I kind of love Ghost of Tsushima. A basic bitch open world game it may well be, but it's easily the best in it's class and it uses it as a vector for some outrageously beautiful visuals and some pretty good storytelling. And in the base game, it ends just about right. Just as the new techniques are drying up and the combat starts to feel like a solved game, it gets to a big emotional climax and the credits roll. It's a huge game in it's own right, there's no need in this world for just more Tsushima, and as the Legends multiplayer expansion showed, maybe there is more value in doing someting a bit different than just giving us another slice of a good time.
Iki island is another slice of a good time. Ostensibly a post-game expansion to Tsushima that adds a whole new landmass of shrines, mongols to slaughter, and ridiculously beautiful landscpaes. And for me, that leaves it needing to justify its existence. If this is just more of the same, its a missed oppurtunity.
And, really, it is just more of the same. Gameplay deviations are very slight, mostly amounting to improved horse combat and a few extremely new cool charms which alter things. Enemies will now also switch between multiple weapon types, and a lot of little things. The world is another slice of beauty, and the quests follow very similar structures to that of the base game, albeit occasionally with some twists.
The story content on offer here is great though. Iki island leans way harder into the semi-supernatural angle seen in the mythic tales and the legends expansion, with Jin getting high on some mongol LSD and being forced to reconcile his relationship with his father and the commonners of Iki island through the medium of cool visions. The entire questline of Iki island is almost entirely focused on Jin, and basically serves to give him a set of tales like Masako and Ishikawa have in the base game, and it really helps a character who's presence in the base game is fine, but a underdeveloped. Particularly if you play Iki before act 3, it makes his motivations a bit more clear and is generally good stuff.
And that's really what Iki does in general. Nothing here is absolutely crucial, but the small amounts of gameplay changes, the story snippets, the absolutely adorable animal shrines, some great new cosmetic options and the general vibe - it just really rounds out tsushima. Whilst Iki is a very purely additive expansion to a game that's already bursting, it puts the new stuff in places that needed it - Both in jin's characterisation and providing more options for specific playstyles which might run out of steam in the later game - especially bow and parry based ones.
It's also fortunate it's pretty short. The main questline can probably be breezed through in a couple of hours, and the island itself is about a sixth of the size of the main game's map, making the whole thing much more of a slight detour than an ugly growth on the main game.
I think if one was to play it when it's clearly intended to be as a post-game thing, it would lose some of it's stength, but as another 4-hour segment in that long, long act 2 of Ghost of Tsushima, its one well worth taking.
Iki island is another slice of a good time. Ostensibly a post-game expansion to Tsushima that adds a whole new landmass of shrines, mongols to slaughter, and ridiculously beautiful landscpaes. And for me, that leaves it needing to justify its existence. If this is just more of the same, its a missed oppurtunity.
And, really, it is just more of the same. Gameplay deviations are very slight, mostly amounting to improved horse combat and a few extremely new cool charms which alter things. Enemies will now also switch between multiple weapon types, and a lot of little things. The world is another slice of beauty, and the quests follow very similar structures to that of the base game, albeit occasionally with some twists.
The story content on offer here is great though. Iki island leans way harder into the semi-supernatural angle seen in the mythic tales and the legends expansion, with Jin getting high on some mongol LSD and being forced to reconcile his relationship with his father and the commonners of Iki island through the medium of cool visions. The entire questline of Iki island is almost entirely focused on Jin, and basically serves to give him a set of tales like Masako and Ishikawa have in the base game, and it really helps a character who's presence in the base game is fine, but a underdeveloped. Particularly if you play Iki before act 3, it makes his motivations a bit more clear and is generally good stuff.
And that's really what Iki does in general. Nothing here is absolutely crucial, but the small amounts of gameplay changes, the story snippets, the absolutely adorable animal shrines, some great new cosmetic options and the general vibe - it just really rounds out tsushima. Whilst Iki is a very purely additive expansion to a game that's already bursting, it puts the new stuff in places that needed it - Both in jin's characterisation and providing more options for specific playstyles which might run out of steam in the later game - especially bow and parry based ones.
It's also fortunate it's pretty short. The main questline can probably be breezed through in a couple of hours, and the island itself is about a sixth of the size of the main game's map, making the whole thing much more of a slight detour than an ugly growth on the main game.
I think if one was to play it when it's clearly intended to be as a post-game thing, it would lose some of it's stength, but as another 4-hour segment in that long, long act 2 of Ghost of Tsushima, its one well worth taking.