Three hours in and feeling great. It's not dramatic, but I can definitely see and feel the improvements in production values. Performances, flora and fauna, npc's, etc. Early days but the map feels much more dense with content. Everywhere I look there's at least one distinct destination with something to do not far away. The sound design really is excellent and the game makes better use of the DualSense than any other game I can remember since Astro Bot. The biggest thing that's taking some getting used to are the combat differences. After multiple playthroughs as Jin I'm so used to his style that Atsu is a sizeable adjustment. Looking forward to more!

Turned it on for twenty minutes there and it is absolutely stunning, I may have been in bad form last night cause the vibes hit me like a train out of Red Dead Redemption 2. Just the atmosphere of the game, the sounds and visuals and particle effects are mind boggling. In just twenty minutes so much ambience has come from every corner of the world I've past, even the clouds feel alive and lighting in Ray tracing mode is wild, I have never preferred RT over framerate until now but here it makes almost a SDR to HDR boosting effect. t's still pretty in performance mode but there is noticeable fine detail lost and things very noticeably don't pop as much.

My God the colours are phenomenal, it makes me wish I had an OLED but just in HDR on my sub 1000 nits screen it has that Elden Ring painterly effect, it's so beautiful. I'm actually gobsmacked by how stunning the world looks and how it holds up without advanving the fidelity all that much over Tsushim, the scale of the world helps too, everything seems very vast even though it's no hassle to traverse. Also, the sound design is a punch in the face of vibes, it's so full of little sounds and everything here reminds me of RDR 2 in visuals and sound.

There are some weird issues like if you return to Atsu's Memories the scenery outside of the area is blurred off but I think I'll be ignoring that mechanic as much as possible as I can n9t stand the dub which seems good otherwise.

Also, Atsu isn't nearly as ugly as the previews showed, she has very striking eyes. It's the detail they put on her face that's the issue, she has a weathered face but it isn't modern times and it's not like she'll be putting on makeup and her jaw isn't nearly as weak as I thought before release.

I agree and to your point about Duelsense implementation, they really took the time and it adds greatly. 

As I wrote my above comment Atsu has been standing there and a little bird came to land on her hand, I know with details like that and the Duelsense, this game is gonna deliver.  

I also have to sat, that the game is pretty forgiving on hard mide. Lethal looks like the way to go, I would prefer an option in between these two but you cab customise difficulty in areas which I will do as I get more experience with the game.

Received an email that my copy just shipped home, will get to play it tonight after work.

Congrats. I can't say you'll enjoy it but I just left the MC standing for a bit and was treated to this, the image won't do it any justice at all but here, the OG image is serenity on screen and COMPLETELY random weather and effecrs cycles, it was raining with clouds when I stantioned her there...

I'm fairly sure it's going to be incredible, since I love Tsushima.

It's veeerry different. Same core is there but it feels further away from itself than GTA3 does to GTA5 or MGS2 to MGS4. The core is there bit it's dramatically different. 

Nice one. 

Can't get into the game itself but boy is wandering the world phenomenal. Worth the price alone. Better than RDR2 and I'm barely four hour on it. Game is way to hugging easy on the highest Lethal difficulty though, it needs a Sekiro mode, they can't even hit me and I'm really sickened that you skip the one to one mount Yotei climb, worst bit of the game so far.