Ghost of Tsushima ended up being kind of a big deal, didn’t it? It was the highest-selling PlayStation first-party game in Japan, and the fastest-selling PlayStation original IP ever. The game more or less single-handedly gave the island of Tsushima the global relevance it never had, to the point that its directors Nate Fox and Jason Connell were named Ambassadors of Tsushima Island. There was also the thing where the game’s fans crowdfunded repairs for a Torii gate on the island when it was hit by a Typhoon. There’s even a feature film in the works directed by one of the directors of John Wick.
Now, a year on from its release, Sucker Punch and PlayStation Studios have decided to do the classic AAA game double-dip by re-releasing their wildly successful phenomenon along with some new content on a new platform. This new release, titled Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut sees the game arrive in earnest on the PlayStation 5 with a bevy of new features as well as a story expansion set on Iki Island. I’m mostly going to talk about the expansion in this review.
Healing Through Reminiscence.
Taking place during Act 2 of the campaign, the new story sees Jin set sail towards Iki Island when he gets wind about a particularly devious Mongol cult causing trouble there. Not long after arriving, he comes face to face with their leader, a woman named The Eagle, who doses him with a hallucinogenic poison that makes him see visions of his deepest anxieties- okay fine it’s basically Scarecrow. We’ve all had some fun with how Jin Sakai is just Feudal Japan Batman, so just know that the expansion sees him go up against Feudal Japan Scarecrow and her fear toxin.
However, like all great Batman vs Scarecrow stories, Iki Island isn’t really about the mechanics of its plot or the specific ways in which the hero defeats the villain. We all know it’s going to boil down to a sword fight in the end. The real meat of a story like this is in the details. It’s in finding out which specific traumas and anxieties the villain chooses to unravel, and what lessons the hero must learn (or unlearn) to grow beyond them. On those terms, Iki Island delivered more than I could ever ask for.
Without going into spoilers, what we get here is a story of healing through remembering. Jin has to accept his family’s somewhat checkered past and learn to forgive himself and others for transgressions, both real and imagined, that were committed in his name. Since this is essentially a lengthy side-quest taking place during the middle chapter of the main game, you aren’t likely to find a meaningful continuation of that story here. But the window into Jin’s past, as well as his internal conflict that this expansion provides, goes a long way in strengthening his arc in the main story overall. I’d argue that’s a much better route for an expansion to take.
The Strength We Need is All Around Us.
Iki Island also packs expands the gameplay a little bit. There are a few new charms you can use to change up your play style. One new armour set you acquire disables your regular parries while vastly strengthening your perfect parry/dodge and counter-attacks. This adds a welcome new layer of risk-reward which, combined with the Lethal difficulty setting, made an already sublime combat experience even better. There’s also a new skill tree for the horse charge ability you unlock early on, but I found it relatively useless. Your mileage may vary.
The island of Iki is dotted with question marks as expected. These can take the form of side-quests, archery challenges that raise your concentration, animal sanctuaries where you can play your flute for animals and listen to Jin reminisce about his mum, and other locations that trigger Jin’s memories of his father. For this review, I only played the main story and maybe two side quests which took me roughly 12 hours. I still have a fair few side-quests to complete and question marks to uncover so Sucker Punch definitely didn’t skimp on content here.
Visually, Iki Island has a very different energy from Tsushima. Where the main game is full of large open fields and grasslands dotted with settlements and villages, Iki feels much more… untamed. It’s full of lush tropical forests and rolling hills, rocky beaches where waves crash hard enough to knock you off your feet (literally, there are platforming challenges built around this). The fact that all of this looks stunningly beautiful shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the game, but it bears reiteration that Ghost of Tsushima is still one of the best-looking games on the market.
Sucker Punch’s art direction is utterly unmatched and is now rendered in 4K at 60 frames a second on the PlayStation 5. Director’s Cut also packs a few other features like lip-syncing for the Japanese voice track. The load times were already shockingly short on PS4 but they are non-existent now. Even fast-traveling between Tsushima and Iki Island is instantaneous. You don’t even get a loading screen anymore. You just click on it and you’re there. Wild!
The DualSense features in Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut also bear special mention, because I’m generally not impressed with how the controller has been utilised in most games. The bowstring tension in the triggers is something to be expected, but like everything about the game, it’s the subtler touches that make it special. Like when you play the flute, the haptic feedback softly vibrates the controller as if someone is blowing air through it. The dialogue from Jin’s hallucinations echoes through the DualSense speakers. There’s too many things to list here but suffice it to say Sucker Punch has used the full extent of the DualSense to make Ghost of Tsushima more immersive than ever.
The Proud Do Not Endure.
As a critic, a question I find myself grappling with more than most is the question of what it is that makes a good game great. Most of the time, it comes down to a wide selection of ineffable little somethings that come together to make a game special. After all, a Horizon Zero Dawn is functionally identical to a Far Cry, yet only one of them is canonised among the all-time greats. Why is that?
This question came to a head in a big way last year with the release of Ghost of Tsushima. To many, it was just another open-world game; just a collection of design tropes and trends established over the course of the last console generation with few original ideas of its own. Yet, to some (myself included), it ended up being a truly transcendent experience. The answer, as is usually the case with these things, was somewhere in the middle.
See, the people who pejoratively refer to Ghost as “Videogame: The Videogame” aren’t wrong. It is, on its surface, a Western open-world action game with extremely familiar design tropes. Big map full of question marks, bandit camps, multiple different types of collectibles, outposts to liberate, loads of side-quests, you name it. But what sets Ghost of Tsushima apart is the very Japanese lens through which those Western design tropes are projected. While you are essentially playing a Batman: Arkham game, Sucker Punch Productions have drawn from an aesthetically wide but culturally specific set of cinematic reference points that make Ghost of Tsushima something singularly unique.
Ghost of Tsushima is a game of two worlds, a confluence of the East with the West. This duality is something that permeates every aspect of the game from its mechanics to its story, but nothing exemplifies it better than its protagonist: Jin Sakai. A disgraced Samurai faced with the realisation that the honor code he grew up believing is not enough to serve the very land and people he has vowed to protect. It’s a simple story chronicling a sort of second coming of age, as Jin sheds parts of his Samurai identity and replaces them with lessons learned from his found family; combining the two to create something new altogether.
With this Director’s Cut, it seems Ghost of Tsushima has achieved its final form, both technically and narratively. The game looks the prettiest it has ever looked and feels the smoothest it has ever felt. With the DualSense, it is more immersive than it has ever been. And with the story of Iki Island, Sucker Punch has effortlessly injected their already excellent – if somewhat simplistic – story with the nuance and pathos many thought it lacked. Like Spider-Man: Miles Morales or Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, Iki Island feels like it speed-runs through what should be lengthier character arcs. But if you can meet it halfway, fill in the blanks with your own baggage, and get on board with the drama of it all, you may just find a little healing of your own. I certainly did.
Review Copy Provided by PlayStation.