Ghost of Yotei doesn’t transcend the open-world action genre, but its prequel was already among the best. Sucker Punch Productions only improved a near-perfect formula. (Sony PlayStation)
Revenge is a well-worn concept that’s retold through the ages because it makes tantalizing promises of justice wrapped in ruin. It’s classic drama, and so is Ghost of Yotei.
Sucker Punch Productions has staked the PlayStation 5’s headlining title for 2025 on an old storytelling genre, transforming its hit 2020 game Ghost of Tsushima into the foundation for an anthology-style samurai open-world action series. Where Tsushima stumbled tying a story about lost honor to the invasion of Mongolian armies, Yotei tells a simpler, and better, tale by focusing on consistent, charismatic character writing.
Ghost of Yotei plays like a page-turner. Every story beat drives the protagonist Atsu - and the player - forward, anchored by Erika Ishii’s fierce performance as a snarling, vengeful mercenary. Her family is slaughtered in front of her by a lord named Saito and his five generals, left to die at her burning home. She returns to her home island of Ezo - now Hokkaido - honed in the art of war, with only a sword, a horse and a belt bearing six names that she hopes to strike through in their blood.
Atsu’s characterization and Ishii’s performance elevate this game above its predecessor and most open-world action games with a similar premise, including the entertaining but clumsily written Assassin’s Creed Shadows this year. Atsu pursues her vengeance with unwavering clarity, a rare trait when morality is endlessly debated in other games, including its sibling PlayStation series The Last of Us.
Jin Sakai, the ghost of Tsushima, often lingered in indecision, his story slowed by clichéd debates over honor that drained the narrative of momentum. Sakai wrestled with the mask of a monstrous ghost, but Atsu wears the myth as naturally as her own skin. Ishii’s performance embodies it with terrifying conviction.
In gameplay, she is a luxuriously animated tornado of blades, wielding two swords to slash across a 17th-century Japan, rendered here in painterly scenes of scarlet leaves, golden fields and flocks of birds moving like brushstrokes across a sky of vivid blue. When her “ghost” stance unleashes special abilities, she looms like a beast with arms spread over her cowering enemies, terrifying and unstoppable.
The writing in Tsushima sang when it came to its samurai-tale side stories. In Yotei, the main plot is the highlight, but the side quests felt so important and consequential that I would often forget they weren’t essential.
Yotei may use common storytelling devices, but it wields them to great effect. Flashbacks woven through the 40-hour journey keep Atsu’s pain immediate and fresh, acquainting us with her family and stoking the player’s desire for revenge. Though video game tropes - such as a villain escaping at the last moment to extend play - can frustrate initially, they often pay off with thrilling conclusions.
Ghost of Yotei follows a familiar revenge plot but is wrapped in perfected open-world gameplay and with driving, emotional beats. (Sony PlayStation)
The strongest criticism I can level at Yotei is that it isn’t dramatically different from Tsushima’s game style and open-world formula, which I already considered one of the best in the genre. Adhering closely to genre conventions, it leans on walk-and-talk scenes and horseback journeys with companions to build character and fill space. The writing, once again, saves all of this from feeling laborious, but I wish it dared a bit more to push the genre further.
Shop vendors and blacksmiths exist to serve a practical purpose, yet as recurring named characters they magically flit across the island to meet Atsu at every rest stop. It’s a game-world contrivance that works, building a comforting familiarity that draws the player deeper into the rhythms of Atsu’s journey. It crafts a world she learns to feel alive in, guided by faces and names she meets again and again.
New features spice up this sequel. “Kurosawa mode” returns as an homage to the legendary director, but it still misses the mark: A stylish black-and-white filter with lighting effects can’t replicate the deliberate choices Akira Kurosawa made in his scenes. The Takashi Miike homage mode splashes battles with mud and blood, creating a striking, if occasionally silly, visual that spreads mud into impossible places.
Much more successful is the mode for animator Shinichiro Watanabe, director of TV classics like “Cowboy Bebop” and “Samurai Champloo.” It honors the lo-fi hip-hop stylings of Nujabes, the late DJ Jun Seba, with new tracks directed by Watanabe that replace and remix the already memorable score by Toma Otowa. Watanabe’s tracks only deepened my appreciation for Otowa’s melodies, turning even familiar open-world tasks into small pleasures - whether slicing through bamboo in a “Simon Says”-style minigame or painting brushstrokes with the PS5’s seldom-used, yet delightfully responsive, touch pad.
Director Nate Fox and the Sucker Punch team don’t transcend the open-world genre, they just mastered it. With writing that hits every note with precision and heart, Yotei understands how, throughout history, stories about ghosts hold us in their sway. Like Atsu, and like Yotei itself, a ghost lingers, refusing to let go as it draws us into the darkness.
Platform: PlayStation 5
Online: suckerpunch.com
