Currently re-playing on PC.

I should say that despite this getting 4/5, it's among my all-time favorite video games. I can't rate this a perfect 5 down to a form of design that I tend to find entirely exhausting and mind-numbingly boring: The Ubisoft formula. It's all over this game and in good conscience, I can't pretend otherwise ...

...even if in this iteration, I actually find that it works mostly pretty fine. When I say that, I mean possibly the best way it has been implemented since the legendary Far Cry 3 (which is a game that is both an all-timer and heavily responsible for this type of bloat design that has plagued so many games).

I feel that a Ghost of Tsushima sequel that reins in the open-world bloat a bit while providing more substantial / meaningful encounters would hit the top of the mountain. The first game though, it's not perfect but for what so much it IS doing, it's like fucking candy to me. Satisfying combat, stunning artwork/design and killer voice work (two of my buddies played this in English and hey, different strokes right ... but i'll never understand why anybody would do that).

Also, yes, I adore Kurosawa and Kobayashi so no shit this hits a particular chord with me haha. All the great, and some of the bad. One of my favorites.

Been on my replay of this one the last few weeks and just a little thought so far but ... it's the little things in Fallout, you know?

This is a really fun, really great game in so many ways that also manages to drive me nuts sometimes. I came here to write this because of one particular 'little moment' where attention to detail was lost:

While speaking to Jack Cabot upon arriving at his home, he asks the player character if they believe in other intelligent life in the universe. An hour before I began this quest, I killed a 'little green man' extraterrestrial and then took its little Alien Blaster in which I had it equipped at the moment of chatting with Mr. Cabot. None of that reflected a dialogue choice with him that not only do I believe in them, I straight-up shredded one into the ground.

Had this been a moment in Fallout 1 / 2 / New Vegas, there's a really good chance you'd have been able to go "Well shit yeah I do, his green goo-blood is under my fucking boot!" or something of the sort haha.

Alas...