Ghost of Yotei Non-Spoiler Cast

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Other Trolls Gaming podcast. If you are new in joining us, we are two brothers who get together and talk about gaming. We may also talk tech, TV, movies, and other nerdy geeky stuff too, and today we will be talking about Ghost of Yota non spoiler cast because Daniel can't beat games. Joining us Today's correct? Ah, but I'm first first, I'm nasty. Eight oh, and I'm taking easy John. And joining us today. We have one special guest and one ex host. We have a Nick from Friday Night game Cast and Dan off the Wise. Both are back in action here. What's goes A long time ago? We should call dand Alf the Creator formerly known as Dandolf Wise. Form right. That sounds I feel like that's how they do content creators once they sail off to the Gray Havens. Maybe yeah, formertor but not formerly dand Wise. That's still my tag on I think things. I might have that as a gamer tag. I'm pretty sure it's your's your name on Discord, it's my name on Discord is on Xbox. Oh, it's Dan Job. Yeah, you're not even you were you are. No longer PlayStation I think though the white you've moved on. That's what they used to call me. I'm already sweating usually free down here in the studio. That's why I'm wearing fucking sweatpants and a sweater. Studio is looking good, though, it's looking real good. I see it. Thanks man. Yeah, Nick, I like. I like your light. What's that a sixty? What it's sucking the fucking boob light from the ceiling? Brother? Yeah, I know, I know. Are you talking about Nick? Yeah? Yeah, I'm looking. I'm looking like. Yeah, I bought a house. I bought a house back in at the like August first was the closing. So yeah, this whole. Grass had a bunch of shit in it just recently took a lot of ship out of it. Yeah. So no, it's the grats on being a home. O. Thank you, thank you, thank you on both counts. Actually that's great. Thank you. Wow. I haven't been keeping up with the discord chat, so if you mentioned it there, I apologize. No, Like, honestly, I've only been talking about it with like friends semi closely, and you know, the folks. Who know me know me. Yeah, yeah I knew. I think I knew that. I think you you mentioned it. Anybody who's recorded with me and they've noticed the background has changed from the black walls to the white ones. They're like, oh, this guy moves somewhere, so so you're gonna paint these black? Now you're gonna No, I'm not gonna paint this or anything. Not gonna do it. I'm what what I'm planning on doing. I'm gonna I'm gonna keep them for the most part, but I'm gonna just put art all over the walls, is my plan. And then I'm just gonna put I'm probably gonna make some homemade soundproof panels, put them on the ceilings. Maybe I already have a bunch of like, you know, sound dampeners. I'm gonna put them on the wall, like behind my computer, that sort of thing. So I'm gonna try and do that, and. And just get some more aesthetic lighting in here, rip out this thing from the ceiling, and actually get like a like a. Legit like a boob light. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you gotta gotta get rid of the Michael Booby. I have a boob light too, actually everybody does. Just like it looks like a boob with a nipple on it. Yeah, contractor grade. You gotta you gotta have it. But yeah, leon Lee, not lean Lee, but Land what is it? Nan Light is probably gonna get a lot. Of my money once I get it, like a legit, you know, actual like video light that I'm gonna try do color temperature stuff too. But yeah, lots of players in the future. Cool cool, cool cool cool. Good for you, Nick, Thank you well, welcome to the show, both of you. Nick. It's nice to hear you guys are back on the airwaves. I listened to it new episodes, Thank you, thank you. I listened on my rain, my bike in the rain. It was. Ah man, I wanted to okay, I was gonna fucking clip a clip from your second last episode, not your your octourerfest. I was gonna clip where where Will was giving you grief for play for wanting to play Kingdom Cup and you were you said you said, I think you said that we were like a bad influence on you. And then you were like they were right about cyberpunk. I wanted to just clip the whole thing and then play it over here. And then he said, we a clock is right twice or a broken clock. This could be the second time or right, this could be. Hey, listen, if John has anything greater, can you give stand to be the exception. Deliverance can come deliverance to next DLC coming in the success see and this was or. Something uh some sort of Latin. Yeah, I'm a little I'm a little upsetty spaghetti about that because I was just on the PlayStation in store while I was prepping for the show today, and I what did I notice in my wishless discounted items was gold. Edition can come deliverance too. I don't want to play that game, oh my goddamn PlayStation. I want to play it on the PC Master Race platform where I can provide the correct modifications to my game file. Oh, I see what you want to do? Okay, all right, exactly exactly. I always checked from that They always have deals on. It connected to your TV anyway, right. I used to, But that was because my living room in the old place and the office. Aired a wall, and I drilled a hole. In the wall and just ran an HDMI through. But now they're like two completely disconnected rooms. So what I'm thinking about doing instead is a super. Cost of faate cost effective you know, alternative. Where I'm going to build an entirely new rig from the ground up and then just move this PC out to the living room. I feel like that that's what I did. Yeah, that's what I did. And then it was too hot in the living room. It was too hot. It was just a space. Really did it heat it up? Oh yeah? Oh yeah? And I couldn't do it anymore. I was like, it's way too hot in here. Like at least I could open like a window in here, and I don't play for that long in here. Yeah, well, in another thing, And I mean, sorry, dear listener, if you're getting if we're getting down the rabbit hole of like desk set up slash like audio videos. But this is the fun part. This is the fun part. We're gonna get into it really quick. But I have like thought about because there's the utility room where you know, my washer dryer is and everything is right behind where the room set up, and I already I want to mount the wall, and so what if I can just get like a mounted like utility like tech rack and then just like have like an access drill and just run all the wires through that thing into the mounted TV on the other wall. I feel like it could work. That's what I do. I have my TV on my wall where my furnace room is, and my PC and my server and everything is behind the wall. Really okay, Yeah, we're going to talk after the show and I'll have to get some tips from. You on fanatical dot com. Can you come deliverance to is thirty. Five percent off on PC? You're you're selling me. Fifty one dollars Canadian. Oh that's nothing. Yeah, that's peanut got that's like ten dollars for you guys. It's basically like a chicken plate. Oh yeah, yeah exactly. It's like going to buy dinner. Yeah, I bought something. I bought something last week from the States. Actually no, it's not from the States, but it was in US dollars seventy five dollars US. Okay, but it's coming from like Singapore or something. It costs me almost three hundred dollars seventy five dollars US. Hello a lo. Is this her first appearance on the show or she's like grabbed the microphone. Walk in, open the doors. Wow, that's CEO. That's CEO's heys and mister Nick Hello, Hello? Wow? Is qut pop baby? See now? Now we have to get Will's daughter on the content. We're gonna put some video content, and we got to get him for sure. We got to get her on there. I could bring Basil in. You'll probably hear her this entire episode. She's still going. The door shaking. You're absolutely right. The Kingdom Come Deliverance to thirty nine ninety. Nine US dollars. Man, Wow, that's a no brainer. Bruh. Yeah, you already bought it. I thought you bought it already. I had in my cart and then I forgot about it because it was like fifty percent off at one point, and then I just clicked out of it and I just ADHD really got the best of me, and then I was like, she can't do it. What I really want to hear after you play it is like the open world, just that open world thin Kingdom Come Deliverance too is just. It's just crazy good PlayStation and it is very enjoyable and looks great. But you can't do game file modifications on it. No, Oh, is it fine? Xbox? Is that what you're doing? I'm on PlayStation. I was going to get it on Xbox, but I couldn't find a single fucking copy anywhere. And then I finally just went to Walmart and they had like a steel Book. I don't know if the if the regular version that came out is like the steel Book, but I found a Steelberg version of it, and. Oh so I bought that. That's nice. Even had that. Yeah, that's what I have, a steel Book. Nice manyho I can come delivers to if it's on sale? Get it? Bes worth it? Worth it? Yes? Yes? Worth? Next up, let's just head in the game time. Okay, it's head there now. Insert whatever transition music you've been playing, Jonathan, maybe some Arch Directors music. Oh yes, I will do that Pokemon Zaza battle theme. How about that one? I'm already sick of that. I that game away. Didn't you tell me? Pam Hard quit it? She's not even playing it anymore. She just quit. Yeah, she's playing Hogwarts Legacy right now. Because we are listening to Chris and Tom in the car on One Hour, one Decision and they are playing Hogwarts. And I guess that must have triggered something in her brain. Yeah, she's just finished it. She's playing a file gotcha? Even Almos like do we still have Hogwarts? And I was like, yes, we do. Showed her the. Game Megan's playing right now and switch. She's like, good, it's a good Christmas game. Yeah, she's doing all that, Yeah, at all the different houses. Yeah. I was watching her play a little bit. I was like, man, I remember. This, I believe if I'm not mistaken, it's if you have the PlayStation Plus Extra Catalog Edition. It's free to play through that, so you can just kind of like download it. Yeah. Nice, nice, nice? Yeah? Sorry, are we in game time? Now? Are you going to make that transition before this? It's done? I've already done it. Future just did it again so quickly, you know, a couple of minutes each? What do we guys plan? What do you got to play it? Nick? Take it away? I'm gonna tell I'm gonna start. I'm going really quick because I don't have much to say. Uh, because y'all have listened to episodes, you already know what I've eaten. But I'm playing Silent Hill f right now. This is a leftover. I really, I so for listeners of the Elder Strolls who haven't checked out our show. I really try to stretch myself for Spooketober twenty five, I thought it was a really good episode, really fun episode. Not to plug our show or anything, but just go ahead. But anyway, we did a Spooktober twenty five episode and I played a bunch of horror games, a bunch of scary games to get you know, on top of that. So, like the TLDRS, I did like Little Nightmares two, Alan Wake, Condemned, Criminal Origins are Little Nightmares two or three? Three? Sorry? Three? Yes, you're exactly right. Yeah, so I played a little the first one. Yeah, well the Criminal Origins, I don't know if that was the first one. That's the first one. Yeah, played that first one. So incredible game, like see this is the there. Condemn is like one of the just as a quick tangent, It's one of those games that makes me realize that we have come so far, but we also like we haven't progressed as much as I really think. I think, like when I really think about like first person shooter combat scenarios with emerging gameplay and interesting tactical strategy and room layouts and level design layouts, like Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven, I think did an excellent job and I think people don't give it enough credit. Namely my co host thinks it's not great, but I I thought he was liking it. He does like it, he just doesn't think the gun play is good, and I just disagree. I think that's where we differ in our opinion. And I think, you know, does some different structure different folks, Maybe you look for different things in your gun play. But I think Cyberpunk did a great job. But like I'm thinking of like the moment to moment scenario in the like the horror element of what it was like moving through. Those condemned levels. Crazy that it was crazy they're doing that in two thousand and five. And I shouldn't be as surprised because I, like semi recently played Half Life two and that was like, right, mind blowingly revolutionary, was like how the fuck were they doing this back then? And why have we not come farther today? It really like just kind of makes my head swirl. And about the. State the Half Life three and then y'all, yeah, like everybody goes to two. They don't. They don't go up. I heard they heard they were making it. Is that not? They always say they're doing it. They say they're making a Left for Dead three. Half Life three. Then they're not doing shit, you know, they're. Just making ant simulator and their money on coke and strippers. Yeah, it gave me us just got to got a draft one. But just like you know, really quickly playing Silent Hill F I don't have much to say other than I think it's really good and the amount that I've played so far, I think Riakushi O seven, who is the writer for this game, did an excellent job adapting it in this you know, historical nineteen sixties Japanese setting with an all new character. It's not tied down by the weight of like the trilogy, Like you don't have to worry about the coult or any other bullshit that they had to deal in the first like you know, four or five games. Uh so, I mean even though Silent Hill two is like one of my favorites of all time, but yeah. The Hill f great game. Other than that, I'm just playing Donkey Kong Bonanza when I get the chance, uh, and I'm feeling okay about it. It's it's a fine game. It's a perfectly fine game. It's a Nintendo platformer. You expect a Nintendo excellence. It's the Mario Odyssey team that's. Doing that, and it's good. It's not Game the Year good, but it's good. Yeah, that's what I'm It's not as good as Mario honestly was either in my opinion. You know, you know what, I picked it in my fantasy book, So I'm I'm happy that it got a ninety I got a ninety. One, right that was sitting there, geez nice, that's right. But you know what's sitting out of ninety two as Arc Raiders right now? On what platform? It was eighty nine when I checked it earlier today. Oh really, maybe they all came in then it lowered, damn it. That's what that's what Jonathan's playing. I think we'll probably do an Arc Raiders big episode. We did did we already do one? We did the server slam ah, yes, and we couldn't really talk about the other maps and stuff like that. Maybe we'll do a game time about it. But mm hmmm. It's very good, very good. That's what I've been playing saying. I've also been playing Sonic Racing because I caved and bought that for a fucking full place. Is he good? Is it fun? Yes? Yes? Did he plays ichipon no, he's not out yet. That's sad. Nice, Okay, I play as a little robo girl. She got like hacker shit on her face. I don't know. She don't know Mega Man. Yeah, she looks kind of like a Mega Man. But okay, I don't think she's from Mega Man. But man. I was like, do I buy it for a hundred bucks? Like, it's one hundred dollars okay for a sonic racing game. So I go on Fanatical and they had it for thirteen percent off. I was like, okay, I'll watch it and I'll watch it and I'll watch it and it never went down. So I was like, fine, I'll just get it because I have the money on my in my gaming budget. I had a ton of money in my gaming budget because I hadn't bought a game in a while. So in about a week, I haven't bought a game, like a week. I was like, sure, it's been like four. Days, and boys like this is insane. It's so fast, it's like it's sonic. Yeah, and they really try to hit they try to hit that button with you with that it's sonic and you're gonna be going fair. I mean, like, why would he drive a car unless it goes faster than he can run, right right, and you're collecting the rings, So the car has got to be pretty damn fast. It's so it's so are Kadie and the lights are flashing. It's like you're in a casino and you're. Going so fast and your eyes start burning after like fifteen minutes and just playing, it's insane. It's absolutely insane. It's very very fun. I wanted a local co op racing game for when people come over. Yeah, play like a racing game. So, since I don't have Mario Kart. Anymore, I was gonna say, like, what happened to Mario? You know, I gave away my switch, old ed a switch too, because you don't have a switch too. That's right, I keep forgetting Jonathan does. Yeah, So so this one is going to fill in and it's very very good. So, yes, it was expensive. I've already I've dumped like fifteen hours into it of just racing and I race online. Now I'm getting like top three every race. You know, I'm pretty fak good. Okay, I'm pretty fucking good here. How many can you get hit by shells? Oh? Yeah, well they're not shells. They're big boxing mits. That's the same shit, right. The only the only thing that's that's is different is like there's the stats on the vehicles are different. Like there's a boost vehicle where the more you boost or use boost, the faster you go. But their top speed isn't high, but they'll they'll really like utilize all the boosts you get. So like those platforms with the arrows on it, or whenever you drift you get the boost out of the drift, right, or a little jumps if you jump and you do a little trick, you boost. So if you're using that vehicle, all those those boost moves are like multiplied and they keep multiplying. So if you're really good at boosting after anything, then you're like super fast. So that's what I'm rocking right now and just blasting people, blasting through people. So anyway I started blasting. But yeah, that's other than our creators. That's what I like, just real quick, Like what's the the character lineup? Is all Sega stuff or is it? There's Minecraft characters? Oh? Okay, so they got and a Minecraft level, which is really cool. They did a Minecraft level, so it's so what you do is you when you're racing, and whoever's in first place halfway through the race or so, the first place player gets to choose what that map turns into. So you like take a portal during the race into a completely different map, and then you race a track on that map, and then you portal back into the original map, and it like does that over and over again, so like it's never the same race, you know what I mean. It's very very cool. So you do your three laps and one of those laps is in a completely different map, and then you portal back. So whoever's in first place gets to choose the map that you portal into after he goes by a certain spot in the in the lap. Very pretty cool. Yeah, very cool, very cool, very cool. And it's so fast. It's so fast, it's like two they have one, like a two fifty cc or something like that, and it's just blistering, like you know, you can't even Mario Kart, Yeah, allows off and you can't even like you can't, I can't even control how fat Like when you're going that fast, you have to be so fast on your controls to even pilot your fucking vehicle. It it's crazy. It's very fast and your eyes are just melting in your head, like nice, very hard core, ver nice. I just want to check to see since we were playing uh Arc Raiders Steam dB, I'm going to see how many people are on right now. You just love doing that. It's funny Steam. He's hoping, he's hoping it's going to beat Battlefield six, that's what he's hoping. Two hundred and eighty thousand on Steam alone right now. And I heard that the console the console count is like is more than double that? Really? Yeah, that's interesting, So there's. Really yeah, yeah, so more than double that, so like six seven hundred thousand console, it's a million players. The thing that. Gets me about our Raiders like beyond the forty dollars price tag, because like sure, like make it a kind of freemium level forty dollars like entry point. I'm okay with that, like do what you need to do in terms of free realizations strategy, but like in terms of how they're going about it and like how they're. Like structuring it. The problem that I had is that I know me and I know how I operate with video games, and because I'm playing so much all the time is that I'm gonna put no more than five sessions into this game, and then I'm never gonna play it again. And by that point, by like that fifth session, the player count is gonna be so low that I'm gonna be like, well, what's the point of nobody's playing this anymore? And then I'm just gonna be like, I. Feel like that forty dollars I didn't get my money out of it because I haven't been like cause it's it sounds like and I mean, sure, if this is your thing, it's your thing. And I really really liked what I've seen you play because I watched Jonathan stream it. But like the thing about it is is that like it seems like a game that needs you to be in there like every day, like playing every day, doing a run like every day, to like get all the resources into the grind for the gear. So I mean, that's just how it is, and that could be fun, but I just I don't know. I have forty five hours in it already. Jonathan, do you know if they they gear like the gear level match you with other players, that's what they said, But I don't know. I don't I don't have any idea or they However, however much your like your backpack is worth whenever you I don't know. Because I've seen like stuff that I've seen like swatching streamers, clips and stuff like that they're looting bodies that have like free loadouts when they have like blue and epic weapons, Like like how you fighting guys with free loadouts? Maybe it's just by level then maybe that's what I said it should be. It should be by the skill tree probably, yeah. I mean, if you're that high level, you know, you probably have decent stuff that you're just choosing not to bring it. Yeah, So why should there be matchmaking based on that? Like you're game sense is higher than the like a new player kind of thing because you're that level. So I think they should probably match up based on like skill points or something like how many skill points you have or XP or whatever. But I have no idea. I can see they say gear score, But I don't know, Dan, what are you playing other than Yote? Well, for the longest time I had been playing Kingdom Come Too, would you still Deliverance? What would you say you still haven't beat? Which I still haven't beat? No, because let me tell you why. I have They're going to keep it brief, but I think I genuinely have what you would actually call a love. Hate relationship with Kingdom. Come to like when I say that, it's kind of like playful, like I actually hate this game sometimes with an overarching love. It's almost like the way you would hate something in moments that you generally love on the whole, or a pets or something like when they're getting in trouble exactly exactly. So I don't know, there's just I've been a lot of to put it in a shell, Like I got to fifty hours and I'm fine, and I and I finally was like, oh okay, like here's the fun gameplay. You know, I don't know what the fuck I've been doing for fifty hours. Where I was like main quest, I was in like random, No, that's not true. I was barely doing side ship. It's just that there's so much there's so many steps to the main quest that you have to do all this ship for all these people before you can kind of like progress. And I mean I was exploring a little bit. But. I don't think I did many side quests. I started some, but then I got to these points where I was like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to waste my time poisoning some guy's food. So he ships himself. That's funny. Water on a holy water on oh in the castle? On yeah, on fireplaces in the castle for what? Like what is anyway? There was There's a lot of dialogue, there's a lot of talking. There's a lot of sneaking around. Uh, there's a lot of things that just make your life so hard when you play the game, and it's just like, I just don't think that's. What I'm looking for anymore. I don't know. Back in the day, Back in the day, I put I put that aside because I loved the medal the Medieval Times saying the Middle Ages thing, and I was really into it, and I was like, man, wow, this is the only game like this, so I love it. I'm going to play it that this time around, I was like fuck man. And I finally got to that point in the story where I was like, Okay, this is cool. When you start meeting characters, you know, I won't see too much, But when you just start meeting these kind of these bands of characters that you get into trouble, with and then you start like fighting more and you start seeing more action, and you start you start seeing what makes a game exciting in my opinion, at least a game like this. I have to kind of adjust my expectations, I think, and I've had to do that several times along the way to kind of check myself and be like, Okay, relax, like it's not that kind of game all the time, but maybe that's just what I need right now, And so it's not. It wasn't driving, but. I did get to the point where I was like, this is fucking cool, and it feels different now, and it feels more exciting, and the story is finally developing, and they they do this thing where they force you into a couple of game instances that you just can't get out of until you passed them, like they did in the first one with the monastery, but they did it twice, but they did it twice to you, to me in this game, they did it twice. So like, is it one of these situations where you have to basically like get through a combat encounter or. No, no, it's not a combat encounter. It's it's more just you're trapped in an instance that you like inside a castle or something that you can't get out of until you do X and y and z and uh. And there's these long segments to these quests that you have to finish. Then it's time. It's time. One of them has told your hand it doesn't hold your hand in the one, yeah, and you and you're like, okay, this is getting kind of like where do I go? What do I do? Yeah? Yeah, So yeah, there were a couple of instances of those. The first game only had the one, so I was just like it was almost like they were laughing at me. I was like, where the first one wasn't that bad? You could just kill your way through it? Yeah? Yeah, So what I did in the monastery, I was there for five minutes. I was there for five minutes. Yeah, I killed him and I took his body and I carried it out of the monastery and that is the complete Yeah. Yeah, I should have too. I don't know. I don't know why I didn't do that. Nick for a reference, because in the first one, there's a squest line in the monastery where you have to like train to be a monk, trained to and they make you do all this mundane ship like that a monk would do. Yeah, and you're there forever and you're done. But like right at the beginning, you could just kill the guy that you're supposed to like get close to you, like as soon as you enter, and yeah, and it'll make a bit of a ruckus. But like you can just do that instead of like doing the whole thing but. Laughing, Like every time I was doing these stupid monk like chores me, the game is funny. They're both very funny. Yeah, that's true. That is true. Sometimes I guess with my temper, I don't feel like laughing, and I'm just like when is this going to be done? But I got to that point where now I'm like, Okay, this is cool and I look forward to playing the end of it. But then Ghost of Yote came out and I was like, well, this obviously is going to take precedent because I think I've waited longer to play that then I played than I wanted to play Kum two. So here we are, and so those those two I've been occupying my time. Nice, very nice cool cool cool cool cool cool. Gole Well, gentlemen, let's jump in to the main topic of this episode. 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Vr rock dot com ships worldwide and all their products are tax free. We extend our sincere gratitude of vr rock dot com for supporting us and making our VR experiences safer and more enjoyable. So don't miss out, Grab your vr rock lenses and get ready for an unforgettable gaming journey. And I want to like, what if I just do the vr rock ad read, But if you just send me, send me the text and I just do their game. I think I have it somewhere for you guys, our listeners. Exactly exactly. We got a referral, We got an extra fifteen bucks. There, let's godd wow. Nice. Yeah, that's funny. We give it to Nick and and like we get fucking tons of sales, like way more. I should do it. I'll send you a little script and just record it. Okay, I'll do it. It was like. There was one time we sold you must have sold like five or six in like two or three weeks. Yeah, people were like playing VR games or something or VR content was big and well our little headset things. I feel like the PSVR two is going on like a deep discount, because that's what it was. Yeah. Yeah, they're just the Sony's like not continuing support for it, and they're just trying to get rid of their stock and so they're just like buy. It, just just buy it. So it's difficult. I'll just I'll say this real quick, like I had it up here so I can hook it up to my PC. Yeah, the with the fucking adapter and the Steam and this to get into VR, like just to start gaming. It's such a fucking ruckus. You don't just plug it into the back of your computer and go, oh. You gotta go through the fucking Steam Live. You go into your Steam Home. It's a room and you got to select your game and you make sure you're fucking doing this. When you hook it up the PlayStation, the PS five and you want to play a VR game, you're in okay, within within like you know what I mean. And I now only use it for like workout games. I don't even I gotta put it on my head and I'll do a workout and that's it. Like I don't play VR games to play VR games. I play them workout And it's a shame. Well, you know, to get your money out of that ps v R two, Will and I were talking and we're like, we need to set up a special Patreon tier specifically for Nasty Night in order to get people to fund and if we meet our allocation goal, you have to finish Resident Evil eight VR two. You have to finish the game all the way through. Is that what you're playing? I thought you're playing like the Village or something that's eight. Yeah, is that what it's called? It looked very scary. What not? Would not play it? It was? It's it's super scary your first run, but then you have to go back and you have to get the platinum. So you have to like do like twenty more runs and it's fine, you know. What's coming, and you have to get the platinum. You have to not a choice. Just another one platin ever, one ever, spider Man two because it was the easiest fifteen hour platinum to do it super easy anyway, Fun Yote, Oh yeah, that game game. We're not It's like going to the movie theater and not knowing why you're here. You're like, what did we say? Was that after all those trailers like make you escape into these other worlds? Yeah? Ghost of Yote, Ghost of Yote. Daniel's been waiting for this one for a while, been drinking five years. I did my waiting five years come in Ever since. Since twenty twenty twenty twenty summer July twenty twenty. God, what a great day that was when when Sushima came out. Wait a minute, you were waiting for this game the day that ghosts of Sushima came out. Yes, because we don't. Have quickly Daniel plays games. He got a review code early. Ever since Jin left us in Ghost of Sushima, that amazing Samurai game and the photo mode, I couldn't wait to get my hands on this one. Yeah. I didn't play the first one super long, Like I just did a quick golden path at the first one. Oh yeah, were you guys at all disappointed? We've all beat the first one here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got the plan. Yeah, okakay, so we were any of you slightly disappointed before the game came out, before Yota came out to learn that it didn't have anything to do with that character, that elusive Fox. Character from the first game. What was her name? Tomoy? You guys really, do you guys remember her? Yeah? There was a lot of talk on the internet. Yeah, there's a lot of talk on the internet being like, oh, the new one could be about her, because like she was sort of one of the strongest side anti villains or whatever you want to call her in the game, and I was like, dude, that would be awesome. She escapes to the mainland and that's where you were. But they didn't end up going with that. But well she was she was the primary side in the game. She was like, yeah, I would say she was yea that the older lady. Yeah, she was the older woman who is well, that was like. The one I'm talking about, was the younger one who was like that deadly oh yeah, the oh yeah, the bow students. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was cool. I was just I just wanted to see my boy some more. But we all know, yeah, you just sailed off into this shit. I didn't expect it. I didn't expect this to be about that. Well. I don't know if I can jump in here with like a little bit of like behind the scenes lore, But in terms of the development of this game, when it when the first trailer was announced, what's really interesting is that Sony Corporate did not know that Sucker Punch was pivoting to a different time frame in history, and there were very high people up on the food chain, specifically at Hermann Holst Tier, who were really really annoyed about the fact that they changed the protagonist for their game because they had spent a lot and I mean a lot of money in branding and marketing Jinseachhai as one of the faces of Xbox or excuse me, PlayStation along side of Ellie Joel spider Man, and like there was a lot of behind scenes marketing that was dumped into, like putting him on marketing assets that hadn't been rolled out yet and all this other stuff. Oh, I mean it's so he still is. It's just like, you know, yeah, but I mean because because this is how the gaming community works, right, Like it's what for me lately, and like we're to me it is, but I guess for sure, for sure, and I think that's just as valid Dan too. But like for a lot of like when we talk about like promotional like marketing tier materials of Infamous, it's like the guy from Infamous, right, it's like that, Yeah, I played Infamous, so I don't know. But it's like there are these you know, crados, his crados for a reason, because he has such a strong identity, and that's what they were looking for in Gin and what other. Sony game changed. Then that's that's true. Well, I mean you got you got Nathan Drake from Monchhearted. He was he was kind of like the mascot for the p S three for for a lot of the time then like. They don't often change, but coming back is like, I don't think it was as big, like Ghost of Sushima wasn't as big, and Gin wasn't as big of a like a character as Nathan Drake. I don't know it units units in twenty two, Yeah, I feel like at talking like hundreds of millions. If I'm not mistaken, I could be wrong. Yeah, I think I feel like it could sold a lot more. I mean I didn't play it, nick Nick, I didn't play it. He goes to Tushima. No, not until like last year. And I think a lot of people did what Jonathan did. Over thirteen million units as of September twenty, twenty twenty four. So not a Wider Man, right, but still I think thirteen million, it's not a Spider Man. Not significant. Yeah, I mean if there was one idea that they could do that with, it was this one. Probably like you're not going to be able to do that with obviously Spider Man. I mean though they kind of did, but they made a new game that was separate with Miles Morales, and then they kind of integrated Miles Morales. But he's still Spider Man. It's still part of the lore. It's not like they're changing. Yeah, the hundred years later. I do think that, like I wasn't as dismayed about like the lack of a Ginzakay present, so the lack of like the through line, the narrative through line carrying through to this game. I feel like that even though this is a brand new game standing on his own, I feel like it stands adequately enough on its own as an anthological sequel. Yep, right, Yeah, but I wonder if they did do Gin, if it would have like made Gin a little bit more of like if obviously they had all that marketing, if if that's true or whatever, they had all that stuff ready to go, would have would it have boosted Gin into the ghost level? Probably mascot godness, you know, because it's just it's just us. It's it's more interfacing for us as fans. Right, we see more of him and we're just like, oh, okay, so he's becoming more of a prominent figure within the sony. Uh you know. Character selection screen kind of thing, right, So yeah, weird move. But maybe the deva the team was just like, well maybe they didn't even think that Gin was like their game was big enough to do that, so they were like, well, we're at liberty to change the game. Maybe who's gonna care? Yeah, yeah, I mean it's history. I think like what they're doing in some ways is smart to the extent because like if you set the precedence of like jumping through historical timelines, like you can do that again, like you can jump to different points because I mean, Japan has pretty long history, so like we can do a lot with that. But what I would say is that in terms of like Gin, in terms of Go to Sushima specifically, I feel like I really only started to connect with jens Kai as a character as like somebody who I was like, Oh, that's my boy, Like in the last five hours of the game, the bulk of the game, I was like, I really don't care about this guy, but like so much of his character development is back into that game, Like I got really interested, especially with the conflict between him and his uncle, and I was. Like, Oh, that would be really cool to explore the fallout of like what happened to him from there. Yeah, right, and you know it's a spoiler, but non spoiler. There's like some easter eggs in Yota that are really cool that you should go find. Daniel and I found a spoiler without a spoiler. Well I didn't. I didn't want to say anything to Daniel about it because I thought it was really special. I stumbled across it, and I thought it was very special. It was very clear what it is when you get to it. Yes, and I was happy. And a couple of episodes ago I remember saying like, I wonder, like if they're going to do that, how they're going to do that? And I found them and I'm glad they did. Yes, of course they had to do that. But yeah, it was really cool. Well I look forward to it. I will say that on that one note regarding the character, you know, not not really connecting with or. Liking the character per se. I was like I loved Atsu from like the beginning for with Yota because I just love how scrappy she was. I love that, And I was just like this is cool because I. As soon as you're like seeing her kind of do these like cool cut scenes where she's like all bloodied at the very beginning, and you're just like, damn, this is cool because you just gave me kill Bill vibes like, uh, kill Bill. So, I don't know, I kind of like a story. I kind of like the story from the first one a little better. I don't know, like the Mungols. I think it's because I think maybe we're too used to these revenge stories. The revenge. Yeah, I mean the story of course, the classic revenge story. Sure. Yeah. I mean I would say it's kind of like it's kind of obviously we see it a lot. You see it a lot. I would say, maybe a bit predictable, but I mean it was good. It was so good. I feel like there's this odd I feel like there's this kind of fan service where they knew because these uh directors in like Japanese film the Yota six, you know what I mean, Like that's such a fucking I don't know what the I don't know who the director is, Nick. You might know maybe the guy who directed like thirteen as Sass and like that kind of stuff, Right, that's. Yeah, there you go, yeah, okay, And he has. And they have a film mode called K Mode in the game, so I just feel like that's kind of what they were playing at and they just wanted to do their own version of it, which I'm cool with. I just don't care as long as I can play and it's fun and like there's action and an excitement. I like that. I like that kind of like I'm reading a manga of like Vagabond or something, you know. To our listener. To give the listener a little backplop here at Ghost of Yote do we tell them even what it is? So let's just make a base and then we can talk. Okay, we kind of been getting into it without giving a little least. So A Ghost of Yote is an open world, first party so Many exclusive title which takes place three hundred years after the events of Ghost of Tushima in the year of our Lord Jinsakai three hundred. I guess right, is that how it works? I don't think. After after gine. The game was developed by Soccer Punch Productions. It is a PlayStation five title and that's it is not for PS four four. Yeah, so this game, this game was built from the ground up for the PS five and Soccer Punch created a whole new custom engine called the on Rio engine on Radio Engine. There was there was a rumor that it was a beefed up engine from Ghost of Sushimia, but no, it is its own custom engine. And let me let me tell you, boys, we did a show on engines. Sorry to derail there, but like we did a show on engines on our show, which fun episode. But like, I really, just just as a quick aside, I really have to say them creating an engine for just like one console must be like every developed dream, because god damn does this run so well. I play on the PS five Pro and holy smokes, what we talked about performance, like, this game delivers on performance in such a great way. So I have to say it's like, you know, shout out to you know, the PC people, and you know, I feel for all the multi platform developers out there, but man, it's just got to be so great being a. Hintingle hint hint Bethesda, Todd Howard, hint hint, God Howard, God Howard. So with this new engine, there was they wanted to enable higher draw distance for those scenery shots oh my god, big scenes right, more advanced lighting including rate tracing, and more sophisticated world streaming off the PS five SSD for loading times and whatnot like that. So holy moly, this game runs. This game goes fast, like the loading in to the fucking game. Oh yes, Oh my god. It's like literally three seconds from your PlayStation screen to playing. It's amazing. I was like, I shut my piece up, I sleep my PS five. I always close my PS five games because I don't want the timer to keep going, you know, like the playtimer does that? Does that happen or is that? Am I just it does if your game is if your game is like open, will probably. Keeps it just if you rest your PlayStation. No, not, if you go back to the home and rest your PlayStation, it doesn't. Yeah, but you're saying if you don't go to start closed game on the game and the menu. Do that you don't have Oh okay, That's what I've been doing. But so I start the game like right away from the start, I can press the button and I'm playing within seconds. So fucking fast. It was so good and compared to all the other games, like even Death Training too was fast. This is faster to get in playing the fast traveling is fast. Oh my god, just it's that right. It's like an instant travel. Yeah, it was so fucking good. Yeah, that is sick. Yeah, the graphics are pretty nice, they're they're pretty, but they're like not the best I've seen obviously, but just the romantic, how romantic the style of you know, yeah, you know the vistas, and it's just so thaves they romanticize effects. It's just so overly romanticized. It's it's it's crazy like that. So yeah, I look at that. Let's talk about the visuals, art direction and in the performance since I know, because I was like, Japan, did they look like this? There's no way Japan looked like this, Like what is this? It's just like. So colorful and just like wow, the wind is blowing, the grass is nice, and I'm. Like, well, in sixteen hundred, no, but I'm maybe in sixteen hundred it look like I just say, there's no way. It looks pollution, pollution, man, the planet we still are maybe don't make that no mo maybe, I. Mean, yeah, it looks like it's very nice. It's just so vibrant and just. Like the sky, the sky, dude, Yeah, the sky was really nice and just like behind everything, it just added that extra layer. Yeah, like they like you said, they didn't really blow me away. It seemed like they looked better in all the trailers in the game showings than the actual gameplay, but like it still looked great. Like, don't get me wrong, the ray traced effects were minimal for sure. On the PS five. Yeah, I don't know about PS five PRO, but like the PS five there wasn't much. They had to even patch that in after the release. For the PS five, I think interesting. I think it's because you're mostly playing outside in the world that the ray tracing isn't really gonna show itself much. Global elimination shadows and grass shadows and things like. You're not in castles where the flames are flickering on the walls, like in Oblivion Remastered, where I was like, I was. Just there's some stunned, there's some it's night day cycle, there's cycle, so you can. I can't tell you that stuff. I had a weird thing speaking of the race tracing, just real quick, but like I turned it on and off and looked at my horse. I chose the white horse for my story? Did we all chose the same horse? I had? I had the great one I had like the great I got the great old one. Same. I did that one. Actually, well, I turned ray tracing on and off and I looked at my horse and with right tracing on, the horse was like. Glowing like the moon. Look at my horse, my horse, and I was like, what the fuck is that? Physics on the horse? I don't know, it was weird, but did you name your horse? The thing about the moon? Maybe that's why. Well, there you go, horse, that's why. But then I turned it off and the and it looked more mute and like normal and just white. Yeah, the darkness. I was like, okay, I think I'm going to leave it off. So I've been playing with raight tracing off. So did I actually was yeah. I would say, you know, playing on the five, but they have so essentially because I wasn't quite sure what to do it, but I played it on like whatever the naming convention is. It's like the pro enhanced mode. So essentially you get your sixty frames and you get your global illumination and path tiss at the same time, which is using the piss or technology. You know, you gotta love it. They They're dumping all that money in there and really knocked it. Out of the park. Supposed to be. As for from it was startlingly startlingly impressive, was what I'll say. It's it was. I would say like in terms of just glowing going around the world, it is very very good. I would say that, like for me, always is like art direction always always always trump's graphics because like you can make if you know what you're doing, you can make almost anything look like somewhat pretty with graphics. But if you don't have like the art direction to really. Like the vision flesh out the world, it. Really doesn't make any it. You know, it doesn't matter. Your game could look anything. And I think it's like a super star comparison. And here's something what I'll say is that, you know, I play Assassin's Creed Shadows right before playing this game, and I'm gonna makes a lot of comparisons to both Assassin's Crew Shadows and Final Fantasy seven Rebirth in terms of my experience as we continue on through this review of the game, and I would say that in terms of like those three games, this game is like far superior in terms of just like the vision, the design, the artistic direction. Like I just think that. It was more thought through and more lived and more realized than I well, assassin. The Creed at the real least. Yeah, man, like cool, Like the cinematography. Let's talk about the art direction, the cinematography, and like just the way they set you into this world, the sceneries, the little events that happened to really bring you into that like beauty of what they've created. For example, when you hop on your horse and you start just gunning it down the fields of the grass blowing in the way, the wide screen bars coming down. As you go, and then do you guys play with the wide screen on? I turn them off. I liked it. I liked it. I liked the idea of like you know, exactly what you were saying earlier, Dan about like it kind of making you feel like you're watching like a Cura Curasaw film. And it's like you're running through those fields and it's it's great. I wish they're like the moments where you go through, like you take your horse through the flowers and he speeds up a little bit, or running next to another pack of horses, and it's just it feels very virun that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then like when you when you're gunning in with your horse and then the birds fly out of the field. Yeah, the bird. The sun hits the water, and it's. Just like these guys bring the camera back behind the horse when you're running through the like flowers. Like that's a really cool. It gave me goosebumps when I was writing my notes about that, just like that experience I had when I first played that. I don't know, like it always happens. It seems to like happened whenever, and I'm just fun. I gotta stop. I gotta take it in, you know, I gotta take some shots and they'll. Think of fifty hours, think of that with this with the Dobey autmost round system. Okay, do you have a double Amos system? Oh yeah, oh yeah, okay, I got one. I got a custom set up. Okay, okay, But like you turn the lights off with the old lead, my room is pitch black, pitch You cannot see anything except for the TV. Well, the TV glow obviously, but like there's no other distractions. It's just the fucking o lead beaming your eyeballs out the knits and then the sounds and they come from all around. And these these Sony games are really good at that at. All of them are pretty pretty prey immersive for sound. But then you hear the wind blowing here, you hear the birds up here, you hear you know, a fox cry over there, and it's around you. It's awesome. It's just so packaged and it's beautiful. They did such a superb, superb job. Yeah. One of my favorites they is looking at Mount Yote, just the distance, especially when the sun hits it in a certain way, that was snow capped, that snow capped peak. Every region I turned my camera to look for the mountain, yeah, every Yeah, I love how it's it's like an anchoring and I mean, they really did a great job making it a. Character in this game. Yea, yeah, yeah, exactly. I stole the words out of your mouth there next No, you got it, same brain. When I climbed that mountain and I was just walking in the snow with the snow prints and the like, leaving the snow prince blind. That was awesome, and the sun just rising above the crest of the mountain just like you can't It's just so good, gorgeous, perfectly done. It was so fit. I was definitely expecting that too. After Yota that at this game had a big or after SUSI men, this games that's some fucking big shoes to film, like they had to outdo themselves with another environment, Like how. Are they going to do that? Because they did in the first game, It's like, how are they going to do it in this And I think that's where mount Yote plays a big party. The mountains are always yeah, every good. They're good for that though, but they're good for making you it feel like a sense of scale maybe, whereas you have a small, small, little village and then you can go on this fucking giant mountain too. You think about the big mountain in Skyrim, you know, climbing that and getting up there for the first time. It in Death Stranding too, there's a giant fucking mountain in the middle of the map that I thought was just scenery in the background, like out of bounds kind of thing. I literally to climb up to the top of it for like the second part of the game. I'm like, oh my god, it is real. Yeah, it was crazy. It's kind of like that. It was just like, yeah, the same, but yeah, what I liked, like the dynamic range the mountain adds to the. Yeah, and while we're on, well, we're on like the mountains. I found with the map, the way the map was designed and where the areas were, they kind of funneled you in with those mountains and how they and how they kind of like put you in the new the new areas. It was like through this mountain pass or through this mountain lake or river or whatever. So fucking good, so good. And then the coast with the little plops of the rocks like tied together. Oh my god. Yeah, it's great. One thing that I will say is that in terms of the improvements in this game, and not only in the map design, but just environmental design in general, I really like that was another kind of like semi big criticism of Tsushima to the extent of the lakes, Like the south was summer, the middle was like spring or fall, and then the north was winter. And I'm just like, Okay, that's not how environments work. But okay, whatever you say. But I do like how like this felt regardless of where you were, Like it just felt very diagetic in terms of the world that you're living in, and like it's realistic that snow is. On the mountain and this is where I'm at or. The because because of where each of these areas were and how different they were, like it made sense like for the environment of design for them to each be very like I can. I can imagine each of those locations in my mind just by picturing you know, the bosses that I was fighting, and of course you know, is this snow, is it burning? Is it this jungle area? Like it's great, It's very well done. Oh yeah for the environments though I had a point here. The character models and faces though, yeah, that's yes. It is a big issue under like the like the enemies and ship and the and the end of her. Like the NBC's during the kind of cut scenes and stuff, I'm like, their faces aren't very like animative, They're not very expressive. Well, let me tell you something about a game called Sassin's creat Shadows, because for me to come off of that to this game, I was like, oh, this is grow Finally we get some actual fine characters in this really. Yeah. The thing it's it's interesting because I feel like this is an industry practice where you know, when you're making a huge triple A title like this, you have to tear your cut scenes, because it costs a lot of money to fucking do the rendering on all of these things, and I feel like Yota does that to an extent here where it's like they have really good they have the you know, the the good mo capping, and they have the good vocal performances in every cut scene, but some of them just look slightly better than others. And it was noticeable here, but not nearly as like starkly contrasted as if you were to play a Ubisoft game. Like who's the big boss man again? What's his name? Yeah? So Psyche. He looked amazing. His model, Yeah, looked amazing. The Yota six, the snake guy, he was disgusting, he looked great. Oh yeah, he's what gave me like those those real like thirteen assassins. Ye, And then you have this character that's almost unrealistic. You're like, would people really do that, like look like that and wear that kind of stuff? But he was feeling care because it's just like dramatic, almost like reminiscent of like Japanese theater. What do you mean you haven't seen a bald guy with a couple of strands of hair, Dan. I don't know. I don't know. I never lived back then. I was man, that guy had sick flow for the time. But yeah, like the enemy is very like PS three graphic looking like all the enemies. You gotta get it credit in that. I don't know. I'm okay. She was Okay, I found I found whenever she was when you like go back to her being a kid. I found the graphics and the modeling, and that was better, Like the modeling on the faces and the bodies were it could have been a thing. I thought her. I thought her rig as a child was really really awful. And we're going to talk about this later, but why the fuck, Why the fuck did Sucker Punch not cast a child to play the child? And why did they just pitch Rika She's voice like to a higher octave, like it just sounds it just sounds so bad to me. I'm sorry. And you were playing in Japanese Japanese. I was playing in English. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. We played. I didn't realize was that men of English. The game was written by fucking Americans. Okay, I played in English? That this came from from soft Yeah, sure, I'll play in Japanese, but come on, really. It's the japan The Japan's the Japanese. I flopped it for a little while. But I just I I was enjoying the English cast enough, and I had just played the whole way through its ascrete shadows in Japanese because that was the only tolerable way to play that game. And so it was one of those. Where I was just like, Okay, well we'll enjoy this, and I think that that that will be my take on it. Okay, so I interesting, we got a new try take. We got both takes at least here. That's good. I tried the Japanese. I was like the Jota six, how they sounded in Japanese was just like, I bet it was good. Awesome, was good? Oh yeah yeah the voice acting Inanese, especially the bad guys like this, they really delivered that. Yeah, like incredibly. I was like, oh yeah, so sick her Atsu the Japanese she was Okay. I wasn't as blown away. She has a beautiful voice in Japanese, but like so does the snake. He was in he was in the game for like five minutes. What's the what's the what's the brother, there's Dragon and Spider was good to Yeah, Spider was good in Japanese, but the Big Boss Man, his voice actor was like, by far my favorite in the game. In Japanese. He was fucking sick. How about the singing the guy the guy who sang? Do you like his singing? Oh god, no, no. No, you guys tell me you don't enjoy traditional, no theater singing, Like like I. Had to be authentic. I was like, I don't think I've heard this before, but there's there's definitely some sort of historically informed decision happening. And that's what I was thinking, Like, is this what they used to call sign? Yeah? Yeah, but I liked it. They just hired some guy who can only sing one note. They're like the best we could get at him. Okay, we were talking about the as a child. Yeah, yeah, the differences between So. Just for a listener's context, like there is a section of the game where you know, you make it to the main character, Atsu's like her homestead was from when she was a child, and the game will prompt you to hit the center touch pad in order to transition between the present day and then in the past when she was a child, because she's like reliving her memories as to you know, what happened. Back then, right. It kind of reminded me of little because you can only do in one spot. Not reminded me. But when we first heard this was happening, we I automatically compared it to Breath of the Wild in my head, saying, Oh, that's like Breath of the Wild, where you see that's a little memory. Spots can be like like different parts on the map where where you get a memory, but it's only at her, her homestead, so it's not like these memories are scattered everywhere. It's kind of. There's one other spot where you. Can Yeah, there's like there's a few like like staple Staple areas that really meant a lot to her. There's yeah, there's a spot where you flip over, like at the garden in the mountain. The garden. Oh there's a garden. There's the game. There's like a mini game with the bow, and then I. Think there's instead Yeah, but. Yeah, Like it wasn't as prominent of a of a part of the game as I thought it would be originally, because I thought it was going to be like a bigger because you don't. There's not really that much of it in the game. Same. Yeah, it was a pretty good like I didn't really care about going to do the the memories whenever it said I had a memory, like okay whatever. But yeah there, Yeah I did them. I did them all. Ye I did them all. Anyway, let's kind of bring it back a bit. Okay, we're going to talk about the story. Let's talk about the story. Just give a little history of what's going on here. So the Also Viot is set in sixteen oh three at So, Japan, where the protagonist ats who seeks revenge against the Ota six, a group of renegade samurai. I guess they would they be called uh well, technically they're not ronan. Well, I mean it's it's really debatable because sayto is trying to establish a new plan, but because. It's not under called themselves. Yeah. Well, I mean, like the shogunate had like actual laws and like procedures in order like what you would need to do to establish the clan. He was doing this all illegally, so they're for all better purposes, they're pretty fucking rogue. Yeah, yeah, he just has a lot of money. Yes, a group of renegade Samurai who murdered her family sixteen years prior. Her quest for vengeance will lead her across this rugged northern Japanese landscape, where she will discover allies, confront the outlaws and covered, and uncover a deeper conspiracy beyond just personal revenge. She is hell bent on this revenge. Yeah, for sure, like really undigging her unrelent indixtorable, digging her. Heels in here, and at every point I could get, I would reinforce. Yeah. Oh yes, I would not move, since that's what that's the kind of person I took her for. And I wanted to drive that across far across the game as I could before they started, kind of maybe forcing me into a different mindset. But I really wait. Wait, hold on, hold on, revenge is bad, Nate, What what do you mean? No, I have blood lust. She was like, no matter what, it was, always about getting that revenge, no matter no matter what what it took to get that revenge, She's gonna do what that is. She feels like that's her purpose right where. That reminds me, you know what, It reminds me of Secario. If you've ever seen that movie with. Oh dude was strong. He was strong. Just so, yes, this is so hell bent on revenge that they kind of lose themselves, and you wonder like what kind of to like Yeah, as a viewer, Yeah, and I think they did well. I think they did a pretty good job. While you're like, okay. Yes, but so I think I feel she like this is where I said it was kind of. Predictable, where she's all, she's realizing. That she's kind of but a lot of things happen that kind of ease her off of it. Maybe perhaps depending on how you talk to people. I guess no, just like the things that happened, I don't know. I guess it's kind of a spoiler because I didn't see it coming. But oh yeah, yeah, I don't know. Definitely spoiler. Yeah, so like halfway through the game or so, when you meet you meet someone and I'm like, oh, no, fucking way I did. I was like, I was like, oh, that was like that was an O ship moment. Yes, yeah, there's a no ship moment, but I feel like definitely grapples with it because of that. As an obstacle, I read an article that described her as like stubborning, like very stubborn in terms of a little frustratingly, so as like a viewer, you're like, god, damn man, like just relent a little bit. Yeah, yeah, like because like it gives you, it gives her a bit of a no matter what, she kind of just bulldozes something, you know, and you're just like. Well, you feel it able to give her a little relief from her revenge. Yeah, but but it just kind of didn't. But I feel like it's kind of she's. Been stewing for sixteen years waiting to like unleash this fucking ghost in her just to kill these motherfuckers. Nothing's nothing's going to get in her way. Yeah, yeah, I would say that, you know, for this game genuinely, you know, Withksu Tsushima, I thought like one of the weakest points of that game was the narrative, right, like, you know what what Jensa Kai was doing, Like it very much like a by the numbers Japanese story of him, you know, being Batman, but then being conflicted about being Batman, right like the whole questions about you know, what does for the sake of you know, for the sake of accomplishing my goals? Right Yeah, yeah, I think I've just been overly exposed to this media, which maybe a mean problem maybe yeah. But and the thing is is that sure, yeah, I mean I've watched a lot of Japanese cinema too. I mean it's one of my favorite things about you know, Japan just in general. I mean, I just I love this setting. I love like the stories that they tell. I think that for this one, it just was like it aired on the side of just being so predictable to the extent where I was like, Okay, so this is what we're doing today. Yes, you otey to the extent. And that's the thing is that, like this is a good sandwich, Like this is not a this is not a bad sandwich by any means, Like when we compare it to you know, like its counterparts in the triple A industry today, like this is you know, very well done. The problem that I have is that, you know, what I took away from this game is that when you know, when you go into your like freshman year English class and you get an assignment from the professor and they're like, okay, like tell a story, but you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You can tell the same story but just put your own flavor on it. It really felt like the creative director. And the writing directors in the room were just like they were telling the people to do that instead of and that's the thing is that, like, that's cool if you want to do that. And I think that story was serviceable to an extent, but I don't expect serviceable from a Sony first party game. They have built this expectation in me from the beginning of the PlayStation four era that they're giving me cinema level game that are gonna make it feel like I'm experiencing a narrative that I've never experienced before, and they've delivered on that quite a few times, and I think that for a Ghost of Yota, they really did fail to like deliver that expectation. And that's like Sony being zero for two for between God of Wo eighteen twenty eighteen and got War. Ragnarok and then now Sushima and Yota. Like I feel like we have we have this life running track record of sequels that are like, yeah, they're good, and they're just good enough for me to be like, Okay, this is fun, but like where is the innovation, Where is like the thing that's gonna make me really really want to sit down and think about what I've done, like when I finished playing Signalis or when I finished playing you know, Disco Elysium. These kind of like ten pole level games. These are studios that have the access and they have the resources to get people who can tell amazing stories like that. And it's not like the writer's room stays the same from game to game, So like I'm just I'm kind of sitting here questioning, like why is good enough good enough for me? And I think that's largely a taste thing. Like if this is your first time experiencing like a Japanese cinema level like Revenge Tail, I think this is a great entry point for you, but it's not really pushing it forward in terms of narrative storytelling. Yeah, it's definitely been told. I found like they did that. They wrote this story and then they just put so much beautiful paint on it that kind of drove you through it. They made it immersive enough, the world immersive enough. I feel that you just kind of wanted to play it, like it just wanted to play more. Yeah. Yeah, the combat is good, it's challenging, it's the world is immersive, like there's stuff that you can explore and find. Like I just wanted to play it. I just wanted to keep playing. But like in terms of the story, I didn't really care about like so much. As what's gonna happen next? Oh my god, it's just like, hey, let's fucking go. We're going to go to the next part in the map and check. It out and beat the ship out where to kill some frigging Ronan's. Yeah, that's it. Speaking of that. There's no ass on Ronan's. That's just Roans. I'm going find and I'm going kidding here. Like it's not like an Uncharted four, like you know where I wanted to know what happened and yeah, that's. Played force into spoilers. What really, it's on my list. I am happy to three, and then four is up. Two. Two was my favorite favorite, too great. Two is amazing. And then when I played four, I was like the bot I take at the end of two is such dog ship. Yeah remember that. I remember I never played to I could not put that controller. Yeah, I was remember that too. Play Like I was just glued to that guy. That's not one of those put it down. I lighted. Yeah, that's what for was like for me. That's what four was like for me. I played four, then I played four, and I was like, I didn't think that they could top two. Yeah, I didn't they could. You talk about like not being able to put the controller down? Date, and when we talk about Yota and. How the gameplay systems kind of like link into me experiencing the story for all of my complaints, and I probably will come out being the most negative of the four of us on the show, but like, for all. My complaints, I couldn't stop playing this game. I thought about. Playing this game when I was at work, Like I wanted to actively be playing this game when I wasn't, which is not something I can say for a lot of other games. And I think that has to do with how perfectly metered this, Like they delivered all of these like immersive level events inside of Yota alongside of like, you know, this pretty pretty decent story, and the story wasn't fond, like. It was fun to play. Yeah. Yeah, So while you say that let's go into gameplay and combat, the core gameplay loop was just like you're going here, You're annihilating a village of guys right absolutely, chopping them to bits, and then you either get a new ally and then you go here you do that and then get a new weapon, go a new weapon, then you go master that weapon with some other guy, and then some other quests go up the map, do it again in this little spot. And like the gameplay. I rarely play this game stealthy like I tried not to because I don't really like to. But they they definitely made you do. It takes less time to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because the fighting takes time. Yes, because it's a little. Bit more challenging than what I was used to in a lot more challenging and just a little fighting the firm. Yeah, a lot more challenging. I would you play? I think, I think, and me and Nick just we just play a little bit a bit harder games like that is true, like souls like games. You know, I didn't think the time timing wasn't very good in this. I know it's not. I love horrible, I love, I can't get it. Timing was great. I don't know. I mean I thought it was like take take the duel on top of the mountain. Yeah, did you guys fight? But I know that it's part of I put the suit on that that that, like the mercenary, was the mercenary, Yeah, that heals you if you do perfect perries. Ya YadA, YadA, YadA, that one. Yes, he or did you do the one that staggers him when you're perfect perry? What's the mercenary do? So the mercenary basically like the mercenary outfit, the one that you get from hunting all of the bounties is the one that will allow you to do a perfect perry and then you do three follow up slashes. Yeah, that's the bounty master set is different. I wore has like a sake benefits. I wore that to beat Buddy on the MAT's tough, and it was fucking crazy. It was so good. I gave up like an hour. I'm like, gave up, gave up. John said you plasy difficulty and then I, oh, okay, because you can't skip the quest. If you leave, it will not give you the reward. So you can't leave, like if you you also can't load before it unless you made a specific save. Well there's a right and so you could you can quit. And I did that at one point just because of time and I had, like because he was kicking my ship in for a little bit and I was like, Okay, I need to go. Eat lunch, and uh, you know I did, and I came back. I tried to load. I couldn't. I didn't have I didn't have a save file before it like all my because I just used auto save and they were all saved over. I would save it like I didn't save, so it wouldn't let me leave because it said like load from last checkpoint, which at the beginning of the fight. So I'm like fuck, and it's like if you quit now, you will abandon the quest and you won't get the reward river. I'm like, god damn it. They say that fight on that mountain incredible. It was absolutely incredible. Also, Stars Go Away. The phases of the fight work as you're as you're going forward. And the snowstorm comes. Oh man. That was like one of the levels like this is the treatment that just that I think that Sucker Punch this is where the real sauce of Sucker Punch comes in, is that it's that level that attention to detail when you're in these intense, fierce combat moments and like the world is functioning around you in this very lib state. It's like you don't get that in many other games. It's like, what's so unique to them, especially in to fight like this. Yeah, like whenever I whenever you kill them and you're just standing there on the mountain and it's the stars are out and then you can see like the Milky Way Streak. Sometimes Yeah, you're just like it's like this fight finishes and you're just this fucking being on the top of the world and just so epic. It was so fucking epic because like he's so he's so hard, and when you beat him and it shows you that like scene, that scenery, and you're just like, oh, it just hits home so hard. It was so fucking sick. That was probably my one of my favorite I call him a boss. I guess like a side boss. It was my favorite fight. Yeah, it's an optional fight, but it's incredible. It's so well worth it. Yeah yeah, so so so you guys did nathanely You didn't do stealth. I do a little bit of both. The only stealth when they made me stealth. I always still man, it's so fast, That's why it takes you so long to beat the game pan well everything. I like doing both. I like taking my time stealth thing, but I also like to just sometimes do standoff. I'm like, fuck these guys. Never I'm just saying I never did a standard stand ever. Interesting, I never did it. I use everything, man, I try to use everything. I'm sorry. Against Yeah, the standoffs. When you unlock the wolf perk that has stand off with you, I did. I unlocked all the skills. I was just like, I don't want to stand off on to assassinate some of you guys. At the same time, I. Stand off and kill like four guys at the one four guys coming up, slice and then the. Arm was kind of a nice addition to the gameplay. I like that there's this kind of furry companion that is mysterious that you don't quite have all the time. Like it's not like Fable two here where this dog is just falling you around all the time. It's like when you hear her howl, you're like, oh, she's near. I might have a chance to summon her with if I throw a sake bottle at somebody, which is also a cool way to do it. Like there's these little triggers for her, which is really cool. Depending on your relationship with the wolves, would you guys call this open world even though there's like sections of the map that you that you can't there's like a lot of mountainous regions, there's clear borders in each section that I would almost say it's like semi linear. It's not like open open where you can't go every single place kind of thing. So for you, yes, so the progression is absolutely linear, but like just for the sake of the fact is that once you finally do make it to the last zone and you can fast travel anywhere. That's really why I would call it open world because they're they're fast travel like points are so generous where you can go anywhere you want to. You've been there right, different different and what do you call exploration little facets though like the first game, you could like target things like you know, pillars of what they called pillars of something where you can go find sword kits in the first game and guy, do there, whereas in this game you just got to like explore an uncover the map and find these things and use your new edition, which is the scope, which you can tag things on and they'll show up on the map as a little sort of sketch use that like twice. That's what I did, really, yeah, yeah, oh yeah. Ever since Jonathan pointed out, I was like, yeah, maybe I'll scan tho. I did that. I would go on the like highest point that I could in the new area and just look around in it, and it would put everything on my map so that I could go and go to everything. I like that. I mean I definitely did that, you know, on the road to the Platinum whenever I was like finding stuff kind of the second half of the game, I will admit that I was using it just a little bit more. And that's the thing, is that what's so cool about the world design and the exploration of this game is that this the way that they have the encounters like kind of partitioned in terms of when the player is supposed to experience them, is just really so masterfully done. Because my like typical thing is I would find the end first, and then I would collect all the bounties that I could, and then I would just hunt those bounties immediately after. And on the way to doing that, I would unlock the wolfed In, I would unlock the fox Nest, I would get a thing to uh uh, like the hot springs, to go sit in the hot springs, And so it was like so organic to the point where it was like I'm unlocking all of these things on the way by the time, and this is something that's so funny. It's like so many people were complaining about this online, about the bird, you know, coming across them when they're trying to do a thing, and it's like a ADHD gameplay, right. Yeah, I love that, but oh I just got swept away again exactly. But that's the thing is that you know when you kind of take a minute to pull yourself out of it and you just like just take a quick second and just like maybe don't pull up your map and just live in the world for a little bit. I feel like it's just so organically done and really well done that I love that aspect. Yeah. I did a lot of side stuff in this one, way more than I did in the first one. Like I said before, I kind of just golden passed it. But like, the bounties were fun. They have they also had kind of cool little side quests with some of the boundary Oh yeah, like most of the had really cool stories attached yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, and they kind of brought you to it like a hideout or something. Some of them that you had to clear the full hideout to get the bounty, which is cool. Yeah, it wasn't just like go here, kill this guy. It was like, oh, there's a story wrapped in in this. Yeah. I like that. The Undying Guy, the White Armor was. It's the coolest. There's a couple I have on my list right now. Yeah, the story of it was fucking cool too, Like period, A lot of these bounties yield like armor rewards. Would you say that the armor because I still have a few to go, would you guys say that some of them are like worth getting or the stats kind of like man, because I like the armor for the stats and the builds. Also, you know, the aesthetics are cool too, like the look of them. But but I like whenever an armor is really used. I used the Undying one mostly well, I think it was one of those, one of my first, and I used that until I got the Consuming one. Yeah, so cool with the claws at the end. Really like but did you guys get the kimono? Yeah, the red the red story, that story was very cool. Yeah, and that guy had cool stories too. The little side guy you got all. The gear from. It was gear sets you got from him, right, Yeah, so I like that guy. He was cool, The singing guy, the guy who was saying yeah, So definitely explore. You're rewarded for exploring this. And one thing one thing that I will say, sorry to cut you off really quickly in terms of your question Dan about like whether or not the armor sets are worth it, It's all dependent. In my opinion, every single armor set is functional. And it's one of my complaints and critiques of the game is that, like this game kind of pretended that you could make builds, and I found most of the charms useless. I found like most of the abilities are the primary core these that you're unlocking when you go to the shrines and you do the normal progression through the game, get. You get everyone anyway. You get everyone anyway. And it's like, yeah, sure, maybe, like like we said, like if you're doing the side content, you need the Master the Bounty Master armor to fight talking talking Meats or whatever his name is, Like sure those those at that point is when it starts mattering. But like, largely you can get through this game in every single like armor set right, and the stealth encounters don't matter, the combat doesn't matter, and. It just it was a little silly to me that that's called balance. It's not though, it's it's not balance, and that's it wouldn't call that balance in in a PvP game. But that's the thing is that, like, you know, I expect, like if I really want to play a stealth character, I expect to be like super like like a glass like a glass tank. Like I expect to be like, you know, one or two shot, but like be able to like really really get into my bag of role playing. I am a ninja in this case, right, And and that's one thing that Assassin's Creed actually did quite well. I would say comparing these two games, Assassin's Creed had the kind of the stealth gameplay and the stealth kind of load outs and the sets that you could pull off in that it's probably best in class. There's probably not many games out there that does it better than Assassin's Cred Shadows, But like in this one, it was like it was very much more kind of like they're they're honing you in to just like do certain things and you get buffs and d buffs in certain cases that if you're good, builds matter specific. Like I like skill trees where you can't have everything. Yeah you know what I mean. Yeah, like cyber you got a benefit of being a being. Then that's when you can make an actual build. Like that's a build and I like doing that. I like looking at the skill tree and planning, Oh what am I going to do? I'm doing it in our graders right now. It's got a big skill tree. You can't have everything. It's got a maximum level you know, skill tree. Like in World of Corecraft. Remember we will remember wow builds like what's the spec? What speck do you build? It's like, oh, you got to use this one instead of this one, and you have a treat. I love that. I love building. It's like deck building, right, it's kind of like deck building. Yeah, by the time you're in, by the time you're end of Yota, you've got everything unlocked. You're just a fucking wizard. Yeah exactly. You can't. Yeah, you can't puck it up. How did you guys? How do you feel about the stances not not stances in that Jinseachai kind of like the weapon wheels. Did you find them. Effective against the weapons they were supposed to be effective. Switching I play fire emblems, so this was old Haad to me, guys. I found switching the weapons a cumbersome. Hundred percent one hundred percent agree, Like, why am I pressing R two and I'm pressing the triangle? Does it not immediately just switch in the middle of a fight. There were so many times that I got killed because it's like I literally pulled out the weapon to Paris of the first game. It was I said this about the first game whenever I played it, and it's just like on you guys, when it works. When it works, it's nice. Yeah, but they're at like a seventy thirty fail rate in terms of it working and not working. Just enough for me to be like, all right, what do you do? Here's what it is. It slows down time a little bit when you open the menu, but it doesn't It shouldn't be stopping time, you know what I mean. Yeah, they want to keep that flow happening, I think, is what they but. Like it's so awkward to do, like because you're in the middle of fighting and things are going crazy and you want to switch, like you're throwing item because you're out of amma or something. It's just like, okay, uh, how do I do that again? I have it stop fucking time please, so I can look at this not intuitive menu that you've created, like stop time, so I can choose, because it was I. Really didn't like that and myself. Let me tell you, dear listener, it's not a Johno problem. It's not a like, it's not a controller input problem because I'm you know, I'm edging it up. Boys, I have the dual sense edge and I and push that thing all the way to the all the way to the maximum where it's just like a little click on the trigger point. So it's like and even then it's like, why why is the so cover s so? Switching between weapons? Yeah, it's not easy, like mechanic. It was the core mechanic of the fighting where you have to switch to to fight whatever they're they're coming with. And when there's ten fucking something you mean to do eat different weapons, you have to do it fast and they all attack it once nobody waits like the Mongols did. Yeah, so yeah, they just this one again. My biggest it has the same problem with the first one switching between the stances, switching between the freaking throwing items. It was the same weird R two fucking R one D pad like I don't want to take my thumbs off of those joysticks, you know what I mean? And pressing triangle and pressing art to triangle L two D pad, like why am I taking these off of the freaking sticks? You should not be doing that. It's counterintuitive to how the games should be played because you have to move your character, you have to move the camera. These things, especially the camera say on the sticks, and when you're in the middle of a fight and you've got to take them off and do all this other crap. It's not intuitive. Well, you can also, but you can also if I play Devil's Advocate, you can also tailor how like a system that you have in combat to help you do that, Like you could throw a kuoni and then you have a time you have a sector, you know, you know, you can stagger guys with whatever, switch. Switch to it. Yeah yeah, yeah, but at least you're doing that boa whenever you have a moment and and you're switching to your weapon after you've given yourself an in an opening kind of thing, so there are ways to like, I don't have as big an issue with it as you guys clearly do. I was fine in the first game. I'm fining this sometimes I feel like I don't know what I got to your point, got to the. Point where I didn't even switch weapons anymore and I just used I just used dual catanas like the rest of the half rest of the game, and it was fucking awesome. See that would have taken me to I changed enemies, would be changed to the correct weapon against every enemy type every single time to this game. And I would say that, like we talk about like the just the the action of switching in the middle of combat, and a lot of people like I feel like this game's enemy encounters, especially stealth encounters, really rewards you for preparation in terms of, okay, am I going to use the short o or the long bo? Am I going to use the kun? I? Did I specon? Like? Did I put on did I put on my assassins? Did I put on like the red kimono outfit or the kiitsane outfit in order to help me? Like I feel like those But it's also that is a level of game breaking immersion that is conflicting with what they're asking of you as the player. When you're going through it's like, you know, like am i am i playing as Atsu? Or am I Nick? Just like going through this game and playing a video game, and that's that's right, kind of where you kind of get me with cognitivesess. And this goes back to the armor sets again, and it's like Atsu goes through this really cool quest collects the Undying Samurai armor, and where's what, in my opinion, arguably the coolest armor set in the game. But why is the coolest armor set in the game Samurai armor? But Otsu is a mercenary, yeah, and she's not a Samurai, you know what I mean. So it's like just enough where it's like they thought this through, but like, did they really think this through to the very end of that path of logic where it's like I don't don't want to role play a Samurai. This's like a huge narrative part of this game is how Atsu is differentiating herself against her Samurai. Counterpe thought I thought exactly this. I was like, why am I dressed as the same Yeah? So it's like there's that, but like in conress a samurai with gin like I would dress. I was in the Roan, like, oh, the Ronan outfit. This gin is so cool, like the the Ninja armor that you get later in the game. It's it's incredible. But yeah, I don't know. Back to the combat, I don't know if what they could have done. There were so many different things to switch to and stuff like, I don't know. I think they gave us too many weapons. There's a lot to choose. Yeah, there's a bit like options. I like options, but I end up forgetting a lot about stuff like the blind bomb. I fucking barely. Oh yeah, yes, when I went solo weapon. When I went solo weapon, because switching the weapon I didn't like, but switching to the throwables was okay. So I would just stack so many throwbles that that's how I would get around the counter weapon is I would stun them in a certain way that I would kill them fast enough that they wouldn't they wouldn't get back to their stance. Because then I mastered. I mastered the Dual Contana and the Dual Contaanna Master skill is fucking op because it's like a ten second combo that just annihilates anybody's aw. So like you chuck a couple of kun ie, the guys staggered, and you just do that combo and I would just I had so much stamina, Like I got so much that it wouldn't even matter. And then folk what do they call it? Spirit? Yeah, they would just refail with whatever perks I had, Like I never had to change my weapon. I would just Kuoni in the face, slice them up next. Yeah, tornado slicing next. I would see like when we talk about like clearing ay encampments, kind of like what JOHNA was saying earlier isoroking back to that, Like I aired on the side kind of maybe towards the midpoint of this game, being like I'm going to approach most of like the enemy occupied homesteads from a stealth perspective, because as soon as I unlocked the it's the Cagousi hora basically the chain the chain cycle. Once I unlocked the assassination option for that follows up with a Kuoni throw to automatically kindle two enemies at once. I was just like I was just clearing out encampments that way we talk about just like yeah, speed and efficiency, getting through it unlocked the shrine onto the next one, and. I felt like stealth ranged stealth kill yeah and yeah, which is nice. It's a lot different. And then and then it was like I can't remember which armor set it was, but it is that range so you can just be super far back and it's like as long as. The enemy that I was like doubled up. That was the kimono one. Yeah, yeah, the right kamana. And then the assassinate too. You can assassinate up to three guys, just dad. The chain assassination. The chain assassination. But that's what I was talking about later on. They really make you like they're gonna give an They're gonna give you a base of four hundred guys. Yeah, okay, obviously they're gonna steal through that, like obviously I try. Yeah, I do it to thin the herd. I do it to thin the herd. Yeah. Every time you talk about though, it's sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, Dan, but like, no, no, that's a difference between Yote's own Rio mode and then Tushima's I can't remember what they called the ghost mode. I guess I can't remember, but like. It was pretty sick really cool. I love like the theatricality of it all. She's like walking in there, they're scrambling back. It kind of reminded me of the Last of Us Part two where they're like begging on their knees for their life until you like you know, slamming axe into their skull and it's great. So I thought that was really well done, especially when you make it because I don't know if you're quite there ye, and like you make it to a point where you really start walking a tree for. That mode, and like that scene was like it was it wasn't even like a boss fighter in battle. It was just like a fucking the blood that was that was a battle. That was a battle, And I thought that it didn't seem like, yeah, well, what was cool. About that is that you know we talk about like Takahasha me Kas like Work thirteen as Athens all of that. It's all about the blood and the mud and like the spray of everything. It's like you're just watching basically the corners corna come out and like really they leaned into that in that one scene and I was like, okay, like this is what I can get behind, Like this. Overtly theatricality of this moment. I was like, let us lean into that, and I thought that get to that. Oh my god, it's so sick. I'm working on it. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to spoil it for you. No, no, no, it's okay. I was gonna say, how do you guys? Do you feel like the encounters are fresh or repetitive? Same as the last game? Like, you know, you got the different sized enemies, that bigger weapon against weapon instead of a dance, right exactly. I hated using the Adacci. I fucking hated it. Yeah, the great Sword, yeah, I just yeah. I was like, this thing is so slow and it barely even does any damage to the big guys too, so like, oh, what do you mean I to know they were done? Yeah, I don't have trouble with that. What I do hate people are techy damage. Yeah yeah, but then you have skills that reduce that damage, at least in the Odacci tree, because they knew that was going to happen. I just didn't like feel a bit. The ad is the least the weapon that I least put anything. I always have it on my back. It's fucking skills like I've never using this. Yeah, I did like the look of it, obviously, it looks fucking sick, and I love the sort. Of animations of her taking it out and flipping the blood off the blade. Yeah. Now, I saw I saw a short about Assassin's Creed yea, and that comparing that the sheathing of that. Did you notice in Assassin's Creed if it was bad or not? Like, did you? I didn't really care enough an Assassin's Creed, like and realistically in Assassin's Creed, the like the way that the animations play out, like are amateurs enough for me to like really just. Be like okay, like this doesn't this doesn't really like move the needle for me. But it it wasn't on you're talking about the one where it was like the Japanese woman showing how an actual dashi would need to be sheathed on the back and. How she No, I was just like do it. No, it's just a comparison of the Atsu doing it, and then a comparison of Assassin's Creed, like her putting her sword away. It's like going just like oh yeah, yeah, no, you see you see those like comparisons all the time. I would say that like in Assassin's Creed specifically, because of course in that game they had the dual protagonist situation, so you're either playing as like the nowway the assassin type or Yaske, who's like the big brawling samurai type. And yeah, I go, we go into it on the show, so you know, just listen. But like the thing is is that I think for this one, all of those minor animation details are really really well done and are I think, like you know, just like the beauty and we talked about like the customization of the scabbards for each of the weapons and all of the different the different variations that we do that I thought it was really fun, really really fun to kind of like figure that out and do. And it's like the the animations because this is the kind of that flare again, those small details of when the different things that she does to wipe the blood off, whether it like flicks the bloke or she does. There's no like clipping through. It is like perfect. I was like, that is really cool. Every time you do it. If you take it out and you put it away, you swipe to put swipe on the on the pad, Yeah, to put away your weapon she does it every time. Yeah, and if there's blood on it, she'll whip it away and then put it away. Yeah, it's so sick. The one thing that I will say about like the weapons, as we you know, continue to talk about like the gameplay design. I felt like the quests that were given to unlock each of the weapons were very like video gamey by the numbers. Here's the master, go talk to the mask or don't go do the master quest, and it's like, oh, the Master's Quest. It's a tutorial on how to use the weapon, and I'm like, the one exception that I will make for it is kind of in the beginning of the game when they teach you how to use the dual Katana mode and going up the mountain to find the dual Katana Master. It was very cool because it was like literally a nineteen eighty montage. Yeah, learning times right, but it's the first one, so you're like, oh, this is pretty cool, and then it's like, oh, I have to do that every single time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we should probably move on to mechanics and systems we have next. We did talk a little bit about leveling and skill trees. Now I had this concern that skill trees. You was like, well maybe you can't. Maybe I can't do everything or unlock everything, but I think it's clear now that you can. So you know, people listening, you don't have to worry about doing a specific build in a game like you know, Cyberpunk or whatever where you're kind of you've got to be picky and choosy. You could just unlock whatever the. Fuck you want. Yeah, play depends on but you get to a point where it's like, okay, well I'm done the build. I'm done the build that I wanted, So I'll just fill out the rest of the skill tree instead of like going a little deeper into one or the other and just get good at pairing. You don't really need much other than that. Yeah, yeah, you don't, right. We talked about fast travel a little bit, which I want to talk about something I think it's I think it fits in here. The horse. Okay, the system. The horse system in this game is perfection camping, getting on the horse, calling the horse, getting on the horse. You're facing one way, the horse comes to your side, You get on it. It doesn't fucking run away. You're not spinning your camera around looking for this fucking horse. I don't know how many games I have to, like fight. We said that we praised the first one for that as well. I think they did a little bit more finesse in this one. The horse in Tushima was not perfect. This one I did. If you go back and watch my episode where or our episode where I was telling about me playing it and finishing it, that is one of the things that I said was that I noticed that was really good because for the exact same things you're saying right now, you don't have to fucking okay, where's my damn horse? Literally you call it and you wait like half a second, you don't even have to look, and you press art right there. It was. It was I said the same stuff. About them, and when I'm going through a forest, you're not ramming in flying off my horse, you know, like there's like an Audi pilot where you get in your treat and he's like Thatch goes around with thank you. Is that so fucking hard? Yeah? Does Henry have that problem where you're going through Is it a little too realist? Again, Henry? Yes, I can't stand the horses in the Kingdom fucking started on it. It's a little too realistic. Listen, here's my thing. You know, the Horse and Assassin's creed was absolute fucking dog ship and there are entire mission structures designed around being on that fucking horse. And it's like not only you get off the horse in a combat scenario and you fight and you have to wait five minutes for it to recall to come back to you. That's the exacta. It's still it's noticeably and annoyingly long compared. To this sty Okay, yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking. Yeah, No, they definitely made it good in these games. It was that was definitely a point. Okay. I have yet to find out if you can get supplies from your horse saddle in this game? Is that a thing? Can you guys confirm this? It's okay, I really missed that. Ye, I mean, like you you do? You mean supplies like kunai and that sort of thing. All those little things throwaballs arrows. Remember you can unlock a campus when you can get on, Yeah, because you can't, they placed it. People will come to you. But like you can also just do like the camp fast travel to the end. I'm gonna be honest with you, man, like yeah, nine times out of ten. I didn't have any issues with like inventory items because it was just a ludathon. When I was going to enemy camps. If I needed to refill, I was just murder somebody. Yeah, take their fucking ship. Yeah, did you guys, whenever you needed an upgrade, did you tell the guy to come to your camp or did you just fast travel to the fucking in he's at fast travel. I never never really care unless I was bad down on health or something or spirit. I needed some spirit, Like if I needed spirit before getting into a fight. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But did you ever once maybe you did it once start the actual fire and cook the actual fish after once skip skip. No, I did it. I did it honestly every time until they like stopped making me do it. At a certain point, they like stopped making me do. It, and I was like, oh, I'm not going to miss that's like enjoying. That's a weird meating. I know it was therapeutic. I wish they would have given you something for cooking it, like taking the ten seconds to cook it. Give me like a plus two on something, you. Know, that would be cool. That would be cool. Yeah, Oh like yeah, okay, I see what you mean. Like if you actually goistic, yeah, actually go through time and give me a little. Give me a little extra. They would give you a buff by just eating the mushroom, right, yeah, right, if you like the mushroom, if you cook the mushroom, even if you cook the mushroom better, like put a little bit of spice in the mechanic, you. Know, twenty five percent melee boost or whatever. Yeah, like in Henry, when you do it right, you get a little boost, you get it a better potion, yeah, or more potion or whatever. Yeah, you get me. Uh. We have a question here that says, how intuitive is it for returning fans of ghosts? But definitely you're not going to have a time. Like it's a little different with small alterations and variations of the same kind of system, but I think pretty much. Would you guys. Agree that most people who come back are gonna have a decent time? I will say I said it before. On that note, I find it more challenging. The combat just seems faster paced. The enemies are much faster their animations, Like they get to you a lot quicker, and I'm like, oh, fuck, like you just and you lose half of your health from one hit. They definitely do more damage. And and on that note, they also increase the health boost when you go to h H Hot Spring. The increase is so much bigger. In Sushima, it was like a fucking little splinter in this game, it's like yeah, and I'm like, whoa, and you get this they know you need it. Yeah, it's funny. I watched it. I watched a video of Erica Yishiu whenever they because that's the thing is for listeners who don't know yet. Like Rika is the main uh English voice actor for Atsu in the game, and they also modeled Atsu's face off of her, so she is the face of this game, and they were saying that she was. She had a question when she was cast to do a game. She was like, am I going to do the hot Spring scene? And she went in there and they were like they basically like mo capped it and she performed it and everything and like once the kind of animators came back and they were like like, is this okay? Do you like it? She was like, the ass is good, but you could also if you want to, you can make it huge, can make it really really funny. They didn't. They largely didn't do it, but she was like, she was like, you know, you can make it huge. Let's get a little more cake. Come, you can put a little a little more junken net trump it goes to thik Shima. You know, we we did talk about visuals, I mean, our direction performance. It's all very obvious how massive fol it is. I think you know, the weather effects and I love when it rains because it's so much rarer in this game than it was in Sushima. Was like a fucking summer fested Sushima. Right, so thunderstorms. Yeah, I was gonna touch on the ray tracing on when it's when it's raining specifically, yes, and it's overcast, the it looks real. Yeah, just the muck and the it looks beautiful. One thing, beautiful dirt. This's some beautiful muck and on that, like note, just to follow up on unate one thing that I will say, you know, coming off and playing Assassin's Creed Shadows in terms of like how the gameplay like systems are designed and how the world is lit. Like I don't know what chimpanzees they got in the studio to light Assassin's Creed Shadows to do that game for a game shadows where you're supposed to be in the dark. I'm playing on an old not playing on some fucking two hundred dollars Samsung LCD TV. I wonder I'm playing on an olid. I can't fucking see anything, Assassas Creshadas. If there is not light in the actual environment, you literally cannot see anything in that game. And it was one of my biggest gripes of the design. Kingdom Come is like that Nike really, oh Jesus, you're telling me to play this game. You have to use your to But but for Yo, it was perfect. It was perfect. The homeland theme, like it's every every like night scenario. I was like, oh my god, I can I can see characters at nighttime. I can see the walls of the caves, I can navigate here. Well, there's a realism. There's a balance between realism and like Kingdom Come is like you're in the middle. There's no fucking electricity, there's no lights anywhere. Everyone's the lao, Okay, like we can we can, we can mitigate the realist. It's just like get the torch out. I never went out in the night. Yeah, you just don't go out at night. You just wait to tack. You get attacked by robbers and bandits and you got to use torch. Game of the Year came in here. What do you guys, I'm gonna make this quick, real quick. I could I could live without the white swooshing of air behind the sword when you like go to put your dual Katana away. I didn't know that the trail that you see with the sword, the swooshings. Not crazy about it. These are little tiny things I've been looking for, and I remember I pointed them out to Megan and I think she's like, you're reaching like this, this is the ship I look at. I don't like, there's things like I could do without that, Like don't do you play. Six hours of the game. You pick up on that sort of thing too, So I'm I think. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, just a little things like that about the wind that directs the wind. I'm also not crazy about the wind direction fucking animations, like I don't need the swirling. Just show me the trees going, I used, I used, Yeah, where do we go? No more? This game definitely an interesting concept. Palette wise color wise in this game, like they were they released it in the Fall for a reason, because this entire game is orange, red, yellow, browns really cool, and I wonder if like that's what the Island of Yote like looks like. I don't know, that's just the seasonal Probably not. It was just like an art direction choice they made. Most probably that. Well, that's what I was saying. They were romanticizing. It doesn't actually romanticizing the look of it. Yeah, there's a performance note here. I mean, obviously you're you're on PS five pro, Nick, right, Yes, so is that sixty fps quality mode? Uh yeah, so yeah, sixty frames per second? And then it has like the global illumination, which is great. It's it's really really well done, I think, like with the HDR. And it was almost to the point where it was like when I switched because I played it and it's automatically in the thirty frames per second quality mode, and when I switched it over, it was, oh, and here's something. Here's a thing that I really. Need people to understand is I was playing this game and for the first like seventeen hours, I started getting pissed off because I was getting motion sick because there's camera sway when Atsu is running like there's mine. It's like we're talking like a middle millimeter of camera movement when she's sprinting along the thing. And I was thin getting sick because it was. So I realized we're running on time here. But like you know, it was it was so close to the point where I was like with with like the PS five pro enhancement, I was like, this is too much. This is too much in my brain when start a headache, So you have to go. You don't. You have to go with a controller. You go to your controller to turn off the motion sway. You don't go to the settings. And that pissed me off that I didn't know. I remember. I remember going through the menu first and foremost and like turning everything. I fucking hated off. Yeah, I found that in there. I was like, I don't want no bobbing. I don't want that shit. Yeah. Oh yeah, then I did that as well. Yeah I must have done that too. Yeah, so that's interesting. We're gonna wrap this up here replayability. I'm going to go back and play it in black and white mode eventually, and I'll take a thousand black and white photos. I didn't get to talk about my photo mode and and how much how many photos I took in this fucking game I took? I took hundred. I don't usually do that. I might even publish a book with my oot photos, you know, just fucking Etsy publisher. You'll have to get some sort of permission for that, you think. So we'll see. Year, we'll find out. We'll find out when I'm on this. But yeah, replayability. Is anybody else going to replay it? Yeah? I probably would. I fucking play Sushima. No. I I got what I need to do from this game when I played it, and I'll probably just pay. I'm not going to start a new new game plus or anything. I'm probably just gonna you get physical copy. No Ah, I did. I'm gonna trade it in. I'm gonna crade it in smart, that's smart. I love the photo mode too much. I probably won't. Yeah, I mean, I'll keep it because, like, who knows, ten years from now, I would be like, let me let me experience goes to Yota again. But like for like the foreseeable future, I don't see myself going back other than just to like refresh myself on some of the core mechanics to for our review on the show. Yeah, I feel like I just always will. Yeah, I would probably sell or traded in and get the PC version when that comes out. I don't know. I just love Samurai movies too much, like Thirteen Assassins and like Right and like Raroni Kenshin and all these fucking things. I'm just gonna want to play a game after watching though, So there's no way getting rid of them, not a fucking fat chance in hell. Yeah, Daniel won't give us final impressions because he's not done. Uh so my final impression, Like, this game is a cinematic like it's just like you're watching this this like so beautifully done, although albeit kind of predictably kind of story, but just the way they dressed it up, it was an experience that I loved, and it was so finely tuned and painted to really immerse me in that sixteen Hunters Japan with the swords and and just how everything was and the voice acting, the Japanese voice acting, and the cinematography and the music. We didn't even talk about the fucking music. The music in this game, yeah, is an absolute fucking masterful. It's like it was like Wild West meets Japanese. Yeah, yeah, and it was amazing. Like Japanese Red Dead too, Yes, Japanese Red Dead music. It's a no brainer if you're into Japanese ship like Samurais and all that ship, so like, go play. Samuraise and all that Samuraiz again with the plural s when it's not needed. Uh yeah, I would agree same. I'd give it to We're looking at probably a solid eight point eight out of ten. Yeah, yeah, maybe eight point seven. There was there was a little bit too much of hiccups with that fucking battling that I can't give it a nine. Appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, I would say I think this is like I would say, this is a unqualified recommendation for anybody that likes open world action at meture games like this is something to play. If you like Samurai, you like games like this, you're gonna love this game. This is for me. I have to put it out of like a you know, an eight out of ten. I didn't love this story. I didn't like how it was manifested. I feel like there, I feel like Sucker Punch is good at character writing, they're not good at narrative building. But yeah, I would I would say this is a good one, and I strongly recommend anyone out there play it nice all right? Better than the first? Or is the second better? What do you guys think? Real quick before we Oh, that's that's hard to I like it better than the first, the same. I think this is an improvement. I played it more, played it, that's the question. Yeah, okay, cool, grip me more. Okay, that's it. Oh. First of all, want to say thank you guys for popping on. Go check out Frida Night Game cast. Nick and Will excellent duo Coast Coast hosts. Their content is fantastic and I listened to it as much as I can when it pops open. Thanks Nick for coming on the show. Thank you really for having me. Yes, thank you, thank you. Any time we want to thank everyone for taking the time and listen or watch. Please be sure to make subscribed on YouTube, give us a rating review on Spotify, rabb if you could pick ups to help the listeners Man Joe Show. You also may find us on Super Part Never Never podcast to find the brows over a super point network dot com. Remember you could always leave us DM on Facebook, Instagram tweets if you want to leave comments and thanks again. Everybody having a wonderful day. Shout whoa, and you still got fifteen seconds you want to say it. It's like it's like one of those side effect commercials. Yeah yeah man. Sometimes yeah diarrhea, Okay, diarrhea. Sometimes you yourself