Ghost of Yotei review: from writing to mission design, a cut above Tsushima

Ghost of Tsushima wanted to say something poignant about how, when faced with an enemy who doesn’t play by the same rules as you, the ends might sometimes justify the means. While it worked on a thematic level, it also resulted in a main character who’s obsessed with his interpretation – a samurai’s interpretation – of honor. Not only did this make him seem like a choir boy with a sword and a big stick up his bum bum, but also a hypocrite because of all the, you know, war crimes he commits. 

The sequel, Ghost of Yotei, fixes that with a less ambitious story, told well. If you’ve seen Blue Eye Samurai or Lady Snowblood, you’ll know exactly what you’re in for within the first few minutes. An outlaw lord and his cohorts, masked killers called the Yotei Six, murdered Atsu’s family and pinned her to a burning tree with a sword. For 16 years, she trained, fought and killed on the mainland as a mercenary. She doesn’t care about honor — she just wants revenge. We take control of the swordsmith’s daughter when she returns home, sliding down rock shale on horseback, riding hard to do dark deeds under an overcast sky. When she arrives at her family home, wearing the same colors as her ginkgo tree, she realizes – despite the damage done to it in the fire – it’s blossoming once again. Resilient, like her. 

There is some symbolism and depth if you look for it. Most side quests mirror Atsu’s internal journey, exploring how grief can control a person or attempting to recontextualize her ideas about what’s important. Atsu starts out evasive and guarded both inside and outside of combat, but she opens up as the story progresses and learns how to let people in — this is reinforced by a page in your menu, your wolf pack, which fills out with allies and vendors you bring to your cause. There’s heart, warmth, and even comic relief that doesn’t feel out of place in such a bloody and brutal revenge tale. I was so attached to some of these characters by the end that I actually cared when bad things happened, which isn’t easy to pull off in a massive open world game full of distractions. It paces itself well and makes it very clear what you can do to achieve your next goal, allowing you to press on whenever you’re done exploring. 

In a smart move, one of the Yotei Six is under your blade within the first hour. Your reputation as the Ghost – a vengeful onryo that’s too stubborn to die, a revenant from a nightmare – is established straight away and only grows as the game progresses. Enemies and allies react to your deeds, with people more likely to lay down their swords when they see the onryo is real and as deadly as the rumors say. Bounty posters with your sketch on them fill out and grow more demonic as you cross more names off the list, raising the price of the bounty on your head and coaxing elite hunters out to track you down. It’s stuffed full of cool moments off the back of this mythos you build up around Atsu, and you feel fully locked in as it all comes together for a big payoff.  

Even the open world activities are better put together this time around. Not only are there loads more standalone sidequests with their own little stories, but the repeatable activities constantly mix things up. A bamboo strike, where you cut through bamboo sticks with your sword, might turn into a wager, or you may be forced to do it with your off-hand (on the d-pad). For one, I had to remove a bunch of spears from the ground nearby because I kept being struck by lightning. In Tsushima, you would just place markers and follow the wind. Yotei has much longer sightlines and open expanses for you to see points of interest with your eyes or spyglass. If something looks like it might be worth exploring, it probably is, and not all of them are marked on the map. 

Instead of filling your map with markers, you find out about interesting spots organically and in a drip feed. Travelers on the road point out new spots to explore, or you might have a random encounter, or take an enemy prisoner with the point of your sword at the end of a fight, or buy a map from a cartographer. It feels natural and prevents the game from being a rush from one POI to the next, which makes the world feel less artificial. 

You settle into a nice rhythm of going to a new area and building your power before working your way toward the target. Visit the local master and learn a new weapon, grab bounties off the board and turn them in to fill your coin purse, spend that coin on upgrades, liberate the map to uncover shrines to upgrade your skills, then go for one of the Yotei Six. 

It helps that it’s one of the most beautiful open worlds ever created, so expansive it makes your heart ache, slightly stylised so it captures that same sense of wonder when you stare down at Hyrule in Breath of the Wild. The open plains here are vast, and you see massive herds of animals running through them as murmurations dance through the sky and the grass sways in the breeze. Every blade of grass flattens as it’s trampled. There are dozens of little flourishes like that, such as blood clouding in water as it spills from an enemy, or how Atsu has to step to the side and pull her back-mounted sheathe down to push the massive odachi blade into it. Every single weapon has its own unique set of blood flicking animations, which is like the samurai equivalent of teabagging an enemy. 

From charred beaches to snowy mountains and forests of creaking bamboo, there’s plenty of variety and it all fits together in a convincing way. When you find yourself travelling to a new area, Sucker Punch borrows from the Rockstar Games playbook and beautiful Japanese music with vocals backs your ride into the unknown. 

Combat works largely the same as Tsushima: blades are deadly and fights don’t generally last long. It’s not deep, but there’s enough there to keep you engaged thanks to each of the five weapons you can use being best suited to a specific enemy type. And, most importantly, it feels, looks, and sounds great. It might not be the most mechanically adventurous system, but it does the job of selling the fantasy Sucker Punch is peddling, in the same way the Batman: Arkham series sold that dream with its crunchy, freeflowing melee combat. 

Ghost of Yotei proves that most games deserve a sequel. The bones were there with Tsushima, but Sucker Punch has improved every area that was lacking. All the characters have depth and personality, including the villains, climbing feels better, missions are more varied and have worthwhile stories, it explores the indigenous Ainu people, their traditions and customs, and the impact Japan’s wars had on them, and the performances from the cast are excellent in Japanese and English (Erika Ishii oozes cool, and I’d go as far as to say this is Noshir Dalal’s best performance ever). Yotei is a massive step up and easily Sucker Punch’s best game yet.