The Sensie Ishikawa and Kenji missions have been cut from the game, and are now bundled in a $10 DLC pack.
There are no pillars of honor, masks, saddles or bandanas to find in the game. Instead these cosmetic items can be purchased for $1 each in the online store. Because of this Haiku spots no longer exist.
Whenever you talk to a merchant the game automatically tries to connect to the internet, and take you to the online store. If your internet isn't connected the PS4 OS notifies you with a pop-up.
The game isn't quite finished yet, and was released in a beta state. Bugs are everywhere, but they'll be fixed in six months to a year.
Buying armor dyes takes 300 flowers per armor dye. Or you can just pony up $3 on the online store.
There's an online competitive multiplayer mode tacked on. It doesn't let you co-op the game.
The online competitive multiplayer is a required 70 GB update, that demands you install it before being able to use Trophy information for the game.
The online competitive multiplayer has monthly updates that add meaningless grind, new items, and superficial improvements designed solely on keeping people hooked on the game. None of these updates add anything fun to the game. They just add more skinner-box elements designed to send you to the store to buy cosmetic items.
It's now a 3rd party title, but is an Epic Games Store exclusive for a year.
The Ghost Armor is a pre-order bonus.
Yongyea, and Jim Sterling both criticize the game for having paid cosmetic items. Youtube commenters insist the game is good despite cosmetic crap.
GoT now scores 71 on aggregate review sites. Extreme fans of the game insist that the critics are wrong.
For those of us that have played GoT, we have the hindsight of having played a much better version of the game. This is just a mental exercise to demonstrate how modern "AAA" game design sucks the life and fun out of a lot of games these days.