If Ghost of Tsushima was a grand Kurosawa epic about legacy, duty, and sacrifice, then Yotei is its chambara cousin: more intimate, more violent, and more personal. This is not a sometimes angsty meditation on murdering to code. It’s a rollicking revenge story. And like all good revenge tales, the uppance only comes after a few neat twists along the way.
Set three centuries after Jin Sakai’s resistance against the Mongol invasion, Ghost of Yotei introduces Atsu, a lone mercenary haunted by the slaughter of her family at the hands of six scumbags led by the charismatic Lord Saito. Unlike Jin, Atsu is not torn between tradition and necessity. She is not agonising over what her samurai code demands. She is a blade sharpened by grief and honed by rage. What makes her fascinating is not whether she will cross a line, but what she discovers on the other side of vengeance.
Atsu does not walk this path alone. Along the way she gathers a steadily expanding crew of allies, from hardened warriors to a mysterious wolf that proves more than a mascot. Together they form a band less concerned with codes of honour and more with survival, loyalty, and the occasional splash of dark humour. I found myself preferring this ensemble to the more archetypal companions of Tsushima. They feel more grounded, more ragged, and more fun to ride into battle alongside.
Narratively, the slickest trick in Yotei is its use of blink-shift transitions. In clever scene switches, Atsu can revisit her home in warmer times, watching it change around her in an instant. Elsewhere, the same technique whips you from reality into drug-induced nightmare realms, as if the very fabric of her mind is folding. The effect recalls Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart’s dimensional rifts, but here it is harnessed for emotional punch and hallucinatory dread rather than platforming spectacle.
It seems impossible, but Ghost of Yotei is even more beautiful than its already painterly predecessor, mainly thanks to increased biome diversity. Mount Yotei dominates the skyline like a myth made stone, while fields of wildflowers sway in the wind, and snow crunches underfoot with a tactile weight. Villages bustle with ordinary lives, and shrines sit tucked away on mountain ridges, waiting to be found. The wind once again remains your compass, an elegant reminder that a HUD need not sully an open world.
Playing on a PS5 Pro, the performance was flawless. Resolution and frame rate options are available, but I stuck with performance mode, which locked in a crisp, fluid 60fps that made sword duels feel buttery smooth. Sucker Punch’s restraint with the HUD still deserves special mention. Where the recent Assassin’s Creed Shadows insisted on plastering our screen with waypoints, checklists, and distance markers, Yotei champions minimalism. I am also a huge fan of the included visual filters that massage the eye candy towards OG Kurosawa cinema or slick, blood-soaked anime-esque stylings.
Combat has always been the heart of the Ghost experience, and Yotei sharpens the formula with meaningful (but not exactly revolutionary) additions. The basics return intact: parries, dodges, and timed counters that make every duel feel like choreography. But layered on top is a new disarming mechanic. Fail to hold triangle and release a counter-strike with perfect timing, and your enemy can knock one of your four weapons from your grasp. It is a cruel twist that keeps fights tense, because losing the wrong tool at the wrong moment can unravel everything.
The arsenal is more varied than ever. Dual katanas bring blistering combos, a beastly odachi smashes bigguns, and the staff channels pure Donatello energy with satisfying reach. Each weapon effectively replaces the old stance system and there are decent means to inch each into more power to suit your preferences. There are also primitive gun / projectile weapons which mercifully show up late in the piece, handle slowly, and don’t overshadow the traditional hack ‘n’ slash too much.
Frankly, I was more impressed with two new kill mechanics which stood out. Double stealth assassinations let you thin enemy patrols with cinematic efficiency, while double quickdraw standoffs add a layer of style and risk to duels. The latter in particular feels ripped from classic samurai cinema, where two warriors fall in a blur before the audience even registers the blade.
I also have to give props to a noticeable increase in on-screen allies as another game changer. Riding alongside half a dozen companions feels like leading a charge straight out of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Also, mass escapes and battlefield assaults become frantic, chaotic, and exhilarating in a way Tsushima rarely captured. These moments give the combat scale and spectacle, balancing out the intimate one-on-one duels.
As for chiller moments, the side activities in Yotei feel less like distractions and more like soulful interludes. The hot springs return, offering not just stat boosts but quiet reflection. Shrines invite prayer, while the new sumi-e painting-via-touchpad mechanic lets you literally paint the landscape or, sometimes, write out shitlists. Playing the shamisen for animals is charming, too, while helping villagers rebuild their lives reminds you that Atsu is more than her blade.
If there is one area where Yotei takes a step back, it is stealth. While infiltration and exfiltration were freer in Tsushima, here the systems feel more guided. Patrol routes are designed for player convenience, highlighted paths steer you toward optimal entries, and distraction items often sit exactly where you need them. It makes sneaking effective, but less rewarding. Success can sometimes feel like following a recipe rather than improvising.
The other blemish is one veterans of Tsushima will recognise. Physics occasionally bend to the needs of combat animation. Atsu and her foes sometimes slide an extra inch so that a strike connects, giving battles a faint slippery-feet effect. Parkour can feel massaged, with gravity adjusted to fit animation chains rather than natural momentum. Sadly, some targeting issues can still persist with the soft lock combat system in multi-person brawls (think: missing a killshot because the game thought you wanted to attack a very healthy somebody else).
These quirks are not dealbreakers. I’d call them tiny seams in an otherwise immaculate kimono. But in a game that so often achieves cinematic perfection, the flaws stand out.
When the wind settled on my time with Ghost of Yotei it struck me as not being a massive evolution of the Ghost formula, rather a classy and mostly clever refinement of. This is a perfectly fine result, given how much I adored the original formula anyway. You can lay yen down and expect Yotei to be sharper in its writing, more soulful in its side content, and staggeringly beautiful to behold on a PS5 Pro. Those alone are compelling reasons to unsheathe it.
Atsu is a protagonist who grabs you from the first cutscene and never lets go, her grounded revenge tale enriched by allies who bring warmth and chaos in equal measure. Better yet, and while stealth hasn’t improved in tandem, the stabby-stab is deeper, riskier, and more varied, with weapons that all feel worth mastering.
If Tsushima was a classic in its own right, Yotei is proof that Sucker Punch can take the same brush and paint something even more striking. This is a journey worth every step, and another high water mark for sumptuously cinematic open-world adventuring.
This review was made possible by a no strings attached review code provided by PlayStation AU
