Ghost of Tsushima was the second most anticipated game of 2020 for me! When I saw the first reveal trailer, I was ecstatic, to say the least! After much wait, I finally got to play the game for myself! The experience of traversing around Tsushima was amazing, phenomenal even, but I quickly realized that aside from the story, the game grew rather dull to me!
Ghost of Tsushima is an action-adventure game developed by Sucker Punch Productions and follows the story of Jin, a samurai turned Ghost as he fights off the invading Mongol forces in order to protect his home island! There is no denying that Ghost of Tsushima is likely one of the most beautiful PS4 games to date and it should be praised for it. The story is a classic samurai tale so I can’t fault it on that. It’s very difficult to find someone who utterly detests a samurai story!
I enjoyed it very much and was the sole reason why I bought the game. That and the combat was slow at the start but after a couple of fights, I got the hang of it, which grew on me once I unlocked a lot of Jin’s arsenal of Samurai and Ghost abilities. Combat in this game is satisfying and the highlight or peak of the combat is when you enter into a duel, where you have to utilise everything you’ve learned in order to win. What also makes the combat fun is how one slice can instantly kill you if you’re not prepared and time your inputs well. However, that’s where my praise for the game comes to an end. Truth be told, after I got the most powerful armor that I wanted, I lost all purpose of continuing to play the game.

Exploration is the highlight of the game, as seeing the serenity of the landscape makes for a great screenshot or wallpaper, but aside from that, the game doesn’t offer much of any other activity to do. Duel system was perhaps the core reason why I kept traveling the land, hoping to fight stronger and more powerful warriors, but oftentimes that ran out as well. Even though this game is a single-player game, I wouldn’t have minded some sort of a multiplayer end-game sort of thing, to test my mettle against other players “Ghosts”! Or at least, randomly as you travel Tsushima, super-powerful NPC will challenge you at random, warriors from outside Tsushima who have travelled across EDO Japanse era to test their metal would have been dope!
Ghost of Tsushima is a game that samurai fans will definitely enjoy, but once you beat the main story and the Tales missions, there’s literally nothing left to do if you’re not a completionist!