A Brutally Honest Review
Released: October 2, 2025 | Platform: PlayStation 5 | Developer: Sucker Punch Productions
Five years ago, Ghost of Tsushima became an unexpected phenomenon: a samurai epic that married breathtaking visuals with satisfying combat and a story that resonated with players worldwide. Now, in October 2025, Sucker Punch returns with Ghost of Yotei, a standalone sequel that shifts the action 300 years forward to 1603 Hokkaido and introduces a new protagonist. The question isn’t whether Yotei is good, it manifestly is. The question is whether “more of the same, but prettier” is enough in 2025’s crowded gaming landscape.
The Bottom Line Up Front
Ghost of Yotei is a technical masterpiece and a refinement of everything Ghost of Tsushima achieved. It’s also frustratingly safe, refusing to take the risks necessary to elevate open-world game design beyond familiar tropes. Sucker Punch has created what might be the most “triple-A” game of all time: impeccably polished, beautiful to a fault, but ultimately playing it safer than a samurai who never draws their blade.
Score: 85/100
Atsu’s Revenge: A More Personal Tale
The narrative shift from Jin Sakai’s honor-bound samurai to Atsu’s vengeful mercenary proves immediately compelling. Set against the lawless frontier of Ezo (modern-day Hokkaido), Yotei follows Atsu sixteen years after the Yotei Six (a gang of outlaws) slaughtered her family when she was a child. Unlike Jin, who was born into nobility and struggled with abandoning the samurai code, Atsu is an outsider. She’s an onna-musha (female warrior) with no status, no honor to maintain, and nothing to lose.
This fundamental difference makes Atsu’s story feel more intimate and emotionally resonant than Jin’s quest. The game employs a clever dual-timeline structure, weaving childhood flashbacks throughout the present-day revenge narrative. These glimpses into Atsu’s past, her relationship with her family, her connection to the land, transform her from a simple revenge-seeker into a genuinely complex character. We see the innocent child reflected against the hardened, cynical warrior she’s become, creating a poignant meditation on trauma and time.
The Yotei Six themselves serve as both narrative targets and structural pillars for the game’s non-linear design. Players can hunt them in any order (with two exceptions: the Snake as the opening boss and Lord Saito as the finale), giving the revenge quest a sense of player agency. However, this freedom comes with a cost—several of the Six feel underdeveloped, serving more as targets to cross off a list than fully realized antagonists. The segmented structure that makes the game feel open also makes the narrative feel episodic and occasionally repetitive.
That said, the story delivers memorable moments, unexpected twists, and a cast of supporting characters who feel essential to Atsu’s journey. The optional Japanese voice acting is excellent (to these non-speaker ears), and the mo-cap performances carry genuine emotional weight. If you’re looking for a predictable but well-executed revenge tale that explores grief, identity, and the cost of vengeance, Yotei delivers.
Combat Evolution: Weapons Over Stances
The most significant gameplay departure from Tsushima lies in the complete overhaul of the combat system. Gone are Jin’s four stances (Stone, Water, Wind, Moon), replaced by an arsenal of five distinct weapons that function in a rock-paper-scissors counter system:
- Katana: Your faithful all-rounder, effective against sword-wielding enemies
- Dual Katanas: Rapid strikes perfect for enemies with spears and crowd control
- Odachi: A massive heavy sword that devastates brutes and heavily armored foes
- Yari (Spear): Extended reach for crowd control and keeping distance
- Kusarigama: Chain and sickle for pulling enemies close and disrupting formations
Each weapon has unique movesets, mastery challenges, and upgrade paths. The combat maintains Tsushima’s weighty, deliberate feel while adding improvisational depth. You can be disarmed mid-fight, forcing you to grab enemy weapons or switch tactics on the fly. Standoffs return with enhanced lethality—upgrade them properly and you can decimate entire groups before a fight begins.
Firearms enter the equation but wisely remain limited. The Tanegashima matchlock rifle acts as a tactical tool for eliminating priority targets, while the flintlock pistol serves as a close-quarter stagger tool. Blades remain “the heart of the fantasy,” as creative director Nate Fox emphasized, and the game is better for this restraint.
The combat is brutal—genuinely, shockingly so. The optional Miike Mode (inspired by director Takashi Miike’s work) amplifies the violence to operatic levels, with geysers of blood and flying limbs. Even the base combat features visceral finishing moves that would make Quentin Tarantino nod approvingly. Atsu’s wolf companion adds another tactical layer, appearing at the edges of fights to harry enemies or join standoffs, though mercifully it doesn’t require babysitting like some game companions.
Where the combat stumbles is in its fundamental familiarity. Despite the weapon variety, the core loop—identify enemy type, switch to counter weapon, break guard, execute combo—becomes formulaic after 20-30 hours. The system is deep enough for those who want to master it, but shallow enough that you can button-mash through most encounters on normal difficulty. It’s satisfying throughout, but rarely surprising.
The Double-Edged Sword of Open World Design
This is where brutally honest becomes brutal: Ghost of Yotei’s open world is simultaneously its greatest triumph and most significant disappointment.
The Triumph: Hokkaido is stunning. Sucker Punch has created one of the most visually arresting game worlds ever rendered. Snow-capped Mount Yōtei dominates the skyline. Fields of wildflowers sway in dynamic winds. Aurora borealis dances across night skies. Weather systems transition from serene sunshine to howling blizzards. The game runs this spectacle at a rock-solid 60fps on PS5 Pro’s Ray Tracing Pro mode, with ray-traced global illumination that creates realistic bounce lighting rarely seen in open-world games. Digital Foundry called it “a triumphant sequel” technically, and they’re not wrong.
The traversal design learns from Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring. Instead of cluttering your HUD with icons, Yotei uses environmental storytelling and the returning “Guiding Wind” to point you toward objectives. The map reveals itself organically as you explore, with fog-of-war covering unexplored areas. This creates genuine moments of discovery—cresting a hill to find a hidden village, following smoke to discover a battle, or spotting a distant shrine and plotting a path to reach it.
The Disappointment: Strip away the presentation, and you’re doing almost exactly what you did in 2020’s Tsushima. Enemy camps. Hot springs to increase health. Bamboo strikes to increase spirit. Fox dens. Shrines. The activities have been tweaked—there’s now Sumi-e painting (in first-person!), wolf dens, bounty hunting, and a coin-flicking minigame—but the underlying structure remains stubbornly familiar.
Critics have rightly called this “dated open world design.” Eurogamer’s Chris Tapsell suggests the game “would be better served as a linear action game, freed of its poor sidequests and dated open world.” It’s a harsh take, but not entirely wrong. Around the 30-hour mark, open-world fatigue sets in. You sigh at yet another enemy camp, yet another handful of icons appearing on your map. The illusion of choice becomes apparent—yes, you can tackle objectives in any order, but you’re ultimately checking boxes off a list.
Sucker Punch clearly heard the repetition criticisms of Tsushima. Directors Nate Fox and Jason Connell explicitly told press they aimed to avoid making “players do the same things over and over again” and promised “unique experiences” scattered throughout exploration. The attempt is appreciated, but the execution falls short of revolutionary. The side quests, in particular, represent a step backward from Tsushima’s excellent character-driven missions. Too many devolve into “go here, kill ambush that spawns when you arrive” templates with minimal variety.
The non-linear structure, while giving players agency, also dilutes narrative tension. Unlike Assassin’s Creed’s more focused revenge tales, Yotei’s segmented approach to the Yotei Six can make the latter half feel disjointed, with odd pacing issues as you hopscotch between regions.
Technical Excellence with Minor Blemishes
As a PlayStation 5 showpiece, Ghost of Yotei is nearly untouchable. The game offers four graphics modes:
- Quality Mode: 4K/30fps (no ray tracing)
- Performance Mode: 1440p/60fps on Pro, ~1080p on base PS5 (no ray tracing)
- Ray Tracing Mode: ~1728p/30fps with ray tracing
- Ray Tracing Pro (PS5 Pro exclusive): ~1080p/60fps with ray tracing
The Ray Tracing Pro mode is the way to play if you have Sony’s $700 console. The implementation of PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) works beautifully here, avoiding the issues that plagued some other PS5 Pro launches. The 60fps ray-traced experience rarely dips outside the VRR window, offering both visual splendor and responsive gameplay.
A substantial day-one patch (version 1.006) addressed multiple issues: environmental rendering improvements, ray tracing consistency fixes, audio bugs, and balance adjustments. The patch brought about 80 individual fixes, including resolving crashes during extended play sessions and FPS drops in high-character-count missions. That such an extensive patch was required at launch is concerning, but Sucker Punch’s responsiveness is commendable.
Minor visual issues persist. Background NPCs and random townsfolk look noticeably worse than main characters, with faces lacking detail. Even Atsu suffers quality drops if you examine her during open-world traversal versus cutscenes. It’s the visual equivalent of seeing the seams in a Hollywood blockbuster’s green screen work—a reminder that even this technical marvel has limitations.
What Works Brilliantly
Visual Direction: The art design remains peerless. Kurosawa Mode returns, now joined by Miike Mode (ultra-violent and muddy) and Watanabe Mode (inspired by Shinichirō Watanabe, featuring a hip-hop-influenced soundtrack). These aren’t gimmicks—they’re legitimate alternative ways to experience the game that honor different artistic traditions.
Wolf Companion: Unlike annoying AI partners in other games, Atsu’s wolf feels like a wild creature with its own agency. It appears when narratively appropriate, aids in combat without requiring micromanagement, and represents the untamed spirit of Ezo itself.
Photo Mode: Available from day one with extensive options, this is essential for a game this beautiful. You’ll spend hours capturing moments.
Cultural Authenticity: While the game takes liberties for gameplay (as all historical fiction does), the respect for Japanese culture, Ainu traditions, and historical context feels genuine. The game doesn’t exoticize or orientalize, it presents feudal Japan with the same matter-of-fact approach Red Dead Redemption 2 brought to the American West.
What Doesn’t Work
Repetition Fatigue: Despite promises to address this, the underlying open-world structure remains too familiar. If Tsushima’s repetition bothered you, Yotei won’t convert you.
Side Quest Quality: A genuine step backward from Tsushima’s character-driven tales. Too much filler, not enough substance.
Missed Innovation Opportunities: Where’s the fishing? The settlement building? The dynamic faction system? Any of the innovations that could push open-world design forward? Sucker Punch played it safe when boldness was called for.
Enemy Variety: Despite the weapon variety, enemy types feel limited. You’re fighting variations on the same archetypes throughout the 40-50 hour campaign.
The 2025 Context Problem
Ghost of Yotei releases into a gaming landscape transformed since 2020. Elden Ring showed how open-world design can prioritize discovery over checklists. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom demonstrated emergent gameplay systems. Even Assassin’s Creed Shadows (releasing next year) is attempting to innovate with dual protagonists and seasonal systems.
Yotei feels like a 2020 game rendered in 2025 graphics. That’s simultaneously its strength (refinement) and weakness (stagnation). For players who loved Tsushima and simply want more, this is paradise. For those hoping Sucker Punch would use five years to reimagine what an open-world action game could be, Yotei disappoints.
The game currently sits at 87 on Metacritic with 95% of critics recommending it on OpenCritic. Japan’s Famitsu awarded it 39/40 (just shy of the perfect 40/40 Tsushima received). These are excellent scores, but they’re also scores for a very good game that isn’t game-changing.
The Multiplayer Future
Ghost of Yotei: Legends, the co-op multiplayer mode, won’t arrive until 2026 as free DLC. Like Tsushima’s Legends mode, it will feature two-player story missions and four-player survival matches against supernatural versions of the Yotei Six. This delayed release means we’re reviewing an incomplete package, though the base game stands strongly on its own.
Verdict: Gorgeous Conservatism
Ghost of Yotei is a masterclass in execution within familiar parameters. It’s the open-world equivalent of a Michelin-starred restaurant perfecting a classic dish—impeccably prepared, presented beautifully, but ultimately the same recipe you’ve had before.
If you’re coming to Yotei for Atsu’s story, gorgeous vistas, and satisfying swordplay, you’ll find 40-50 hours of polished entertainment. The game does what it sets out to do with remarkable competence. But if you’re hoping for the next evolution in open-world design, you’ll leave wishing Sucker Punch had taken risks commensurate with their evident talent.
The game’s greatest achievement might be how it makes you simultaneously admire its craftsmanship while wondering what could have been if the developers had been bolder. It’s a testament to Sucker Punch’s skill that a game this safe still feels this good to play.
Final Score: 85/100
Recommendation:
- Buy immediately if you loved Ghost of Tsushima and want more
- Wait for sale if open-world fatigue is real for you
- Skip if Tsushima’s structure bored you—more polish won’t fix fundamental design philosophies
Ghost of Yotei is the gaming equivalent of the greatest hits album from a band you love—all the songs are good, but you wish they’d written something new.
Ghost of Yotei is available exclusively on PlayStation 5. Review based on 50+ hours with the game, day-one patch installed, played on PS5 Pro.