My horse in Ghost of Yōtei is called Mochizuki, which means “full moon” in archaic Japanese, and I swear she is the most unfortunate creature in all of northern Japan. The button I have to press to summon her is right next to the button I need to press to heal my samurai during a fight and I often fumble with my thumb and call her straight into a chaotic seven-on-one brawl. Mochizuki frequently gallops full pelt into an arrow or catches a sword-swipe from one of my outlaw enemies as I roll out of the way. Sometimes she stands on the edge of the skirmish, calmly waiting for me to finish disembowelling bad guys so that we can resume our picturesque adventures across the region of Ezo.
Ghost of Yōtei is the follow-up to American studio Sucker Punch’s reverent samurai action game Ghost of Tsushima, from 2020. Most of the time it looks exceptionally well-directed, no matter what you’re doing: tense standoffs against formidable swordsmen, following a golden bird or a sprinting wolf across the landscape to find a secret natural spring or shrine, scaling a mountain to sneak your way into a tightly guarded fortress. But no open-world game’s dignified framing can survive the addition of a wayward player, and so sometimes I make it look entirely ridiculous by accidentally calling my horse into a fight, or setting myself on fire by mistake.
I found Ghost of Tsushima to be extraordinarily beautiful, but also shallow and oddly dour. Its protagonist Jin couldn’t stop talking about how dishonourable he found the whole business of sneaking around and cutting Mongol invaders’ throats to save his island. Yōtei’s hero Atsu, meanwhile, is much more comfortable in her role as vengeful mass-murdering spectre. The story itself is hardly groundbreaking – Atsu’s family is murdered by a group of masked outlaws called the Yōtei Six, and she vows to track them down and bury them one by one – but star Erika Ishii gives such a good performance here as a stony-faced killer that I was fully drawn into Atsu’s bloody quest. No matter how many other characters sombrely remind her of the consuming of vengeance, she just keeps slicing up her enemies. You get the impression that she rather enjoys it.
And honestly, I enjoy it. The fighting in Ghost of Yōtei is deliciously brutal. Though you can carve your way through Ezo with a basic understanding of evasion, parrying and well-timed sword strikes, the frequent fighting is enlivened as you learn how to use dual katana, a spear, a bow and the oversized ōdachi sword. The set-piece standoffs particularly never lost their challenge, as Atsu circles imposing generals twice her size, knowing that a few strikes are enough to finish her off. I play a lot of challenging action games, from Monster Hunter to Elden Ring, and I often find the combat in free-roaming games such as this rather unexciting. But after more than 20 hours of duels and free-for-alls, I’m still not so powerful that my foes fall before me with barely any effort – and therefore, I’m not bored.
Alongside this year’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows (also set in historical Japan), Ghost of Yōtei is the most graphically beautiful game I have ever seen. There is such veneration in this digital tribute to Japan’s natural beauty, in the ginkgo trees and distant mountains, the sparse plains, rivers teeming with fish (you can spear them for your supper). This is a world built to be admired: you navigate with your eyes and your ears rather than an on-screen map. The wind shows you where to go to continue the story, but I truly felt free to wander, and it’s in that wandering that you find succinct side stories and moments of quiet. Charmingly, you can use the PS5’s controller to roast fish over a fire, play the shamisen or daub strokes of ink on canvas; returning to Atsu’s memories in familiar locations lets you relive her life before it was overtaken by violence.
The music, which marries old west-style rhythms and traditional Japanese instruments, reminds me that this is 1600s Japan through an American lens. There’s probably more action and blood and death-defying climbing than in any samurai movie, but is that a bad thing? If anything Ghost of Tsushima was held back by its slavish devotion to a sombre tone that was at odds with the game’s very high body count. Yōtei does not overcomplicate things, as Assassin’s Creed Shadows does, with too many distractions, things to collect or people to recruit or bases to build. It is endearingly straightforward, and I found it very easy to enjoy. Whenever I was bored of pursuing one target, it was easy to find something else to do.
As Atsu’s legend grows, the people of Ezo start leaving offerings for the vengeful onryō (bloodthirsty ghost) tearing through the land’s oppressors. As you travel Ezo, you do begin to feel part of it, as Atsu is, joined in battle by wolves and pursuing scampering foxes to find hidden places in nature. I started to wonder what would happen to Atsu once her vengeance quest was complete: she can envision no life afterwards, and I wondered if she would simply melt into the wind that had guided her.
This might be a straightforward tale at heart, but it has absorbed me more than any other historical action game. Even hours and hours in, I still feel a flicker of excitement whenever Atsu purposefully draws her sword at the beginning of a battle. I will be sad to see the end of it.
