I found it incredible how much I liked this game despite how uninteresting it is. While the territories of Tsushima are extremely pretty, its open world design feels conservative and uninspiring; like a 2016 Assassin's Creed clone. You go to a mission-giver, go to the mission location, complete the mission, return to them. The map is dotted with lots of various, mostly pointless icons, though the task bloat isn't as terrible as what I've seen in Ubisoft's recent games. The world doesn't feel dynamic at all. The tools you're given to interact with the world are extremely limited and pale in comparison with Breath of the Wild, which will always loom large in my mind when playing open world games.

My biggest gripe with the story is that I don't really know who Jin Sakai is until about the middle of the second act. While I think the game does a great job of identifying the tensions that Jin is facing, I don't have a clear idea of how he himself feels about it. His interiority and motivations don't really start to express themselves until much later.

All that said, I still really enjoyed my time with the game. The combat is incredibly simple, but even after hours playing I looked forward the rhythm of doing a standoff and managing my stances as I juggled multiple enemies. The sword combat by itself was enough that I rarely used the ghost tools the game gives me.

While I'm not fond of Jin Sakai, I liked all the side stories and appreciated how each were an interesting story in themselves while simultaneously speaking to the conflicts Jin himself was tackling with.

Also, the world truly is lovely to travel around in. While I didn't like the act 3 terrain as it was dull (and in fact I think act 3 as a whole is dull and should have been rolled into previous acts), I still loved the areas of the first 2 acts.

Overall, a neat experience.