Sucker Punch is one of Sony’s many internal studios that I have the least history with. Sly Cooper and Infamous were games that I never truly explored as deeply as others, and while Infamous: Second Son was an alright game, I didn’t know what to expect going into Ghost of Tsushima, a game that up until just a few months ago, we barely knew anything about. While we had seen bits and pieces of some aspects of the game over the years, it wasn’t until Sony’s State of Play this past May where many got their first real look at it. All that said, I went into Ghost of Tsushima with very low expectations, unsure if the team was going to be able to pull off such a massive-in-scale samurai adventure. Not only did they succeed, but it’s made for one of my favorite gaming experiences this year.
While there have been several games released in the past few years to visually impress me, Ghost of Tsushima hits a bit different, as while its cast of characters don’t quite hit the highs of something like the recently released The Last of Us: Part Two, what Sucker Punch and its much smaller team have done in respect to its environments is nothing short of staggering. From not just an aesthetic point of view, but in its vast assortment of detail, Ghost of Tsushima is without question one of the best-looking video games ever made. This is furthered along with a feature-rich photo mode that can offer up near-unlimited ways to capture the beauty this game delivers around every corner. While its human cast may not have an ‘end of a console era’ level of detail to them, they still emote incredibly well, often evoking more emotion and feeling than anything else in the industry. “The Art of Seeing”, a quest midway through the game, is easily the most emotional I’ve been with a game in some time and is a testament to not just the level of detail this game achieves, but the work put in through each of the two performers featured.
I’ll also come out and say that while Ghost of Tsushima doesn’t reinvent much of what it does, it still manages to make its open-world more immersive and engaging than almost any other in the past decade, reminding me what it was like to first explore the lands of Velen, Novigrad, or the Skellige Isles in The Witcher 3, my all-time favorite game. Other games have had memorable open-worlds, but many of them feel designed solely to structure checklists of tasks and fill their space with uninteresting busy-work to extend the game’s length. While there are things to track down and accomplish here in Tsushima, the world feels designed more around freedom of exploration and a drive to know what is further down the road. Not once did I feel obligated to check off the question mark locations or felt the same type of repetition I often feel in a Ubisoft-type experience. What Sucker Punch has done here is not by creating a new type of open-world, but rather in the cause and purpose in its exploration.
Jin Sakai, the game’s lead, is a samurai initially tasked with saving his uncle, a man taken hostage by the Mongolian troops that have invaded his homeland. The battle was brutal, seeing almost all the samurai defeated, and had Jin not been pulled off the battlefield and tended to, he would also have perished alongside his samurai brethren. The battle was won quickly due to the Mongolian leader, Khotun Kahn taking advantage of the samurai’s honor code. This manipulation results in Jin having to think and fight differently than what his code requires. The game dives deep into this internal struggle of Jin attempting to comply with being honorable but also finding himself needing to do whatever it takes to take back his homeland. While other games may have done a duality system of picking either the samurai code or taking the less honorable path, Ghost of Tsushima is about Jin’s own personal story being told. While there is a choice to make during the game’s finale, it’s something that isn’t as easy as saying it’s a good or bad ending, it’s all about perspective.
JIn’s story of revenge and the path he needs to walk to achieve it is really impressive and it’s in large part to his supporting cast of characters, each of which is loaded with an impressive story all their own. The first character you’ll encounter is Yuna, who pulled Jin’s barely alive body from the battlefield, nursing him back to health. It’s also Yuna who convinces Jin that his honorable samurai ways may not be viable to save his home. Yuna, much like a few of the characters you’ll meet, will teach Jin a skill he will need to survive what is ahead of him, such as Sensei Ishikawa giving Jin the capability of using a bow. You’ll help Ishikawa on his own personal journey of dealing with a rogue student who has seemingly sided with the Mongols. Other characters you’ll meet include Lady Masako, who is looking to uncover who killed her family during the invasion, as well as Norio, a monk who looks to request the help of Jin in some personal matters of his own.
Beyond these characters are also those who are important to Jin personally. Ryuzo, an old friend of JIn’s, as well as Yuriko, his longtime caretaker at his estate, who’s minimal appearance here is still impressively used to perfection. Lastly, is Lord Shimura, who is Jin’s uncle and parental figured since Jin’s father was brutally killed when JIn was at a young age. Lord Shimura then raised him like he was his own son, teaching him the ways of the samurai and molding Jin into the man he has become. There is a very deep understanding of how Jin interacts with everyone, regardless of them being in his life for years or only introduced to him during these hellish times. Jin may come across as being somewhat emotionless in contrast to protagonists in other games, but given what he’s going through, I found him calm when he needed to be and his own personal struggle with doing what he needs to do, to be captivating and extremely engaging. This is also in large part to Daisuke Tsuji’s performance of Jin Sakai.
While the main story itself is very interesting, it does suffer a bit in the third act. Up until then, Khotun Kahn is a menacing foe, played to perfection by actor, Patrick Gallagher. Kahn is a tactical genius and illustrates this in nearly every scene, taking command of the story every time he is on screen. This, unfortunately, doesn’t hold true in the final act and he feels largely throwaway at this point. Apart from this failure to close out his story in a meaningful way, I still found the story to be deeply emotional and worth investing the 30-40 hours into it. Where Ghost of Tsushima truly succeeds in; however, is through its side tales of each of its supporting characters. Whether it’s tracking down numerous threats with Lady Masako, or finding out what Ryuzo has been up to, or even the adventures with a sake smuggler named Kenji, I found these multi-part stories to sometimes topple even the main story in not just their tone, but in the emotions packed into their performances. While sure, many of them are formulaic in their design, the stories they tell are anything but.
As Jin, you’ll have a variety of attacks and equipment to push through camp after camp of the Mongolian invaders, to different combat stances to counter the varying types of opponents you’ll face. These stances can be swapped to during combat to ensure that you’re able to perform attacks capable of pushing through certain types of defenses. The Stone Stance is perfect for taking on those fighting with swords, whereas the Water Stance is built around bashing down shields. The Wind Stance is effective against spearman, and finally, the Moon Stance is designed around the more hulking brute types. As you develop your legend around Tsushima, you’ll earn technique points that you can put into a variety of different skills, abilities, or used to enhance your stances. While you can still use any stance against any foe, switching to the counter stance is where combat becomes a ballet of blood. There is one last stance, but I’ll leave that for you to discover on your own.
To compliment your stances, you can block and parry attacks, and given certain charms you can equip, you can make the parry window longer, making it just a bit easier to find that perfect timing. Perfect parry attacks can issue back health, or resolve, which is the way in which you can earn back health, or use a more powerful strike once you’ve learned it. By using technique points, you’ll flesh out these systems to parry and dodge, giving Jin that much-needed edge to strike when his opponent is vulnerable. Jin will also learn two special attacks that will be gifted to Jin once he completes their trials; the Heavenly Strike and the Dance of Wrath, which consume resolve when used, but deliver powerful attacks that can decimate foes in a single strike. Jin will also learn how to coat his sword in a flammable oil, to firing off arrows coated in a volatile powder that explode on impact.
In keeping with the Samurai code, Jin can challenge foes to a standoff, and these are simply performed by timing the release of the triangle button with an enemy advances towards you. Eventually, you can add on an additional two more enemies to throttle with this attack. The standoff is another mechanic that serves another purpose as you may not see some groups of enemies as you explore, but when the ability to perform a standoff is prompted on screen, you can use that time to quickly hide in the bushes or flank your enemies. Jin can also rely on his bow, and performing a headshot with it is extremely satisfying.
Now, the struggle between JIn’s samurai code and his descent into being the Ghost of Tsushima, allows Jin to use a variety of ghost attacks and equipment. You can throw out small blades called Kunai to stagger your foes, powder bombs, or sticky bombs that can cause some massive damage, smoke bombs to fade from sight to luring the attention of nearby threats with a few distraction-based items like wind chimes or firecrackers. Each of these can be upgraded with technique points to make them more effective, such as using smoke bombs to earn back some health, to powder bombs erupting in a sea of shrapnel, causing more harm upon their explosion.
Now, using all these abilities, stances, your bow, to the variety of ghost items, can be a bit messy in their execution, and with how hectic some battles can get, it can be pretty easy to accidentally select the wrong thing. So let’s go over controls on how everything works and you’ll likely get an idea about why Jin is sometimes given too much to handle at once. While easy stuff like jumping or blocking is a single button press, selecting your items is a different story. L2 will bring up your bow skills and the ability to swap between your bow, throwables, or your poison darts. As you hold L2, you’ll use the d-pad to select those prior options and the face buttons then to select within the options of your bow, throwables, or your darts. Pressing R2 works along the same way as you’ll have access to your ghost weapons in your bombs, flammable oil, and kunai. Pressing R2 also lets you select your stances with the face buttons. While this method of using L2 and R2 seems viable, and for the most part it is, it’s the L2 functions that offer just too many choices when you’re in the thick of it. It’s not a bad system, and frankly, when you take into account everything Jin can do, I’m not sure if there is a better way that it could have been done, but it still can feel a bit too much sometimes.
When you have a solid flow going into combat, between parrying attacks or switching stances, there is an incredible flow between dodging and rolling that is downright perfect. That said, I do wish dodging and rolling were more different than one tap of circle for dodging and two taps for rolling as you’ll often panic press the button too much and roll away from an opening. That annoyance aside, combat is pretty impressive and remains fully satisfying throughout the adventure. While there is no lock on, likely because of threats on all sides, it would have been nice to have some sort of manual focus given to us to not lose sight of foes as they move around you. If you get a chance to check out some videos showing some extremely skilled players fully utilizing combat, it’s a sight to behold for sure. I found combat so engaging that I would eagerly jump into bases or patrols just to embrace in everything I could do. I also found it extremely satisfying to find enemies crawling on the ground in pain to just walk up to them and jab my sword directly into their back, finishing them off.
Using all these abilities and ghost items will aid you in the overall gameplay loop that is Ghost of Tsushima. While there are missions where you’ll need to stealth your way into enemy camps for a variety of tasks, much of what the game has you do is take back your land, one Mongolian, or bandit camp at a time. This has you hiding in tall grass, leaping from above buildings, using your grappling hook to swing from place to place, or sneaking behind enemies and assassinating them, an act that goes against the samurai code. By using your tools and stances, you can choose to take back these camps how you see fit. Should you go in acting on your code, you may put civilians in danger as their captors may move in an attempt to kill their hostages, meaning that while you can race over and prevent this, sometimes going in silently and offing them one by one in the shadows is usually the better play. Now, that said, stealth is mostly decent and this is largely because the AI of the enemies and the tunnel vision they have can make this style of gameplay feel a bit easier than it should be. To aid in resolving some of the issues with stealth or its fast-paced combat, Jin can slow down time to pull off a well-placed arrow or use a mechanic similar to that of listening in The Last of Us, or detective vision in the Arkham games.
Throughout the adventure, you’ll earn gear and charms. Gear varies from different types of outfits such as helmets, face masks, or armor, each with their own stats, to charms that also have stats of their own. You can equip six different charms that vary from offering a more potent bonus such as killing enemies restoring a ton of health, to chimes emitting a poisonous gas to those who pick them up. There is also a vast assortment of minor charms that let you earn more resolve, reduce all damage taken, to having some abilities refund resolve when used. You’ll acquire a ton of charms as you push through the game, with many of them offered as rewards for tracking down fox dens, completing puzzle shrines, or other activities around the map, and the same goes with being able to increase your overall resolve by completing bamboo strikes. Each of your gear items, as well as your weapons, can be upgraded should you find the right NPC and have the resources needed to do so. You’ll find items everywhere you assist with this, and the later levels of upgrading can get incredibly expensive, so it’s good to not just blindly upgrade things you rarely use.
Now, the activities you do as you explore the map either on foot or via your horse, are short experiences such as following a fox to a nearby statue, taking a dip into a hot spring, writing a haiku, finding pillars of honor, to large puzzle-like shrines that require the full use of Jin’s mobility and his grappling hook. These activities never feel tiring, nor feel like chores needing to be completed. I’d often stumble upon them as I would be taking on a mission or just picking a direction and continuing. It’s a testament to how Sucker Punch has designed its world and how quick and sweet these brief activities are. I will say that the Bamboo Strike is easily my favorite activity as you study a list of button commands and then attempt to press them in order as quickly as you can to chop down a bundle of bamboo. It’s a short experience that goes a long way to being very satisfying.
The last thing to talk about from a gameplay perspective is the wind. Now, in other games, the wind is something you really don’t focus on. It may sway the trees or show off some impressive cloth physics, but here, the wind is also your guide. While you’ll have a few ways the hud will show you where to go when you get close enough to your destination, the long-range way that you’ll be guided to your target is through the wind. You’ll see it flow a certain direction and you can swipe up on the touchpad on the controller to have the wind blow in the direction you need to go. For the most part, this system works wonders, but it’s when you need to find things between that far and near distance where it’s not as intuitive. It’s certainly an interesting way that allows the screen to be free of any clutter, but hard to say how everyone will get on with it.
Accompanying the stellar photo mode is a variety of different ways to enjoy Ghost of Tsushima. You can swap the language to Japanese if you want, or play it in a black and white filter through Kurosawa mode, invoking the feel of an older samurai film. Now, from a visual standpoint, I didn’t play too much in Kurosawa mode as I wasn’t a fan of losing the color and beauty of the game. While it certainly adds its own beauty and charm, it doesn’t aid in adopting certain aspects of gameplay too well. Some missions have you tracking colored objects or locations and this is next to impossible as there is nothing added to Kurosawa mode to assist here. You’ll often swap out of the mode and then back to it, and this can break the feel and tone the mode is trying to invoke. The film grain effect is pretty cool and some moments during the action-heavy scenes or through how it handles conversations can be rather remarkable. As it stands right now; however, the mode doesn’t feel as compatible with the game built around it.
Ghost of Tsushima is a very ambitious game given that Sucker Punch is a third the size of most big AAA studios. The fact they were able to pull off this visually striking and massive game is nothing short of impressive. The gameplay is extremely satisfying, and the open world itself is a beauty to just explore at your own pace. The variety in missions, to activities, to the numerous methods to dismantle a bandit camp, is impressive to no end. I didn’t know what to expect from Sucker Punch before Ghost of Tsushima was in my hands, but I know I’ll be eagerly anticipating whatever they choose to make next.
Ghost of Tsushima was purchased by the reviewer and played on an PlayStation 4 Pro.
All screenshots were taken on a PlayStation 4 Pro.