Hello all! I have played Ghost of Tsushima last year, and while I thought the visuals were stunning and the gameplay and atmosphere were tremendous, the game felt a bit too long and repetitive for me. The story was nice, but due to the slow pace it didn’t have the emotional impact it might have gotten if the game was a bit more concise.
So recently I was running low on space on my PS5 and decided to play and finish the DLC, so that I could reclaim the 65GB for other stuff.
This DLC fixed almost all the issues I had with GoT. The map was smaller and more densely packed. The busywork didn’t outstay it’s welcome and the new gameplay additions were all super cool. The activities were less in number than the original game but the quality was higher in my opinion. Finally the story was really cool (although I feel like they still played it a bit safe in the end).
What did you think of it? I would also love to discuss the story (but use spoiler tags for the new people).
My partner and I recently did a playthrough with me at the controls and her making all the decisions, even play style. The third act of the base game fell pretty flat for both of us, and some of the forced decisions were very annoying.
spoiler
Killing our horse (named Nobu) was just fucking brutal. It led us to really dislike the poor, temporary horse we got. “FUCK YOU, NOT NOBU” was a common epithet
We immediately played the DLC and thought it was great, and the collectables/shrines were different enough it felt fresh. The story wasn’t much to write home about, but the visuals were great. It was nice to have a new biome without it being one that doesn’t exist in Tsuahima (looking at you, snow).
I loved GoT, agree it got repetitive, but it was also one of the first games I bothered to get all the collectibles in.
I couldn’t get into the DLC but maybe I should try again.
I was really into the game before the end of the first island but really started hating that there was a mongol group every 100 feet on the roads, and that even if you roll to dodge an attack if they’re mid-air lunge they will seemingly change direction mid-air and still hit you.
I took a break partway into the 2nd island and I’m still skittish about restarting because of how repetitive the game seems.
Honestly, I fixed this for myself by seeing each Act as a separate game (and DLC as game 4) and playing other games for a while after “finishing” each one. This way it feels fresh again :)
I think so but I also feel that the arena/duel can feature a bit more variety of high level enemies that uses different weapon types. I really miss when some of the duel that the enemy use things that are not blade and wish they could be extended more even onto say archer based boss, or ninja style boss, etc. (I guess the legends/raid type of boss may have more variety but I don’t really like that rng loot drop grinding part so I skipped the whole thing. )
Good to hear that the DLC is different and better, I too finished GoT this last year and by the end I was so worn out by the game that I had zero desire to keep going into the DLC.
While it has good parts for sure, I think GoT is massively overrated by many. I keep hearing people say it’s one of the best games they’ve ever played and I just can’t see it. It’s a solid open world collect-a-thon with a fairly satisfying combat system but it’s way too long for what it offers and wears out its welcome pretty fast, especially since the quest design is so bland and repetitive. Almost all side stories are just “talk to person, go somewhere and kill enemies, return”, and main stories overuse walk-and-talk way too much.
The story is pretty mediocre and the consistently dour and overly serious tone makes the game a true slog once the novelty wears off. Kenji alone is not enough to balance it out.
The bossfight duels are cool though and good fun, often with really cool settings and gorgeous visuals, like floating lanterns in shallow water. I wish there were more of them, and that they were repeatable at will.
For me it was the opposite. Loved the base game, heavily disliked the DLC. The entire poison and hallucinations felt widely out of place, and it got in the way of exploring. The constant need to use the adaptive triggers was annoying and added nothing. But most importantly, the story about Jin and his father did not grab me at all. The uncle one was much better done, imo.
In the end, I ended up skipping it.
I liked the monkey boss fight and its armour, though.
