A few months ago I was playing an action adventure game with shinobi and samurai theme. It was that time that Sucker Punch announced a game called Ghost of Tsushima coming into PlayStation 4. I was excited to see the trailer. The game trailer caught my attention for two things: superb scenery and a Samurai! I decided that this was a must-play-game when it come out. I pre-ordered the Launch Edition from Amazon.
It was a great choice.
(I try not to elaborate any spoiler stories or even much of the game mechanics. This article elaborates my opinion of the game.)
The game was launched on July 17 this year. I didn’t play the game right away because I was in the middle of completing other game which dragged a little bit. Finally, I started playing this game on August 7. The game started with impressive story. A war with mongol invaders.
Set in 13th century, this game gives a very interesting setting. Plotted with the protagonist and his relevant groups wielding a katana set, ranged and ghost weapons. This game reminds me of the olden era game of a ninja fighting his way through enemies. With some historical setting embedded into the game, it feels that I was brought into touring the historical place. Going through the stories in the game is very immersive.
I spent about 90 hours of gaming time – give or take – on this game spanning across a month (and finally finished it on September 3). It is a satisfying gameplay. Personally, I feel that way. There are not many games that really make me want to go around and visit the marked point on the map. This game is interestingly making me do that. It feels so irressitible. The feeling is so good when done. I managed to get 91% of the trophies (in PlayStation). I rarely play a game exploring so much. Proud.
Graphics and Kurosawa mode
This game, without doubt, has an astonishingly awesome graphic render. The open world exploration in this game does give you a feel of day of time and weather as well as the climate – depending on the game progress. There are hundreds of screenshots there in my Ghost of Tsushima folder in my PlayStation 4. I simply couldn’t stop taking screenshots – well not like I ever forget to take screenshots – but the game’s graphic is so appealing that its beauty always reminds me to take tons of screenshots. Each pause I take a few from different angles. With and without the hero in them. Fun.
Unlike other fantasy games, this game shows some level of realism. The scenery, texture, and model proportions are made to match realistic nature and properties. Like what I said earlier, I felt the immersive exploration. Too bad my screen is just a 27″ monitor. Pretty sure this is 1080p. Good enough.
On the other hand, Ghost of Tsushima has a Kurosawa mode that players can enable to have a feel of watching old time samurai movie on TV in 1980s. I did try this very briefly just to have a look into how it is and a little bit of nostalgic feeling. I missed 1980s in my grandma’s house watching this kind of TV show. However, I did not try much because of the other side of the beauty of the colors. Maybe I’ll try this mode next time.
Music and Sound Effects
Not much of the background music in open world or duel battles actually stick in my head. Not for long. By this time of writing I already have forgotten most of the melodies. But I do remember the musics are actually good. (Well, not many other musics actually stick to my mind for long anyway.) The protagonist’s flute play is enjoyable as well. There are probably around 4 tracks if I remember correctly.
Sound effects really feel realistic. The grind between katanas feels real (and probably hurting the teeth nerves for some). Frankly, I do not have much comment about the music and sound effects. No complaint at all either.
Gameplay, Mechanics, and Difficulty
I tend to start playing games first time with blind playthrough. Mostly. Unless there is difficulty settings in a game. Usually I prefer to find out what kind of difficulty settings a game has before I start to play. So, most of the time I’ll search online for them and see people’s recommendation on what difficulty is suitable for me. I liked to play some souls games (if you know what souls games are), so I prefer to make action adventure games a little bit challenging yet not way too difficult to tackle because I do not want to be held up way too long to enjoy the story. There are four levels of difficulty in this game: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Lethal. I decided to go with Hard.
The Hard level started with a struggle. For the first few hours of the gameplay, I have to try very hard to keep the game interesting. It was a bit difficult to win fights. The camera angle is difficult to maneuver while I have to spam either attack or block buttons. One thing I’m not used to is that this game does NOT have target tracking during a battle. So, I really have to move the camera around when fighting with a group of enemies in open world. Fortunately, a duel is of different camera control. You get to see your opponent all the time in a duel. So, you don’t worry about moving camera angle during a duel. Focus on the fight.
The game starts to get easier after some exploration and a few duels. This is when you get a hold of what so called ghost weapons. It’s really much easier to handle the group of enemies when I started to use a Kunai. Ghost weapons really help in mass control taking the enemies into stagger or blindness where I can easily take them down. Death count really slowed down here.
Duels are very hard in the first two duels. This is probably when I was trying to get used to the fights. The first duel in Hard mode took me about 30+ tries. Wow! In all, till the end of the game including open world fights, I get about 334 deaths. I am not feeling bad.
Story and Historical Accuracy
Ghost of Tsushima’s main and side stories (tales) are split into small progresses. Doing them does give a good feel and curiosity like “what’s going on next from here? let me guess!”. They are immersive. The side stories are really good additive to the main quests and really compliment them much. If you’re planning to play this game. I would suggest completing all the side quests as well.
Mythic Tales is another aspect this game is adding to my liking. They are totally not related to the main or side stories but they are interesting to hear and follow. I didn’t regret at all spending time following them. It is worth the time.
Most (if not all) of the named characters in the game are fictional. I didn’t find a good reference to the hero name or the antagonist. The names of places, on the other hands, seem to be familiar.
Having the setting in 13th century about mongol invasion, this game has a very good look and feel of that era. The game properties, however, such as katana is believed to be not relevant to this era. This I found out after some search online. Samurai during that era seem to carry what so called daichi instead of katana, in which the latter was invented some time after that. Anyway, this game really did kick my curiosity to read some texts about ancient Japan. Good Game.
Copyright
Ghost of Tsushima is published by Sony Interactive Entertainment and developed by Sucker Punch Productions. All rights reserved by respective copyright owners.