fucking christ tengu demon (boss of longbow quest) is nearly impossible on lethal
i tried to do this quest early on to get more arrows, but he fucking wrecked me.
i had to actually give up the quest and press "o" that resets the fucking quest! (i thought it'd just go back to an old save point, no you have to initiate with the musician again)
had to get upgraded before i decided to face him again.
This game is just plain perfect, aside from the camera. It even did the usual thing I get annoyed with in games where the rules kind of change for the last major fight, but it was done so well that it did not bother me in this instance. Consistently fun from the start to end, well acted, and just plain fun in whatever way you wanted it to be. There have been games that have done individual things better (Last of Us 1 had better individual acting and story in certain ways, Witcher was more epic scaled, HZD had better combat mechanics, God of War had better pacing but its also the 4th in the series) but each of those games faltered in other areas while GoT was just flat out top tier to GOAT in every single area. And the most important thing, the ending, they nailed perfect for the genre. Holy fucking hit you in the man feels ending.
Open world wide I think I can safely say this is the best open world game I have ever played. The quality of life stuff in this game was just fucking unmatched by any game I can recall playing. The graphics were just plain incredible. And the combat/stealth was so well done that my friends and wife came over just to watch me fucking murder Mongorians for the spectacle and story of the game. No wonder the Naughty Dog fanbois are in such a desperate lather to belittle this game, since it just exposed what a giant hunk of shit that TloU2 was. It even dunks on their cultural appropriation argument, if you watch the bonus features, because they actually sought direct input from respected Japanese historians who they got to even play the game. Just so much great work on this game that paid off on every level.
Now about the game:
The endings for all the characters were on the dark side, for sure. Ishikawa got some redemption when he let Tomoi leave to start over, but the rest of them were just going through the same arc as the main character. Its not any coincidence that all of them were balancing both Revenge vs Duty and Old Values vs Saving the People. That was the entire theme of the game, really. And Jin did get some wins (he saved Yuna even if she more or less friend zones him at the end), learned a lot about his father by sharing the end with his dad's side piece to reconcile that relationship, and got closure with his uncle as men (good no matter what you picked) at the very end. The whole point of this was that Jin was willing to make any personal sacrifice to save his island and people. This game was basically an exercise in what that really means, both on a personal level as well as a larger scale. And it was left open for some great sequel potential with how all the individual arcs finished out. And the best part is that (and the devs talk about this in the bonus features) its a great love letter to the Samurai movies in the same vein as Spagetti Westerns were to American Western movies. Its a homage that does everything right.
Fucking amazing game and easily in my top five of all time, next to FFT, Dark Souls (pick any), Fallout NV, and XCom2. It is clearly the best sandbox game ever made, in my view, with Breath of the Wild being the only game that comes close. I had skipped Sucker Punches last Infamous outting, but after playing this I might have to go back and look at that game again. Hats off to the team that made this thing from the ground up. Except the camera guy. Fuck that guy LOL.
Gameplay wise, I pretty much stuck with the clan Sakai armor most of the game, except for swapping in resolve gain armor for certain duels and Ghost armor in the sneak only missions. The bigger parry/dodge window charm is pretty much hands down the best one. It makes a lot of the duels more manageable on higher difficulties and compensates for the camera issues when fighting in a mass. It also mitigates the need to swap stances so much, especially if you just want to turbo chop out of the anti-shield guy stance or Moon stance. Rest comes down to playstyle, though I focused mostly on Resolve gain myself. I intend to go back and do an archery focused playthrough, but I think most of the essential components of that combat style are not available until later in the game (mostly the arrow and concentration recovery) if you want to use it in direct fights. And of course its hard to turn down the full Resolve bar, dead pile, and half full murder mode bar that a five man standoff setup gives you.....
But really one of the best aspects of this game is that there is no wrong way to play it. One of the main reasons it was not such a slog is later on, if I got bored being the silent murder hobo, well let me swap some stuff and walk into the fucking town and do standoffs. There are also a vast variety of things to use the ghost weapons for, especially smoke bombs, if you want to change it up in that direction. So many games fuck this up by shoe horning you into one path, either with shitty mission design or balance issues. But this one nailed it. Bravo Sucker Punch.
if you watch the bonus features, because they actually sought direct input from respected Japanese historians who they got to even play the game. Just so much great work on this game that paid off on every level.
i think they also let the jap voice actors run w/ it and adlib, a few times i caught the subs not matching what was spoken, of course not being fluent in any way other than copious anime, but stuff like when jin is talking to his grangran he just calls her yuri.
the script keeps on saying yuriko, but thats pretty much like your best friend saying "thomas alva edison wuz up dog?"
They also tend to despawn if you get in a fight (and standoff) near their initial spawn point. Minor bug, but amplified by how bug free the rest of the game is.
I personally did not get all the collectible shit, outside of the shrines. Not sure I want the Plat that badly, but I will probably miss killing Mogorians enough soon to go back in. The Epic Tale sword moves are the only things I really consider essential, beyond whatever boosts health and resolve.
Yeah I actually had one fox just simply not spawn due to what was likely a bug. Reloading the save, quick travel, no dice on respawning it. I had to basically complete one of the last couple of story missions to get it to load in to finish powering up my charms; was near the Silk Farm. Read a post saying that it had happened to other people as well at the same location, so possibly just a bug.
There was one fox den that didn't spawn a fox, it was near a coast line with a waterfall. Nothing I did would make it load, so I skipped it til it was the last fox den on the entire map. Then it spawned in.
This will be my first Platinum game Have a bit to go but just cleared out the Mongels which is nice because it reveals the map, and now I am off to do the other stories I took a pause in.
One thing I LOVED!
At the ending of the game, you are in a discussion and they start talking about what left their is to do in those story lines you didn't complete. That was so epic!
This was just my first ever platinum game now. Did everything there was to do before finishing it, so only missed a few things by the end. One haiku that didn't show up as a ? (you needed to talk to someone to activate it), kicking someone off a cliff, a costume combination (missed a mask and a dye for that) and 10 hidden altars that you need to pray to. Last 15 hours or so I was maxed out in stats. Never needed to use the skills that made the wind find places.
Great story though not a cheerful run. Every side mission is basically "did you find my ...." "yeah he/she/they are dead".
It's up there for sure, though my unnumbered days spent on the SC2 arcade machines and my nostalgia remind me that this is also one of the great title-drops in history, with the music ramping up and the title morphing out of the visuals.
Just finished Act 1 and it was pretty cool. Feeling pretty awesome on Normal difficulty. Don't die all that much, and feels perfect for my skill level.
