2 reviews liked by Novakasa


I really don't know what to say about this game. The environments are the beautiful, the world in general is, the sound design is on point... Everything relating to the world is great. However, this game is a very generic open world game. This may seem weird, given that most people have claimed that it strived for originality, tried to introduce a few interesting twists on the cliché mechanics of the genre: there is no more minimap, simply the wind guiding you. Birds guide you to close side objectives. The goal is to make you feel immersed in Tsushima, for this not to feel like a game. For me, it kinda fails at this, simply because these aren't new mechanics, they're just a different way to implement the same old mechanics. It doesn't "hide the strings" of said mechanics, for me it makes them even more obvious. The bird mechanic especially really takes me out of it, because he gets stuck everywhere, and because you have to follow him really closely for him to move.
As for gameplay, it's good, but it's all deja vu. The stealth isn't the best, which is a shame given it's supposed to be a key factor of the story. The "form" mechanic is good, it can make the combat against large groups of varied enemies exciting, and I will say the swordfighting overall is pretty awesome. However, all the accessories, like the kunai, the grenade or the bow, aren't exciting to use, I much prefer slashing through my enemies.
As for the story, it suffers from ludo-narrative disconance. The stealth gameplay is bad, so I avoid using it, which makes Jin's "fall from honour" that's detailed in the cutscenes incoherent from my experience with the game. But, the story is pretty good, it has decent characters, an interesting moral complex (doing whatever it takes to win VS doing what's honourable), and a very emotional ending that I won't spoil.
The side activities are not all that interesting, even though there are way too many side missions (some characters give you 9 side missions as a part of single story-arc that could've been done in just five or less), that it can sometimes feel like a collecta-thon, which is fine in a 3D platformer, but not really in an action-adventure game. Most of the activities are just "click R2 here", the only thing changing between activities being how you find the place to click R2. Also, dishonorable mention to the "Liberate Tsushima" missions. I do however have to praise the legendary tales (which are cool side-missions that are interesting and use the beautiful open world to their advantage), the shrines (which offer a great view of the beautiful world), the duels (which use the great swordfighting) and the haiku's (which use the game's interesting setting of a feodal japanese world). Basically, when the side-activities play to the game's strentghts, their great, and when they don't, they aren't all that good.
This game is good, but it feels same-y. Most of the acclaimed originality of the game just feels like a new coat of paint on already tried and tested open-world mechanics. It has some really amazing stuff in there, the visuals, sounds, swordfighting, some side-activites, but there's way too much average stuff to be considered a great game.