Saturday Morning Gaming: Ghost of Tsushima
Wandering through my post-Elden Ring funk, I found myself saying that I didn’t want to play this or that game because it was just dull. Gotham Knights? Kicked to the curb. God of War: Ragnarök? Yeah, I’m not interested in getting all of the crows or side quests.
I asked myself “SO NOW WHAT?” and just prepared myself for merely waiting for Elden Ring II with a handful of little $20 indy games to fill the void between.
But then I saw that my little local game shop had Ghost of Tsushima on sale. Like, more than 50% off. It went from $69.99 to $29.99 and, instead of seeing that as a warning signal, I saw it as an opportunity. Maybe it’d be good, I hoped.
One of the first things that the game did was give me a half-dozen cut scenes giving me the background to the story. Then it put me up against an unbeatable boss in a fight that I was destined to lose. You go up against the fictional Khotun Khan (grandson of Genghis, nephew of Kublai) and re-enact the heavily dramatized (seriously, this happened!) Mongolian invasion of Tsushima in 1274. So getting an unbeatable boss first thing already reminded me of Elden Ring but after the game started in earnest, I was given a lot of very familiar RPG stuff:
A map that is covered with the “fog of war”. A sandbox where you pick which of the mandatory missions you’re going to do next. Side quests, side quests, and more side quests. Armor that supports your playstyle. Do you prefer the bow? Use Tadayori’s Armor! Are you an expert at parrying? Use Sarugami Armor! Do you want haptic feedback whenever you get close to a collectable? Use the Traveller’s Attire! Heck, mix and match! Use your favorite hat (or helmet) with your favorite armor!
And I ran around going into the fog of war and finding a bunch of Mongolian-occupied sites. The missions involved infiltrating the site, killing everybody, freeing prisoners, and maybe getting a new hat.
When it comes to combat, the game really shines. You can open combat by challenging an opponent and kill him instantly if you time it right. Once you get into combat proper against his compatriots, the game rewards precision rather than button-mashing and, if you manage your parries perfectly, you can finish a fight against a particular enemy in seconds (and get to one of the next 20). There are multiple stances for the swordsman… the stone stance is good against guys with swords, water is good against guys with shields, wind against guys with polearms. So in any given fight, you’ll swap between stances (and maybe switch from sword to bow and back).
The overarching story is one where the island has been lost, most of your allies are dead, and now you have to win the island back inch by inch by finding and recruiting any remaining assets that might be out there. And, along they way, they’ll teach you new skills, give you new cutscenes, and, most importantly, give you new outfits.
I’m maybe 20% into the game but I find myself absolutely delighted with it so far. It’s the perfect game to play if you are in a post-Elden Ring funk.
Amazon is selling it for $70 still but you can get it for free from the PS store as part of your Playstation Plus membership and your local gamestop will have it used for about $25. Well worth it!
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is Ghost of Tsushima promotional art.)
Ghost of Tsushima is fun. I enjoyed the combat. Post-Elden Ring I’ve been replaying Dark Souls 3 and Symphony of the Night, trying out Nioh 2, completed Tales of Arise, and spent the most time with Tactics Ogre.Report
Ah, Tactics Ogre.
It’s that old meme about having a machine capable of running VR games on max settings but playing stuff from GOG.com.Report
OH! One of the most awesome parts of the game that I forgot to mention:
There isn’t a compass HUD. What the game does, instead, is has the wind blow in the direction of your goal. So you’re standing in a field of flowers and the breeze goes in the direction of where you want to go.Report
I finished up the post game of Super Robot Wars 30, which was a bit of a slog. Just a lot of enemies with inflated health pools that took forever to kill. Still a fun game overall, even though it petered out at the end. Really, the game is more about playing in a robot toy box, mixing and matching mecha from various sources, and it does that well.
I recently got Monster Hunter 3U on the 2DS. It’s the one with underwater combat, and I wanted to try it and form my own opinon. I haven’t done too much underwater combat yet, but I think it would benefit from a controller with a right joystick instead of using the touch screen control pad for the camera. Other than that, it’s what I expect from a Monster Hunter game.
The other new game is Fire Emblem: Engage. Depending on what folks like about Fire Emblem: Three Houses, this is either a step forward or a step backward. Engage is more combat focused and less social focused than Three Houses was. I thought all the school stuff was a time-consuming chore, but it was necessary to improve your characters. There are still some of the chores in Engage (and they existed before Three Houses), but there is not as much, and you can move onto the next battle more quickly. Engage also brings back the classic weapon triangle (swords beat axes, axes beat spears, spears beat swords). I am only starting chapter 6, but I really like it so far. I also decided to do my first playthrough on hard and classic (permadeath) mode which really forces me to think a lot about what everybody is doing.
I also bought Factorio before the price goes up in a week or so and dabbled a little bit in that. I need to really sit down and dive into it.Report