Ghost Of Yōtei - Onryō Engine (Review)

Ghost of Yotei

Released: October 2nd, 2025

Developer: Sucker Punch Productions

Publisher: Sony

Systems: PS5

I love a good revenge flick. From I Saw the Devil to Dave Benson Phillips’ seminal Get Your Own Back, tales of retribution are guaranteed to get my attention.

They come in many different flavors, but my favorite is undoubtedly the kind where a gang of bad bastards have done something terrible and a survivor returns to cross their names, one by one, off a list. It’s a classic, a framework that’s been used many times, but I can’t get enough of sequential vengeance enacted upon colorful villains. 

Ghost of Yōtei is cast in this timeless mold and the samurai fans at Sucker Punch haven’t even needed to do their homework. As the fearsome Atsu slices her way across Ezo to take down each member of the Yōtei Six, I’ve been thoroughly on board. Ghost of Yōtei is a damn good revenge flick. 

How to make standoffs cooler? Add a big wolf and a hat full of mushrooms.

Those expecting a repeat of Sucker Punch’s last spectral foray into Japan will be surprised to find a somewhat different beast to Ghost of Tsushima. While the two games obviously share a lot of DNA, the structure, pacing, and various aspects of combat are overhauled to sometimes unrecognizable lengths. After a bit of a learning curve, however, Yōtei offers a more fruitful experience that I greatly prefer. 

The usual open world trappings are still in place with an abundance of busywork as standard. It’s very easy to find all of the side content as NPCs point stuff out, magic birds catch your attention, and main quests lead toward further points of interest. This has become characteristic of open world games published by Sony, and I approve - I’m far more willing to engage with this stuff when it’s easy to do so. 

Atsu uses methods both stealthy and flashy in her quest to kill the Six, aided by an angry wolf that occasionally turns up to help. By completing Wolf Den missions where you free its canine pals from trappers, the wolf becomes more trusting and dynamically appears during gameplay to bail Atsu out. Eventually, you’ll be able to summon it reliably for coordinating stealth kills or scaring the shit out of guards. 

Purple pain.

Stealth is a straightforward endeavor and you know the score if you’ve played any number of similar games - sneaking in convenient patches of tall grass, popping off enemies with backstabs or arrows to the head, all that jazz. Due to the speed and swift savagery of gameplay, this fairly ordinary suite of mechanics is heightened to an enjoyable degree, especially after unlocking chain assassinations and a literal chain of assassination.

One thing I really appreciate is that, if you’re caught while creeping around a base, the entire location isn’t suddenly aware of you. Only enemies in a reasonable vicinity will hear the commotion of battle and join in, which means you can tackle camps by going in, out, and back into stealth if you wish. It’s a really nice touch that makes logical sense while keeping your options flexible.

Unlike Tsushima, how you go about defeating your foes isn’t judged by your pillock of a dad who tries to make you feel like shit for having fun. Atsu is a killer on a mission, and the only reason to fight “honorably” is to show enemies how fucking scary she is. Stab them in the back like a midnight creeper or take them head-on, either choice is valid and not subject to a weak evocation of a vintage videogame morality system.

Yanky panky.

Standoffs are back, and still really cool. If you do want to go in loud, you can declare yourself and stand before the enemy, hand on hilt, waiting for one to attack before cutting them down for a freebie kill. It’s still as lovely as it was the first time around, such a simple but rewardingly sexy thing.

Combat is far less trivial than it eventually ended up becoming in the last game. While you do acquire enough of an arsenal to become a melee beast, Atsu is fragile and any opponent has a variety of ways to cut her down quickly. It’s no longer a case of spamming counterattacks until everything is dead - rhythmic parries, exploiting every available trick, and approaching offense like an opportunist is so much more important.

Enemies frequently crawl around in need of mercy.

Atsu’s growing arsenal takes a rock/paper/scissors approach, with players encouraged to swap weapons on the fly to better match each opponent. You’re free to use anything against anything, but if you want to break stances and exploit weaknesses effectively, flexibility is key. There’s no reason not to change your arms, given how easy it is to swap weaponry in an instant.

The trusty katana is your basic weapon and matches well against other katana users, the dual swords are best for countering polearms, the yari spear is strongest against dual wielders, and the kusarigama can easily break shields. There’s also the odachi, which is best against large “brute” types and overwhelming enough to feel close to an all-rounder. 

I’m slightly torn on the way these weapons work, but only because each one is fun enough that I wish they felt a bit less situational. I never felt intimately enough acquainted with any single armament, and while I could just focus on a favorite, it’s clearly not the best way to fight. Nevertheless, weapon switching is fun and really well done, so I can’t complain much at all. 

Dress like a kappa, feel like a badass.

Enemies are aggressive, deal huge damage, and even basic mobs have attacks that either ignore blocking, punish counters, or knock your weapon from your hands. Luckily, you have a very forgiving parry ability and quickly unlock access to your own unblockable moves. You also get to disarm enemies yourself, which is deliciously satisfying after suffering the same humiliation. 

Fights move very quickly but require patience as you pick your moments to attack between defensive moves. You really have to watch that fragility, as even with several health upgrades you’ll lose more than half your total HP to a single strike. I don’t mind the high damage, but I feel Yōtei would be better served by very literal hit points instead of a health bar, because it’d just be far more informative. 

Healing is a simple matter though, as a button press will spend a Spirit point to restore a ton of health. Spirit is also used for advanced attacks, though regaining it requires efficient play or taking a risk by downing a bottle of sake - the latter of which might also make you disoriented from the alcohol.  

Mind the gap.

While I don’t mind the challenge, I do dislike how often enemies can tank offense to where some really neat combos and charged moves are unviable much of the time. Whether it’s a boss or just some mook, anyone can no-sell like Hulk Hogan when they so choose. It especially sucks to break an enemy’s guard and be punished for logically pressing the attack because they recovered in a nanosecond.

It’s not impossible to use every maneuver at your disposal, but you’ll likely use the flashiest stuff for flavor against basic mobs rather than relying on them in serious fights. When it comes to more dangerous opponents, there’s almost nothing better than a rudimentary course of heavy and light attacks.

Well, I say there’s nothing better, but that’s only as far as standard melee goes. Atsu has many other tools at her disposal, some of which really even the odds. In keeping with her pragmatic approach, she can quickly swap between various Quickfire Weapons such as smoke blasts that interrupt attacks or a flame coating for weapons that make them briefly unblockable. 

Boop.

You’ll be able to acquire two bows early on. The smaller one uses fire, poison, and Cool Original(™) flavor arrows, while the longbow fires heavy bastards that knock people backwards as well as explosive and disarming arrows. Then there are fire bombs, ye olde flashbang bombs, and later on you’ll get yourself a rifle that trades all practicality for sheer power. 

There are enough tools that by the late game I was suffering from choice paralysis. It’s also easy to forget stuff after a while, such as the super terrifier move that I forgot to use for most of the bloody game! Amazingly, however, these myriad choices are all tightly mapped for quick in-game selection without the need for menus.

So extensive is Atsu’s suite of dirty tricks, even the act of restoring Spirit can be turned against her enemies - once you’ve drunk your sake, you can throw the empty bottle in their stupid faces. 

What a tosser.

Throwing is the best fucking thing. One of Yōtei’s appeals is that even though it can be tough when it wants, it makes being cool the easiest thing in the world. Tossing shit is the pinnacle of this philosophy, as any weapon an enemy drops can be picked up and immediately flung at the nearest fucker in sight - an instant kill for all but the most elite. 

It is so easy to do, but in the heat of battle it’s beyond beautiful, especially if you’ve thrown a sword into the chest of the very person you yoinked it from. 

I love throwing stuff so much I built an entire loadout around it, since every element of play can be enhanced via unique armors and equippable charms. I have a build that makes throwable weapons drop more often, heightens their damage, and adds a blinding effect to sake bottles when hurled. 

Dentistry was brutal back then.

Yōtei wants you to tailor the shit out of it. I almost always avoid multiple loadouts in games - I like to make as balanced a build as possible so I don’t have to think about it - but the options are so fun here that I’ve used every loadout slot to emphasize different aspects. 

I’d absolutely kill for the option to transfer abilities between armors or outright transmogrify them. There are so many cool looking armor sets in this game, but they’re locked into bespoke playstyles. They also have their own unique set of variant color schemes, so you can’t take a pattern you like from one and use it on an outfit you prefer.

While many aspects of this game featured in its predecessor, everything has been improved to such a degree it might as well be brand new. The gear enhancements, the throwing, the sneaking, the slashing, it’s all more precise and pronounced. It’s also better balanced, with more incentive to vary up your tactics. 

Another dogged contender.

All that said, Ghost of Yōtei does have an unfortunate tendency to disincentivize some of its coolest options in a manner that reflects (and directly assists) all those no-selling tanks you’ll be facing.

Spirit governs both healing and some of your best combat moves, which is quite the premium. Worse, getting the time you need to drink sake is frustratingly implausible due to enemies “rubber banding” and instantly closing any distance - it gets downright ludicrous if you try a series of dodges, as they practically drag n’ drop themselves to keep up with you. 

Duelists effortlessly deflect projectiles with their weapons - including your disarming arrows - at best taking a few token hits before gaining Borglike immunity. They can sidestep smoke bombs, get moments of invincibility, immediately retrieve disarmed weapons, and automatically trigger weapon deadlocks once their stance is broken, fucking over any combo attempts.

Essentially, Ghost of Yōtei wants you to enjoy every toy in its massive box of fun… until it doesn’t. 

"Stop having fun!"

Duels will happily grant enemies wild advantages in an attempt to force you to engage with fights in as “pure” a fashion as possible. My problem isn’t the challenge, it’s the way in which Yōtei breaks the immersion it otherwise works so hard to build. It wants duels to feel like a fair match between equal  warriors, but does so with crude railroading that ultimately reminds you it’s just a big ol’ wacky videogame. 

I can’t say I approve of games encouraging players to pick their own approach before selectively punishing them for doing exactly that. Sure, occasionally taking away the toys or introducing immunities can make for a fun challenge, but I can’t help feeling there are more elegant ways of doing this than reneging on its own versatility. 

All of this would be a ruinous detriment to the whole experience if not for two crucial mitigators - the “pure” combat is still really bloody good, and even when it’s at its most railroady, you can still find ways to make combat as dirty as sin. Despite how big a deal I’ve made of my complaint, allow me to explain the ways in which it is more than made up for.  

He's gonna be so surprised.

Like I noted earlier, every facet of play can be enhanced with bonuses attached to your collection of armors and charms. Things can be finely tuned to such an extreme that not only is there a charm for increasing your Quickfire weapon damage, every individual Quickfire weapon has multiple charms made just for it. With six charm slots per loadout, you can get really granular with your tactics. 

When I first tried a ranged build, it was purely to justify wearing the badass Dragonfly armor which comes with bow-based perks. However, once I got a charm that empowered flame arrows to set the ground alight, I became fully invested. That was before I acquired one that gave my shortbow a rapid fire mode with automatic target locking. 

I love the charm that heals you when you use a smoke bomb, especially if combined with ones that restore HP or Spirit upon stealth kills. It turns a stock subweapon into an offensive medkit without changing anything about the controls, mechanics, or inventory. I have to make a massive point about how passive the alterations are, because the active difference they make deserves appreciation. 

Seriously, it is impressive how every possible playstyle behaves the exact same way and has access to the exact same moveset, but things still feel completely different based on whichever aspects you feel like passively enhancing. I’ve never been so committed to tweaking multiple loadouts as with this game, encouraged as I am by how approachably flexible it all is. 

There’s one setback to having so many useful outfits and charms - Ghost of Yōtei’s inventory gets congested to hell and back. Trying to find the gear you want is an expanding chore as you acquire more stuff, made harder by insufficient filtering tags and a bunch of unintuitive item names. This game desperately needs a “favorite” button, the lack of which is a serious oversight.  

Can you tell I love the Spider Lily armor?

Since this is a modern open world game, there’s plenty of clambering to be done. You’ll spend hours fiddling with an endless parade of grapple points, platforming segments, and climbable ledges highlighted with what my husband declares to be scatterings of bird shit. They’re not wrong.

Most of the time, traversal is smooth and Atsu’s physical magnetism is trustworthy enough, but surfaces can be very awkwardly placed at times, confounding the intended physics. Frequently I’ve encountered platforms that are too easy to overshoot or grapple points that don’t trigger reliably. There are some angles and positions that just don’t feel right, leading to awkward jumps that might not work the first time.

While the action is consistently great, particular story arcs can drag a little depending on how they play out. The Kitsune, for example, is the Six’s obligatory ninja and his Nine-Tails gang represent their Shinobi antics with far too many Skyrim-grade puzzles. I wish they were supposed to be legitimately rubbish ninjas, because their “turn the statues in blatantly obvious directions” challenges are so childishly ineffectual that they’re kind of embarrassing.

Fortunately, some lovely narrative payoffs are awarded in exchange for making it through the more tedious spots. The Kitsune arc may have you constantly deciphering “codes” that wouldn’t fool a primary schooler, but it comes with a very fun villain and a delectable little plot twist. It’s a worthy trade. 

It's hard to make any screenshot not look awesome.

While Ghost of Yōtei’s story is laden with familiar tropes, as befits the creative intent of a bunch of samurai nerds, it’s done incredibly well - ain’t nothing wrong with the road most traveled if you’re in a slick ride. Like I said, I’m always up for some quality revenge shenanigans and I don’t need them to break new ground. 

Atsu is a great character to spend an open world’s worth of time with. As the feared “Onryō” of Ezo, she simmers with understandable anger and contempt for her enemies, but tempers it with some dry wit and a softer side that reveals how lonely her mission’s made her. Her growing set of acquaintances are all super likable, especially the delightful disaster that is Mad Goro. 

The Yōtei Six fulfil a range of classical villainous archetypes - lowlife starter villain, proud warrior guy, the proud son, the shamed son, etcetera. Leading this rogues gallery is Lord Saito, who nails it as the charismatic instigator. He’s easy to dislike for the naughty shit he’s done, but hard to hate for how good he is at it. 

That arrow is going directly into his mouth and I love it.

Ghost of Yōtei is exceptional in many areas, but when it comes to finding interesting uses of PlayStation hardware, I’d advise Sucker Punch not to give up the day job. 

It seems Tsushima wasn’t enough to get a fascination with touchpad and gyro gimmicks out of Sucker Punch’s system, since Yōtei sometimes comes off like PS Move game from a decade ago. There’s a procession of truly pointless minigames where you waggle food over fire or smear your finger around to “paint” stuff, all so awkwardly forced into the game I feel a compulsion to cringe.

Luckily, you can switch the most egregiously repetitive minigames off in the options, but that’ll only deal with the very worst of it. I’m just perplexed that we’re getting legitimate tech demo bullshit on a five-year old console for even older controller gimmicks. Who’s it helping? 

Putting the style in fighting style.

The rest of the fluff is decent enough. You can set up a camp almost anywhere in order to refill your Spirit, cook food for random temporary perks, and craft your various consumables. NPCs occasionally approach the camp, usually one of the familiar merchants but sometimes it’ll be a stranger with some info. It’s a great but tragically shallow feature, quickly becoming repetitive and lacking the kind of spontaneous interactions I’d hoped for. 

That lack of spontaneity is possibly Yōtei’s biggest recurring downside. There’s a great story and it’s utterly stacked in the combat department, but the open world itself is made of incredibly pretty cardboard. Each new region offers the same rotation of side corn, and while there’s always something to do there’s rarely anything that feels truly dynamic, like it wasn’t artificially placed in the world to fulfil a content quota.

It might not have been so noticeable if not for the little moments of promise that pop up. As Atsu’s legend grows, Saito starts dispatching kill squads after her, which was really cool at first until it became just another routine. Similarly, the increasingly exaggerated wanted posters suggest you’ll be fending off bounty hunters, but any and all fending is blatant in how scripted it is.

In the face of so much quality stuff in every other department, the flimsy open world is absolutely far from a deal breaker. If anything, it’s only because of how good everything is that the open world’s hollow nature is much of an issue - the game simply deserves an environment as enriching as the rest of it. 

That kappa mask, though!

It should almost go without saying that this thing is a visual treat. Tsushima was one of the last generation’s most beautiful games and boasted the kind of color saturation that makes me downright giddy. Yōtei offers up more of the same. Vast fields of flowers, windswept oceans of autumn leaves, and obligatory blossom trees as far as the eyes can see, it’s all here, and once again it comes with almost zero loading times. 

A genre-humping soundtrack conspires with the vibrant art direction to create some wonderful setpieces, especially when it comes to the bevy of one-on-one duels. Sucker Punch is so excessively committed to coolness as a concept that the sheer abundance of fights taking place under ethereal trees or before thunderous waterfalls is almost comedic. It’s awesome every single time, succeeding with pitch perfect audacity.

Pack and slash.

I love Ghost of Yōtei. I adore the classic mold of Atsu’s revenge tale - it’s the kind of story for which “formulaic” is more compliment than criticism. I appreciate how rich a toybox has been provided in its combat. I give it immense credit for the transformative way it uses passive enhancements to so strongly influence a player’s active playstyle. 

It’s a beautiful production full of mechanically enriching treats that can make a player feel like the sports car of assassins. Seriously, when is Sucker Punch going to make a John Wick game? All told, I’d say this is some of the sleekest, tastiest action I’ve seen from the big budget space in a long, long time.

Proper respects.

Now if they’d just let me wear the cool full-face masks with the cool helmets instead of making me pick. The enemies can have both, why can’t I, you cowards?

9/10