Ghost of Yotei Reminded Me of the Magic of the PS5 DualSense Controller

By Maddy Myers | October 14, 2025 | 12:15pm

Video Games Features ghost of yotei

Ghost of Yotei Reminded Me of the Magic of the PS5 DualSense Controller

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The PlayStation 5 DualSense controller has been my favorite controller ever since I first held it. It’s the right size for my hands, which are small, and unlike the Joy-Cons and the Xbox Series X controller, it doesn’t hurt to keep using even if I’m gaming for hours. But the best part of the DualSense is its variation in rumble mechanics; it has the capacity to provide a variety of haptic cues that, besides the Astro Bot devs, few developers have taken advantage of. And now that I’m playing Ghost of Yotei, I’ve been forced to remember just how amazing the DualSense controller actually is—how much it can do, and how it shows that well-designed haptics and controls can underscore the meaning of an in-game experience.

I say I’ve been “forced” to remember this because I actually don’t use the DualSense controller all that often these days. I use it when I’m gaming on my PC, which I do with friends at least once a week. But the majority of my time gaming is spent on handheld devices, especially since I set up my Steam Deck so that I can stream both PC and PS5 games to it. It means that I’m often not seeing games at their best, but it also means that I’m getting more time sitting next to my wife on the couch while we both watch a mindless TV show in the background (she’ll have her own handheld gaming device in her hands for this, too).

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As beautiful as Ghost of Yotei looks on a bigger screen, I figured that I’d be streaming the bulk of the PS5 exclusive to my Steam Deck, as I typically do. But after the very first cutscene, it became very clear that I wasn’t going to be able to do that. I had to play this game with a DualSense controller. After the very first sequence in the game, in which heroine Atsu’s entire family is murdered and her childhood home is set ablaze by a group of masked warriors, the player is invited to use the DualSense touchpad to write the names of each of the attackers on a piece of cloth. Along with Atsu’s black paintbrush running over the white fabric, the player traces out the kanji for every single name.

Streaming PS5 games to the Steam Deck is pretty effective, but I’ve never managed to get the touchpad on the Steam Deck to take my inputs properly. I spent a while trying to fix the problem and, after failing a few times, realized I would simply have to use a DualSense controller to get past this opening calligraphy sequence. I’m so glad I did, in part because doing this forced me to play on a bigger screen, and the game is gorgeous enough to deserve this treatment. More importantly though, if I’d been streaming the entire game to my Deck, I would have been missing out on the entire PS5 controller experience, including all of the haptic feedback. Technically, I could have plugged a DualSense into my Steam Deck and experienced the haptics that way, but once I realized I had to use this specific controller, I figured I may as well commit to the full-screen experience as well.

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The fact that the game starts not with swordplay but with Atsu writing down the names of her enemies is important. There are enough names that my finger actually started to tire as I traced out each kanji alongside Atsu. I began to feel a creeping sense of dread as we wrote name after name after name, carefully, beautifully, methodically. That’s how many people I’m going to have to hunt down and kill, in much the same fashion—along with countless more who’ll stand in my way. By the time I got to the end of the list and saw Atsu’s completed cloth of names, I felt a little proud to watch her attach the list to her waist—a brand-new bloodthirsty fashion piece. She and I were going to carry these names with us everywhere from here on out, in honor of our first act creating it together, as player and heroine. Cool as fuck.

But that’s just a one-time cool gimmick, right? Wrong. Ghost of Yotei’s developers must have loved coming up with ways to use the DualSense controller. Very early on, Atsu revisits her childhood home, still heavy with ashes and in a state of years-long neglect and disrepair. Rebuilding it and making it into a home base for her revenge prep is the obvious next step here. But as she explores and rediscovers tools that will be of use to her present-day self, like her blacksmith father’s old smithing equipment, Atsu repeatedly flashes back to her childhood memories in this place. These are happy moments of a world filled with sunlight and color, inhabited by a child-sized Atsu who is small and smiling. One of the many chores on child-Atsu’s to-do list is to practice her shamisen with her mother, which means the player gets to practice along with Atsu’s mom, too.

The shamisen is a fretless string instrument; a musician playing it can easily slide their fingers from one note to the next, allowing for songs to hit beautiful and haunting bends between pitches, as well as quick and robust strumming and plucking. Ghost of Yotei includes a simplified version of playing the shamisen by incorporating the DualSense touchpad; along with Atsu, the player has to “find” the right note on the neck of the shamisen by sliding their finger over the pad. I would have been happy to play an entire song in this fashion, although Ghost of Yotei only does the first note before letting Atsu play the rest of the song on her own. Regardless, it’s very satisfying.

Up until this moment, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that adult Atsu was carrying a shamisen with her everywhere—slung over her back, the way many video game protagonists carry a sword. Atsu’s sword, meanwhile, is at her waist. The shamisen is always in view to the player, signaling its importance in her life, even as thoughts of revenge have taken over her existence in the years since her family’s slaughter. And every time Atsu sets up camp, the player has the option for her to pick up her shamisen and play. I do this often, either playing alone or for merchants who stop by Atsu’s camp to sell their wares. It feels like a way of keeping her grounded in something beautiful about her past, rather than just the dark parts.

Later, when I saw a reference to an in-game musician, I made a beeline for them, knowing it’s what Atsu would do. This other musician—also a shamisen player, naturally—tells Atsu he has writer’s block, and our heroine helps him write a song. Just like before, the touchpad mini-game allows Atsu to “find” the right note for the beginning of this brand-new tune. The touchpad implementation makes the experience of playing and writing music feel a little bit magical, in the best way. Again, I only wish the player could be more involved in the song-playing (not the first time I’ve said I wanted more playable instruments in games).

All that said, I don’t love every single implementation of the DualSense in Ghost of Yotei; there’s a fire-building minigame that, thankfully, players can skip after completing it one time. The player glides their finger over the touchpad to simulate striking a stone with flint; it’s just not as satisfying as painting calligraphy or playing the shamisen, which are both slow, deliberate actions. (The shamisen can certainly be played rapidly as well, but the player isn’t challenged to do so—at least, not in any sidequest I’ve yet played.) Trying to quickly strike a flint in a specific direction just isn’t that much fun, even though you get a lit fire as a reward for it.

On the whole, though, Ghost of Yotei implements the DualSense haptics in extremely impressive ways that are congruent with the game’s themes and vibes. Ghost of Yotei’s predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima, made use of haptics in combat; I didn’t play that game, so I can’t speak to its effectiveness, but I can say that Yotei’s implementation of this is excellent. The controller’s adaptive triggers provide resistance when Atsu is aiming her bow, for example, which is a classic application that feels good every time. The swordplay includes subtle thrumming haptics as well, upon drawing Atsu’s swords and upon connecting hits against enemies. The game makes slicing and dicing guys feel as satisfying in my hands as it must feel in Atsu’s.

I would have expected great haptics for swordplay and archery—that’s typical for a PS5 exclusive game with this kind of combat. The calligraphy and shamisen, though, are the parts of Ghost of Yotei that have stuck with me. When the game gets its inevitable PC port, make sure to get a DualSense controller to play it on PC, if you don’t already own one. The magic of the game’s best moments would be lost without it.

Maddy Myers has worked as a video game critic and journalist since 2007; she has previously worked for Polygon, Kotaku, The Mary Sue, Paste Magazine, and the Boston Phoenix. She co-hosts a video game podcast called Triple Click, as well as an X-Men podcast called The Mutant Ages. When she is not writing or podcasting, she composes electro-pop music under the handle MIDI Myers. Her personal website is midimyers.com.