Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
2 
Report this post
Talking about different things though. I am talking about real, tangible power that you feel as soon as you realize there is no elaborate stealth puzzle a simple kunai to the head wouldn't solve. It only gets better/worse throughout the game, to the point where you can run around in broad daylight and assassinate everyone through a combination of Hidden Hand, smoke bombs and "Throw Kunai" perk. Yeah, you don't build a reputation, because... you don't need to. As shinobi, being recognized by everyone is the opposite of what you want. And for Yasuke, some enemies yell "Yasuke" in combat, leading to impression everyone has a pretty good idea who the guy is.
Ghost builds a reputation because fear tactics is part of Ghost's arsenal. And, truth be told, by the time I reached that point in game I had unlocked chain assassinations, standoffs, smoke bombs, poison darts and heaven knows what else - to the point where Ghost stance became one of a half a dozen ways to take care of a group in addition to what I already had. It's surely stylish af, but it did not divide the game into "before" and "after" for me.
To put things in perspective, the entire Japanese army of Tsushima is like 80 men, meanwhile in Shadows "kill 100 samurai" is just another side quest.
I honestly don't know how you say that. I mean, I kinda can, as you clearly stated the "movie" and narrative parts are more important to you. But from the pure gameplay perspective, GoT is lacking. Going with Tsushima and especially Mongols as the enemy really limited the variety of locations and enemies. Like I said, just two tiny castles. Stealth feels like an afterthought. There are new game+ items, plenty of builds you can put together with DLC in mind - like an archer build where you shoot guided arrows that auto-heatshot (yet another way to trivialize combat).
Problem is - there is basically nowhere to put it all to use and no reason to do so. It's the same problem Shadows have, but it's even worse there. Like, every side quest boils down to "talk - ride to a location - fight - ride back - talk". The narrative part you've already experienced, so it's not interesting anymore. And the combat is trivialized through one of a half a dozen flavors of power fantasy, boiling down to just clicking a couple buttons every once in a while. Once I realized that, I lost motivation to keep playing.
To me, the most exciting part of those games is at the beginning - when you have to sneak around because a single 3-chunk samurai poses an existential threat. Or when you've just started out as Ghost and your every sneaky stab is still slow and clumsy. Unfortunately, in both games that moment quickly passes.
Pathetic
You can trivialise combat in both games really. I feel the gameplay in both games is much alike and mostly the same than it is fundamentally different. You do get the stances for melee in GoT where each stance is good for a specific archetype. You need to adapt on the fly against the various archetypes, which often attack you at the same time.
I mean, how many archetypes does Shadows have? People with polearms/lances, people with bows/rifles and people with swords and then people with a lot of health and grunts. And then reskins for each different faction. Enemy variety is not super high in Shadows either.
In GoT you get stand-offs, more stylish than necessary, but it can be very satisfying with the right armour set etc, you get the combat with four different stances, only melee weapon variety is lacking, but the stances make up for it (think of the different weapon types in Shadows as "stances" really), on top of that you have the kunai, a bow and ranged combat is more than covered and stealth is perfectly fine and does not feel like an afterthought to me, you can, after a while, approach each situation however you like... be the honourable samurai who challenges his enemies, or be the Ghost that murders everyone from the shadows or even be the archer that eliminates people without even entering the camp, this is functionally virtually identical to almost any AC game ever. Jin even gets the grappling hook Naoe has. And the paths of honour in Shadows are very similar to the various shrines/temples you need to climb up to.
How is the gameplay in GoT worse then? It's virtually identical really.
On top of that you get legendary / boss enemies that give meaningful rewards, you get quests for armour sets that are often really, really good whereas in Shadows new gear for the most part only means to find a chest (some enemies award you with gear), chests that are no challenge to find.
I feel it's solely down to taste... what do you like more? A more grounded "realistic" feeling and looking Japan that is massive in size? Or a much more stylised romanticised version of Japan where magic birds can show you the way to poi or loot, foxes guide you to small shrines and love to be petted and that is more cinematic and somewhat more compact? Don't forget the wind mechanic that guides you through the game, which is pretty unique and immersive.
If you value interesting NPCs and a compelling narrative then GoT will probably come out on top for most people. Just compare someone like Yuna in GoT with Yaya in Shadows. The one feels like a real character, the other more like a gameplay gimmick (like any other ally in Shadows) that gives you some passive ability or briefly helps out in combat, they are for the most part gameplay devices in Shadows, whereas the NPCs in GoT have multi part arcs of their own, the characters are more3-dimensional.
I believe one can easily like or love both games, they are thematically somewhat similar because of the setting, but have different approaches. One is a Kurasawa movie as a game, kind of, the other feels much less cinematic and more grounded, at the end of the day you infiltrate castles or forts/camps in both games, kill enemies either stealthily or in open combat and you need to defeat some big bad.