The little touches go a long way towards combat's exquisite feel When it’s at its best, combat in Ghost of Tsushima is fast, chaotic, tactical, and is true to the fantasy of being a lone hyper-skilled but outnumbered samurai.
There are four stances total, and once you have access to them all combat will challenge you to not only identify the greatest threat at any given moment but also to swap to the stance that is best suited to deal with them, all while balancing the very real need to play defensively. Later on you’ll learn the Water Stance, which uses slower but more powerful strikes that can break through the defenses of shield-wielding enemies. The starting Stone Stance is ideal for dealing with swordsmen, as one charged-up stab attack can sneak through their guard and either kill them outright or deal massive damage. As Jin completes certain tasks, he’ll unlock new sword stances that each come with their own movesets, and, more importantly, their own strengths versus a particular type of weapon. That probably all sounds familiar, but the glue that holds this combat system together and allows it to remain interesting the whole way through is the addition of the stances you can shift between at the push of a button. Like all great combat systems, it’s simple to understand on a surface level: there are light attacks to quickly deal damage and beat out slower strikes, heavy attacks that deal more damage and can break through enemy guards, a block button to guard against certain attacks, and a dodge button to avoid the attacks that can’t be guarded. And, as witches’ brews tend to be, the result is magical. Ghost of Tsushima’s combat is like a witches’ brew made with bits of the Batman Arkham series, the pre-Origins Assassin’s Creeds, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and the entire library of Kurosawa films. Overall, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing – the music always fits and serves to enhance whatever emotion the gameplay and the cinematics are trying to evoke. The dynamic score seamlessly shifts from quiet and ambient shakuhachi flutes during stealthy moments to thunderous taiko drums once blades start clashing tense encounters are made even more palpable thanks to increasingly speedy strums of biwas and shamisens. I wouldn’t recommend playing the whole campaign in Kurosawa mode, as there are some quests that demand some color recognition, but it’s a great visual effect to turn on every now and then. It’s not a huge issue as it’s still well worth playing in Japanese – and you have the option of enabling the beautiful Kurosawa Mode, which puts a film grainy black-and-white filter over everything to match the style of the classic Akira Kurosawa movies that Ghost of Tsushima so effectively pays homage to. As a result, if you choose to play with the excellent Japanese audio track, which features the outstanding Kazuya Nakai as Jin, it comes off as a comparatively cheap dub with wildly mismatched lip flaps and facial expressions that don’t mirror the emotion in the voice. Khotun Khan is one of the most memorable game villains of recent memory.As good as the English voice cast is, though, it’s a shame that Sucker Punch wasn’t able to find a way to have the performance capture match the Japanese voice acting as well. He’s extremely cunning, always one step ahead, and his presence as the “Big Bad” is a large part of why Jin’s 40 to 50-hour quest for vengeance works so well. He’s one of the most memorable game villains of recent memory thanks to his soft intensity that is oddly calming despite his terrifying intentions. Even if Jin himself isn’t the most charismatic of protagonists, his foil, Khotun Khan, played by Glee’s Patrick Gallagher, has charisma in spades. Ghost of Tsushima revolves around this inner conflict as Jin’s formative teachings push up against his need to save his homeland at any cost, and though it takes a little while to really get going, it’s a compelling struggle.
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