As everyone's said, the game really is gorgeous. One of the most beautiful I've played this year. And there is a soothing quality to just riding your horse through a forest or along a coastline.
I'm only a few hours into the game so far, but it does kind of make you wonder how the Mongols ended up completely destroying and conquering Tsushima (which is what happened in actual history) when they had a superhuman swordsman going around single-handedly vanquishing all the Mongols. Yeah, the Mongols attacked Japan twice and never once actually got any further than the coast of Kyushu. But that said, in the first invasion in 1274, they annihilated the island of Tsushima (which is actually pretty close to South Korea, which is where the Mongols sent their ships from), the island of Iki, then landed in Hakata Bay, which was the capital of Kyushu at the time, where the Mongols fought the Japanese, but retreated back to South Korea after one fight there, only to come back 7 years later in 1281 (where they left from China instead of South Korea and did not land on Tsushima, but went straight to Kyushu). I'm wondering if the end of this game has the Mongols being defeated and the explanation just being "Oh, history books are all wrong." or what. :lol: I mean, I guess that wouldn't be too surprising, considering how it's influenced by the Assassin's Creed series which does exactly that, though usually only in matters in the shadows.
I also find it interesting in this game how in the English subtitles, Jin is so arrogant and forceful. In the actual Japanese audio, he uses humble and honorific speech to Ishikawa-Sensei, Lady Masako, Buddhist priests, etc. as the nephew of a jitou should, but in the English he just says everything super blunt and forceful like he thinks he's the most powerful badass on the island. Lots of characters say "I don't need your help" and Jin's response in English is usually "No, you need me" or "No, you can't do this without me" (even if correct, those are very arrogant expressions), whereas in Japanese, he uses humble speech for himself and honorific speech for the person he's talking to, trying to convince the person he's speaking to that it would be wise to allow him to help them.
English doesn't have a hierarchical structure like Japanese does. And Japanese had it even more back then than it does now, and nowadays you always need to consider your own social status and the social status of the person you're speaking to when choosing which forms of speech to use. It seems like the English writers of the script researched Japanese history, but didn't really take into consideration a lot of really important aspects like this.
Again, it doesn't make the game unenjoyable. It's just kind of distracting, I guess. :lol: