I just played Ghost of Tsushima on the phone. I never thought I would ever see this day and I do not regret this terrible event
I tested a bunch of gaming phones, but nothing prepared me for watching the Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut debut on the Red Magic 11S Pro. This wasn’t cloud gaming or something like Remote Play from a PlayStation sitting somewhere else in the house. I used GameHub, connected it to Steam, and after some trial and error, I had the PC version of Ghost of Tsushima running on the phone—and it was much more playable than I expected.
And yes, it looked as ridiculous as it sounded. Seeing Jin Sakai on the phone’s screen with a GameHub overlay, virtual shoulder buttons, and a live FPS counter sitting on top makes the whole setup seem more functional.
How I went about it and the difficult first step
Starting the game wasn’t as simple as tapping install and riding into Tsushima. Thankfully, it wasn’t too frustrating either. GameHub allows you to connect your Steam account or manually copy PC game files and have the app find them. I went through the Steam route, then dealt with the settings within GameHub and the game itself. GameHub’s library screen made the process feel surprisingly close to using a small PC launcher. Ghost of Tsushima sat alongside other PC games.
All graphics settings have been set to low, which seems like the only logical place to start. Even then, the first run was anything but smooth. In one instance, the overlay showed Ghost of Tsushima running at around 20fps while the phone sat at 48.7 degrees Celsius. For one, it went up to 24fps when the temperature drops to 50 degrees. This wasn’t great performance, but the fact that you can hit playable frames on a phone is amazing.
However, it is not all smooth sailing. The game may crash during certain loading screens, especially if you’ve failed a mission—talk about a harsh reality penalty for not doing well in the game. This was a serious test, and the phone performed well.
How GameHub settings came in handy
After looking at a few community guides, I started putting together the settings in GameHub. At this point, I felt like I was simulating games on my desktop PC. I went to GameHub’s compatibility settings, the app gave me options for compatibility layer, rendering parameters, DirectInput behavior, audio driver, and CPU rendering. I ended up using community guidance to get things right, and those tweaks made the experience more stable. The compatibility layer, in particular, was key to a better experience, and the game felt smoother after switching to Proton.
Since the Red Magic 11S Pro offers different power modes to squeeze performance from Qualcomm, it’s no surprise that the chips used in other entry-level laptops these days. The liquid cooling system, shoulder triggers, and various GameSpace technologies really helped to make it feel consistent.
Diablo mode was exciting and dangerous
The Red Magic 11S Pro offers you many modes of operation, and Diablo mode is an example of the smartphone’s modes of operation. There is rarely any significant change in gameplay when you switch to “work mode” on any smartphone, including a flagship. But raising the phone to Diablo mode directly doubled the framerate in Ghost of Tsushima. I was even hitting 60fps at times.
However, the trade-off was stability and temperature. With the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Leading Version rising to 80 degrees Celsius, the game was prone to many crashes. The numbers were interesting, although not realistic when played. So, in my experience, I stuck to the second best thing, which is the “Rise” mode. Long gaming sessions had me sticking to the Balanced mode to make sure the experience was more consistent. This is no longer the ideal way to play Ghost of Tsushima. But I’m not complaining, as the fact that it worked is still impressive.
