Oh dang, I have another health system post. The one in Ghost of Tsushima is really complicated, because you can heal whenever you want as long as you have these “resolve” points, which you only really use for healing (or sometimes a special move). But to earn resolve points, you have to attack and kill enemies, so you’ll be in situations where you’re very low on health and kill someone, but still not have enough resolve from the kill to heal up, so you have to kill a whole nother dude which is just frustrating. Then you use a heal and you get 1/3rd of the health back.
What’s also confusing is you can get charms which modify how you get resolve and health. There’s one where you get resolve from getting hit by someone else, except more often than not this is from a death blow from an enemy, so you’re low on health, can’t heal, but after you die you finally got enough resolve to heal, which is now useless. There’s also a charm which adds regenerative health, but only if you’re out of combat, and when you get low the game tells you to “leave combat to heal” so you run off and maybe play a song on your flute on a nearby hillside while the enemies patiently wait for you to heal up and re-enter combat. It broke up combat in a weird way.
My one hint for that game is focus on upgrading the sword damage because once you can 1 or 2 shot enemies the game becomes 50% less aggravating.
