Ghost of Tsushima

Back when it was announced in 2017, Ghost of Tsushima caught my attention, due in part to it being a brand-new IP from Sly Cooper and Infamous developer Sucker Punch and for it being their own take on samurai-style gameplay. The more I learned about the game as it got closer to release, the more it intrigued me, such as how the game was heavily inspired by works such as Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo comic book series and the films of Akira Kurosawa of Rashōmon fame. Though the game was delayed on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, said delay was fortunately only by a few weeks, which incidentally made it the final first-party PS4 exclusive following the rather divisive (and that’s I will say on that) The Last of Us Part II released a few weeks prior. The game took a little longer for me to complete than anticipated due to Comic-Con@Home starting up shortly after it came out, though once I finally completed it I found the experience be wholly worthwhile.

At the start of the first Mongol Invasion of Japan in 1274, Jin Sakai and an army of other samurai led by his uncle, Lord Shimura, fight back against the Mongol forces invading the island of Tsushima. After failing to stop Mongol leader Khotun Khan, Jin is fatally wounded and left for dead, while Lord Shimura is taken hostage. After being saved by a thief named Yuna, Jin wakes up several days later and resolves to rescue Lord Shimura and reclaim Tsushima from Khotun Khan’s grasp.

Ghost of Tsushima tells a rather effective historical fiction narrative, taking full advantage of its ancient Japanese setting to explore the concept of honor as it applies to a samurai. According to samurai code, fighting with honor means to face your opponents head-on rather than from the shadows, which is seen as a sign of cowardice. Early on, Jin adheres to this code and feels disgraceful the first time he learns thieving techniques from Yuna, however as the game progresses he starts to question the way of the samurai and how far fighting with honor will get them, afraid that the samurai will be wiped out if they don’t change their ways, which becomes a major plot point later on.

On another note, I liked the way Khotun Khan’s character was written. When he’s onscreen, he is portrayed as someone who speaks softly and offers his opponents another way out, with the condition that they bow down to him. Should they refuse, however, his soft-spoken nature is contrasted with sheer ruthlessness, displaying no qualms killing someone or otherwise forcing people’s hands in order to get what he wants. This ruthless side of him is complemented by him being very tactical, having taken the time to learn the Japanese language and culture in order to communicate with the enemy and find weaknesses to exploit for a more effective takeover.

Before you start the game, a good number of options are available to you to help provide the best experience. I don’t usually include things like this in a review aside from difficulty selection (I played on Easy so I could finish the main story faster), though I thought it was interesting that among the audio setup options given to you are settings for night mode and bookshelf speakers. The game includes a number of experience options as well, though the ones immediately available are English audio with or without subtitles and a Samurai Cinema option that uses Japanese audio with English subs. For a complete Akira Kurosawa experience, there is also the Kurosawa Mode option that places a black and white filter over the screen. At the start, this filter is applied over the Samurai Cinema option, though you can toggle this filter at any time in the options menu.

Kurosawa Mode recreates the experience of watching an old
Japanese samurai film.

The island of Tsushima is split up across three larger sections, each of which opens up at the beginning of each of the three Acts. Despite the size of the island, it somehow doesn’t feel too overwhelming to traverse, though it certainly helps that you have the option to ride on horseback and discovering locations creates a generous number of fast travel points. Like many open world games, however, it can still be very easy to get distracted by sidequests, though I focused as much as possible on trying to complete the main storyline. In the pursuit of a more non-intrusive HUD, the game offers a sense of immersion by having the wind guide you to your next destination, which can be activated at any time by swiping up on the touch pad. In a nice touch, the guiding wind also has a physical effect on your surroundings, as elements such as grass, fire and banners blow in the same direction as the wind.

In addition to the wind, golden birds can appear when you are near an item or area of interest and guide you to it. Often the bird can fly in a direction that you need to put some additional effort into reaching, though if you lose track of the bird on your way it will still find you. Exploration is otherwise encouraged through searching the environment for collectibles and items that will allow you to upgrade items and gear at various merchants in the game world.

The touch pad also does more than activate the guiding wind, as swiping in different directions performs different actions. For instance, swiping left allows Jin to play a flute melody that has affects the weather, with the default melody creating clear skies and further melodies unlocked by collecting enough crickets at graveyards. Swiping right also allows you to brandish or sheath your katana, while swiping down causes Jin to bow in a respectful manner.

There are numerous other collectibles peppered throughout the game world, many of which are purely cosmetic such as headbands, masks and armor/weapon vanities, allowing you to customize Jin’s appearance without having to worry as much about their effect on gameplay; there’s even an option to make masks disappear during cutscenes. Additional headbands can be unlocked by exploring the game world or writing haikus in designated areas, which double as a more calming minigame where you reflect on a topic while looking around for inspiration for your haiku. Other collectibles that don’t affect gameplay include Sashimono banners, finding enough of which unlocks new vanity saddles for your horse, and Mongol Artifacts that provide historical context on Mongolian lifestyles and culture at the time.

Some items that do affect gameplay, however, include Armor and Charms. Over the course of the game you can unlock different Armors, each of which has different abilities such as revealing more of the game map as you travel, reducing the amount of damage you can take during combat or making it more difficult for enemies to spot you. Charms are earned by completing side quests or locating Shrines, with a maximum of six Charm slots available, and have effects ranging from regenerating health outside of combat to allowing throwable Wind Chimes to inflict poison damage, among a myriad of others. While you don’t start out with six slots, foxes found at Fox Dens can guide you to Inari Shrines; finding enough of these shrines unlocks additional Charm slots. As an added bonus, you even get to pet the fox after it guides you to the Inari Shrine. Though I didn’t unlock all six Charm slots during my playthrough, my Charm loadout ended up based more around health and health recovery, including Charms that grant you health upon killing an enemy and another that multiplies the amount of health recovered at one time, as well as the aforementioned health regeneration Charm.

You can pet foxes in this game.

On another note, some collectible gear have some rather clever references to Sucker Punch IPs Infamous and Sly Cooper. The former is in the form of a headband based specifically on Infamous Second Son, appropriately called the Band of the Second Son, while the latter is spread across multiple items, including a headband (Crooked Kama), a sword kit (Sly Tanuki), Gosaku’s Armor (unlocked through a Mythical Tale) and a dye specific to that armor (Ocean’s Guardian). Collecting and equipping all of the Sly Cooper items makes Jin vaguely resemble Sly, which even nets you a Trophy.

Combat is based around stances, which change Jin's behavior in combat and how well he counters specific enemy types. You start off with the Stone stance, designed to counter sword-wielding enemies, and can unlock three additional stances, Wind, Water and Moon stance, by observing or killing enough Mongol leaders. Jin can switch between stances on the fly and his effectiveness in both combat and crowd control depends on how well the player can switch between stances as the situation continually changes. During the mid-game you also unlock the Ghost Stance, activated by clicking both sticks, which requires a lot of setup, but has a very satisfying payoff once you activate it. There are also times where you defeat an enemy and they’re not quite dead yet, in which case you are given the option to finish them off and “end their suffering”.

Aside from a katana, you have the option to use different bows for long-ranged attacks, though this personally didn’t come up too often for me. The bow is also useful for is shooting down Mongol birds, which sometimes act as a warning system to alert nearby Mongols to your location. Early on you learn the ability to assassinate enemies from behind, and can even learn more effective means to do so, though this is interestingly worked into the narrative by Jin initially finding the act dishonorable and having to overcome a mental barrier.

Building your legend, either by completing story quests or liberating Mongol-controlled territory, enough to level up unlocks additional quick-fire weapons called Ghost Weapons, including kunai and bombs, which can really come in handy when dealing with a large group of enemies at once. You can swap between them at any time to alter the situation or suit your preference. Although Ghost Weapons have a limited ammo supply, you can easily replenish them by looking around the area you are in. Your ammo capacity for bow and quick-fire weapons can be increased by killing some animals for Predator Hides and taking the hides to a Trapper, though from my experience bears can be especially difficult to deal with. Building your legend also grants you Technique Points that can unlock new abilities, as well as upgrade the effectiveness of Ghost Weapons and combat stances.

In addition to your health, you also have a meter representing Resolve that can be spent to perform quick actions, such as healing yourself in the middle of combat or performing powerful sword strikes against your enemies, with stronger moves requiring more Resolve to pull off. Resolve can be replenished by killing enemies, though you can otherwise increase your max Resolve by completing Bamboo Strikes that require a series of rapid-fire button presses; among the game’s accessibility features is one that makes the timing of these button presses more lenient, however I personally opted not to do that. Similarly, your maximum health can be increased by relaxing at hot springs, which also allow Jin a chance to reflect on given topics and provide a moment of calm in the middle of a war zone. There are also some moments out of combat where you are given a timed dialogue choice in conversation, though there aren’t any real consequences for your choices aside from a change in dialogue and the characters’ attitude towards the subject.

On the graphical side, the island of Tsushima is visually stunning, with highly realistic depictions of environmental details such as grass, water and mud. Depictions of animals are also realistic, though I particularly noticed some attention to detail with horses and foxes, the former for their idle animations mimicking real horse behavior and the latter for their jumping animations and higher-pitched vocalizations. Settlements and the insides of buildings look very lived-in and tell a story on their own, allowing the player to get a good idea of what ancient Japanese life was like. One instance of this that stood out to me was a whaling village included for historical accuracy, which gave me some insight into the horrors of whaling even before liberating the area from Mongols.

Ghost of Tsushima is visually stunning.

In a natural evolution from the comic book-styled cutscenes in the Sly Cooper and Infamous series, Mythical Tales are prefaced by stories told using a calligraphy brush style that fits well with the tone of the game, impressively rendered in one continuous take. The Mythical Tales themselves show that the game’s visuals embrace both the natural and supernatural sides of Japan, finding the beauty in nature whenever possible. This natural beauty can be captured at any time using the game’s Photo Mode, which enables you to position the camera however you want in order to stage the perfect shot.

While I didn’t notice any major flaws during my experience, I did come across some minor issues. One that came up a number of times was that, when trying to view or upgrade items, especially gear and weapons, it can take a few seconds to actually load what the item looks like, which makes the process of choosing the right items a little harder than necessary. When petting a fox, there was at least one moment where, due to it taking place on a sloped surface, it appears as though both Jin and the fox are floating slightly above the ground for the sake of the animation until it concluded. Additionally, the game seems to be free from any major glitches, save for one I encountered at least twice when trying to view an item. At some points in the game when you unlock an item, you have the option to view it immediately by pressing/holding the Options button. Once in a while, however, said item was replaced by a red placeholder cube with no text and few button prompts, though this went away as soon as I backed out of that screen.

This was a rare occurrence, though an easy fix.

In spite of some minor issues, Ghost of Tsushima is an interesting and engaging addition to Sucker Punch’s catalog. The stance-based combat is handled well and the visuals are some of the best on the PS4, while the story and world design otherwise displaying a high level of respect for Japanese history and culture, as well as the works of Akira Kurosawa. The premise of the story may not entice everyone, however it ends Sony’s line of first-party exclusives on the PS4 on a high note and is a game I would highly recommend regardless.