Playtime: 67h 30m.
A beautiful game. This stylized version of ancient Japan couldn’t be more appealing to the eyes.
The plot does work, although it can be easily predicted from the first hours. But the friends you make are imperfect enough to be believable and captivating. Well, except that damn fighting monk.
Exploration is rewarding, but can easily become a game of clearing map markers, which, admittedly, I did.
A well executed PC port, runs smoothly. Nothing surprising, given it is originally a PS4 game, but many similar ports have had terrible execution and result.
The combat is initially interesting, but ends up becoming a simple game of rock-paper-scissors, where you just need to select the proper sword stance given your enemy and mash the atack button, with a sprinkle of parrying and dodging here and there.
I guess combat only becomes challenging when you start to get mobbed, but not because it is hard to fight many enemies at once, but because once you defeat some enemies and their loot start accumulating on the floor, the button you should use to change stances (hold RT) starts getting interpreted as “pick loot” (tap RT) and you need to keep moving around to be able to pick the correct stance for your current oponent.
I also disliked that you’re able to learn and master all the skills, making a second playthrough even less interesting, since you can try all styles and combinations on your first attempt.
Boss fights were very climatic, with the narrative and gameplay building into them, but ended up being quite simplistic. Even the expansion ones, which were supposed to be more challenging, were quite easy.
Overall, quite a nice game, but one without the gameplay depth to make it an all-time best.