What’s good gamers, I go by TVOS Slade, but you can call me Slade. Now imagine this, for just a moment you and your homeboy are playing Swordsman in the backyard, and you have sticks for swords, while you two battle you start too dramatically scream, I won’t give up! Your homeboy says I’m sorry my friend, but this is the end, and when he stabs you with the stick, you reach out your hand in pain wondering when it’ll all be over ! Do you remember the thrill you had as kid in those moments? Ghost of Tsushima brings all that imagination you had back then too life, and the gameplay will have you sucked into this world for literal hours wondering where the time went.
Okay Gamers I know how we all hate spoilers, and how we all try our best to avoid them, from never opening the YouTube app hoping too never see the game being played by your favorite youtuber, too never opening the TikTok app because you know someone has already made a AMV of the game’s best moments. I’m going to explain the plot of Ghost of Tsushima briefly while avoiding spoilers, you spawn in as Jin Sakai one of the last surviving samurai seriously injured, from the Mongolians initial invasion of the island. While you’re out of commission the Mongolians, pillage, plunder, and ravage the native population, and from your initial encounter with the enemy you witness their brutality, savagery and underhanded tactics. You must now make a choice, will you fight with honor the way the samurai has been known for generations or become something more, using tactics not approved by the samurai code to save your home. So Gamers that’s the basic plot of Ghost of Tsushima and when I tell you everything in the game is beautifully written, It’s truly an understatement.
Where do I begin Gamer’s with this massive game. Imagine you’re watching a Disney movie, more specifically their princess movies, the way nature usually saves the princess from a villain or guides the princess on where to go on their journey, Ghost of Tsushima plays on this trope, while traveling in game the wind guides you were to go depending on where you set the ping on the map. Simply swipe on up on the touch pad the actual wind in the game guides you like your in-fairy tale book. Now of course while navigating the beautiful world of Ghost of Tsushima, you will come across many fast travel options, while traveling on your horse companion. Some of the fast travel options are shrines you find on the outskirts of the map, and other fast travel options are villages you find and free from Mongol control on the map, etc. There are also numbers at the top of the screen that inform you how far you are from your destination, but the wind guiding you on how to get there is by far one the coolest features in this game!
Y’all destroying the Mongols on the island is your only purpose for living and the game makes it as fun, as possible. From stealthily dropping smoke bombs, to spitting poison darts, and don’t even get me started on the drop-down assassinations from the buildings, it’s awesome! Now on the opposite side of the coin you’re screaming at Mongols, challenging them to fight you head on, only to chop them down like weeds too instill fear in the rest, and sometimes they even run away! That mechanic is so dope, and it makes you feel like a bad ass! Ghost of Tsushima gives you so many ways too attack, to get the upper hand on the Mongols, you can throw gun powder bombs, kunai, and there’s so many more options too choose from, what more could you really ask for! Now I play the game with a controller, but you can play with Mouse and Keyboard on your PC, and it makes the game feel completely different, but it feels amazing. The game comes with very few puzzles but they’re very simple and very easy. The main point of the game is hack and slash through waves of enemies stealthily, or with honor which is the samurai way!
One feature that stands out in Ghost of Tsushima is how customizable it can be for you, not only do you have a wide range of outfits you can equip from the pause menu, but you can also unlock different skins for your weapons. Some of the skins can be bought from the villagers, in the shop and others you can acquire by trading flowers you pick up around Tsushima. Yes, I mean actual flowers!
Other villagers will allow you to upgrade your outfits and weapons with materials you get from freeing villages, or you can rob their homes while their backs are turned to get some extra loot or loot the corpses you come across in the world whichever you prefer.
The skill point system in the game increases depending on the number of villagers you help, and territories you save. The more lives you save the higher your Ghost meter increases which is comparable to Infamous’s renown system. This the system that gains you your skill points to apply on what techniques you prefer to use in combat.
When exploring the map, you will run across Hot Springs, that increase your total health pool, Pillars of Honor which provides new customization options, Light Houses, and different types of Shrines like Shinto, Inari Shrines, they provide charms which are basically perks that you equip on your gear. On your journey you’ll run into bandits or ronin, who will challenge you to duels, perform sword training in the form of bamboo strikes, and you can rest your mind at certain spots on the map too write haiku’s, and express your deepest thoughts. The game has so much more to offer.
It’s quite clear from the opening scene, that Ghost of Tsushima dumped plenty of resources to make the game as alluring as possible, it sounds and looks amazing. Trust me y’all you can tell from the opening cut scene of the game. You can see the despair in the main protagonist face Jin Sakai, as he can clearly see they are outnumbered by the thousands, you can see the Mongols ships out on the water, and how the water sways the boats. When the gameplay finally begins, you start charging towards the beach on your horse, you can hear your horses’ hooves smacking against the sand, and you’ll see blood splatter from the Mongols once you strike them down with your sword, it’ll leave you in shock. The screams they make when the initial charge begins, not knowing whether they’ll make it or not really set the tone for the game. I felt like I was on the actual beach on Komada, it looked unreal.
The world feels alive wherever you are in the game because the leaves are constantly falling from the trees, and if it’s raining there’s always thunder. You can visibly see it strike, and you can most definitely hear it. The amount of life they put into the world is just astonishing, at night you can even hear crickets constantly and during the day you’ll hear the birds. When you’re traveling the music changes to let you know you stumbled into an enemy territory. They did a magnificent job on the sound and realistic look of the world of Ghost of Tsushima.
Ghost Of Tsushima has many customizable options, for every player’s preference. They have many different types of control schemes that would make every player feel comfortable. Inverted controls have been implemented into the game, camera speed can be adjusted, and a cool setting I’ve never seen in a game before called stick drift compensation. Gameplay settings are interesting. They give you the option too have loadouts for all the different amour sets you acquire in the game, target lock options, photo mode too take a cool photo during battles, and you can change the difficulty from here also. Audio preferences are amazing in this game you can swap between a couple different languages, all with subtitle support. You can you change the size, and color of the words if you like, and of course you can adjust the sound of the gameplay or the dialogue at your own leisure.
The display settings in the game are quite simple, you have basic brightness settings, you pick a higher resolution for pretty looks or bite the bullet and leave the game in performance mode. Which is basically Gameplay over Fidelity. The display setting has a mode called Kurosawa mode which puts the whole game in black and white like an old film from the 1930’s. You can make the HUD minimal for more immersion, and my favorite display setting is being able to decide whether I want my mask on or off during cutscenes or not. I love to see myself with my mask on, when I’m confronting a boss in a cutscene it really makes Jin Sakai feel like your own, like no playthrough is the same.
Accessibility has options that make the wind that’s guiding you in game easier to see, it has a combat cue setting that makes parrying, and dodging easier to perform by, making the sound louder and light brighter when the enemy is attempting to attack you. It doesn’t have many options for people with disabilities from what I can see, there are no color-blind options, and people with other accessibility needs may struggle playing this game.
The game has a DLC and with the director’s cut edition you get it for free. The DLC’s timeline is set after you defeat the boss of the main game, and it comes with extra cosmetics, new skills, extra lore, and a story line delving into Jin Sakai’s past. It’s worth purchasing because once clear the first castle you’ll be able to access the content and the skills you acquire there would be great help in breezing through the main story. I say purchase the Director’s Cut and enjoy that extra storyline because there’s no telling if we’ll ever get another one.
Okay gamer’s we reached the end of the review, and my overall thoughts of the game is that it’s a must have. I love the way you can attack every territory any way you’d like, I love the way the environment has so much life and the NPC’s you meet along the way has their own tragic backstories just adding too urgency of defeating the Mongol empire. I love the game so much I played it 3 different times from beginning to end and I’m still discovering outfits I missed in my first and second playthrough. Okay now I’m about to nitpick, the game a little but I won’t be too harsh, I think the accessibility option in the game should have a color-blind mode because I’m unsure how color-blind gamers would be able to grasp the full beauty of the game. Another thing that kind of upsets me is that the game ended too soon. Thank God for DLC’s! Gamer’s if you wanna play a great game in 2024 that’ll never lose its awe and wonder Ghost of Tsushima obvious pick. I’m Slade y’all and I hope to catch yah in the next review!
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