Ghostwire: Tokyo ★★★★☆

Who is this game for?

• Achievement hunters
• Animal lovers
• Collectors of collectibles
• Cutscene fanatics
• No-lifers
• Psychological seekers
• Roamers of the world
• Story-driven gamers
• Supernaturalists

Game length

20+ hours, especially if you’re trying to obtain all those spirits and collectibles.

Genres

• Action/Adventure

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Explanation to Negative Feedback

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Bad lock-on system

If the enemy is mostly standing still and lobbing attacks at you, sure, the lock-on works because they aren’t doing any crazy moves. But if they get knocked down or hop sideways, the lock-on just gives up. It just doesn’t stay focused on them if they’re all loosey-goosey.

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Explanation to Positive Feedback

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So much lore!

Seriously, I enjoyed reading up on the different yokai, the relics we’ve found, and all the stories. Mythology and folklore is so fascinating to me, plus we get to learn about some of the Tokyo locations.

Unique enemies

There are a lot of enemy types, but of course some enemies are a bit more well-known as you traverse Tokyo. Some of them look the same, but with a slight difference to them that also brings different ways they attack you. I love how some of the Visitors in this game are so unique looking though, going with some of the Japanese folklore, I suppose.

Variety of combat options

One of the downfalls of Assassin’s Creed games is the same constant combat system to me, but Ghostwire: Tokyo offers a pretty big playstyle when it comes to the combat system. I mean, you don’t get a variety of weapons with skills like that of a lot of other combat-heavy games, but we do have three different elemental weaving attacks as well as a bow that can do damage in a lot of ways.

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Links Worth Checking Out

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• Nothing here

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Ghostwire: Tokyo Review

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In-Depth Review

Spoilers / Work in progress

I’d first like to say Ghostwire: Tokyo had changed quite a bit since I first played it, with things added on and new enemies I hadn’t known about before. It’s a pretty big game, but I’ll try to keep this review to the specifics and not do a play-by-play with how I went through the game. Expect a lot of lore though, as any culture’s myths and legends are fascinating to me.

All I hear about is bigfoot and the loch ness monster.

When you first enter the game, you get a call from an unknown person saying our sister’s condition is getting worse, and then it’s us on a motorcycle with our sister, whose name is Mari, speaking from our memories. So it already sets us up to think that maybe we were close to our sister and the memories of what she’s said to us is kind of tormenting us in a way as we make our way to her.

On our way, however, a large plume of fog obscures our vision and we’re hit by a van.

This is where the starting cutscene began when I first played the game, so there was no phone call or motorcycle ride to get to this point, but now there is. I like how they added on a little bit for more context at the beginning.

Next we’re in the viewpoint of a ghost who apparently can’t occupy a living person’s body, and so aims for us, aka Akito. Thus, a ghost shares our body, which makes me think we might not have been dead, but close to dead if he could slip through and fuse with us?

We get a new facial which is kind of horrifying but also kind of cool. It kind of makes us look like we’re possessed by a demon more than a ghost, but whatever. At least we get cool powers that come with our new look.

Arguments happen and after we try to choke ourselves out, the Casper the antagonistic ghost decides to play along with our antics.

Before we make our way to the hospital where Mari is, we learn some of the basics, such as combat with the Men in Black that have no faces. They’re actually called Visitors, not the MiB as the suits suggest. For now we learn how to attack, block, assisted aiming for combat, though it’s kind of finnicky and doesn’t quite lock on at all times. We also learn that the fog is bad and will harm us if we walk into it.

Aside from that, while you progress through the prologue you’ll find cell phones that can clue you in a little bit on what happened and how a lot of people reacted toward it. Outside of the prologue, you don’t really find too many phones dropped on the ground that reveal snippets of conversation, but there are still papers and flyers and such. I don’t think any of it really pertained to the fog and the situation you’re in though. It’s just information regarding events and the like that happen around town.

The first cell phone you can find reads:

What’s up with this fog?
Everyone’s scared.
Why are they running?

On another cell phone, the person saw a Visitor.

I saw this strange guy out front of a bar. Something was wrong with his face. Like he had a mask on, maybe? He was dressed in black.

I felt compelled to have a closer look. He turned and walked down a dead-end alley. Still curious, I followed.

But when I looked into the alley, he was gone. It’s a dead end. Where could he have gone?

First off, why are you following a suspicious looking person down a dead end alley in the first place? Hello? Have they never seen a horror movie in their life? Japanese devs make some of the scariest horror out there! At least gaming-wise.

Before reaching the hospital doors, you can find bags of food to heal yourself and learn you can sprint as well as use a strike attack which isn’t really worth it to use against enemies except maybe for a skill perk where you can regain ether. Ether is what you use to attack enemies with. But the strike attack you use in this instance destroys matter from the other world, which turns into ether that you can absorb if you’re low on resources. They’ll be your main go-to when needing ether, but you’ll also gain ether through different skills.

Within the hospital you can find more cell phone messages, one has a text toward someone talking about them needing to come back right away because there’s smoke coming in from the entrance and it might be poison.

I’m sorry, but if there’s an urgent matter, why would you shoot off several texts for someone to read through. Why wouldn’t you just call them? That way they can answer and you can light a fire under their ass to get them moving quicker than text messages ever could. What if they don’t look at the phone right away? What if they’re busy doing something at the time of the texts?

Ugh!

These people deserve to be taken!

Of course there are more Visitors in this place to teach you some more tricks and gather information. Such as when two enemies are gathering souls in a box, you’ll notice those boxes out in the world, and while the souls here can’t be saved, the souls that are being boxed up out there can be. When coming across these enemies you’ll learn you can crouch and quick purge.

So stealth is definitely a thing in Ghostwire: Tokyo and sometimes it’s better than going on an all-out assault.

On the second floor you’ll meet a new enemy as well as learn about the Charge Attack and grabbing the core of an enemy to destroy it. Sometimes it’s not lucrative to kill something this way because it takes time, and if you’re surrounded by more than one, you sometimes don’t have enough time before something else attacks you and breaks the attempt of a core grab.

By pulling out an enemy’s core, you get the achievement Heartbreaker.

When you get to the kitchen, you’ll notice things start to distort the closer you get to Mari’s room. Our ghostly inhabitant doesn’t say anything regarding it right now, but it’s something to do with the underworld leaking into our world? It makes it so you can’t trust your eyes with everything that you see and what your environment exists as. You’ll see this happen several more times throughout the game and it’s always a trip.

Once you reach Mari’s room, you’ll see who the main antagonist is, the name of our hitchhiker, which is KK, and what happened for our sister to land her in the hospital.

This basically completes the first chapter and earns you the achievement Beginnings.

In chapter 2, you’ll learn all about cleansing torii gates, which is one of the primary focuses of the game in order to unlock more areas you can travel into. Cleansing the gates will make certain portions of the fog around the map disappear. After cleansing your first torii gate, you’ll earn the achievement Opening a Path. My only complaint regarding the cleansing of the gates and unlocking areas of the map, is that cleansing one doesn’t unlock a specific area of the map to allow you to get all the spirits in that area. Instead they open small weird portions that intersect with other areas, and you’re never able to fully get all the spirits in an area until much later.

After cleansing the initial torii you’ll acquire some Katashiro. You’ll be using these to store spirits that you find around open world, another primary focus of the game, because the more spirits you save, the more experience you get.

It’s also a nice thing with torii gates–usually when you cleanse them they’ll provide you with something. Not always Katashiro, but usually something.

Within this first shrine of the gate that you can find your first relic, which is a Kagura Suzu, and will earn you the achievement Treasure Hunter. The relics are scattered throughout the world, but in the menu they’ll provide you with information and lore behind them.

At the point of approaching a barking dog, you’ll see some Visitors putting souls in a box. This is the point where you’ll learn you can save the spirits before the boxes take them away. All you need to do is defeat the enemies that are trying to transport them away. Throughout your playthrough you’ll sometimes see random spirits in boxes popping up. You don’t have to do anything about it, but, y’know, defeating the enemies will grant you spirits which will grant you XP, so maybe worth it?

Here the game teaches you to absorb the spirits into a Katashiro, then make your way to a phone booth–which are actually called Spirit Transmission Devices, courtesy of someone named Ed. After transferring them you’ll learn an important number: 240,300.

That’s right. There are that many spirits in the world for you to collect.

But if your Katashiro keep becoming full on you and there aren’t enough phone booths around to transfer them before you find more spirits, if you complete the game and then start a new game you should be able to wear something that’ll grant you unlimited Katashiro. So don’t think you need to find all of them on the first run.

On top of the phone in the first booth is a voice log, which will grant you the achievement Echoes of the Past.

So far you can search the world for relics, voice logs, and while we haven’t seen any yet, there’s also graffiti and figures you can find. Don’t be alarmed if you find more than one relic, such is the case with the kites, as there’s a vendor would will give you money only if you find all of them.

The yellow ether crystals floating around will grant you money, the large gold cats granting you even more. You can also feed dogs with dog food and they’ll run somewhere to dig you up some money. You can’t do anything with the cats though. They’re far too self-dependent to deal with the likes of you with cat food.

When you enter a store, you can use the money to buy a variety of things from a yokai that looks like a floating cat with two tails. You can also use your money to donate for a granted wish, and I think that might be it?

The other cat yokai you can find floating behind stalls will either sell you things, or relieve you of your relics in exchange for money or other gifts depending on the amount you donate to them. It’s definitely worth it to look out for the relics. When you’re near one it’ll make something like a meowing and chime noise.

After you visit KK’s home, you’ll know how to do Hand Seals, you’ll have received a bow with arrows–something I find insanely useful for one-shot headshots on lower class enemies, though finding extra arrows in the outside world is a pain, you’ll have better luck with just buying them. You also find out how to destroy a barrier–something that will show up in the future. You know how to cleanse corrupted areas as well as how to use your Spectral Vision in order to track an echo of someone’s spirit to track or just find things around you.

There are a lot of extra things you learn in continuing through chapter two.

There’s a new yokai called a Tengu, which you can grapple onto and hoist yourself up on rooftops. You’ll be running and gliding around on rooftops a lot in this game, because that’s where a lot of spirits like to hang out. Plus you can get the upper hand on some Visitors in the future. There are omikujis, which are basically paper luck charms. Whether good luck or bad luck depends entirely on RNG. Also as previously mentioned, there are offerings, where you donate a certain amount of money for specific awards.

You learn Fire Weaving, which is a whole lot more powerful charged up than your wind ether. Along with the weavings, you can find Jizo Statues, which depending on their color will raise that specific ether’s capacity. Meaning green is wind ether and red is fire ether. Your first Jizo Statue gives the achievement Roadside Spirituality.

Nekomatas don’t only run the stores, but you can also find them at stall where they’re either going to sell you something to eat (acknowledged by the fact that there’s food sizzling in front of them), or they’ll give you money in exchange for finding specific relics. These guys also have a tab to sell you things, such as music, equipment, and more.

By speaking with a tanuki quest giver, you find out how sneaky they can be, although their tails always give them away. Some of them are pretty obvious, but there are a few stealthy ones out there.

You’ll finally get the third element for your weaving, which is Water Weaving.

The combat is actually pretty fun at this point, as you’re not tied down to just a single weapon. Not only that, but you can use your weaving abilities normally, or power them up. Water is for multiple enemies in front of you. Fire can be used on tough crowds or a single person. And you can basically just spam wind if you wanted to and had enough ether to do it. Using the Charged Rushes for each element is also quite fun.

There might not be an actual machine gun in the game, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use your wind element like one at a certain point.

Your playstyle can also change depending on the talents you take when you level up.

All that’s not even counting the Talismans that can aid you in combat either. Although I don’t really use them ever, they can help out immensely in certain battles.

So while there are still a lot of battles where you’ll spam the same things and choose the same way to eliminate everything, I think there’s enough variety of Visitors out there to also give you a bit of a challenge.

And even though Ghostwire: Tokyo isn’t meant to be a horror game, it is pretty terrifying to be separated from KK at a certain point in game, as well as sometimes in a battle. You can’t use your weaving abilities while separated, by you can still capture spirits. The only weapon you have to rely on is your bow, and if you haven’t put much effort into using it yet, then it’s even more nerve-wrecking, because you can only use your human eyes and hearing to track where any of the Visitors are. And armed with a weapon that can run out of arrows while facing down Visitors is not a fun thought.

Closing in on the end of chapter two, you’ll meet Rinko, a friend on the other side.

Finally, to end this chapter, you learn an ability called Wire In, which basically sends out a shockwave and makes your attacks more powerful for a certain amount of time. Very nice for combat with a deadly adversary, or just too many Visitors to want to deal with at once. Ending the chapter gives you the achievement Trouble.

Honestly, that’s about the gist of the gameplay. Three elements that can use a basic attack, a strong attack, and can become charged. A bow you can use for headshots and situations where you might become separated from KK. Sneak attacks from behind. Your Wire In power buff. Talismans to benefit you during certain situations. Not to mention some stuff that your talents can give you.

Some of the Visitors I’ve fought so far are:

• Rain Walkers, which are the Men in Black carrying umbrellas. There are different ones you’ll face.
• Rugged Walkers are the big boys of the rain walkers, with a white shirt stretched over that chonky tummy.
• Rain Slashers are women carrying a red umbrella that come at you brandishing a knife.
• Shadow Hunters are the ones in a police uniform trying to beat you down.
• Relentless Walker, which is somewhat of a mini-boss while traversing a building. He carries a huge hammer and aims it as if you’re a nail.
• Students of Misery are headless females. Oddly enough, you can still basically get a headshot on them, just aim a little above their chest?
• Students of Pain are the male versions of the headless Visitors.
• Paper Dolls are the super annoying enemies that blow bubbles of fire at you.
• Passengers are kind of the same, but wear black clothes instead of blue.
• Marionettes are able to heal Visitors near them if they take damage.
• Forlorn are enemies you don’t want to enter combat with, as they’ll peace out after calling in reinforcements. You’re meant to stealth kill them.
• Wanderers are ghosts that you’ll typically find while traversing the rooftops.
• Kuchisake was a kind of mini-boss while obtaining the water weaving skill. She uses scissors to try to cute your head off.
• Retribution is a brand new enemy I hadn’t seen when I first played Ghostwire: Tokyo, but it’s annoying because it glides just below the surface of the ground as if it’s water and pops up to attack you.
• Silent Gaze is yet another new enemy I hate because it’s basically invisible until you start hitting it, and while you’re doing that, it’s throwing every piece of environment it can lift at you.
• Sojutsuki is a boss you’ll face before KK is separated from you. It’ll use the same elements as you, but also do a seismic attack that you’ll need to jump over to avoid.

Some of the achievements I’ve acquired are as follows:

• Welcome to Shibuya, which was obtained by finding graffiti
• Animal Lover from petting either a cat or a dog
• Problem Solver, after completing a side mission
• Soul Breaker by simply pulling out the cores of 50 Visitors
• It’s All Thanks to Yokai is given once you acquire a magatama, which can be obtained from several side missions, as well as some yokai wandering around Tokyo
• Master of Blocking is from being too coward to be hit, so I’d done 30 Perfect Blocks
• Amateur Photographer is obtained by going into photo mode. You don’t actually have to take a picture
• Boundless Spirit because I bought the max amount of katashiro’s, which is 50.
• Lonely Tsukimi after staring at the moon for 30 seconds
• Couldn’t Take the Heat by detonating an explosive and having it kill 3 Visitors
• Go For the Eyes, because I love using my bow for headshots on 20 Visitors
• Take a Bow, after defeating 50 Visitors with the bow
• You Wouldn’t Steal a Spirit is from saving all three spirits that were being placed into cubes

So let’s go through some of the things that we now know of from chapter two after having gotten used to them a bit more throughout the playthrough.

Let’s start with the combat.

As far as wind weaving goes, I find it incredibly easy to run out of wind ether if you’re constantly spamming it on more than one enemy, and your lock-on isn’t doing it’s job, which, let’s face it, if you’ve made it to the end of chapter two you’ll know that a lot of times, it’s got an ADD mind. Sometimes it’ll lock on, but if the enemy moves to the left or the right too quick, it’ll fuck off.

Then again, wind ether is the one you’ll be getting the most of when it comes to destroying otherworld matter around you.

I think at this point, it’s better to try to power it up and lob several elements at an enemy rather than single shots peppering everywhere but where you want them to go.

Your fire weaving is incredibly powerful when you power it up, and if two enemies are close enough to each other, it’s best to aim the fireball at the ground between them to get the most out of it. Single shots for fire weaving are still powerful, but I feel they’re a waste when you can do a big shot for the same price. Fire ether is also the one I’ve always had the most difficulty finding when it comes to breaking matter, so I never really used it unless it was to take out the girls with their bubbles or tougher enemies.

I find that I don’t often use water weaving, but that’s only because it’s more useful at this point on the enemies that tend to run toward you in groups, so the Rain Walkers and Students, primarily.

You’ll sometimes find certain areas of Visitors that have red explosives, which are beyond helpful if they get caught in the explosion. You don’t find too many of them out in the world though, only specific areas.

There’s not too much to say on the bow, other than the fact that I always try to buy arrows whenever I can and use them for head-shotting enemies when I can.

Now for the torii gates.

While I do appreciate the fact that they give you rewards for cleansing them, I’ve already voiced a complaint on how the fog doesn’t clear the specific area of the torii gate. Instead, the fog is cleared in random spurts, which makes it take more time for you to clear a specific area of the magatama, relics, tanuki, and other such things. Thankfully, cleansing a torii gate will give you fast travel points to make it easier to move around.

Like the randomness of the fog, the torii gates also sprinkle side quests throughout Tokyo, which are pretty fun, honestly. Especially the earlier one with the tanuki who lost all their comrades and now you need to go out and find them. You can find them anywhere, as almost anything. One of them is a giant billboard on top of a building and another is disguised as a vending machine in an alley. The former was pretty easy to notice, but the latter was a bit more difficult as you can imagine.

When it comes to collecting money, I mentioned the dogs and the yellow ether crystals, but you can also open trash can lids and dumpsters. While it might seem like a glitch, sometimes dumpster lids, or drawer lids as well, will open and close in a persistent manner that stops you from actually opening them and obtaining anything. It’s not a glitch, and while it’s annoying, it actually works here because of the influence of the underworld leaking into the living world, ya know?

It’s going to make things a little janky.

By the time chapter two was over, I’d freed 34,822 spirits out of the 240,300.

As far as the different relics I’d obtained, here’s the list.

• Daruma
• Lion Mask
• Kokeshi
• Utamaro Ukiyo-e
• Hokusai Ukiyo-e
• Portrait of a Spirit
• Golden Tea Bowl
• Shachihoko Statues
• Bottle Gourd
• Model Supercar
• Model Frilled Lizard
• Loose Socks
• Kagura Suzu
• Kendama
• Kite
• Japanese Rhinocerous Beetle
• Super Shinji Sticker
• Maneki Neko
• Shakokidogu
• Dotaku
• Kan’ei Tsuho
• Ghastly Knife
• Inugami Mummy
• Chochin-obake Netsuke

I don’t think there’s much else to say as far as what we’ve gone through so far. I didn’t mention the beads, but you can obtain them after clearing certain torii gates as well, and they’ll hep out with certain aspects of the game.