Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut on PC Review

Back in 2020, I played and reviewed Ghost of Tsushima, one of the best Samurai games ever made on the PS4. The game was incredibly breathtaking in terms of graphics and it’s a very well-crafted open world game (which I normally hate with all the endless icons and meaningless quests). For some forgotten reasons, I didn’t end up finishing the game so it’s been left hanging inside my game library.

So, when I had the chance to actually replay the game on the PC with better framerates and improved graphics thanks to newer technologies only available on the PC, it’s impossible to say no to review the PC version. And I’m glad I didn’t turn the review opportunity down.

In the Director’s Cut for PC, Ghost of Tsushima now has unlocked framerates which means the game now is as smooth as butter, and combat animations look even better than before because of this. Dodging and parrying feels more responsive too.

Obviously, it’d require a beefier PC to be able to experience everything in its glory but there are new graphical settings in the game so the game can support a variety of PC specs, including for portable PC gaming devices.

The system used for playing and reviewing the game is as follows:

• Processor: Intel i7 14700K
• Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z790 AERO G
• RAM:  T-Force Delta RGB 32GB DDR5 RAM running at 7,200MHz overclocked speed (review in progress)
• Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GAMING OC 10GB
• Cooling: iCUE LINK H115i RGB AIO 280mm Radiator & four iCUE LINK QX120 fans
• Storage: WD Black SN850 NVMe M.2, 1TB capacity

With these beefy specs, I’ve managed to crank everything to the highest and really enjoy the improved graphics, smoother framerates, and the almost instantaneous loading screens. Getting into the game menu takes a few seconds and continuing the game also takes that long (2-3 seconds at most).

With the PC version, the game utilises all the latest and greatest technology such as NVIDIA DLSS 3, AMD FSR3, and Intel XeSS. And if you have the higher-end NVIDIA cards, you’ll also get the NVIDIA Reflex and DLAA (No Ray Tracing, it seems). Everything looks so much smoother and sharper – especially since I’m comparing this with my past experience playing the game on the PS4. On the PC, I can definitely respect and enjoy the game more with all these eye candies smoothness. For example, while swimming across a lake, I can see the sun glare blasting through the forest trees while being able to see their reflections at the same time on the water.

Have a big, wide monitor? Then you’ll appreciate the Ultrawide (21:9), Super Ultrawide (32:9), and 48:9 Triple Monitor support. I’m stuck with my 2560×1440 resolution though on the HyperX Armada 27 Gaming monitor but that’s okay.

I was using an English Dialogue with English Subtitle when I played this on the PS4 but the PC version has a better lip sync for the Japanese voiceover (made possible by cinematics being rendered in real time by your PC). I opted for playing with the Japanese Dialogue for more immersion. Jin’s voice actor, Kazuya Nakai, is also well known by many (including myself) as he’s the voice actor of One Piece’s Roronoa Zoro.

To play Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut on the PC, you can opt for playing with a wired DualSense controller or a mouse and keyboard. I went for a mouse and keyboard to play the game and the experience is as good. Sure, there are more keys to memorise such as pressing T + a number to change your stances, CTRL and mouse clicks to change your Ranged weapon and its ammo, R and scroll to change your throwable weapons, and more. If you don’t like the sound of this, you can use your DualSense controller instead – but it requires to be used wired to experience the full range of in-game controller features. And oh, you’ll also get that haptic feedback and adaptive triggers which is pretty nifty.

The Legends multiplayer mode will include cross-play between PS4, PS5, and PC players so you’ll get more people being able to join in now and that’s a good thing. The cross-play is still in beta currently so you can only invite your PlayStation friends but there will be updates in the future to fully unlock its true potential.

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Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut on PC is a magnificent port of the well-received, well-loved game from the console. For a four-years old game, Ghost of Tsushima is still a great game to play and still feels like a modern game (especially when I compare it to the more recent, Samurai game, Rise of the Ronin). The game now is even better as it feels so much smoother, responsive, and lightning fast to load (depends on the spec of your PC and storage). It’s available now on Steam.

Disclosure: Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut on PC review licence was supplied for reviewing