The extra hours didn’t add much to the latter, just more repetition. A 100% completion only takes around 18 hours compared to the 35 or so it takes to get a platinum trophy in Marvel’s Spider-Man. The superhero title is something of a side-adventure to its predecessor, boasting a breezy 8-hour run time. It’s a similar experience to the one I had playing Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. I found myself taking more time to admire the environment and soak in all the beautiful colors - stopping to smell the flowers, you could say. I tackled the story in a way that felt narratively right, not disappearing at critical plot points to spend hours on busywork. Instead, I was playing at a more leisurely pace. I wasn’t spending hours hopping between map icons, obsessively checking them off my to-do list. That smaller world entirely changed how I interacted with the game. I felt like I’d actually be able to do and see everything on Iki Island in a reasonable amount of time, which was a relief coming off a game like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which feels melancholically large. Nothing threatened to overstay its welcome. I’d gotten to try out a handful of new activities, like a motion-controlled flute minigame and archery contests, each of which only repeats a small handful of times. Within four hours, I had revealed a little less than half of the map with new points of interest appearing at a steady pace. Unlike my time on Tsushima, I never felt overwhelmed during my stay on Iki. Iki Island doesn’t feel much different from Tsushima in terms of design, but it is more manageable to explore. It’s often a way for developers to deliver more content by remixing existing assets and activities, placing them on a freshly uncharted map that contains a few new tricks. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla just took its Vikings to France for its Siege of Paris DLC. It’s the same post-launch strategy we’ve seen with games like Sony’s Horizon Zero Dawn, which added a frosty northern area to its map for the Frozen Wilds expansion. It’s a self-contained tale that takes players to an entirely new location that’s just a touch smaller than Tsushima’s starting zone. After a certain point in the main game, Jin can set sail to Iki Island where he finds that a shaman called “the Eagle” is unleashing a mysterious poison on the people of Iki. It’s a sort of an optional narrative interlude that slots right into the central story. Ghost of Tsushima’s Iki Island expansion is included in the game’s new Director’s Cut. After a few hours of play, I found myself wishing that more open-world games would shrink down to its size. It features a brand new story set on Iki Island, a smaller and more compact location than the sprawling Tsushima. So imagine my relief when I fired up Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut and hopped into the game’s new DLC.
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