<Snipped quote by Fabricant451>
The window on perfect parries is a 10x tighter in ghost than the couter kills in something like black flag, which gives you the ability to counter kill anything instantly, and being in the right stance doesn't guarantee anything when you're surrounded by multiple enemy types, or even when you're against the same type. If I fuck up my positioning or time my attack string badly, the stagger combo isn't auto killing anything. Now the new-ish combat style of origins and oddessy has the arcade double speed dark souls which ditches the counter kill crap but also makes enemies like wonky damage sponge terminators. It's not fluid.
I don't know what game you're playing but even with just a rank 4 katana all I have to do is swap to the right stance, hit triangle one or two times to stagger, and then they're dead. That's even before I think to just throw a sticky bomb or do the legendary attack that pretty much staggers immediately. It's beyond simple and call it fluid if you like but there's little in the way of variety unless I actively choose to play inefficiently because while perfect parries might have a tight window (I've seen tighter), regular parries do not and at this point the only thing I can't parry are bears. Every tool at your disposal is less about making the combat fluid and interesting and engaging and more about finding ways to kill enemies that much quicker. You don't have to keep dragging another game through the mud to make this one stand up.
Even if I pick the wind stance against 4 spear enemies, I can still be turned into swiss cheese if I pick my attack approach wrong, despite all of my combat abilites, something can always go wrong. It also incorporates the principles of Sen, Go No Sen, and sen no sen (albiet lightly) by giving you options to deal with attacks outside of parries, like disrupting their own 'wind up' with a well placed attack of your own.
Or if you're up against four spear enemies you just hit circle a bunch, throw a sticky or smoke bomb, assassinate, wind style, dead spears. It's not some tactical combat game where you have to think of your approach before every encounter even if the story missions would have you believe it is. The stealth mechanics are really lacking to the point where the preferred option is to just do a challenge and thin the heard every time. Every enemy telegraphs their attack so far in advance that you'd think they were trained that way. Archers still shout their attacks even when everyone else is dead because otherwise it might be unfair or dishonorable or something. The game is so slavishly devoted to its style that it's an active detriment to the overall combat experience with how many times a fucking tree or bamboo shoot has gotten in the way of the camera.
The combat in ghost isn't perfectly rewarding but combat in anything but a pirate ship in AC has never been rewarding (and even then it wears bloody thin, real quick).
Look, dude, I get that you don't like AC but if Tsushima can't stand on its own without having to drag another franchise then is it really standing on its own. Combat is more fun in Odyssey if for no other reason than it having more options in terms of loadout, ability, and approach. If you want to talk about wearing thin then Tsushima shouldn't throw those stones in the glass house it built.
The skill tree has the advantage of having skills I actually end up using and want to use instead of just bells and whistles which technically make me more of a badass but feel hollow or impractical.
Like every skill in Tsushima has an equal or better equivalent in Odyssey down to both games having a goddamn kick that launches dudes and a shoulder tackle and a heal that takes a full resource pip. Not every skill is just 'number go up now'. Stuff like the 'slow time while aiming' or 'shoot three projectiles at once' are far from hollow or impractical. You have more freedom to tailor your playstyle and approach in Odyssey because of the loadouts and abilities and that, in turn, makes for a more versatile system. It's not deep but it's something.
I'm with you on the charms, but I ditched the traveller's attire as soon as possible. I'm unlocking the map fast enough by just chasing foxes and birds in my armor and I'm in no rush to do any of that faster. The customization works on an aesthetic level, It looks nice enough for me to want ride over to a flower out of my way so I can get my scabbard to match my headband. It's just the right amount of incentive for a cosmetic upgrade.
I'd prefer it if I could pick and choose the bonuses the armor gives so I could wear the one that looks the best in white while maintaining the abilities that are more geared to how I'd like to play the game. I'm never going to use the samurai clan armor or the Tadayori armor but I sure wouldn't mind the option to slap the concentration boost on the cooler outfit I am wearing. Sure, it's not practical, but I settled into my look already - white dye, headband of death, no face mask, white sword set - that the only reason I'd get flowers is because there's a trophy to buy vanity gear. And if I didn't have to pull up the menu to swap between the two I use then it'd be a lot cooler and I'd be more inclined to at least use other sets. But I'm basically locked into the traveler's attire because, again, the ping for collectibles and the wider fog clear and if I forget to switch to the outfit I actually like then the only thing I lose is style because the bonuses aren't substantial enough to matter outside of, like, the concentration one.
I'm not going to sit here and defend the story, it's a pretty stand stoic revenge/liberation tale. What I like about it is that it doesn't break my immersion of being a wandering ronin. Jin's character is just flat enough for me to be able to project my own goals of becoming more powerful without me getting bored or pissed off when he opens his mouth, when compared to a lot of other open world games including AC, this is a godsend.
Meanwhile I'm struggling to give a shit because this is another game where the protagonist gets hung up over breaking his code or doing something he doesn't like for all of a cutscene then has no problem doing it for hours on end. At least it's amusing to cut open doors instead of opening them. Jin is the least interesting character in his own story and it's hard to project my goals onto him, personally, because my goal isn't to get more powerful it's to see what's that undiscovered location oh it's just another fucking fox den or a fucking pointless haiku good thing my uncle isn't in jeopardy or anything.
I really like how everyone in the game is pretty no-nonsense but still manage to feel distinct from each other, the game wont win any TLOU2 type awards for the acting. But I never feel the urge to skip a cutscene, when Lady Masako told me about the slaughter of her family after seeing the bloodstained tatami and broken naginatas in her estate, I gave a shit. Which is something an AC game has probably made me do twice over the span of a dozen games.
Yeah cool and in Odyssey going back to my home island only to find that my sparing of sick people now means a plague has ransacked the island hit made me both give a shit and realize that there might actually be consequences, minor or otherwise, to decisions but again, that doesn't make AC worse or Tsushima better because people respond to things differently. The only story thread that has made me want to see it played out is the archer and his protege and even that's like half because it's the Dharma dude from Lost and he's cool.
And I never feel like there should be less mongols after clearing outsposts because this isn't far cry. It's literally the mongol empire they are the in-universe example of the endless horde. If anything I'm surprised there aren't more of them crawling about, they probably have a metric fuck ton of ships posted in every sea surrounding the island.
But when the objective is literally measured in how much of the island you have 'liberated' it rings a bit hollow when you liberate a bunch of shit and the only change is now there's burned grass. Clearing outposts in Far Cry 2 just meant eventually outposts were repopulated but your goal in that wasn't to liberate the country. If I'm supposed to be liberating Tsushima, then I would think I would start seeing less Mongols and more bandits to at least make it seem like I'm actually, you know, liberating and pushing back the invasion.
Oddessey's story might make you feel more in tune with greater conflict but when you get to know the people in your island are ubisoft-usubtle wink-and-nod swingers who want to have pansexual orgies with you, it's hard for me to take my role in the fight for these people very seriously. Seeing Jin's bare ass when he gets into the hot springs is about all the fanservice I need for a game like this.
Sorry that Greek people liked to fuck I guess? Like there aren't even that many people you can fuck in Odyssey and your role in that game isn't to end the war or liberate Greece you're a mercenary and your ultimate goal is unraveling a conspiracy while there's a war in the background.
So yeah the game is on the better end, of open word stuff. It's somewhere between Breath of the Wild and Mad Max in terms of quality.
Shit no wonder I'm coming down hard on it then
