No matter how many times I did it, the 1st or the 100th, cutting an enemy down in a single slash during a standoff never got old. Seeing that spray of blood in a brilliant arc like a painting, never lost its luster.
If there’s a single thing Ghost of Yotei gets right, it’s style. This is a game that absolutely oozes style from every pore, and I mean that in more than one way – visually, mechanically, thematically. Easily one of the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous games I’ve ever played in my life, Ghost of Yotei is a sequel that makes a strong first impression, and makes a handful of meaningful improvements over its predecessor. But as a sequel, it lacks a bit of the novelty that Ghost of Tsushima had, and while many elements of Yotei are objectively stronger, just a bit of its shine wears off after a few dozen hours of formulaic open world design.
Razor’s Edge
Just like Tsushima, Ghost of Yotei is an emotion-packed story of revenge and retribution. But the sequel, crucially, dives even more into the very concept of revenge and the effect it has on a person’s psyche – the way it warps and twists your very nature. And a big part of that is because of the genuinely smart way this story is structured, giving us the big “tragic” event without any context for who the game’s main character is – then slowly and deliberately layering all that in through flashbacks.
Ghost of Yotei takes place in 1603 in the lands around Mount Yotei, in Ezo province (the modern day equivalent of Hokkaido, Japan). You play as Atsu, a wandering mercenary who seeks revenge on a band of outlaws known as the “Yotei Six,” who brutally murdered her family sixteen years ago.
Atsu is, notably, not a Samurai, but a renegade and rogue, whose entire life has now been driven by the singular thought of getting justice for her family. But like I said earlier, what’s really interesting about Yotei’s narrative is the game opens on adult Atsu, with only the lightest of context on who she is, and the bond between her and her family.
The structure of Yotei has you exploring the various regions of Ezo, taking on quests, as you hunt down the Yotei Six. But interspersed among that are dozens of little flashbacks and details that give you more context on Atsu’s childhood and family, their relationship with the land, and how they fit into the bigger picture of the region’s factions.
It’s a genuinely fascinating way to approach this game’s story, and by and large, makes Atsu feel like a much more complex character than Tsushima’s Jin Sakai. And that’s because we get to see Atsu as almost two different characters – her innocent childhood reflected against the hardened cynical shell of her adult self. It’s a really smart way to illustrate the ravages of time, and how trauma can sit with a person, and change who they are.
The main narrative is genuinely what I love most about Yotei – it’s a compelling story filled with fantastic and quirky characters, laden with drama and emotion. Erika Ishii does an incredible job as Atsu, filling her with every bit of charisma that Jin Sakai had in the previous game.
But the other interesting aspect about Yotei, is the different stylistic tone the entire game has. While Tsushima, very intentionally, felt like a classic Akira Kurosawa Samurai flick, I’d liken Yotei to more of a Samurai Western – almost like the anime Samurai Champloo. That’s both because of the revenge-driven story and the stylistic tone of its genre-meshing music and writing. There’s a clear “Old West” slant to everything, which in turn does make Yotei feel more fantastical than historically grounded. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a drastically different approach that I, by and large, enjoyed. And that’s a good thing, as on the gameplay front, Yotei is much more iterative.
By the Numbers
Part of what made Tsushima feel so refreshing in 2020 was how novel it was, a hybrid of games Assassin’s Creed and Red Dead Redemption that managed to pack in some truly unique design mechanics like the Guiding Wind, using the actual wind to point you to objectives instead of markers.
And before I dive into the meat of Yotei’s gameplay, I do want to be clear that the game really doubles down on those immersive, streamlining elements – and that’s by far where it feels the most genuinely innovative.
The Guiding Wind returns and feels just as delightfully emergent as the first game, but now there are extra elements to complement it. Fields of white flowers work as boost points to speed up your horse, little minigames let you start your fire at camp, and you can play songs on your Shamisen to help guide you to open world tasks. I also particularly love the Sumi-e painting activities, which let you use the touchpad in a calming way to paint the pictures – a lovely break from the blood and brutality.
It’s these kinds of immersive elements that make Yotei really stand apart, with the game having a deliberate focus on making the experience feel cinematic, from the way it uses music and lyrics for big story moments like Death Stranding, to how the aspect ratio changes at specific points to feel more film-like. All of these elements add up to give Yotei a marvelous sense of place and spectacle, a world that’s simply a joy to behold – serving up one wondrous vista after another.
Yotei even streamlines much of the open world experience to make sure you have a constant sense of improvement and moving forward. You can find shrines both out in the wild and by tackling enemy bases, all of which give you a point to invest in a new skill. There is a crafting system and multiple merchants, but all your resources are broken down into larger categories, like wood or flowers – meaning you don’t need to go out of your way to find things.
But apart from those streamlined elements, Yotei doesn’t have that same novelty factor as Tsushima, and is by far a more repetitive experience that builds on the structure of the first game. The “gameplay experience” is almost beat-for-beat what was in Tsushima, which might be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your experience with that game. Yotei is an open world game all about “freedom,” approaching the story in any order you want, tackling enemy bases with stealth of pure action, and a diverse lineup of weapons and charms to alter how Atsu fights.
But I want to be clear that Yotei is more about the illusion of choice. Sure, you can choose which members of the Yotei Six to pursue first, but ultimately you’re doing the same thing in the end – and that same thing is also drastically similar to Tsushima.
In Yotei, you go through bombastic set-piece story missions, eliminate enemy bases, find Hot Springs to increase your health, do Bamboo Strikes to increase Spirit, etc. These are all elements present in the first game, in the exact way they were before. There are some new additions, of course, like a Wolf partner that appears when you’re in trouble and fights alongside you in battle.
The same goes for the game’s combat, which still has the visceral brutality of Tsushima, letting you hack off enemy limbs and spray those crimson showers of blood. Atsu has much more diverse weaponry to play around with, from a massive Odachi, to bombs, blinding powder, and the chained Kusarigama weapon. Yotei’s combat is surprisingly simple in terms of the buttons you need to press, largely boiling down to light and heavy attacks, parries, and dodges – but the complexity is woven into those different weapon types.
There’s a kind of rock-paper-scissors system, where some weapons are better against others, such as Dual Katanas being good against Yari (spears), or Odachi giving you an advantage over Brute-type enemies. This means that you’re constantly swapping weapons during combat to try and adjust to the compositions of enemies, and Atsu’s lengthy skill trees add more complexity with new moves and combat options. Battles do grow in complexity across the game, but like many of the game’s other elements, inevitably start to blend together after a few dozen hours.
And therein lies my biggest problem: a creeping sense of monotony. There’s not a single element in Yotei that I would outright call “bad.” The combat has a deliciously impactful feel, and is consistently, shockingly brutal. The world is achingly beautiful and a delight to simply see. And the story goes to some genuinely fun places, even in side missions – like one that takes a surprising left-turn into horror as you hunt down the Spider Lily Samurai.
But ultimately you’re doing the same things over and over. Around 30 hours I realized I was starting to feel fatigued, as I sighed at yet another enemy base I had to infiltrate, or a new handful of icons on my map. And while the immersive elements of the game, like Guiding Wind, tinge Yotei with a different feel, the open world fatigue, like so many other games, does start to set in.
Back in the Saddle
It’s that sense of monotony that strikes me most about Yotei, especially when juxtaposed against a story that does feel genuinely bold and incisive. Again the combat and open world activities of Yotei are mechanically sound, but I wish the game could have been a little more daring in breaking from the formula of Tsushima, a little bolder in treading new ground in open world design.
What results from all that is a strong sequel that feels like a small step forward, rather than a leap – but it’s still a journey well worth taking, especially to see out Atsu’s harrowing tale of revenge and growth.
And Yotei’s world is simply a joy to exist in, even if the activities within that world might start to feel too similar. I never tired of climbing up a mountain and seeing a stunning view, walking through a forest as leaves swirled about me, or dashing through flower fields on my horse as flocks of cranes glided alongside me. My PS5 is now filled with over a hundred shots of Yotei’s world, both using the game’s fantastic photo mode and not.
Ultimately, for any problem I have with Ghost of Yotei, perusing my photo album like I just got back from a vacation is worth any frustration I had to put up with.
8/10
Ghost of Yotei launches on October 2 exclusively for PS5. Inverse was provided with a copy for this review.
INVERSE VIDEO GAME REVIEW ETHOS: Every Inverse video game review answers two questions: Is this game worth your time? Are you getting what you pay for? We have no tolerance for endless fetch quests, clunky mechanics, or bugs that dilute the experience. We care deeply about a game’s design, world-building, character arcs, and storytelling come together. Inverse will never punch down, but we aren’t afraid to punch up. We love magic and science-fiction in equal measure, and as much as we love experiencing rich stories and worlds through games, we won’t ignore the real-world context in which those games are made.
