Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut review for PC

At long, long last, Sony has decided to give their wizard-like porting studio Nixxes the job of porting Ghost of Tsushima to PC via Steam. It’s been a multi-year wait for PC players without a PlayStation console, but we can rest easy now that we can get our hands on such a phenomenal title. In typical Nixxes fashion, you have lots to look forward to in more than just the game itself.

Before you have to worry about hardware and other things, even with my somewhat outdated specs (RTX 2070 Super, Ryzen 9 3900x @ 4.2GHz, 32GB DDR4 @ 3600MHz), the game runs and looks absolutely stunning. I’ve got everything cranked as high as I can with NVIDIA frame generation, DLSS, and all of that on, and it’s running at a constant 85+ frames per second. The optimization work done on this port is genuinely phenomenal, and I have no idea what absolute magic that Nixxes worked on this title. It has the typical PC graphical settings you’re used to, such as shadow quality, texture quality, anti-aliasing, etc, but I find that you can easily crank those up and enjoy one of the most visually gorgeous games of all time on PC.

I haven’t had any issues with the new mappings of controls meant for a PlayStation controller’s touchpad, either. For those that played Ghost of Tsushima back on PS4, or the PS5 release of the Director’s Cut version, you may recall using swipe gestures on the touchpad to put away your katana, play the flute, check the wind, and bow respectfully. On PC, controllers without a touchpad can still do all of these things. If you hold right on the D-Pad, it will bring up the menu of the typical four things I just mentioned. Using the right control stick, you’ll pick one of four cardinal directions and that will perform the desired command. Up for wind, right for sword, down for bow, and left for flute just like the touchpad directions.

Also, it may be a small detail for me, but I love that Nixxes used controller prompts that fit the theme of the game instead of just using bog standard ABXY graphics like a lot of games do. They’re still colored appropriately, but they look more stylized like what Sucker Punch did with the original PlayStation controls. I’m not sure if anybody else feels that way, but I love when devs put in that extra little effort for ports that make other controller types feel less like an afterthought.

The multiplayer functionality is back on Steam. Dubbed the “Legends” mode, you’re basically playing a tower defense with up to 4 total players (including yourself) running around as various classes with the gameplay you’re accustomed to from the single player. As of this review being written, it’s a little unstable and doesn’t function the greatest, which is a shame. I remember playing a bit of it back on the PS4 and loving it with some friends, so here’s hoping Nixxes can fix the stability on that so more people can enjoy it. It honestly really is worth checking out if the idea of Ghost of Tsushima but multiplayer sounds exciting or interesting to you.

Quite honestly I cannot possibly recommend this game enough on PC. If you’re one of those people that waited for an eventual PC port, you have got a dream port right here to experience. This isn’t a review of the game (see that here), so I won’t be praising the game itself too much, but it needs to be said how good this is. The PC port is nothing short of excellent, and aside from the Legends issues, I have run into exactly zero problems. The only thing I ran into once was some crashing at startup, and I found out that to fix that crashing you just have to disable the Steam overlay. I haven’t re-enabled it mostly out of forgetfulness, but just know that if you crash, make sure to disable that Steam overlay. Otherwise, I have run into exactly zero problems during gameplay or setting modifications. Be aware that any online play will necessitate a PlayStation account created and linked if you have not already done so for games like Helldivers II. I know this is a big deal for a lot of people. That said, PlayStation accounts are NOT required to play and enjoy the single player.

All in all, Ghost of Tsushima is an incredible package for $60 and well worth your time if you have even a moderate-strength PC. I have zero doubt about you finding some sort of combination of settings to make the game run as smoothly as you’d like. Incredible ups to Nixxes and Sony for this port.

Note: Sony provided us with a Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut PC code for review purposes.