Ghost of Tsushima

“At its current price this game is absolutely not worth it; the graphics have aged terribly and a lot of the cutscenes look dreadful and are pre-rendered, seemingly locked at 30-60fps 1080p, which is blaringly trash when the game itself is played in 1440p at 120+ fps.”

“I would constantly run into a graphical issue where the wind and most particles would flicker; this bug would come and go, usually starting the second I play the game, or if it didn't start then, it usually didn't show up.”

“While the graphics look more basic in some areas than some new titles, it really is a very good game but the graphics aren't pushing any real boundaries and feel dated compared to other recent releases.”

“The combat is functional, the duels better but the game is on the very easy side for most seasoned players and you'll find nothing new and fascinating here mechanically.”

“The standoff mechanic, where jin challenges enemies to single combat, remains a highlight, providing a visceral sense of samurai authenticity. However, there is a serious bug where the standoff only works about 50% of the time, causing frustration as inputs do not register, forcing you to take damage or reload.”

“The gameplay quickly becomes a tedious grind of repetitive open world activities, with side content like fox dens and haikus serving as shallow filler. The combat fails to evolve after the halfway point, and the open-world bloat and lack of varied gameplay ultimately diminish the experience.”

“The port is absolutely atrocious, my mid-high range PC and many others I've looked at have experienced stuttering, frame drop and latency, late rendering, and all around things that make it borderline unplayable after about 15 minutes.”

“It's absolutely insane to me how badly optimized this port is, I've never heard anything wrong about it like TLOU1 but when I decided to replay the game on PC I got hit with my FPS going from stable 130 to even 20 on RTX 4070.”

“This is the worst optimized PC game I have ever played.”

“But I feel like the whole game had only one remarkable soundtrack, the rest of the music didn't have much feeling, and rescuing the villages got really repetitive over time.”

“Sometimes in big battle scenes it was great in the moment, but I wouldn't say that I wanted to hear the soundtrack outside of the game.”

“There's no memorable music; the entire game feels like it's on ambient mode.”

“Boring story, boring main quest, boring side quests, boring NPCs... the combat initially looks okay, but by the middle of act 2 I leveled up all the stances and it became repetitive and boring, with the same six enemy types and occasional bosses over and over again.”

“Trash lazy made game, boring voice lines, boring story too bland to follow, combat system that gets old quick, visuals that look like they were made by AI, boring intro to the game. 100000% don't buy unless it's like 10 bucks.”

“Boring story and unskippable dialogs.”

“The gameplay is really not it; the atmosphere and setting are incredibly boring, and my ash hair in 240p quality looks better than this game on ultra settings.”

“While I can appreciate the artistry and effort put into the visuals and atmosphere, the combination of repetitive gameplay and awkward controls ultimately leaves me feeling like this game doesn’t deserve a positive review.”

“You have a beautiful world to explore, but every 5 meters is a group of enemies to fight and dark clouds and thunder ruin the atmosphere.”

“Couple of nasty problems; forget about alt tabbing, when you do your whole PC freezes and you have to restart (alt F4 doesn't fix this issue).”

“The game was running just perfect up until the 'chapter 1' end mission (the rescue the uncle one), in that mission the game simply started having long freezes, where afterwards the controller simply stops working for several seconds (which usually results in imminent death).”

“For the amount it costs, it needs to be optimized better, after 2 minutes of starting the whole PC freezes and I also received a restart from the last freeze (I have an i9-13900KS and a 4080 Super). Needs to be optimized better.”

“The gameplay quickly becomes a tedious grind of repetitive open world activities, with side content like fox dens and haikus serving as shallow filler that fails to sustain interest once the initial aesthetic charm wears off.”

“Unlocking the raid, finding a team through discord, and grinding for all the multiplayer achievements eventually started feeling more like a chore than something I wanted to do.”

“There are some small grindy collectible elements, but the atmosphere and environments make trekking across the open world feel much less of a chore!”

“The story was well written, the character development had meaning behind it and it did not happen just for the sake of writing a story, it happened to show the duality of people, the story made me understand that there are no rights in war and there are only wrongs depending on the side. Watching Jin Sakai become what he is at the end of the game was a rollercoaster, the game made me agree with Jin at times and disagree with him at others. Seeing a man do what he did for the sake of Tsushima is fascinating, a man doing whatever it takes for a greater good.”

“Main and side quests alike are plagued with repeated dialogue lines, sluggish (if not stagnant) character development, and drawn out storylines (e.g. Tomoe, Ryuzu, etc.) that overstay their welcome because the plot twists were easily predictable, thus making the stories fall flat.”

“Outposts you have to clear, trivial loot, meaningless crafting, empty open world with fake freedom and markers everywhere (even when the markers are built into the world, they are the opposite of subtle), shimmering flowers and bushes indicating that you can collect them, an annoying half-arsed stealth 'system', mandatory x-ray vision, of course, brain dead AI, a meandering story that goes in all kinds of directions that is constantly taking away your agency, predictable character development, and a pacing that is way too discombobulated, yet so much happens in a short time that you barely know how you got from A to B and what the heck is happening.”

“That also hurts the game's replay value.”

“The game doesn't present me with meaningful options beyond 2 dialogue options which don't have consequence, and it puts you on rails in a very linear path forward -- and while some may enjoy that, I'd personally have liked it to be less linear in that regard especially because it would increase replayability a lot if I could have chosen one path my first playthrough then the opposite for my next.”

“The only bad side is there is zero replay value as one playthrough you will essentially get every single perk and there really is no choice to make during the story.”

“I like to make fun of myself when I play this game even when I'm not being kept intentionally lonely and miserable for years despite pretty clear communication, and it's actually not funny... meh... anyway... I can't walk on ropes, never tried archery, and have a 2 throwing knife limit, not 7, but I can do much of this game in real life oddly enough.”

“It's not funny anymore.”

“I am loving the game so far, but playing for 40 minutes then crashing is not funny.”

“I don't find the game enjoyable and the marketing/advertising team behind the game are the real MVPs because they made a sucker out of me, that's for sure.”

“Sony just after a quick cash grab and a lot went for it.”

“I tried to play more but the more I go the more it's apparent that this was in development in 2015, released before the pandemic, and just does not resonate in 2024. It's a total Sony cash grab for expiring merch. Sad.”