My horse in Ghost of Yōtei is called Mochizuki, which means “full moon” in archaic Japanese, and I swear she is the most unfortunate creature in all of northern Japan. The button I have to press to summon her is right next to the button I need to press to heal my samurai during a fight and I often fumble with my thumb and call her straight into a chaotic seven-on-one brawl. Mochizuki frequently gallops full pelt into an arrow or catches a sword-swipe from one of my outlaw enemies as I roll out of the way. Sometimes she stands on the edge of the skirmish, calmly waiting for me to finish disembowelling bad guys so that we can resume our picturesque adventures across the region of Ezo.
Ghost of Yōtei is the follow-up to American studio Sucker Punch’s reverent samurai action game Ghost of Tsushima, from 2020. Most of the time it looks exceptionally well-directed, no matter what you’re doing: tense standoffs against formidable swordsmen, following a golden bird or a sprinting wolf across the landscape to find a secret natural spring or shrine, scaling a mountain to sneak your way into a tightly guarded fortress. But no open-world game’s dignified framing can survive the addition of a wayward player, and so sometimes I make it look entirely ridiculous by accidentally calling my horse into a fight, or setting myself on fire by mistake.
