One mechanic I do not like is the ability to grab weapons the enemy has dropped and throw them

because I keep doing it accidentally

And the throwing mechanics are kind of clunky

And, as far as I can tell, once you pick them up there's no button to just drop them

You gotta throw

I have never ONCE hit a guy with a thrown weapon

Oh wild, I love them because you don't actually have to enter aiming mode

HOW

when you pick up a weapon, it'll highlight whoever Atsu is auto-targetting

just hit square and you'll throw it

I almost never use the manual aim, it's all quickfire for me, usually to snipe an annoying guy or give myself breathing room

god they never explain that so I keep on accidentally picking up empty sake bottles and then flailing miserably while three guys stab me with swords

yeah I think they do the tutorial LITERALLY once all the way back when you fight snake and never again

it's not ideal

like I also had some time where I was flailing with it because I forgot how to throw

Also if you accidentally grab a sword while trying to stealth guys then

you're done stealthing

it counts as an attack and blows your cover

the actual thing that's fucked me up more than anything else is my muscle memory keeps wanting to assume assassinate is on square rather than triangle

It's been long enough since I played the first one that I had forgotten

Anyway the FUNNIEST thing that has happened to me in this game was

I have blown my cover MULTIPLE times doing this

I got into a hotspring

Atsu is just ruminating to herself while relaxing, as she does

And then

While she's thinking

a fucking bear just walks by

like 5 feet away

I ALSO GOT THAT LMFAO

ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING

the bears i think are even worse in this game than they were in Tsushima, which is frankly impressive

if Tsushima if you were patient and very cautious you could deal with a bear in melee

in Yotei the answer to engaging a bear in melee is

"don't"

yeah these bears are not fucking around

if you engage a bear in melee you can and will just fucking die

Let's be entirely fair here. Part of it might just be because of how early in the game I was when I tried it but engaging with the bear at range also made me fucking die.

you absolutely need the heavy bow to deal with those fuckers, the Hankyu will NOT cut it

anyway eric, if I can ask a mild spoiler question

have you ventured into any of the other areas yet besides the Grasslands

I'm currently in the region north of the grasslands

fucking around with The Oni

yeah I did that for a bit, I doubled back to the area east of the grasslands

mostly to get the odachi

I'm probably gonna go back to fucking around in the plains now

oh

I don't have to do them in order

good to know

yeah the game has felt VERY directionless so far in like

a positive but also weird way

They give you a goal right out the gate

"Kill these 6 guys"

So it doesn't have the aimlessness that I feel in a lot of open world games

yeah I just was expecting a bit more structure after tsushima very clearly like, delineated its acts

this feels Less Structured to me than Tsushima, I don't hate it, just an observation

yea

Me: this region isn’t as pretty as the grasslands
This region:

god everything about the game is gorgeous

A lot of Ishikari is just like

yellow grass, brown dirt, gray trees, cloudy weather

But if you head to the northern half you get shit like this

I need to repaint this

I look like a storm trooper

Summing up this game to someone who played GoT:

"What if Yuna was the main character and Jin was the sidekick?"

"You were right. We're strangers."

"I don't know you, and I don't think I want to."

...that's....not summing up the game

that's separate

Plot happened

The funniest shit

I was like "I keep running out of spirit. I should find some more bamboo cutting events"

/play the song of spirit

/leads me to a mysterious gate

Uegetsu is like "Don't go in there it's cuuuuuursed there's a ghost general who went mad after he accidentally killed his daughter!"

"But he had MAGIC ARMOR"

I'm like "Okay well, song of spirit says there's a bamboo stand in here, so I'm gonna"

And it was this whole fucking

haunted house puzzle dungeon

I found the bamboo stand about half way through

did it

and then seriously thought about just leaveing

Atsu like "I'm sorry about your daughter but I just wanted a place to train"