6/3/2023 0 Comments Ghost of tsushima expansionThe update adds worthy new features - like lip sync for Japanese voice acting and a lock-on camera - that are terrific options for newcomers. If you never picked up the game, or did so and dropped off early like we all do with so many open world games, this is perfect. Albeit with a very welcome touch of more complex storytelling and enhanced visuals. Nothing left me hungry for more of a particular, fresh idea. Nothing feels like the developers did something truly new with the pieces they already had in place. Having already finished Ghost of Tsushima, nothing about the Director’s Cut outright surprises me. These are the same kinds of high points, though. Learning your foes one-on-one is well worth a place to practice as much as you want. It’s part of why the new dueling mini-game is so welcome. One duel involving monkeys and a blind man feels like the end of a movie - as the best duels in Ghost of Tsushima usually do. They’re still great! Each is a memorable peak of style among what are otherwise pretty similar encounters. When Jin is alone, though, combat continues to hum. Not in a game where the challenge is quickly recognizing which enemy is using what weapon and fluidly switching stances to match. I often had to flick on his ninja vision mid-battle just to outline who was friend and who was foe before starting to sling steel. Backup that’s tough to tell apart from his dozens of enemies in the thick of a fight. Jin gets lots of backup against his new rivals during the scripted missions. That’s an even bigger issue in some of the “Tales of Iki” story battles. I only wish they stood out from the crowd more it’s often tough to find the singers in a sea of similar-looking dudes. The shamans are no slouches in a fight, either, which adds an interesting order of operations to combat. Plus there are new “shaman” enemies that test the limits of historical fiction by buffing other attackers with chanting. The first “normal” camp of foes I fought was protected by half a dozen turret units I only saw before in the central campaign. The hostile camps don’t stand out much from the base bases. Not to mention there are some all-new side activities like a fantastic dueling arena. The island is full of new bases to conquer and legends to unravel. Thankfully, the gameplay is mostly there to pick up the slack again. As such Jin never feels urgently connected to the people he constantly claims to protect. He teaches himself every philosophical lesson he comes upon. Jin ultimately makes the right decisions - just as he does in the main game - but all of that growth seems isolated. What’s worse is the game never commits to considering this a mistake, emotionally for losing a friend or tactically for threatening an ally. We watch him slowly grow to trust and understand the people of Iki, for instance, only for him to pull a knife on a close ally the second he discovers something he doesn’t like. The game can’t help but frame his d ecisions as righteous at every turn, even as his choices and beliefs shift on a dime. The expansion (and really all of Ghost of Tsushima, even before the Director’s Cut) is at its best when studying these common characters. And the people you meet don’t have the same rosy memories of the man who led an invasion to take their land. Iki Island is where his father died, you see, as witnessed in flashback during the main plot. It offers a less romantic perceptive of the aristocratic overlords than the majority of the base game. In this way, Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut adds more of exactly what I want. He sets out to stop her - this woman called The Eagle - and embeds with a local population his late father once tried to “pacify.” Protagonist Jin Sakai hears tell of a new warlord poisoning people with hallucinogens on Iki. The side plot that takes you there is more prosaic. Oily purples, sun-soaked greens, and bioluminescent blues at the bottom of black caves make a very picturesque home away from home. But its accompanying “Iki Island” expansion introduces environments that look plucked from a fantasy painting. Ghost of Tsushima has always been downright drowned in the reds, yellows, and oranges of autumn leaves dancing across the camera. Which isn’t to say the base game lacked color on the PS4. Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut adds some much needed color to the samurai adventure.
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