The best Ghost of Tsushima skills you need to succeed

(Image credit: Sony)

Picking the best Ghost of Tsushima skills will be a matter taste to some degree depending on how you play. There are Samurai, Stance and Ghost options and what works for you will change depending on what gear you like to use, or whether you favor direct combat or a more stealthy approach in Ghost of Tsushima.

That said there are some essential Ghost of Tsushima skills you should really prioritize as they're either so useful, or vital, that you can't really afford to do without them. Especially when you have a limited pool of points to spend. So let's take a look across the options available and pick out Ghost of Tsushima's must have skills.

Best Ghost of Tsushima Samurai skills

Ghost of Tsushima Duels — (Image credit: Sony)

There are a lot of Ghost of Tsushima Samurai skills that largely focus on direct combat, sword to sword, with your enemies. Nearly all of them are useful but most of the Samurai Deflection branch are basically essential and should be unlocked as soon as possible to make combat easier to manage and survive.

Perfect Healing Parry - getting a perfect parry will give you a little bit of health back.
Unyielding Sword Parry - This will let you block and parry unblockable attacks, making it easier to deal with enemies that use them.
Resolved Parry - This will reward you with resolve from parries. As resolve is how you activate special moves topping it up is always useful.
Unyielding Spear Parry - Like the Unyielding sword skill, this makes unblockable spear parries blockable, and makes the enemies that use them more manageable,

Ghost of Tsushima Stances

Stances are an odd one in Tsushima. There are four you gradually unlock over the course of the game that make you more effective against different enemy types, namely Swordsmen, Shieldmen, Spearmen and Brutes. Obviously if one of those is giving you more trouble than the others you'll want to probably invest some more points in their specific stance. However, because you more or less meet them all in any given encounter it's hard to recommend one skill over another. However, make sure upgrade each one's first tier, which makes your heavy attacks more powerful. Since that's what you need to break a particular classes' guard, it makes sense to make sure they're all leveled up.

Ghost of Tsushima Ghost skills

The Ghost is the character you becomes over the course of the game - a stealthy, assassin type character using every dirty trick to defeat the mongols. It's where you'll want to invest a lot of your points as there are some incredible useful abilities here you'll use constantly. There are two branches - weapons and tactics both of which have some good things to unlock.

Ghost weapons

Kunai - these throwing knives are incredible useful in a fight as the break an enemy's guard and, once leveled up, can kill people that have already taken damage.
Wind Chimes - these jangley distractions are useful for pulling one guard to an area but you really want the next level firecrackers. These will pull in every enemy in earshot, perfect if you can gather them around an exploding barrel or within the blast radius of a bomb.

Evolving tactics

Recover Health - the basic skill lets you turn resolve into health but you really want Iron Will on the next level. That lets you spend two resolve points to comeback from the dead.
Stand off streak - leveling this up lets you chain together three stand offs (more if you equip the Clan Sakai Armor) which can see you clearing entire patrols in one go if you're lucky.
Assassination - a fully maxed out Assassination branch lets you chain three assassinations together if enemies are close enough (remember the firecrackers?). However, the most powerful option is the first tier that lets you negate fall damage with a well timed roll. It makes getting around so much easier.
Ghost Stance - When you initially unlock Ghost stance you can only charge it by slaughtering leaders at camps. Level it up up a notch and it'll charge through kills without taking damage. It rewards a stealthy approach and lets you go full Ghost on an enemy base after stealth killing a few guards.
Archery- all of the archery branch is about bullet time - useful for both nailing head shots with a bow and arrow, and using the blowgun you get later in the story.

Mythic Tales essential skills

There are seven Mythic tales in total in Tsushima that, for the most part, earn you special gear and weapons. However, there are two that will earn you combat moves than make a huge difference in a big fight if you spend the resolve need to use them.

The Heavenly Strike - This move unleashes a sword strike from a fast dash forwards. It's impossible to block and can outright kill an opponent in one hit.
The Spirit of Yarikawa's Vengeance - this unlocks a move called Dance of Wrath that costs a lot of resolve but makes you dart between multiple enemies, killing them each with a single blow. If you're outnumbered or overwhelmed this can change everything.

I'm GamesRadar's Senior Guides Co-ordinator, which means I run GamesRadar's guides and tips content. I also write reviews, previews and features, largely about horror, action adventure, FPS and open world games. I previously worked on Kotaku, and the Official PlayStation Magazine and website.

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