Ghost of Tsushima - PS4 Game | Action-Adventure, Open World, Samurai Story | Perfect for Fans of Japanese History & Epic Battles

Holy moly !! What an amazing game !! The first game for which I even cared about the platinum trophy. From the prologue, which also serves as a tutorial of sorts for the combat and also shows how weak the protagonist initially is, till the end, it's an emotional roller coaster. Extremely well fleshed out characters and amazing dialogue combined with side tales and an amazingly beautiful world just yells to keep playing and keep exploring everything the game has to offer.The combat is hard on hard and even though one completes the game there is still so much to master in the combat that it needs another play through. The story, well its an experience to say the least. It grips you emotionally and forces you to attach to the characters and care for their fate. One can really feel the bonding between the protagonist and the NPCs to the point that it made me extremely sad to see some of them take their last breath. There are no hidden elements in the story. Its left upto the player to decide if some of the decisions made by the protagonist are right or wrong and the choice at the ending left me thinking for a really long time to the point that I had to recollect everything from the story and debate with myself on what should be the right decision.The world is beautiful. From hills overlooking the sea to marshes to the harsh cold regions of the northernmost island, I just had to stop myself from playing time and again to just enjoy the breathtaking visuals. Some of the temples and monasteries are beautifully crafted. Overall visuals and face animations on the PS4 pro are pretty good but nothing ground breaking. I would say that HZD, even though it came out almost 4 years earlier had better face animation and visuals.Gameplay wise, there are plenty of side missions (or tales) and a large number of camps to clear which also helps in opening the map up around the camps to indicate any points of interest. There is not a lot of variety in the tales apart from some interesting side stories. The mythic tales however are pretty different and end up with some difficult duels but the end result are some cool moves and some cool gear as well. There aren't a lot of variety of enemies (a total of 4 types) too, but the variety lies in how you take them down. Sometimes you would have to clear out a sprawling fort and there are multiple ways to do it, eg: completely stealth or a mix of stealth and combat or outright combat. There are certain missions where all-out stealth is mandatory since on detection, hostages would be killed resulting in failure of the mission. Variety in gameplay comes as a result of how you can complete a mission rather than the different kinds of missions and enemies you encounter. What's interesting here is that the combat is so diverse that experimenting with different styles of fighting keeps you engaged in the game no matter what you are doing at the moment.This game is a must buy and a fitting final exclusive for the PS4.