GRcade

I've recently re-downloaded this so that I can play through the DLC, it is quite generic open world stuff but it's done very well, and I think the fact I've not bothered with mostly all of the Ubisoft open world games means it wasn't too tiresome for me.

For anyone new to the game I'd advise not to overlook the Legends mode and making sure to try it out at some point, for a game that's clearly built around a single player experience the multiplayer works surprisingly well and might actually be the most fun I had with the game. Not sure how populated it is these days but if you can still matchmake with others it's worth playing.

Re-finished this last weekend, got to say playing it the second time through on PS5 in 60fps made it much more enjoyable for me.

Started the DLC campaign yesterday night.... IKI island sure looks beautiful!

Started this over the weekend through PS++

- It's a shame the Japanese dub isn't lip synced, I'd have preferred to play it in Japanese with subs for the authenticity but not like this
- You can't skip cutscenes, what the hell?
- Love the combat and challenge on lethal...
- ...but the checkpointing is really frustrating me

The autosave/checkpointing is very frustrating because you can't reset to how things were before an encounter starts if you die during it. One side of that is in the random encounters around the map - these are basically one shot encounters you can't retry, because if you die and reload from checkpoint the enemies won't be there a second time. The other side is when doing a map event like liberating a location partial progress gets saved over death. The first place I came to required me to collect three flags to liberate it, but when I died after collecting one flag and reloaded it would stay collected, so I felt cheated out of doing it properly. This extends to collecting anything like supplies - you can just run in, grab whatever, die, and still have it all. Compounding that annoyance is that where you respawn to retry the encounter seems to be based on where you die rather than where you previously started it, so I might approach from one direction, die, reload from checkpoint, but find myself starting on the opposite side.

It's frustrating because these seem like such simple problems to fix but are significantly impacting the whole experience. Story missions are much better for having deterministic restarts.

Just finished this in around 26 hours. Absolutely loved it - strong 9/10 for me. Didn't do an OTT amount of side stuff so felt fairly streamlined to me.

My main annoyance was the lack of being able to influence outcomes. At times I would spare people who I didn't want to, or vice versa. Was frustrating to me.

Coming to PC excited to play this again on Steam Deck

Wouldn't mind getting this on PC as I never bought the DLC.

The most pure 7/10, enjoyable open world game there is. I will get back to completing it eventually.

So excited at us finally getting PC confirmation Releasing quite soon too!

Excellent. This was the one game I was really looking forward to being ported to PC.

It's gonna look amazing on my ultrawide OLED.

PC bump!

Put 20 hours or so in since release. This is a bit special eh? It's like an Ubisoft game that people have actually thought about rather than cramming as much in as quickly as possible.

It has just the right amount of quality of life at just the right pace. Level ups are packed perfectly with plenty of impactful skills and upgrades to spend skill points on. The resource economy seems pitched perfectly - you seem to always have juuuust enough of a certain resource to choose between two impactful upgrades or purchases and you never feel like you're going to be immeasurably rich.

Little things like being able to quickly pop off during a mission to grab a collectible you saw on the way to a sub objective in said mission (rather than an instant fail like in Rockstar games) or the wind guiding you meaning you never have to open the map if you don't want.

I saw a comment articulating my exact feelings - initially I was disappointed after wasting loads of arrows taking down a deer to find they leave no loot. The next time I saw a group of deer beautifully highlighted by the morning sun cresting over the grasslands ahead of me I was so relieved I didn't have to shoot every one of these I saw just to have a big enough quiver for the rest of the game.

I am playing on Lethal difficulty after 5 or so hours on hard to get a feel for the combat without dying in one hit, and I really really love the feeling this difficulty brings. Essentially a one/ two hit kill mode for both you and the enemies. Really makes you feel like every decision you make in combat counts. Obviously I'm dying over and over again at most substantial encounters but having an SSD means jumping back in is immediate and the fast paced nature of the fights on this mode means when you do actually beat an encounter it is over extremely quickly. Boss fights are a great example of this, when I win a boss fight it's usually only 30 seconds long. Yes you still need to get a feel for all the boss' attack patterns but rather then the exam being a 10 minute slog a la Soulslikes it's a quick pop quiz you can try instantly (and I do mean instantly!) over and over again. Getting killed by the boss' one hit KO attack immediately 3 times in a row just becomes funny as opposed to the miserable slog that same experience is in souls (not a fair comparison as they are going for different things, it's just a refreshing change for me compared to games I've been playing recently.) Just really feels like you've nailed one of those samurai duels from popular media when you take down a boss so quickly and cinematically, not that you have too many options for being slow and ungainly on this difficulty.

Up to Act 2 now, very invested in the story and the samurai drip I'm acquiring. Thinking of going back to the first island to mop up there before continuing. Can't wait to play more!

Oh and the port seems really good at 1440p on my 3080ti. Getting 90fps in combat on everything turned high. FSR2 frame generation crashes the game as soon as you turn it on (and doesn't boot up if you enable it before loading) but I guess I can live with a mere 90 frames for the time being. Also one button to skip all the into movies, instant quit the program from the in-game menu (no quit to main menu) and apparently excellent ultrawide support!

Excellent impressions! Looking forward to double dipping!