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Ghost of Tsushima does a number of things quite well, and a lot of other things very mediocre or predictably. Visually, it's ridiculously pretty. The Japanese island of Tsushima that they've created is spectacular and looks incredible in motion. Screenshots and even video don't do it justice; playing the game in real-time looks spectacular especially when traveling on horse through a huge field of pampas grass or through a foggy forest. Character models look incredible and are well detailed, although animation sometimes feels a little stiff or rudimentary (only when stacked against incredible mo-cap work like The Last of Us).
In terms of gameplay, it's honestly a bit shallow and sometimes frustrating. It uses a very standard open-world non-linear quest setting not unlike Assassin's Creed or Far Cry. The map slowly opens up over the course of 3 distinct story acts, with those 3 acts taking place in 3 separate 'sections' of the whole map, each with distinct and recognizable geography or weather. The moment-to-moment combat and core gameplay loop comes at a reasonable pace and introduces new concepts, skills, and enemy types to keep combat engaging up until the end. It uses a pretty standard light attack, heavy attack, parry, and dodge system. The combat can be frustrating if you aren't used to or adept at quick reactions. Although not strictly crucial a lot of the combat relies on quick button presses to parry or dodge enemy attacks leaving them open for counter-attacks. You can also break enemy defenses without parries, although it leaves you more susceptible to counter-attacks yourself. Stealth is also often a viable option for a lot of confrontations, but I think the level design isn't always well-suited to engaging stealth gameplay, although it's serviceable.
The story is painfully predictable in a number of sections, although I was a bit surprised toward the end. Essentially, the Mongols invade Tsushima island in preparation for a raid on mainland Japan. They wipe out all the samurai except the player character Jin, who vows to drive the Mongols away and stop their plans. As he does this he slowly loses his grip on the honor that drives what it is to be a samurai. He starts to become the Ghost of Tsushima and take on a new identity that clashes with the well-established lineage of his family. You're introduced to handful of supporting characters over the story's progression and they each have their own mini story arcs that can be optionally followed and help flesh them out and provide more context to how the Mongol war has affected the population. A neat aspect of the supporting character side missions (called Tales in-game) is that a lot of them can be done out of sequence without affecting that story's structure. Obviously some need to be first and last, but a lot of the Tales in the middle can fill out the story without relying on others before or after it. Each one wraps up well and feels like care was taken to make the stories stand on their own. Voice acting is between great and good; broadly speaking the main characters are all acted very well, but not all sequences and cutscenes are animated as naturally as others. Ambient music and sound effects are fantastic and 3D tracking is incredible; this is a joy to listen to on a proper 5 or 7 channel system.
Where I take most of my issue with Ghost of Tsushima is in it's pace and choice of open world. Open-world games will always inherently have pacing issues because you lose the ability to guide a player along a tightly constructed path. It doesn't suffer the way other games like Assassin's Creed can where the map turns into a huge icon-filled collect-a-thon, but there's still too much stuff to be distracting from what could have been a tighter story. Some folks love roaming open worlds, but I love being drip-fed a brilliant story with tight pacing and insane attention to detail. Ghost of Tsushima strikes a pleasant balance that kept me engaged, but ultimately I feel as though the open-world wasn't necessary.
The game also has RPG-lite elements. Performing story quests, liberating areas of the map, and meeting bonus objectives earns you "technique points" that can be spent to unlock or upgrade abilities. Some I found useful or at times compulsory, others are far less practical and are just there to make 100% game completion easy. Weapons and armor can be upgraded by finding common and rare supplies in the world (and yeah, they are actually just called "Supplies") and spending them at vendors throughout the world. Abilities can be augmented with 'charms' that can be found in the world - take less damage, deal more damage, stealth is easier, etc. It's all a very "fill out the skill tree" type of thing, but it gives the player choice of where to put their points.
Overall it's a very good game and is incredibly pretty. It controls reasonably well, and I encountered very few visual bugs and no game crashes on a PS4 Pro and PS5.
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Possibly obscurity, an odd one for sure to pull off the shelf by happenstance. Piqued my interest in content alone, where I’ve always had a penchant for all things ninjitsu, stealth being the one trait I do not and cannot attain in physical stature so of course, it's what I aspire to. Though, more recently a renewed interest in the benign childhood whims and an urge for something new in my Sixaxis bare palms yearning for that vibration. Originally I purchased this alongside one of the many Assassins famed games. As good as they are, they lack all things that truly offer this game space to shine. Amidst the chaos of hacking and slashing, this game felt clumsy, awkward, and unforgiving. But 2 months after a backburning cooldown with reflexes stopped, I attempted to pick up where I had left off into this Gem, luckily just at the start of things to flow, before any bridges were truly crossed initially and I relearned how to play responsively.Once that threshold crossed, the world inside this box began to bloom. Slow at first as things tend to, but before too long I'm finding myself stopped by a waterfall or cloudy hillside, or walking slowly through the woods to find a possible flower and just to see what all there is unfolding to me. Fireflies and ancient spirits gilding by, souls weigh the mist of war-torn Japan. stark white ethereal, oceans on stone translucent doe floating in a backdrop of the serene inner calm this game begs. Though, seemingly, this game is about killing -- it isn’t. It is truly about sacrificing and understanding how precious each moment is, the true cost that a person can bear. You are not savagely anything, but rather a sentinel of persistence, endurance for Tsisiham to feel the powerful strength that cannot be broken because he is not fighting. He is peacing. And if one is not fighting, then there is no fight, where if one is peaceful there will always be peace.‘Posits come, as I am sure they must, for a samurai. It is not my pain that is savaging the world. And it is not my pain that will fight it. But instead, a loving endurance to stand and risk everything for what is truly sacred. I find myself growing and learning alongside Jin as he grows from a young-hearted ready for revenge fighter, to an enduring heart calm at peace, who accepts that it is easy to fight bloodthirsty into a battle you know you cannot win. But it is not the ease of things that define us. And it is not for us to spare ourselves the hardship of becoming what we must nor deafening the struggle with which we must survive. And it is not anyone else choices that hurt me. They take a life, that is on them to take that life and cannot blame righteously anyone, even if it is their own. If I cannot save someone it isn’t my blade hurting them nor my hurt to endure.Each character has their own weakness and while everyone has their faults that does not “make everyone a murderer.” And as we shadow Jin on this self-fulfilling journey toward inner peace we see just how much the world can try to burden him, blaming everything that goes wrong on him, their suffering, torment, betrayal, sacrifice, and anger on him, while he must battle the quiet from his own mind where, in silence, his sword is what screams.
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 15, 2021
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 7, 2021
Possibly obscurity, an odd one for sure to pull off the shelf by happenstance. Piqued my interest in content alone, where I’ve always had a penchant for all things ninjitsu, stealth being the one trait I do not and cannot attain in physical stature so of course, it's what I aspire to. Though, more recently a renewed interest in the benign childhood whims and an urge for something new in my Sixaxis bare palms yearning for that vibration. Originally I purchased this alongside one of the many Assassins famed games. As good as they are, they lack all things that truly offer this game space to shine. Amidst the chaos of hacking and slashing, this game felt clumsy, awkward, and unforgiving. But 2 months after a backburning cooldown with reflexes stopped, I attempted to pick up where I had left off into this Gem, luckily just at the start of things to flow, before any bridges were truly crossed initially and I relearned how to play responsively.
Once that threshold crossed, the world inside this box began to bloom. Slow at first as things tend to, but before too long I'm finding myself stopped by a waterfall or cloudy hillside, or walking slowly through the woods to find a possible flower and just to see what all there is unfolding to me. Fireflies and ancient spirits gilding by, souls weigh the mist of war-torn Japan. stark white ethereal, oceans on stone translucent doe floating in a backdrop of the serene inner calm this game begs. Though, seemingly, this game is about killing -- it isn’t. It is truly about sacrificing and understanding how precious each moment is, the true cost that a person can bear. You are not savagely anything, but rather a sentinel of persistence, endurance for Tsisiham to feel the powerful strength that cannot be broken because he is not fighting. He is peacing. And if one is not fighting, then there is no fight, where if one is peaceful there will always be peace.
‘Posits come, as I am sure they must, for a samurai. It is not my pain that is savaging the world. And it is not my pain that will fight it. But instead, a loving endurance to stand and risk everything for what is truly sacred. I find myself growing and learning alongside Jin as he grows from a young-hearted ready for revenge fighter, to an enduring heart calm at peace, who accepts that it is easy to fight bloodthirsty into a battle you know you cannot win. But it is not the ease of things that define us. And it is not for us to spare ourselves the hardship of becoming what we must nor deafening the struggle with which we must survive. And it is not anyone else choices that hurt me. They take a life, that is on them to take that life and cannot blame righteously anyone, even if it is their own. If I cannot save someone it isn’t my blade hurting them nor my hurt to endure.
Each character has their own weakness and while everyone has their faults that does not “make everyone a murderer.” And as we shadow Jin on this self-fulfilling journey toward inner peace we see just how much the world can try to burden him, blaming everything that goes wrong on him, their suffering, torment, betrayal, sacrifice, and anger on him, while he must battle the quiet from his own mind where, in silence, his sword is what screams.
Once that threshold crossed, the world inside this box began to bloom. Slow at first as things tend to, but before too long I'm finding myself stopped by a waterfall or cloudy hillside, or walking slowly through the woods to find a possible flower and just to see what all there is unfolding to me. Fireflies and ancient spirits gilding by, souls weigh the mist of war-torn Japan. stark white ethereal, oceans on stone translucent doe floating in a backdrop of the serene inner calm this game begs. Though, seemingly, this game is about killing -- it isn’t. It is truly about sacrificing and understanding how precious each moment is, the true cost that a person can bear. You are not savagely anything, but rather a sentinel of persistence, endurance for Tsisiham to feel the powerful strength that cannot be broken because he is not fighting. He is peacing. And if one is not fighting, then there is no fight, where if one is peaceful there will always be peace.
‘Posits come, as I am sure they must, for a samurai. It is not my pain that is savaging the world. And it is not my pain that will fight it. But instead, a loving endurance to stand and risk everything for what is truly sacred. I find myself growing and learning alongside Jin as he grows from a young-hearted ready for revenge fighter, to an enduring heart calm at peace, who accepts that it is easy to fight bloodthirsty into a battle you know you cannot win. But it is not the ease of things that define us. And it is not for us to spare ourselves the hardship of becoming what we must nor deafening the struggle with which we must survive. And it is not anyone else choices that hurt me. They take a life, that is on them to take that life and cannot blame righteously anyone, even if it is their own. If I cannot save someone it isn’t my blade hurting them nor my hurt to endure.
Each character has their own weakness and while everyone has their faults that does not “make everyone a murderer.” And as we shadow Jin on this self-fulfilling journey toward inner peace we see just how much the world can try to burden him, blaming everything that goes wrong on him, their suffering, torment, betrayal, sacrifice, and anger on him, while he must battle the quiet from his own mind where, in silence, his sword is what screams.
Images in this review
Top reviews from other countries
Bob Webbleston
Absolutely buy it
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 8, 2020
Ian Bisgrove
A Masterpiece that Leaves you wanting more
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 5, 2021
Zaeem Siddiqui
Amazing Open-World Game with Fantastic Story and Excellent Combat!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 4, 2023Isk Khan
Great game apart from freezing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 18, 2021
