If you’ve read a fair amount of Stephen King novels you may have noticed his longer stories tend to have great initial hooks before meandering around in the middley bits, and just when you’re ready to call it quits finally the ending arrives; they have pacing problems. Now, this is something my husband has told me, since I’ve never been able to finish a single Stephen King novel due to all that middley meandering. Ghost of Tsushima almost met the same fate, I almost didn’t finish it. In Ghost you play as Jin Sakai, an orphaned lordling taken under the wing of his stern traditionalist Samurai uncle. As Jin you must confront the invading Mongols and fight an inner struggle between loyalty to the teachings of uncle frowny face or becoming a ruthless monster to drive out a ruthless enemy. The game starts off with a bang during the Mongol invasion of the titular Tsushima island. Then you spend the middle 10 - 20 hours of the game in a tedious and repetitive slog which only my intense stubbornness got me through. Like many a King novel, Ghost of Tsushima is big, long, and has pacing issues.
After completing the first section of Tsushima island I quickly found mostly copy-paste content. My play sessions became more and more spaced out, shorter and shorter. At worst it only took about 15 minutes for my eyes to glaze over and switch to something else. But it wasn’t always this way, there was a time I was having fun, playing with foxes, fawning at vistas, slicing up raiders…
Ghost has some good stuff to offer, primarily in presentation. Visuals are polished, draw distance is insane, cinematics are well directed, and the soundtrack hits the right notes in the right places. For me the most striking aspect of the visual design is the seemingly constant movement of the environments, helped in part by the divine wind constantly blustering about. The ripples through fields of pampas grass and flurries of snow swirling through the air gives the game world a living breathing quality. But beauty is only skin deep, and this skin is stretched thin over a world that’s too big for its own good; if everything is beautiful, nothing is.
Ghost is massive, it felt like one of the largest open world games I’ve played. At first it seems you’re spoiled for choice, looking around seeing smoke fires in the distance knowing each one is either a Mongol or raider camp you can take down. Then you realize you’re running through a gambit of similar activities. A fox shrine, a Mongol camp, a haiku, some highwaymen, a fancy sheath for your sword, another fox shrine, and over and over and over. What do I do with all of these haiku emblazoned bandanas?
When I got to the second section of Tsushima I felt I’d exhausted the freshness of exploration. I felt I’d seen all the game had to show me in terms of new discoveries, and it’s not as if the rewards felt worth the journey. Some say it’s more about the journey than the goal, but how much can you really spice up riding your horse about? Even encountering Mongolian road patrols, which initially felt like nice organic encounters, started to feel repetitive and lost their appeal. In the best cases repetitive encounters can be saved by an excellent combat system, but unfortunately Ghost’s combat is a tad blah and must have eaten the same meal that gave the world such a case of bloat.
While fun enough at first combat too becomes formulaic, loses its challenge, and eventually becomes trivial. Jin has four stances which are unlocked progressively throughout the campaign. Each stance is designed to combat a specific enemy type. Swapping stances is fluid, and an element of strategy is necessary especially once you’re dealing with multiple enemy types. It can feel really satisfying to perfectly parry a sword attack, swap stances, turn around, and pummel a shield baring enemy.
Unfortunately, if you spend any reasonable amount of time clearing Mongol camps you’ll have all the stances, and a lot of the combat perks, unlocked after completing the first section of the island. And once you have ghost mode things just get silly. When entering ghost mode any enemy can be sliced down in a single blow, as easily as a tsushi chef cuts some fatty tuna. Throw some ninja gear into the mix and by the start of the third act you’re nearly unstoppable. It can be fun to be unstoppable, I enjoy a silly power fantasy as much as the next person, but it comes too soon and too easily in Ghost. Fortunately, bosses don’t care how fancy your armor is or how many stat points you’ve spent
Boss fights, mini bosses, or any one-on-one battles are consistently the most enjoyable part of Ghost’s combat. Each one-on-one battle required precise timing, and quick assessment of the enemy to determine if you should dodge, parry, or strike. Most importantly for fun factor, each combatant had unique patterns, or some special ability. Some try to overwhelm with force, others try to distract with flashy attacks, and still others would feint to goading me into striking before executing a swift counterattack. Each duel is engaging and enjoyable, and that aspect never wears out its welcome. The story on the other hand struggles with achieving the same level of consistency.
Ghost has a slightly clichéd approach to story and character, which would be perfectly fine if it felt consistently punchy and didn’t beat me over the head with its message. The game tries way too hard to demonstrate the rift within Jin, between how he was raised, and what he feels he must do to drive out the Mongols. What I felt was odd was the game missed an opportunity to change and react based on playstyle and story choices. I somehow got it in my head that if I fought as a Samurai, avoided stealth, challenged the enemy head on, it would somehow influence the outcome of the story. But nope, you will become the Ghost and alienate everyone around you until the final moments where you make a binary choice to get one of two endings…Considering how much of the game emphasized Jin’s inner struggle I found it odd the story was so linear and lacking in response to player behavior. Don’t get me wrong I like the story just fine despite its rather linear approach. It had high points, low points, and points so dull I can’t remember.
Most of the high points in Ghost’s story come from the companion quests. Whether you’re helping Masako in her quest for revenge, Ishikawsa trying to stop his rogue pupil, or helping Yuna and Taka trying to escape the island. You meet characters at challenging points in their lives and see how they all deal with those challenges in different ways. Some of the side missions are wonderful as well, like spending time with your nanny in her final moments, or helping a young man track down a dear friend (who is likely his lover) kidnapped by Mongols. Unfortunately, these high points are few and far between, with most side missions amounting to not much more than fetch quests. The vastness of the world is much to the detriment of the side quest quality due to a lot of filler. I feel if the game world had been scaled down the pacing of the main campaign would have been greatly improved and there would have been fewer fluff side quests.
Ultimately the vast scale of the landscape, not the Mongols, was Tsushima’s greatest enemy. It’s as if the world was conceived first, and everything else was secondary. The main story started strong, and ended strong, but meandered in a thick and bland middle, most side quests felt like filler, and combat became quickly repetitive and eventually trivialized. What’s a real shame is there are great moments in this game that get lost in its size. Dramatically standing off against Mongol highwaymen,frighting friends turned enemy, stunning visuals audio and music, but it was stretched thin and overstuffed with filler; like trying to staple a few chickens together stuffing it full of cheap pre-packaged cornbread mix and calling it a Turkey. No matter how cool Samurais are, how pretty the photo mode is, or how cute those foxes are, Ghost of Tsushima blew its load early showing me almost everything it had to offer in the first 10 hours, then went on for another 30. The game is worth playing, I’d just suggest sticking to the Turkey and skipping the stuffing.