Ghost of Tsushima in technology test

Sony has brought Ghost of Tsushima to PC in the form of a Director's Cut including its expansions. Nixxes handled the transfer to your computer. ComputerBase analyzes the technology and provides benchmarks and is amazed at what AMD FSR 3 can achieve in this game – first sign of FSR 3.1?

Ghost of Tsushima: Technology PC Edition

Ghost of Tsuima was released for PlayStation 4 in July 2020, followed by PS5 a year later, and now the PC version in the form of a Director's Cut including DLC. The game was originally developed by Sucker Punch, but premium Sony developer Nixxes Software is responsible for the PC version, and they've recently done a very good job with Horizon Forbidden West (test).

Presentation with light and shadow

Visually, Ghost of Tsushima is also impressive, but it can't keep up with Horizon II, which isn't surprising given its age. However, the game's art design is quite successful, with light effects captured brilliantly – combined with the well-executed panorama and plants, it looks like a lot.

If you ignore the art design, it becomes clear that Ghost of Tsushima is a bit older and didn't look particularly great at the time. The characters aren't that detailed, and the faces in particular not only look wooden but also plain. In addition, you often encounter textures with poor detail and lighting has major problems indoors and at night, making graphics look quite flat, especially at night.

Although Ghost of Tsushima ultimately has one of the weakest visuals of all of Sony's recent PC games (and can't compare at all to Horizon Forbidden West and The Last of Us Part I, for example), the art design more than makes up for it. Depending on the scene, the game looks good to good, but nothing more than that.

Without ray tracing, but with a lot of upsampling

When it comes to the features of the PC version, Ghost of Tsushima has a lot to offer. There's no ray tracing, which would have helped greatly, especially when it comes to indoor lighting, but when it comes to upsampling, almost everything is included. Nvidia DLSS, AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS are represented in the Ultra HD version. In addition, DLSS and FSR also have frame generation (FG).

And here is the first special feature. Ghost of Tsushima is the first game ever to offer FSR FG independent of FSR Supersolution. It is also possible to use FSR FG at native resolution including TAA or with DLSS Supersolution.

In fact, this should only be possible with the upcoming and greatly improved FSR 3.1, according to AMD, but Ghost of Tsushima already supports this functionality – and FSR 3 is officially the norm, not FSR 3.1.

Technical testing for games has become exponentially greater in complexity and workload in recent years. In order to provide detailed reports in a timely manner, ComputerBase has modified the format. Tables now play a larger role in some departments.

In addition, technology tests will appear staggered from time to time, so that the entire article is not made available at once, but rather is worked on with updates. In order to let the reader know exactly what content the editorial team is working on and which sections are still expected, they will be included without content when published. The missing part will be delivered within the next few days. However, there is no guarantee that the relevant section will definitely appear.

Official system requirements

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Loading times

Some games load incredibly fast, while others load forever. An editorial team equipped with a stopwatch measures loading times in the main menu and then from there to the test sequence. Since loading times can vary, this is done three times in total and then an average is generated. Between each attempt, the computer restarts so that there are no more files in the cache. If there are skippable intros or video sequences, they will be clicked away because only the loading time matters. If the game pre-compiles shaders, this run will not be included in the calculation. The shading creation time is specified separately.

It should be noted that ComputerBase has a high-end PC equipped with, among other things, a Ryzen 9 7950X3D and a Seagate FireCuda 530 as an NVMe SSD with PCIe 4.0 capability. Consequently, loading times will be longer on most systems. The values ​​here are for guidance only.

Official Steam Deck compatibility

According to the Steam homepage, there are currently no reviews for Ghost of Tsushima and the Steam Deck, but the developers at Nixxes have announced that the game should run very well on the Steam Deck. There are no further details about which graphics options this should apply to.

ComputerBase plans to take a look at the title on Linux in the short term.