Believe it or not, my TikTok algorithm feeds me a lot of video game videos. Besides the usual crop of trailers, video essays, and streamer reactions, I see a lot of videos of people listing their top 10 favorite video games of all time. I’ve noticed that millennial creators tend to pick games that released in the late 90s and 2000s, while Gen Z often sticks to games that released in the last 10–15 years or so. It makes sense that people would place the games they grew up with on a pedestal, but I’m always a little taken aback whenever I see Ghost of Tsushima on these lists or even topping them. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and Tsushima is far from a bad game — in fact, I think it’s great. It’s a beautiful open world game with intense combat and memorable characters, but I feel it’s totally outclassed by many of its peers. While I don’t think it’s the best game ever made, and it wouldn’t make my personal top 10, I wouldn’t be raising my eyebrows as much if I were to see Tsushima‘s sequel, Ghost of Yotei, making those lists.
Ghost of Yotei is set hundreds of years after the events of Tsushima and tells the harrowing revenge story of Atsu as she sets out to slaughter all the members of the Yotei Six, who killed her family, destroyed her home, and left her for dead 16 years before the start of the game. Yotei‘s classic revenge story is arguably simple, but it’s elevated by Atsu, who is a complex and layered character willing to do whatever it takes to avenge her family.
Atsu’s journey drew me in more than Jin Sakai’s tale in Tsushima, partly because of how it’s expertly woven into the fabric of the open world. Taking out a random, optional enemy camp triggered a scene that showed the impact Atsu was having on the Yotei Six and their leader, Lord Saito. Almost everything is tied to Atsu’s quest for revenge, and that, along with the great deal of variety players encounter while exploring the open world, makes every side quest feel worthwhile in a way that they did not in Tsushima. And that was really Tsushima‘s greatest flaw and what keeps it from being the kind of game that deserves to grace all these Gen Z top 10 lists, in my opinion. Tsushima‘s open world activities are flat, dull, and repetitive, with Ghost of Yotei completely outclassing them.
Ghost of Yotei Beats Tsushima in Every Category
Ghost of Yotei doesn’t just have better open world activities and side quests than Tsushima. Ghost of Yotei beats the 2020 game in every other category as well, with a more gripping narrative, more exciting combat, and better graphics. Yotei expands combat possibilities by giving Atsu five primary melee weapons to choose from, with the ability to swap between them on the fly. Atsu is also able to obtain a variety of other helpful tools that give her even more options, adding a great deal of variety to each combat scenario.
Graphically, Yotei has an admittedly unfair advantage over Tsushima. Yotei was built to take full advantage of PS5 hardware, whereas Tsushima was made with the PS4 in mind. Yotei is one of the best-looking video games ever made and is comfortably ahead of its predecessor when it comes to animations, textures, and performance. Both games are absolute works of art when it comes to their visuals, but Ghost of Yotei is in a class all its own.
The Ghost of Tsushima GOTY Argument
Besides seeing Ghost of Tsushima dominate the Gen Z Top 10 lists, I often see the argument that it was the game that should have rightfully won Game of the Year in 2020. The Last of Us 2 won Game of the Year at The Game Awards in 2020 and effectively swept the awards show. But there are a lot of vocal fans who vehemently dislike The Last of Us 2, largely for its narrative choices, and insist that Tsushima was robbed. Looking at the other games nominated for Game of the Year in 2020, I don’t think Tsushima would have won even if Last of Us 2 was taken out of the equation.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Doom Eternal, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and Hades were all nominated for GOTY at The Game Awards 2020 alongside Last of Us 2 and Ghost of Tsushima. Out of those, the only one that I would put Tsushima ahead is FF7 Remake. All the other nominees had a higher review average than Tsushima. In fact, when it comes to games nominated for GOTY, Tsushima is on the lower end with its 84 overall rating.
I don’t think Ghost of Yotei should win Game of the Year in 2025, but I think it is more deserving of a nomination than its predecessor and does stand a realistic shot at taking home the top prize. I think Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the current frontrunner along with Hades 2 and Hollow Knight: Silksong, but Yotei still belongs in the conversation.
I think Gen Z’s affinity for Ghost of Tsushima boils down to it being one of the big PlayStation exclusives that released when they were in high school. Everyone has that bias, and we all overrate games that we grew up with. But Ghost of Yotei realizes the promise of Tsushima, delivering an incredible open world samurai game that will be incredibly hard to top. It feels like the perfect realization of the concept and is potentially Sucker Punch’s best game to date. Maybe five years from now, we’ll see it listed as one of the best games of all time in TikTok videos made by Gen Alpha.