Quick disclaimer: if you’re debating whether this game would be fun for you, this blog may help, but I’d recommend checking out my first impressions blog first! 

When you play out the initial cut scene in Ghost of Tsushima- you may not know what to expect. While the gameplay hooked me right off the bat, I found the opening cinematic to be a little bland on the graphics side, and not too different from any other vengeance-fueled underdog story. However, what came to pass after that opening scene so blew away my expectations and standards for an open world stealth(ish) game, I just had to write a blog about it.

In fact, the only other game/franchise you could really compare to Tsushima is Assassin’s Creed, and honestly the former blows the latter out of the water so drastically that this is the point of this blog: Assassin’s Creed needs to be more like Ghost of Tsushima. Let’s compare the two in three different categories. Atmosphere, Combat/Mechanics, and Story. 

Atmosphere: How does it feel to exist in this game’s world? 

Dudes! It feels great! I have never felt more like a samurai, and that’s ultimately why anybody’s playing this game! You could argue that Sekiro gives it a run for its money, but I think that Sekiro’s immersion is due to its challenging combat system. When it comes down to it I felt like I was in Feudal Japan. Not only that, I felt like I was in wartorn Feudal Japan. Historical relevance is something that sounds cool but can be hard to nail. In this case, it was actually an interesting part of a game. The game put me in a setting and doubled down on every aspect of it. That’s the way to do it. 

Everywhere I looked there was evidence of the atrocities and hardship brought on by the Mongol invaders. Every camp I raided had artifacts with quick historical blurbs that were interesting enough to draw me in but simple enough that I wasn’t just skimming over the descriptions. It’s clear that Sucker Punch did their research on this time period. It also helped that with their use of environmental cues (as detailed in my first impressions) I spent such little time absorbed with my ingame map that I felt much more attached to what was happening around me. 

Ultimately, they could have totally bungled it! I’m no expert in Feudal Japan or samurai lore, but I do know that I felt incredibly immersed in the world that they created. That’s something I haven’t felt with an Assassin’s Creed game in a long time, if ever. The closest they got was in Black Flag with the introduction of some impressive naval warfare, but even that lost its shine in the later hours of the game. Assassin’s Creed loves to strive for immersion with historical figures, accurately designed cities, and large events of consequence that you happen to find yourself in the middle of (the battle of Bunker Hill, and the French Revolution to name a couple). While it’s fun to run around 18th Century Paris and realize that I’m a cog in a much bigger machine, it loses its luster after the first ten hours or so.

While Tsushima may not make such a big show of drawing everything it does out of a history book, that doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t, and it feels far, far more organic. I don’t need to be buddies with Aristotle in order to feel like I’m a part of Greek life. I want to watch characters around me act Greek, and communicate Greek values to make me feel like I’m a part of Greek life! Half the fun of playing Ghost of Tsushima was noticing the care that went into different encounters to make them feel more authentic. The way my character prepares for a duel. Using bamboo strikes to improve my combat skills. Pausing on a breezy cliff to write a prompted haiku. Yes, some of these felt forced towards the end of my 30 hour play through, but they’d already done their job- which was to make me feel like I was the last surviving samurai on the island of Tsushima.

Combat/Mechanics. How does combat feel/is it distinct/what specific mechanics from the game are unique and/or well executed?

This one’s easy. The combat in Tsushima is incredible. The TTK (time to kill) is very short, which makes every swing of your sword seem heavy, deliberate, and vital to the battle’s outcome. Your kills are bloody, brutal, and skillful- with a myriad of well designed kill-animations that are very distinctly samurai-esque in nature. You’re not just hacking and slashing. You’re learning new stances, upgrading those stances, and then choosing the appropriate one based on your enemy’s class. Every battle in the game feels intense, and ruthlessly cinematic, as if it was drawn from movies like The Last Samurai or 13 Assassins. Your character’s style also develops drastically during the course of the game. In addition to learning stances, and new attacks- you learn skills that help swing deadly encounters in your favor (such as the ability to block one enemies formerly un-blockable attack).

Assassin’s Creed, on the other hand, feels like it’s stuck in limbo with regards to its combat system. A few years ago Ubisoft decided to change its combat with the development of Assassin’s Creed: Origins which took place in ancient Egypt. This swap from a largely counter-based system which lead to cinematic pre-animated deaths to a much more RPG style combat system with spamming the dodge button, occasionally blocking, and overall just beating your opponent into a pulp, made the game slightly more challenging, but was also pretty underwhelming. I think the goal was to aim for something more similar to the Witcher series which in many ways sets the bar for RPG’s, and to allow players more variety in combat styles, but it just kind of came out as bland. Your hits carry no weight. Nothing about your movement or style seems specific to the time period (other than the obvious “spartan kick” in Assassin’s Creed’s Greek adaptation). And there’s just not much to make you finish a fight and say out loud, “that was fucking cool.” 

I think if Assassin’s Creed took a page from Tsushima’s book and designed a combat system that allowed a variety of styles, still incorporated an element of RPG leveling, but also instituted a finishing animation that triggered 100% of the time, it would be a far better game for it. The only area in which you could say Assassin’s Creed has the edge is in its climbing mechanics. Tsushima definitely suffers from some issues with its ingame borders which make climbing, stepping down from ledges and mounting ladders more difficult than it should be. However, that’s only mechanically. Tsushima’s climbing system, although pretty basic, actually allows you to bound from building to building, providing you multiple options on how to take down an enemy encampment.

Assassin’s Creed, in theory, allows you to do the same thing. But ever since the transition into a more RPG focused game, I’ve noticed that the climbing mechanics have definitely taken a back seat, or at least seemed less important. So many times in the most recent iteration, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, I’d scale nimbly up a building only to realize there wasn’t really anywhere I could go or jump from that building, and so I’d have to scale back down to continue my movement- and that just felt clunky and tedious. Yes, I got stuck on some ledges in Tsushima, and yes it was annoying, but I also loved the feeling of vaulting off a cliff onto a roof, through a window, then onto a tight rope, then onto a tent, all to line up the perfect assassination. 

The climbing mechanics may not be as refined in Ghost of Tsushima as Assassin’s Creed, but their implementation is far more interesting.

Story. How well do the main campaign and side missions draw you into the world, and ultimately keep you there? 

This one can be difficult to differentiate from the earlier “Atmosphere” section because the two often go hand in hand. I’ll likely feel more immersed in a game’s world if I’m sucked into the story, and I’ll more likely get sucked into a game’s story if it makes me feel like a true part of its world. Fortunately for me and the ease of writing this blog, Tsushima does both really well. First of all Tsushima’s main story is compelling: a lone samurai faces the overwhelming odds of a well prepared enemy and struggles to justify his actions with the honor system he’s been conditioned to adhere to. It may not be the best story I’ve ever seen in a video game, but it was more than enough to power me through.

The game’s pacing is also really strong. Just as an area started to feel too easy, I’d find myself in a new area with far more challenging enemies. “Well that’s great but what is this doing in the story section?” By allowing you time to upgrade your character and advance through these areas, you live out the story of your samurai turned backstabbing assassin. In the first area, you use mostly samurai tactics to survive, and you can because the enemies are easier to kill. In the final area, enemies are numerous and powerful enough that you need to use the more ninja-esque skills you’ve been honing.

This isn’t the only thing that makes the story in Ghost of Tsushima a strength. The game also understands its scope and its limits. The world never seems too big. There never seem to be too many characters. The open world is strong enough that the game doesn’t need to rely on random encounters and side quests to make it seem more than it is. There are side quests, and they are interesting! But the game’s strengths lie in tying your actions and the main brush strokes of the story to your interactions with around six principal characters. As a result, I wasn’t so burnt out by the endless grind of a gratuitous story that I lost the ability to feel any emotion when thing got heavy, or my character lost a dear friend.

This is something that Assassin’s Creed really struggles with. The game world in Odyssey was so big, offered so many side quests, introduced so many characters, and asked so much of you that it was impossible to really care, or even stick the game out for that matter. By allowing the story to flourish with only a few characters, and implementing narratively strong main missions with more character specific side missions, Tsushima kept me engaged, and ultimately invested, in what happened!

If you made it this far in the blog. Congratulations. I didn’t intend for this to be so long, but honestly I saw so many critics saying, “this is too similar to Assassin’s Creed” that I couldn’t not write my brain out.  For years and years and years, Ubisoft fans have been clamoring for an Assassin’s Creed set in Feudal Japan. I am so glad that Sucker Punch made this and not Ubisoft. It could be the research, the sense of cultural accuracy, the minute details, the story, or the combat that makes this game what it is. I think it’s a combination of all of them. This was the samurai game we wanted, the one we’d been asking for- and I truly believe in my heart of hearts that Ubisoft and Assassin’s Creed would have fucked it up somehow. Yes, this game is similar to Assassin’s Creed. It takes everything that Assassin’s Creed has tried to do, and does it far, far better.