After its surprise announcement, Ghost of Tsushima has finally received its free Legends update. Not just offering a New Game+ feature, which comes with its own goodies. Ghost of Tsushima Legends comes with an entirely new game mode which focuses on the game’s more mystical side, whilst offering some cooperative antics to share in with friends.
Back to Tsushima
If you’re worried about your rustiness affecting your online cred, then don’t panic, Legends begins with a great tutorial to get you back into the swing of things. This narrated introduction also allows you to become accustomed with the very different direction that this DLC is aiming for, and will also take you through all four of the new classes and original controls as if you are a brand new player.
Getting into the general swing of things is easy and before you know it, you will be perfectly parrying and slicing your way through ghostly Mongols.
Different Code of Honour
Just hovering over the Legends option in the main menu will cause the backdrop of the UI to change to an eerie red, straight away showing you that this is a separate and vastly different experience to the original game.
Being multiplayer -centric means that there is of course a progression system, which dependent on the class you choose, is chocked full of shiny new gear and upgrades to aim for when grinding through the levels. Each class has its own progression system and abilities to unlock along the way.
To level up and gain access to these goodies, you can either play through short story missions, or try your hand at the survival mode once you are powerful enough to do so.
Mystic Quests
The story missions themselves are short and don’t involve much of a satisfying narrative to follow. There is narration through these missions that attempts to outline why and what you are doing, but the storytelling is far weaker than even the introductory tutorial section.
In these missions you will likely be matched with another player, sneaking around and completing objectives not too dissimilar to those you are used to doing in the main game. Often sprinkled on top, however, are the new devilishly hard enemy types or some other caveats that will make combat more frantic at times. There are frustrating times where the base gameplay, most notably the lack of a lock on camera, negatively impacts these newer enemy types as they often barrage you with ranged or AOE magical attacks.
The progression system that you are likely being motivated by before jumping into these missions, greets you at the end of each one. You will accrue loot-based gear and experience for your troubles, before heading back to the main hub and gearing up for your next adventure.
Satisfy Your Ki
The rarity-based loot and progression that we have come to see in many games now, is as always very addictive. It’s made even more so with your “Ki” stat that increases dependent on your equipment. This stat acts as a comparison before venturing onto a mission, so you can assess the difficulty beforehand and of course be motivated to get stronger. This alone makes getting better gear more engaging and the higher difficulties more inspiring to attempt.
Unfortunately, this also acts as an emphasis on how weak the story missions are. The bleak visual style, which is charming at first, soon becomes very boring and uncharacteristic of the original aesthetic that Ghost of Tsushima boasted.
This is paired with what are surface level missions in general, with samey gameplay moments and a lack of narrative intrigue. Because of this and the enjoyment that you get from equipping your new gear, you may find yourself rushing through the missions to get back to the main hub.
Survival Mode
Surviving waves of enemies in the survival mode, is the shining part of the experience. With three defendable locations to look after over 15 waves of Mongols, you will need to work in your team of four to ensure that these points are not captured.
You will gain bonus points for defending these areas, which you can spend on very helpful special skills, which can be purchased during any bit of down time between waves.
Depending on how far you get, your rewards tier will change offering some great loot at the end. Similarly, to the story missions, you will play first at Bronze level which offers minimal challenge. As you unlock better equipment and gear, you may try your hand at Silver and Gold, both of which are much tougher whilst offering better rewards.
Four and the Same
The four classes are once again quite surface level. Although they all have their own cosmetic features to unlock and a technique skill tree, the main difference resides with special abilities. All four of the classes can still use the katana, stealth kill enemies and use the bow/other ranged weapons.
This isn’t a massive problem, and the unique abilities/cosmetics are great, but considering you can only play one class until you have committed enough time to unlock another, it’s hard to really care about ever changing from your original.
Your equipment will carry across each class as you begin ranking up and unlocking them. You can dismantle unwanted gear in exchange for points that can be spent on rerolling better stats or purchasing unique techniques for each class.
Verdict
Firstly, Ghost of Tsushima Legends is quite remarkable in the fact that it’s free. It’s packed with high effort content and has an extremely satisfying progression system integrated into it. Unfortunately, a lot of the gameplay moments just aren’t enjoyable. However, it must be said that survival mode is excellent and there are still lots more to come soon in the form of raid events.
Check out our comprehensive Ghost of Tsushima review here
