Ghost of Yōtei (2025): The Review
Overview
Ghost of Yotei is a huge step up from its predecessor, refining almost every aspect to razor-sharp quality. The shift to a more open-ended progression and a smaller, denser map pays off, giving you plenty to do without the usual open-world clutter. Exploration actually feels rewarding instead of like a checklist. And the presentation? Absolutely stunning, it’s almost unbelievable how smoothly the game runs given how good it looks.
Score: 9 out of 10
The Positives✅
Ghost of Yotei leans fully into its revenge-driven narrative, but what makes it stand out is the way it frames that story through the eyes of someone who’s clearly been shattered by what she lived through. Atsu isn’t just walking the classic “avenge my family” path, she’s trying to piece together the real story of the night everything burned. That structure alone makes the plot feel sharper and more compelling than the usual revenge blueprint. At times, she’s not an easy character to sympathize with, but that’s part of the point; she’s an anti-hero who cares more about results than morals, and the game never hides that.
Gameplay-wise, the core remains just as satisfying as ever. Sucker Punch didn’t try to reinvent their combat foundation, and honestly, it didn’t need to. The real shift is in exploration: the open world has been dramatically streamlined, and the difference is night and day. The tighter map means you run into something meaningful every few minutes, and that simple change does wonders for the pacing. It turns what used to be scenic stretches of beautiful emptiness into a rhythm of curiosity and reward.
Visually, the game is absurd. Sucker Punch somehow managed to outdo the original, which didn’t even seem possible. The sequel doubles down on rich color palettes and heavy contrasts that make practically every corner of Ezo look like a postcard. Fields, plains, mountains, everything feels designed to be photographed. Sure, some cutscene animations come off a little stiff, but when the world itself looks this good, it’s a tiny blemish on an otherwise incredible presentation.
The audio work matches the visual ambition. The score shifts tones seamlessly depending on the moment, and the game nails the emotional swings through music alone. Sound effects are crisp and punchy, especially the perfect-parry clang making its triumphant return, giving combat that tactile edge the series is known for. Most of the voice acting is spot-on too, even if a few deliveries don’t quite land emotionally.
And for the asking price, it feels like a complete, polished package. Between its refined open-world structure, strong narrative focus, and the harmony between exploration and combat, Ghost of Yotei delivers something that feels both familiar and impressively improved. It’s the kind of sequel where you can see the developers understood their own strengths and built directly on top of them.
The Negatives⚠️
For all the improvements, there are still a few cracks showing. The choice to ditch stances in favor of weapon-type countering is clever in theory but messy in practice. Early on, it works fine, switching between blades to match enemy weapons feels like a fresh twist. But later in the game, when enemies swarm you and force constant toggling, the system stops being strategic and starts being maintenance. It interrupts flow more than it enhances it.
Because of that, mastering individual weapons never feels fully satisfying. Just when you start getting comfortable with a specific blade, the game throws another matchup at you that forces you off it. It’s not that the combat becomes bad, far from it, but it loses that clean, rhythmic sharpness that the original’s stance system offered. The constant juggling dilutes the purity of the fight.
Atsu’s personality may also rub some players the wrong way. Her coldness, bluntness, and tunnel-visioned hatred make her compelling, but not always relatable. She’s not Jin Sakai, there’s no internal struggle between ideals and actions here. Some moments of vulnerability do peek through, especially in side quests, but the game sticks hard to its portrayal of her as a damaged, angry specter. For some, that’s fascinating; for others, it’s distancing.
The late-game encounters highlight the biggest wear-and-tear in the design. When the number of enemies spikes and the weapon-matching becomes constant, the combat loop flattens. Instead of a crescendo, the finale sections lean toward repetition, and that undermines the otherwise strong pacing introduced by the smaller map and open-ended chapter structure.
And lastly, while the voice acting is solid overall, a handful of scenes suffer from emotional underdelivery. It’s not enough to derail anything, but when the visuals, music, and story are firing on all cylinders, those slightly stiff line reads stand out more than they should.
The Experience 🎮
Being a huge fan of the original, someone who literally earned the Platinum twice, I went into Ghost of Yotei with unrealistically high expectations. And somehow, the sequel actually met them. From the moment I stepped into Ezo, the improvements were obvious. The pacing is smoother, the exploration is more rewarding, and the whole world feels like it’s been built with intention rather than size for the sake of size.
The smaller map turned out to be one of the smartest decisions the developers made. Instead of wandering across giant stretches of land just to reach the next point of interest, the world now funnels you into rapid-fire discoveries. Everything feels dense in the best way possible, challenges, shrines, altars, random encounters, all hitting frequently enough that getting lost never feels like a waste of time.
Atsu herself grew on me more than I expected. She’s not warm, she’s not noble, and she’s not pretending to be anything other than furious, but her complexity becomes clearer the more you explore the world. Those small character-driven moments, like the musician with the cursed flute, add layers that the main plot doesn’t always show directly. It made me appreciate her more as the game went on, even if she isn’t meant to be “liked” in the traditional sense.
Some of the late-game combat did get frustrating, especially when I felt like I was fighting the weapon-switching more than the enemies. But even then, the overall flow of the game carried me through. The open-ended chapter design encouraged me to carve my own path through the island, and that freedom kept the pacing tight and the gameplay loop exciting.
By the time I reached the end, it was clear that Sucker Punch didn’t just create “more Ghost of Tsushima”, they genuinely refined it. The sequel fixes the biggest issues from the first game, maintains everything that worked, and layers in fresh ideas that mostly pay off. Ghost of Yotei feels like a confident evolution of a beloved formula, and it left me satisfied, impressed, and already itching to revisit Ezo for round two.
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