Tragedy has befallen the island of Tsushima. It is the 13th century and its Jitō has just been captured by Khotun Khan, a brutal warlord sent on the warpath by his cousin, Kublai. As the sole survivor of the samurai massacre that opens the narrative, it is up to you, Jin Sakai, to rescue your uncle, Lord Shimura, repel the Mongol invasion and save your fellow islanders.

Since the Mongols are intimately familiar with the samurai code of honor and how to exploit the rigidity of japanese tradition, you will have to employ a seemingly dishonorable combination of stealth, assassination and rogue tactics to achieve your mission. In fact, a great big deal of the main plot explores the theme of sacrificing one’s honor to save those he loves.

With its lush vegetation and tall grass, the island offers plenty of hiding spots for all your infiltration needs. Even though you’re a samurai, the environment and opportunities heavily encourage you to take to the shadows. Should you prefer, you can always challenge a group of Mongols to a standoff, where you have the opportunity to counter and indeed slice your opponents one after the other by nailing a fairly simple quick-time event.

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An open-world adventure that employs stealth, exploration and a myriad of secondary missions to help you gear up and unlock special abilities? While this particular stew will sound all too familiar to any Assassin’s Creed fans, there is enough substance here to spice up the formula and, in many ways, deliver a unique and engaging experience. For one, the rich tapestry of weather effects, magnificent lighting and elaborate, painterly landscapes are vivid in a sense that very few other games manage to attain. You tend to forget the checklist architecture and repetitive encounters, because the presentation aspect is just so incredibly beautiful.

Then there’s the sound design - everything you would expect considering the culture: taiko for percussion, flute melodies that really transport you into that world. Biwa chords and kotos complete the soundscape, drawing you in like slipping into a warm bath. Penned by Ilan Eshkeri and Shigeru Umebayashi, the soundtrack truly shows an understanding of japanese convention and music theory which often eludes Western developers.

Most of the time, you’ll be on horseback, no doubt admiring the gorgeous environment, where the wind races through the fields and makes waves through the grass. GoT is one of the most beautiful games out there, with a level of detail and visual poetry elevated by the environment, totally on par with some of the best scenes from RDR2 or Uncharted 4. Almost all of its setpieces are not nearly as bombastic or elaborate as those other games, but there will be plenty of vistas and landscapes that will simply take your breath away.

The majority of the main questline has you actively waging war against the Mongol hordes (who are kind enough to get off their horses when challenged to a fight, one of many artistic licenses the game employs). It’s a reminder that even though the island of Tsushima exists, we should treat the game’s universe as historical fiction, a heightened reality where the main objective is Kurosawa-level badassery and not exactly historical accuracy.

In that respect, the combat is remarkably snappy and satisfying. Mechanically, it’s simplistic - the standard parry-and-counter fare you would expect from an action-adventure, but an elegant combination of seamless animations and sharp responsiveness really makes you forget how repetitive the layouts and permutations of the fights are.

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In that respect, the combat is remarkably snappy and satisfying. Mechanically, it’s simplistic - the standard parry-and-counter fare you would expect from an action-adventure, but an elegant combination of seamless animations and sharp responsiveness really makes you forget how repetitive the layouts and permutations of the fights are.

While there’s no level-based progression, you do gain special abilities, consumables and techniques that make the harder fights in the game manageable. Your enemies, in turn, will wield different types of weapons and by mastering the game’s four stances, you will be able to easily counter all of them.

The two types of darts, several types of bows and smoke bombs make you feel more like a ninja than a samurai, but you’ll need them to save time in those many occasions when picking off a few enemies silently means you won’t have to fight them once you raise the alarm and an entire camp descends upon you.

Perhaps the game’s only notable flaw, your enemies seem dumb, slow and confused when confronted with even just a portion of your arsenal,and despite always being outnumbered you never quite reach that Sekiro-like level of panic where only skill and great timing will save you from an unsavoury death.

What makes the traditionally tedious task of hunting down collectibles decidedly less so is that not only do they have puzzles attached to them (from the sequence flurry of the Bamboo Strikes to the rhythm-based flute minigame which makes use of your controller’s accelerometer) and give you Charms and other perks which affect gameplay as well.

Outside of that, you will learn to play the flute, find fox dens or help one of Tsushima’s many inhabitants with their problems and requests. Most sidequests are single-serving yarns that bridge the picturesque land with Japanese folklore and legends. And yet, the monsters and ghosts that are described by witnesses turn out, most of the time, to be nothing more than humans who appear terrifying to their victims, a la Scooby Doo.

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If you like traversal and platforming, you’ll be happy to hear that in order to reach the game’s many shrines, you will have to climb literal mountains (I guess in this regard the game is right on the money, as the real Tsushima island is covered in mountains and forests), use a grappling hook and grab onto ledges hundreds of feet high.

There’s a multiplayer component as well (Legends), with a few story scenarios you can play with a friend, a survival mode with up to four players defending several zones against incoming waves of enemies as well as a kind of weird co-op pvp where two teams race to defeat waves of monsters while spawning enemies for the opposing team. The four classes and raid-type endgame will add a few dozen hours of diversion, but bear in mind that public matchmaking is only available for pre-endgame content.

After going through numerous iterations (seriously, the developers considered making a Scottish folk game or a steampunk world before settling on feudal Japan), Ghost of Tsushima reached its final form. A level of polish and optimization that should become the industry standard gives you eye candy for days without sacrificing performance, and it won’t take you but a few hours to realize why Ghost of Tsushima was one of the fastest-selling PlayStation titles ever released.

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