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S2 Ep183: Ghost of Tsushima
83 Plays4 years ago
MINOR SPOILERS: Ghost of Tsushima
Join Dave and Jake as they travel back to the 13th century Japan and repel the Mongol invaders by any means necessary in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Join Dave and Jake as they travel back to the 13th century Japan and repel the Mongol invaders by any means necessary in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Shopping Adventures
00:00:09
Speaker
you
00:00:34
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Substone. My name is Jake and I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave?
00:00:42
Speaker
It's going pretty good. Pretty good. I got some medication and a CVS further away from me. And then I stopped at Giant to get some last minute groceries so I could eat at dinner. That's fair. How about you? How was your CVS run? I haven't been to CVS for a while. You traitor. Closest was probably Rite Aid. But that's where we pick up our I was going to say subscriptions. That's not really true. Prescriptions.
00:01:12
Speaker
I think is more of the correct way to say that. I mean, would you opt in through certain medications if it had like subscription boxes, like, Hey, do you want to do like a tier three type thing? Yeah, that sounds good. I mean, I literally do. Cause my, um, heartburn medicine I get from Amazon with subscribe and save. So it literally is a subscription instead of a prescription. I don't have a prescription for it. Probably should, but it saved me money over the years, but.
00:01:39
Speaker
It's kind of weird to think about, like, this is an over counter medication that nobody said I should take, but I'm going to regularly. Well, I did. I did go to a doctor because it's specifically like, hey, this is a two week thing and you shouldn't go more than two weeks.
Health Humors
00:01:55
Speaker
I was like, this is the only thing that keeps me from, like, feeling absolutely miserable at night with, like,
00:02:02
Speaker
acid in my throat and all this nonsense. I'm going to continue to take it, but I will go to the doctor. And the doctor's like, you good with that? Like 20 milligrams? I was like, yeah, it seems to work. Okay. That was it. That was the doctor consultation. He's like, is this working for you? I have like background in this, but, uh, Hey, if you're doing okay, sure. Yeah. I mean, that was pretty much it. He was very nonchalant.
00:02:29
Speaker
I mean, that's good, I guess. You don't want too nonchalant, obviously. Right. Do they actually care about my well-being? That's the thing. I feel like a lot of the medication or the medical field in general is, hey, here's medications that should do these things typically, unless your body's weird. I hope your body's not weird, is it? You're like, well, they're like, no, you're fucked. Take this anyway, but also figure out your own shit on your own time.
Dental Dilemmas
00:02:56
Speaker
I definitely had that like the last time I went to the dentist because I was like I have some like some tooth pain and they're like okay well there's like there's a little suspicious area down here and it's like potentially some like could be an infection or something like that from after you had a root canal which is bad because that's down there like under the tooth and stuff. I don't want to go into details I'm not going to.
00:03:17
Speaker
We're not going to talk about teeth things on the podcast, but the short of it was like they're like, we could do a procedure and potentially get it, but we it might come back. So we're just going to advise you to just use numbing toothpaste and just just sit on that. And I was like, oh, my gosh, you're right. I am 30. I've hit the maintenance part of my life. This is where we just write problems out. We don't fix them anymore.
00:03:46
Speaker
You start thinking of other possible practical uses for duct tape like keeping your Who needs dentures or a retainer when you have duct tape? Yeah, exactly structures right way it works Yeah, they're like, yeah, you don't have that many years left. Just Write it out.
Aging and Health Jokes
00:04:03
Speaker
You're at the halfway point You start making concessions like how many teeth or specific bones do I need to have be fully functional? I don't know. Um, um
00:04:11
Speaker
As long as you can get from point A to point B, as long as you can poop kind of normal. That's good life. Those are really like my two goals. I'm not, I don't have a list. Actually just prioritize the second one. Cause the first one, I don't really go anywhere do anything. So like point A to point A is actually usually fine.
00:04:29
Speaker
Jake, you've been even pooping in your shirt. No, but I am recording from the comfort of my bathroom. That's when you put in like the super obvious over the top flush sound effect. Don't even balance it to be like, oh, this is a reasonable level. It's just like.
00:04:50
Speaker
Niagara Falls. Yeah, I think I wouldn't recommend it for people who are interested in going into any sort of audio recording. The acoustics in a bathroom are basically the worst you can have, like uncovered walls, flat surfaces. It's pretty much the worst you could do.
00:05:10
Speaker
I mean, you could put up foam. True. So then you'd be that guy who has like a soundproof bathroom. Right. Which isn't a good look. It's a yellow flag at least. You invite people over and they're like, do I bite on that? Why are there eggshell cartons all over your bathroom walls?
Gaming Nostalgia
00:05:31
Speaker
Art deco? I don't buy it. Yeah.
00:05:38
Speaker
I feel like Gex for like N64 must have had an art gecko pun at some point, but I don't know for sure.
Rare and Gaming Collaborations
00:05:48
Speaker
If not, let's remake that game. They got the good puns in there. Yeah. I mean, Rare's not using it.
00:05:58
Speaker
What has rare been doing? I was like selling her characters to Miyamoto. I'm very concerned that you might actually ask. And so I started Google when you started talking. I picked up on that. Working with Microsoft, THQ. They've been working on a battle towards revival since 2018. I don't think that's real.
00:06:26
Speaker
I mean, how hard is it to remake Battletoads not? I mean, they've done it for other side scroll punchers. What do you call that? Yeah. So I can see them doing it for Battletoads too, because it was another big one.
00:06:42
Speaker
You know, it's sad here though, in this article that I'm reading, Wikipedia is what it's called, underground site. Um, the second to last thing that they've like done in quotes is like, they collaborated to add Banjo Kazooie to smash. And I'm like, Oh, this company's dead. Aren't they? That's weird that the thing I joked about the beginning was the last recorded thing. Yeah. Ooh, a little bit rough, but you know, we can't all play golden eye forever. Conker's bad for today.
00:07:11
Speaker
while all of those other, the golden age of rare, basically. Kazooie, obviously.
00:07:19
Speaker
Banjo. Wait, did you say Kazooie or Kazooie? Uh, that would be, that would be funny. Crossover, Kazooie. Actually his own thing. He just seemed like flex with Kazooie's now super ripped and has scars all over his body. It's actually a sign of like how poor, how poorly rare is doing right now. But like Kazuya from Tekken, when they were added to Smash, Rare actually submitted the character. They're like, Hey, yeah, uh, we've got a fighting character. You can use it.
00:07:49
Speaker
It's Kazuya from Tekken. Nintendo's like, you have the rights to... Yeah, yeah, totally. We're gonna need the money up front.
00:07:59
Speaker
It was somebody's like timid attempt to submit Kazooie and then like scratched out the last two letters like Kazooie and then just went to somebody else. I never thought about that, but that's got to be a fan theory somewhere. Real quick though, did you see that I think Cartoon Network supposed to be doing some jazz?
Cartoon Network's Gaming Ventures
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah, I did. Like I literally just saw or heard something about that today and it
00:08:27
Speaker
I mean, it's like the Nickelodeon thing. It looks gimmicky It looks worse
00:08:34
Speaker
Hmm. That's hard for me to say at this point, but because like, so this was the matchup. Uh, Dan posted this to the discord and the matchup in the picture is Batman and Garnet from, I think, like it's not regular show. It's the, um, Steven, Steven universe. Yeah. Um, and versus Aria from game of thrones and Tom and Jerry.
00:08:59
Speaker
Now, I'm not always the best at being able to tell when a game is going to be bad, but when Aria from Game of Thrones and Tom and Jerry are some of the characters, I don't have faith.
00:09:20
Speaker
I'd be willing to suspend my disbelief if it looked really good. But it don't. It looks like a gimmicky cash grab off of a model that has worked for Nintendo.
Multiversus Critique
00:09:31
Speaker
Yeah. Now, if they had an alternate skin for Bugs Bunny, if it's just Big Chungus.
00:09:37
Speaker
My position would be completely reversed. I mean, if you leaned into that, the memory and then Tom foolery, if you basically said like, hey, salty, but we'll give you a percentage if we can. Yeah, like that could go somewhere.
00:09:55
Speaker
I also don't really know, like it's a 2v2 fighter is like what the format they at least showed. And then in the screenshot, there's like levels underneath the characters. Like, oh yeah, these are all level one characters. I don't like that at all. Even if it's really a cosmetic thing, I don't think I like that at all. You start this game and you're gonna go up against the level 500 Batman. Nobody wants that.
00:10:19
Speaker
I don't want to know what your level is. Let me just get my ass beat. Like God intended. Just beat my ass. Yeah. No, I mean like this, this roster is so weird. Some of these characters, I don't know. There's actually, I think Steven from Steven universe. There's also Shaggy from Scooby-Doo wonder woman. Finn and Jake is separate characters. Like Harley Quinn. Yeah. I don't.
00:10:49
Speaker
I don't know, it's very, very odd. They're just going with like popular names from recent things. It's like Wonder Woman has had two movies in the last five, 10 years. Batman, obviously you have to have his Batman. Another notable character to be Harley Quinn, who had a movie or two. Yeah. Joker went off to do, I think, what was it, Mortal Kombat? Smash, yeah.
00:11:19
Speaker
I was actually watching somebody, eventually we'll have to talk about the game we have scheduled time on, but I was watching a modded switch, uh, match and smash and they took Kazuya and they put him like in a DC comics Joker outfit. It's like Kazuya as the Joker. And it was just really funny cause you can have like Joker be Joker and it's Kazuya versus Joker. But.
00:11:47
Speaker
A good name on the game though. Multiverses is kind of a mouthful, but it's witty. I appreciate that. I do like the wit on it, but if it is literally always 2v2, fuck off. Dave refuses to play games with me ever since the incident.
00:12:07
Speaker
The incident where I stopped playing games with time. This is a picture of Shaggy going Super Saiyan.
Humorous Gaming References
00:12:16
Speaker
Anyways, Ghost of Tsushima is a PlayStation game. We don't cover that often. I'd say infrequently at best. Well, I mean, we typically avoid JRPGs, so that's fair.
00:12:28
Speaker
I don't know what else PlayStation really has. I wasn't sure if you were saying that is like that is what I guess what PlayStation had. But I was like, this game does have RPG elements and it is in Japan. Nice. That's pretty good. Now that I've explained it, the reader, the listings can also get it or readers if you subscribe
Ghost of Tsushima Initial Impressions
00:12:48
Speaker
to our transcripts.
00:12:50
Speaker
um but anywho um so i played this a while back i think i got through like part of act two and then like i was playing through a couple of playstation games and then i think i moved on to something else i'm like hey jake i think you'd like this game you should check it out how long ago was this like half a year not even an exaggeration i was just like oh this does look really nice i've heard good things about it and then like
00:13:19
Speaker
cut to that classic shot of like the sun rising and setting repeatedly, like while the the box with the game in it is there on the kitchen table. You see it get like light sun damage from the box over time. It's yellowed. The box is still in pretty good condition, I think. I don't I don't think it's had too much sun damage, but the game is good.
00:13:45
Speaker
Thank you, everybody. So this is another open world type game for anybody who's not aware. I feel like the closest comparison is going to be something like Horizon Zero Dawn. Another open world, very in depth and beautiful. But like, in my opinion, Ghosts of Tsushima takes it to a whole another level. They really lean into very stylized, idealistic, Edo-era Japan.
00:14:14
Speaker
It's so good. Like, I'm glad they have it on like a PlayStation versus like me trying to run on my PC a year ago, because that would be bad. We missing out on a lot. Yeah, it's I think a lot of people's if you've heard anything about the game or if you've seen anything about the game, it's probably one of those early trailers where it's like the sparring ring with like the flower petals or like riding the horse through like fields of pampas grass.
00:14:43
Speaker
And it's just like waves, like not waves, waves of air or wind, you know, like rolling over the hills, like moving all of the grass. Like the game absolutely loves wind physics. I think like, oh, yeah, most most of the clothes have like some some jiggle, not jiggle physics, bones, bones. Yeah. Yeah, that's animated capes and things like that. And yeah,
Combat Mechanics in Ghost of Tsushima
00:15:10
Speaker
it's it's it's an absolute like
00:15:13
Speaker
It looks ridiculously good. They know how good it looks. There's a minigame where you compose high cues that are literally looking at nature in the game. Look how pretty your game is. Because the game is that pretty. They got cool about how pretty your game is.
00:15:29
Speaker
It would be funny because each time you do that minigame, it's like compose a haiku about and then a concept. It could be death or rebirth or acceptance. But what if it's just beauty? Beauty, beauty, beauty. The tranquility of the tranquility is very tranquil. Pass into the iris.
00:15:54
Speaker
There's your reference. No, nothing. Okay, that's fair. But yeah, the game looks incredible. And I think like, I don't know if we ever talked about like the mechanical difference between a PC and a console, but
00:16:09
Speaker
One of the big things is consoles have very little else as far as operating system is concerned Running at a given time more now than probably ever before but most of it's just focused on the game and because of that you can just eke out more physics from the hardware With some concessions, you know usually framerate and other things
00:16:29
Speaker
Not getting into that looks amazing on PlayStation and if you do have a Pro PlayStation 4 Pro, which I think is the last PlayStation to be released so far Then it gives you the option to optimize it for graphics or frame rate But I did graphics in it didn't really dip that much. So it was good That's fair. I
00:16:55
Speaker
Again, I think we talked about before, but it's at a point where the graphical fidelity is already so high, where you have to really go back and look at an older game to be like, this looks bad. Yeah. Because this just looks clean. And it's not hyper detailed at any given point. You could be like, oh, that's a video game character. That makes sense. But no point throughout the gameplay does do things look off.
00:17:20
Speaker
Yeah, it all fits the style it's all well textured and modeled It's really telling that the most egregious example I can think of from like so I played through I did beat the game didn't 100% but I got a high percent the most egregious example I can think of is there's these like traditional samurai duel and
00:17:41
Speaker
setups where it's like it's like western samurai facing off like both people slowly draw their weapons or like the opponent will slowly draw their weapon and then he sits there with like his thumb beneath the the blade guard and like it goes to like a tone in the track like uh and then there's
00:18:04
Speaker
like one final ping as he like uses his thumb to push the blade out of the sheath and then like it starts the fight and the graphical bug I shot with certain outfits certain sets of armor your thumb would clip and the blade guard and I was like oh my gosh guys let's hold the duel hold the duel something's up it's got no clip on here
00:18:28
Speaker
The duels I think really highlighted a lot of obviously how beautiful it looks.
00:18:36
Speaker
But I think for some of them, not all of them, it is actually side by side. You may have touched on the Kurosawa mode, but it's always a third person game, but sometimes they will lock into a certain camera angle for style points and it's just great. But on top of that,
00:18:58
Speaker
The duels really let you shine your mechanical ability. You've learned for like, oh, I'm going to parry. I'm going to dodge. I'm going to attack with one of these four combat styles for how I hold my sword versus like if you go to a given camp, you can do whatever. You can do stealth grenades, other bullshit. But they're just against like basic mob people. You can backstab when they're dead. Whereas the duel is like, here's your your test that you have to pass.
Comparative Combat Analysis
00:19:27
Speaker
It's have you been paying attention? How much of your skills slipped as you used gadgets essentially for the rest of the experience? And yeah, the some of the duels are just they're definitely by far the place that I died more than any other place in the game like on hard is they can really mess with you.
00:19:49
Speaker
Yeah. Also, there's a whole key mechanic in the game where if you do certain actions, you can regain key. Yeah, the resolve. Yeah, the resolve. But then you can use that to heal. You can use it for like a special move. But it's a fun resource to play around with, but you get rewarded with it by doing certain actions correctly like parries. Yeah.
00:20:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of the combat, the like actual sword play combat, I would kind of funnel into like budget Sekiro. Like Sekiro is much, I don't mean that necessarily is a bad thing, but it uses some of the similar concepts like
00:20:32
Speaker
there is a guard mechanic where people will use shields or they'll just block your attacks and you can break their guard with heavy attacks. Very similar to posture or stature in Sekiro, right? And usually you can kill them very quickly if you manage to break their guard. Similar to Sekiro, right? But it's more kind of mixed into the Batman
00:21:01
Speaker
sort of style or Assassin's Creed, you could potentially be swarmed, have multiple people attacking you, and Sekiro doesn't really play that much, that space. Not unless you really fuck up. Yeah. That you just run in, you're like, hey, and then you're like, div out. Yeah. But the sort of play feels good. It's one of, I think it is actually the most original concept that the game has besides kind of like the story.
00:21:32
Speaker
Did you go with his particular stance? I unlocked all of them. So I played the game. I got a lot of the optional objectives and the missions and things like that. I did everything except most. So I got almost everything up until Act 3, which is the final act. And then I didn't do absolutely everything. So I had the full skill tree maxed out.
00:21:53
Speaker
Um, eventually you start getting, you stop getting rankups. Um, and the game's just like, you have all of the skill points. There's no reason to rank up any further. Um, but more so like, did you find yourself using a particular style? Like I very much went with the, the overhand strike because you could do it and you'd like spin your body as you did it. And you could keep chaining that. So for one guy, he's just like being assaulted by like these vertical strikes. Yeah.
00:22:23
Speaker
I know that so each of the styles is like particularly good against a certain type of enemy. And at least on hard, like the using the wrong style to try to like break somebody's card is.
00:22:35
Speaker
really tough and it basically is the difference a lot of times between like a true combo and the enemy being able to counter attack you in the middle of your attacks so you're really incentivized to use like uh yeah rushing water stance against shields and like stone breaker stance against people that just have swords and etc etc um
00:22:59
Speaker
But I am really partial to the starter stance. It is a really good default and it has this like piercing combo. If you put points into it where it's like you do one quick guard break stab and then like just try to impale the guy. And there's a special animation for it where you just like stab them through the chest and they die. So it's particularly good, I think.
00:23:24
Speaker
I also like you can switch between the stances at a moment to notice. So you could do a single strike of the vertical. I forget which one that's called the stone breaker. And then you can switch into the you say the rushing water. Yeah, it's it's something with water. I know because all of the preview videos are all like they recorded all the preview videos like on a beach front with like rocks where like the waves are like crushing up against it. It looks very pretty. You can tell explicitly what they did.
00:23:56
Speaker
you could do a single strike and then switch in between because like Jake said you could be swarmed by a mob of enemies maybe you invaded a camp and there's a mix of oh there's a giant guy the shield there's an archer a couple of swordsmen maybe somebody with a spear
Stealth and Strategy
00:24:11
Speaker
So it's really convenient to be able to switch between those, to just get out of Dodge, or if you're me, run and then find the one guy who chased after you and use the same stance over again. Uh-huh. It works too. So the stances where I looked them up just to make sure. So stone, water, wind, and moon, where wind was spearmen and moon was brutes. And I will say,
00:24:37
Speaker
Moon is basically required against Brutes because all of their attacks are like, I'm going to swing a giant club with a massive AoE and I'll never stop doing that. And it's unblockable. Yep. And so that stance, the Moon stance is like kicking them in the face repeatedly to like disorient them. And if you use any other stance again, though, it's not true and they'll just attack you. So.
00:25:04
Speaker
Well, then you could just use like a bow at range. True. You could take one of the bigger bows and like the giant arrow and just literally shoot explosive projectiles at somebody.
00:25:16
Speaker
And then you run out of ammo and you have to figure out a new solution. There's a lot of gadgets you can get. I call them gadgets because I guess I'm still thinking about like Batman and stuff, but like a lot of tools and weapons you can use. There's like ones more suited to stealth, like the bell to attract like an enemy's attention or firecrackers to attract multiple enemies attention.
00:25:38
Speaker
I like how you're like, stealth and things that make noise. Yeah, yeah. Well, it is used for stealth because you're like, yeah, it's to lure them out. Yeah, exactly. Firecrackers in general are like. I didn't use the bell that much until I got like a charm, which I guess we get to at some point. There's a special charm in the game that's just like the bell releases fatal flame or fatal fumes when it's picked up.
00:26:03
Speaker
And so now if you throw the bell, it always attracts one person. Multiple people will never check it out. That guy dies. Because he'll pick up the bell and then die. And it makes the ability much better. But usually the firecrackers are super good because you get a full group of enemies and you're like, how far game, how many upgrades did I get for the assassinate ability and kill three people at once? Got it. Then just jump in.
00:26:31
Speaker
Literally just jump in. Yeah. I forget, is that supposed to be like a trigger that you go up and do like as a single backstab that applies to multiple or is like an overhead strike? You can do it from different directions. You can sneak up on somebody and assassinate, but it also does death from above. So if you just jump at them and you are roughly above them, you'll get the prompt to instant kill them as well.
00:26:53
Speaker
Okay. Budget Sekiro. Here we are again. Exactly. Yeah. Very derivative. I mean, did you feel any similarities where you're like, Oh, this is kind of like Sekiro? Cause like for me, as I was going through like facing against spear people with the wind stance, I very much wanted the, just trying to run in and like step on their spear. Yeah. And then feel like I've outwitted their range by my masterful gameplay.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah, there's nothing quite like that. I mean, maybe sort of because it does have like, so you mentioned parries and there's a button to just parry, but then there's a perfect parry. So in that way, it's actually the same mechanic as Sekiro. I think in Sekiro, if you perfect parry, you take much less stature or posture damage or potentially could like counter and deal some damage back. But can't remember exactly how that worked.
00:27:49
Speaker
But that's the way it works in this game. If you perfect parry time freezes or slows down a lot and you can just counter for oftentimes a one hit kill against normal, normal job or enemies pulling the nine to fives.
Open World Design Insights
00:28:02
Speaker
I mean, that's just how it works in spash. Smash for me. Yeah. I get the parry. I'm like, Oh, did you see that? And then I get hit by something else. Perfect parry, like a jab sequence. But I mean, it's.
00:28:20
Speaker
I think there is a lot of similarity, but I don't think it was specifically meant to be stolen from Sekiro. It's just taken from fighting games. Like Batman has the same stuff.
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah. I, I remember at least when I initially watched the trailer, the reason I wanted to hold off on Tsushima for so long is because I had like just played Sekiro for possibly a second time. They're like, Hey, samurai game was like, Hmm, can't fool me with that shit. Yeah. So I was immediately in the headspace of doing those direct comparisons, even though it was of course a different type of game. Um, but I finally did a good chance to appreciate it for what it is of, uh, an open world adventure.
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's a very. Spoilers, I guess, for final summary, it's a very strong open world game. It's between like this and Breath of the Wild for like my favorites of all time, particularly because I did go back and play the Witcher and it's good, but it's aged. Yeah, and definitely aging person.
00:29:17
Speaker
And I just like Tsushima's got that that kick. It has fast travel. You don't have to waste time, but it also uses all of these systems from all these open world games. It takes a lot from Far Cry. It takes a lot from Assassin's Creed and it takes the fun stuff for the most part, and that's not terrible, right?
00:29:41
Speaker
I mean, there's there's a couple of missions where you have to follow somebody around while they talk for a little bit. Yeah, thankfully, not that many. It's usually like an introductory part of the mission, like, hey, let's ride our horses here. And you're talking in the meantime. But then you're at the location.
00:29:58
Speaker
It's significantly less than like Red Dead, which is like every mission, you're going somewhere and you're talking on the horse. Going somewhere and you're talking, you're going somewhere and talking. We recorded 10,000 hours of dialogue for this character and you're gonna hear all of it. I will say, funny little aside, for the slow walking portions where the game's like, hey, you're having a very serious conversation with somebody close to you.
00:30:22
Speaker
like you're not going to run through this. If you jump, you jump faster than you slow walk because it unbinds your movement limitation while you're in the air. You can kind of leapfrog ahead to the objective. If you get far enough away from those NPCs that are slow walking, the game's like, oh, OK. And they'll run to catch up to you. So that was a fun time.
00:30:46
Speaker
I love the AI rubber band. They're like, what are we? Oh, we're behind. Uh-huh. It is nice, though, because games that don't have that type of mechanic where the AI companions stay behind you or fall behind. It's like, hey, where'd you go? And you have to go back literally to keep. Witcher 3 had this. Yeah. Because I would definitely like, oh, this is where we're going. I'll just get there and we'll go at the same pace. And the NPC is like, my leg's broken.
00:31:13
Speaker
Yeah, they don't do that in Tsushima. They pretty much always speed up to your pace, which is really nice. It's a minor thing, but it is really a quality of life because if you're trying to like experience a part of the game, having the game limits you in any way, shape or form, which kind of kind of takes it out of it a little bit.
00:31:33
Speaker
Yeah. And they do, they do a lot of work to, to pace like your progression. So it feels like you're always unlocking things. There's always a reason to do something or unlock something. Um, I don't have that many gripes with the game.
Cosmetics and Exploration
00:31:49
Speaker
One of them would be, I don't care nearly as much about the sheer number of cosmetics. There's a bunch of like, okay, ones or good ones. And then a couple that are like, that looks really sick.
00:31:59
Speaker
And then you get that and you're like, I'm kind of good. And one of the issues is one of those types of cosmetics is like, um, uh, for your sword and taunt, you know, like your Katana and your Tonto sword, you're like stealth shorter blade. And, um, the one you start with is like pure white with like dark blue. It's like the, uh, Sakai, uh, clan colors or whatever. And.
00:32:30
Speaker
It's so good like the only one that really compared with it for me was like Emperor's tears which was a pure white looking cosmetic one and I was like you kind of just You kind of gave me the best one like from the get-go. I don't care about other cosmetics for the swords now I played around with them just to try to justify spending time picking up those cosmetics, but I mean
00:32:56
Speaker
It doesn't change the sword though. No, it's just if you want to vibe out with your character in a specific way. Yeah.
00:33:04
Speaker
And some of them are cool. Like I did like, you can have like different armor sets and get dyes for them to make them look different. And there's actually special set dye vendors. There's one special white dye vendor and there's one special black dye vendor, like across all of the acts. There's just like one of them's in act one and one of them's in act two, I think. And it's just like, oh, you wanted like the dark,
00:33:30
Speaker
like shinobi type armor. See, I got I got you. I got you for any type of armor that you like. I'm trying to imagine this one guy is like an interior designer is like, what color are you on these walls? Oh, we think like a nice taupe. He's like, hear me out black. Yeah, it's the one thing I have.
00:33:49
Speaker
That's basically it, though. Did you find yourself going out for a lot of things for the sake of cosmetics or just to see what it was? There's not that many cosmetics. It's literally that what you get from the honor shrines. And then you can pick up flowers, which are one of the basic ingredients that you can use to buy cosmetic cosmetics with like the dyes for cosmetics is how it's justified.
00:34:16
Speaker
And it was fine, it was the part I emphasized the least. I care much more about actual progression and actual upgrades, hold more ammo and gadgets, and make sword better. Like the Katana and Tonto, they have separate upgrade paths, where as you upgrade the Tonto, your assassinations all become faster. And that one was nice, and I prioritized that above everything else in the game.
00:34:45
Speaker
What a sneaky lying shinobi. Well, to repeat my question, though, did you find yourself more so going for those optional things on the map for the sake of. Finding it specifically like, oh, I need this reward or for the exploration? I don't usually play games strictly for the exploration. There has to be a very specific game for that. Most of the time I was doing it for the reward. Like you knew something was over there. You're like, I got to get what it is.
00:35:15
Speaker
Yeah. And the game doesn't, it wastes your time like all open world games do, but it kind of lets you optimize a bit. Like we haven't talked about the wind mechanic where it's like, Hey, the objective's that way.
00:35:32
Speaker
but you can set the wind to target fox dens, which is how you get the fox charms and then you upgrade them, or the bathing areas, the hot springs. Finally, a way to see my character's naked ass briefly in two seconds.
00:35:54
Speaker
As far like all open worlds will have nodes or points of interest, whether it's like a camp or something you can find. Or I think from Ezio Auditori's arc in Assassin's Creed, it was like these high points where you could get like, oh, here's math knowledge. Assassin's Creed's really egregious with the amount of optional collectibles. It's like catch the pigeons and do all this other stuff.
00:36:23
Speaker
I don't... I don't care. Well, Sekiro is different because it has a yellow bird you follow to find stuff or a fox you follow to find something. See, and I almost did the same. I'm going to count this as the first mistake. I almost did the same thing. You called it Sekiro and I was this close to calling it Sekiro earlier. Oh, no, I've done the faux pas.
00:36:45
Speaker
But the foxes have great faux pas too. You can actually, after you find one of the fox shrines, there's a pet the fox button prompt and you'll literally ruffle it for a bit or pet its belly or scratch its belly or whatever. I'm like, this is a wild fox and you shouldn't do this, but also that's adorable. But also when you pray at the shrine, it kneels down with you, which is also really cute. How did you feel about the
00:37:12
Speaker
I guess the shrines or the temples, which are usually some type of platforming. Oh, so this is they're they're OK, but they're a waste of time. Like this is I talked about how the game doesn't waste your time that much. The shrines are one of them because the game cosplays is Prince of Persia for a while, where it's like, hey, climb around the cliff face and grapple up to this thing and do this and do this and like
00:37:40
Speaker
You do it like three times and you basically get it. Like it always just takes roughly the same amount of time to complete. And you're largely just moving the control stick slightly differently. So you'll climb up the cliff face. There's never any enemies. It's always that. But the problem is the game also hides good rewards behind it. Like the charms.
00:38:06
Speaker
I was going to say it was like a nice change of pace type thing that they kind of threw in there. So it wasn't the same shit all the time. That's fair. But OK. My opinion is not always right. See, again, going back to Dark Souls 2. But it usually is like when I talk about Dark Souls 2.
00:38:27
Speaker
Dark Souls 2 too, that upcoming game. So going back to my point with the exploration question, I really did enjoy those parts of the game where it's like, hey, here's a shrine. I'm like, oh, what am I going to find? And it was always all the shrines are very distinct. I don't think those were ever the same.
00:38:46
Speaker
So you have a nice little unique, granted it is very much a hold the left analog stick a certain way if you're climbing, or you had to do some very simple jumping type stuff. It wasn't ever asking a whole lot of you. But as far as a change of pace, a beautiful scenery, and then getting a nice reward, I'm like, oh, cool.
00:39:04
Speaker
Yeah. The other big part that did that for me, there's a quest line for, I think, getting some archery armor. It's like, oh, you have to go look for purple flowers. And then you get like a picture. You're like, where the fuck is this? And then you have to go find it. But it feels really cool when you actually do discover it in person. You're like, that's the thing from earlier. And they don't give you like a, hey, it's here, dumbass. They might give you like a big circle large. It's like a, hey, somewhere on this continent.
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah, they don't want you to waste your time a ton, but they give you a large, explorable area. And if you're paying attention to the hints, then you'll pick it up a lot faster. I did like those. Kind of as a throwback to before games always had a waypoint marker, telling you exactly where to go. Well, yeah, but it was also more linear, too. It's like, hey, this is the way forward. Don't go backwards.
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah. I'm comparing this like I've been playing a little bit of Skyrim recently and they're very much like waypoint marker, waypoint marker. There's no waypoint marker. They don't go there. Why are you even considering this? You poor fool. But yeah, no, I like those. That part I liked, that was kind of breaking it up for me and I was like trying to be observant and be like, where are these?
00:40:21
Speaker
Where are these flowers? There's two quests like that in the game where it's like Purple flowers and blue flowers. I think the two you have to find something like that
00:40:30
Speaker
All of the other flowers are white throughout the entire game. They do use the color tones to denote things. Once you get the bloat art and the poisons, the yellow flowers give you the hallucination poisons, and there's blue flowers that give you the poison.
Realism vs Playability
00:40:51
Speaker
Again, Monster Hunter, obviously ripping off Monster Hunter.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yeah, they use that a lot. Visual identification of things is big, but they also use a temporary highlighting effect on interactables in the world. Oh, yeah, the shimmer. The shimmer, yeah.
00:41:14
Speaker
Yeah, I love when games do that, because it's not me walking around mashing the collect button. So I think actually Last of Us had something like that as well for like, hey, here's a resource you can use. And you're like, oh, cool. Let me grab that shit. In the same way, you can run by and be like, oh, there's a flower I passed by. Let me grab it. Or something else.
00:41:34
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes games need to if it's a toss up between like playability and realism, take playability every time. I don't even care. Like if it's the gameplay is meant to be more drawn out and survivalist and that happens to play into realism. Awesome. That's what you're going for. But never just be like it would be unrealistic to see where things are. So we hit it all. It's like that just leads to people wasting time.
00:42:04
Speaker
I don't know anybody who's touted a game's realism over, hey, this game was really fun and enjoyable. My friend Pedro would be an example of not the most realistic game, but I've heard good things about it. As soon as you said that, I thought about Kingdom Come Deliverance and I was like, crap, that game tries to emphasize realism and stuff.
00:42:27
Speaker
Do you know how to use a bow? No, no one knows how to use a bow when you start I think I I Wanted that progression at a point so I did pick it up and I played it for like three hours then I hated my life Yeah, it's a really rough start to not have like the arrow go where you're pointing but
00:42:47
Speaker
Tsushima doesn't really have that problem. It's, um, it's very, very accessible from a like open world standpoint. Like there are a bunch of different difficulties. Like there's a story of one too, but the way I mentioned it's like accessible is as the combat has like frame one interrupts for anything. Like, you know how in dark souls, sometimes you swing and you're like, I shouldn't have swung. Um, that was a mistake and I will die. Um, that usually resolves very quickly in Tsushima.
Progression and Crafting Systems
00:43:17
Speaker
You can go to attack and be like, uh, no, actually I'm in Perry and Perry is what I meant to say there. And it'll just instantly interrupt with a Perry and the game actually has a faint system for that. And the enemies kind of use it in quotes that they use it in standoffs. But if you go to attack your, and then cancel into something else, you'll reposition your arm. So you can like pretend to make an attack. It just doesn't matter most of the time. That sounds.
00:43:46
Speaker
kind of janky like like you want to like start an animation in slow motion and you need to like hold okay when we were playing it takes two when there's like the the husband and wife kiss it or the about to be ex-wife and ex-husband but they're about to like kiss at the end how we kept like holding it and then like letting go of the button yeah you're like approaching the backup for that maybe no no that's kind of what it felt like a bit um
00:44:15
Speaker
But it's still cool. Again, like the variety of gameplay, it's not just run around hack and slash, it's you can have standoffs. You can shoot people with a bow. You do have the opportunity to duel technically bosses or special characters. It's not like you pick a guy off the shoe, like, hey, it's a one on one, some shit epically because they'll die in a hit typically or two.
00:44:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And you can continue to make your sword better, um, to do more damage and your armor sometimes will have like increases melee damage. Different sets of armor have that. And then some charms are like increased melee damage. So if you really, really like it, um, like just doing a bunch of damage, some of those end game builds are like, you will one shot all.
00:45:03
Speaker
9-5 Jobber Mongols that are invading. We haven't even talked about the story. Mongols that are invading Tsushima. If you hit them, they die and it feels really good. Nothing like a good kill, am I right? Good old one shot. And you kill a lot of people in this game.
00:45:22
Speaker
Yeah, your thing is literally to liberate the whole island. So like with a lot of open worlds, once you take camps, you will kind of like reclaim part of that area. People come back like, oh, we can eat fish again in this specific locale. But that will open up shops.
00:45:39
Speaker
Um, typically not like crazy new vendors, but just having that option at that location. Yeah. And also really cool thing about the shops is if you have enough ingredients or resources for a given thing where you can upgrade, it will highlight and say like, Hey, you have an option here. Yeah. You see on the map. Yeah. Instead of like, what you're going back to town, you're like, can I upgrade my horse? Fuck no. I'll come back. It'll just say like, Hey, you can do horse stuff for your saddle. Uh, you can upgrade the sword or you can go to the Fletcher.
00:46:09
Speaker
It's very, very optimized, almost to not necessarily uncomfortable extent, but you absolutely know this. One of my examples of this is the crafting supplies are usually broken out into
00:46:25
Speaker
literally supplies, which are currency. If you sell other things, you get supplies back. Common ingredients, which you can get pretty frequently around the game, and then like exotic ingredients that you get just from like freeing settlements or completing sub missions and things like that, side missions. And the game like rations these out to you, not like slowly, but they give you
00:46:53
Speaker
the proper amount of these to make you feel like you could always save up to grab something else and you're never like over you know for flooded and resources like literally act three and i was still like okay i think i can finish some of these armor sets out you know um and that's a good feel because you don't cap out early and Adelsa doesn't feel like you have to farm but if you play this game
00:47:20
Speaker
Just look up the shrine when that gives you double supply drops and double resource drops off of like all of your pickups Cuz that one's good and I didn't learn about it till like the end of the game Yeah, always start economy first and then you're good for the rest of whichever game exactly take an early expansion mm-hmm block the ramp
00:47:43
Speaker
It's easy. And then you have more minerals investing to trade with. Um, but, uh, the upgrade systems, it's, it's really good. It's not super in depth. It's just usually make things better. Numbers get better on whatever type of gear you have, but the different types of gear will have different attributes. So one set might be, um, one that I really loved for duels. My favorite one for duels is like increases health because it's samurai armor and all of that usually increases health.
00:48:13
Speaker
and then increases stagger damage. And I'm like, yep, that's the one. And then I put a bunch of charms on it that are increased stagger damage. And usually bosses are like, you missed hit me multiple times to break my guard, and then I will have a vulnerable period where you can hit me a couple times.
00:48:31
Speaker
And I'm just like, what if I hit you like twice? And then I just wail on you for six seconds and that's the fight. And the left hand is my stagger dagger. On the right hand is my big sword. That's primed. That's pretty much it.
00:48:49
Speaker
But I enjoy that. I guess I definitely didn't do as much of the progression system. And that specifically, as I've always said, for like my gaming policy or my approach is like very brute force. Or if you give me a way to cheese, I will cheese. I will smother it and gear or Gouda and.
00:49:12
Speaker
As soon as I had a bomb, I'm like, let's use the bomb. I'm out of bombs. What do we do? The next range option. We're out of that. We're going to stab them. We talked a little bit about the standoff mechanic, which is just like they'll try to flinch.
00:49:29
Speaker
You basically approach them and you're like, hey, fight me honorably. And they're like reluctantly. OK, I guess they encircle you. And depending on how many times you've improved your skill, you can kill a certain number of the enemies if you time your attacks properly as they go to attack you.
00:49:45
Speaker
But there's a set of armor and it increases the count by two once it's upgraded fully. So you can kill five people in a stand-off. We're just like, let's go. And they come at you one at a time, comically. Begin.
00:50:05
Speaker
It's weird to think from a realism standpoint that an armor is like, this makes my weapon stronger, or this will attract two more men to come at me. That's just like hot pain. I don't know why, but I want to hate him.
00:50:24
Speaker
Dang right I'm gonna hit that. Yeah, but I did end up maxing out a couple different armor sets for different uses. I had like my stealth set and my adventuring set and my okay I guess I'll reluctantly fight honorably set and then the dueling set. I think that was basically what I had.
00:50:46
Speaker
Well, I had two stealth sets. I had one stealth set that was mostly for staying stealthy and the other self set was combo for gadgets. And it was all like the bombs are now like. I was going to say nuclear explosions, but that's not that's not OK to say. But really good.
00:51:07
Speaker
For that particular set, I got to a point where there'd be like an enemy scouting party. There'd be like six, seven guys, some of them on horses, all walking as a group. I'd just like sneak up through the Pampas grass and be like, one black powder bomb. And it's like reputation increased as they all literally died instantly. Yeah, that'll do it.
00:51:34
Speaker
Those are a lot of damage in a huge AOE too. Yeah. And there's charms that are just plus 20% damage, plus 20% damage. And the armor is at itself increases. I can't remember the type of the weapon, shadow of shadow weapon damage, I think is what it's called.
00:51:53
Speaker
I digress. It is nice that they actually balance out the gameplay options because I feel certain other games like Dark Souls being my most recent example doesn't necessarily flesh out let's say magic or ranged options as well. It's like hey melee a lot of different options a lot of different weapon types but very much up in your face and it's like bows
00:52:17
Speaker
there's like a bow and then you can unlock different arrows later technically but it's never been like the most viable thing you see it in like gimmick videos of like hey i did a bow run and like what i gotta click that it's so crazy
00:52:32
Speaker
And then magic is a lot more options in general, but a lot of it can feel kind of samey between the types. Whereas it feels equally viable to do melee in here or bow or gadgets or some blend.
00:52:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think it helps because like half the gadgets, half the gadgets are quick use gadgets, where you like throw a sticky bomb, which is like literally a sticky bomb in any modern game would be like, like proxy mine or something like that that attaches to somebody.
Character and Story Development
00:53:07
Speaker
And in this one, it's like,
00:53:08
Speaker
It's a bomb and we covered it in pitch. It's just gonna stick to them. Sticky bomb. Justification established. Have fun, player. How do you throw the sticky bomb? Will you hold with your hand? Oh, hold up. With your anti-stick glove. There you go. Yeah, they don't really explain that part. But yeah, and the rest of them are all more focused to like stealth pace.
00:53:38
Speaker
And if you're good at the combat, just walking up and killing everybody usually is the fastest way to clear an encampment. And you can clear the game much faster than if you try to sneak around and do everything. But there's a certain, like, there's a certain, like, sadistic stealth itch that can be scratched by, like, stealthing your way through an entire encampment and open world games sometimes give you that option. This is one of them, and it's really good for it.
00:54:06
Speaker
it feels nice to be like the last guy kind of looks around he's like something's up everyone's dead people are normally dead you're like i've chosen you for last there's literally a charm that's the enemy's um stay in the alert phase it's like 40 less time which is really funny it's like if you happen to be caught they're just like
00:54:26
Speaker
It must have been the one they say must have been the wind like before the arrow kills their allies sees the red down their friend looks away. We don't we don't want that. But yeah, I guess we've talked about the combat mechanics, things like that. Do you want to give this story or the characters a blip? Give it a shot. Yeah. So you place Jen.
00:54:53
Speaker
and you're a samurai, the last of the Sekai clan, which I'm definitely, I'm going to say every Japanese word wrong, um, in the remainder of this episode. I call it Sekiro at a point, so don't feel too bad. Sekiro clan. Um, and the game opens up and it's like, Hey, glorious charge. And you're like,
00:55:17
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. And then like everybody else does and you're like, ah, right. Makes sense. Um, and then the rest of the game is basically repelling the Mongols and helping the few remaining samurai or samurai adjacent people, uh, on Tsushima to accomplish their goals, get revenge, things like that.
00:55:44
Speaker
Yeah, I found it to be, I think that unfortunately, I won't say pessimistic term, but like the word serviceable, like it works and it fits for the game. But for me personally, I did not really find it engaging story-wise or the characters necessarily as interesting as some other games.
00:56:08
Speaker
But it works for like, hey, these characters fit in universe. You got to go do the thing, got to help these people out. And you're motivated to help them. Yeah. Like nobody, you're like, fuck Lady Osaka. She's awful. No, she's cool. But.
00:56:22
Speaker
I don't know. Did you like the story in particular or the characters that stand out for you? This is going to be the rare episode where we have two different points we disagree on. You like shrines. I'd remove them from the game. I kind of liked all the subplots or most of them. Some of them are. Some characters are just a little bit too obnoxious for me, but. There's there's a few that I do particularly like, so there's the there's an archer named Ishikawa and
00:56:51
Speaker
All of these main character subplots like they basically wrap up into back to or Act three so like they're with you through the entire game as we take away from that and his whole subplot is like he trained and apprentice named Tom away Tom away and Same name is from Sekiro stolen straight from sick. Yep straight from Sekiro and
00:57:18
Speaker
It takes very little time to realize that she's a straight up murderer and she's joined the Mongols, which is not what you want to happen in this situation. But acts pass, acts pass. Do you see all of these terrible things that she's caused? You get to the end and she's like, I was trying to prevent all of this and I was caught up in the tide and she seems to have all of these justifications. She purposefully puts herself in the position of being like,
00:57:48
Speaker
I could have killed you and I didn't. So how are we going to deal with this? And it all just builds up to like an actual, I'm not even going to spoil it for the people who beat it, but like a satisfying conclusion where Jen's making some decisions in cut scenes. You don't yourself make decisions, obviously. And.
00:58:11
Speaker
Pretty much all the point I'm getting to is all of these sub characters, they are mirrors to some aspect of Jen's personality as he's going through this shift from honor to sacrificing everything, basically, in order to win.
00:58:28
Speaker
And I just really like that. Like they all come into play. Some characters are driven by revenge above all else. And you can see that it doesn't even work for them. Jen becomes the voice of reason by comparison. And I don't know, I just like it.
00:58:49
Speaker
Disagree. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Obviously, I didn't get to that part of the game. So I can't really judge the full story and character development. I can tell you about one, though, one that you would have seen because you got to act two. Yes. So end of act one, a reuso, the straw hat Ronan leader and your childhood friend. There's a development there. And we're
00:59:17
Speaker
I guess I don't know. I'm not going to spoil it, but there's a development. I'm gesturing with my hands what I think happens from what I recall. Yeah. I think I think your base. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. He doesn't show up. Then he shows up. Yeah, I blinked out. So I do like that part. I like when characters actually are involved throughout the story. Yeah.
00:59:42
Speaker
And like he's definitely not a trope character, but like you get kind of his vibe. Yeah, there's some other stuff is. I don't know. Gin for me is like so non-expressive, but like not. Terribly witty type thing where it fits. Oh, yeah. He's kind of just very stoic. Yeah. Yeah.
01:00:08
Speaker
Yeah, Jin's probably the weakest character, which is funny because he's the protagonist. But the other characters kind of reflect on his actions and inform, you know, what he's doing. There are a few missions where Jin's personality comes into play like a little bit more.
01:00:30
Speaker
There's one in act two, where you're like talking to basically like your keep your childhood nurse, essentially, like helped raise you. And there's legitimately like a four mission, mostly non combat sequence. That's literally just talking to this lady. And I was like,
01:00:53
Speaker
Crap, I should really feel like this game is just dragging things out. But I appreciate everything that's happening here. And it has such a satisfying conclusion. And the game has enough moments like that where I'm like, ah, OK. All right, you're doing a little bit more than just taking everyone else's mechanics and optimizing them and making them clean. So I am partial to this story. I'm not going to spoil everybody's plot lines, I think.
01:01:18
Speaker
The game for me, at least if I had the option to not complete them and just leave them unresolved, I still would have resolved them even without a mechanical reward of shiny shoes or something. So.
01:01:34
Speaker
The takeaway from this is Jake and I disagree on it, but it's definitely much more immersive. Again, it is a JRPG, as we kind of disclaimed. I don't think it is. I don't think it is. I don't actually think it is. But if you like more in-depth story, this does have a lot of it.
01:01:54
Speaker
at no point was all like, Oh, what's going on with the plot or this character? Cause they tell you. Um, so if you like that and you're like, everything else is described to look mechanically on its own, I think it's great.
Final Thoughts and Recommendations
01:02:06
Speaker
I think it's a beautiful game. Um, so honestly, like you probably will be on board for the story too. It just wasn't as strong for me. Yeah. But still definitely worth a checkout. I think it until Elden Ring comes out, this is my number one open world game right now. Yeah.
01:02:26
Speaker
I don't know if I'm going to categorize. I will. We'll see, I guess how much I end up categorizing Elden Ring is an open world game. It's going to depend on how much world there is, how much open there is also big Dark Souls, big Dark Souls. Yeah, extra thick. But I would also give this game an extra thick score of at least an eight, but like turned on inside. Can I can I share something with you?
01:02:52
Speaker
Collin thick to work. That was good. I heard it recently and I'm very happy with hearing about it. That's fair. But yeah, like I said, we spoiled it earlier. It's this in Breath of the Wild for me. My top two open world contenders.
01:03:13
Speaker
That means a lot. I play a lot of open world games. I play more Far Cry than people should play. Jake's now going through Skyrim again. That's true. I would argue a better game than Skyrim. Sorry, sorry Todd.
01:03:31
Speaker
That's just the way it is. If you know of a game that's a better game than Skyrim, you can send in your recommendation to substonepodcast.gmail.com or you can join the discussion on Facebook where we only talk about Skyrim, actually, at facebook.com slash substonepodcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.