Minimum Wage Nerd

It has been a roller coaster of a few years for the video game industry. One the hand, the industry was hit hard by the aftermath of several major acquisitions, thousands of layoffs, and many lackluster releases. On the other, multiple new, high-profile independent studios have emerged across the globe and there appears to be renewed effort to fill the gap between the major $70 releases and smaller indie titles, especially at a time when there appears to be a growing dissatisfaction in tentpole, AAA-style games.

2024 seemed to encapsulate this idea the most due to an overall lack of enticing AAA releases, with a few noted failures among them such as Concord.

It hasn’t been the case in 2025 thanks to a much more loaded release calendar with titles including Doom: The Dark Ages, The Outer Worlds 2, Borderlands 4, and Monster Hunter Wilds among others. One that, I believe, sits head and shoulder above them, though, and truly embodies what AAA games can be when done right – Ghost of Yotei.

The sequel to 2020’s Ghost of Tsushima, Ghost of Yotei is the second entry in the series from longtime PlayStation developer Sucker Punch Productions. Yotei takes places over 300 years after the first game on the island of Ezo, modern day Hokkaido, in the regions surrounding Mt. Yotei. The new setting also means a new protagonist in Atsu, a mercenary who has returned to Ezo seeking vengeance for her family’s murder at the hands of the “Yotei Six.”

Like the first game, Ghost of Yotei thematically and aesthetically borrows heavily from Japanese samurai cinema, especially the works of Akira Kurosawa. It can be seen in the world design with the striking color contrasts and felt in the music and dialogue over the game’s estimated 60-hour playtime to complete it.

The visuals, in particular, are so striking that it has made me do something I don’t typically do – take screenshots. The landscapes combined with the changing weather and time of day have resulted in some of the most eye-catching images I have ever seen in a game.

When people have to take a moment to make sure a landscape shot from a game isn’t a real landscape, it really does say something about that game’s visuals.

Aesthetic is only one half of the equation, though, and while Ghost of Yotei has plenty of style, does it have substance.

The answer – yes.

As of this writing, I am still playing Ghost of Yotei and have not yet completed the main plot. However, I feel I can still say with full confidence that this is one of the most engrossing narratives I have experienced in a game in quite a while. Atsu, portrayed wonderfully by Erica Ishii, is exactly the type believable, sympathetic, and flawed protagonist players would hope to see in a game that doubles as a love letter to samurai cinema. The characters she meets and interacts with most often feel like real people who players can buy following someone like Atsu during her journey for revenge.

It has, admittedly, been hard to stay on that narrative because of the wealth of things to do.

Sucker Punch has managed to design the various sub-plots, side quests, and random encounters in a way that feel genuinely rewarding and worth doing. It is a feeling that can get lost in some games due to simple “copy-and-paste” mechanics design with little thought or time given to making these activities worthwhile.

All this comes together to form one of my personal favorite games of the year and a reminder of what happens when a studio is able to make a AAA game the right way.