Note:<\/i><\/b> This review was first published on 26 September 2025.<\/i><\/p>\n
The first time Ghost of Yotei truly clicked for me wasn\u2019t during an exploration or a sidequest \u2013 it was in a duel. A simple one-on-one, under grey skies, against a masked swordsman who felt like he\u2019d been waiting for me all along. The fight lasted about two minutes, but my palms were sweating by the end. I\u2019d mistimed a parry, nearly lost my balance, and just scraped through with a final desperate slash. The camera lingered on the fallen body, then pulled back to Mount Yotei\u2019s reflection on a nearby stream. It wasn\u2019t just a victory \u2013 it was a reminder that every duel, no matter how small, carried a weight that the open-world skirmishes didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Duels in Yotei are stripped down, more personal. They take away the chaos of bombs and pistols, forcing you to rely on timing and rhythm. When the blade meets steel in these moments, you feel the clash in your hands through the DualSense\u2019s feedback. It\u2019s less about mashing through waves of grunts and more about knowing when to commit, when to hold back, when to risk a heavy slash that could end it or leave you wide open. These duels became my anchor through the game; every time the open-world sprawl risked tiring me out, another duel pulled me back in.<\/p>\n Image: Sony<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n That\u2019s the tone of Sucker Punch\u2019s sequel: familiar in structure, yet heavier in mood. Where Ghost of Tsushima was about Jin Sakai navigating the honour of the samurai code, Ghost of Yotei centres on Atsu, who\u2019s a warrior without such traditions to weigh her down. She has one purpose and only one: to hunt down the Yotei Six, the masked killers who murdered her family. Six names, one by one, across the wide emptiness of Ezo (the old name for Hokkaido). It\u2019s a simple premise, but simplicity doesn\u2019t make it lighter. Each step across the lonely landscape feels soaked in inevitability.<\/p>\n Ezo itself sets the stage differently from Tsushima too. It\u2019s quieter and lonelier. Villages are sparse, and large stretches of the map are nothing but wind over grass or the sound of rivers in the distance. Travelling here means paying attention to cues in the land itself: gusts of wind bending trees, a golden bird fluttering away, or the faint cry of a fox. The game still has a map, redesigned into a tidy card-like layout, but most of the time you don\u2019t need it. Ghost of Yotei trusts you to trust the world.<\/p>\n The early sections thrive on this sense of stumbling into things. I once intercepted a bandit ambush on a back road, sparing a panicked survivor. Instead of rewarding me with loot or coin, he coughed up information about Kitsune, one of the Six. That moment felt organic, like the world could bend in unexpected ways if you were paying attention. Sadly, by the second act, that looseness gives way to something more routine. Soon enough I was back to bouncing between quests and errands in a way that felt all too familiar. Still, those early hours, which were unpredictable and raw, were where Ghost of Yotei convinced me it was worth the journey.<\/p>\n Image: Sony<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n But here\u2019s the contradiction: Ghost of Yotei ranks as one of the prettiest games I\u2019ve played this year, but sometimes it\u2019s just too pretty. Fields washed in scarlet flowers, ridges that look like oil paintings at dusk \u2013 it\u2019s almost theatrical. Some days, I want to have Atsu on her horse, pan the camera, and call it a digital ukiyo-e. Other day, I rolled my eyes a little because the visuals feel like a curated postcard.<\/p>\n And yet, I\u2019d be lying if I said I didn\u2019t give in to the game\u2019s beauty more often than not. Riding along the foothills of Mount Yotei at dawn, I stopped to watch mist rolling across the plains, only to be interrupted by wolves circling in the distance. Sometimes the game captures that tension perfectly: Ezo is beautiful, but it\u2019s not safe, and Atsu\u2019s journey is always one step away from violence.<\/p>\n The optional filters underline that tension. Kurosawa mode returns, with its black-and-white grain, but there\u2019s also a new Shinichiro Watanabe mode that swaps in lo-fi beats \u2013 and seems at odds with Ghost of Yotei\u2019s tone. Yet it works and even grows on me after a while. Then there are also times when I\u2019d mute the score entirely, just to hear the natural soundscape of Ezo: wind, wolves, distant waterfalls. Ghost of Yotei is at its strongest when it drops the gimmicks and trusts the silence.<\/p>\n Image: Sony<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Combat, though, is where the game earns its steel. Instead of Jin\u2019s stance system, Atsu juggles weapons. The kusarigama slices through shields, the odachi smashes heavy armour, the katana is the do-it-all. Then you layer in kunai, bombs, pistols \u2013 half the time I felt like a walking armoury. The downside though, is that the DualSense buttons feel cramped when you\u2019re trying to juggle it all, and more than once the camera spun at the wrong time, making me whiff a crucial strike. I can\u2019t help thinking a PC port with re-bindable keys would fix a lot of that.<\/p>\n Still, duels are where the combat system shines. They\u2019re slower, more tense, and when you finally break someone\u2019s guard, the payoff hits harder than any flashy combo. My fight with Kitsune stands out. He circled, feinted, forced me into bad blocks. By the end, when I finally got him, I had that shaky-hand relief you only get from games that don\u2019t let you brute force your way through.<\/p>\n Outside the main story, sidequests are a mixed bag. Some feed into Atsu\u2019s arc nicely, showing how villagers perceive her \u2013 sometimes as a saviour, and sometimes as a dangerous omen. Others, though, feel disconnected, like generic errands slotted in for padding. At one point I was fetching supplies for a settlement while supposedly racing against time to hunt a member of the Six, and the tonal clash was hard to ignore. It\u2019s a problem plenty of open-world games face, but here it hits harder because Atsu\u2019s journey feels so single-minded from the get-go.<\/p>\n Story-wise, Atsu\u2019s path is strongest when it refuses to sand down her edges. Early on she\u2019s blunt: revenge is her endgame, nothing more. Like a bee that dies after stinging. That\u2019s interesting. But the game doesn\u2019t quite hold the line. Too many side errands make her slip into the typical \u201chelpful wandering hero\u201d. The main missions with the Yotei Six pull her back into focus, but the tonal wobble is there.<\/p>\n Image: Sony<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Finishing Ghost of Yotei didn\u2019t leave me with the usual sense of closure that games often chase. The final member of the Yotei Six fell, the cutscenes played, and Atsu\u2019s path of vengeance reached its inevitable end. But instead of a rush of triumph, I felt\u2026unsettled. I caught myself sitting on the results screen, controller in hand, staring out at Ezo\u2019s landscape one last time. It wasn\u2019t the ending that stayed with me \u2013 it was the spaces in between.<\/p>\n I remember the way the plains looked at dusk as I rode towards that last battle, the grass flattened by a sharp wind. I remember wolves howling somewhere in the hills, and how the sound seemed both threatening and mournful. I even remember pausing at a stream, watching the water blur the reflection of Mount Yotei before forcing myself onwards. It\u2019s odd, but those little pauses spoke louder than the game\u2019s closing speech ever did.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the paradox of Ghost of Yotei. On paper, it follows the usual loop: ride here, duel there, tick a few boxes, repeat. I\u2019d be lying if I said I didn\u2019t feel the drag of sidequests that had me fetching supplies or clearing bandits in places that barely mattered. But somehow, despite the grind, I found myself booting the game up again the next day. Not because I had unfinished missions \u2013 I\u2019d wrapped most of those up \u2013 but because I wanted another ride across Ezo. I wanted to see if the weather had changed, if I could stumble onto one more duel in the rain, one more fox leading me off the beaten track.<\/p>\n Image: Sony<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Atsu herself is part of why it lingers too. She isn\u2019t polished into a larger-than-life hero, and the game doesn\u2019t soften her much. She\u2019s blunt, brutal, sometimes distant. At the end, I wasn\u2019t sure if she had found peace, but I also wasn\u2019t sure if she ever could. And maybe that\u2019s the point: Ghost of Yotei doesn\u2019t answer what happens after vengeance. It leaves the question hanging, the same way the campfire smoke drifted into the night earlier in her journey.<\/p>\n What I know is this: when the credits were done, I didn\u2019t put the controller down for long. I went back into the world with no objective, just to wander. I fought no one. I didn\u2019t chase any foxes. I just let Atsu stand by a riverbank as the clouds shifted overhead. And in that moment, I realised the game had done something rare \u2013 it made me want to linger in its silences, even after the blade had been sheathed.<\/p>\n Ghost of Yotei will be available on 2 October for PlayStation 5.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\nViolence, beauty, and tension<\/h2>\n
After the blade, what remains<\/h2>\n