2022 is hear! During the Christmas and New Years break I finally took the time to explore Sucker Punch’s latest open world title - Ghost of Tsushima the Director’s Cut on the PlayStation 5. I wanted something relaxing and easy to get into, but long, and this game fit the bill perfectly.

Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut is a tale of retaking a land lost by invaders as you play as Jin Sakai, an honorable samurai forced to break the traditional means of combat to effectively tackle the Mongol threat that now holds Tsushima island. The story is straightforward, the motivations are understandable. Each tale (quests) or activity results in me expanding Jin’s ability to be the perfect one-man samurai army. While most of them are mostly me taking on multiple enemies either from stealth or head-on for the sake of honor, the combat hit the right marks that repetition wasn’t an issue even past the 20-hour mark.

But beyond it’s combat, every section of the massive map holds different distractions to keep you busy as I find each one not taxing but mostly comforting. Aside from following a cute fox to pay your respects in a shrine - which can be tedious - other activities make Ghost of Tsushima a suitable game to play when on a long break from reality. One such activity that puts emphasis on this is making your own haiku (Japanese poems) in certain locations, picking 3 of the premade lines to complete your inspiring words of literature while basking on how the game’s environment looks and moves naturally through the wind, complete with soothing melodies only heard when entering a modern day spa.

Jin can also bathe in one of the many hot springs in the game to increase his total life pool. Yet another opportunity to show reflection and relaxation. Though these are more personal choices for the character, it’s another moment of expressing one person taking a break from all the murder and troubles that surround him. If a game can excite you from all the action and set pieces it presents, a game that presents the complete opposite could potentially emit the same feeling to a player, and weirdly enough, this game did. Ghost of Tsushima felt relaxing. Something I needed as we are ending another year with the same pandemic crippling the world.

Follow the wind

Traveling through the game via horseback further supports what I think about this game as the many vistas and open fields filled with flowers are a treat for the eyes. The wind is the true star here as every tree or flower reacts naturally based on where the wind blows. You go through these areas with great speed on horse, and 9 out of 10 times you’ll encounter a scenery that just calls to you, making it a worthy sight for you to whip out the game’s in-game photo mode, a feature I used more than actual gadgets in Jin’s arsenal.

Wind in the game is also used to point at the direction to where your next tagged objective is located, a fantastic approach to feeding player key information as I'm rather tired of following blue lines pasted on paths or clear arrows for players to blindly follow.

With how Ghost of Tsushima informs the player where to go is genius as you are not detached from the jaw-dropping scenery when traveling from point A to B. Nothing is altered. No “Detective Vision” or heightened senses highlighting important details. Everything feels more natural this way as all you have to do is follow where the wind blows, and pay attention to shiny objects that catch your eye.

It also helps how grounded and simple combat is in Ghost of Tsushima. No flashy moves with bright colorful animations or sequences that make Jin in the same vein as Dante from Devil May Cry. You pick your fights and take your time, switch stances that best suit the enemy in front of you, unsheathe your blade and ride off to the sunset.

Ghost of Tsushima has been a treat so far and I was glad I reserved this one for the long break. I’ve been playing it for more than a week and the game is rather long, but then again, it doesn’t help that I'm just going from one side objective to another, progressing through the main campaign in snail pace, wearing headbands containing my well-crafted and inspiring Haikus.

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