Ghost of Tsushima PC Review – Just As Great As The Console Versions

Ghost of Tsushima was a good game. The tale of Jin Sakai fighting off the Mongol invasion of Tsushima was a lot of fun, letting you play a game with Samurai full of equal parts action and story. Of course, it was an experience reserved for the privileged folk who owned a PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5, until recently with its long-awaited PC release.

Long story short, it’s still great. For a more detailed explanation, read on as we review the performance of the PC version of Ghost of Tsushima, now available to a much wider audience.

Performance

As always, PlayStation games ported to PC by Nixxes Software are always able to make the most of the features. This is from the fact that there is always a choice of upscale methods that vary based on your specifications. Since we were using an AMD graphics card, we were able to play Ghost of Tsushima with FSR. Here’s an overview of the performance:

• Without FSR: 78 FPS
• FSR Quality: 101 FPS
• FSR Ultra Performance: 103 FPS
• FSR Quality + Frame Generation: 170 FPS

As expected, AMD FSR significantly increased the number of frames. However, this time we only tested the Quality and Ultra Performance sections. When comparing the two, there is only a slight performance difference, and we don’t recommend playing it using upscale in Ultra Performance as the visual quality will look blurry.

Our PC specifications are already very smooth without using an upscaling method like FSR. This proves that the porting of Ghost of Tsushima on PC is very good without the dependence on upscaling that can be seen in many modern games these days, which is always a plus point.

If your PC has potato specs, it can certainly be helped a lot more with the upscale methods available. Interestingly, they’ve provided AMD FSR 3.0 out of the box, unlike Horizon Forbidden West.

This also includes the Frame Generation, which claims to increase FPS significantly while minimizing CPU bottlenecks. More amazingly you can see the visuals remain sharp. In our opinion, AMD FSR 3.0 with Quality + Frame Generation is the best combination of visual settings for this game.

Image Credit: Nixxes Software, Sucker Punch Productions

Image Credit: Nixxes Software, Sucker Punch Productions

Image Credit: Nixxes Software, Sucker Punch Productions

What is interesting is the fact that AMD FSR 3.0 can be used on older graphics cards, where my RX 6800 becomes much more powerful. It can even help those of you who are using RTX 20x or even the GTX Series.

As always, blockbuster games from PlayStation are still a great way to push your hardware. Ghost of Tsushima is an almost painfully beautiful game, remaining impressive despite being 4 years old. The game’s environments are lush and vibrant with a keen attention to detail. The character animations are fluid and realistic, while the PC version further enhances performance and the cinematic feel of the game.

Controller

As usual, PlayStation games brought to PC will always support DualSense controllers. We tried using DualSense in this game using plug and play as the game supports Haptic Feedback and Adaptive Triggers on the go.

The most noticeable of the two is the Haptic Feedback feature. Almost all activities performed will vibrate the controller. For example, walking causes small vibrations in the controller but will be more intense in certain activities such as riding a horse. This also includes combat actions such as attacking or being attacked by enemies, which are more noticeable when releasing arrows or blowing up objects.

For Adaptive Trigger, it is only noticeable when using a bow. The R2 button will feel heavier pressed as if pulling an arrow. It’s amazing, but it’s standard for most PlayStation games by now and they’ve done it in Horizon Forbidden West too.

Playing using a mouse and keyboard also feels comfortable. The button selection by default is very easy to use and feels optimal like usual Sony ported games. So for those of you who don’t have a controller or gamepad, don’t worry. But as usual, we highly recommend using a DualSense controller for a more immersive experience.

Bugs

Unfortunately, our praise for the performance of both AMD FSR 3 and Frame Generation for lower end PCs had to be slightly tarnished by some rather annoying bugs.

When we used Frame Generation, sometimes it can’t be activated directly through the launcher when we want to open the game, requiring in-game changes. Otherwise, the game has the possibility of freezing or crashing when we start playing it. Although it can still be circumvented, it’s annoying because it takes time.

Also, for some reason, every time we turn on AMD FSR 3, the game also crashes a few times. When I looked into it, it turned out to be caused by the AMD AntiLag feature, so I had to turn it off. In our opinion, things like this shouldn’t happen.

Another bug we encountered was that sometimes texture loading was very slow, even though we were playing on a PCIe Gen4 SSD. This only happened a few times, especially when using the upscale method.

Verdict

Sony Interactive Entertainment has once again managed to satisfy PC gamers with an outstanding quality port. They continue to bring good standards and improve with new features to keep it relevant. For example, this time they have brought AMD FSR 3 out of the box complete with Frame Generation to accommodate more players.

Without a doubt, Ghost of Tsushima is an incredibly beautiful work of historical fiction, a slice of a tumultuous era you can play through. It has its few moments that detract from making it a truly perfect game, but it is, nonetheless, a masterpiece. The PC version further enhances performance and the cinematic feel of the game. Even if you already finished the game the PC version might still be worth getting for the new experience.

Ghost of Tsushima was reviewed on PC via Steam with the following specs – Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB RAM @3600MHz, AMD Radeon RX 6800.

Review code provided by Sony Interactive Entertainment.

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