After you've begun Jin Sakai's quest to liberate his home from invading Mongols in Ghost of Tsushima, you'll wind up discovering a plant-slicing series of mini-games called Bamboo Strikes across the island. These are optional mini-games that, if performed properly, can raise your Resolve, which in turn allows you to perform stronger moves in battle and recover health at the press of a button. Bamboo Strikes are fittingly a challenge, but there's one little trick that will make the process effortless.
How do Bamboo Strikes work in Ghost of Tsushima?
As you're Nanba walking from north to south on Tsushima, you might run into these small manmade bamboo structures comprised of several pegs that strap together about seven bamboo stalks. These Bamboo Strikes are marked by a white banner on the map and tend to rest in some kind of open area. Jin will focus himself before striking, and a successful attempt will raise his Resolve permanently.
To complete a Bamboo Strike, you'll need to execute three rounds of button combinations, which need to be pressed in quick succession. You'll be given the button combination before the round begins, and it disappears once you've input the first button, beginning the round. It's somewhat similar to the squat or pull-up challenges from Final Fantasy VII Remake, so if you were bad at those, then expect similar levels of frustration in Ghost of Tsushima.
On the first round, you need to press three buttons. In round two, it's five buttons, and in round three, you'll it's seven buttons. By the third round, it feels impossible to hit all the buttons in the allotted time. It gets intensely frustrating very quickly, especially when Ghost of Tsushima can take a long time to finish for completionists out there who want to collect everything.
Thankfully, there's an easier way.
How to complete Bamboo Strikes in Ghost of Tsushima the easy way
Regardless of what difficulty you're playing the game on, Bamboo Strikes can be quite the challenge, but if you're willing to manipulate the game's accessibility options to dabble in a minor cheat, then they become effortless.
Take a quick trip to the in-game menu by pressing "Options" on your controller and select "Accessibility." You'll spot an option that says "Simplified Controls." Toggle the option to "On" every time you're working on a Bamboo Strike, and the whole thing will become easy.
Activating this setting will remove the timer requiring you to press every button in quick succession. You'll still need to flex that short term memory, however. Even with this setting activated, the buttons will still disappear once the round begins. You could try writing them down quickly or chant them aloud in quick succession once you see them.
Whatever your method of memorization, this Bamboo Strikes cheese will make these challenges significantly easier, allowing you to complete all 19 of them without popping a vein in your noggin.
Good luck, samurai.
Ghost of Tsushima is now available exclusively on PS4.
