Ghosts of Tsushima Impressions

It feels like this year I am going through another one of my phases where I play a bunch of single player games, and additionally I seem like I am already going to have trouble short listing my games for the eventual AggroChat games of the year show. Ghosts right now is on that list even though I have not made it terribly far into the game. I am still exploring what is I believe the first major area of the game, and I would probably be going faster were it not for my allergy to horses. What I mean by that is that I ultimately feel more comfortable roaming around on foot than I ever do on a horse in a game like this. I spent most of my play through of Witcher 3 for example ignoring the fact that I had access to Roach, and for now at least I am mostly ignoring poor Nobu.

At it’s core, Ghosts of Tsushima is what you get when you lovingly translate an Akira Kurosawa film to video game form. In practice Tsushima is to swordplay what Horizon Zero Dawn is to bowplay, and combat feels deeply engaging and fluid. I can play super aggressively or defensively and both feel like I am having a meaningful experience. For awhile I thought I had screwed something up and triggered some morality clause in the game, because a Samurai scolded me for not fighting with honor… but in truth it seems like I can flip between being sneaky and striding into the center of an encampment and challenging the leader without much recourse.

I’ve got to admit, it is the later that I enjoy the most. I really love triggering a showdown, and this is the one time that I feel like a Quick Time Event feels purposeful and engaging. Essentially when you stand off against someone it is a game of chicken with you holding the triangle button until after your opponent has begun their strike. If successful you dispatch your foe in a single hit, and then proceed to enter open melee with everyone else in the camp. If you fail… that opponent decimates your health bar making the brawl significantly harder than it would have been otherwise. Initially these stand offs are pretty simple, but I am noticing that the mobs that I am encountering are starting to fake me out and try and get me to attack early.

The quest advisement is pure genius and absolutely the best system in the game that I would love to see other games adapt. Essentially in the story you are being guided by the wind to your destiny, and how this plays out in game is that things will blow in a specific direction that you need to go. You can swipe up on your touch pad and will get a visible wind burst that you can see on the edges of the screen. However EVERYTHING is impacted by this… so you can just follow the direction the leaves or blow or that the pampas grass is bending. The wind direction adjusts constantly to give you a sort of zeroing in on your target, but it is so subtle that it just sorta blends into the rest of the game.

Another really nice touch is that when you accept a major quest, you get this cinematic title card which makes the entire encounter feel like a chapter in a movie. While I have not made it terribly far into the game, I am already starting to reap the benefits of the random people that I save along the road. I am spending a lot of time engaging roaming Mongol patrols and often times end up saving a civilian or two. These fairly regularly end up showing up later at one of the major hubs and call out to me, which triggers a little back and forth about how thankful they are. This gives the feeling that you really are in fact saving your people that you have been given stewardship over.

The only problem that I see initially… is the same problem that I seem to have with all open world games. I know what events will trigger the storyline moving forward and as a result I end up avoiding them like the plague. I spend my time roaming around and knocking out the minor events with the thought process that I will make a pass to wrap up the story elements later. It sorta feels bad when you cross paths with one of the NPCs that are waiting for you to finish the next phase of their story, while you are instead chasing whispers in the woods at night. The game tries to install a sense of urgency that doesn’t actually seem to exist other than in story beats. It feels like I have all the time in the world to roam freely which is a fairly good thing for my natural play style.

I originally was wanting to wait until the launch of the PlayStation 5 to play this game… and I admit there is part of me that wishes I had. I own a baseline PS4 and never upgraded to the pro, and while the game looks pretty… it could look so much better and I am absolutely certain it does on a Pro. Maybe this is a side effect of having played Death Stranding and Horizon Zero Dawn back to back which are both jawdroppingly gorgeous PC games that I played in 4k. So when I look at Ghosts of Tsushima, I mourn slightly at how much better this would have looked on the PC or on Next Gen hardware. I am too hooked now to pause the game and revisit later, but it does make the experience a little bittersweet. It makes no sense at all to get a Pro now when we are on the theoretical cusp of the PS5 release.

If you have a PS4, especially if you have a PS4 Pro… then I highly suggest checking out this game. So far it definitely seems like it might be my favorite game that was released this year. I am including HZD and Death Stranding PC in my games of the year list because they got PC releases this year, but I fully expect that Tsushima is going to take all the honors at the Game Awards. It truly is a masterpiece of cinematic gameplay.