If you're impatient I'm just gonna sum it up in this convenient haiku
same formula again
braindead stealth AI, cant see you
the world is pretty
Now as for my true elksters? go ahead and read below.
Assassin's Creed: Tsushima's two biggest strengths are the insanely well-designed world and the great ending. Both of these are done so well that if not for those things it would be seen as another Days Gone or whatever that werewolf game was, order 1738 or something. Because it's literally assassin's creed. Open world, climb tower, free outpost, find collectibles, tailing missions, go here kill that, sneak here, climb that, dcuo machinima cutscenes. Every mission is the same and it sort of feels like red dead redemption 2 how restrictive it is. The combat tried to be different from AC by adding some different sword stances and enemy weapons, with each stance countering a different weapon. In the beginning, it's fine, with fewer enemies and you don't have all the stances so some guys still pose a threat. But by the end, you can take care of most enemies with a couple of swings of your sword if you're in the right stance. Break their posture EZ and kill when they're stunned for half a decade. How did they balance this easiness? add more enemies!! now, because there's no lock on- the game attacks the enemy closest to you. So if you're in the shield stance and attacking a shield guy, but a spear guy comes up close on your left, the game thinks that you want to attack spear guy and your guy drops everything and jumps 9 nautical kilometers to the left to lunge at this guy with the wrong stance, you get parried, shot with a fire arrow and you are killed. Now onto the next point... the stealth is undeniably inarguably objectively factually and truly GARBAGE!!!!! Do you know how stupid and terrible it is? If you stand on a table the enemy cannot see you. I was playing on normal mode. Also quick side tangent... I swear the Batman Arkham games ruined stealth forever. Don't get me wrong, every single Arkham game is goated. God tier. But I think it may be to stealth games what Half-Life and Halo were to FPS games. Great games on their own, but started a trend of other games copying them, failing, and making everything boring and sucky. So now every FPS game is slow and story-based like half-life but forgets that half-life had no cutscenes at all and you could just walk away if you wanted. In Halo, you could only carry two weapons but there was a large variety of different weapons with lasers and explosives and different stuff and not 9 variants of an assault rifle or whatever. Arkham games had the stealth be walking up behind an enemy and using a prompt to knock them out, and you can't carry their bodies. This was OK because the bodies were a fear tactic first of all- you can't ghost batman rooms. (for those non-stealthers joining us today ghosting means moving through an area without touching any guards or getting spotted.) And second, walking up behind them was the tough part. But seriously in this one forced stealth segment, I walked through this castle and all the enemies were standing alone looking off the mountain practically wearing "STAB ME" capes. It's a nothing sandwich of stealth. I'm making an official decree - if your stealth game doesn't allow you to move bodies, it is not a stealth game. Unless it's Batman. CASE CLOSED!!!!! Now for the plot... I got some stuff to say and I'm going to get a little philosophical so please take an IQ test before reading forward unless you are confident in your intelligence. Reader discretion is advised. Ok... So this games whole schtick is Honor vs Evil. At the beginning of the game, Jin starts off as a super cool, honorable, and awesome samurai. Is never mean, always cool and kind. No sneaking, sticking to his code. Early on he is taught by his uncle (best character in the game, ez) Shimura to be kind even to your enemies, give everyone respect and dignity. This is definitely not historically accurate but it’s an awesome trope, the honorable warrior. The conflict isn’t actually about the Mongols invading; they are just the spark for the real conflict of the game which is Jin slowly becoming evil out of necessity as the Mongols use cheap tactics to gain an advantage. This is a cool idea for a story even if I don't like the idea of the message that the only way to defeat a cheater is stooping to their level but who cares. It’s a cool story but it doesn’t have any harmony with the gameplay. Sure the stealth is easier than the combat, but I didn’t like the stealth at all so I just played combat for everything. Aside from the forced stealth segments which were stupid, I was 100% honorable. I know this game’s whole theme is about Jin’s downfall, but explaining it as Jin started sneaking instead of fighting is strange, because I didn’t sneak and anyone who played like me will feel like there is a split between the story and the gameplay. The best thing I could think of was a splinter cell double agent style honor meter. But even then that would ruin the whole theme. I dunno, but what they did right here didn’t work for me. Feels like cutscene stupidity.
Finally, after all that hate I wanna talk about the two good parts of the game. HOLY MOLY GUACAMOLE!!!!! THE OPEN WORLD!!!! It’s genuinely breathtakingly beautiful. I don’t know if this is blasphemous to god or whatever but I think sucker punch outdid god on Tsushima's nature. So much variation and so much fun stuff tucked away in there. It’s so omega Giga god tier. I don’t know how else to put it. Like bro imagine this open world on halo infinite. Would’ve demolished the world with its amazingness. But what do I know, I’m only the most important and significant game reviewer on Backloggd.
And the next thing that the game did amazingly was the ending. Your ending has got to be shaq level to get me to care about it if I didn’t care about the story so far. But man. There are spoilers following this, just warning you.
I’m so glad the ending focused on the best parts of the game. Jin and Shimura, the 1v1 duel system, the beautiful scenery, and the classic conflict of honor vs evil. I got the ending where I killed him. I thought I was dishonorable for Tsushima’s sake enough, and even though the island will lose its Jito I owed it to Shimura as my uncledad to let him go out with style and honor. The ending made me think of the ending of metal gear rising, and again anything that reminds me of metal gear rising is awesome.
same formula again
braindead stealth AI, cant see you
the world is pretty
Now as for my true elksters? go ahead and read below.
Assassin's Creed: Tsushima's two biggest strengths are the insanely well-designed world and the great ending. Both of these are done so well that if not for those things it would be seen as another Days Gone or whatever that werewolf game was, order 1738 or something. Because it's literally assassin's creed. Open world, climb tower, free outpost, find collectibles, tailing missions, go here kill that, sneak here, climb that, dcuo machinima cutscenes. Every mission is the same and it sort of feels like red dead redemption 2 how restrictive it is. The combat tried to be different from AC by adding some different sword stances and enemy weapons, with each stance countering a different weapon. In the beginning, it's fine, with fewer enemies and you don't have all the stances so some guys still pose a threat. But by the end, you can take care of most enemies with a couple of swings of your sword if you're in the right stance. Break their posture EZ and kill when they're stunned for half a decade. How did they balance this easiness? add more enemies!! now, because there's no lock on- the game attacks the enemy closest to you. So if you're in the shield stance and attacking a shield guy, but a spear guy comes up close on your left, the game thinks that you want to attack spear guy and your guy drops everything and jumps 9 nautical kilometers to the left to lunge at this guy with the wrong stance, you get parried, shot with a fire arrow and you are killed. Now onto the next point... the stealth is undeniably inarguably objectively factually and truly GARBAGE!!!!! Do you know how stupid and terrible it is? If you stand on a table the enemy cannot see you. I was playing on normal mode. Also quick side tangent... I swear the Batman Arkham games ruined stealth forever. Don't get me wrong, every single Arkham game is goated. God tier. But I think it may be to stealth games what Half-Life and Halo were to FPS games. Great games on their own, but started a trend of other games copying them, failing, and making everything boring and sucky. So now every FPS game is slow and story-based like half-life but forgets that half-life had no cutscenes at all and you could just walk away if you wanted. In Halo, you could only carry two weapons but there was a large variety of different weapons with lasers and explosives and different stuff and not 9 variants of an assault rifle or whatever. Arkham games had the stealth be walking up behind an enemy and using a prompt to knock them out, and you can't carry their bodies. This was OK because the bodies were a fear tactic first of all- you can't ghost batman rooms. (for those non-stealthers joining us today ghosting means moving through an area without touching any guards or getting spotted.) And second, walking up behind them was the tough part. But seriously in this one forced stealth segment, I walked through this castle and all the enemies were standing alone looking off the mountain practically wearing "STAB ME" capes. It's a nothing sandwich of stealth. I'm making an official decree - if your stealth game doesn't allow you to move bodies, it is not a stealth game. Unless it's Batman. CASE CLOSED!!!!! Now for the plot... I got some stuff to say and I'm going to get a little philosophical so please take an IQ test before reading forward unless you are confident in your intelligence. Reader discretion is advised. Ok... So this games whole schtick is Honor vs Evil. At the beginning of the game, Jin starts off as a super cool, honorable, and awesome samurai. Is never mean, always cool and kind. No sneaking, sticking to his code. Early on he is taught by his uncle (best character in the game, ez) Shimura to be kind even to your enemies, give everyone respect and dignity. This is definitely not historically accurate but it’s an awesome trope, the honorable warrior. The conflict isn’t actually about the Mongols invading; they are just the spark for the real conflict of the game which is Jin slowly becoming evil out of necessity as the Mongols use cheap tactics to gain an advantage. This is a cool idea for a story even if I don't like the idea of the message that the only way to defeat a cheater is stooping to their level but who cares. It’s a cool story but it doesn’t have any harmony with the gameplay. Sure the stealth is easier than the combat, but I didn’t like the stealth at all so I just played combat for everything. Aside from the forced stealth segments which were stupid, I was 100% honorable. I know this game’s whole theme is about Jin’s downfall, but explaining it as Jin started sneaking instead of fighting is strange, because I didn’t sneak and anyone who played like me will feel like there is a split between the story and the gameplay. The best thing I could think of was a splinter cell double agent style honor meter. But even then that would ruin the whole theme. I dunno, but what they did right here didn’t work for me. Feels like cutscene stupidity.
Finally, after all that hate I wanna talk about the two good parts of the game. HOLY MOLY GUACAMOLE!!!!! THE OPEN WORLD!!!! It’s genuinely breathtakingly beautiful. I don’t know if this is blasphemous to god or whatever but I think sucker punch outdid god on Tsushima's nature. So much variation and so much fun stuff tucked away in there. It’s so omega Giga god tier. I don’t know how else to put it. Like bro imagine this open world on halo infinite. Would’ve demolished the world with its amazingness. But what do I know, I’m only the most important and significant game reviewer on Backloggd.
And the next thing that the game did amazingly was the ending. Your ending has got to be shaq level to get me to care about it if I didn’t care about the story so far. But man. There are spoilers following this, just warning you.
I’m so glad the ending focused on the best parts of the game. Jin and Shimura, the 1v1 duel system, the beautiful scenery, and the classic conflict of honor vs evil. I got the ending where I killed him. I thought I was dishonorable for Tsushima’s sake enough, and even though the island will lose its Jito I owed it to Shimura as my uncledad to let him go out with style and honor. The ending made me think of the ending of metal gear rising, and again anything that reminds me of metal gear rising is awesome.