## 2025-10-25 I was not very fond of the original **Ghost of Tsushima**. I found it bland and inoffensive, like an episode of **Friends**. I think the people who acted like it was the **Assassins Creed** everyone wanted extremely laughable. It was just as repetitive and bloated as the worst of that series. So I wasn’t too excited about **Yotei**, other than the fact that a lady was the main character this time. Having now put about 30 hours into it, I must apologize. I did not recognize your game, **Yotei**. The reason **Yotei** hits so much harder than its predecessor is that it really does just address the major complaint I had with the original game. You wanna talk about checklist games? **Tsushima** is the epitome of the genre. Every activity was independent of the other. It felt like busywork in the truest sense of the word. I couldn’t stand it by the time I got to the second major area of the game, and bum-rushed to the end, left feeling unsatisfied. **Yotei**, in contrast, weaves its various game loops into one another in ways that always keep me on my toes. A fox den — of which there are like, 12 instead of the original 5000 — could turn into a bounty. A side-quest could lead to a fort that needs to be liberated from Lord Saito, the game’s antagonist. The terrible haikus have been replaced with sumi-e painting, which is much more enjoyable and not cringe. And all of this is wrapped up in an actual sense of exploration. You can find points of interest using your telescope, get information from people you come across during your travels, or demand it from enemies you defeat in combat. If you have spare cash, you can buy maps of POEs from a cartographer and line them up with your world map to reveal them, too. It’s little things like this that make wandering Ezo much more enjoyable. Rather than a chore, finding everything in an area in **Yotei** feels fun. It helps that the game is undeniably gorgeous. I don’t care much about graphical fidelity, but I do care about aesthetic, and both **Ghost** games have it in spades. But **Yotei** gets the edge here too because of its variety. Every area is screenshot worthy, and the island feels meticulously crafted in a **Breath of the Wild** sort of way, creating POEs on every horizon that are begging to be explored. All of this with blazing-fast load-times and a solid 60FPS. It almost makes me remember why I even own the PS5 that’s been gathering dust in the first place. Combat has been refined as well. It’s still more of a [[Combat Sauce vs Mouthfeel|mouthfeel game]], but replacing the stances with weapon types at least *looks* more interesting moment to moment, and there are more differences. Your kusarigama can hit with wide AOE attacks, while using two katana at once gives you a bunch of rapid slashes, for example. It’s no **Nioh**, but it feels good. I never expect much from the stories of Sony’s first-party games at this point, and **Yotei** isn’t really an exception here. That said, Atsu is so much more of an interesting character than **Tsushima**’s protagonist that it’s not even funny. To that point, I don’t even remember that guy’s name. But Atsu has a sense of humor, doesn’t yap about honor, and has heart under her gruff exterior. She’s out to get revenge on the Yotei Six, because they killed her family. Same old same old. But the interesting wrinkle here is that the game seems interested in reflecting on what happens *after* you get that revenge, and why you should keep on living. I’m holding on to the hope that is has something interesting to say about Atsu beyond “revenge bad,” but I can’t comment on it until I finish the game. One other note: this game seems to have pretty good Ainu representation, which I appreciate. It doesn’t do enough to really get into how horrific their treatment was at the time, that’s for sure. But it *does* get into how their land is being encroached upon during the time period and clearly has a lot of respect for the culture. Also, any generic NPC that isn’t Ainu or part of some faction (the Yotei, Kitsune, Oni, etc.) is just labeled as a settler, which is particularly funny. So far, **Ghost of Yotei** is shaping up to be a game I’m really enjoying. I mean, I wouldn’t put 30 hours and counting into it otherwise. Time will tell if it keeps this energy up, but still, it’s better than **Ghost of Tsushima** ever was, and that’s enough for me. ## 2025-11-02 The game does veer a little too closely to “revenge bad” as a lot of first-party AAA Sony games have…well, not “a lot,” all of them, lmfao. But it doesn’t go all the way there, thank God, and has more interesting things to say. I really enjoyed it overall.