If you're like me and you already played through "Ghost" on PS4, the whole upgrade path can be a bit annoying, but let me break it down. If you own "Ghost" on PS4, you can upgrade to the Director's Cut PS4 version for USD20.
I don't like being piecemealed for something like DualSense controller support and haptic feedback. I just want to point that out upfront.
A lot of people are either, A, confused about the pricing structure, or B, just not happy with the pricing overall, and I totally think a lot of it is valid.
But for me personally, though, the rest of it, the new content and some of the stronger graphical fidelity, I'm all about it.
Now, if you haven't played "Ghost of Tsushima" at all, now, after all of this, is absolutely the time.
The Director's Cut is best version of the game, objectively, like when we're talking about all the added content, and on PS5, yes, it does look somewhat better.
Smoother frame rates, even if that's not technically new. It's not an insane upgrade or anything, but just a little refinement.
So if you were jumping on this from PS4 to PS5 and expecting an absolutely massive, massive overhaul, I've seen expectations all over the place out there on the internet, keep your expectations in check.
Although I gotta say, man, don't worry if you don't have a PS5. This game still looks good either way, and if you have a TV that supports HDR, man, this thing has been like my definitive HDR game since it released.
With the Iki Island expansion, I was happy to just jump back in and play through some new stuff. It was easy, after the upgrade, to bring over my save from PS4. It's actually simpler than how it's been handled with other games.
So you get this whole new area, Iki Island, to load into separately.
You can find the mission on your map on the coast of Tsushima, and it's a quick mission, and then you have the ability to go there and get on a boat and start a whole new adventure that feels nicely in-sync with everything else going on and Jin's character and whatnot.
The island, like Tsushima, is also occupied by Mongol forces, but a bit of a different breed of Mongol.
They follow a cult-like leader known as the Eagle who uses these hallucinogenic poisons to strike fear into the hearts of local citizens and control her soldiers.
Now, with this Mongol group, you encounter a couple of new enemy variations, most notably, a Shaman.
They do a chanting thing that hypes up other enemies and makes them attack relentlessly. It can make things challenging, but also really messy and annoying.
There are a lot more combat scenarios, though, with tons of enemies this time around and a greater challenge, as enemies change up their weapons a lot and are just kind of always surrounding you.
This is fine, of course, because for me, combat is my favorite part of the game.
It's not always maybe the most complicated, but it's a great bad-ass simulator, and it's always fun managing stances and parrying or doing some crazy Batman stuff, like with smoke bombs and throwing knives.
I actually was kind of rusty because I haven't jumped into "Tsushima" for almost a year and I got messed up a lot at first. And so that's just a warning if you're jumping into this.
Maybe brush up on the main island first. Also worth pointing out, a big new addition, you can kill people with your horse.
There's actually a horse charge ability. It might not sound like much, but it's really satisfying to crush through a bunch of dudes.
It's a nice little change-up, and it feel kind of nice with the DualSense feedback. Now, Iki Island is closer to mainland Japan, but it's much smaller, and here, in the video game version, there are tons of biomes and environmental variety, like the main island.
A lot of the exploration is boiled down to just more, more haikus, more hidden areas with more supplies, banners to collect, birds to follow, but they are also fun little archery challenges now, and these cool animal sanctuary moments.
A lot of the game, in the story, but also just in the exploration of the environment itself is about Jin reliving his past and coming to grips with old memories and skeletons in his family's closet. It's fun to see how the game plays around with those concepts.
And to be fair, that's the better part of the overall thing. There's this Eagle bad lady and her Mongol followers, but that's all whatever.
It's just more fodder. What's cool is learning about this place and Jin dealing with the uneasy alliance he has with the people of the island and how it all connects to his heritage.
There are some neat little tricks in the presentation, too, that you don't see in the main game. Some storytelling things are really shaken up here in fun new ways.
But like I said at the start, it still slots in nicely as a necessary and interesting part of the story, and that's not always an easy task.
It just makes you understand Jin and this world way more. And the other bells and whistles are nice, too.
Iki Island has new trophies, and you're gonna get some new stuff along the way. My personal favorite so far is this monkey-inspired suit of armor, which makes it so you can only do perfect parries.
You can't just block. But if you do get that perfect parry, you can chain a bunch of strikes together. It makes fights more challenging, but even more satisfying, which I didn't think could be done.
So I just want to get this across if it hasn't been clear. It's a bit more of "Ghost of Tsushima" to play.
But besides the couple of things I mentioned here and there, nothing overall is completely revolutionary for the formula, but it's a nice little expansion for me personally, which I completed the main game and 100%ed it, and I was dying for a little something more.
I needed a taste. This scratches that itch, and it's over 10 hours if you're trying to do everything.
And like I said, there is absolutely some valid debate over the pricing model, specifically with the upgrade and the features, but the actual new content, the actual meat itself, I felt like it was worth my time and money.
But I really, really, really enjoy this game, so keep that in mind. And if you're coming in completely new and completely fresh, buying the whole game for a full price, you're getting the game, the refinements, graphical and otherwise, the newer expansion, and the multiplayer mode, Legends, which was added a few months back, which is actually really good.
So I highly recommend "Ghost of Tsushima" in general, and the new island gets my seal of approval, too.
I give you some pros, some cons, and some personal opinion, and if you haven’t got this game, you will not be disappointed if you do.
