Ghost of Tsushima | Coming to PC

[Moonface]

3) The game was very obviously designed to be a stealth game, but then they force you into open fights against large groups of enemies.

Oh yeah, this is a definite. A large number of abilities the game gives you are about either surprising enemies, or if you're going head-on then they end up being things like stun bombs and other such things to disrupt everyone to let you just go crazy on everybody. I think the only time the game makes a proper effort to focus solely on sword fighting is in any of the special standoffs that remove everything from you but the sword.

1) If you shoot arrows, and then die, reverting back to a state BEFORE you shot the arrows, you don't get them back. This is complete bullshit, especially considering the extremely limiting number of arrows you're able to carry at one time. If you pick up arrows and then die, you don't get to keep them, so the game is screwing you both ways. It just makes absolutely NO sense for you to revert to a point before you used the arrows, but don't have them any more.

I never had an issue with arrows running out, simply from very quickly getting my hands on the skill that refunds an arrow for a successful headshot. It was why I ended up leaning so heavily into the bow because headshots are a one-kill, and the ammo would end up almost always being free due to the refunded arrow for doing that.


As a tip that I wished I had known earlier, when it comes to revealing the fog on the map, it will completely clear automatically when you fully liberate a region. I spent a lot of time with the perk that clears more fog around your character while travelling in the early game only to find it was a waste of a slot and my time trying to manually clear fog areas. Any perk related to clearing map fog isn't worth it once you know that info.

[Dragon Lord]

I should look for that perk then, because that would definitely be helpful. I did upgrade my arrow capacity to 16, but still feels like I run out in no time.

Boss fights are absolute ass in this game. "We're going to give you all of these cool tools and shit to use, but then force you into battles where you're stuck using just your sword because kek." Like, I get if they let you sneak and use assassinations on bosses, it'd make them too easy, but at least let us use our bow, or maybe some flash bombs or something. It'd be hilarious to be fighting a boss, run away, turn around and whip out your long bow and send an explosive arrow right into the boss's face.

I just get annoyed how the game is supposed to be this story about how Jin had to set aside his honor as a Samurai to do whatever was needed to save his homeland, but then the game turns around and is like, "nah, you gotta be honorable bro. Bow before the fight and 1v1 this guy, no healing." (Dark Souls PvP reference for those who don't understand).

Like no, let me throw away all of my values and stab some bitches in the back. That's what I'm here for.

[Moonface]

So I looked into whether the PS4 and PS5 version have gameplay differences, but it doesn't look like anything is different between them besides the visual options so at some point I'm gonna have to boot up my copy of the game and see whether enemy sliding was something I didn't notice before or just forgot about because it's gonna bug me. XD

And yeah, all but one boss fight I think is limited to melee combat only, and in some cases I could understand limiting it to just a sword since not every boss fight is against a Mongol enemy thus it would make sense that Jin won't necessarily fight everybody in a non-honorary manner. Now that you mention it, it is definitely jarring that Jin can go into a Mongol camp, slaughter everyone however he wants to, but then opts to fight the leader with honor. Would've been better to let the player make the call on that like they can with everything else, and if the developers still wanted some sort of limit to it then make it that as Jin strays further from honor in the story as he learns new techniques that are gained through story progression, the ability to do duels in less honorable ways opens up more and more to signify that he's willingness to stray from honor is progressing, at least when it comes to the Mongols. I'm not sure how far you are so I don't want to dive deeper into any particular bosses.

As for the arrow refund skill, I forgot that it's actually a charm. If you want it, you can get it from the Winding Mountain Shrine but you need a certain story item to access it.

[Moonface]

@Dragon Lord: I believe I played the game on Hard because I'd heard Lethal just wasn't very fun when it came to combat. That might be why I don't recall having as many irks with the combat as you seem to have had, but my memory of the game is rather hazy so don't take my word fully on that.

That very well could be it. The thing that really sucks about Lethal is that none of your upgrades/charms matter at all. Even if you equip the most defensive armor, have max health, and equip all the charms that reduce damage, you'll still be 1-2 shot by everything. It definitely makes the stealth feel more exciting, because getting caught and having an entire camp of enemies come charging at you usually means death. This is also what makes the combat feel so bad though, because when you have two or three enemies attack you at once, you're going to die because you cannot parry/dodge all of them. I had countless deaths happen because I parried or dodged an attack from an enemy, only to have another enemy hit me right after the parry/dodge, when there was nothing I could do about it because I was unable to move.

It really felt like they made Lethal purely with the stealth in mind, but didn't really put much thought into how that was going to translate into the open battles against multiple enemies. I'm hoping if I play NG+ on Hard, that maybe I'll feel better about the combat since I should be able to actually feel a difference with armor and charms.

Oh, speaking of armor and charms... one thing that really grinded my gears in this game was the lack out LOADOUTS. It was so annoying having to constantly go into the menu and change my armor because I wanted to have certain ones equipped for different situations. Like, I wanted the Traveler's armor equipped while I was exploring to get notice when a collectible item was around, but if I came across a group of Mongols while exploring, I had to stop, go into the menu, change to the Sakai Clan Armor so I could have the +2 to the Standoff count, then go back in and change back to the Traveler's armor to continue my exploration. Then it gets even worse when you get the Ghost Armor because I wanted that one equipped while I was clearing out camps.

I ended up basically never changing my charms just because it was too much work to go into the menu and change them constantly. If they had loadouts so I could have an exploration loadout, an archery loadout, a stealth loadout and a melee loadout, things would have felt MUCH better.

So fun fact, this game does have loadouts but for whatever reason, it gets hidden behind a setting that you have to enable first:



Once you enable loadouts, you can assign charms to each armor set instead of having to redo it every time you switch armor, or change up charms based on situation. So if you want stealth charms on stealth armor, you can use this to do that and make switching armors so much better. I have no idea why this feature is tucked away like it is in the game but hopefully knowing this makes Iki Island and NG+ better for you DL. XD

[Dragon Lord]

Holy shit what were they thinking when they did that. They did the same with lock-on. I've never seen a game be like, "hey, let's take these really nicer QoL features and lock them away behind options they need to turn on, but we won't put any notice in the game that these options exist if they want them."

That would have made my play through at least a little less of a slog. I didn't think to look in the options for it though, because anyone with a brain would look at only one place for loadouts -- in the equipment menu. I didn't realize I'd have to go into the game and look for things in the places they'd make the least amount of sense.

Thanks for letting me know though, as you said, it'll at least make doing the rest of Iki Island a little smoother.

[Moonface]

I forget how I even stumbled onto the option myself. It may have just been through pure luck of going into every menu in the settings just to see what was in there and coming across it that way. What's funny is I found it and never used it, while you didn't find it and would've used the heck out of it.

Also what choice did you make for that final fight @Dragon Lord?

[Dragon Lord]

I let Shimura live. I felt that it fit best with Jin's character. A lot of the narrative the entire game was that while Jin was willing to become the 'Ghost' and do "dishonorable" acts in order to claim victory over the Mongols, that he would never let it consume him and he wouldn't become a monster. So I felt like killing Shimura is not what Jin would do, especially since after losing so much during the war (his honor, friends, etc.), the last thing he'd want to do is not only lose the very last of his family, but have his own hand cause it. I'll likely choose to kill Shimura at the end of my NG+ run to see the difference in the event will be, but at the end of the day I don't feel like that would be the "canon" ending for Jin.

[Moonface]

Ending Choice

Ah. I considered killing Shimura for the same reasons you gave but ultimately I chose to kill him, because I felt it was what Shimura would want and that sparing him would be an insult to his honor. As for what it changes, it just changes the location you end up in after that fight and the color of the armor you get, and I think the dialogue with Yuna is different but it doesn't change anything beyond what you find upon first loading into that post-game location.

[Moonface]

Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut | Coming to PC on May 16
Sony have announced that Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut is coming to PC on May 16, with the port being handled by Nixxes.



The PC port will include the following features:

• Ultrawide display support for 21:9 and 32:9 resolutions, and even supports 48:9 resolutions for triple monitor setups.
  
• NVIDIA DLSS 3 and AMD FSR 3 are available with both upscaling and frame generation options. Intel XeSS upscaling is also supported and if your hardware has headroom to spare, you can use NVIDIA DLAA or FSR 3 Native AA to further boost image quality.
  
• NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency and DLAA support.
  
• DualSense support with haptic feedback and adaptive triggers.
  
• Unlocked frame rates.
  
• Customizable mouse and keyboard controls.
  

Source: https://blog.playstation.com/2024/03/06/...on-may-16/

[Dragon Lord]

Yes. Yes. YESSSSSS.

I saw there were big rumors floating around the last couple of days of a GoT PC port announcement coming today, but of course as with all rumors, you never want to fully invest your hope into them. Super happy to see this one was right though, and we're finally getting Ghost on PC. Definitely buying the game for a third time here.

[Moonface]

You couldn't just upgrade the PS4 version to the PS5 one @Dragon Lord?

Also do you intend to try a different approach at all when you play the PC version or nah?

[Dragon Lord]

I could have, but Ghost is one of those games that's so good that it's worth buying it multiple times. I wanted to have a physical PS5 copy for my collection to go along with the PS4 copy.

And I'm not sure yet. There's really only two ways to play the game (stealthily or all-out warrior mode) and I still have to do a PS5 play through, which I'm not sure if I'll do before playing it on PC or after, so when I get to the PC version I might have already played it both ways, in which case I probably just go through the game a third time trying to do crazy shit that I didn't do the first time through.

[Moonface]

And I'm not sure yet. There's really only two ways to play the game (stealthily or all-out warrior mode) and I still have to do a PS5 play through, which I'm not sure if I'll do before playing it on PC or after, so when I get to the PC version I might have already played it both ways, in which case I probably just go through the game a third time trying to do crazy shit that I didn't do the first time through.

True, although for my playthrough I know I tried hard to avoid using the "ghost" abilities because I wanted to play a role of beating the enemy without sinking to their level as much as I could, but I forget if I eventually started using more of those as the story progressed to show Jin starting to use them in cutscenes. Bows are so powerful though I know I spent most of my time just shooting people in the head in stealth because of the guaranteed one-hit and that one skill that gives you back an arrow for a successful headshot or something, so running out of arrows was practically impossible.

If you didn't play the difficulty already and aren't against it maybe try out that one where you can die in a single hit but so can enemies? Or if the game makes it possible try killing people using only items like the bombs and stuff and don't use actual weapons except for when the game forces you to could be an interesting approach that isn't just stealth or aggression.

I just realized while writing this I never finished Iki Island. I'll have to remember to boot the game up again at some point to finish that off, although I can't remember much of what I had achieved in that expansion already; the only part I remember is ripping apart the people who were hurting my poor horsey when you get separated from it at the start.