Ghost of Yōtei's Hell Mode boss battle difficulty is now here, along with a load of QoL and performance fixes, plus Raid matchmaking.

Patch 1.601, which rolled out over the weekend, shows developer Sucker Punch is still committed to stabilising and polishing its action-adventure game six months on from release. It introduces a number of interesting tweaks, including the ability to matchmake Raid missions and skip straight to the Dragon and Saito raid boss fights.

Here's everything you can expect in Patch 1.601:

Raid Updates

• “Hell Mode” boss battle difficulty for the Raid is now live.
• Add new class cosmetics for defeating Hell Mode bosses.
• Enable matchmaking for Raid missions.
• Add “Skip straight to the Raid Boss” options for Dragon and Saito.

Gear Retirement

• Add “Gear Retirement” prestige feature.
• Players can spend in-game currency to retire perfected gear items. There is no gameplay advantage, but gear retirement count is visible to other players, and attracts fireflies when bowing.

Performance and Stability

• Various rare crash fixes.

Gameplay

• Fix issue where certain enemies could occasionally do extra damage on some attacks.
• Added "Matchmake to fill empty slots" in weekly Nightmare missions.
• Prevent players from being disarmed during Ultimate attacks.
• Reduced Tanegashima damage vs bosses.
• Reduced Lightning Tanegashima headshot damage.
• Fix issue where Samurai and Shinobi could have their Ultimates canceled when being attacked.
• Enable petting the spirit animals in Survival.
• Enable emotes while waiting at gathering points
• Fix issue where Bo-Hiya Rain card could cause players to die after completing an Incursion mission.
• Don't allow Giant Bo-Hiya to drop inside defend areas in Story missions.
• Uncompleted daily bounties now refresh daily.
• Prevent Shadow Snake from Attuning himself.
• Added a checkmark on completed Story and Incursion missions in the Campaign menu.
• Enable weapon trails in Lobby Bamboo Strike.
• Fix leaderboards UI issue where the list would not scroll past the first page.

Ghost of Yōtei is Sucker Punch's follow-up to Ghost of Tsushima, set in northern Japan around 300 years after the first title. We awarded it 3/5 stars, writing in Eurogamer's Ghost of Yōtei review: "Sucker Punch's sequel offers more great swordplay and heartfelt storytelling, but would be better served as a linear action game, freed of its poor sidequests and dated open world."