As a reminder, it is also to Nixxes that we owe the excellent port of Horizon Forbidden West, another title particularly anticipated on the platform. And it is clear that the studio once again spoils us with expert work, allowing PC players to discover in its most beautiful and poetic guise this very good Sucker Punch game, which clearly does not have much to offer. envy a certain Assassin’s Creed Shadows to come, while waiting for a sequel. So let us compose a haiku for you in honor of this PC version almost as sharp as a katana blade of Ghost of Tsushima.
The poetry of feudal Japan in its almost perfect beauty
Already on PS4, Ghost of Tsushima amazed us with its superb artistic direction, depicting Sucker Punch’s vision of a relatively faithful feudal Japan like a superb painting moving in the wind. The console, however, had some difficulties in doing it justice, with many sacrifices in particular on the display distance, the sharpness of the textures and the fluidity. Things have improved significantly on PS5 with the Director’s Cut. Some traces of her big sister’s limitations, however, still remained.
With the PC version, Nixxes exploits the enormous potential of the platform to tear down most of these barriers like rows of bamboo under the assault of a katana. The island of Tsushima shows us its magnificent settings as far as the eye can see with almost no clipping and omnipresent fluidity up to 4K (provided of course that you have a sufficiently solid configuration). Small downside, however: several textures have unfortunately aged quite poorly since the PS4 era, despite the studio’s obvious efforts to erase them on computer. Same observation for the facial animations and gestures of the characters, today a bit robotic.
Where, however, this port impresses is the exquisite quality of the lighting and lighting effects, despite the absence of ray tracing. From morning until dusk, Ghost of Tsushima is truly beautiful, the sun darting its rays over these sumptuous landscapes representing feudal Japan to extract all the substantial poetry. We have also regularly used and abused the beneficial presence of Photo mode to try to capture all the majesty specific to meditation. This is unfortunately no longer the case at night, where the light of the Moon, the few scattered lights and lanterns do not manage to repel a darkness which quite strongly tarnishes this transcendent print. And this is precisely where the problem lies for the game of Sucker Punch: with a certain emphasis on infiltration, many sequences take place once the sun has set, therefore preventing us from fully appreciating its picturesque open world. We could also criticize a day/night cycle switching from one to the other too quickly for our taste. Nothing but a few mods, a real added value for computer games, probably won’t fix it, that said.
Adjustments as fine as a katana blade
Speaking of settings, PC port requires, this version of Ghost of Tsushima ensures that we can configure our tailor-made experience. Unlike its counterpart for Horizon Forbidden West, it should be noted the existence of an Ultra mode for certain options, allowing the best equipped players to push all the knobs to the limit. This will notably erase, as mentioned above, the fact that certain textures nevertheless remind us that it was originally released on PS4.
Everything we expect from a modern PC game worthy of the name is there. DLAA, DLSS, FSR and Intel XeSS are there to ensure better performance without compromising too much on overall visual quality. Image generation is also included. Owners of wide and ultra-wide screens will finally be able to exploit them to their full potential. Nixxes therefore spoils computer gamers of all stripes, despite the fact that the game was released four years ago. A great effort which deserves to be duly commended.
Exemplary optimization on PC for Ghost of Tsushima
The certain age of the original game ensures, however, a controlled optimization of Ghost of Tsushima in its PC version. This is also compatible with the Steam Deck, for nomadic players who want to take Jin Sakai and the feudal Japan of Sucker Punch on their own journeys. The title can run very smoothly there, without having to make too many sacrifices in the graphics settings.
The game is therefore not excessively demanding, at least to enjoy it in 1080p at 60 FPS. Another good point, which allows those who do not have a PS4/PS5 to enjoy without breaking the bank too much while visually enjoying this Sony exclusive, highly anticipated by fans of the Land of the Rising Sun or fans of ‘Assassin’s Creed.
It is also important to tell you about our configuration used as part of this test:
- Graphics card: RTX 4080 SUPER
- Processor: Ryzen 7 7800X3D
- RAM: 32 GB DDR5 6000 MHz
A machine, you will agree, extremely muscular, which allowed us to play Ghost of Tsushima at full speed in 1440p with a frame rate per second never falling below 120 FPS. And suffice to say that the experience turned out to be a real joy in such conditions. Jin Sakai responds with complete fluidity and extreme responsiveness to our commands, both in combat worthy of exhilarating samurai and in infiltration phases that are as incisive as they are enjoyable. We can, by the way, thank the presence of NVIDIA Reflex to minimize input latency.
Note that, even if this PC version naturally supports both the controller and the keyboard/mouse combo, the controls are clearly more suited to using the first option. Unfortunately, the diversity of keys is not the most ergonomic on the keyboard/mouse. If, however, you want to be the best archer in Japan, the unstoppable precision of the mouse will clearly be your best ally compared to the much more approximate aim of the analog sticks.
Whether you have a PS5 DualSense or any other model, you will be able to better appreciate the solid gameplay of this open-world action/infiltration game. We can even bet that everything will be more pleasant without a touch pad that is much too sensitive for our taste. Just touching it sometimes frustratingly ruined fights or stealth sessions without a hitch until Jin Sakai suddenly started to bow. On the other hand, you will not benefit from the haptic feedback, which still has its small effect in every moment spent on Tsushima. Note that we also suffered from a particularly annoying bug: when we provoked opponents, it was in some cases impossible for us to hold the button to hold our katana ready to be drawn.
Before coming to the conclusion, it is appropriate to stop for a moment on the case of the Legends cooperation mode. Currently, it is not mandatory to link your copy of the game to a PSN account. However, this prevents it from being played with PS4/PS5 users. Following the controversy surrounding Helldivers 2 for similar reasons, Sony nevertheless made the decision to delist the PC version of Ghost of Tsushima from some 170 countries where its network is not available. If this restriction has been lifted in certain territories since the launch of the port, this is not the case everywhere, to the great dismay of their residents who do not have a PlayStation and are sadly deprived of this little gem.
