The tiny complaints I have about Ghost of Tsushima
For the most part I think that Ghost of Tsushima is a pretty solid game and I have enjoyed playing it well beyond the 1-hour time minimum that I normally prescribe for these PS Plus Extra games. I don't know how many hours that I have banked in the game but I would imagine that it is around 20 or so. I don't actually have much of an idea as to how far along in the game I am but seeing as how I have maxed out most of my stats and my gear is getting close to the same, I would imagine that I am getting reasonably close to the endgame material.
I think this is a good game but the issues I have with it are the same issues I end up having with almost any RPG game in modern times. None of these are actually game-breaking and I am quite pleased that I have sunk time into this title. I regret nothing. This doesn't mean the game is perfect though and my critiques might seem a little nitpicky. Of course this are my opinions and while they are shared by others in various communities, I don't claim that this is going to be noticed or even disliked by a large portion of people out there.
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While the game is absolutely beautiful, one of the best I have ever played on the PS4, I have an issue with it that I also have had with a great many other open world RPG's and that is that it is a really long game. There are a ton of optional missions and at first I was completing everything. Then in act 2 I started skipping most of the optional content because I don't need the upgrades and they are not necessary for progression.
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The objective in this particular mission is "defeat the Mongols" and guess what your objective is in 95% of every other mission that you do? Since this game is focusing on realism there isn't really much opportunity for the objective to be anything else. Unlike Witcher and God of War there isn't going to be any supernatural occurrences in this game and while this did appeal to me at first, I'm at the point now where I am finding a lot of the battles to be just more of the same.
Yeah the enemies get to be more difficult but this isn't to say that it is actually hard. I'm only playing the game on "Normal" and I really haven't found very much of anything that is required of me to be difficult at all. Some of the missions where you have to keep prisoners from being killed once you are spotted can be a bit tough but honestly, even this is just a question of rushing and rolling through all the enemies and just standing next to the prisoner. I have only failed one of those missions once and this is because I was unfamiliar with how the mission actually worked at the time.
What I am trying to say here is that combat, although very good and inventive, starts to feel like more of the same but just with greater numbers of enemies. I suppose this is just me being a very finicky gamer who has certain styles that he enjoys, but I've gotten to the point where I really struggle to make encounters interesting and rely on stealth and killing from the shadows even though this normally just results in the mission taking longer. It is perfectly possible to just rush the gates and take everyone on at once.
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That I suppose is a minor point because combat is as varied as you want it to be but in my situation I am kind of ready for the story to be over so I don't put a lot of time into making my missions a work of art. Since I know that I can overcome 10 enemies at a time no problem, it doesn't make a great deal of sense to me to stick to the shadows.
The major complaint I have about Ghost is the sheer number of cinematics that you are basically forced to endure. Simply talking to an NPC with a "speech indicator" above them takes you to what I consider to be a completely unnecessary cinematic sequence, especially since the character you are interacting with is of such little consequence that they don't even have a name. Again, this is just my personal preference but I don't actually want to have a cinematic sequence for every single NPC that I encounter. I guess I am just impatient. If I wanted to watch a movie I would go ahead and do that. This is a big issue I have with almost every Square-Enix game as well.
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Another thing that is a tiny complaint of mine is the fact that most of the gear that you encounter in the game is purely cosmetic or as it is referred to in the game, "vanity gear."
As a gamer that skips the character creation sequence of virtually every game I play I am not at all concerned with what my character looks like on the screen. I rarely take screenshots and since this is a single player game, it's not like there is any showing off of your new look.
There is an entire section of the game that is geared around writing haiku's and the reward you get for this process is gear that in no way affects your abilities in combat or anything else. It just changes what your character looks like. This has never been something that I was ever concerned about in anything other than MMO's so I just don't see the point.
These are minor gripes that I have and I think that a lot of people would agree with me that while GoT is a really good game, everything has a bit of a downside.
tl;dr: Ghost of Tsushima is damn near perfect but if I had to point out some grievances I would say that combat is repetitive, most of the gear in the game is purely cosmetic, and in my opinion there are entirely too many cinematic sequences.