Ghost of Yotei’s Echoes of Sekigahara sticks to the formula

It has been a year since of Ghost of Yotei first debuted as a PS5-exclusive. A spiritual successor to Ghost of Tsushima, it delivered on every front we expected, so when an expansion was announced in the form of the Complete Edition of the game, we were very interested to see what was being added to the mix.

On this front, two new aspects are present – Most Wanted and Echoes of Sekigahara.

We focused on the latter for this review, and will touch on it shortly, but we did want to talk about the Most Wanted mode first.

Combat redux

Best described as a horde mode, it sees waves of enemies enter the playing area to take on Atsu, and, you guessed it, kill her. There are also boss battles thrown into the mix, and the chance to unlock some of the side characters you encountered in the main story.

The horde mode is indeed challenging, and really served as a great/humbling refresher to combat of this game, which we forgot after recently playing Marvel’s Wolverine and Onimusha, which both have different parrying systems.

What Most Wanted definitely teaches you though, is the importance of rotating between different weapon types that Atsu wields, and the fact that creating mismatches is the best way to take on waves of enemies.

The boss battles are nice too, but these can also be revisited if you completed the main story once you fire up the Complete Edition, so this aspect does not necessarily feel like a standout.

The chance to play as other characters is quite cool, although we must admit that there does not feel like much of a differentiation in fighting styles. To that end, all female characters play similarly to Atsu, and all males like Jin Sakai from Ghost of Tsushima.

What we really like about the Most Wanted mode, though, is that it offers a gameplay experience comparable to the co-op Legends mode, but does not require the online/friends aspect in order to play.

Snake Road

Now for Echoes of Sekigahara, which plays exactly like one of the main story chapters from Ghost of Yotei. Much like Phantom Liberty in Cyberpunk 2077, developer Sucker Punch has done a great job of making this expansion feel seamless.

The only issue we had with it, however, is that Lord Saito is present throughout. He is referenced several times, and even appears in a cutscene, which was an odd experience for us, especially as we picked up the expansion after completing the game, and not as a new game+ playthrough.

It by no means throws you out of the gaming and narrative experience, but it was peculiar to Saito given we already killed him.

As for the story, there are two threads that are weaved it the story nicely. The first are the ramifications of Atsu killing the Snake, who was one of the Yotei Six who murdered her parents, and is the member you kill in the opening of main story. With the Snake now dead, a power vacuum has been created, and now Atsu has to deal with the bandits that have ravaged a new region of the map.

The terrain is similar to that of Ezo, and once again, the use of colour in the environments truly make this a visual feast. Those who enjoy making use of the camera mode for Ghost of Yotei will definitely have plenty of fun playing around when beautiful new vistas are found.

To be honest, it is not the biggest map of all the ones that Ghost of Yotei has, but there was enough for us to explore over four days of playing (roughly three to four hours each session).

Along with the new area, Sucker Punch has served up a new group of enemies to take on in the form of the Vipers, who as mentioned, are vying for the position of the new Snake. There is a new-ish enemy class that has been added to the mix, with larger, heavy enemies that are more difficult to take down. To assist on this front, a new weapon class has been added to the mix too – the unimaginatively named heavy weapons.

These weapons are good for taking on larger groups at once, but do break after five hits, so there is a finite amount of use that you can get out of them.

Two other interesting new mechanics added to the mix in order to up the ante are arrows that can remain lodged in your body and bolas, which are thrown and wrap around your legs to tangle you up. The arrows need to be removed or they will continue to deal damage, while the bola simply has to be removed, but takes up to 20 seconds of button mashing to accomplish.

These are nice additions to a combat system that did not change dramatically from Tsushima to Yotei.

The other thread to this expansion is Nagato, who is a past companion of Atsu’s, who she last saw at the battle of Sekigahara. We don’t want to spoil the story, but the two had a major falling out from the battle, and there are several instances where Atsu has flashbacks to what happens as you progress through the expansion.

It is a nice addition to the narratives that Yotei has had so far, as Atsu did not really have a romantic arc, but above anything, it is great to see how Nagato views Atsu as his equal, which is a common theme that the character has to deal with in last year’s game.

Final verdict

Ghost of Yotei Complete Edition does everything the main game did, and applies it to the expansion, which is a good thing considering we scored it nine out of 10 last year.

As always, the chance to earn new in-game cosmetics, as well as explore more of this beautiful world that Sucker Punch has created, is welcome.

For those who played last year’s game, getting the Complete Edition upgrade is a no-brainer, especially for R289. If you have never played the game before, the R1 499 is not cheap, but is par for the course when it comes to PS5 exclusives.

As an open-world RPG AAA title, you’re hard pressed to do better than Ghost of Yotei Complete Edition, and the R1 499 price tag comes with several weeks of gameplay in terms of the main story, and couple of more weeks for the completionists out there.

Game

Ghost of Yotei: Completion Edition

Visuals

9.0

Audio

9.0

Story

9.0

Minute-to-Minute Gameplay

8.5

Gameplay Loop

8.5

Value

9.5 (Upgrade)

Overall Score

8.9 out of 10.

FULL DISCLOSURE: GHOST OF YOTEI: COMPLETE EDITION WAS SEEDED TO HYPERTEXT TO REVIEW BY A LOCAL DISTRIBUTOR.

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