Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut PC review – Honed to perfection

When Sony began its PC porting initiative, fans begged for all sorts of exclusives to hit Steam. While heavy hitters like Uncharted and The Last of Us have been available on PC for some time, Ghost of Tsushima has been noticeably absent from the publisher’s PC lineup despite huge demand from fans. It’s finally here, though, and it’s a fantastic port to boot.

Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut feels right at home on PC, arguably even more so than it does on PlayStation 4 and 5. The PlayStation 5 upgrade of Sucker Punch’s open-world samurai adventure completely overhauled the already solid PS4 experience with an increased framerate and other next-gen bells and whistles, but the PC version is easily the definitive version of the game.

There’s not much to be said about Ghost of Tsushima that hasn’t already been said, but revisiting the game yet again four years after launch is an easy reminder of why the game is so beloved to begin with. For starters, it’s breathtakingly gorgeous thanks to its stellar art direction. Sucker Punch is one of the few studios that isn’t afraid of color, and it shows in Ghost of Tsushima’s striking landscapes.

The island of Tsushima (and Iki Island from the included expansion) already looked amazing on PlayStation 5, but their beauty is expanded upon on PC — quite literally in fact. Ultrawide monitor support is a match made in heaven for Ghost of Tsushima’s environments, and playing with a 21:9 aspect ratio makes the game’s cinematic inspirations. Enabling the black-and-white Kurosawa Mode on an ultrawide monitor just feels right. Of course, you can also take things even further with a 32:9 super ultrawide display or a multi-monitor setup to really soak in the sights.

You’d think that running Ghost of Tsushima with extended aspect ratios or high resolutions would result in huge hits to the game’s framerate, but developer Nixxes has proven its PC porting prowess once again. The game runs buttery smooth on all sorts of hardware, and support for upscalers like DLSS, FSR, and XeSS means you can crank up the resolution and settings while still maintaining a high FPS target.

Plus, aging hardware can still squeeze quite a bit of performance out of Ghost of Tsushima without huge hits to graphical fidelity since the game’s visuals are carried so hard by the art style. Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut is a remarkably scalable experience on PC, and as recent PlayStation PC hits like Helldivers 2 have proven, accessibility for a wide range of hardware is key to success on the platform.

Ensuring your PC port is scalable is also incredibly important in an era where handheld devices like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and Lenovo Legion Go are rapidly increasing in popularity. Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut runs great on both the Steam Deck and ROG Ally in my experience, so you shouldn’t have issues with the handheld of your choice. At the end of the day, it’s yet another avenue that lets a larger audience experience Ghost of Tsushima without a PlayStation console.

Cultivating a large audience is crucial to the game’s success on PC, too, since Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut also includes the cooperative Legends mode. Legends is surprisingly fleshed out for what it is (so much so that it got a standalone release on PlayStation), and it’s being used as a testing ground for future multiplayer PlayStation projects on PC. Legends boasts full crossplay with PC/PS4/PS5, and PC players can even earn PlayStation Trophies and manage social features with an all-new PlayStation overlay. It feels like Sony is getting much more comfortable with the PC platform, and the new overlay is a sign of things to come.

Aside from all the PC-specific bells and whistles, Ghost of Tsushima remains a remarkably solid game at its core. Gamers are always chomping at the bit for open-world games in this style, and Ghost of Tsushima’s PC port cements it as the definitive samurai game of the modern era.

In addition to the solid combat, gorgeous art direction, and smooth performance, Ghost of Tsushima has personality, which is a core tenet missing from a lot of big productions these days. The game wears its heart on its sleeve and sets out to achieve a distinct vision with such confidence that it’s impossible not to become captivated by the sights and sounds of 13th-century Japan. It’ll suck you in and refuse to let you go, enticing you with more story content in the Iki Island expansion or co-op combat in Legends when you think you’ve seen it all.

Ghost of Tsushima feels authentic in a way that few historical epics do, not just because it holds an immense amount of respect for the history that it portrays, but more so the media that the period gave rise to. Ghost of Tsushima is not a samurai game, it is a samurai movie game, and that’s an important distinction to make. It’s fluent in the language of samurai cinema and desperately wants you to speak it, too. It’s a love letter, like a close friend info-dumping about their latest obsession in such a way that makes you feel like you’ve experienced it too.

Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut is a truly stellar port that is easily PlayStation’s best PC release to date. With a beefy single-player campaign, a wonderful side story in the Iki Island expansion, and a truly great co-op mode in Legends, Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut is the full package for PC players. Nixxes continues to prove it’s worth with every new PlayStation PC port and Ghost of Tsushima’s breadth of options and silky smooth performance make me incredibly excited for the future of PlayStation on PC.