My critique of Skill Up’s review of Ghost of Yotei

Skill Up uploaded his review of Ghost of Yotei a couple of days ago, and it seems he only barely recommends it. While everyone is entitled to their own opinions and tastes, I find his review and the reasoning behind it to be fundamentally flawed. This will be a long post, but I will focus on just a few of his main points and share my thoughts on them.

To start, it is worth remembering that Ralph’s (Skill Up’s) Game of the Year in 2020 was Ghost of Tsushima, which he described as “a perfection of the open-world formula.” Yet now, with Ghost of Yotei, his main criticism is that it is “more of the same,” offering only marginal improvements to exploration and combat, and that it does not revolutionize the genre or reinvent the wheel.

That is a bizarre position to take. If the first game was a masterpiece, and the sequel slightly improves upon it (except perhaps the story), how can that make it less appealing? While it is fair to criticize a developer for reusing a formula too many times until it becomes stale, this is only the second game in Sucker Punch’s series. It has not overstayed its welcome. Claiming that a studio should overhaul something he himself previously called “perfect” makes little sense. Why radically change what already works?

Ralph also compares Sucker Punch to Ubisoft, not in terms of design philosophy, but in the sense that Sucker Punch “found a good formula and stuck with it.” There are two major issues with this comparison.

First, Assassin’s Creed did not decline in quality because AC2 was similar to AC1, or because Brotherhood and Revelations built upon AC2. It arguably became stale only after nearly ten games reused the same structure. By contrast, Ghost of Yotei is just the second game in the series, which makes the comparison inaccurate.

Second, by his logic, every studio could be labeled “Ubisoft” for making a sequel that closely follows its predecessor. That is how sequels work: you refine and you iterate. You do not reinvent the wheel when the foundation is already excellent. If we apply his reasoning consistently, Dragon’s Dogma 2, which he highly recommended, should also be dismissed for being similar to Dragon’s Dogma 1, and its developer (Capcom) would then also be “Ubisoft-like.” The same logic would apply to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Batman: Arkham Knight, Spider-Man 2, and God of War: Ragnarök...etc. You cannot expect a game that already nailed its formula to completely change everything just for the sake of change.

Another strange point in his review is his suggestion that Ghost of Yotei should have introduced vastly different mechanics, some borrowed from unrelated games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. This is an odd take, because once again, why overhaul systems of a game he himself once called “perfect”?

It also feels like Ralph refuses to meet the game on its own terms. Instead, he expects it to cater to his personal preferences. If it does not include the mechanics he imagines, it is somehow not “good enough.” He applied similar reasoning in his Death Stranding 2 review, complaining that it needed mechanics like tire punctures and repairs, despite DS2 having more mechanical depth than DS1, which he had also called a masterpiece.

By this logic, you could dismiss any game. I could say Elden Ring is not good because swords do not break and need sharpening like in Kingdom Come. But we can all see the fallacy here. You judge a game by what it aims to achieve, not by what you wish it did. Otherwise, every game would fail some arbitrary personal test.

Now, if a game genuinely lacks depth, such as (in my opinion) Hellblade 2, which I find mechanically shallow, then suggesting additional mechanics makes sense. But Ghost of Yotei actually adds more depth than Tsushima, just as Death Stranding 2 does compared to its predecessor. Yet in both cases, Skill Up criticizes them for not having “deep enough” mechanics. That inconsistency really stands out.

Overall, I respect Ralph’s work, but I wanted to share my thoughts on his review and hear what others think. There is a lot more that could be discussed, but I will leave it there for now.

I personally just finished Yotei and I enjoyed it far more than Tsushima (despite how good it was), hoping y’all are enjoying it too, and please do share your views as well 😊.