Ghost of Yotei Complete Edition review: An expansion worth returning for

There have never been more things competing for your time, and money.

More games than ever are released every day, infinite streaming services provide more content for less money than at any point in human history. Alongside that, you’re expected to work, feed yourself, and generally interact with the real people in your life.

That’s why I often find such friction when returning to a game I’ve not played in months, even if I loved it the first time around. Live service games are the biggest culprit of this, with virtually none of them adequately introducing re-onboarding measures for players who take a break.

However, when the new content is as good as that offered in Ghost of Yotei Complete Edition, it’s more than worth returning to Atsu’s journey, even if you’ve long-since popped the Platinum.

Ghost of Yotei Complete Edition is comprised of Most Wanted and Echoes of Sekigahara. The former is a roguelike mode which sees players take on waves of enemies before facing a member of the Yotei Six, and the latter is a story expansion.

Ghost of Yotei Complete Edition’s Most Wanted mode is a compelling take on the roguelike genre, and a worthwhile addition to a game that already boasted a substantial single-player and multiplayer offering.

In Most Wanted, the player is stripped down to the base abilities of each character, and is then tasked with taking on waves of tougher and tougher foes. Death is inevitable, and with each run the player earns currency they can use to purchase abilitlies, and unlock new playable characters.

The headline here is that this mode reintroduces Jin Sakai, the protagonist of Ghost of Tsushima, as a playable character. He’s joined by Atsu and two other playable heroes, each of which play slightly differently. The loop of completing rounds and being rewarded is satisfying, even if the curve for earning currency is a litte steep in the beginning.

Echoes of Sekigahara is the highlight of Ghost of Yotei Complete Edition. While not as large as the Iki Island expansion from the first game, the story it tells is one of the richest across the franchise.

Echoes of Sekigahara begins with Atsu hunting a bounty from her past. A samurai that she fought alongside in the war. The DLC includes flashbacks to Atsu’s time before she returned to Yotei and became the titular Ghost, and brings with it a new side to Atsu.

A new, smaller region is introduced in Echoes of Sekigahara, which includes new bounties, dye merchants, and more. It’s certainly more limited in scope than a full-on expansion, but what is there is all enjoyable. The main campaign will take around 5 hours to complete, with side missions and bounties adding a few extra hours on top.

Echoes of Sekigahara’s biggest addition is two new fighting mechanics: massive weapons and a new deadeye-style ability that allows Atsu to fire three arrows at once, each auto-targeting an enemy. Yotei already offered so many weapon types and gadgets that there were certainly some that I virtually never touched in the base game, but both of these new additions are welcome.

The massive weapons, which add a category to the skill tree, function like other weapon pickups from defeated enemies, though it’s possible to upgrade your skill with them and use them a few times before they break. These are fun for crowd busting, but they’re less agile and satisfying than picking up an enemy’s sword and Luke Littlering it across a rice field at them.

The world of Echoes of Sekigahara is now full of traps, and a new enemy type will shoot arrows deep into Atsu’s arm, which requires the player to remove it before they can heal or use any spirit abilities. It makes the region feel slightly different, even if combat encounters play out mostly the same as in the base game.

Echoes of Sekigahara’s strongest moments come in the main story missions, which are full of great writing, and another strong performance from Erika Ishii. Ishii’s portrayal of a younger Atsu, when compared to the Ghost she’d become, is very effective, and adds context to the character that makes me rather surprised this portion of her story was relegated to DLC.

The highest praise I can give Echoes of Sekigahara is that the main story of Ghost of Yotei is weaker without these sections. This is a “Complete Edition” that actually feels complete from a narrative perspective. I wish there was more of it, and this was a more Iki Island-sized adventure.

The great things about the base game remain, namely the best-in-class presentation. Ghost of Yotei’s excellent soundtrack, including the “chill beats to behead your enemies to” Wantanabe Mode, makes riding across this new chunk of Japan a joy.

The soundscape greatly complements visuals which can go toe-to-toe with any other game on the platform. Some of the shots of the landscape as Mount Yotei pierces the sun on the horizon are absurd.

I left Ghost of Yotei Complete Edition with a reaffirmed appreciation for the base game, and a desire to go back and do absolutely everything the island has to offer. The new expansion is strong enough that it should never have been divorced from the main narrative, and Most Wanted is another string to the game’s already content-rich bow.

If this is your first time picking up Sucker Punch‘s latest, what is here is one of the best “Complete Editions” of a game in a while, even if the new story content isn’t quite as long as I had hoped for. Though between the base game, Ghost of Yotei Legends, Most Wanted, and now Echoes of Sekigahara, it’s difficult to imagine you running out of things to do quickly.