Thursday and Friday were two very long work days, for me. Long story, not getting into it, but Thursday was an exhausting, stressful day at the office, rolling right into doing the podcast, and Thursday night I just kinda' crashed - I didn't have the mental energy to keep my promise to play Hunt Down, or even play Overwatch.
Yesterday was another very long day at the office, but at least it was Friday. I felt like I should play HuntDown and I should make a post for the next clip show, but I'm so beat, I just wanna' lay down and watch a movie.
So I resolved to do that.
When I walked into my room, though, what was on the TV was the start screen for Ghost of Tsushima. I'd updated the game earlier in the day for (what I considered to be) the NG+ patch and forgotten about it in the whirlwind of work. Oh well. Tsushima is pretty chill as a rule, it might be nice to just... check that Legends thing out? Maybe see if there's a tutorial..?
I would go on to play Ghost of Tushima: Legends until 03:00 AM the following morning. And there's a lot about it that I dislike, I guess. Or a lot that denies what I'd initially want of Tsushima multiplayer, but that should not be the immediate takeaway. This is the gist, the short version, the quick truth of Ghost of Tsushima: Legends:
It is astonishing that this is being given away for free, and it. Is. Excellent.
And I say that as someone who never wanted this kind of DLC or even thought I would try it.
Ghost of Tsushima is an open-world game, and so in my imagination, what I'd most like to do in a friend is the open-world thing - exploration, flowing from task to task. That is not what Legends is. At all. If you're playing Legends' "story" missions, you're playing very linear sequences - but it's fun, for the record. If you're playing Survival, you're confined to a town or a large section of beach or whatever.
Ghost of Tsushima is a game with a heavy emphasis on its combat. That is what Legends is. It specifically evokes the way-over-the-top fantasia of Sucker Punch's Festival of Blood DLC for inFamous 2 back in 2011, for there as here you find yourself taking on otherworldly enemies (see: normal enemies with new visual effects and new moves) in familiar locations (set pieces you remember from the core game - Hiyoshi springs, et cetera) that have been all jazzed up with supernaturalia.
In the screenshot above an impossibly large moon hangs in a sky dotted with floating paper lanterns. I played one last night that had colossal, disembodied, dripping hearts hanging in the air. It's all visually crazy and familiar at the same time. It's still that spectacularly gorgeous single-player game you remember, it's just now the artists have had their "should be somewhat historically accurate" limiters removed, and they were able to go nnnuts.
One of the things that makes Legends work is how much it limits you, which initially seems and sounds like a turn-off, but I think it's handled really well, and pays dividends.
There are four classes - Samurai, Hunter, Ronin and Assassin - reflecting various aspects of Jin's kit in the core game. That sounds perhaps shitty - you'll never be endgame Jin in all his omnipotent glory - but... well, let me explain.
All 4 have basically your entire core repertoire from the base game. All can parry blue-glint (ublockable) attacks, for example - you have the entire parry and dodge skill trees silently unlocked in the background, and all can carry a bow - but only the Archer has a bunch of skills to make her bow truly fearsome. And only the Samurai gets a skill to block arrows, which is weird, but whatever.
If you're a good shot, you can still headshot those sentries out of the way on any other class. All classes can perform assassinations - burly Samurai in their hulking armor can fly off a grappling hook line, soar through the air and land sword-first on an enemy, but only the Assassin can do it so quietly a guard within two paces won't hear, or chain one assassination into the next.
But it's still a step back from where you were when you finished Jin's story. It still feels limiting - and wait, it's more limited than that, because you don't switch stances in Legends. Usually. The stance you use is solely dictated by the sword you're using (more on items below). This sword is a moon stance sword, that sword is a stone stance sword, and so on. We all start with a stone stance sword, and it's a bit like Diablo in that you may get a sword that will raise your level a bit. Gear behaves very much like it does in Destiny and Destiny 2 - gear has a level, but never a level requirement. So my newly-started Assassin has a gear level of 34, thanks to all the choice stuff my level 11 Ronin picked up.
And they can equip the same sword, for the record. It's shared.
When you're choosing a mission, its difficulty is gauged against your overall item level, as does the damage, damage reduction and HP you have (I think?). So what this means is your current sword is item level 25, and it's Water stance and you fucking love it, but you just picked up a Moon Stance sword that's level 45.
You don't want to be locked down to Moon Stance, but you also want that higher item level.
Those questions extend to every other part of your kit. You can use kunai just like Jin, or you can swap 'em out for other options like sticky bombs or a toss of dirt. Personally, I favor the toss of dirt because for some reason, tossed dirt is a piece of equipment that may randomly increase the window for performing a perfect parry.
Oh yes. We're back on perfect parry street, in multiplayer! So it's Ghost of Tsushima, but new missions. A bunch of new missions. A bunch of eminently replayable missions, particularly something called Survival.
For all multiplayer "story" missions, I believe you're limited to two players. For Survival (and probably others, I actually haven't ventured beyond these two modes yet), you're dropped in to a game with 4 others in a familiar seaside town, a familiar little farm, a beach, and required to defend it for 15 waves.
That sounds boring in and of itself, but it becomes interesting when there are 3 zones that must be defended - 2 legends in a zone, working together, will hold it as a general rule - and there's only 4 of you. So it's always a balancing act between four strangers, holding these spinning plates. This point pulses red on your UI - Mongols are standing on it, uncontested! The pulsing stops - one of your allies is on it. This point is yellow on the UI - Mongols are on their way!
The UI is immediately intuitive, the constant ebb and flow of the battles, and the differences between the heroes - right down to their personal spec and the gear and talents they've chosen - really start to make a huge impact. After that initial limitation, how powerful you become - and how powerful you are specifically in this mode, really snaps into focus.
I'm only level 11 on my Ronin, right now.
This sweet-ass Water stance katana is just too handy for words. I know people complain a lot about spear dudes on forums, but for my money it's the ability to run up to anyone with a shield - or almost anyone, really - and lay into them with Surging Strikes that makes a bigger difference, more often. The above sword, miraculously, also offers the ability to switch from Water to Stone stance - kind of a biggie!
Just to illustrate how meaningful gear becomes, and how quickly it becomes that meaningful - this is where I'm at after just a few hours with the game.
That perfect parry chance on the katana? Yeah, I had to reforge that into the blade. Oh yes. You can reforge entire items, you can reforge specific aspects of an item - it's kind of immense. You earn the materials to do that by completing missions and, of course, sacrificing items to the items god.
But almost every item above does more than it should. The defense charm is only equipped for the ability to grant me a bit of +HP on a perfect parry. The Bomb Pack is only equipped for the high item level, and melee stagger damage (big for Water stance). The dirt throw's +perfect parry stat is too low, but its item level is too high to ignore, and the Lucky bit means it may have no cooldown. The gourd is just... the highest-level healing gourd I have.
And all heroes can equip a healing gourd like that, but the bomb pack is weirdly limited - Assassins can't equip it, for example.
I chose Ronin specifically for the hat, and the style. I had no understanding of the hero's skill tree at the time, but I'm a little sad to report that if you want to kill guys better than any other class, Ronin is not the class for you.
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| A particularly chill and cool Samurai. |
You may remember from the core game very powerful skills that required resolve to perform - multi-strike attacks that would obliterate groups in seconds. Every class gets one of those - the Hunter performs a McCree-from-Overwatch-like-High Noon thing where she lands 3 headshots no matter what. The Assassin disappears in a puff of smoke and quickly assassinates 3 enemies in rapid succession, and the Samurai can perform 3 massively powerful strikes, and then unlock another 2 further special strikes.
So I guess what I should have said was "every class gets one of those except the Ronin." Devastated, of course.
The Ronin gets something called "breath of Izumi," I think, which resurrects a fallen ally. And the entire time you're playing through Legends' story missions with one other person who's using their ult to win fights while you basically don't use yours because Samurai don't die that easy, it feels like a very shitty ult to have. And maybe it kind of is, but it comes in handy.
It's the difference between having to hold down R2 for two seconds - without being hit by any of the enemies swarming you - and just instantly doing it with your ult. Handy, but not a deal maker, really.
I was so disappointed with not having an offensive option like that, on my chosen class, that last night I rolled an Assassin just to see. And yeahhh it's pretty awesome to have those multi-kill specials, but...
...if I'm being honest, now, I don't really need 'em. For the most part I'm rollin' this multiplayer with my +parry windows and my basic knowledge of the game's mechanics, and today I discovered that the Ronin's ult isn't like Mercy's rez in Overwatch. It doesn't just resurrect an ally, it resurrects all allies no matter where they are on the map.
So in that survival scenario I was describing earlier, imagine you're holding down the stables in this village, there's a cry for help from your Assassin at the farm, and he dies. That point turns red - the Mongols are taking it. Around now you hope someone will go from the villa to the farm to back it up - but they can't! Your Hunter has already died, and the Samurai holding the villa is nearly dead!
But wait - did you spec your Ronin so his ult catches nearby enemies on fire? Or did you spec it so when you pop your ult and resurrect all allies across the map, now, you'll also apply a heal over time that will top them all off to full HP?
'Cause I'm here to tell you, that's a good spec, and when that moment came I was pretty glad not to be playing Assassin. That... is a deal-maker.
I want to go on, but I'm sure you understand that what I really need to do, right now, is go grind some Survival missions just for the goddamn fun of it ^.^
...and now that I come back and notice I never actually post this, I wonder if I should've titled this post "Ghost of Tsushima Legends Made Me Forget to Eat For 24 Hours." But the one I've got remains apt.
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