Yuna, and a simple peasant Mongol can butcher me.

I look forward to getting good at the parry system, cause atm, Jesus H is it hard

I've been pretty disappointed by this game, and I'm a fair way in (not anywhere near the halfway point yet, but deep enough that I think I understand the various loops.)

It's not a terrible game, but I was really looking forward to it and I think it's pretty "meh." Visually it has a lot of style, but not a lot of variety, which means I started finding the visuals boring after awhile.

Gameplay wise it's functional but not fantastic. The climbing mechanics are pretty awful and the stealth is annoying and mediocre. The combat is okay after you get some upgrades and have more options during a given fight, but nothing special, and there's a surprising lack of it. You can spend minutes just riding your horse through the huge open world and not running into anything interesting to do, and after you upgrade a bit a lot of the random encounters become super trivial.

The progression system has a lot of useful stuff in it but nothing all that interesting.

The open world is pretty empty in every way. Not a lot going on, not a lot of variety in what you find etc...

You find fox dens that lead you to shrines for a certain type of upgrades and while some of them lead you through enemy encounters or some traversal stuff, a lot are just chasing after a fox (who waits around for you so it's not challenging) to go to another location and get a collectible. There's like 49 of those in the game. A lot of the other open world activities are equally mindless. There are resources to gather like in every other game from the last 10 years. I am so sick of running past some bamboo and hitting R2 to collect.

The story is...pretty bad. It's not terrible, but it's boring, predictable, the main character is the biggest stiff I can remember in gaming and so much of the writing is just the same pablum about honor and clans. It honestly feels like it was written by a 14-year-old who just got really into samurai cinema and wants to mash all the cliches from that together. I have zero investment and I'm rolling my eyes a lot.

All the peasants are super-deferential and I'm kind of uncomfortable with the game's take on feudalism which seems to be that...it's good actually.

Functional mechanics, good graphics, and reasonably engaging combat at times make it like a 7/10 for me so far but honestly I could see it dipping to a 6/10 or 6.5/10. It's just kind of boring. Lots of running through a big empty world doing boring tasks for boring people. Ironically it makes me appreciate The Last of Us Part II a lot more. At least that game, for all its issues, was engaging moment to moment.

Honestly I think this combat will carry me through even if the open world activities wear a little thin. I find myself not even bothering with the stealth at all, it's hard to when there's a ever present "HEY COME FIGHT THIS" button on the screen.

@bigsocrates: I'm 100% with you on how this game seems to be really into "actually, class systems are good and the Samurai are great." but I do like that you are using supplies to pay for things instead of money, because 1. you are a Samurai and take what you want and 2. Times are desperate and money doesn't keep you alive.

I feel like there would be less people being annoyed with the historical inaccuracies if the game didn't go IT IS 1274 AD! THIS IS A THING THAT HAPPENED. Most samurai films DO NOT give a year for that reason, or try and use real locations. GTA and Yakuza both use NOT REAL cities so that not being accurate isn't immersion breaking. Using Real stuff is a good way to make problems. Like Black Ops 1 had songs and guns in it that did not exist at the time.

I do actually enjoy how the world is kind of empty, but the movement speed is fast enough that you move through the landscape fast enough to get from interesting thing to interesting thing without the world feeling hilariously packed like a lot of open world games. Having a couple hundred yards of NOTHING is nice.

Combat is a bit better than Assassins Creed/Batman combat as the sword can really mess dudes up and you can guard break to do damage/flank hits. It feels like the enemies are playing Dark Souls while you are playing a character action game, and thus are much more powerful.. they still do a lot of damage with hits, which makes combat intense, even though you can block a ton of things and the i-frames on the dodges are hilariously long.

My recurring gripe with the history angle is that you use a Katana because of course you do its a samurai game you wouldn't be allowed to not have one for so silly a reason as they weren't really being made yet.

However it would have been a great chance to use a Tachi instead which is period appropriate and also a really dope sword.

I'm left wondering why people expected more from a Sucker Punch game. It's as if people only saw the first trailer and then built up this entire fantasy about what the game was gonna be, without even noticing who was making it. Not to say Sucker Punch is a terrible developer or anything, but they've stuck fairly close to their niche of B rated open world games for over a decade now.

@ares42: It is certainly interesting from a supposed AAA perspective. Not that it isn't a AAA game, but I sort of always expected it to be a bit...I dunno, beat up around the edges just like their other games. And I love it, myself. It's just been odd to see the backlash to people that say it is fine?

@aktane: I've mentioned Famitsu precisely once in a throwaway comment, making no mention of them being reliable, several others since have mentioned that they maybe aren't the most respected publication.

As far as I'm concerned my part in that conversation was done days ago, I just don't care whether they are/aren't a good publication tbh and it was never really important to my original point anyway.

I've been playing the game incessantly and I'm enjoying it a whole lot. The combat feels great and even if it gets a little easy a little too quickly, it's still immensely satisfying to dismantle massive groups of enemies with precision. It's also a friggin' gorgeous world that I can't see myself getting tired of looking at tbh, it's the only game that's made me want to take screenshots of it and that photo-mode is pretty great.

The story and side-stories have been interesting enough to keep me engaged and the upgrades have been meaningful and plentiful. I'm really liking the characters and their respective "tales" so far and most of the other side content have been quick 1/2min excursions and had worthwhile rewards so they haven't bothered me at all, I generally just do that stuff if it's on the way to the next mission.

I've been belligerently ignoring the stealth aspects so far and I love challenging everyone to fights regardless of what the mission expects. I've had several instances of this sort of scenario and it makes me way happier than it should:

Ally: "Jin, we need to be careful. We should sneak in ar-"

Jin: "SEND OUT YOUR BEST WARRIOR!!!"

Enemy: *sends out an archer*

Wonderful game.

I think if you played a lot of Sekiro just go ahead and preemptively bump this up to Hard because normal mode parry windows cracks this game wide open.

@ares42: Hey hey come on now! I don’t think I’d classify inFamous as B tier games. Second Son was for a very long time one of the most polished and well playing game to come out for the new generation that also succeeded in showing the evolutionary leap from PS3 to PS4.

If anything I would expect a little more from Sucker Punch specifically because their previous games were so much more creative than your average open world hack n slash. Cities are inherently more diverse and interesting than sprawling forests and super powers lend themselves to a wider permutation of skills than grounded sword arts. Granted that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and all that but objectively speaking modern day super hero stuff gives you more avenues for creativity than a strictly realistic period piece, even if it is a movie stylized version of history.

Lastly I think the main reason people had high expectations, and this has been mentioned before, is that those early trailers sure made this game seem like it’s going to be...I dunno...more? Bigger? I can’t even find the right word and I’m desperately trying to not say “epic” but for me personally I got this promise of grandeur. It’s that weird effect of adversely skewing perceived expectations when you think something is going to be amazing and it turns out to be good but now that good is not “good enough.”

It's good, just like the rest of Sucker Punch's lineup. I'm confused as to why this was hyped up so much. Have people not been paying attention to Sucker Punch's work? The Infamous games are not mind blowing experiences, their good/great games that are fun to play, and not much more. I love all of them, but nothing about what this studio has made for the past 11 years gave me the impression that Tsushima was going to blow the house down.

I'm enjoying it about as much as I've enjoyed Infamous 2 & Second Son, and that's exactly what I was expecting and wanted. The fact that it's drop dead gorgeous is impressive enough for me.

HEY NOW! Sucker Punch may create some mostly bland if not kind of annoying characters and dress them up in fairly typical morality plays about good and evil, but the inFamous series had super compelling gameplay. I played the first one like once a year (I mostly played sports games in the PS3 era) and 100% completed it every time. Second Son was also my first and for a long time only platinum. They're great at making games that just push you around the world in really engaging ways, even if moment to moment you're doing nothing new their approaches to combat have always been some of the most fun in the business.

Tsushima might be lacking the spectacle of that series but it more than makes up for it, IMO, with the brutality and swiftness of the swordplay...plus, with just the kunai and the sticky bombs, I can already tell that with another couple of upgrades, and upgrades on upgrades, I'm going to feel very much like a superhero. All Jin's gonna be missing is wheelies in his boots to go super zoom zoom.

Also, I think the sound design in this game is truly phenomenal the more I play of it, it's a real headphone banger. The Kurosawa mode rightly gets a little flack for not going far enough in terms of color correction and shot composition, but the subtle effects applied to the sound mix are pretty damn cute.

One of the few positive comments about this game during that Besties podcast episode I mentioned earlier had me nodding my head vigorously in agreement: so many games this generation have given players options to evade combat or meticulously pick through combat arenas like an organic wine vintner, but this is one of the only games I can think of that has a FIGHT ME!!!button. It feels so good to roll up on a crew and cut them in half in two seconds. The very first skill upgrade I purchased was the one that made it so after you kill the challenge enemy, another immediately sprints at you and you take them out just as quickly. So good.

@humanity: @nodima: I'm by no means saying Tsushima (or an of the Infamous games) is bad, but they're all the stuck in the same mid to late-2000 open world game design. They're fun for what they are, but even the first game struggled to distinguish itself from its direct competitor, Prototype.

The whole thing around this game just sorta makes me think about the good old "pirates vs ninjas" question. I am a pirate guy, and I certainly have fallen in the trap many times of seeing a pirate game and thinking it's gonna be awesome because it's a pirate game. When I see the reaction to Tsushima it just seems like a bunch of ninja people who have fallen in the same exact trap.

@ares42: Clearly I'm a samurai person.

LOL, anyway, I know plenty of people have less than stellar opinions about inFamous; personally, I think 2 is a bit of a flop (very fun, but a much less cohesive map and a horrible payoff to 1's cliffhanger) bookended by two super fun games. Compared to Prototype, which to me was just a "throw video game design in a blender and see what happens," inFamous games were very thoughtful and coordinated in their approach to - what was not at the time - dated game design.

Once Tsushima started opening up, I was immediately reminded of how Sucker Punch can just compel me to do whatever they put in front of me, even if it's as bland as standing in front of a wall and angling the Sixaxis around somewhat aimlessly until some goofy graffiti gets finished. Their games just make me a base level of happy that few games do; could very well have something to do with not enjoying Ubisoft games generally and so not having the same open world fatigue a lot of people might bring to a game as old school open world as this one, but it's how I'm feeling nonetheless.

That said, why can I shoot the deer if I can't collect their pelts? C'mon, Sucker Punch! It's 2020! Give me pelts!

I'm only a few hours in right now, but so far:

Things I Like

• The map screen isn't filled with garbage. Sure, there are ?s around, but the map isn't an incomprehensible mess of them.

• Locations having a defined purpose. Unlike AssCreed, where the every single location regardless of type is just another generic way of giving you experience points, I like that set types of locations give you set benefits in this one.

• Stand-offs. So good. I'm honestly surprised that it hasn't gotten old yet.

Things I Don't Like

• The stealth isn't great, particularly at the beginning of the game. While it has gotten quite a bit better after some upgrades, I feel like it isn't as useful or as fun as going in guns blazing. I think some of that has to do with that initially, the assassinations are so slow and make so much noise that you are almost always going to start a fight. And if a fight is going to start anyway, I'd rather use a standoff and get rid of 3 guys right at the start.

• The combat camera is sort of bad. I'm not fond of how when you parry, it tends to move the enemy slightly behind or to the side of you but not swing the camera around to track them at the same time. I've had problems with the soft-lock as a result - I try to follow-up a parry with an attack, but the camera is pointed at something else, so it goes after a different enemy.

• The soft-lock flat out needs work. The game is clearly wanting you to use stances for different enemy types, but often the enemies bunch up and the game isn't very good at picking out the one I want to attack. I've definitely had instances of swapping to water stance to get rid of a shield dude only to have the game decide to go after the spear-guy next to him.

You really have to invest quite a bit into the stealth before it's worthwhile at all and if there weren't "don't raise the alarm" missions sprinkled here and there I probably wouldn't bother since kicking down the door shouting at everyone is way more effective.

At the bare minimum it's pretty easy to max out the dagger upgrades and that makes all the stealth kills basically instant.

Personally I felt Second Son was a big step down from 2 when it came to gameplay. I adored the ice powers in 2 and could spend hours just Messing about in the city, while I couldn't wait for SS to be over. Hearing about all the identical side quests and strongholds in GoT is enough for me to wait for a big sale. I have zero tolerance for open world repetition these days.

My memory of inFamous 2 is shrouded in a lot of water that made the city traversal less freeform than the other two games, as well as some late game enemies that were just a little too kitchen sink for my liking? I enjoyed it, but I only played it once whereas the other two got a Mass Effect style good/bad double feature (and the first I did both runs twice since it was still a novelty for me at the time).

Got a little more time in with the game this morning, I've now got a good amount of Kashine and Hiyoshi cleared out and three of the Ghost weapons unlocked plus some other techs and I'm beginning to feel pretty unstoppable on Normal...but I kind of like that. It feels appropriate since I'm running around in huge samurai armor mostly fighting goons in rags, but I loved the inFamous games on their hardest difficulties so I might wind up ramping things up after I work this brunch shift and can really dig in.

I also tried out the Kurosawa mode for some extended time and I think it gets a bit of a bad rap. All that white in HDR is a bit of an eye strain situation but I also sit a Jeff-like distance from my TV which likely doesn't help, but otherwise I think it's actually pretty damn effective at conveying a totally different mood. I used it during the suicide forest mission, then on my way to and during a raid on a shipping / boat yard, both at night. I turned it off after the mission was over and found the colored look a little... muted? by comparison.

I can see myself switching between the two pretty regularly. Like I said before, my super brief touch of it before already had me really impressed with the audio compression and it turns out I find the overall tone pretty striking, it does a great job of emphasizing all the movement going on in the environment...though on the negative side, it does make significant items in the environment a little more obscure since it's blocking out a lot of the signals game designers use to lead players around these open world environments.

Okay the second zone is a little less willing to let me kick down the front door on these bigger camps. Everyone's getting fancy fighting game specials and explosives.

Might just be reiterating myself a bit here but:

The VO sync really shouldn't bug anybody because it's not especially great looking with English either, and the Japanese voice acting has a touch of...life to it that's missing from the dry English takes (I'm watching a longplay alongside my own and the English stuff is just so maudlin). Like, there are scenes where Jin seems to have a sense of humor which is wild compared to his English interpretation, and the Khan is pretty much Japanese Emperor Palpatine.

I still can't decide which display mode I prefer. The audio is even more engaging with the compression, but the game is clearly designed around color (see: quests focused on following specific colors of flower) and it's easy to miss things in quests. But I think the Kurosawa look just...pops in a really special way.

I'm at a point where I'm thinking of kicking things up to Hard (I loved previous Sucker Punch games on Hard) but I'm also really enjoying this idea that Jin is an utter murder machine mowing down Mongols.

A thought I came across somewhere that's ringing true as I run out of small quests and focus back on the three Tales questlines is they should've made a game more inspired by Yojimbo/Sanjuro than this more traditional video game plot. I think this game would've totally worked if it were just a series of short stories about a wandering ronin and it might've felt a little more consistent in tone.

My bigger concern with Kurosawa mode is that moves you can block/parry/dodge are all color coded.

I guess I would have learned them all eventually just by taking unblockables to the face if I tried to parry instead but this does not seem ideal.

I had this exact moment last night as I was finishing up. I think I'm going to switch over to Japanese because I find the weird lip sync in general distracting (the faces are distractingly last gen enough sometimes without being pulled in to looking at their weird lips). I haven't listened to any of the Japanese VO yet, but it has to be more inspired than the English.

That's definitely a fair point. I didn't have any interest in the dodge roll that opens the Evasion tree so I pretty quickly gained the ability to deflect all but the most un-evadable(!) attacks which are pretty well telegraphed (shield bashes and brute overhead strikes) so it hasn't been a huge issue, though it is notable. Armor and charms eventually can be combined in such a way that you can take some pretty rough hits but almost immediately recover your HP and/or Resolve also so if you take a hit...it's kind of whatever.

Maybe it's just my weird sense of humor, but I laugh everytime a character walks out of a sliding door before me and slams it right into my face. I get why it is there, but it's still so silly.

@nodima: The ronin are what make it a problem I think. Many sword moves that are also unblockable. A lot of these can take you below half health if you take it on Hard.

Perfect dodge is very strong, I avoided it too long as well.

I’m only about 2 hours in, but I’m having fun. It’s nothing crazy or innovative, but I just like these kind of games.

I'm almost 20 hours in and still very entertained. Still haven't left the first island. As Tamoor said on the Bombcast, it's a great game for playing in short bursts and setting different goals for yourself. It's so beautiful that I end up spending a non-insignificant amount of time just staring at the landscapes.

I'm playing on Hard and am really enjoying the combat. I feel like stance changing and effectively using your tools is key to turning overwhelming odds into a stylish battle. I really like how seamless you can switch between stealth and open combat. This is a game that benefits and is designed around a more simplistic enemy AI.

Also the skill trees are great. Varied with lots of options. Pretty much everything you get can be upgraded. I haven't touched the stance or even basic combat trees that much but when I get in there it really changes how I deal with different enemies.

Been playing with Japanese on and it just feels right for me. I have no problems reading subtitles and the lip syncing issues faded into the background pretty quickly.

I do wish there were loadouts. The cosmetics you get really add to the game and, at this point, I have an armour set for sneaking, combat, and exploring. I wish they were able to tie your armour, look, and even charms together into loadouts.

Oh man. I just did the end of Act I last night and I'm in luck I had the color turned on at the time.

I'm glad they started throwing some new wrinkles into the combat because I was starting to get worried it was just gonna be a smoke fest (I've already got a fully upgraded sword, stone stance and all the ghost weapons) going forward. NOPE!

@nodima: one of my few problems with the game was that it was too easy to get your sword and a couple sets of armor fully upgraded quite early id you were doing a lot of the side content. Though I was glad that they added new wrinkles in the combat throughout the game to keep things fresh

I find they upgrade just enough to throw a wrench into things the first time you get to a new zone but honestly they really can't keep up with you if you make full use of your tools.

Your ghost weapons are honestly broken as all hell, there is no enemy in the game that can effectively counter them. I find myself not wanting to use them all that much because of it.

I think I'm finding it a little too hard?

When I play on normal, I get absolutely cut in two when fighting any sized group of enemies. Like, it's really hard. I guess I can't quite work out the parry, and at least on my controller, the idea of "tapping triangle to break their block" never ever works.

I turned it down to easy and it's...too easy. Like, not even fun easy.

It's upsetting, cause I really adore the world and characters, but the gameplay, for me personaly, is all over