The Snake was a putrid fiend equally as rotten on the inside as he was on the outside. It was as if his moral corruption had quite literally poisoned his blood. Atsu cut down his festering husk of a body in Ghost of Yotei‘s prologue — nine stabs to the torso will do almost anyone in, especially the unwell — but this didn’t stop his decay from spreading. The Echoes of Sekigahara expansion deals with the fallout of that murder and weaves it into Atsu’s past to tell a poignant tale about consequences and rebuilding. This new chapter meaningfully enriches Ghost of Yotei, despite being bundled with a rather standard roguelite mode.
Much of Echoes of Sekigahara‘s greatness stems from the quality of the base game. The reaction-heavy swordplay is brutal and gives players just enough options during skirmishes, although it is sometimes hampered by its unhelpful lock-on, occasionally lethargic camera, and handful of blazing-fast unblockable attacks that leave little time to react. Its landscape is designed for players to wander around and go where their eyes take them. Said rendition of Ezo is absolutely stunning, too, making for one of the best-looking games on the PS5. Expansions rarely sully fundamental qualities of a game, but they are still worth admiring.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Echoes of Sekigahara is not as pretty, but that’s on purpose and part of why it’s such a remarkable expansion; it mixes up elements from the base game and doesn’t just blindly re-serve them with no twist. This new carveout of Ezo is, at first, uncharacteristically dull and desaturated. The rivers flow with sickly green water. Mutilated animal carcasses litter the land. The Viper gang members terrorizing this turf often look like emaciated cannibals. It’s like the thick fog that covers this place is nature’s way of hiding its shame.
Witnessing a once-serene horizon lose its shine is a key part of the story’s appeal. All of these perversions against the natural order come from the power vacuum left by the Snake. His goons are all competing against each other for his throne, all while trying to fulfill their goal of providing Lord Saito’s army with food. Such rancid tasks have ravaged the wildlife, frightened the locals, and ensured these aimless thugs wield the blade as if they have something to prove.
Echoes of Sekigahara constantly circles these topics, so all of it is fairly cohesive. Most of the side missions show how locals have had to deal with the constant siege on their homeland. One of the best ones even follows the tragedy of an artist forced into serving the Vipers. The activities littered around are also rarely just more mindless fodder for the checklist. For example, there is a fox den that revolves around guiding the little furry creature around traps set by the reptilian mob. One of the many bounties also has players tracking down a horse thief that has taken a sick pleasure in gathering meat for Saito.
Unlike many open-world games, these distractions in Echoes of Sekigahara aren’t unrelated to the grander task nor do they feel like they’re just copied and pasted repeatedly for the sake of content. Many of these missions even cleverly remix existing mechanics to make them more narratively relevant, such as the whistling command that gains new meaning in the aforementioned bounty. And these touches are a big reason why its side tasks are so appealing; each piece reveals another spec of insight into the game’s world.
The world itself is also much denser than the other parts of Ghost of Yotei — it is by far the smallest region — and this density works in its benefit, since there is almost always something nearby that is subtly pulling at the player’s attention, be it a suspicious wolf howl or a weird-looking shack. Even though the broader narrative makes these missions worth doing, the way in which they’re fueled by curiosity makes them all the sweeter. This translucent hand of the designers makes it easy to wish Sucker Punch would just rip off the bandage and go further in this direction, but this approach is a solid fusion of the two main styles of open-world games.
All of these threads culminate in a surprising and optional finale tertiary to the main plot that fully realizes the theme of how individuals and communities can rebuild after tragedy. This theme is visible in the main town, as well as the environment, both of which reflect the player’s altruistic actions. Echoes of Sekigahara intuitively ties the health of its land to the health of its people and benefits greatly because of that link. Ghost of Yotei is still utterly gorgeous, however, it makes players work to see its beauty this time.
The wrath unleashed upon the land is indirectly Atsu’s fault, and this ties into the main story of Echoes of Sekigahara and its focus on consequences. Her former lover, Nagato, unexpectedly slides back into her life, but their contentious jabs at each other are anything but romantic. Instead of instantly summing up why the two are at odds, the game takes the more interesting path and doles it all out slowly through flashbacks, allowing it unfold like a mystery. It’s clear something tragic went down, but it takes time to figure out what happened, how it relates to the current-day storyline, and when the joy expressed in the earlier sections will become a distant memory.
Both parties feel guilty for their own reasons, and Echoes of Sekigahara is all about how people can try — and sometimes fail — to atone. Nagato’s personal journey runs parallel to Atsu’s, allowing this handsome devil of an archer to play a worthy foil to the Ghost of Yotei. The two are only trying to do good in their own ways, and Echoes of Sekigahara examines what that means for each of them. It astutely ties back into the events of the base game, but this core tale is strong enough to stand on its own, despite the one development that should have been explained more clearly. It’s the best part of Ghost of Yotei‘s story, and even though that was the original game’s weakest aspect, that doesn’t diminish what Sucker Punch has done here.
Echoes of Sekigahara isn’t just a campaign add-on, as it also adds a few elements to Ghost of Yotei‘s core gameplay. New bolas and massive clubs act as temporary power-ups that stun and clobber enemies, respectively, further adding to the toolbox of what players can wield and see wielded against them. Catching arrows and sending them back acts like a ranged counter the game could have used earlier. The many Viper traps also mix up the stealth, since they litter the waist-high grass and mean players can’t turn their brain off when sneaking. Crouch walking through vegetation has gotten fairly stale, so this small tweak is worth a small nod.
Its modest yet welcome array of new tools fit right into Ghost of Yotei‘s new roguelite mode, Most Wanted. It’s divided up into six different small campaigns that all end with a fight against a member of the Yotei Six. The four playable characters — Atsu, Nagato, Oyuki (the ninja woman from the base game), and Ghost of Tsushima‘s Jin Sakai — all have their own abilities and loadouts, which can be further be augmented through equippable perk-like charms and buffs gained after clearing a wave.
It’s a fairly standard roguelite setup and means it is a fairly standard roguelite experience. Working with the charms and buffs means there’s some semblance of making a build — focusing on Atsu’s wolf buddies can be quite beneficial, for example — and the four characters play differently enough to yield a decent amount of variety. Jin’s versatile stances and sticky bombs are quite the change from Oyuki’s ability to summon ninjas and assassinate targets in a puff of smoke. Ghost of Yotei‘s swordplay with its litany of parries and buckets of blood is solid enough to make Most Wanted worth sinking some time into, especially since the base game is quite peaceful after the credits roll.
However, it lacks the hook of a truly great roguelite. Unexpected variables or new objectives never pop up to keep players on their toes. It just cycles through the same handful of bases and mini-bosses from the chosen faction and doesn’t even use stealth to change up the pacing.
It also locks away too many abilities. Almost everything from perfect parries to Onryo’s Howl has to be purchased again, which means it will take some time to get to an acceptable power level. It’s frustrating to go from an endgame-level Atsu in Echoes of Sekigahara to an Atsu who can’t even disarm opponents without forking over a ton of mon. While unlocks are at the soul of the genre, players should have been given more complete kits to work with at the start and tasked with unlocking new charms, buffs, and cosmetics instead. At least the purchasable cosmetics here are fantastic.
Most Wanted, while ultimately a welcome addition, has its share of problems, but it is certainly the weaker part of the Ghost of Yotei‘s new DLC. Echoes of Sekigahara is significantly more elegant, tying the themes of redemption and guilt seen in its story into the very soil of its world. Ghost of Yotei followed in Ghost of Tsushima‘s footsteps in a lot of ways, and now the two share yet another aspect: a well-crafted expansion that has some of the best moments of the entire game.
A PS5 copy of Ghost of Yotei: Echoes of Sekigahara was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
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