Ghost of Tsushima: Basic and advanced combat tips to win fights easily

Ghost of Tsushima offers a fluid combat system that is further improved by the haptic feedback from the DualShock controllers. There is a wide variety of combat options in Ghost of Tsushima. This makes the combat rules a little hard to remember for new players.

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Ghost of Tsushima basic combat tips

In Ghost of Tsushima, you earn skill points as your legend grows. You can earn the legend XP by completing different quests, activities and random encounters. For Ghost of Tsushima basic tips, we are going to talk about the Samurai skill tree in general. This skill tree includes the Deflection(parry) and Evasion(dodge) sub-skill trees.

Image Credit: Sucker Punch Productions

Parry lets you counter your enemy attacks and deliver a deadly blow, while dodge skill helps you to maintain distance between you and your opponent to create an opening. While there are different approaches, we highly suggest you unlock the parry skills at the beginning.

Parry skills help in blocking or countering different enemies and, if you didn't know already, enemies hit hard in Ghost of Tsushima.

If timed correctly, you can even deliver a counterattack. You can also use the circle button to perform basic doge at the beginning of the game. Also, if you are having a hard time with the parry timings you can just spam the button. It usually works pretty fine.

When you take fights, these are the different enemies you will encounter:

• Archers
• Spear man
• Swordsman
• Brutes and
• Shielders

Image Credit: Sucker Punch Productions

Most of the time you will find groups which have all of them. So the thing you have to do is take out the archers. They will hinder you in battle and will often easily kill you from long distance.

Taking down the brute is the second-best option to do as most of the time, you will encounter only a single brute. Meanwhile, there are flocks of archers, swordsman, and such others present on the battlefield.

Related: Best weapons and builds to opt for in Ghost of Tsushima

There are two types of attacks in the game:

• Blockable attacks (can be parried, countered)
• Unblockable attacks (can be dodged)

Blockable attacks in Ghost of Tsushima are represented with a white shining mark that appears on the enemy's weapon when he/she attacks. On the other hand, the red marker represents the unblockable attacks. Most of the unblockable attacks in Ghost of Tsushima can be blocked when you unlock different skills.

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Ghost of Tsushima advanced combat tips

Image Credit: Sucker Punch Productions

There are a total of 5 stances in Ghost of Tsushima.

• Stone Stance (used to deal with sword type enemies)
• Water Stance (used to deal with shield type enemies)
• Wind Stance (used to deal with spear bearers)
• Moon Stance (used to deal with brute type enemies)
• Ghost Stance(minor stance)

You have to unlock different stances through the course of the game. If you don't know how to do that or want an easy way to unlock all major stances during the early game then follow the tips below and you will be good to go.

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Tips on unlocking stances in Ghost of Tsushima during the early game

Image Credit: Sucker Punch Productions

Captains in Ghost of Tsushima grant you points to unlock new stances. One of the most amazing things about this is that there's a way to double these points. Observe captains, and you will be rewarded with a point; kill them, and get another score to unlock your stance.

To observe captains in Ghost of Tsushima, get close to them and hold the R2 key when prompted to observe.

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To learn advanced techniques you must become fluid with the controls of the game. You have to constantly switch between stances (that can be done by pressing the R2 + Triangle or Cross or Square or Circle keys). Ghost of Tsushima does not offer a locking mechanism when you fight mobs.

Image Credit: Ghost of Tsushima

This makes combat a lot easier. As you can chain your stances, it can kill your enemies faster. Most of the time, you need advanced skills to deal with boss-type enemies. That is quite easy to handle if you know the game. Most of the boss-type enemies in Ghost of Tsushima use a shield.

So, we highly recommend you get your water stance to the max level by holding the triangle button on your controller. You can release a flurry of attacks that will destroy the posture of your enemy. After that, you can either use normal attacks to deal damage or use heavy strike mythic skills that you can acquire in the game by doing mythical quests.

The other bosses which you will encounter in Ghost of Tsushima are sword types. This means your priority while upgrading stances should be the water stance followed by stone stance.

Image Credit: Sucker Punch Productions

The best-advanced tip that we can give you while dealing with tough enemies is to perform a running heavy attack to break their posture followed by a flurry of normal attacks. We will cover a video tutorial of basic and advance combat tips with different skills and stances. So make sure to stick with Sportskeeda for more on Ghost of Tsushima.