Action Adventure, Action RPG, Fantasy, Open World, Stealth, Third Person Action
Ghost of Tsushima
The Way of the Samurai, the Path of the Ghos
Ghost of Tsushima is set on the island of Tsushima in 1274, as Mongol forces land and tear through samurai defences. You play Jin Sakai, one of the last remaining samurai, stuck between the code he was raised in and the dirty tactics needed to actually keep his people alive. It’s a classic “honour vs survival” story, but told with the pacing and framing of a Kurosawa film turned interactive.
The combat loop is all about stance-based sword fighting. You swap between stances on the fly to break different enemy types: shields, spears, heavies, and dual-wielders. Parries, perfect dodges, and counters are the spine of the system — when you’re in rhythm, fights feel like choreographed duels instead of random swings. One-on-one duels strip out everything but timing and nerve: no UI noise, just steel, footwork, and the feeling that one mistake is the end.
The “Ghost” side bends that purity. As Jin abandons strict samurai rules, you gain tools for stealth and psychological warfare: smoke bombs, kunai, chain assassinations, fear-based perks that break enemy morale. Camps can be taken head-on or dismantled from the shadows, and the world quietly reacts to how you fight, not just that you win. Legends, the co-op mode, builds on this with class-based supernatural spins on Jin’s toolkit.
Exploration is driven by absence of UI. Wind guides you to objectives, foxes to shrines, birds to points of interest. Side activities — haiku spots, onsens, bamboo strikes, mythic tales — aren’t checklist junk; they all feed into either Jin’s stats, his legend, or the island’s mood. The Director’s Cut and PC release add Iki Island, a focused expansion that digs deeper into Jin’s past and the cost of what he’s become.
In the Vault, Ghost of Tsushima is pinned as “samurai fantasy done right”: if a game wants to sell the fantasy of a lone swordsman in a dying era, this is the bar.
- Category :
Action Adventure, Action RPG, Fantasy, Open World, Stealth, Third Person Action
- Date :
Jul . 17 . 2020
- Ghost of Tsushima follows Jin Sakai as he tries to save his home from the first Mongol invasion of Japan — and realises honour won’t be enough. It’s an open world built around wind, steel, and silence: cinematic duels, fast lethal swordplay, and stealth tools that slowly turn a samurai into a ghost. In the Vault, this is the reference for “playable samurai film” — a game where combat feel, atmosphere, and framing matter as much as stats.
