The following are Design-specific excerpts from my Ghost of Tsushima YouTube video, which I thought would be the sections of most interest for discussion on this site. If you want to listen more about Context, Aesthetics, Cohesion and Emotions feel free to watch the full videos.
<iframe title="GAME DESIGNER REVIEWS Ghost of Tsushima" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/T9P8eDq7Rzc?enablejsapi=1&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamedeveloper.com" height="360px" width="100%" data-testid="iframe" loading="lazy" scrolling="auto" class="optanon-category-C0004 ot-vscat-C0004 " data-gtm-yt-inspected-91172384_163="true" id="837746450" data-gtm-yt-inspected-91172384_165="true" data-gtm-yt-inspected-113="true"></iframe>"The entirety of Ghost of Tsushima revolves around the Samurai fantasy in its romanticized form, but in the Context category we will talk about how the game tackles the more complex questions regarding historical Samurai. But this is not just a Samurai game, this is a title where to save people of Tsushima from an overwhelming invading force, the protagonist Jin Sakai has to abandon his code and make use of tactics and weapons one could find dishonorable, - stealth assassinations, dirty tricks, explosive tools, and so on, thus grappling with his transformation into the titular Ghost persona.
What’s really curious about Ghost of Tsushima is that it’s not a game with the two thematic pillars standing beside each other - Samurai and Ghost. No. Ghost of Tsushima starts with one core pillar - that of the Samurai, with a number of sub-pillars within it like Combat, Stealth and the like. But at the beginning you can use stealth only to avoid being seen and have absolutely no tools that you can use in combat or outside of it. There’s only you and your sword, and that’s the only way you can deal with the invading Mongols - openly and directly. The game even makes a point of that in the tutorial section where Jin outright refuses to hide and calls out the Mongols to fight him, and the stand-off mechanic becomes an important part of that behavior.
But, as the game progresses, the pillar of the Ghost slowly and gradually overtakes the Samurai pillar, and that affects all the gameplay aspects within. Stealth is no longer just about avoidance, you can now actually assassinate from behind, with the first such kill being an incredibly difficult moment for the character. And even after gaining this ability, the assassination animations are quite long. Until you upgrade your Tanto blade which eventually will make stealth assassination kills incredibly fast. And then you get all those tools and moves in combat that allow you to be even more efficient.
And this is how the game makes the Ghost pillar overtake the Samurai one. Not by forcing you to use tools like smoke bombs or kunai or any other dishonorable method through adding enemy immunity restrictions or something like that, but by making these tools incredibly effective. Most of the time, you will be alone against dozens of Mongols or more, with the enemies having increasingly better armor as you progress. And sure, you can fight them honorably just with your sword and bow every time. Or you can throw down a smoke bomb and instantly chain kill assassinate three of them. And then use kunai to stagger other warriors and kill them faster. Maybe finish everything up by attaching a sticky bomb. And now suddenly, what could have been a pretty long fight transformed into a short skirmish.
Of course, there is still balance involved - the game makes its Ghost actions and tools either consumable or contextual, so you can’t just always use them… but at the same time it gives plenty of opportunities to do so, and as you progress through the game those tools only become more powerful in nature. So Ghost of Tsushima not only makes the transformation from a Samurai into the Ghost the premise of the entire character arc in the narrative, that is also the premise of the entire player arc in gameplay, and that happens naturally. This is an absolutely fantastic representation of a central concept through gameplay.
That said, are the actual gameplay mechanics, the moment to moment actions, any good? Well… as a matter of fact yes, and we’re going to tackle all the most important aspects starting with Combat.
The romanticized Samurai fantasy once again is at the core of how the systems are designed. Combat in Ghost of Tsushima is about discipline and precision. Your standard melee attacks strike only one enemy at a time, and the light attack is very quick - you can do multiple strikes within just a couple of seconds. However, not only does spamming quick attacks make each consecutive strike slower, enemies tend to get into defensive mode after several hits, blocking your weapon.
The most straightforward way to get enemies out of that defensive state is to use heavy attacks, which are actually not slow. They’re not as fast as normal attacks, but they are still pretty quick. Heavy attacks do stagger damage, meaning that by using them several times you will break through the block and stagger the opponent, - they’re rendered inactive for several seconds, allowing you to make deadly strikes as a staggered enemy receives more damage. That’s the basic pace of combat, and Ghost of Tsushima puts layers upon layers on it to add the aspects of depth and skill mastery.
First, of course, you are incredibly rarely put into a 1v1 situation, it’s usually fights against a group. So while you’re attacking one enemy, another will for sure try to strike. In this situation you can either parry or dodge, and in some situations you absolutely have to dodge as there are attacks that you can’t block or parry. Both moves allow you to get some extra hits in, but if you press L1 just before the enemy weapon connects, you perform a perfect parry which instantly staggers the opponent.
What’s pretty cool about the way group combat is set up in Ghost of Tsushima is the fact that enemies feel aggressive even though underneath it all they actually attack the player 1 by 1 as to not overwhelm them. This is achieved through pretty long initial wind-ups. You can see that before starting an attack, the enemy usually needs time to run up to the player, and then the first animation of their combo attack is pretty slow too. This gives players enough time to respond, while retaining the feeling of enemies being aggressive and not just standing there doing nothing while they wait for their turn to attack. And the game can sort of stack these long wind-ups on top of one another, so while one Mongol is still in the process of initiating their attack, another one can already start their approach, but they won’t strike until the situation with the first one is resolved.
What’s not cool about the way group combat is set up in Ghost of Tsushima is how the camera works there. A big complaint regarding the original release of Ghost of Tsushima was the lack of a lock-on button, which was added in a post-launch patch, but I would go as far as say that the lack of lock-on was never the problem. In fact, lock-on makes the style of combat which revolves a lot around switching often between different enemies more cumbersome to play. The actual problem is the fact that the camera is not dynamic, or rather not dynamic enough. In most cases it will zoom out just a tiny bit, but very rarely will it show the proper full situation with most of the enemies on screen. It also doesn’t try to push itself in the direction of enemies, and your opponents don’t seem to prioritize getting into screen view before attacking, which can lead to cases where you literally lose sight of enemies or don’t know that some are participating in a group fight.
The exceptions are archers, which are handled very elegantly. First they make an audio cue before firing, but also, since for accessibility purposes using only audio is not enough, enemies duck when archers are about to fire, so you know when you have to dodge. There is also an accessibility option available in the menu should you need even more explicit visual cues. So archers add another layer to combat, but that’s not the end of it.
There are also stances. You start the game only with one fighting stance, but as you progress you unlock more. And these stances not only give you access to new moves, like for example holding the heavy attack button in the default Stone stance leads to a piercing attack, while doing the same action in Wind stance activates the Typhoon Kick, but also they make you effective against different types of enemies.
So for example the Stone stance heavy attacks are very good at staggering only swordsmen, but won’t be effective against other types of soldiers. If you want to stagger shieldmen faster for example, you have to use the Water stance. Not only that, heavy attacks interrupt enemies if you’re in the stance that’s effective against them, so with enough skill and timing you can actually stay in the offensive quite a lot. And of course when you need to change stances time slows down so you would have a moment to properly process which stance to select. The advantage of this system is that the game can create interesting combat situations just by sending different combinations of soldiers your way.
But what’s great about stances is that, because what they affect is stagger damage and not actual damage, they don’t trivialize enemy archetypes to a matter of always matching the stances, as the special moves can be useful against a variety of enemies. Typhoon kick for example works against all normal-sized soldiers, not just spearmen. And later you can get a skill which adds a stun to the kick, allowing you to perform a one hit kill after. It’s a widely applicable tactic, not just against spearmen. So stances have the basic goal of providing you as a player clear strategies you can use against enemies, but also on a deeper mastery level they actually increase the amount of choices you can do in fighting situations, which is incredibly important.
So with that in mind, Piercing Strike is a powerful attack that can be used on anybody who doesn’t have a shield or can’t use one against you at the moment. And you don’t have to use Flurry Strikes only on shielded enemies. Yes, it staggers shieldmen best, but it is still a good way to deal considerable damage quickly on any type of opponent. In fact, you might want to use it against brutes for example, as even though Moon Stance is great at staggering them, it’s not always great at dealing damage to them. Not to mention there are Brutes with shields, so you don’t even need to switch to Moon Stance for those.
And this aspect gels so well with the overall fantasy of a Samurai becoming the Ghost. Stances are introduced as something that has concrete rules - use a particular stance against a particular type of opponent. But the depth and mastery of this system comes from learning when and how to break the rules - as that’s what ultimately will make you a more effective fighter.
The next layer of combat is Resolve. In the beginning, you can use this resource that you gain by parrying and killing enemies only to heal yourself during combat, but later on in the game you unlock special powerful combat techniques. It’s a consumable resource that has a symbiotic relationship with core player actions. Because you don’t lose it between encounters like usually happens with an adrenaline-like system, you can wait for the opportune moment to utilize Resolve, but also it can be connected to pretty powerful abilities as to get resolve back you would need to participate in the core combat or stealth loops.
And then of course there’s the stand-off mechanic, where before you start an encounter you can call out enemies to try and defeat you in a single sword strike. Timing is everything in this Risk vs. Reward mechanic - if you strike too early you will lose almost all your health, but if you attack at the proper moment then you gain a lot of resolve. At first you can do this only with one opponent, but later on you can upgrade this ability enough that you can kill five opponents through stand-off.
And it’s another great way Ghost of Tsushima combines its fantasy with a mechanic that has different potential reasons for you to use it.
Plus of course there’s the ghost tool layer which we have already touched upon when we discussed the game’s pillars so I’m not going to repeat myself here. But, I should mention that just like with all other game mechanics here, every Ghost Tool is something that gradually unravels itself. Sticky Bomb for example - it’s an effective tool but at first it also damages you, so you have to make sure to not be in its radius after throwing. However there’s an upgrade that makes you immune to the bomb’s damage, and after purchasing it you can immediately become much more aggressive with the bomb’s utilization, adding more choices to your evergrowing arsenal of tactics.
And all this is without me even mentioning a myriad of little details that help make the combat so consistent. For example you can cancel out absolutely any animation except that of the finishing kill, but also you will NEVER be attacked while doing such an animation.
You might have noticed I said ‘unlock later in the game’ or ‘unlock as you progress’ quite a lot. That’s because Ghost of Tsushima really eases you into its combat systems, at first you have only the absolute basics available to you, which are satisfying enough, and then the whole breadth of this system unravels as you master the mechanics available.
And the progression is so gradual that you don’t even have access to ranged combat at the beginning - you receive your bow only in one of the first main missions after completing the whole prologue that is quite lengthy. I don’t have as much to talk about archery as I had about melee combat though. It’s a quality system.
Your arrows travel in an arc so you need to take distance into account, and the game’s UI with the little stripes beneath your targeting reticule can help you learn to understand where they need to be located for the arrows to hit. The head hitbox on enemies is quite large so you don’t need to be incredibly precise when doing headshots, but some enemies wear helmets and your default bow is ineffective for piercing them, but will still work if you hit the part of the face not covered by the helmet.
Again, there are different mechanics that open up as you progress - like various arrowhead types or the slow mo concentration action. There’s not as many as with melee combat but enough to add more to your choices and playstyle. If there’s one thing that’s problematic with archery it’s the fact that when you switch up weapons or arrowheads while holding the firing trigger, you have to put the bow back down and up again to draw the arrow, which messes up the flow a bit but it’s a very minor issue.
Archery of course can be used not only in combat, but stealth as well, which is the second big gameplay aspect Ghost of Tsushima implements incredibly well. Stealth is always a tricky beast, because it needs to have extra clear rules to feel fair, otherwise it can be frustrating. Ghost of Tsushima is a great example of such crystal clear rules.
For example, no unalert enemy will detect you if you’re crouching one story above them. So you can be sitting on a yurt, which is not a tall structure or anything, but still remain undetected by people below you. The only way they will detect you is if they’re in alert state after noticing a dead ally or searching for you after you have escaped, in which case you need to stay at least two stories above to remain undetected.
Then, a detection by a lone enemy won’t actually alert people in the vicinity immediately. If you manage to silence them before they yell, which can be done either by shooting an arrow to their head or quickly killing them in melee combat before they can react, you will stay stealthed. This also naturally means that if they detect you while you are killing them, you’re safe. And even if it takes too long for you to take care of an enemy and the ones nearby do become alert, they won’t actually know your position until they have a direct line of sight with you.
If an enemy is not in a hostile state yet but sees a body of one of their allies they will first approach them and then after several seconds will take out a horn to call everyone to their location and set an alert state. Again, the rules for this are extremely clear, so when it’s happening you not only know how to prevent this, but also can use it to your advantage and lure enemies that way.
Clear rules also apply to your stealth tools. For example, a wind chime is going to attract only a single enemy regardless of how many others there are near them. Though of course, to add some believability, other enemies in a group will still turn around if you throw it too close to them, but only one enemy will approach regardless. If you want to attract a group of people then you need firecrackers for that.
There are other types of little mechanical affordances, for example air assassination doesn’t have to be performed only from a static position above an enemy when the prompt is available. If a guard is a bit too far, you can actually jump towards them and press the air assassination prompt on your way down.
And speaking of assassinations, what is really appreciated in Ghost of Tsushima and is really easy to get wrong is the consistent length of animations. Now, I’ve already mentioned closer to the beginning that when your Tanto is level 1 your animations are longer than if your Tanto is level 3. However, what I also should mention is that all animations of a particular level are practically the same length. So when your Tanto is level 1 your stealth kill will take about 5 seconds to perform. But on level 3, when your blade is extra sharp and Jin feels more comfortable with this type of tactic, it’s quick, effective stabs, practically 1 second in length. It’s not exact of course, but absolutely close enough so you always know how much time is needed for an assassination to succeed whichever level your Tanto is. Which by the way can still work as a move even a little bit AFTER enemies enter combat state, as yet another affordance to make sure all these mechanics feel very consistent.
And there are many. Shoji assassinations have a pretty generous range and will always teleport the enemy close to the door upon activation, smoke bomb effect lasts a little bit after the actual smoke disappears, and so on. Honestly, the only real criticism I have of Ghost of Tsushima’s stealth is the fact that standard assassination and chain assassination require two different initial inputs, as opposed to a single input that is then either continued in a chain or stopped depending on if you keep pressing the buttons or not. Though the activation ranges are generous, sometimes it is possible to overestimate how close enemies are and instead of killing at least one of them, you just do a heavy attack instead and enter combat. But, for the purposes of fairness, despite assassinations being considered a dishonorable method of dealing with enemies, putting single and chain assassinations as two different button prompts is in line with the overall Samurai gameplay fantasy focused on discipline and precision, which means being attentive and deliberate with your actions.
Another interesting aspect of stealth is the fail condition. Unless it’s a quest with a specific narrative connotation, usually you don’t lose by getting detected. However, you can lose if the Mongols kill a prisoner or hostage, and this once again is something that works from multiple perspectives - first of course being the reasoning why Jin as a character would start using the dishonorable sneaky method, so the Mongols wouldn’t be able to execute anyone, but also from gameplay perspective the hostage is not killed immediately when you’re detected. A soldier is chosen randomly to run towards the civilian, but you can always intercept them on the way if you’re fast enough. And even after they reach the hostage, the enemy will wait for a while before striking, to make sure that before losing the game due to a hostage’s death, you have to fail multiple times. Like stand-offs, it’s another cool combination of fantasy and mechanics.
When it comes to other core gameplay mechanics, they’re not as advanced as combat or stealth. Horses are needed mostly for navigating long distances. While there are mounted combat mechanics, they’re very basic and honestly not that comfortable to utilize. The enemies themselves try to dismount before entering combat, and even a single hit kicks you off your horse. Ghost of Tsushima itself prefers you to fight on foot.
With navigation things are a bit more detailed. You have a pretty free reign in terms of controlling your jumps and their distance, and Jin is magnetized towards branches, ropes, and ledges so you don’t need to be very precise. It’s basic but it feels like you have a lot of control, which makes it enjoyable enough. As opposed to actually climbing cliffs, which feels very floaty. The thing is that to climb cliffs you need to only push the stick in a particular direction and wait for Jin to jump where needed, and it just feels like you are not in control, in strike opposition to literally the rest of the game where you have precise control over every Jin’s action. To be fair, sometimes you do need to press jump manually while climbing, but it would’ve been better had it been a regular action.
However, just like with most other systems, there is a bit of progression there - at one point you receive a grappling hook which adds more engagement to navigation because you have to time at opportune moments when to use it, although also with very generous windows because the game doesn’t focus on navigation as a core gameplay aspect, but a means to an end.
Now, despite us talking about combat and stealth for quite some time, there’s still a considerable number of mechanics related to them that I haven’t mentioned. I don’t want to spoil those openly though throughout the video you will notice their existence in the UI. Ultimately, detailed discussion of these mechanics won’t add anything I haven’t already mentioned - how Ghost of Tsushima clearly defines its Samurai fantasy being overtaken by the Ghost one through addition of very qualitatively done powerful mechanics that add layers upon layers of depth and player choice without forcing to use any of them.
Which leads us to a more detailed discussion about the game’s progression. Ghost of Tsushima starts out with a set piece where you’re one of 80 Samurai fighting against an overwhelming Mongol invasion force. This is purely a section about moving and basic fighting. You don’t have a health bar, Resolve, none of that. Just you fighting enemies.
After that you have a section that’s only about stealth movement. Now, sometimes the game doesn’t quite make it clear enough where exactly you have to go in this segment which can lead to unfortunate situations related to opening the wrong doors… but, the point is, the game doesn’t try to overwhelm the player with mechanics. And only after the player is familiar with those, Ghost of Tsushima introduces the health and Resolve mechanics, as well as teaches all the combat basics like parrying, dodges, and the like.
Only after the prologue does th
