- Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Release Date: Oct 2, 2025
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Edge MagazineOct 2, 2025Yotei is another breathtaking vision of Japan, then, which treads open-world paths familiar to Tsushima but explores a more captivating story, with characters you want to spend time with. [Issue#416, p.102]
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Sep 25, 2025Thrilling combat, captivating sound, and a breathtaking art style—these alone make Ghost of Yōtei well worth experiencing. The rest of the game, however, is harder to praise without reservations, and next time the developers would do well to embrace more experiments, rework the climbing segments, and bring in new writers.
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Sep 25, 2025Ghost of Yōtei certainly has its beautiful moments when everything does click: when the moonlight falls just right, when the battles reach their climax, and admittedly—even the predictable story contains a few moving moments. But on the other hand, there’s a long list of elements that aren’t necessarily bad, but mostly outdated, old-fashioned, or at best far from groundbreaking.
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Sep 25, 2025Foregoing genre-advancing substance and texture for impeccable style, Ghost of Yotei feels like a cowed shadow of its full potential. Those looking for a departure from checklist-oriented open-world gameplay will be disappointed. The title lands as generic, risk-averse, rigid, and safe.
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Sep 25, 2025One of the best-looking open world games ever but the formula is beginning to feel increasingly outdated, despite the cool visuals, fun samurai gear, and surprisingly good plot.
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Sep 25, 2025Ghost of Yotei has clearly refined its formula on quite a few points, exploration and the construction of its open world being foremost, delivering a far greater sense of discovery than the previous installment. Stealth has been sharpened and combat gets a few small tweaks, but the game also neglects other aspects that should have been addressed. It is still a visually stunning game to wander through, but the story struggles to stand out and to offer us something as strong, narratively speaking, as Ghost of Tsushima.
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Sep 25, 2025Ghost of Yōtei is big, beautiful and bloody, with a world that's very fun to explore. This doesn't however make up for tiresome combat and a story that ultimately feels quite hollow. The game is shockingly similar to its predecessor, and while the formula still works, it's hard not to be disappointed in the lack of any meaningful changes.
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Oct 15, 2025If Sucker Punch's mission was to build a portal to 1603 and paint it with the tones of great Japanese artists — from the feudal era to the last century in pop culture —, Ghost of Yotei definitely delivers. Is it enough to make it a great game? That will depend on the players.
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Oct 14, 2025Ghost of Yotei achieves what it set out to, in that it wanted to take what makes Ghost of Tsushima so popular (the visual engine, the combat, Sucker Punch’s open worlds) and transport it to a “barely settled” location where they could give us a rip-roaring, all-American Wild West story. So… good on them for achieving that, I guess. But, as I brace for the inevitable comment moderation job ahead, I gotta be honest and say I just didn’t care for any of it. Or the way it capitalises on the Japanese/Ainu setting rather than tries to work with it.
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Sep 25, 2025Sucker Punch's sequel offers more great swordplay and heartfelt storytelling, but would be better served as a linear action game, freed of its poor sidequests and dated open world.
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Sep 25, 2025If you’ve seen one Japanese orphan avenging their parent’s death, have you seen them all? That’s the question that I can’t seem to shake after spending the last few weeks sinking all of my spare time into Ghost of Yotei.
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Sep 25, 2025Sucker Punch has perfectly understood what it means to make a sequel: not to expand for the sake of expanding, but rather to take a step forward in what the Ghost franchise needed. It's still a game where feeling like a samurai is at the heart of everything, where walking through open fields with the wind hitting your face is almost as important as wielding a katana, but now it's accompanied by a more personal and human narrative. I've encountered characters that matter, moments that matter, and combat that, while familiar, gains freshness thanks to the variety of weapons and a more self-aware design. It may not be as visually striking as Tsushima, but there's no doubt that it's still a pictorial marvel. Not all of the side content is interesting, but there's been a noticeable improvement, especially in the character, master, and legend quests. And yes, it's another revenge story, but Atsu manages to make the journey worthwhile. [Recommended]
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Sep 25, 2025Sucker Punch had the difficult task of improving on a game some might consider perfect. Not only did they complete the task, but made it look effortless with Ghost of Yotei. The game has all the same great elements that made the original so enjoyable, yet improved on practically every aspect with hardly any flaws.
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Sep 25, 2025I’ve begun to view games like this as the video game equivalent to old Hollywood epics. They are sweeping works of craft that swallow you up in their grandiosity, not so dissimilar from Gone With The Wind. When I look out at a field of bright red flowers contrasting with a sky that’s as blue as the sea, it’s like I’m looking at a Technicolor matte painting. I let go of my sense of time as the pluck of Atsu’s Shamisen pulls me into the 1600s period piece setting. It is rigidly structured in the way an old American epic born from the studio system would be. Ghost of Yōtei, God of War Ragnarök, Horizon Forbidden West – they’re all built for gaming’s own AMC movie marathon 50 years from now.
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Sep 25, 2025None of it arrives with any genuine impact, because genuine impact would get in the way of easing the player toward the next simple set of tasks, to keeping them hooked on the ride. The fact is, you’ve played this game before. You’ll almost certainly wind up playing it again. It’ll pass through you like water—or maybe a gorgeously decorated bowl of gruel—and that’s both Ghost Of Yōtei’s blessing, and its curse.
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Sep 25, 2025Mostly, though, Yōtei smooths out many of the issues of its predecessor, while rearranging itself to sharply focus on its epic tale of revenge. Atsu’s quest starts out violently straightforward, but things naturally become more complicated along the way thanks to some genuinely surprising twists that I won’t spoil for you. That combination of refined gameplay and cinematic story is exactly what PlayStation owners have come to expect, and Ghost of Yōtei shows that Sony can still pull it off. Which is good news, because the pendulum appears to be swinging back to these kinds of games.
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