Who saw this coming?!

https://blog.playstation.com/2020/08/17/ghost-of-tsushima-legends-coming-to-ps4-fall-2020/?ref-cat=249748

This sounds like a wild swing for this game to take and I'm...quite curious. Seems like it'll be more focused on Japanese folklore and myths/demons than the base game, and it'll come with several modes depending on how many players are in your party, from story-based one-off missions to a full Raid coming a bit later than the release.

I loved the gameplay of Tsushima personally, but I'm kind of struggling to picture how that translates to a Game as Service which is how sentences like "With four players, you’ll be able to take on wave-based Survival missions, fighting groups of the toughest enemies Tsushima has to offer, Including new Oni enemies with supernatural abilities."

I just uninstalled the game after collecting one of my rare Platinum trophies last week, but I'll probably give this thing a shot whenever it launches.

It has a good base of combat mechanics, its Sekiro Lite, parry sword attack combo could be expanded more and they could put pressure on you with a horde mode with co-op. Sounds like a good idea.

It's great that it's free but I dont see myself resubbing PS+ for it.

I wasnt a huge fan of the combat in this game, it felt kind of sloppy compared to Nioh & Sekiro.
(I think Sekiro is also getting a free update quite soon too)

I was pretty fucking done with this game when I hit credits, so I don’t see anything really pulling me back in. But, this sounds interesting for the people who are into this sort of thing. I’d watch a GB stream of it.

It's an interesting choice and I'll check it out. It was already the GOTY so far. I hope they add new game plus soon too.

More details came out today, including some info on the new Single Player content that it comes with.

I personally find this frustrating as I bought it day one and have already platinum'd it. Now people who waited 4 months get a more fully featured version of the game? That really bums me out; it is hard to see myself going back to it when I've done everything already (except the new content).

@colinstros55: You still get the same content as they do, at least this isn't a Control situation where I played that game at launch and now the base game plus both DLC packs are $20 cheaper than the base game was at time of release. Now thats a crazy price change.

@colinstros55: Isn't the main new addition on the singleplayer side a New Game Plus mode?

That seems designed...precisely for someone like you who has beaten the game and platinumed it. So there's more to do now. It doesn't seem well targeted to people buying it for the first time.

A ton of games add New Game Plus modes a few months after launch for just this reason. To give players who have done everything a reason to return. And in this case it seems like they're adding actual stuff to the second playthrough (new charms and a new horse and stuff). I also platinumed the game and will not be going back for New Game Plus, but it's not like I would have wanted to immediately after finishing it the first time!

@colinstros55: The only real addition is a New Game+ mode which has more features for players like you who have already completed the game. Apart from that, there’s a multiplayer feature now. This update is also free, so I’m not sure I understand why you’re bummed out by it.

Adding loadouts is a huge quality of life feature, but they're also adding additional NG+ trophies to incentivize playing again.

Personally, there's way too much game in there for me to want to go back any time soon unless I can completely ignore all the side activities on NG+ or better yet, they're already marked completed on the map and all the birds are gone!

Well, this came out over the weekend and I haven't seen much press coverage of it other than a Kotaku contributor with the succinct headline "I Am Going to Play the Shit Out of Legends". The subreddit for the game appears over the moon about it as well. Personally, I haven't played it yet beyond the tutorial as my younger sister also enjoyed the game quite a bit this summer and we'd like to at least do the story missions together but she's been hammered with schoolwork.so we haven't had a chance to get after it yet.

Anybody here have thoughts? I remember the GB community as a whole being lukewarm to basically pleased with this game so I wouldn't be surprised if it's already uninstalled from most PS4s here but I'd always trust the opinions of more neutral observers than, well, the users of a subreddit dedicated to the game.

@nodima: So I never played the single player, planned on picking it up eventually but I had other games to play. Three folks I regularly play other games with all had it though, and were wanting to dive into this, so I got it. The multiplayer is actually my first experience with Ghost of Tsushima at all, so I think I might count as a neutral observer.

It's fantastic, amazing that it's a free expansion. It took me some time to figure out the combat since I had no singleplayer experience, but once I did, it's really clicked with me. It's a very fun horde mode that really does value teamwork a lot, and the progression system is fairly generous and meaningful.

The co-op story missions are cool as well. It's got some really creepy imagery in there, very appropriate for the season. I'm not too deep into those though, since I've mostly been doing horde mode.

The group I play with had been bouncing around between some 4 player co-op games like this. WWZ and Vermintide most of all, and while Ghost of Tsushima isn't exactly like those, it's a similar enough kind of experience, and all of us greatly prefer Tsushima over the others. The progression system is the biggest thing. You can grind out levels/gear in Tsushima of course, but playing normally the progression still feels rewarding, whereas gaining levels/gear in Vermitide/WWZ is such a chore that playing normally for fun feels completely unrewarding. I can't stress enough how good the character/loot progression feels compared to most other games.

Right now it's a pretty great horde mode with some really neat (but short) story missions. If they nail the raid that's due out a bit later, this completely free expansion might be the best co-op game on PS4. They really could have charged money for this and it would have been worth it.

Well my sister still hasn't taken me up on playing so I decided to just do some story missions with matchmaking. Seems like the game has been pretty popular, over 2 million players have logged in in the first week and the matchmaking is still pretty much instant for the bronze level of the first story missions which is a good sign.

...That being said, as somebody that beat* this game on Lethal, I'm finding this pretty damn hard. Between the super dark aesthetic, having not played the game for several months, having to silently communicate with another person who likely hasn't played in months or, like @brackstoneat all, juggle all the elemental affinities, having just a single sword stance to start, get used to having several diminished ghost weapons and not having a heal tied to your spirit balls (I forget the, er, technical term) Legends feels like an entirely new game in ways I didn't expect at all.

I'm not exactly surprised considering the base game had a pretty strong roller coaster the combat would go on so Sucker Punch set the tone there, but the extra layers they've thrown on top of the combat and the design around the expectation of at least one other player character in the encounter does seem to have emboldened them to really kick your ass.

Really enjoying this free co-op mode. Got my Samurai and Hunter swole as fuck. Now I'm waiting for my bro to gear up so we can take on those nightmare story missions. I don't think I'll do the raid unless the GB community puts something together, I did my time in Destiny 2. But overall, I am truly impressed with this. It's such a joy to play this game, not run into weird technical glitches, and just unlock new looks by completing tasks in the game. At no point has the game hit me up for cash or anything like that.

I played a couple rounds of the horde mode and its pretty neat. Like all horde modes I always feel like I'm kinda done with a round a few waves sooner than they'd like but that's a bit of my own attention span getting in the way.

I tend to default a lot to running in and parry killing everything I can just like in the main game so I need to work on actually making better use of the classes themselves but I'm having a pretty good time with it so far.

Saving the co-op missions for when a friend picks up the game eventually but I dipped my toe in one of the easy ones solo and really dig the atmosphere that's going on.