Ghost of Yotei is the long awaited sequel to Ghost of Tsushima. It is also one of the handful of games I have binge played in the past couple of months. In many ways, it is a great game. We have stellar graphics, good writing with interesting characters, responsive combat, and a cool stealth system that allows for a variety of assassinations. But however unfair to Yotei it may be, I can't avoid comparing it to Ghost of Tsushima.
As I played Tsushima for the first time only a couple of years ago, Yotei felt like almost the same game. In Tsushima, after I played through the excellent expansion content, I got bored of fighting the same old mongols over and over again, so I just went ahead and beat the game quickly rather than trying to methodically explore and liberate the entire map. The enemies in Yotei were so similar that my mongol-killing-fatigue from Tsushima kicked in early on. Here the enemies are bandits rather than mongols, but they are so similar that I suspect many of the bandits have Mongol blood flowing through their veins. But combat is not entirely the same. We can now four different types of weapons instead of four different stances, and all weapons can be upgraded by doing a training with one of the masters scattered about the map. Another difference in combat is that the square button quick attack has become almost entirely useless, as enemies block almost all of your attacks. In direct confrontations, one is left with the choice to either parry and counter or my personal strategy of smashing everything to bits by spamming the triangle heavy attack with the big sword.
One issue I had with Tsushima is that after the new game magic wore off, I felt like I was playing through a series of predictable mini-games rather than a unified game with an evolving experience. Yotei is much the same, and it becomes as such more quickly because it was so similar to Tsushima. You still have some of the same mini-games: follow-the-fox, find-the-top-of-the-shrine-that-no-normal-human-could-ever-reach, liberate-what-seems-like-same-town-over-and-over-again, and see-the-avatar's-bare-buttocks-in-the-hot-spring-that-increases-your-health. But we also have new mini-games in Yotei: flick-coins-to-gamble, follow-the-wolf-to-kill-some-bandits, draw-a-pretty-picture, improve-your-weapon-at-the-forge, and everyone's favorite, start-a-campfire-and-cook-your-food. If you are one that gets into mini-games, you'll probably like it a lot. Otherwise... well, otherwise.
Like Tsushima, Yotei has excellent writing for a video game. Compared to most games that I have played, it has much better narrative and characters. But the unfair comparison I am forced to make is that Tsushima had a more interesting story, more memorable NPCs, and conflicts with supporting characters. After all, the last fight in the game was not with the Mongol leader, but rather with your own uncle who you had gone to great lengths to rescue earlier in the game. Overall, it was a sweeping epic with escalating stakes, a liberation campaign that began with a samurai with a flexible attitude towards honor and a thief who favored pragmatic means. Yotei gives us an interesting strong female lead, but her main motivation is revenge. There are towns to liberate from bandits, but the main plot feels like Kill Bill rather than Braveheart. (My 12 year old daughter watched me play much of the game. As she is less familiar with classic cinema, she thought it was like Blue Eyed Samurai.) Again, I'm not saying that Yotei is bad in anyway, just that the story doesn't live up to its predecessor.
In summary, Ghost of Yotei is an excellent game with a good story, great visuals, and interesting stealth and combat mechanics. If you played Ghost of Tsushima and you want more of the same, you will be very happy with it. If you wanted something significantly better or different, you will probably still like the game, but you might find yourself finishing it in a relatively quick thirty hours like I did.