The battle of Komoda Beach takes less than ten minutes to lose. The samurai of Tsushima ride out to meet the Mongol invasion in formation, in the open, with the dignity their code demands — and they are destroyed. Jin Sakai survives not through superior skill but through luck, dragged from the water while his comrades die around him with their honor intact and their island lost.

The education that begins here is brutal and specific. The Mongols do not fight by the rules Jin was trained to enforce. They are not dishonored by ambush or misdirection. They are simply effective, and effectiveness is what Tsushima requires, and the gap between what Jin was raised to be and what his island needs him to become is the entire width of the game.