by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $16.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Intro:
… a big budget blockbuster AAA video game that puts most of its peers to shame …
When FilmInk wrote about the original Ghost of Tsushima, way back in 2020, we noted that the samurai genre won the dubious honour of earning the ‘least utilised’ guernsey in the modern gaming era. While that was true five years ago, it certainly isn’t now. Since then, we’ve had Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Rise of the Ronin and – perhaps the most pertinent example – Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. Now that Ghost of Yōtei, the sequel to the solid performer from developers Sucker Punch, has landed, does it still hold its head high in this much more crowded market? Honestly, it pretty much does, but there are a few caveats you should be aware of before you open your heart and your wallet to this new Ghost.
Ghost of Yōtei is a standalone sequel set in 1603 Ezo, Japan, telling the tale of Atsu, an onna-musha (female warrior) who has trained extensively to take revenge against the “Yōtei Six” (a gang of vicious bastards) for slaughtering her mother, father and brother years earlier and leaving her for dead. This is no small task, however, as the Six are a disparate group in different regions with varying strengths and weaknesses. Atsu will need to summon all her training, learn new skills and perhaps even make some friends along the way if she hopes to be successful along her bloody path of vengeance.
The original Ghost game was a beautiful journey with excellent combat, stunning graphics and a story and open world that was frustratingly resistant to taking risks of any kind. Many of these same compliments and criticisms can be levelled at the sequel as well. Oh sure, Atsu’s journey is a little more interesting and propulsive, but it’s your basic revenge yarn that you’ve no doubt experienced in one form or another over the years. That being said, the open world – while hardly revolutionary – looks pretty bloody great compared to Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, which offered one of the more pedestrian examples of the genre in recent memory. By stark contrast, Yōtei’s open world is maybe a little predictable but it’s also rewarding, fun to explore and feels like it was lovingly crafted by a team of people who sought to make the experience engaging if not revolutionary.
Also, and we can’t stress this enough, the combat is wonderful. Fast, responsive, snappy and boasting a variety of weapons, Atsu is a joy to control and slicing your way through slack-jawed soldiers, scarred bounty hunters and challenging warriors never gets old. Atsu herself is, admittedly, a little less engaging. Although she’s more entertaining than listening to Jin Sakai wanking on about “honour” as it relates to stabbing people with sharpened pieces of metal every ten minutes, she’s also a bit one note. And yet another yarn that tells us of the perils to one’s soul of a quest for revenge? Give it a bone, people, and write something new!
Ghost of Yōtei is a stunningly beautiful game, perhaps the most gorgeous to date on the PS5, and its mixture of expansive exploration, historical tourism and fast-paced fluid combat will thrill those who want an experience similar to the first game but with better graphics and a more interesting protagonist. This is a big budget blockbuster AAA video game that puts most of its peers to shame, but it would have been nice if its visual homages to directors like Akira Kurosawa and Takashi Miike extended to the writing and characterisation, because then we’d have a true masterpiece instead of just a very good videogame.
Still and all, when you’re facing down enemy hoards with a gleaming ōdachi in your hands and a friendly wolf snarling at your side, it’s undeniable that Ghost of Yōtei is a bloody good time.
