Something I think is really cool about stealth in Ghost is how it evolves as you become the Ghost of Tsushima. You start scrappy and under equipped, and will make mistakes and be forced into fights as Jin's... frankly bad stealth kills get you spotted from how long he takes. Then you get your bow, and upgrade the dagger to be faster, and you get a more traditional stealth experience of taking out lone guards and outliers to create safe paths into camps. Then you get the Ghost armor, and suddenly you get another option. The Terror mechanic effectively recommends that you make a spectacle of your kills. You want massive groups to witness their comrades suddenly start vomiting blood and you go from waiting to kill commanders last to making a huge show of cutting their heads off to make grown Mongol soldiers pee themselves in fear. And if your spotted? Well Ghost stance and perfect parries makes it so even if you get spotted you get another chance to sow fear. It's really fun to go into a Mongol camp and not even have to kill half the enemies simply because your mere presence was enough to make them leave. It feels like the next logical evolution of the Batman Arkham trick of enemies getting more scared as you pick off bad guys.
Funny thing is, early AC games did have the fear mechanics in combat, where if you kill tough enemies (or a lot of weak ones) without taking much damage, and preferably with combo-kills, then the rest will run in fear or beg to be spared. It's still a mystery why they decided to abandon that fairly unique idea in favor of damage sponges.
@@bloodymaresI really feel ubisoft thinks of itself as a software company rather than a movie/TV series production house, which while technically correct, really hurts the games
It would be great if they implemented that in a future Batman game. For example in a Bank Robbery sequence, as Batman takes down enough armed thugs, the rest of the guys drop their guns and loot and run out of the bank screaming etc.
As a testament to the graphics and overall look of the game, I’ll never forget hanging out with my brother in his room when our mom came in during a cutscene and asked “Oh, what movie is this?”
its also the fact that its not really the assets or anything thats super impressive, we`ve seen better grass and trees and lighting in other games, but the art direction and overall cohesion of the game is top tier
I actually really liked that the stealth was narratively discouraged, but mechanically encouraged. Tsushima's one of the only games where it felt equally viable to both cut and run AND hold your ground, or - better yet - blend those two things, giving a guerilla style of ambush, skirmish and fade. If I'm caught, then narratively I'm encouraged to draw my sword, so it doesn't feel at odds with the game, and depending on how many people are around and how many tricks I've still got up my sleeve, might be doable. If I need to break, the Mongols and maps are designed in such a way I can loop around to get some kills, get some health back, and pick them apart as they search for me. A lot of stealth games with combat elements either make the combat WAY too easy (AC Brotherhood) or the combat basically non-viable. Tsushima struck that balance better than most games, and neither approach felt at odds with the character or tone.
I don't really think Tsushima did actually strike that balance (except in one scenario). That's part of the reason I think many people complained about the narrative killing their immersion when it acts as if the player used the stealth tools all along. Mechanically stealth and the ghost tools are much more boring than straight up fighting, most of the stealth tools are just instakill or quick damage and most players are gonna enjoy using blade techniques more than the tools. The only time Tsushima actually struct the balance was when they released the lethal difficulty because the margin of error to die in a sword fight is much bigger and players will die more frequently. Which pushes them to go through the same thought process Jin had to go through where they consider the ghost tools they actively avoided before. Now the narrative and mechanics are working together by mechanically pushing the player through the same arc the narrative is pushing Jin through. But I don't believe for a second this was intentional given it came as a by product of an additional difficulty released after the game came out, which is a shame because I know some people that would have enjoyed the game much more if they didn't play it on release but played it when lethal came out.
thats the thing, i feel this game was made for lethal, is not hard in the fact that it inflate enemies hp and dmg, but it makes you use every tool at your disposal, creating a way more engaging experience than the normal game. I honestly can't even turn it off bc it is so smoothly placed into the game.@@theresnothinghere1745
I haven't seen the vid but the answer is yes. Best assassins creed I've ever played. I honestly don't want them to make a AC Japan anymore. I would love to be wrong but playing after this game I don't think unisoft can pull it off. Not better then it's done here.
@@SimonPhungChanneland it will, mirage is already showing signs of returning to the roots Ac Red holds a mesmerizing setting that's full of traditions, armor, weapons & gadgets that could be different than their western counterparts, and finally a potential Ezio cameo Im still unsure how they'll be pulling hexe off, but as far as Red goes It's gone be good
@@SamayGhosh But they also said that Red is going to follow the new formular of origins etc. Not to forget that even tho Mirage is showing improvements, its no way near what fans want. Its just the closet they got in years, that doesnt mean its good.
@@joelschittenhelm5571 logically speaking what's the point of returning to the roots if you're just gonna botch it all up the next year Even if red is inspired by origins it would be nowhere near it Have some faith Bois, you don't win a war in a day, Ubisoft is taking small steps in the right direction, let's just let them do it at their pace
I like how Jin’s tanto instakills even on the late game but it only upgrades how fast the kills are and how quiet they are to keep a progression system, unlike AC enemies surviving a Hidden Blade to the neck just because you are under leveled.
Bingo. The first few assasinations in Ghost looks really hard for Jin struggling with it but once he starts developing you can see how effortlessly it was for him to make assasinations. Same as wolf in the first genichiro fight not being able to onetime draw his katana and the second encounter in ashina beinf perfection. I love games with Japan settings. Wo lokg isn’t bad too
Games should have that be the standard rather than making enemies arbitrarily damage-spongey. Your character takes longer to insta kill the enemy and makes a lot of noise doing so. And as your character gets better (via level up skills/perks) then the quicker and quieter the instakills become. Apply this to guns, as well. A 5.56 round is a 5.56 round. Doesn't matter if it was fired by a level 1 mook or a level 100 boss. *It does the exact same amount of high damage.* _Only difference is that the boss is going to land his more of his shots a hell of a lot closer to his target._
@@musicandboxing7370it was on the 3rd encounter my guy. 1st encounter- slow even fumbles feeling the hilt 2nd encounter- firm grip faster draw but still kinda "heavy" on 3rd encounter in the field- quick confident draw
I actually dislike that. At first I didn't like how you couldn''t instakil in Odyssey, but after a while I quickly realized how much more fun it makes clearing the camps. I couldn't do "kill the closest and move to the next". I actually had to sneak around camp, first picking off weaker enemies. Then look for opportunities to one kill the strong ones with spartan kicks or dropping something on their heads) untill I finally had to fight the few strongest ones I couldn't stealth. It made the whole experience was more varied and challenging. Valhalla removed that. You can instakills everyone there, the strongest ones just require simple QTE minigame. And fans were asking for this, but I think it made clearning the camps so much worse.
Ghost is an excellent example of how you can skillfully use standard design/trops and still have a great game. I love Ghost and I regularly go back to it when i get that samurai itch.
Tropes are not to be feared, but mastered. Sucker Punch used all the tropes masterfully and integrated them seamlessly into a samurai-game we've all been thirsting for for decades. In a desert, even a drop of water is good, but they gave us a whole glass of water, and a refill. I loved how the sidequests for powering up your character showed that the samurai is more than a warrior. He's also a philosopher and a poet, a sophisticated warrior. Taking baths to relax and contemplate is a really good mechanic, writing haikus to focus your mind, practicing cutting technique, and it's all part of japanese culture. It fits perfectly within the narrative and setting.
What's important about Ghost of Tsushima is that while it played it safe, it also refined everything to a capital T. The gameplay is genuinely fun and feels satisfying to fight enemies, or sneak through them.
apart from the gameplay, I feel like what sets Ghost apart from many stuffy RPGs is the clean and user friendly UI, the colors, fonts and little animated graphics.. the simplified system of him only using his main weapons, and even with several abilities and upgrades there's no unnecessary clutter. they also made some wonderfully designed outfits and accessories. its all gives it this kind of crisp intentional look.
I LOVE how little they use HUD elements during gameplay. It makes you immerse yourselve in the game much much more and appreciate the world without a 4th wall breaking feature to guide the player. The wind guidance mechanic is such a simple thing but that does SO MUCH good for this game. I even turn off enemies healthbars (and I'm glad they allou it without turning off the whole HUD) as I feel that it makes so enemies aren't simple healthbars that you have to mow down. It makes me count how many hits I am to kill or stun each enemy and look at how damaged they are, which adds another whole layer of immersion. This game is a masterclass in executing industry-wide overused concepts in a intersesting and concise package. It sets out what it wants to be and accomplishes it without overcomplicating it or trying to reinvent the wheel.
You also arent stuck behind dumbass levels like the newer AC games. Its just that the game gives you the option to proceed however you want. If you wanna speed run the campaign without doing side quests or anything to level up proeprly or do any of the world events like chopping bambo for resolve slots and finding the fox statues etc. Or the legendary heroes of Tsushima Getting their armors and weapons
Is Ghost of Tsushima the perfect AC game? For reasons mentioned in the video, it is not. It offers no meaningful parkour in an urban environment and there's no social stealth (barring one late game disguise mechanic). But Ghost highlights an important issue with the franchise. When I'm playing any AC game from AC1 to Unity I am getting an experience that Ghost cannot fully offer me. But once the switch with Origins happened, this stopped being the case. And that's because AC stopped having the features that made it AC in the first place. The very features that made it so Ghost could not replace AC, stopped being in AC, and now Ghost is in direct competition with the recent games that miserably fall short when compared to Ghost. The Assassin identity is what kept the games safe, kept them niche. Once the features that made that identity were stripped away, that identity eroded, and the games merely offered an experience that you could get from other superior games. What is the point of playing Origins if there's practically no city parkour and social stealth? The combat? Ghost has a vastly better system. The controls? Ghost feels much more responsive. The exploration? Again, Ghost and RDR games provide a much less bloated and better paced world to explore. The story? It's laughably bad in all the RPG creeds. The things that made me take out the RDR disc from my console and put in AC1, AC2, brotherhood, Rev etc are now gone. It doesn't matter if the RPG creeds have a better combat system, better exploration, better graphics than the old games, because what they offer you can get elsewhere in significantly higher quality. Once AC lost its identity, it stopped having any edge over the rest of the open world games from triple A studios. You see, AC2 does not have Ghost's combat, graphics, exploration or even stealth. But what it does offer makes it so unique that Ghost can never replace it. Origins though? Why play that when I can play TW3, Ghost or RDR2? Literally no reason. That's why AC needs to find its roots again, because if it doesn't, there is nothing it can offer that other open world games do not. So no. Ghost is not the best AC game. Not even close. But since 2015, it may as well be the very best AC experience when you compare it to what AC has become.
If you really think that, then stop making videos about what Ubisoft should do with AC, you lost all credibility here. Making videos lamenting about how there isn't enough great parkour then saying this game thasn't even close to the parkour of any AC is the best ? Get the hell out. This game does pretty much nothing as good as any of the AC games, no matter if you prefer old school pure AC or new big Open world AC, Tsushima does the blandest mix of both world possible. Yes, i dislike hearing it because it's completely false on every level. The ammount of so called pure AC fans and channel, like you and Master assassin, that i see saying that this is the best AC games, makes me really really want Ubisoft to cut all ties with peopke like you and go full force and the RPG with superpowers like Odyssey, because that's what most people want actually, and those people at least are happy with it.
The biggest thing Ghost does is challenge its protagonists world views. Jins inner struggle makes Ghost shine especially in act one when you do dishonorable things and you hear jin mutter a little "sorry" or see a flash back of his uncle for a few seconds. The closes Assassin's Creed came to such a deep protagonist was Connor Kenway.
@@MrAjking808 I played ac games for the longest, after origins, ac fell off hard. no doubt ghost trashes pretty much every ac game besides 3, personally my favorite ac game.
@@MeggaMann_theBlueLionWell, Ubisoft used to be the leader in open world game design once. They invented/popularized a lot of open word staples like vantage point system (radio towers), enemy camps, hidden collectibles and points of interest. But instead of innovating these concepts like other open world games (for example Breath of the Wild and ToTK have all 4 of the above systems but they were a lot more interesting both thematically and gameplay-wise), Ubisoft just copy and paste the same systems they created from 10+ years ago into a new game. Once you played one Ubisoft game, you already played them all.
It doesn’t do anything groundbreaking but it pays homage to the Samurai genre, a true love letter. Add good historical narrative, excellent visuals, score, and mechanics. Sometimes the wheel doesn’t need reinvention.
Most Japanese Samurai films, especially the classics, place a hard emphasis on the indignity and dishonesty of the Samurai class, especially in their mistreatment of the lower class, and its aesthetic and structural contibutions to Japanese Imperialism. In contrast to the western world's obsession with the concept of "bushido" as a strict and unbreakable "code of chivalry" - another romanticized and largely ahistorical concept, that plays on a desire to see precepts as magical constraints that all but evaporate any tendency for systemic abuse by those in the best position to abuse it. Tsushima confronts only this concept, and even then only by contrasting it with ninjitsu as an ostensibly less dignified but potentially more practical alternative that can ensure the survival of more people. "People," in this context being mostly the peasants Samurai historically mistreated. Again, the appeal of ninjitsu in this particular framing, to the west, can be traced back to the romanticization of guerrila warfare tactics against stuffy British redcoats supposedly standing and fighting in single-file lines during the American Revolutionary War. So, despite being a foreign product, Tsushima is quite conservative and jingoistic from a Japanese perspective, in a way those films were not. The writers may have crafted a love letter to their favorite genre, unfortunately that doesn't mean they understood it.
IMO you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to be great, you just need to something well. This game does that, it doesn’t set out to do something super innovative. It set out to be a classic Samurai Film in Video Game format about a Samurai betraying his original values to defeat an unstoppable force. In this regard it did what it set out to do perfectly
@@Broomer52 I commented essentially the same. There isn't anything groundbreaking but there was enough done extremely well to hold my interest in the game exceptionally well. Similar to how I felt about The Witcher.
@@futurestorytellerYou pick up a manga by Hiroshi Hirata or the classic Lone Wolf and you see that there was a good reference for them to get the love letter right, there were provisional collectors who were hired mercenaries who hunted for a rich person warriors who signed a blood contract to be spared from death, this is genius and would be really good in a game both to build bounty hunting missions and to generate dramatic moments where you have to kill someone who doesn't have the money, refuses to pay, or has a very complicated plot to don't pay the provisional fee, I think that Ghost pays a lot of homage to the idealized Samurai, to have a better story, who knows, perhaps in a sequel Ghost will have to tarnish its references.
You should watch this guy's video about the 'illusion of "real" assassins creed' He does a great job of avoiding the easy simple arguments about old vs new AC most of the time. As a fan, I think you'll enjoy it a lot.
@@alexandruacatrinei1032Literally every AC game was an emotional linear story besides Origins, Odyssey & Valhalla.. what’re you actually yapping about right now?
Don't forget GOT has addictive engaging combat which lets the gamer live out the samurai/ninja power fantasy. I recently just got the director's cut on ps5 and I love the combat on lethal difficulty. I die A LOT but man is it rewarding when you pull it off.
Ghost is Tsushima was the first time in a long time i genuinely enjoyed an open world game, in large part because it looked and felt gorgeous. The only thing that would have made it better is if it actually mattered story wise if you did or did not use ghost techniques. You can finish the game without using any stealth quite easily, I really would have liked them do more with that choice.
I disagree. It's not a "choose your destiny" story. By the end of the game, Jin IS the Ghost. You just need to decide if he abandoned the Bushido and became a ninja with no honor and no respect for his history, but an invisible death bringer, or if he goes as a reluctant Ghost who knows that needs to evolve to survive, but knows that it eats his own soul bit by bit.
Phenomenal commentary. You hit a lot of points of why this game was so memorable for me. One thing you didn’t mention that I thought put the game over the top was the addition of “Lethal Mode” Typically, I don’t pick harder difficulties as usually enemies just become damage sponges and can kill you with any mistake, but Lethal mode essentially made both Jin and enemies glass cannons. I played the entire game on this mode and I felt it really forced me to engage with all the mechanics and carefully plan out any encounters. It was brutal at first as about 2 hits would result in death, but once I grew accustomed to the combat system, it became one of my all time favorites. It was supremely satisfying how quickly you could cut down enemies but also be mindful to not get hit yourself. I don’t know if any other game that has made it’s hard mode so fun. Anyway, I’m rambling a bit but great analysis!
The story isn't groundbreaking by any means, but that final mission is one of my favourite endings to a videogame. It's a very sensical choice that i could see anyone argue for one way or the other. Excellent game
There's no risk and no reward as far as I'm aware, I never felt any punishment beyond the insult of losing to AI, but that's nothing new to me. If you die, you lose nothing but the last few minutes of gameplay, which is probably the moment just before you made the choice that had your ass handed to you. And I don't know what the reward is, every action game has a sea of dead enemies in your wake, plenty of them have experience gain for skills and other unlocks, and Tsushima's combat just isn't as satisfying as it could and really should be. It doesn't even have the gore you'd expect from a samurai game, not much arterial spray or dismemberment (a little morbid perhaps, but you are swinging around a 5 foot razor, there should be some claret at the very least), nothing to convey the lethality and brutality of combat, or that emulates the weirdly comical element of old samurai films, it's just the same old counter based combat you get in old AC but with a rock/paper/scissors element and a samurai aesthetic. The standoff's are kinda cool, but not much to it. Maybe it's just me but people seem to constantly fellate this game and I just don't get it, it really isn't that good. It's solidly meh. It's like bad sex, it's better than nothing and worth a go, but you're never really going to arrive at the desired destination. But maybe I'm just getting increasingly jaded after 30 years of gaming and failing to see any real innovation over the last decade, the hobby has perhaps gone stale and it affects my view and experience. Maybe my reward circuits are fried after years of overstimulation, or maybe the game is just that dull. I don't have this issue with RDR2, a game that is purposefully slow and at times incredibly dull (it needs an animation skip because I've watched Arthur skin some poor animal so many times now that I'm probably an expert butcher.), yet I fucking love that game. Probably too much, so much that I notice areas where rockstar could put more attention such as the animation for drawing and holstering, especially the off-hand, but instead they devoted that time to horse testicles and idle animations. They have unusual priorities. But I digress, my point is that I don't mind dullness if it serves immersion, and Tsushima is dull without immersion. I think that's the issue, I feel detached because whilst Arthur feel heavy and connected to the world, Jin feels like he's secretly wearing hover shoes. Add sone weight to Jins actions and the combat, add some genuine risk and reward, and it'll be a lot better. I need a decent way of the samurai or Tenchu game cause Tsushima just fails to satisfy my desire for Japan based shenanigans. Sadly those series are dead.
@@djinnxx7050I agree with most of the combat points, it’s satisfying to hear the clang in my controller I guess but samurai combat in my opinion was perfected in Sekiro. Feel like the devs saw that and dumbed it down as much as possible
I really don't like HUDs but they're a necessary evil most of the time, so for me the best thing about the wind system is being able to play without one, it just makes the experience better for me.
A nice framework to approach GoT and just an answer to that continuous comparison that pops up since before its release. I really like the conclusion that those missed items in the AC franchise (Assassin institutionalized, deep parkour systems and emphasis on social stealth) are not present by design, but game stability and the backs to a immersive and cinematic narrative are unknows and unsaid factors that really resonated with the AC community. But what comes to my dumb mind is that one thing I would love to see carried from GoT to AC is that air assassinations could be initiated from a standing position and contextual press of a button, but also in the middle of a manual jump if the timing is right
I fuckin’ love GoT. Can’t say I have ever had such feels for AC. Put another way, GoT is the first single player game that made me want to be *flawless*
Ghost is like a mix of assassins creed, infamous, shadow of Mordor, and red dead 2. There is no way assassins creed shadows is gonna come close to this story or gameplay
@@tonytang4668 haha, then don’t ever bring up games like the last of shit part 2 into that conversation and don’t tell me what to talk about buddy boy. Ghost of Tsushima is literally THE ONLY GAME SO FAR IN EXISTENCE EVER, to reach the graphical fidelity of rdr2 and possibly better while still having intense and highly realistic fighting and traversal. Learn words learn game creation grow a brain
I guess I played the game quite differently. Every time I saw something in the open world, I'd interact with it. At the end of my game there were only a few things I hadn't done, those were the only question marks I sought out. I spent a lot of time in the game just exploring though, that's what happens when you craft a world people want to spend time in.
Ubisoft could never. Too lazy to wait & develop such a game, the graphics, UI, UE, the care given to absolutely everything feudal era Japan, the look & acting of the characters, the beautifully done combat both if you want to play as samurai or shinobi (ninja) was so good I never ever got tired of hearing the katan clash with Mongolian weapons. Alll this whilst being the very first game in this era/genre for Sucker Punch whilst Ubi have done history pieces for over a decade & still fail wayyy more than succeed. This is a game to play if the Assassin fantasy especially in Japan ever kicks in. Their new game code name red or whatever wishes it could hold a candle to Ghost.
Facts! Ubisoft wishes they could make like a game GoT. Their AC Red is gonna look like a cheap regurgitated game beside the cinematic Masterpiece that is GoT.
hah it's funny, i always joked that GoT was the best AC games to my friends but had no idea it was such a wide sentiment. Great video as always Jay, well edited, paced and written. I could listen to you for hours tbh
I actualy think the stealth is my favorite part about the game, you know why? Because I had the extrinsic motivation to make it look as cool as I could possibly make it look, it made me look at camp as more of just “objectives I have to complete just because” to “oh shit a new screenshot/video opportunity” it gives me that shinobi fantasy ya know?
if mirage is the last game from them on the valhalla engine then we might see a new style of game for red but I wouldn't get my hopes up too high with ubisoft
I booted the game up recently for the first time (three years late for the party) and I couldn't believe how it hooked me. It was the most gripping open world experience since Red Dead Redemption 2, I dare say. Even Death Stranding Lost me at times (as a Kojima fan). So, I believe Sucker Punch is doing something right 😊
It is for me. Gameplay and mechanics aside, the fact that the game is a historic set piece period. Which always has been the main draw of the AC series, the period it was set on. Except that in Ghost there is annyoying modern day B plot to bring you out of the experience every so often, no animus, no abstergo and no alien artifacts or civilization to put up with. Which I'd argue most players don't even remotely care about. Ghost stays grounded in the time it's set and for me that will already make it better than AC Shadows.
A great video! as @01ChaosWarrior mentioned, I love how th egame evolves. The camps in the open world are no different, with each act they get progressively more intricate, with high peaks and low valleys. They are pretty repetitive but I remember a few choice ones that really stood out to me. Another thing I love is the Ronin Duels! some of those ronin you hunt down are in absolutely gorgeous spots.
Yes ghost of tsushima is indeed the best modern AC. It does everything the RPG AC games do but tenfold better. And they achieved this level of quality and perfection with a small budget of $60 mil so imagine what they'll do with the sequel. AC used to be my favorite franchise back in the day but now its a hollow shell of its former self (not really hollow cuz that shell is filled with microtransactions lmao)
I just finished playing this on PC very very good game very fun. This is definitely a better assassin‘s creed game I haven’t played assassin‘s creed since 3. I can’t wait for the second ghost Tsushima game
It is one of the best games I've played. I'd say it's the best Ghost of Tsushima game. It is it's own thing. AC has gone down the drain after Origins. Origins did the same thing of a warrior turning into an assassin and establishing the creed. And the game made it hard to just be a warrior and straight up fight in the later stages of the game and incentivized stealth so much more. And GoT did the same thing. Origins was the last game I loved from AC. This would be the next if it were to be a AC game. But, I like to keep it separate as it's own thing. It has it's own charm and it's a unique game. I want a franchise of GoT games now. The Ghost franchise if you will!
10 month old video but a friend of mine that worked on the game recently (finally) gifted me it and the first few things i noticed were that the next assassin's creed game will take a miracle to top this version of japan, ubisoft will make a better world but they won't have it in then to make the story or characters as interesting. The second was the flute, control of weather in an open world game was something i didnt know i liked wanted or needed until this game showed how many times i dont want super dark thunderstorms when im already in a dark jungle.
For me, the reason it's the best of its kind is the combat system. I hate freeflow combat, it's just mashing and countering but GOT's has real combo routes and tech that allows for stylish combos actually made by the player and not just prebaked animations. At first I had no interest in the game due to freeflow but a friend bought it so I tried it and immediatly realized that there was depth there. It was so satisfying to beat the whole thing like a samurai on lethal.
How do you access that combat system? Don't tell me it's a mid to late game unlock, that'll mean having to play more of it to eventually unlock this weird thing called fun. Most I've experienced is counters for 90% of enemies (which admittedly is most of samurai combat techniques using the sword. The sword historically being a sidearm and status symbol, not the samurais main weapon, thus more defensive techniques are used with it.), I've occasionally played aggressive with them but that tends to lead to being poked in the rear in a less than satisfactory manner. And trying to flow from one enemy to the next is seemingly discouraged by enemies staying spread out, even in more confined areas they seem to prefer to stand as far away as they can and gawp as you slaughter their friend, occasionally rushing in to give a little poke from behind before running away, and then for some unfathomable reason decide to take turns to eagerly rush in for their own demise. It's like a conveyor belt of idiots eager for death. The only complexity in the combat is the make-up of each enemy squad you face (and they're usually the same), and once you've fought one of each type, you know how to deal with them. Basically you aggressively chase down the archers first, then you deal with the spearmen and then shield bearers, in exactly the same way, with counters, only the stance is different. Everyone else is easily dealt with as you deal with the main targets, just cannon fodder that can be ignored and used for easy heals. That isn't a complex combat system, it's just rock/paper/scissors with the added "complexity" in the order of how you deal with them, and you deal with them the same way every time thereafter thus negating any illusion of complexity the combat initially had. It's just dull. The bosses can be enjoyable though, until you realise they're just the same as regular enemies only you need to hit them more and they have a much larger health bar and a name.
@@djinnxx7050its rock, paper, scissor combat but executed quited well, we really feel every slash and stab. compare to the other combat like AC vallhala for example, you just bashing light attack R1 or heavy attack R2 with no context, and using a bunch of prebaked animation skill to finish off the enemy,.
@@night1952 Fishing for counters suggests I'm just standing there waiting to counter. I'm not, I'm trying to fight proactively hence chasing down archers and prioritising threats, closing each down in turn. The problem is that counters are the optimal way to do things, you can attack aggressively but you'll probably be attacked through your own attacks or stabbed in the back, and I find getting stabbed in the back only to still kick everyone's ass and then gallop into the sunset totally unharmed to be somewhat immersion breaking. Immersion is where I find my enjoyment in the absence of sheer spectacle. I guess I'm just weird like that. I perhaps speak only for myself here but you want it to be cinematic and less gamey because the game tries to be cinematic, so I play to the strengths of the system in that respect and try to choreograph a fight that wouldn't be too out of place in a samurai film. That means after aggressively dealing with the archers, you slow down a little and dance, you take your time to dodge around an enemy, play a little, the headcannon being that each time you evade an enemy he becomes more angered and frustrated, begins to make rash choices and wide swings that give you the opening for the kill. You know, ninjary samurai shit. The evasive agility and underhanded tactics of the ninja coupled with the calm focus and deadly accuracy of the samurai. That's how I try to play, but the AI are reading from a different script so it devolves into the same repetitive fights with the same enemies, again and again and again and again. I understand the combat, and I'm not feeling it. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad combat system in general, not in the sense that it's mechanically bad, it's just not good enough to keep me going for 20+ hours. It's just too safe and lacks a solid feel. It lacks immersion or any sense of vulnerability. You begin the game as a god, for whatever reason, cutscenes and scripted losses aside, Jin is the greatest swordsman on Tsushima and totally untouchable unless you happen to make rash choices yourself and end up getting attacked through your own attacks. Stealth may be encouraged but it's unnecessary because Jin can take out entire squads like it's nothing. I must add that context is important here, I played skyrim and Odyssey for hundreds of hours and neither has exceptional combat, but they aren't samurai games where combat is where most of the focus is. They have the exploration and other elements to fill in, whereas Tsushima, although stunningly beautiful, it's world just doesn't feel worth exploring. One sword is the same as any other so unlocking weapons, or rather skins, just isn't rewarding, and the talismans aren't that great either, and as much as I love the look of samurai armor and unlocking new looks, I don't like how it looks on Jin, it all feels a touch too bulky. In fact, the best looking armour in my view is the one you begin with even in its damaged form, I like the one pauldron look and the dirt, it suits the guerrilla tactic vibe, such fighters always appearing somewhat dishevelled and barely scraped together. Everything else is too bulky or clean, or just a bit silly. All the world really has is the visuals and I can see that beauty without ever leaving the main path from mission to mission. I always explore, and as I explored Tsushima, all I ended up thinking was "why am I even playing this.", I struggle to put it down but I'm not having fun, it's barely filling the void that my life is nor satisfying my desire for escapism, it's well made and beautiful but ultimately dull in every corner I looked. The combat is the only element it really has going for it, it's what you're expected to be doing the majority of your playtime, and it just doesn't satisfy enough to cover for the other areas of the game that are also lacking. If it was a 20 hour experience, I'd be fine with that and satisfied, but it isn't. For the time investment it expects, it should really deliver a little more, be a little more fleshed out. I feel I'm somewhat outnumbered with that opinion but you know, different strokes for different folks.
@@azmihakam Its executed competently, yes. Fluid and generally decent. But impactful, no. It's a bit floaty, I don't feel connected to anything, and the vibration function seems off. It may just be my controller but it always felt like it vibrated a touch out of sync with the action, we're talking mere milliseconds but it's noticeable and immersion breaking. That needs tightening up and it'll help a little, probably. I know, it's a bit picky but it's the small details that make or break immersion. I really want to love the game, but playing it I just feel bored, i still have that "a few more minutes" thing but it just ain't fun, it's gaming Stockholm syndrome, I keep playing in the hopes that fun will finally present itself, or something will magically happen that helps me feel the game and start to actually enjoy it. But it never comes. I've been here before with AC:Origins, for some reason I just can't find the enjoyment, I see a game that isn't bad by any real measure (you can be nitpicky and find faults), but it just fails to grab me. Others love it and I feel wrong and a bit left out, why can't I love it like everyone else does, is there something wrong with me or the game. I'd usually go for me but in this instance, it's definately the game, it just plays it way too safe to the point of competent mediocrity, and it fails to tickle my pickle.
The only thing I hate about the game (other than it's PS5 upgrade pricetag) is the idea that its story is worthy of its aspirations to somehow re-manifest Kurosawa's essence in digitized interactive form. People always seem to think games with great gameplay and presentation also have excellent stories. If "Ghost of Tsushima" were an actual Kurosawa film, it would be among his worst
I came to comment to dispute the entire comparison to Kurosawa, actually. It was a namecheck by ignorant games journos parroting a namedrop by the devs and its marketing (the Kurosawa filter is a joke). It's just jargon meant to give the game an historic resonance and ambition it does not really embody and seemingly cannot live up to. Has Jay ever seen a film from him - that wasn't a few clips from Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress, or Yojimbo/Sanjuro? Kurosawa specifically *never* pandered in the kind of generic, romanticised samurai adventure visuals and mood that this game hones in on (only Hidden Fortress isn't mostly genre subversive, and it actually looks the least like GoT). Frankly it's closer to something like Zhang Yimou's Hero or House Of Flying Daggers. I've seen AK's name dropped countless times, but not once have I ever seen a shot selection or camera movement the really recalls his style. And there's nothing in the story I've yet seen (I'm on Xbox so can't play it. I'd like to watch an LP, but no one I sub to has done one, or is likely to) that suggests the writers had any real interest in dealing with similar themes as Kurosawa often did. GoT, for one, is partly a violent power fantasy. That in itself is enough to make it borderline antithetical to everything AK cared about. Am I correct that the game's story rejects the romanticism of 'warrior codes' and samurai culture? I've seen people suggest that's the case, but without seeing the story for myself I'm not sure I trust anyone's analysis, especially from people banging on about how it's a 'love letter' to 'samurai films like Kurosawa's'. AK pretty much hated romanticism of the period and of the military social class. I mean, jeese... the point of Seven Samurai is 'samurai and bandits are both a bunch of bastards making villagers' lives a misery'. Yojimbo is blackly, bleakly comic - and features a rōnin who'd be a disgrace to any notion of 'samurai [false] honour'. And Sanjuro's iconic final duel is pretty much a fuck-you to the genre fanboys as represented by the young men who valorise samurai and hire him. He has no time for their praise or desire for violence. And if people reach instead for Ran or Kagemushu? That's even more ludicrous... given they're even weirder and more abstracted. Anyhoo, sorry for the rant. ; -) None of this is a criticism of the game itself, at least I think not (like I said, I've not seen the whole story). I'm just always slightly annoyed by how AK's name was - I feel - ignorantly thrown around, including in this video (and on the whole I think Jay does a good job on his channel. a bit hyperbolic at times, perhaps). If GoT really was an exquisitely framed Kurosawa-like work, which also concerned itself with mature humanist themes - awesome, the use of his name would be appropriate. But I think it's deeply misleading. If it all led to greater actual knowledge and awareness of his films, that's ultimately a good thing. But I'm not so sure that's overly true.
@@SabiJD The story certainly has its humanist moments, especially in the subplots. Its rejection of warrior codes and samurai culture is largely anodyne. While I believe the Khan has some interesting dialogue up front, it is hyper-focused with the "good vs. evil" struggle against foreign invaders to "sacred land." Probably only saved from accusation of racism because people distinguish between modern "Mongolians" and "the Mongol Empire" the same way they do modern "Romans" and "the Roman Empire." The game treats the emphasis on honor as, at worst, a prideful apathy towards the lower class that will almost certainly lead to the death of innocents, and the samurai themselves, due to strategic faults. It handles this mostly through a secondary female lead from the peasantry that shows Jin his ignorance and teaches him how to fight "without honor" to maximize his impact. This even puts him into conflict with his uncle. I suppose he's technically even made ronin, by the end, because as a "dishonorable" samurai combatant he is expelled from the ranks. I don't think the game really illustrates the absolute contempt the samurai often had for the peasantry, and even though the game technically takes Jin's side on this issue (he is after all the protagonist) I think it undermines itself in two key ways especially: 1. Gameplay. Jin is a one man army. Because the game caters to the two most obvious playstyles it is possible to spend the majority of the game successfully rescuing just about everyone as a sword swinging lunatic who freely announces himself at the gates of ground baracks before every duel. 2. Themes. In what seems to be a stab at nuance the game has Jin sneak into a camp and poison the Mongols. Jin's uncle is disgusted by his behavior, and his horror seems just reasonable enough under the circumstances to suggest it's valid to see things from his perspective. This might be all well and good if the only question of "Samurai honor" was how to approach a fight with one's enemies. Both of these problems are pretty wide-reaching. Making what could be a much needed injection of subtlety and nuance into something more akin to distilled false equivalency. I do kind of reject the notion that Kurosawa wasn't a fan of action sequences, and set pieces. Which seems to have some suggestion here. I do think he valued humility and empathy on a level that's not reflected in this game's narrative, but he loved himself some "chambara," clearly
Bruh my anticipation for the sequel is through the roof, I hope Sucker Punch take their time cooking to further differentiate itself from other game in genre. Maybe we are fighting the Mongol and Shogunate in the next game? 🤔
I'm doing my second round and I still enjoy it more than assassin creed I love customization all the techniques and sword styles makes me feel like a real samurai and when I start to have trouble I go straight up Ninja It helps so much and make the game far better than assassin creed in my book!
Been playing this for 2 weeks and yeah I love it! I have been aiming for this game as my first Playstation game when I can get my hands on the console. One of the things that like about this game is the freedom to choose the playstyle during combat. I combine AC way to clear some annoying obstacle then just walk with the blade drawn towards the enemy slashing them one by one making me feel like a terror to the mongol invaders. Unlike Assassin's Creed ( Especially the older ones ), the combat here has more variety and more kind of skill demanding rather than just pressing block then counter attack then performing kill streaks which keeps me engaged all the time during combat. Overall, I love this game and this is the Samurai game that seems I have been looking for all this time.
I absolutely Love this game. I 100% it. I feel like it does every aspect of an open world justice. All collectibles have a reason for you to go get them. Even the foxes, they may be simple follow quests but they take you through beautiful landscapes and at the end you get a little award.
I will be giving my left kidney for this game to have a sequel, I just finished my second playthrough after putting it down for years and it still has those emotional beats all that time ago that made me so invested in the story Im so hyped to be getting into Ikki Island also. great video and thank you for more glaze of this masterpiece!
No. Ghost was better than AC games at the start but by the end the AC games are miles above imo. Things such as combat which was great in GoT just got way too repetitive by the end whereas I still havent got tired of any of the combat in AC games. I also have a lot more fun exploring the open world of most AC games. The story for ghost is generic imo and definitely doesnt beat games like origins for me. Same for the characters which I found uninteresting. I honestly was disappointed by ghost of tsushima because I heard how great of a game it was before i played it and then after I played it I felt like I wasted my time after the first 3 - 4 hours because it got stale after that point and I only played more in hopes of finding what made this game a masterpiece. I wish i stopped playing the game after 4 hours and my opinion in the game would likely be much better
so i jst found your channel, & being a massive 'ac' fan, i'm honestly so glad that I did.. you articulate yourself so well, & i seem to be agreeing with a lot more of what you say than i disagree with.. i find your narrative both eloquent, & somewhat soothing as well.. in my opinion (such as it is), a truly brillaint channel, with informed, balanced & objective opinions, genuinely pleasant to listen to, & all (so far) on a subject matter very close to my heart.. 110% worth a subscription, & i'm really looking forward to watching a few more right after leaving this comment.. thank you for making my day-off considerably less mudane than it was shaping up to be, & wishing you all the best moving forward..
I would love a Shao Jun armor mod. I know they're not the same culture, but it would be the closest thing we'll get to a real Ac Shao Jun game (since chronicles was really underwhelming) They could even just use Syndicate's Shao Jun armor. I don't know how hard it would be to make, but I guess it's better than creating it from scratch.
It's all about having a cohesive artistic vision the whole dev team supports. Ghost of Tsushima was built by people who loved every aspect of it, who knew what they were working on. Ubisoft, however, has notoriously poor and messy management. They have no idea what they're doing most of the time, not professionally but concceptually, just half-assing it: Doing things "just because you're supposed to" and picking the bottom of the barrel formulas for their 3 programmers to do while their 300 3D modellers sculpt trees and buildings. Sucker Punch has good artistic and tech talent. They knew what tech to use to enable the art (particle effects = leaves) Ubisoft is too focused on making a "consumer products" than interactive art that is fun and makes you feel stuff. Because that is risky, that is difficult. You can't just use a formula to make that happen as every game is different. That's why the first ACs felt good, because they were not hampered by having to make a "product that must sell and one-up the last one". New ACs are just a mess, you can sense how most of the devs don't care about what they're working on. Everything feels so jaded, so soulless. The relative competence it's executed masks it somewhat, but you still feel something is off... It feels like this is the first draft polished instead of reworked and refined.
Waiting for realese on PC. Graphically it looks great, they even managed to add physics for the rope. She collapses under the weight of the character, something that has never happened in assassin's creed
I would argue the mains tory has one of the best endings ever in a vidoe game, all other parts of it islike you say, nothing great but that ending IS great.
Being a fan of the early AC games (1 -> Black Flag) I always thought the modern AC games are half baked and poorly executed, to the point that playing them bacame a chore. Then I played this game and realized how good AC would be if they focused on actually having a great story that will keep you going, your journey to the title card alone is a masterpiece.
Oh man, as if waiting for it to come on PC wasn't painful enough xD Good video, great points. I might need to temper my expectations when I eventually play it, but I'm sure I'll have a good time. Competent, one might say)
It's kinda funny because GoT isn't really that much different than the latest three AC games (Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla), it has the same or very similar approaches to gameplay, mechanics, combat, parkour, stealth, world desing, narrative (fight me) RPG elements like exp, skill points and trees, collectables, and yet it manages to be more appealing to AC fans than those three games.
from my perspective as a new fan of the franchise (played my first AC back in 2021, and have completed 9 of them since), it seems like the only reason AC fans call the newer games bad isn't cuz they're bad, but because they're not like the older games. if Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla didn't have the Assassin's Creed name slapped on them, they'd be saying these are world-class games matched by no other. it's honestly hard for me to go back to the older games after playing the RPG ones. they feel incredibly outdated imo.
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@@burgerbran If that was true then old ac fans wouldn't praise GoT as being a "better AC game". The problem with the new AC games isn't that they're RPGs, it's that they're bad RPGs. They're bloated, grindy and generally lacks focus in the narrative and gameplay. They would be awesome mobile games, but they make for lackluster triple A experiences. Also the fucking brain dead take of calling something outdated just because it's a different genre, like bro Syndicate came out just two years before Origins. Technology didn't change that much to make it "outdated". Hell, RDR2 has the same gameplay style than old AC and it came out the same year Odyssey did. Learn what "outdated" means please.
I don’t see the AC connection really at all except for some very limited stealth and coded ninja iconography. The game plays more like Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor.
Anyone else think that the only reason there is an AC Japan in the works is precisely _BECAUSE_ of the success of *AND* comparisons that Ghosts was the AC game everyone has been begging for since Ezio faded into the sunset in Revelations? I suspect Ubisoft only knows how to be reactionary at this point which is another reason AC feels hollow now. When you wait to see what the new trend is instead if trying to set the trend... your always going to be in the middle of the pack and unremarkable. I think another reason AC has been dying, is the constant jump from character to character. Ezio is beloved because he got 3 games to build his story. Even though I'm not a fan of Connor Kenway of AC 3, I Am a fan of his father and grandfather... there was connection and investment with the main characters once upon a time. I think if ubisoft had built a few games around Bayek in some way or tied his story to Kassandra in a 3rd game it would have been better. Fans WANT to carry on a good story with at least appearances from favorite characters from previousstories... that's why the Star Wars legends universe exists.
I think the reason Ezio is popular has nothing to do with the number of games.. in fact quite the opposite.. he got 3 games BECAUSE he was so popular from ac2, that devs wanted to capitalise on that character as much as possible. The sequels were rushed and scrambled together.. Revelations being a game they made from a scrapped attempt at a mobile game 😂.. Also no surprise that Ubisoft has always been mediocre and late to the party... and allergic to criticism..
ghost does so many things at around a 7 or an 8 that it all adds up to a 9 or 10. it’s a similar philosophy for GoW Ragnarok that I heard first from that game’s director. I think AC could learn a lot from Ghost considering how much Ghost learned from AC
I think trailing can be fun. I like a few of the ones in AC4 (but also felt a lot of them were really frustrating), specifically the ones where you have to stay near to targets to hear them talk
AC4 is the only game that made me enjoy (some) trailing missions. But I hated the ones where you had lots of open space and alternative routes to go through, but the game just refused to let you do it.
This game was my favorite game of all time when I was playing it for the first time on release. I 100% completed the story. When I tried to come back later for the dlc and do new game+ though it did not grab me and I dropped it before starting the dlc. I still think it is an amazing game. As someone who has played every AC game and used to be a huge fan of the series I am definitely one of the people who has been saying this game is a better AC game than Ubisoft could ever make. It definitely is more similar to the post Origins games with the Stealth, Warrior, Archer trio of gameplay and I think it does it way better than AC has.
If only it was available on pc... Edit: Welp, it's on pc now! And all I can say is that after playing the mission where Jin gets thrown off a bridge at the beginning, it still isn't captivating me yet, hopefully it will as I continue to play whenever I get the chance to
god of war, last of us, and uncharted i think are all on steam now, it should come out somewhat soon if they know whats good for their business now about bloodborne....
@@SgtFunBun i have been waiting 3 years to play the game. i don't think i have the right to complain that they haven't ported it yet, but it still pisses me off so much. like, come on Sony, take my fucking money already!
Though i am a completionist when playing games, i really love how GoT's world just makes me stop right on my tracks to admire the landscape. It's really beautiful and captivating when the time and place aligns perfectly. another note that if you want to fully immerse yourself in the story but you still wanna get all those question marks, I personally would bee-line every story quest or tales on the map, immersing myself with the dialogue and narrative. Once done, i'll then actually start exploring the island, going through all the question marks, the mongol camps and such. This is only my recommendation though, play how you want, this is just a small piece of advice to those who wants to listen
The one thing that AC has done better than all other of third person action/stealth 'em up games is a dense recreation of a historical city. In terms of gameplay mechanics like stealth, combat, and RPG elements, AC is massively outshone by basically everything on the market. To say nothing of typical Ubisoft writing quality. I really liked the franchise, but I think it just doesn't have the same appeal to me anymore. AC is not just an AAA game, but a flagship AAA franchise, thus it has to appeal to as broad of a market as possible. It really is a "dudebro" franchise these days, just a stabby market equivlent of CoD. It has to be built assuming that it could be someone first and only game. So even when games like Ghost of Tsushima and Shadow of War does almost everything so much better, it really does not matter. Ubisoft will never make a better Assassin's Creed, only a more profitable one.
Ac is more than just stealth. The main thing that makes ac ac is the parkour and exploring a city with guards. Ghost has stealth and assassinations but that’s about it
Well clearly you haven’t played ghost because the exploration is insane and sure it doesn’t have parkour but it surely can depending on how you play it
@@doctorx2307 the exploration is insane??? What does that even mean? Nothing you said countered my point of ghost not being an ac game. Also ghost is extremely exhausting to play because of repetitive gameplay. Enemy patrols, foxes, bamboo, bandit camps, etc… etc… doesn’t have the charm of 2015 and under ac games or rdr2, botw, elden ring, etc…
@@Entertainment-ev6ob it’s crazy to me how you have to bring up the assassin Creed games that are from 2015 and under because you know that there are no other good assassin’s Creed games and they all get repetitive and then you bring up other games that have nothing to do or even close to assassin‘s Creed at all those are completely different games and yeah they do have good exploration but ghost of Tsushima also has really But you talking about ghost of Tsushima is repetitive doesn’t even make any sense because in each assassins Creed game there’s always something super repetitive about it that can make it boring for a while
@@doctorx2307Why is it crazy to go back to 2015? Only 3 of the 12 mainline AC games released after 2015, are you stupid? And Ghost of Tsushima is my favourite PS5 game but it comes nowhere close to ONE SINGLE AC game in exploration. It is literally just natural sceneries, 4-5 temples and some copy paste dinky towns. Pick just one region of AC Origins like Alexandria and it has better cities and way more sceneries. Ghost has the best combat, the story is better than AC Valhalla, Syndicate and 3. But the main reason it was loved it because it did not have the garbage colour coded rpg outfit where every enemy is a sponge that takes 500 hits to kill. It also has the 2 main weapon (blade and sword) plus gadgets style of old school AC. That’s why Ghost is smooth and feels like an old AC game.
My issue with Assassins Creed is going back and playing games like Unity and seeing the missed potential. The formula was almost perfected in that game. If they had 1) Used English speaking French voice actors 2) Had maybe a year extra in development to polish the bugs and really flesh out the story more, it would have been the best AC game of all time. Imagine all the amazing AC games we could have gotten using that formula instead of the RPG stuff (Which I do enjoy but feel like clones of other games). I had a lot of hope with Mirage, but all the reviews seem negative and it looks like it should have been a DLC. Ubisoft just keeps dropping the ball when they have everything going for them, it’s just so frustrating.
In my humble opinion, you missed the biggest reason why AC fans called Ghost of Tsushima the greatest Assassin's Creed game. For us laymen, simple casual gamers who don't review games or dive in depth into how well games do what, allow me to express why for many of us GOT stole AC's thunder... For over a decade now, the single most highly requested AC setting BY FAR has been Feudal Japan but no... Ubisoft was so tone-deaf that they'd rather make both a viking assassin (I'm sorry, what?) and a Greek mercenary that they had to retcon into AC canon before making what could possibly be the closest to a guaranteed slam dunk of a game! All we've been asking for probably ever since the phenomenon that was Naruto and ever since we all realized that Ubisoft was so good at creating assassins in history's most iconic eras has been NINJA ASSASSINS!! All Ghost of Tsushima did was make a game based in Feudal Japan where at some point, for a decent portion of the game, you could run around with throwing knives, bows and arrows, smoke bombs, etc, sneak up on bad guys and ASSASSINATE THEM! That's all the majority of us AC fans wanted. The ultimate assassin fantasy... And that, Jay, when compared to the likes of Valhalla, Oddessy and to a lesser extent, Origins, is why GOT out-Assassin's Creed-ed Assassin's Creed! Want more proof? Now, FINALLY, after Ghost of Tsushima proved just how awesome and fun AND PROFITABLE the setting turned out to be, and how much of a no-brainer it was to do it, NOW Ubisoft decides it's a good idea to make Assassin's Creed Red, the NINJA Assassin's Creed and sadly, now people will inevitably compare Red to Ghost of Tsushima and if Red isn't more fun (by leaning into that fantasy) than GOT was, the common sentiment among average gamers (not necessarily the RUclips AC putist reviewers and vloggers) will end up being that Sucker Punch made a better Assassin's Creed set in Japan than Ubisoft was able to, even without it being an actual Assassin's Creed. ... OK, rant over now. 😅
facts my brother! spit yo shit indeed! all we want is japan + assasssin's, it's everything we've always wanted. also commenting now with the whole AC shadow's controversy...
@@ayamesupremacy8367 they totally fucked it up.. more slop without even the decency to provide both Japanese main characters.. also parkour has way too many flips.. will get old fast😂
I’m playing black flag now for the first time, I played ghosts when it came out, black flag kicks the shit out of ghosts in damn near every category except graphics. Ghosts is overrated as fuck, the only game more overrated than it is god of war ragnarok
I love open world games. I loved them so much that I lost all interest in other genres. I used to play shooters, driving games, fighters, platformers... but after GTA Vice City, my interest in them waned. It got even worse once San Andreas came out. After that, I simply couldn't get into other genres. I tried playing Titanfall 2 a few years ago. It was the kind of game I'd have devoured in the past, but now? I simply couldn't stay interested. I put it down one day and never picked it back up. For me, it's the ability to role play in an open world. To become the character you're playing by immersing one's self in their world. Because of this, I found myself playing games that aren't half as good as TF2. Like Farcry. I played a whole slew of those. As for why Tsushima worked so well? The gameplay loop. All other shortcomings disappeared in the face of deeply satisfying and varied combat. You don't just fight spongey enemies as you level up, they become better at fighting you. You in turn become better at fighting them. I bought Ghost when it came out and to this day, I still fire it up, just to keep my skills sharp.
Ghost of Tsushima has a stunning beatiful design although some compromise in history level in the game like The Last Samurai film.The Samurai on that period is very different from Edo style that they romanticized but it success to construct the samurai code to contrast the conflict in Jin very well and the game is still satisfying.
People who say things like this have no idea what Assassin's Creed is actually about. At least the first games, they weren't generic open world games where the focus was the time period. the setting was the background for the story, nothing more
Ubisoft doesn't care so maybe that's why people don't care anymore. Recently when they were giving away older AC games for free for a limited time, they kept advertising them as if those titles were only about their respective time period, except Black Flag to an extent. No mention of the Assassin fantasy, just something along "make history yours". Ubisoft clearly wants this IP to be known as a historic theme park to cater to the masses and not, well, Assassin's Creed and its been clearly working since Origins cause neither the critiques nor a casual gamer ever asks to why is there nothing Assassin-y in a game called Assassin's Creed. Rant over.
@@user-fm9ww2wk1iAC has never really perfected stealth (aka the assassin fantasy), and the assassin's/Templars story started to go off the rails immediately... There never was an era where the series' potential was realised, and very quickly AC as an historic theme park was how people began to treat it. A common refrain was that people were sick of the modern narrative - especially the dullard Desmond - and that all they wanted was time in the past. So Ubisoft responded accordingly. I can't really fault them for doing so, and the sales of Valhalla vindicate that shift (whether the next big AC gets near those numbers or not will be interesting. I'd hope even very casual fans are sick of such obscene scale and feature bloat). Odyssey remains my favourite in the series - because of its era, world, Kassandra, and the main story/stories. It got me back into the series after I soured on Brotherhood (that's a bigger, dumber cash grab than any of the modern ACs in my book. it just didn't have a story worth telling). As much as I've enjoyed Odyssey and even Valhalla (I think they're more cohesively designed games than the classic eras), I would like a true, passionate, less investor-driven return to a 'proper' AC. Bring back ACII's actual puzzles, do a really good arc involving far more of the present narratives, and actually look to better stealth systems like MGSV and almost wholly cast aside action combat. The classic AC era represents something truly distinct - and as much as I enjoy the modern era, it's obviously far too generic and commonplace. But if all Ubisoft are going to do is half-arsed cast-offs like Mirage? I would much rather they craft better open-world adventures.
Yes ghost of tsushima is about the ac brotherhood and the templar order, just switch out the samurai for the brotherhood and the khans for the templars and there you go. A classic ac story of a group trying to take over and you the caracter have to take them down whilst also grappling with what it means to be apart of and if its right to be apart of the brotherhood and what it stands for.
bro what are you yapping about?? Samurai are like basically templars... ancient rich order controlling the people. You just said there are good and bad guys in both storys, which every story in existence has. This story has like nothing in common with any AC story and it is better that way cause most(not all) ac storys are kind of mid at best.
@@Willzb-xk4ew I mean, yes, it could be possible but look at Tsushima's map detail and the attention to every single place in the map. It's already so detailed on a small map. If they wanted to do that on such a massive map compared to the island alone, they would take 10 years.
I remember in 2014, i was really disappointed with Unity, and although i personally enjoyed Rogue and it had one of my favourite cities in it (Halifax, although definitely not to scale), it felt like more of an expansion pack to Black Flag than a game. I made the joke that Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor was the best Assassins Creed game of 2014... although i can't watch it at the moment the title of this video gives off the same feeling
You nailed everything I've thought about this game. It's great, but I don't consider it the best of anything. Just a jack of all trades. For me, the story and eventual repetition are what kept this game from being unforgettable.
Naw, this game is meant to be played as a samurai, not sneaking around. AC still has a chance of making a good assassin/ninja game. The focus would need to be in big castle infiltration.
I agree about the Guiding Wind mechanic, and I still ended up using the map the same as I would in any other sandbox game. If anything, the guiding wind would annoy me because it would lead me directly into rock walls or straight to the edge of cliffs. Perhaps that's an issue with the world design, but traveling anywhere on foot or on horseback is never 'fun' unless it's a flat open field, since the terrain of the island has so many jagged hills. I've got other little things like that; Kurosawa Mode is a neat feature, but it breaks combat because in Black & White it's impossible to tell red attacks (unblockable) from the blue attacks (blockable). The day/night cycle seems imbalanced because we only get a few minutes of sunshine compared to extended periods of dusk, or storm clouds. Even something as beautiful as the particle effects seem to have gone overboard, littering the camera with ember, or blades of grass, or flower petals, at all times, making moments where the screen is actually clear, a rarity. All this is, of course, are my personal nitpicks that seemingly didn't bother others. The game is otherwise worthy of all the praise it got. I don't think it's the best Assassin's Creed game because AC 2 and Black Flag are still better than Ghost of Tsushima imo, but I love your point about how fully the game commits to its concept and setting. And that they may have cornered the market. The real question is, if AC finally does set one in Japan, can it, and will it be better than this? I don't know...
No. It isn't the best Assassin's Creed game and I'm so tired of people saying that. Not every historical fiction with stealth had to be compared to Assassin's Creed. And just because people desperately want an AC in Japan doesn't mean that they can just attach that to Ghost of Tsushima. AC and Ghost of Tsushima are two completely different games that only share similarities in some basic gameplay concepts and mechanics. Ghost of Tsushima is not an Assassin's Creed game
At this point there is no way to know if something is ac unless it has the title and besides the parkour this is definitely the perfect ac game becauee it sticks to the principles of the first game
"the focus on stealth" comment kinda stood out to me. My experience (now that it's finally on PC) is that, while all the tools are there and it's certainly competent for the genre, you are discouraged by the narrative to be a sneaky bastard. But the Mongols are such a dominant force that marching up to the front door for an honorable crossing of swords isn't an option (at first), so you have to. Then once you get stronger, it's usually faster (and imho more fun) to just stride up in full samurai armor and yell "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough" at everyone in earshot. I also feel this is reflected in how there are more armor sets and skills for open combat, while the stealth dagger upgrade is relatively cheap and I had it maxed out long before the first castle liberation. Though tbf I'm the kind of player who likes to meet (most) games on their terms. I loved Red Dead 2's slower pace, the camping, the fishing, the cooking and drinking and sleeping, in the same way I love watching Jin contemplate his allies, father, struggles, violating his oaths as a samurai while he's soaking in the hot springs water. I love how the bamboo cutting is how you level up your Resolve. I love that a certain bird will chirp and lead you to a POI, but are easier to ignore than a blinking compass marker if I'm not in the mood. While the wind is effectively no more than a diegetic GPS, I love how the line "[your father] is the wind at your back" gives a character motivation to care about it. The role-playing part of the RPG is so much more important to me than min-maxing stats and optimizing gameplay so it's a treat to play another game that says, "this is the fantasy, you are the guy, go be the action hero you used to daydream about" after Red Dead 2 did that for me with cowboys. It doesn't really do anything new outside of nailing the samurai fantasy, but it does everything *right*.
maybe so, but it does everything ac did but better. maybe apart from music@@vanlllasky and come on now, it's literally a stealth game. don't pretend it has nothing to do with the core elements of AC
@@GREATSLUMBER the core elements of AC, as in, using our DNA to go back in time and relive the memories of our ancestors, experience a new version of history with altered events, learn about the philosophical debate and literal war between Templars and Assassins. none of these things are present in GoT, because it's not an AC game, it's not trying to be. it's a Samurai game.
I've been an ac fan day one and seeing them make a game in Japan is an embarrasment, as if they haven't done that enough for the series. It will never live to ghost of tsushina because the people at ubisoft don't care enough about the series, the game itself or history. When I play got I can tell these people care about what they do.
At least you have sense. It's particularly the lack of love and care that makes new AC games such a "paint by numbers" game. Same thing is happening with Call Of Duty. MW3 has to be the worst reviewed COD of all time.
![JAPANESE PLAYS GHOST OF TSUSHIMA #1 | DIRECTOR’S CUT [PROLOGUE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1I_dhDoK0jk/mqdefault.jpg)
Something I think is really cool about stealth in Ghost is how it evolves as you become the Ghost of Tsushima. You start scrappy and under equipped, and will make mistakes and be forced into fights as Jin's... frankly bad stealth kills get you spotted from how long he takes.
Then you get your bow, and upgrade the dagger to be faster, and you get a more traditional stealth experience of taking out lone guards and outliers to create safe paths into camps.
Then you get the Ghost armor, and suddenly you get another option. The Terror mechanic effectively recommends that you make a spectacle of your kills. You want massive groups to witness their comrades suddenly start vomiting blood and you go from waiting to kill commanders last to making a huge show of cutting their heads off to make grown Mongol soldiers pee themselves in fear. And if your spotted? Well Ghost stance and perfect parries makes it so even if you get spotted you get another chance to sow fear.
It's really fun to go into a Mongol camp and not even have to kill half the enemies simply because your mere presence was enough to make them leave. It feels like the next logical evolution of the Batman Arkham trick of enemies getting more scared as you pick off bad guys.
Perfectly stated *slow clap*
Funny thing is, early AC games did have the fear mechanics in combat, where if you kill tough enemies (or a lot of weak ones) without taking much damage, and preferably with combo-kills, then the rest will run in fear or beg to be spared. It's still a mystery why they decided to abandon that fairly unique idea in favor of damage sponges.
@@bloodymaresI really feel ubisoft thinks of itself as a software company rather than a movie/TV series production house, which while technically correct, really hurts the games
It would be great if they implemented that in a future Batman game. For example in a Bank Robbery sequence, as Batman takes down enough armed thugs, the rest of the guys drop their guns and loot and run out of the bank screaming etc.
I like walking in and doing a showdown it feels like the most Chad mechanic in a game "Face me Cowards!"
As a testament to the graphics and overall look of the game, I’ll never forget hanging out with my brother in his room when our mom came in during a cutscene and asked “Oh, what movie is this?”
Most non gamers always say that lol
@@dl30wpbexactly, even with ps3 graphics my neighbor would ask me😂
looking as this game on 4k and HDR is just... amazing.
its also the fact that its not really the assets or anything thats super impressive, we`ve seen better grass and trees and lighting in other games, but the art direction and overall cohesion of the game is top tier
My mom asked that while i was playing AC Brotherhood, it's not a testament to anything.
I actually really liked that the stealth was narratively discouraged, but mechanically encouraged. Tsushima's one of the only games where it felt equally viable to both cut and run AND hold your ground, or - better yet - blend those two things, giving a guerilla style of ambush, skirmish and fade. If I'm caught, then narratively I'm encouraged to draw my sword, so it doesn't feel at odds with the game, and depending on how many people are around and how many tricks I've still got up my sleeve, might be doable. If I need to break, the Mongols and maps are designed in such a way I can loop around to get some kills, get some health back, and pick them apart as they search for me. A lot of stealth games with combat elements either make the combat WAY too easy (AC Brotherhood) or the combat basically non-viable. Tsushima struck that balance better than most games, and neither approach felt at odds with the character or tone.
I don't really think Tsushima did actually strike that balance (except in one scenario). That's part of the reason I think many people complained about the narrative killing their immersion when it acts as if the player used the stealth tools all along.
Mechanically stealth and the ghost tools are much more boring than straight up fighting, most of the stealth tools are just instakill or quick damage and most players are gonna enjoy using blade techniques more than the tools.
The only time Tsushima actually struct the balance was when they released the lethal difficulty because the margin of error to die in a sword fight is much bigger and players will die more frequently. Which pushes them to go through the same thought process Jin had to go through where they consider the ghost tools they actively avoided before. Now the narrative and mechanics are working together by mechanically pushing the player through the same arc the narrative is pushing Jin through.
But I don't believe for a second this was intentional given it came as a by product of an additional difficulty released after the game came out, which is a shame because I know some people that would have enjoyed the game much more if they didn't play it on release but played it when lethal came out.
@@theresnothinghere1745 I only ever played the game on lethal, so ‘the only way it worked’ is the only way I experienced it. Lucky me!
thats the thing, i feel this game was made for lethal, is not hard in the fact that it inflate enemies hp and dmg, but it makes you use every tool at your disposal, creating a way more engaging experience than the normal game. I honestly can't even turn it off bc it is so smoothly placed into the game.@@theresnothinghere1745
Yeah lethal difficulty is so good as it forces me to use my gadgets when I get overwhelmed. When I play on normal I hardly ever feel pressured
I haven't seen the vid but the answer is yes. Best assassins creed I've ever played. I honestly don't want them to make a AC Japan anymore. I would love to be wrong but playing after this game I don't think unisoft can pull it off. Not better then it's done here.
Assassin's Creed: RED got a huge shoe to replace with it's Japanese's setting.
@@SimonPhungChanneland it will, mirage is already showing signs of returning to the roots
Ac Red holds a mesmerizing setting that's full of traditions, armor, weapons & gadgets that could be different than their western counterparts, and finally a potential Ezio cameo
Im still unsure how they'll be pulling hexe off, but as far as Red goes
It's gone be good
@@SamayGhosh But they also said that Red is going to follow the new formular of origins etc. Not to forget that even tho Mirage is showing improvements, its no way near what fans want. Its just the closet they got in years, that doesnt mean its good.
@@joelschittenhelm5571 exactly
@@joelschittenhelm5571 logically speaking what's the point of returning to the roots if you're just gonna botch it all up the next year
Even if red is inspired by origins it would be nowhere near it
Have some faith Bois, you don't win a war in a day, Ubisoft is taking small steps in the right direction, let's just let them do it at their pace
I like how Jin’s tanto instakills even on the late game but it only upgrades how fast the kills are and how quiet they are to keep a progression system, unlike AC enemies surviving a Hidden Blade to the neck just because you are under leveled.
Bingo. The first few assasinations in Ghost looks really hard for Jin struggling with it but once he starts developing you can see how effortlessly it was for him to make assasinations. Same as wolf in the first genichiro fight not being able to onetime draw his katana and the second encounter in ashina beinf perfection. I love games with Japan settings. Wo lokg isn’t bad too
Games should have that be the standard rather than making enemies arbitrarily damage-spongey.
Your character takes longer to insta kill the enemy and makes a lot of noise doing so.
And as your character gets better (via level up skills/perks) then the quicker and quieter the instakills become.
Apply this to guns, as well.
A 5.56 round is a 5.56 round. Doesn't matter if it was fired by a level 1 mook or a level 100 boss. *It does the exact same amount of high damage.*
_Only difference is that the boss is going to land his more of his shots a hell of a lot closer to his target._
@@musicandboxing7370it was on the 3rd encounter my guy.
1st encounter- slow even fumbles feeling the hilt
2nd encounter- firm grip faster draw but still kinda "heavy" on
3rd encounter in the field- quick confident draw
If there were an AC game that gets anywhere close to how good GOT is, imagine a tanto in the back and a blade in the throat.
I actually dislike that. At first I didn't like how you couldn''t instakil in Odyssey, but after a while I quickly realized how much more fun it makes clearing the camps. I couldn't do "kill the closest and move to the next". I actually had to sneak around camp, first picking off weaker enemies. Then look for opportunities to one kill the strong ones with spartan kicks or dropping something on their heads) untill I finally had to fight the few strongest ones I couldn't stealth. It made the whole experience was more varied and challenging. Valhalla removed that. You can instakills everyone there, the strongest ones just require simple QTE minigame. And fans were asking for this, but I think it made clearning the camps so much worse.
Ghost is an excellent example of how you can skillfully use standard design/trops and still have a great game. I love Ghost and I regularly go back to it when i get that samurai itch.
Tropes are not to be feared, but mastered. Sucker Punch used all the tropes masterfully and integrated them seamlessly into a samurai-game we've all been thirsting for for decades. In a desert, even a drop of water is good, but they gave us a whole glass of water, and a refill. I loved how the sidequests for powering up your character showed that the samurai is more than a warrior. He's also a philosopher and a poet, a sophisticated warrior. Taking baths to relax and contemplate is a really good mechanic, writing haikus to focus your mind, practicing cutting technique, and it's all part of japanese culture. It fits perfectly within the narrative and setting.
What's important about Ghost of Tsushima is that while it played it safe, it also refined everything to a capital T. The gameplay is genuinely fun and feels satisfying to fight enemies, or sneak through them.
apart from the gameplay, I feel like what sets Ghost apart from many stuffy RPGs is the clean and user friendly UI, the colors, fonts and little animated graphics.. the simplified system of him only using his main weapons, and even with several abilities and upgrades there's no unnecessary clutter. they also made some wonderfully designed outfits and accessories. its all gives it this kind of crisp intentional look.
I LOVE how little they use HUD elements during gameplay. It makes you immerse yourselve in the game much much more and appreciate the world without a 4th wall breaking feature to guide the player. The wind guidance mechanic is such a simple thing but that does SO MUCH good for this game.
I even turn off enemies healthbars (and I'm glad they allou it without turning off the whole HUD) as I feel that it makes so enemies aren't simple healthbars that you have to mow down. It makes me count how many hits I am to kill or stun each enemy and look at how damaged they are, which adds another whole layer of immersion.
This game is a masterclass in executing industry-wide overused concepts in a intersesting and concise package. It sets out what it wants to be and accomplishes it without overcomplicating it or trying to reinvent the wheel.
You also arent stuck behind dumbass levels like the newer AC games.
Its just that the game gives you the option to proceed however you want. If you wanna speed run the campaign without doing side quests or anything to level up proeprly or do any of the world events like chopping bambo for resolve slots and finding the fox statues etc. Or the legendary heroes of Tsushima
Getting their armors and weapons
It also doesn't pad its skill tree with useless 2.8% damage increases and 1.3% stealth upgrades 😂
It's not an RPG nor is AC, Horizon and Zelda
It's called Action Adventure
As much as some might dislike hearing it, yes. I'd be curious to see if this video changes my perspective.
Hey LeoK👋
The assassin's Creed guro
Oh hey leoK! would love to see more GoT vids from you
Is Ghost of Tsushima the perfect AC game?
For reasons mentioned in the video, it is not. It offers no meaningful parkour in an urban environment and there's no social stealth (barring one late game disguise mechanic).
But Ghost highlights an important issue with the franchise.
When I'm playing any AC game from AC1 to Unity I am getting an experience that Ghost cannot fully offer me.
But once the switch with Origins happened, this stopped being the case.
And that's because AC stopped having the features that made it AC in the first place. The very features that made it so Ghost could not replace AC, stopped being in AC, and now Ghost is in direct competition with the recent games that miserably fall short when compared to Ghost.
The Assassin identity is what kept the games safe, kept them niche. Once the features that made that identity were stripped away, that identity eroded, and the games merely offered an experience that you could get from other superior games.
What is the point of playing Origins if there's practically no city parkour and social stealth?
The combat? Ghost has a vastly better system.
The controls? Ghost feels much more responsive.
The exploration? Again, Ghost and RDR games provide a much less bloated and better paced world to explore.
The story? It's laughably bad in all the RPG creeds.
The things that made me take out the RDR disc from my console and put in AC1, AC2, brotherhood, Rev etc are now gone.
It doesn't matter if the RPG creeds have a better combat system, better exploration, better graphics than the old games, because what they offer you can get elsewhere in significantly higher quality.
Once AC lost its identity, it stopped having any edge over the rest of the open world games from triple A studios.
You see, AC2 does not have Ghost's combat, graphics, exploration or even stealth.
But what it does offer makes it so unique that Ghost can never replace it.
Origins though? Why play that when I can play TW3, Ghost or RDR2?
Literally no reason.
That's why AC needs to find its roots again, because if it doesn't, there is nothing it can offer that other open world games do not.
So no. Ghost is not the best AC game. Not even close. But since 2015, it may as well be the very best AC experience when you compare it to what AC has become.
If you really think that, then stop making videos about what Ubisoft should do with AC, you lost all credibility here. Making videos lamenting about how there isn't enough great parkour then saying this game thasn't even close to the parkour of any AC is the best ? Get the hell out.
This game does pretty much nothing as good as any of the AC games, no matter if you prefer old school pure AC or new big Open world AC, Tsushima does the blandest mix of both world possible.
Yes, i dislike hearing it because it's completely false on every level.
The ammount of so called pure AC fans and channel, like you and Master assassin, that i see saying that this is the best AC games, makes me really really want Ubisoft to cut all ties with peopke like you and go full force and the RPG with superpowers like Odyssey, because that's what most people want actually, and those people at least are happy with it.
The biggest thing Ghost does is challenge its protagonists world views. Jins inner struggle makes Ghost shine especially in act one when you do dishonorable things and you hear jin mutter a little "sorry" or see a flash back of his uncle for a few seconds.
The closes Assassin's Creed came to such a deep protagonist was Connor Kenway.
Ghost of Tsushima is a work of art made with Ubisoft's tools. AC Valhalla is a corporate microtransaction mess made with the same tools.
Cope
@@MrAjking808Eh, AC Valhalla was just bad.
@@MrAjking808 I played ac games for the longest, after origins, ac fell off hard. no doubt ghost trashes pretty much every ac game besides 3, personally my favorite ac game.
It was not made with Ubisoft tools…they don’t get any credit for this masterpiece
@@MeggaMann_theBlueLionWell, Ubisoft used to be the leader in open world game design once. They invented/popularized a lot of open word staples like vantage point system (radio towers), enemy camps, hidden collectibles and points of interest. But instead of innovating these concepts like other open world games (for example Breath of the Wild and ToTK have all 4 of the above systems but they were a lot more interesting both thematically and gameplay-wise), Ubisoft just copy and paste the same systems they created from 10+ years ago into a new game. Once you played one Ubisoft game, you already played them all.
It doesn’t do anything groundbreaking but it pays homage to the Samurai genre, a true love letter.
Add good historical narrative, excellent visuals, score, and mechanics.
Sometimes the wheel doesn’t need reinvention.
Most Japanese Samurai films, especially the classics, place a hard emphasis on the indignity and dishonesty of the Samurai class, especially in their mistreatment of the lower class, and its aesthetic and structural contibutions to Japanese Imperialism. In contrast to the western world's obsession with the concept of "bushido" as a strict and unbreakable "code of chivalry" - another romanticized and largely ahistorical concept, that plays on a desire to see precepts as magical constraints that all but evaporate any tendency for systemic abuse by those in the best position to abuse it. Tsushima confronts only this concept, and even then only by contrasting it with ninjitsu as an ostensibly less dignified but potentially more practical alternative that can ensure the survival of more people. "People," in this context being mostly the peasants Samurai historically mistreated. Again, the appeal of ninjitsu in this particular framing, to the west, can be traced back to the romanticization of guerrila warfare tactics against stuffy British redcoats supposedly standing and fighting in single-file lines during the American Revolutionary War. So, despite being a foreign product, Tsushima is quite conservative and jingoistic from a Japanese perspective, in a way those films were not. The writers may have crafted a love letter to their favorite genre, unfortunately that doesn't mean they understood it.
But it did it shouldve had Goty
IMO you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to be great, you just need to something well. This game does that, it doesn’t set out to do something super innovative. It set out to be a classic Samurai Film in Video Game format about a Samurai betraying his original values to defeat an unstoppable force. In this regard it did what it set out to do perfectly
@@Broomer52 I commented essentially the same. There isn't anything groundbreaking but there was enough done extremely well to hold my interest in the game exceptionally well. Similar to how I felt about The Witcher.
@@futurestorytellerYou pick up a manga by Hiroshi Hirata or the classic Lone Wolf and you see that there was a good reference for them to get the love letter right, there were provisional collectors who were hired mercenaries who hunted for a rich person warriors who signed a blood contract to be spared from death, this is genius and would be really good in a game both to build bounty hunting missions and to generate dramatic moments where you have to kill someone who doesn't have the money, refuses to pay, or has a very complicated plot to don't pay the provisional fee, I think that Ghost pays a lot of homage to the idealized Samurai, to have a better story, who knows, perhaps in a sequel Ghost will have to tarnish its references.
Its everything assassin creed is supposed to be... not an empty grindset RPG but an emotional linear story game
You should watch this guy's video about the 'illusion of "real" assassins creed' He does a great job of avoiding the easy simple arguments about old vs new AC most of the time. As a fan, I think you'll enjoy it a lot.
@@gothxm ill check it out thanks
Than you know and understand nothing about AC.
@@alexandruacatrinei1032Literally every AC game was an emotional linear story besides Origins, Odyssey & Valhalla.. what’re you actually yapping about right now?
Don't forget GOT has addictive engaging combat which lets the gamer live out the samurai/ninja power fantasy. I recently just got the director's cut on ps5 and I love the combat on lethal difficulty. I die A LOT but man is it rewarding when you pull it off.
Ghost is Tsushima was the first time in a long time i genuinely enjoyed an open world game, in large part because it looked and felt gorgeous. The only thing that would have made it better is if it actually mattered story wise if you did or did not use ghost techniques. You can finish the game without using any stealth quite easily, I really would have liked them do more with that choice.
I disagree. It's not a "choose your destiny" story. By the end of the game, Jin IS the Ghost. You just need to decide if he abandoned the Bushido and became a ninja with no honor and no respect for his history, but an invisible death bringer, or if he goes as a reluctant Ghost who knows that needs to evolve to survive, but knows that it eats his own soul bit by bit.
Phenomenal commentary. You hit a lot of points of why this game was so memorable for me. One thing you didn’t mention that I thought put the game over the top was the addition of “Lethal Mode”
Typically, I don’t pick harder difficulties as usually enemies just become damage sponges and can kill you with any mistake, but Lethal mode essentially made both Jin and enemies glass cannons.
I played the entire game on this mode and I felt it really forced me to engage with all the mechanics and carefully plan out any encounters.
It was brutal at first as about 2 hits would result in death, but once I grew accustomed to the combat system, it became one of my all time favorites. It was supremely satisfying how quickly you could cut down enemies but also be mindful to not get hit yourself. I don’t know if any other game that has made it’s hard mode so fun.
Anyway, I’m rambling a bit but great analysis!
The story isn't groundbreaking by any means, but that final mission is one of my favourite endings to a videogame. It's a very sensical choice that i could see anyone argue for one way or the other. Excellent game
How is the story not groundbreaking
@@doctorx2307It's just a Simple Story, The Story is not Revolutionary or Groundbreaking in Any means
@@10yearsinthejoint363It's a simple story done well. Quite understandable for new gamers as well.
@@doctorx2307basic revenge plot is not ground breaking in been done in media for generations
@@Skyrim_Thalia and you can say the same for most of the assassins creed games
I think what made its combat and stealth fin is high risk high reward feeling it has. Enemies won't survive many hits but neither will Jin.
Me playing on Lethal in my first play through: 😏😟🤬👺👹💀
@@ASTROPLANET13slide 6
The lethal mode was my favorite
There's no risk and no reward as far as I'm aware, I never felt any punishment beyond the insult of losing to AI, but that's nothing new to me. If you die, you lose nothing but the last few minutes of gameplay, which is probably the moment just before you made the choice that had your ass handed to you. And I don't know what the reward is, every action game has a sea of dead enemies in your wake, plenty of them have experience gain for skills and other unlocks, and Tsushima's combat just isn't as satisfying as it could and really should be. It doesn't even have the gore you'd expect from a samurai game, not much arterial spray or dismemberment (a little morbid perhaps, but you are swinging around a 5 foot razor, there should be some claret at the very least), nothing to convey the lethality and brutality of combat, or that emulates the weirdly comical element of old samurai films, it's just the same old counter based combat you get in old AC but with a rock/paper/scissors element and a samurai aesthetic. The standoff's are kinda cool, but not much to it.
Maybe it's just me but people seem to constantly fellate this game and I just don't get it, it really isn't that good. It's solidly meh. It's like bad sex, it's better than nothing and worth a go, but you're never really going to arrive at the desired destination. But maybe I'm just getting increasingly jaded after 30 years of gaming and failing to see any real innovation over the last decade, the hobby has perhaps gone stale and it affects my view and experience. Maybe my reward circuits are fried after years of overstimulation, or maybe the game is just that dull.
I don't have this issue with RDR2, a game that is purposefully slow and at times incredibly dull (it needs an animation skip because I've watched Arthur skin some poor animal so many times now that I'm probably an expert butcher.), yet I fucking love that game. Probably too much, so much that I notice areas where rockstar could put more attention such as the animation for drawing and holstering, especially the off-hand, but instead they devoted that time to horse testicles and idle animations. They have unusual priorities. But I digress, my point is that I don't mind dullness if it serves immersion, and Tsushima is dull without immersion. I think that's the issue, I feel detached because whilst Arthur feel heavy and connected to the world, Jin feels like he's secretly wearing hover shoes. Add sone weight to Jins actions and the combat, add some genuine risk and reward, and it'll be a lot better.
I need a decent way of the samurai or Tenchu game cause Tsushima just fails to satisfy my desire for Japan based shenanigans. Sadly those series are dead.
@@djinnxx7050I agree with most of the combat points, it’s satisfying to hear the clang in my controller I guess but samurai combat in my opinion was perfected in Sekiro. Feel like the devs saw that and dumbed it down as much as possible
While I was playing Ghost I definitely thought it felt alot like a ubisoft game but alot better
I really don't like HUDs but they're a necessary evil most of the time, so for me the best thing about the wind system is being able to play without one, it just makes the experience better for me.
A nice framework to approach GoT and just an answer to that continuous comparison that pops up since before its release. I really like the conclusion that those missed items in the AC franchise (Assassin institutionalized, deep parkour systems and emphasis on social stealth) are not present by design, but game stability and the backs to a immersive and cinematic narrative are unknows and unsaid factors that really resonated with the AC community. But what comes to my dumb mind is that one thing I would love to see carried from GoT to AC is that air assassinations could be initiated from a standing position and contextual press of a button, but also in the middle of a manual jump if the timing is right
I fuckin’ love GoT. Can’t say I have ever had such feels for AC. Put another way, GoT is the first single player game that made me want to be *flawless*
Bravo Jay.
Another level headed, critics take on a very turbulent genre and IP's.
You're killing it dude, keep it up.
I appreciate that, thank you
Ghost is like a mix of assassins creed, infamous, shadow of Mordor, and red dead 2. There is no way assassins creed shadows is gonna come close to this story or gameplay
Hahahah don’t ever compare this game with RDR2. Not even in the same league.
@@tonytang4668 haha, then don’t ever bring up games like the last of shit part 2 into that conversation and don’t tell me what to talk about buddy boy. Ghost of Tsushima is literally THE ONLY GAME SO FAR IN EXISTENCE EVER, to reach the graphical fidelity of rdr2 and possibly better while still having intense and highly realistic fighting and traversal. Learn words learn game creation grow a brain
@@tonytang4668 Yeah, it actually controls like a game, I don't need a spreadsheet with the controls like in RDR2, nor to nap during cutscenes.
I guess I played the game quite differently. Every time I saw something in the open world, I'd interact with it. At the end of my game there were only a few things I hadn't done, those were the only question marks I sought out. I spent a lot of time in the game just exploring though, that's what happens when you craft a world people want to spend time in.
same
Ubisoft could never. Too lazy to wait & develop such a game, the graphics, UI, UE, the care given to absolutely everything feudal era Japan, the look & acting of the characters, the beautifully done combat both if you want to play as samurai or shinobi (ninja) was so good I never ever got tired of hearing the katan clash with Mongolian weapons. Alll this whilst being the very first game in this era/genre for Sucker Punch whilst Ubi have done history pieces for over a decade & still fail wayyy more than succeed. This is a game to play if the Assassin fantasy especially in Japan ever kicks in. Their new game code name red or whatever wishes it could hold a candle to Ghost.
Facts! Ubisoft wishes they could make like a game GoT. Their AC Red is gonna look like a cheap regurgitated game beside the cinematic Masterpiece that is GoT.
hah it's funny, i always joked that GoT was the best AC games to my friends but had no idea it was such a wide sentiment. Great video as always Jay, well edited, paced and written. I could listen to you for hours tbh
Really enjoying these video essay's, some great insight. Volume levels on this one jumped in some sections, but otherwise quite enjoyable.
I actualy think the stealth is my favorite part about the game, you know why? Because I had the extrinsic motivation to make it look as cool as I could possibly make it look, it made me look at camp as more of just “objectives I have to complete just because” to “oh shit a new screenshot/video opportunity” it gives me that shinobi fantasy ya know?
The parry in this game is phenomenal.
code red (the rpg assassins creed japan game coming out next year) won’t live up to expectations and won’t touch this game, which is unfortunate.
if mirage is the last game from them on the valhalla engine then we might see a new style of game for red but I wouldn't get my hopes up too high with ubisoft
@@yourbarber6732 they confirmed it’ll be a rpg creed and it’s reported to be on a upgraded anvil engine.
I booted the game up recently for the first time (three years late for the party) and I couldn't believe how it hooked me. It was the most gripping open world experience since Red Dead Redemption 2, I dare say. Even Death Stranding Lost me at times (as a Kojima fan). So, I believe Sucker Punch is doing something right 😊
People get mad when I say GOT is an Assassin's Creed but more polished and without parkour haha
It is for me. Gameplay and mechanics aside, the fact that the game is a historic set piece period. Which always has been the main draw of the AC series, the period it was set on.
Except that in Ghost there is annyoying modern day B plot to bring you out of the experience every so often, no animus, no abstergo and no alien artifacts or civilization to put up with. Which I'd argue most players don't even remotely care about.
Ghost stays grounded in the time it's set and for me that will already make it better than AC Shadows.
I absolutely loved playing this game 🤗 I loved the graphics and the game play, it all felt so smooth 😌
A great video! as @01ChaosWarrior mentioned, I love how th egame evolves. The camps in the open world are no different, with each act they get progressively more intricate, with high peaks and low valleys. They are pretty repetitive but I remember a few choice ones that really stood out to me. Another thing I love is the Ronin Duels! some of those ronin you hunt down are in absolutely gorgeous spots.
Yes ghost of tsushima is indeed the best modern AC. It does everything the RPG AC games do but tenfold better. And they achieved this level of quality and perfection with a small budget of $60 mil so imagine what they'll do with the sequel. AC used to be my favorite franchise back in the day but now its a hollow shell of its former self (not really hollow cuz that shell is filled with microtransactions lmao)
I just finished playing this on PC very very good game very fun. This is definitely a better assassin‘s creed game I haven’t played assassin‘s creed since 3. I can’t wait for the second ghost Tsushima game
It is one of the best games I've played. I'd say it's the best Ghost of Tsushima game. It is it's own thing. AC has gone down the drain after Origins. Origins did the same thing of a warrior turning into an assassin and establishing the creed. And the game made it hard to just be a warrior and straight up fight in the later stages of the game and incentivized stealth so much more. And GoT did the same thing. Origins was the last game I loved from AC. This would be the next if it were to be a AC game. But, I like to keep it separate as it's own thing. It has it's own charm and it's a unique game. I want a franchise of GoT games now. The Ghost franchise if you will!
10 month old video but a friend of mine that worked on the game recently (finally) gifted me it and the first few things i noticed were that the next assassin's creed game will take a miracle to top this version of japan, ubisoft will make a better world but they won't have it in then to make the story or characters as interesting. The second was the flute, control of weather in an open world game was something i didnt know i liked wanted or needed until this game showed how many times i dont want super dark thunderstorms when im already in a dark jungle.
For me, the reason it's the best of its kind is the combat system. I hate freeflow combat, it's just mashing and countering but GOT's has real combo routes and tech that allows for stylish combos actually made by the player and not just prebaked animations.
At first I had no interest in the game due to freeflow but a friend bought it so I tried it and immediatly realized that there was depth there. It was so satisfying to beat the whole thing like a samurai on lethal.
How do you access that combat system? Don't tell me it's a mid to late game unlock, that'll mean having to play more of it to eventually unlock this weird thing called fun.
Most I've experienced is counters for 90% of enemies (which admittedly is most of samurai combat techniques using the sword. The sword historically being a sidearm and status symbol, not the samurais main weapon, thus more defensive techniques are used with it.), I've occasionally played aggressive with them but that tends to lead to being poked in the rear in a less than satisfactory manner. And trying to flow from one enemy to the next is seemingly discouraged by enemies staying spread out, even in more confined areas they seem to prefer to stand as far away as they can and gawp as you slaughter their friend, occasionally rushing in to give a little poke from behind before running away, and then for some unfathomable reason decide to take turns to eagerly rush in for their own demise. It's like a conveyor belt of idiots eager for death.
The only complexity in the combat is the make-up of each enemy squad you face (and they're usually the same), and once you've fought one of each type, you know how to deal with them. Basically you aggressively chase down the archers first, then you deal with the spearmen and then shield bearers, in exactly the same way, with counters, only the stance is different. Everyone else is easily dealt with as you deal with the main targets, just cannon fodder that can be ignored and used for easy heals. That isn't a complex combat system, it's just rock/paper/scissors with the added "complexity" in the order of how you deal with them, and you deal with them the same way every time thereafter thus negating any illusion of complexity the combat initially had. It's just dull. The bosses can be enjoyable though, until you realise they're just the same as regular enemies only you need to hit them more and they have a much larger health bar and a name.
@@djinnxx7050 seems you're just waiting around fishing for counters, playing in a boring way.
If you understand your moveset you can do awesome stuff.
@@djinnxx7050its rock, paper, scissor combat but executed quited well, we really feel every slash and stab. compare to the other combat like AC vallhala for example, you just bashing light attack R1 or heavy attack R2 with no context, and using a bunch of prebaked animation skill to finish off the enemy,.
@@night1952 Fishing for counters suggests I'm just standing there waiting to counter. I'm not, I'm trying to fight proactively hence chasing down archers and prioritising threats, closing each down in turn. The problem is that counters are the optimal way to do things, you can attack aggressively but you'll probably be attacked through your own attacks or stabbed in the back, and I find getting stabbed in the back only to still kick everyone's ass and then gallop into the sunset totally unharmed to be somewhat immersion breaking. Immersion is where I find my enjoyment in the absence of sheer spectacle. I guess I'm just weird like that.
I perhaps speak only for myself here but you want it to be cinematic and less gamey because the game tries to be cinematic, so I play to the strengths of the system in that respect and try to choreograph a fight that wouldn't be too out of place in a samurai film. That means after aggressively dealing with the archers, you slow down a little and dance, you take your time to dodge around an enemy, play a little, the headcannon being that each time you evade an enemy he becomes more angered and frustrated, begins to make rash choices and wide swings that give you the opening for the kill. You know, ninjary samurai shit. The evasive agility and underhanded tactics of the ninja coupled with the calm focus and deadly accuracy of the samurai. That's how I try to play, but the AI are reading from a different script so it devolves into the same repetitive fights with the same enemies, again and again and again and again. I understand the combat, and I'm not feeling it.
Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad combat system in general, not in the sense that it's mechanically bad, it's just not good enough to keep me going for 20+ hours. It's just too safe and lacks a solid feel. It lacks immersion or any sense of vulnerability. You begin the game as a god, for whatever reason, cutscenes and scripted losses aside, Jin is the greatest swordsman on Tsushima and totally untouchable unless you happen to make rash choices yourself and end up getting attacked through your own attacks. Stealth may be encouraged but it's unnecessary because Jin can take out entire squads like it's nothing.
I must add that context is important here, I played skyrim and Odyssey for hundreds of hours and neither has exceptional combat, but they aren't samurai games where combat is where most of the focus is. They have the exploration and other elements to fill in, whereas Tsushima, although stunningly beautiful, it's world just doesn't feel worth exploring. One sword is the same as any other so unlocking weapons, or rather skins, just isn't rewarding, and the talismans aren't that great either, and as much as I love the look of samurai armor and unlocking new looks, I don't like how it looks on Jin, it all feels a touch too bulky. In fact, the best looking armour in my view is the one you begin with even in its damaged form, I like the one pauldron look and the dirt, it suits the guerrilla tactic vibe, such fighters always appearing somewhat dishevelled and barely scraped together. Everything else is too bulky or clean, or just a bit silly.
All the world really has is the visuals and I can see that beauty without ever leaving the main path from mission to mission. I always explore, and as I explored Tsushima, all I ended up thinking was "why am I even playing this.", I struggle to put it down but I'm not having fun, it's barely filling the void that my life is nor satisfying my desire for escapism, it's well made and beautiful but ultimately dull in every corner I looked.
The combat is the only element it really has going for it, it's what you're expected to be doing the majority of your playtime, and it just doesn't satisfy enough to cover for the other areas of the game that are also lacking. If it was a 20 hour experience, I'd be fine with that and satisfied, but it isn't. For the time investment it expects, it should really deliver a little more, be a little more fleshed out. I feel I'm somewhat outnumbered with that opinion but you know, different strokes for different folks.
@@azmihakam Its executed competently, yes. Fluid and generally decent. But impactful, no. It's a bit floaty, I don't feel connected to anything, and the vibration function seems off. It may just be my controller but it always felt like it vibrated a touch out of sync with the action, we're talking mere milliseconds but it's noticeable and immersion breaking. That needs tightening up and it'll help a little, probably. I know, it's a bit picky but it's the small details that make or break immersion. I really want to love the game, but playing it I just feel bored, i still have that "a few more minutes" thing but it just ain't fun, it's gaming Stockholm syndrome, I keep playing in the hopes that fun will finally present itself, or something will magically happen that helps me feel the game and start to actually enjoy it. But it never comes. I've been here before with AC:Origins, for some reason I just can't find the enjoyment, I see a game that isn't bad by any real measure (you can be nitpicky and find faults), but it just fails to grab me. Others love it and I feel wrong and a bit left out, why can't I love it like everyone else does, is there something wrong with me or the game. I'd usually go for me but in this instance, it's definately the game, it just plays it way too safe to the point of competent mediocrity, and it fails to tickle my pickle.
The only thing I hate about the game (other than it's PS5 upgrade pricetag) is the idea that its story is worthy of its aspirations to somehow re-manifest Kurosawa's essence in digitized interactive form. People always seem to think games with great gameplay and presentation also have excellent stories. If "Ghost of Tsushima" were an actual Kurosawa film, it would be among his worst
I came to comment to dispute the entire comparison to Kurosawa, actually. It was a namecheck by ignorant games journos parroting a namedrop by the devs and its marketing (the Kurosawa filter is a joke). It's just jargon meant to give the game an historic resonance and ambition it does not really embody and seemingly cannot live up to.
Has Jay ever seen a film from him - that wasn't a few clips from Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress, or Yojimbo/Sanjuro? Kurosawa specifically *never* pandered in the kind of generic, romanticised samurai adventure visuals and mood that this game hones in on (only Hidden Fortress isn't mostly genre subversive, and it actually looks the least like GoT). Frankly it's closer to something like Zhang Yimou's Hero or House Of Flying Daggers.
I've seen AK's name dropped countless times, but not once have I ever seen a shot selection or camera movement the really recalls his style. And there's nothing in the story I've yet seen (I'm on Xbox so can't play it. I'd like to watch an LP, but no one I sub to has done one, or is likely to) that suggests the writers had any real interest in dealing with similar themes as Kurosawa often did.
GoT, for one, is partly a violent power fantasy. That in itself is enough to make it borderline antithetical to everything AK cared about. Am I correct that the game's story rejects the romanticism of 'warrior codes' and samurai culture? I've seen people suggest that's the case, but without seeing the story for myself I'm not sure I trust anyone's analysis, especially from people banging on about how it's a 'love letter' to 'samurai films like Kurosawa's'. AK pretty much hated romanticism of the period and of the military social class. I mean, jeese... the point of Seven Samurai is 'samurai and bandits are both a bunch of bastards making villagers' lives a misery'.
Yojimbo is blackly, bleakly comic - and features a rōnin who'd be a disgrace to any notion of 'samurai [false] honour'.
And Sanjuro's iconic final duel is pretty much a fuck-you to the genre fanboys as represented by the young men who valorise samurai and hire him. He has no time for their praise or desire for violence.
And if people reach instead for Ran or Kagemushu? That's even more ludicrous... given they're even weirder and more abstracted.
Anyhoo, sorry for the rant. ; -) None of this is a criticism of the game itself, at least I think not (like I said, I've not seen the whole story). I'm just always slightly annoyed by how AK's name was - I feel - ignorantly thrown around, including in this video (and on the whole I think Jay does a good job on his channel. a bit hyperbolic at times, perhaps).
If GoT really was an exquisitely framed Kurosawa-like work, which also concerned itself with mature humanist themes - awesome, the use of his name would be appropriate. But I think it's deeply misleading.
If it all led to greater actual knowledge and awareness of his films, that's ultimately a good thing. But I'm not so sure that's overly true.
@@SabiJD The story certainly has its humanist moments, especially in the subplots. Its rejection of warrior codes and samurai culture is largely anodyne. While I believe the Khan has some interesting dialogue up front, it is hyper-focused with the "good vs. evil" struggle against foreign invaders to "sacred land." Probably only saved from accusation of racism because people distinguish between modern "Mongolians" and "the Mongol Empire" the same way they do modern "Romans" and "the Roman Empire."
The game treats the emphasis on honor as, at worst, a prideful apathy towards the lower class that will almost certainly lead to the death of innocents, and the samurai themselves, due to strategic faults. It handles this mostly through a secondary female lead from the peasantry that shows Jin his ignorance and teaches him how to fight "without honor" to maximize his impact. This even puts him into conflict with his uncle. I suppose he's technically even made ronin, by the end, because as a "dishonorable" samurai combatant he is expelled from the ranks.
I don't think the game really illustrates the absolute contempt the samurai often had for the peasantry, and even though the game technically takes Jin's side on this issue (he is after all the protagonist) I think it undermines itself in two key ways especially:
1. Gameplay. Jin is a one man army. Because the game caters to the two most obvious playstyles it is possible to spend the majority of the game successfully rescuing just about everyone as a sword swinging lunatic who freely announces himself at the gates of ground baracks before every duel.
2. Themes. In what seems to be a stab at nuance the game has Jin sneak into a camp and poison the Mongols. Jin's uncle is disgusted by his behavior, and his horror seems just reasonable enough under the circumstances to suggest it's valid to see things from his perspective.
This might be all well and good if the only question of "Samurai honor" was how to approach a fight with one's enemies.
Both of these problems are pretty wide-reaching. Making what could be a much needed injection of subtlety and nuance into something more akin to distilled false equivalency.
I do kind of reject the notion that Kurosawa wasn't a fan of action sequences, and set pieces. Which seems to have some suggestion here. I do think he valued humility and empathy on a level that's not reflected in this game's narrative, but he loved himself some "chambara," clearly
Bruh my anticipation for the sequel is through the roof, I hope Sucker Punch take their time cooking to further differentiate itself from other game in genre. Maybe we are fighting the Mongol and Shogunate in the next game? 🤔
This is an exquisite review and critique. I thank you for your effort and perspective.
I actually pity people who never played this masterpiece, Played it twice and platinum it.
Same
I'm doing my second round and I still enjoy it more than assassin creed I love customization all the techniques and sword styles makes me feel like a real samurai and when I start to have trouble I go straight up Ninja It helps so much and make the game far better than assassin creed in my book!
joking right, it's an okay game, pretty good at best.
@@MaxIronsThird agree to disagree, just know that your wrong
Lol I'm about to start my 4th playthrough
Been playing this for 2 weeks and yeah I love it! I have been aiming for this game as my first Playstation game when I can get my hands on the console. One of the things that like about this game is the freedom to choose the playstyle during combat. I combine AC way to clear some annoying obstacle then just walk with the blade drawn towards the enemy slashing them one by one making me feel like a terror to the mongol invaders. Unlike Assassin's Creed ( Especially the older ones ), the combat here has more variety and more kind of skill demanding rather than just pressing block then counter attack then performing kill streaks which keeps me engaged all the time during combat. Overall, I love this game and this is the Samurai game that seems I have been looking for all this time.
I absolutely Love this game. I 100% it. I feel like it does every aspect of an open world justice. All collectibles have a reason for you to go get them. Even the foxes, they may be simple follow quests but they take you through beautiful landscapes and at the end you get a little award.
I will be giving my left kidney for this game to have a sequel, I just finished my second playthrough after putting it down for years and it still has those emotional beats all that time ago that made me so invested in the story Im so hyped to be getting into Ikki Island also. great video and thank you for more glaze of this masterpiece!
No. Ghost was better than AC games at the start but by the end the AC games are miles above imo. Things such as combat which was great in GoT just got way too repetitive by the end whereas I still havent got tired of any of the combat in AC games. I also have a lot more fun exploring the open world of most AC games. The story for ghost is generic imo and definitely doesnt beat games like origins for me. Same for the characters which I found uninteresting. I honestly was disappointed by ghost of tsushima because I heard how great of a game it was before i played it and then after I played it I felt like I wasted my time after the first 3 - 4 hours because it got stale after that point and I only played more in hopes of finding what made this game a masterpiece. I wish i stopped playing the game after 4 hours and my opinion in the game would likely be much better
I agree about exploring the open world of AC games more. Say what you will about their gameplay, but their historical settings are the gold standard.
so i jst found your channel, & being a massive 'ac' fan, i'm honestly so glad that I did.. you articulate yourself so well, & i seem to be agreeing with a lot more of what you say than i disagree with.. i find your narrative both eloquent, & somewhat soothing as well.. in my opinion (such as it is), a truly brillaint channel, with informed, balanced & objective opinions, genuinely pleasant to listen to, & all (so far) on a subject matter very close to my heart.. 110% worth a subscription, & i'm really looking forward to watching a few more right after leaving this comment.. thank you for making my day-off considerably less mudane than it was shaping up to be, & wishing you all the best moving forward..
I would love a Shao Jun armor mod. I know they're not the same culture, but it would be the closest thing we'll get to a real Ac Shao Jun game (since chronicles was really underwhelming)
They could even just use Syndicate's Shao Jun armor. I don't know how hard it would be to make, but I guess it's better than creating it from scratch.
It's all about having a cohesive artistic vision the whole dev team supports.
Ghost of Tsushima was built by people who loved every aspect of it, who knew what they were working on.
Ubisoft, however, has notoriously poor and messy management. They have no idea what they're doing most of the time, not professionally but concceptually, just half-assing it: Doing things "just because you're supposed to" and picking the bottom of the barrel formulas for their 3 programmers to do while their 300 3D modellers sculpt trees and buildings.
Sucker Punch has good artistic and tech talent. They knew what tech to use to enable the art (particle effects = leaves)
Ubisoft is too focused on making a "consumer products" than interactive art that is fun and makes you feel stuff. Because that is risky, that is difficult. You can't just use a formula to make that happen as every game is different. That's why the first ACs felt good, because they were not hampered by having to make a "product that must sell and one-up the last one". New ACs are just a mess, you can sense how most of the devs don't care about what they're working on. Everything feels so jaded, so soulless.
The relative competence it's executed masks it somewhat, but you still feel something is off... It feels like this is the first draft polished instead of reworked and refined.
Waiting for realese on PC. Graphically it looks great, they even managed to add physics for the rope. She collapses under the weight of the character, something that has never happened in assassin's creed
I’m just a fan of historical inspired games, we need more of them
I would argue the mains tory has one of the best endings ever in a vidoe game, all other parts of it islike you say, nothing great but that ending IS great.
Being a fan of the early AC games (1 -> Black Flag) I always thought the modern AC games are half baked and poorly executed, to the point that playing them bacame a chore. Then I played this game and realized how good AC would be if they focused on actually having a great story that will keep you going, your journey to the title card alone is a masterpiece.
Oh man, as if waiting for it to come on PC wasn't painful enough xD Good video, great points. I might need to temper my expectations when I eventually play it, but I'm sure I'll have a good time. Competent, one might say)
Today your prayers were heard.
It's kinda funny because GoT isn't really that much different than the latest three AC games (Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla), it has the same or very similar approaches to gameplay, mechanics, combat, parkour, stealth, world desing, narrative (fight me) RPG elements like exp, skill points and trees, collectables, and yet it manages to be more appealing to AC fans than those three games.
from my perspective as a new fan of the franchise (played my first AC back in 2021, and have completed 9 of them since), it seems like the only reason AC fans call the newer games bad isn't cuz they're bad, but because they're not like the older games. if Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla didn't have the Assassin's Creed name slapped on them, they'd be saying these are world-class games matched by no other.
it's honestly hard for me to go back to the older games after playing the RPG ones. they feel incredibly outdated imo.
@@burgerbran If that was true then old ac fans wouldn't praise GoT as being a "better AC game". The problem with the new AC games isn't that they're RPGs, it's that they're bad RPGs. They're bloated, grindy and generally lacks focus in the narrative and gameplay. They would be awesome mobile games, but they make for lackluster triple A experiences.
Also the fucking brain dead take of calling something outdated just because it's a different genre, like bro Syndicate came out just two years before Origins. Technology didn't change that much to make it "outdated". Hell, RDR2 has the same gameplay style than old AC and it came out the same year Odyssey did. Learn what "outdated" means please.
I don’t see the AC connection really at all except for some very limited stealth and coded ninja iconography. The game plays more like Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor.
Sucker punch really went like, fine I’ll do it myself
Anyone else think that the only reason there is an AC Japan in the works is precisely _BECAUSE_ of the success of *AND* comparisons that Ghosts was the AC game everyone has been begging for since Ezio faded into the sunset in Revelations? I suspect Ubisoft only knows how to be reactionary at this point which is another reason AC feels hollow now. When you wait to see what the new trend is instead if trying to set the trend... your always going to be in the middle of the pack and unremarkable. I think another reason AC has been dying, is the constant jump from character to character. Ezio is beloved because he got 3 games to build his story. Even though I'm not a fan of Connor Kenway of AC 3, I Am a fan of his father and grandfather... there was connection and investment with the main characters once upon a time. I think if ubisoft had built a few games around Bayek in some way or tied his story to Kassandra in a 3rd game it would have been better. Fans WANT to carry on a good story with at least appearances from favorite characters from previousstories... that's why the Star Wars legends universe exists.
Waiting for a trend instead of trying to set the trend is a great point.
I think the reason Ezio is popular has nothing to do with the number of games.. in fact quite the opposite.. he got 3 games BECAUSE he was so popular from ac2, that devs wanted to capitalise on that character as much as possible. The sequels were rushed and scrambled together.. Revelations being a game they made from a scrapped attempt at a mobile game 😂..
Also no surprise that Ubisoft has always been mediocre and late to the party... and allergic to criticism..
I never knew that Jerryrigeverything had a gaming channel
One regret I have is that I will never get to re-experience the thrill of playing Ghost of Tsushima for the first time, this game was incredible 😍
ghost does so many things at around a 7 or an 8 that it all adds up to a 9 or 10. it’s a similar philosophy for GoW Ragnarok that I heard first from that game’s director. I think AC could learn a lot from Ghost considering how much Ghost learned from AC
I think trailing can be fun. I like a few of the ones in AC4 (but also felt a lot of them were really frustrating), specifically the ones where you have to stay near to targets to hear them talk
I agree there is one in RDR2 with a rail road worker stealing things you can tail him or just run up to him and force him to tell you what he knows.
AC4 is the only game that made me enjoy (some) trailing missions. But I hated the ones where you had lots of open space and alternative routes to go through, but the game just refused to let you do it.
This game was my favorite game of all time when I was playing it for the first time on release. I 100% completed the story. When I tried to come back later for the dlc and do new game+ though it did not grab me and I dropped it before starting the dlc. I still think it is an amazing game. As someone who has played every AC game and used to be a huge fan of the series I am definitely one of the people who has been saying this game is a better AC game than Ubisoft could ever make. It definitely is more similar to the post Origins games with the Stealth, Warrior, Archer trio of gameplay and I think it does it way better than AC has.
If only it was available on pc...
Edit: Welp, it's on pc now! And all I can say is that after playing the mission where Jin gets thrown off a bridge at the beginning, it still isn't captivating me yet, hopefully it will as I continue to play whenever I get the chance to
god of war, last of us, and uncharted i think are all on steam now, it should come out somewhat soon if they know whats good for their business
now about bloodborne....
@@SgtFunBun i have been waiting 3 years to play the game. i don't think i have the right to complain that they haven't ported it yet, but it still pisses me off so much. like, come on Sony, take my fucking money already!
@@SgtFunBun Bloodborne 🥺
GeForce Now leak from 2 years ago has GoT listed as coming to PC
@@FTL7I1H something from 2 years ago? doesn't matter to me then, since no official announcement came after that.
Though i am a completionist when playing games, i really love how GoT's world just makes me stop right on my tracks to admire the landscape. It's really beautiful and captivating when the time and place aligns perfectly. another note that if you want to fully immerse yourself in the story but you still wanna get all those question marks, I personally would bee-line every story quest or tales on the map, immersing myself with the dialogue and narrative. Once done, i'll then actually start exploring the island, going through all the question marks, the mongol camps and such. This is only my recommendation though, play how you want, this is just a small piece of advice to those who wants to listen
Hell yeah it is!!! And absolutely no micro transactions! Can’t beat that
Voiceover goals 💗
The one thing that AC has done better than all other of third person action/stealth 'em up games is a dense recreation of a historical city. In terms of gameplay mechanics like stealth, combat, and RPG elements, AC is massively outshone by basically everything on the market. To say nothing of typical Ubisoft writing quality. I really liked the franchise, but I think it just doesn't have the same appeal to me anymore. AC is not just an AAA game, but a flagship AAA franchise, thus it has to appeal to as broad of a market as possible. It really is a "dudebro" franchise these days, just a stabby market equivlent of CoD. It has to be built assuming that it could be someone first and only game. So even when games like Ghost of Tsushima and Shadow of War does almost everything so much better, it really does not matter. Ubisoft will never make a better Assassin's Creed, only a more profitable one.
The modders are going to have a field day when this releases on pc next week
Ac is more than just stealth. The main thing that makes ac ac is the parkour and exploring a city with guards. Ghost has stealth and assassinations but that’s about it
Well clearly you haven’t played ghost because the exploration is insane and sure it doesn’t have parkour but it surely can depending on how you play it
@@doctorx2307 the exploration is insane??? What does that even mean? Nothing you said countered my point of ghost not being an ac game. Also ghost is extremely exhausting to play because of repetitive gameplay. Enemy patrols, foxes, bamboo, bandit camps, etc… etc… doesn’t have the charm of 2015 and under ac games or rdr2, botw, elden ring, etc…
@@Entertainment-ev6ob it’s crazy to me how you have to bring up the assassin Creed games that are from 2015 and under because you know that there are no other good assassin’s Creed games and they all get repetitive and then you bring up other games that have nothing to do or even close to assassin‘s Creed at all those are completely different games and yeah they do have good exploration but ghost of Tsushima also has really But you talking about ghost of Tsushima is repetitive doesn’t even make any sense because in each assassins Creed game there’s always something super repetitive about it that can make it boring for a while
@@doctorx2307Why is it crazy to go back to 2015? Only 3 of the 12 mainline AC games released after 2015, are you stupid? And Ghost of Tsushima is my favourite PS5 game but it comes nowhere close to ONE SINGLE AC game in exploration. It is literally just natural sceneries, 4-5 temples and some copy paste dinky towns. Pick just one region of AC Origins like Alexandria and it has better cities and way more sceneries. Ghost has the best combat, the story is better than AC Valhalla, Syndicate and 3. But the main reason it was loved it because it did not have the garbage colour coded rpg outfit where every enemy is a sponge that takes 500 hits to kill. It also has the 2 main weapon (blade and sword) plus gadgets style of old school AC. That’s why Ghost is smooth and feels like an old AC game.
more than half of ac games arent cities with guards lmao. this point is just idiotic@@Entertainment-ev6ob
My issue with Assassins Creed is going back and playing games like Unity and seeing the missed potential. The formula was almost perfected in that game. If they had 1) Used English speaking French voice actors 2) Had maybe a year extra in development to polish the bugs and really flesh out the story more, it would have been the best AC game of all time. Imagine all the amazing AC games we could have gotten using that formula instead of the RPG stuff (Which I do enjoy but feel like clones of other games). I had a lot of hope with Mirage, but all the reviews seem negative and it looks like it should have been a DLC. Ubisoft just keeps dropping the ball when they have everything going for them, it’s just so frustrating.
In my humble opinion, you missed the biggest reason why AC fans called Ghost of Tsushima the greatest Assassin's Creed game. For us laymen, simple casual gamers who don't review games or dive in depth into how well games do what, allow me to express why for many of us GOT stole AC's thunder...
For over a decade now, the single most highly requested AC setting BY FAR has been Feudal Japan but no... Ubisoft was so tone-deaf that they'd rather make both a viking assassin (I'm sorry, what?) and a Greek mercenary that they had to retcon into AC canon before making what could possibly be the closest to a guaranteed slam dunk of a game!
All we've been asking for probably ever since the phenomenon that was Naruto and ever since we all realized that Ubisoft was so good at creating assassins in history's most iconic eras has been NINJA ASSASSINS!!
All Ghost of Tsushima did was make a game based in Feudal Japan where at some point, for a decent portion of the game, you could run around with throwing knives, bows and arrows, smoke bombs, etc, sneak up on bad guys and ASSASSINATE THEM! That's all the majority of us AC fans wanted. The ultimate assassin fantasy...
And that, Jay, when compared to the likes of Valhalla, Oddessy and to a lesser extent, Origins, is why GOT out-Assassin's Creed-ed Assassin's Creed!
Want more proof? Now, FINALLY, after Ghost of Tsushima proved just how awesome and fun AND PROFITABLE the setting turned out to be, and how much of a no-brainer it was to do it, NOW Ubisoft decides it's a good idea to make Assassin's Creed Red, the NINJA Assassin's Creed and sadly, now people will inevitably compare Red to Ghost of Tsushima and if Red isn't more fun (by leaning into that fantasy) than GOT was, the common sentiment among average gamers (not necessarily the RUclips AC putist reviewers and vloggers) will end up being that Sucker Punch made a better Assassin's Creed set in Japan than Ubisoft was able to, even without it being an actual Assassin's Creed.
... OK, rant over now. 😅
All I read was it’s set in Japan that’s why we like it 😂🤦🏾♂️
facts my brother! spit yo shit indeed!
all we want is japan + assasssin's, it's everything we've always wanted.
also commenting now with the whole AC shadow's controversy...
@@ayamesupremacy8367 they totally fucked it up.. more slop without even the decency to provide both Japanese main characters.. also parkour has way too many flips.. will get old fast😂
I hope ubisoft noticed how they messed up by not giving us a samurai AC game years ago, they better make right with assasins creed 2025
I’m playing black flag now for the first time, I played ghosts when it came out, black flag kicks the shit out of ghosts in damn near every category except graphics. Ghosts is overrated as fuck, the only game more overrated than it is god of war ragnarok
ive been waiting for this to hit PC forever. Really hope AC Red copies Ghost homework.
I love open world games. I loved them so much that I lost all interest in other genres.
I used to play shooters, driving games, fighters, platformers... but after GTA Vice City, my interest in them waned. It got even worse once San Andreas came out. After that, I simply couldn't get into other genres.
I tried playing Titanfall 2 a few years ago. It was the kind of game I'd have devoured in the past, but now? I simply couldn't stay interested. I put it down one day and never picked it back up.
For me, it's the ability to role play in an open world. To become the character you're playing by immersing one's self in their world.
Because of this, I found myself playing games that aren't half as good as TF2. Like Farcry. I played a whole slew of those.
As for why Tsushima worked so well? The gameplay loop. All other shortcomings disappeared in the face of deeply satisfying and varied combat. You don't just fight spongey enemies as you level up, they become better at fighting you. You in turn become better at fighting them.
I bought Ghost when it came out and to this day, I still fire it up, just to keep my skills sharp.
Ghost of Tsushima has a stunning beatiful design although some compromise in history level in the game like The Last Samurai film.The Samurai on that period is very different from Edo style that they romanticized but it success to construct the samurai code to contrast the conflict in Jin very well and the game is still satisfying.
People who say things like this have no idea what Assassin's Creed is actually about. At least the first games, they weren't generic open world games where the focus was the time period. the setting was the background for the story, nothing more
Ubisoft doesn't care so maybe that's why people don't care anymore. Recently when they were giving away older AC games for free for a limited time, they kept advertising them as if those titles were only about their respective time period, except Black Flag to an extent. No mention of the Assassin fantasy, just something along "make history yours".
Ubisoft clearly wants this IP to be known as a historic theme park to cater to the masses and not, well, Assassin's Creed and its been clearly working since Origins cause neither the critiques nor a casual gamer ever asks to why is there nothing Assassin-y in a game called Assassin's Creed. Rant over.
@@user-fm9ww2wk1iAC has never really perfected stealth (aka the assassin fantasy), and the assassin's/Templars story started to go off the rails immediately...
There never was an era where the series' potential was realised, and very quickly AC as an historic theme park was how people began to treat it. A common refrain was that people were sick of the modern narrative - especially the dullard Desmond - and that all they wanted was time in the past. So Ubisoft responded accordingly.
I can't really fault them for doing so, and the sales of Valhalla vindicate that shift (whether the next big AC gets near those numbers or not will be interesting. I'd hope even very casual fans are sick of such obscene scale and feature bloat).
Odyssey remains my favourite in the series - because of its era, world, Kassandra, and the main story/stories. It got me back into the series after I soured on Brotherhood (that's a bigger, dumber cash grab than any of the modern ACs in my book. it just didn't have a story worth telling).
As much as I've enjoyed Odyssey and even Valhalla (I think they're more cohesively designed games than the classic eras), I would like a true, passionate, less investor-driven return to a 'proper' AC. Bring back ACII's actual puzzles, do a really good arc involving far more of the present narratives, and actually look to better stealth systems like MGSV and almost wholly cast aside action combat.
The classic AC era represents something truly distinct - and as much as I enjoy the modern era, it's obviously far too generic and commonplace.
But if all Ubisoft are going to do is half-arsed cast-offs like Mirage? I would much rather they craft better open-world adventures.
Really shows how constantly thinkIng of other games while playing another can horribly cloud ones perspective.
In what way?
Yes ghost of tsushima is about the ac brotherhood and the templar order, just switch out the samurai for the brotherhood and the khans for the templars and there you go. A classic ac story of a group trying to take over and you the caracter have to take them down whilst also grappling with what it means to be apart of and if its right to be apart of the brotherhood and what it stands for.
bro what are you yapping about?? Samurai are like basically templars... ancient rich order controlling the people. You just said there are good and bad guys in both storys, which every story in existence has. This story has like nothing in common with any AC story and it is better that way cause most(not all) ac storys are kind of mid at best.
One thing i hope for if we get a sequel is it being set on the mainland
It would be cool but they for sure could not fit the whole Japan Mainland
@@nikoraasu6929 never know. It could be possible but if they couldn't then atleast a good amount
@@Willzb-xk4ew I mean, yes, it could be possible but look at Tsushima's map detail and the attention to every single place in the map. It's already so detailed on a small map. If they wanted to do that on such a massive map compared to the island alone, they would take 10 years.
I remember in 2014, i was really disappointed with Unity, and although i personally enjoyed Rogue and it had one of my favourite cities in it (Halifax, although definitely not to scale), it felt like more of an expansion pack to Black Flag than a game. I made the joke that Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor was the best Assassins Creed game of 2014... although i can't watch it at the moment the title of this video gives off the same feeling
The way the game encouraged stealth but showed the moral dichotomy of using a powerful mechanic was very cleverly implemented
YES
Three of the best looking games of all times artistically and in no particular order
1. The witcher 3
2. Red dead redemption 2
3. Ghost of Tsushima
I'd add Skyrim in 4th.
You nailed everything I've thought about this game. It's great, but I don't consider it the best of anything. Just a jack of all trades.
For me, the story and eventual repetition are what kept this game from being unforgettable.
Naw, this game is meant to be played as a samurai, not sneaking around. AC still has a chance of making a good assassin/ninja game. The focus would need to be in big castle infiltration.
Hmmm yea no. The game is literally called GHOST of tsushima. It's a ninja game not a samurai game. 🤦😂
Spoilers: Yes.
I agree about the Guiding Wind mechanic, and I still ended up using the map the same as I would in any other sandbox game. If anything, the guiding wind would annoy me because it would lead me directly into rock walls or straight to the edge of cliffs. Perhaps that's an issue with the world design, but traveling anywhere on foot or on horseback is never 'fun' unless it's a flat open field, since the terrain of the island has so many jagged hills.
I've got other little things like that; Kurosawa Mode is a neat feature, but it breaks combat because in Black & White it's impossible to tell red attacks (unblockable) from the blue attacks (blockable). The day/night cycle seems imbalanced because we only get a few minutes of sunshine compared to extended periods of dusk, or storm clouds. Even something as beautiful as the particle effects seem to have gone overboard, littering the camera with ember, or blades of grass, or flower petals, at all times, making moments where the screen is actually clear, a rarity.
All this is, of course, are my personal nitpicks that seemingly didn't bother others. The game is otherwise worthy of all the praise it got. I don't think it's the best Assassin's Creed game because AC 2 and Black Flag are still better than Ghost of Tsushima imo, but I love your point about how fully the game commits to its concept and setting. And that they may have cornered the market. The real question is, if AC finally does set one in Japan, can it, and will it be better than this? I don't know...
Imagine thinking AC2 and Blackflag is still the best compared to GoT lmao
At least make it less obvious you have that nostalgia googles on
No. It isn't the best Assassin's Creed game and I'm so tired of people saying that. Not every historical fiction with stealth had to be compared to Assassin's Creed. And just because people desperately want an AC in Japan doesn't mean that they can just attach that to Ghost of Tsushima.
AC and Ghost of Tsushima are two completely different games that only share similarities in some basic gameplay concepts and mechanics.
Ghost of Tsushima is not an Assassin's Creed game
Gameplay wise it really feels like Assassin's Creed
At this point there is no way to know if something is ac unless it has the title and besides the parkour this is definitely the perfect ac game becauee it sticks to the principles of the first game
I was literally playing this game 30 minutes ago, and I was thinking the exact same thing😳
Yes, yes it is
no it isn't. it has nothing to do with the literal Assassin's Creed, and has nothing to do with the core elements of the AC franchise.
@@vanlllasky ok black face
@@vanlllasky neither does AC itself anymore
@@pegasuskiller9905 black face? is that an insult? what does that even mean?
"the focus on stealth" comment kinda stood out to me. My experience (now that it's finally on PC) is that, while all the tools are there and it's certainly competent for the genre, you are discouraged by the narrative to be a sneaky bastard. But the Mongols are such a dominant force that marching up to the front door for an honorable crossing of swords isn't an option (at first), so you have to. Then once you get stronger, it's usually faster (and imho more fun) to just stride up in full samurai armor and yell "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough" at everyone in earshot. I also feel this is reflected in how there are more armor sets and skills for open combat, while the stealth dagger upgrade is relatively cheap and I had it maxed out long before the first castle liberation.
Though tbf I'm the kind of player who likes to meet (most) games on their terms. I loved Red Dead 2's slower pace, the camping, the fishing, the cooking and drinking and sleeping, in the same way I love watching Jin contemplate his allies, father, struggles, violating his oaths as a samurai while he's soaking in the hot springs water. I love how the bamboo cutting is how you level up your Resolve. I love that a certain bird will chirp and lead you to a POI, but are easier to ignore than a blinking compass marker if I'm not in the mood. While the wind is effectively no more than a diegetic GPS, I love how the line "[your father] is the wind at your back" gives a character motivation to care about it. The role-playing part of the RPG is so much more important to me than min-maxing stats and optimizing gameplay so it's a treat to play another game that says, "this is the fantasy, you are the guy, go be the action hero you used to daydream about" after Red Dead 2 did that for me with cowboys.
It doesn't really do anything new outside of nailing the samurai fantasy, but it does everything *right*.
yes
no it isn't. it has nothing to do with the literal Assassin's Creed, and has nothing to do with the core elements of the AC franchise.
maybe so, but it does everything ac did but better. maybe apart from music@@vanlllasky and come on now, it's literally a stealth game. don't pretend it has nothing to do with the core elements of AC
@@GREATSLUMBER the core elements of AC, as in, using our DNA to go back in time and relive the memories of our ancestors, experience a new version of history with altered events, learn about the philosophical debate and literal war between Templars and Assassins.
none of these things are present in GoT, because it's not an AC game, it's not trying to be. it's a Samurai game.
I remember I would play with the white-dye Ghost armor as my coping intensified
Kazumasa horse armor: allow me to introduce myself
I've been an ac fan day one and seeing them make a game in Japan is an embarrasment, as if they haven't done that enough for the series. It will never live to ghost of tsushina because the people at ubisoft don't care enough about the series, the game itself or history. When I play got I can tell these people care about what they do.
At least you have sense. It's particularly the lack of love and care that makes new AC games such a "paint by numbers" game.
Same thing is happening with Call Of Duty. MW3 has to be the worst reviewed COD of all time.
quality vid man! Was a good watch.
I thought Ghost of Tsushima was incredibly overrated. The combat was cool but the game was as deep as a puddle