I’m on part three of my ‘quick look’ at Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions). In yesterday’s post, I talked about my difficulty with the combat. Before I go on with that, I want to acknowledge that there is an accessibility tab in the options menu. I said yesterday that Sucker Punch doesn’t seem to care about accessibility, and I…think it’s still somewhat true. Or rather, I’ll say that they tried, but they fell short. At least for me.
I appreciate the visual aids like putting the subtitles on a different color background, and the fact that you can choose the font color for the subtitles. I have subtitles on because I have the spoken language in Japanese. I will make that choice whenever I can (as long as I don’t have to pay a lot of attention to the dialogue whilst fighting). I like the guiding winds because it helps with my lack of direction.
Let’s get to combat. I appreciate aim assist and simplified mini-game controls. Also, changing holding down the button to toggling, which, unfortunately, brings up a problem. Or rather, a bug. I’m pretty sure it’s a bug because I’ve Googled extensively to try to figure out how to fix it. I may have mentioned it in past posts, but it’s still happening, and it’s really immersion-breaking.
There’s a thing called a standoff when you come upon a group of enemies. I have to press the up button on the D-pad, and one of the Mongols will come up to me. Then, I have to hold down RT (the game tells me it every time) before releasing when twhe Mongol strikes. Except, half the time, the RT prompt would not pop up, and I’d get my face sliced off. It got worse and worse until I got the standoff maybe 1 in 10 times. Which meant I was at a distinct disadvantage doing things the samurai way.
I Googled it and found out a roundabout solution to it. Maybe. It was to go into options before each combat situation and flip hold to toggle and then back off again. (In the accessibility tab.) It seemed to have worked, but as I said, it’s immersion-breaking.
In addition, the attack buttons randomly stop working during combat. At first, I thought it was because I wasn’t facing the enemy (lock-off), but that wasn’t it. And with the lock-off, when I run backwards, my character doesn’t automatically turn around so I’m literally running backwards.
I talked with Ian about the issue and said that another suggestion was capping the framerate, but I could not find that anywhere. He said to check Display and flip vsync. If it’s on, turn it off. if it’s off, turn it on. I did not find framerate, but I did find vsync. It was on, so I turned it off. Then I saw that it had five settings. On, off, half-rate, third-rate, and quarter-rate. I just turned it off, and it seems to have done the trick!
Actually, the first suggestion did the trick, but only for that one instant of combat–or two at best. So far, this has held for several standoffs in a row. We’ll see if it keeps working and if it helps with the ‘attack buttons suddenly don’t work’ issue.
I’ve put the lock-on back on because I just cannot get the handle of lock-off. I can’t emphasize enough how bad my dexterity and hand-epye coordination are. In addition, since my medical crisis, it’s gotten even worse. With the whistle thing (to signify there’s an arrow coming my way), I don’t even register it. In that situation, I’m glad that I turned on the visual. It’s a white-filled balloon (like a speech balloon) with…an arrow? a bow? Either way, I don’t have to know what it is in order to know what it is–if you get my drift. The second I see it, I know there’s an bowman in that direction. I always want to get the bowmen first.
The more I think about it, the more I have to amend my stastement that Sucker Punch doesn’t care about accesssibility. They have obviously put care into it, and they have several options for visual and aural disabilities. However. I still maintain that they fell short when it came to the gameplay. Not having a lock-on in a game when they’re constantly throwing hordes of enemies at you is just not on. I mean having that option.
If I’m wrong and it’s been there since the start, well, it’s still not ideal. I hate to keep bringing up FromSoft (no I don’t), but they have it down cold. Someone in the RKG Discord pointed out that you had to click a button in From games with every group of enemies, which is true. However, It’s clicking in right stick, which is the same thing you flick to change from one enemy to another. In Ghost of Tsushima, it’s flcking up on D-pad to toggle the target lock-on on and then right stick to move from one enemy to another. Just make it the same damn button (or stick in this case)! And don’t always have ten enemies in three groups of three/four at a time!
Seriously! The standoff is cool as fuck, but then it tips everyone else off that you’re there. This is not how I want to approach situations as it’s much easier to pick off one or two enemies at a time if you’re not ttelling everyone you’re there.
The game has kind of made me into a stealth person, which is not usually my style. I mean, I do like to attack from afar as a caster, but I don’t usually use stealth to do it. In this game, there are the ghost techniques, and I love the kunai (throwing knives, essentially). I have gotten the wind chime that is supposed to draw away one or two enemies, but I have not tried it yet.
The problem with the throwables/ranged weapons, though, is that it’s two buttons not one. This is very Nioh-like, too. Well, not all of them. Which is also confusing. Throwing the kunai is moving the left stick in the direction of the enemy and hitting X. Which means you can miss. Which I HATE. If I throw it in the general direction of the enemy, it should hit. This is another reason I reluctantly turned lock-on back on.
I cannot do all the little pieces needed in combat without some help. I don’t mind saying that because I’m very frank about my issues such as lack of depth perception, my lack of dexterity, and my no sense of direction. I’m not playing this game to be hard. I don’t play any games outside of From games to be hard. Hell, I don’t even play those to be hard and will make them as easy on myself as possible.
I have one more post in me about my ‘quick look’ of Ghost of Tsushima, I think. Be back here tomorrow.