3/5 ★ – fantastic_clap's review of Ghost of Tsushima.

My experience with this is how I imagine most open world games of this scale and budget are to experience: initially I was super into it, the fighting felt extremely fun and addictive, and the world felt absolutely enormous. Some of the side quests were great fun as well as the main chunk of the game being reasonably entertaining. But after I had kinda got halfway through the second big bit of the map it all just started feeling a bit bland, like I was repeating the same thing over and over again, and where I had first felt immersed and like the tasks came naturally, I soon stopped feeling like a cool samurai answering the call of duty and more like I was ticking off a checklist before I just went and committed to the final mission. I understand why games feel like they need their world to be massive, I have played Just Cause 2, GTA 5 and RDR 2 - those game worlds get me wet! It’s just, when something is so big, it’s harder and harder for it to feel authentic when traveling it, it would be close to impossible to make everything feel spontaneous, but that’s why often little games make me feel so much more complete and satisfied, because they actually fit a good game into the right size box, unlike this, where they fit an alright game into an entire country. Recommend for slicing up dudes with a sword, don’t recommend for guided haiku writing or general artistic satisfaction.