4.5/5 ★ – PhatBaby's review of Ghost of Yōtei.

For the first time on this account, I say this unironically. Absolute. Goddamn. CINEMA. ✋🗿🤚 I get it. It's pretty ironic for me to glaze this. I am the king of open-world slop haters. I'm a self-certified Ubisoft op and a prime time shit talker of any game where there's a fat ass checklist behind all of its open-world mechanics that only exists to give the illusion of fun because time is passing. It's true that Ghost of Yotei is, in many ways, one of these "checklist" games. There are a bunch of different recurring activities, and you run around a big map doing them over and over, and in return, the game goes "good job, buddy! Here's another headband that you will never use because it looks utterly insane on Atsu's weirdly shaped head." But man, everyone has a flavour of this exact type of game that just WORKS for them. Open-world checklist-athons have to click with you on some deeper, primal, monkey-brain level, and give you the exact gameplay loop that you specifically like to not become chewing gum for the brain. They're almost like crisps. You hand me a bag of Tangy Cheese Doritos, and imma tell you, no, gross, get that shit away from me. And if I'm forced to eat them, my thought process is, wow, I hate everything about crisps. They give me heartburn, the crisp dust is thick and gets all gloopy in my mouth. Why do people like these? But if you hand me some pickled onion Monster Munch? Woah, momma, now you're speaking my language. One acidic bite later, and I'm like, why am I not eating crisps all the time? This shit is bussing. And Ghost of Yotei is kind of like video game Monster Munch. There's just a little somethin', somethin' about how it seamlessly combines frenetic, bloody, super satisfying sword combat, a gorgeous open-world that's consistently dealing out stunning and varied locations to explore, and a super compelling, well put together story with huge, jaw-dropping set pieces (even if I'm more than ready to move on from PlayStation Studio's endless obsession with cycle of revenge storylines). All of it just tickles my brain something fierce. I could play this for 200 hours if there were consistently new bounties to track down and aura-fuelled duels under spindly trees to smash through, and hearing Sucker Punch hint they might move away from Ghost for a bit actually makes me really, really sad. Because this shit just speaks to me. Being a samurai is probably the ultimate coolest thing you could humanly be, not to mention feudal Japan as a setting will never not be goated as fuck, and the way it leads you through this world is exactly what I want from these types of games. I don't want to play as a weightless little goblin, finding cloth shirts with meaningless "stealth +2" stats attached in wooden chests, spending my time watching numbers appear while I swing my flimsy sword at a hollow, lifeless robot with a blaring red health bar above his head. I want to feel like the world is real and I'm a real person navigating it. And I'm not trying to say Ghost is the best in the game at this. Breath of the Wild had that shit on lock. But the little touches just work so well for me. How you can stumble across bounty posters at a random shelter, then immediately go chase that bounty down, or how a group of ronin will sit around a little campfire chatting shit about me until I absolutely rinse them with my Sekiro-trained parry fingers. It's grounded, and interactions feel authentic, exploration is rewarding, and completing things earns you meaningful loot. Even when the game does have to do standard open-world shit, like making you capture enemy strongholds, the combat is so goddamn slick that it makes you feel doused with aura, not to mention that it's fairly punishing without reaching ball-breaking status, which is exactly what I want from a game I'll be playing for a long time. There are definitely things I was a bit mixed on, for sure. By the end, they add a bit too much shit to your arsenal, meaning fights can get finicky for no reason as you're trying to remember what button combination brings up that one fucking thing you learned about six hours ago that you've never needed again until now. There's a real lack of choice and consequence, which is weird, because the game seems to pose scenarios similar to the amazing final choice in the last game, and then immediately makes Atsu be like "ok, good moral conundrum, I've decided to do this," which sucks, considering having some authorship over Atsu's story would've been cool. Sucker Punch's weird obsession with the PS5 touchpad continues to be bizarre and slightly concerning. Why are we still running into issues where my fat ass thumbs trigger Atsu to start playing her guitar mid-fight? And I think the story leans more towards immersing you in the fantasy of being a wandering samurai, which, trust me, I have no beef with, but I think it's a little less compelling from a pure narrative standpoint than Jin's struggle between honour, survival, and how the flaws in the samurai code put him at odds with his uncle. It works better from an open-world standpoint, and I like being a cool-ass journeyman, moseying into town to take a wanted poster, but it never hits the story highs Tsushima did. That being said, man, Atsu is like 500,000 times more interesting than wooden spoon man, Jin... But I really just forgot about most of these issues seconds after they cropped up because I was having a good ass time out here. Honestly, I was probably having the most fun I've had with an open-world game in years. I spent pretty much every evening since I booted this up doing the side content because, who would've thought, it was actually super engaging and fun. A lot of the side quests tie into the plot or have full side narratives of their own, so they always felt special. I just think Sucker Punch is trying to woo me or something, but instead of sending chocolates on Valentine's Day, they spent five years pouring blood, sweat and tears into a AAA blockbuster. And, hey, it's working Sucker Punch... you knew exactly what I wanted and I will definitely be coming inside for some coffee after our romantic meal at Wetherspoons. Sure, their grip on me is slightly weighted because I'm a weeb who thinks samurai are dope as fuck and Japan is the sickest place ever, but the things they invest time and care into make playing 50 hours as a wandering aura merchant peddling my wares feel like 10 minutes. I think I'm a little higher on this than I know some people are. And who knows, man? Maybe I just needed a big ol' world of guys in sick hats to sink my teeth into. But I also just think Sucker Punch are some of the best in the world at making checklisty open worlds, because they understand that "content" shouldn't be a substitute for quality, immersion and fun. Also, my ADHD meds go crazy when you get an adrenaline spike, which I've never experienced playing a game before, but I was so locked in on one of the boss fights in this that I managed to trigger it outside of lifting weights and playing sports. It spiked so hard, in fact, that it knocked me out of my medicated brain when it was over and sent me packing back to AD land. That's crazy. My body ejected the drugs because it acknowledged I was so nice with it that I didn't need performance enhancers. Can't tell if that's ultimately a negative or a positive, because I then spent the rest of the day thinking about Shrek 2, but it's nice to know I can access super-saiyan levels of clarity if I perfect parry a man with a sword for long enough.