Ghost of Tsushima is a Action-Adventure game was originally released in 2020 for PS4, while the expanded version was later released in 2021 titled as Director's Cut both for PS4 and PS5.
It was developed by Sucker Punch Productions and published by SONY Interactive Entertainment.
So if you combine the action-adventure games like Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption with the Akira Kurosawa's films into a open-world game where you take control of a badass samurai warrior battling out against the invasion caused by the brutal empire, so that is Ghost of Tsushima.
When I first saw the trailer reveal back when it was first shown at Sony Interactive Entertainment's Paris Games Week press conference in 2017, as well as the gameplay footage at E3 2018.
I was blowned away with the visuals, cinematics, presentation, and of course gameplay which really proves to show the true form of what the future of gaming is like in later years, so I am impressed to see the game like this being on the PS4's system powerhouse.
After the 2020's game release, it received many positive reviews from the gaming press, and also a commercial success has sold more than 9.73 million copies by July 2022 and was one of Sony's fastest-selling original games.
It also received numerous of nominated awards in 2020 including The Game Awards and Golden Joystick Awards, while winning at Japan Game Awards in 2021.
It has caught me attention to give it a shot because I heard many of great things about the game that was heavily inspired by Akira Kurosawa's samurai-classic films, such as Yojimbo and Seven Samurais, which is why I am interested in playing it on my PS4 to see if this game did lives up to my expectations perfectly or is it far from being perfection.
I will discuss all the details regarding the open-world exploration, combat system, story and characters, and of course visuals and sounds design with pros and cons further on this review.
So without go further do, let's start the review.
Presentation
The game set in a year 1274 as it takes place in Tsushima Island where the invasion of Japan was led by Mongols empire making a brutal war conflict between the Japanese and Mongols.
The story starts off with a Japanese samurai warrior named Jin Sakai and his uncle Lord Shimura, who are a members of Clan Sakai, went on the battle to fight and defeat many Mongols army.
However, many of Japanese army were killed after the battle which left Shimura being captured by Mongols army, while Jin got separated after being thrown off the bridge by Mongols leader.
Then he is found by the female thief named Yuna came to help him by escaping from the Mongols camp.
After the escape, Jin had agreed to help Yuna as an new companion while meeting with others to join in, as well as recruiting with Japanese army in a quest to protect the Japanese island and conquer the Mongols empire in order to bring back peace and freedom.
So far, the plot in the game is done absolutely incredible because I love the accuracies of Mongols invasions of Japan where all the mens had gone through hell fighting in the brutal war to protect their home island filled with many innocent people are likely to get captured and tortured by the empires led by warlords.
It brings lot of interesting history in the game which is why I had a reason to bought this to play single-player story campaign.
You have Jin Sakai (Daisuke Tsuji) as main protagonist goes out his journey to help his people of Tsushima who are held captured by Mongols empire. I really liked his persona for its bravery and confidence which is what I liked about him is that he really cares about saving his people lives, agrees offer to help, and confronting those bunch of horrible bandits that commits crime which delivers his excellence personality.
He has his uncle named Lord Shimura (Eric Steinberg) who is a father-figure had thought Jin to learn to become a samurai warrior.
He was held prisoned by Mongols army starts interrogating him while he's waiting for his nephew and Japanese army soon to rescue him.
Jin has shares with supporting cast of characters such as Yuna the female thief (Sumalee Motano) and her blacksmith brother Taka (Eddie Shin), elder-female warrior Lady Masako Adachi (Lauren Tom), renowned Kyūdō archer Sensei Sadanobu Ishikawa (François Chau), merchant and con-artist Kenji (James Hiroyuki Liao), and Buddhist warrior monk Norio (Earl T. Kim) came to aid him to fight against the empires during the battles.
Lastly you have the main villain called General Khotun Khan of the Mongol Empire (Patrick Gallagher), who is a cousin of Kublai Khan and grandson of Genghis Khan. He is a big fat ruthless warlord are responsible of invading Japanese Island of Tsushima, so he is a one bad mother f***er who is a tough and brutal looking villain that he can squash and pound you in pieces is what made him quite deadly and also one of a dangerous leader of Mongol army.
The motion capture actors in the whole game does such an incredible job of portraying their roles really nails their performance in terms of character's development, spoken dialogue, and interacting between the characters throughout the cinematic scenes is what made the acting in story campaign so great.
I considered the whole presentation is the work of art because you can't go wrong with the cultural stuff that Japan was very known for its traditional Japanese cultures such as ancient folklores, bold mountains, colourful natures, temples and shrines, and cherry blossom that creates the beautiness of Japan.
It has 3 regions such as Izuhara, Toyotama, and Kamiagata which filled with lush forests, flowering rivers, beautiful grasslands, shrines, hot springs, haiku, farmstead, villages, beaches, fireflies, and many stuff going around that are so overwhelmingly beautiful to discover things that I am so grateful to see the game like this are looking so impressive.
I got to say the cinematic design in the game is fantastic especially with the use of motion capturing technology that adds the game's realism just to make most of the characters in the game capturing their emotions and expression as well as keeping the lip-syncing intact just feels right on the cutscenes.
The game's atmospheres is stunningly amazing especially with the peaceful vibes of places that makes you feel relax and relived such as making poetry on haiku, make prayer on shrines, and taking bath in hot springs which really helps you reflecting on stuff related to serenity, death, honour, and so on.
The best part of the cinematics stuff that made samurai genres quite famous is the stand-offs duel where groups of guys will make a move until the other one does something, where as the other sequences such as the part where twos opponents makes an eye to eye contact before they draw the sword to begin the battle adds the game's badassery.
This is got to be one of the greatest presentation in any of video games does a job well done by AAA development team feels really proud of their results turns out very successfully.
Overall, it has incredible storyline and characters, beautiful presentation settings, and fantastic cinematic design.
Gameplay
In single-player campaign, you get to control as Jin Sakai in open-world environments as your main goal is to defeat the Mongols empire by liberating the main fortress and camps as possible in each region in order to save the island.
You just move around by pushing the left thumbstick forward, while clicking the left thumbstick to sprint to traverse throughout the areas, but you can also traverse much faster with the horse riding which you can call out your pet friend to join you on the ride by hitting the left d-pad button making the traversing much easier to explore throughout the level.
Pushing the right thumbstick around is to control the camera movement to look and interact around the surrounding.
You will have cross button that allow Jin to jump on platforms such as wall climbing and landing on obstacles, and the circle button that makes Jin roll around that are used as dodging enemy's projectiles or safe landing when jumping off from high platforms.
You will obtain one of the grappling hook item in later part of the story mission which allows you to swing, climb, and jump on unreachable platforms by clicking on right trigger button in mid-air.
The touchpad buttons will have 4 commanding gestures such as swipe up to pinpoint the location with guiding wind that leads you to the destination, swipe down to bowing which can be used for something like paying respects, swipe left to equip flute to play calming song, and swipe right to draw/sheath sword.
In exploration, you will access to a map screen at the pause menu which tells you where you are located in, but everything else are all covered up meaning these locations are not been fully discovered yet unless you had to traverse around the map to visit a new places including villages, shops, and houses, or liberate one or more enemy's camps and fort will expand further more on the map meaning more discoveries will appear as a question mark symbols on the map such as hot springs, shrines, bamboo strikes, and etc.
You can also use fast travel options in the pause menu after you had discovered a new location will allow you to select any of these available places you want to visit making it easier for those who does not want to travel more than 100 meter distance.
In swordplay combat, you will have two basic attacks such as hitting the square button to use quick attack deals less damage but perform faster, while hitting the triangle button will allow you to perform heavy attack deals much damage but slower to perform.
Like I've mentioned the circle button before which is used as dodging are effective for when the enemies perform their heavy attack highlights with the red flashing dot, but you will have left shoulder button which are used as blocking and parrying the enemy's attack when the blue flashing dot appears which tells you when to parry, so it requires a perfect timing to get a perfect parrying which staggers the enemy off which means you can perform an counterattack on them after perfect parrying.
You will also have other weapons to obtain such as bow and blowgun which you will hold left trigger button to aim, while holding the right trigger to pull the arrow back for precision then release it to fire.
After defeating the enemies or beating numerous of the mission, you will be rewarded with EXPs, as well as obtaining the new techniques and skills which I will provide you these stuff further more on this review.
Stuff like you will have numerous of weapons and stance that really enhances your combat ability such as half bow which is short-ranged bow can be used to fire both normal and fire arrows. The fire arrows will set enemies on fire causing light damage, can expand large range of fires into dry grass, and cause barrels of gunpowder to explode which burns enemies nearby.
The long bow are slightly far-distance ranged weapon giving a much précised aiming at the enemies takes much heavier damage than the half bow, and it also can fire explosive arrows which can inflict a lot of damage to groups of enemies.
The blowgun is a dart weapon are used for poisoning the enemy which they can instantly die in 5 secs, where as the hallucination can cause the enemies turned into a blind rage and would attack anyone except hostages strangely.
The item will have numerous of sub-weapons such as sticky bomb that sticks directly into enemies till it get exploded deals similar damage as the exploding arrows, the kunai is a throwing blade can be thrown with 2 or 3 more blades to multiple enemies nearby perfect for stealth play, the way of the flame unleashes with the flaming sword can also set the enemies on fire just like with the flaming arrows, and of course the smoke bomb will expand the large cloud of smoke makes the enemies unable to detect you nearby.
You will have 4 different stances allowing Jin to perform different style of fighting techniques such as stone stance are effective against the swordmen, the water stance works effectively on shieldmen, the wind stance staggers the spearmen, and the moon stance deals against brutes with heavy attacks deal extra stagger damage to them which these are the stances adds the realism of combat.
In stealth play, you'll be sneaking around the enemy's camp or fort depending on which mission you're playing on, so during the stealth you will see an enemy's indicator which indicates the status where if they notices you suspiciously will turn the indicator yellow meaning they will search for you nearby, but if the indicator turns red which mean they finally caught you in action can lead into fight.
The best way to avoid getting caught is to find the hiding spot that the enemies won't able to see you whereabouts.
You can also perform the sneak kill on the enemy in close-range during the stealth by hitting on square button but make sure they don't see you nearby, and you can also highlight the enemies by hitting the touchpad button is not just focusing on hearing, but also you could able to see where the enemies near close-by making an easier to navigate the areas without getting caught in action.
Like I've mentioned about EXP points which you can able to upgrade your skill tree allowing you to perform various of moves such as sprint strike will let you do dashing attack, chain assassination instantly kill 2 or 3 enemies at a time during the stealth, stand-off streak lets you dispatch even more enemies at the beginning of a fight, mental fortitude slows down the time lets you focused more on aiming with bow much easier, perfect parrying healing adding a healing effect makes Jin harder to kill is a great way to restore some health, and there's more of techniques to upgrade improving Jin's fighting skills.
I also liked the two of the mythic moves such as heavenly strike which is a unblockable attack that deals big damage to staggered foes, while dance of wrath deals 3 combos attack, but my favourite part of it is the ghost stance which allowing Jin to unleash his instant kill on 3 enemies, so you will need to charge it up by killing enemies without taking any damage till the metre bar reached fully before activating ghost stance.
Speaking of upgrades, you will gather all different kinds of materials can be collected throughout the open world, so stuff like wood, metal, cloth, and goods which you will need these supplies to upgrade stuff like armor and weapons can be traded with trappers, swordsmiths, armors, and bowyers at the shop in ally's camp or fort.
These will improve upon your attributes such as more ammunition capacity for arrows and bombs, quality defense to reduce damage, and increased strengths for swords and bows that makes Jin feel more stronger throughout the adventures.
The combat system plays absolutely well throughout the battle and exploration which I am happy with the swordplay mechanics where you have an options to change stance that makes your fighting style feel effective against the different enemy's classes like swordmans and brutes, and I also liked the parrying system which displays enemy's blue light dot meaning that you can easily able to parry them in right timing just works pretty well during the battle.
Then you will have variety of weapon choices like the bow, blowgun, kunai, bombs, and you name it comes very handy with the different ammunition like you have fire arrows, explosive sticky bombs, and poisonous darts which you will have the choice to pick and choose any of these that works better on the events like stealth mission or lethal battles.
I also liked obtaining many new abilities, collecting materials, and earning EXPs after beating numerous of missions and activities with many upgrades to improve upon your fighting techniques, weapons, armors, and other stuff I've mentioned above which really builds up the player's skills meaning the more you earn stuff the stronger your character becomes powerful is the reason you had to keep busy with the game, so that your character is strong enough to fight against highly skilled enemies in later story mission.
The stand-offs duel, the stealth assassination, one on one boss battle, rescuing innocent hostages, helping with supportive characters throughout the mission, and liberating all the enemy's camp and fort is epically stunning that keeps the game very entertaining especially on both story and side missions, where as discovering new activities in each regions like hot springs, haiku, and bamboo strikes that keeps me playing over and over to get many completion as possible which is why I loved playing these types of genres that took over 30 to 50 hours long of lengthy campaign, so I am happy with the results had turned out really outstanding job with the controls, exploration, and of course numerous of story and side quests that the team behind this had done it right.
Overall, it has outstanding combat system, large open-world exploration, and epic story campaign.
Graphics
This game is what I considered as the most beautiful things that Sucker Punch Productions had ever produced showing a true technical feats that the PS4 was being capable on the hardware.
It feels more like of the PS5 title than the PS4 itself thanks to large range of open-world design filled with bold and gorgeous environments of the temples and villages, the heavy textures of landmark stuff, and has great use of draw-distances like mountains or hills which you will never seen anything such outstanding for todays standard.
With the use of real-time day and night cycle starting from bright and colourful mornings to grainy and dull night time which really changes the nature's weather system such as clouds, winds, thunder, and snow adds the game's realism.
I also liked the use of the special effects on some environments such as these grass and flowerbed firmly moves slowly, the leaves particles came flying down from the sakura trees, the oceans made the stream of wavy waters, the campfire made the smoky clouds coming up to the sky, and you'll see the beauty of the fireflies glowing in the dark misty places is just so miracle to look at the Japanese culture stuff that I considered the game as the biggest technical marvel for PS4 system.
The PS5 version are also look fantastic with the 4K resolution, runs 60fps, and has better loading time, so you may not notice as much in terms of colours and details in open-world design are looked identical on both PS4 and PS5 versions, but still they looked gorgeous on both system.
The character model is looking spectacular on both motion capturing cutscenes and in-game exploration with precise lip-syncing on facial animation and the realistic movement of body figure had done absolutely right it should look in the game.
This is clearly to be one of the most ground-breaking game's design in any of PS4's library, so you will be amazed to see how much gorgeous the game runs and plays on the SONY's one of the kind hardware machine.
Overall, it has bold and gorgeous environments, impressive special effects, and spectacular character animation.
Music and Sounds
The original soundtrack is magnificent to listen because I love the Japanese orchestra that delivers the emotions to the game's presentation.
I considered the "The Way of the Ghost" as the saddest but the most beautiful song I ever listened especially on both with vocals and instrumental version which was sang by Clare Uchima.
I also liked the epicness of intense song such as "Jin Sakai", "No Mercy", and "A Reckoning of Blood" that made my blood pumping up for epic battle of brutally war.
My favourite part of the song has to be the ones in the haiku sequence called "Forgotten Song" which I am so amazed with the atmospheric sounds around me especially when the music plays on my PS4 controller's built-in speaker during the haiku sequence is just sounds incredible that made you feel relaxed and relived at same time listening it.
It was composed by Ilan Eshkeri and Shigeru Umebayashi did such incredible job of capturing the Japanese orchestral sounds pretty nicely done in the game.
The game has amazing sound design in regards of atmospheric effects that you hear in open-world environments such as the sounds of winds, stream of rivers, and people's chatting from the villages, and I got to give a huge praise to voice cast did such a fantastic job on their performance showing their energy and charisma that fits perfectly on their character's role.
Overall, it has magnificent soundtrack, amazing sound design, and fantastic voice performance.
Special Features
The director's cut came with bonuses such as Iki Island which is a DLC story expansion adds new missions and exploration with 5 to 6 hours of play, and it also includes online multiplayer mode called Legends with 4-player co-op, and some digital deluxe features such as director's commentary, digital artbook, and in-game cosmetics like skin set.
Sadly for those who owns physical PS4 copy as Director's cut will not have free upgradable PS5 version, instead you had to pay £10 to upgrade your game for PS5, or even worse for those who has a original release copy will had to pay £25 to upgrade your game for PS5.
Overall, lackluster upgrade prices but excellent deluxe bonuses.
Advantages
Incredible storyline and characters
Fantastic cinematic design
Beautiful presentation settings
Large open-world exploration
Outstanding combat system
Gorgeous visuals overall
Magnificent music and sounds
Additional content features
Disadvantages
Overpriced upgradable PS5 version
Final Verdict
Presentation 10/10 - incredible storyline and characters, beautiful presentation settings, and fantastic cinematic design.
Gameplay 10/10 - outstanding combat system, large open-world exploration, and epic story campaign.
Graphics 10/10 - bold and gorgeous environments, impressive special effects, and spectacular character animation.
Music and Sounds 10/10 - bold and gorgeous environments, impressive special effects, and spectacular character animation.
Special Features 9/10 - DLC story expansion, online multiplayer mode, and some digital deluxe features.
Overall 10/10 - As I have God of War (2018) as my all-time favourite PS4 game so far, Ghost of Tsushima deserves to be on my same list because this game proves to be not just being one of the best game on the PS4's library, but also one of the most beautiful Action-Adventure game that Sucker Punch Productions ever produced thanks to story, open-world, combat, visuals, and sounds adds the game's main highlight is the major reason to recommend this for those who loves watching Japanese-samurai cinema films and playing action-adventure type of games will be fully appreciated to play this epic samurai adventures.
As a director's cut, it is still also worth for purchase which you can get it physically on PS4 and PS5 for in between £30 to £40 which is quite cheaper compared to digital copy which cost between £60 to £70 at PS Store, but you can also get access to play this game freely with PS Plus subscription.
For those who are not so keen with the director's cut, you can also get the PS4 copy of the original release physically for less than £20.
That being said, go play this game I can guarantee you will love this especially on both the PS4 and PS5 because it's deserves to be on the Playstation's another masterpiece list, so I was hoping for development team considered to make sequel in the near future.
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