Ghostwire Tokyo is a weird game. Its more bloated than some of the ghouls walking its streets, and I didn't really understand much of the story. But I loved basically every second of it. The enemy designs, the setting, the lore, the color palette, the rain, the yokai... all of it is just so damn cool. Living in the world of Ghostwire Tokyo was an absolute dream, even if much of the actual game is busywork.

Storywise I don't have much to say but I did really like the main characters and it had some really cool levels. Where the storytelling really shines is the side quests. Despite its abundance, not all the side content is meaningless. Most of the side missions actually have some effort into them and are really cool and unique. Thanks to the free Spiders Thread update, there's a new quest chain in a haunted school that was absolutely phenomenal. Even if you ignore all the relics and other collectibles, it really is rewarding to at least check out all the quests.

Then there's the combat. Much like the rest of the game it is repetitive but still really fun. My only real complaint is that i never really felt like I needed to use the different elements much. But with how flashy it is and how cool the enemies are, it never really got old for me. Plus with how condensed the map is and how easy it is to grapple and glide around everywhere, the gameplay loop was consistently engaging. All the collectibles were just an excuse for me to spend more time in the world. Despite the downright unnecessary amount of collectibles, I still went for the platinum because I wanted to spend every second playing the game that I could.

I very much love a lot of what Ghostwire has going for it, but it still has a lot of room for improvement. From the leaked Microsoft court documents it has been confirmed that a sequel was at least once considered, but who really knows what the plans are now. I can't say I'm optimistic about its likelihood. But just knowing it was in the talks has given me a little bit of hope. I'm very grateful this game exists, and a Ghostwire 2 would instantly shoot its way up to my top 5 most anticipated games.

Nancymeter - 89/100
Trophy Completion - 100% (Platinum #272)
Time Played: 31 hours 42 minutes
Completion #5 of October
Completion #197 of 2023

I'm always profoundly weary of expensive videogames that allegedly sold millions of copies yet never once entered my sightlines beyond intrusive advertisements on mobile Youtube and a stray nomination at Geoff Keighley's masturbatory advertisement ses- sorry, The Game Awards. In the same way morality disappears as desire for wealth increases, wealth itself increases the negativity associated with 'nobody talks about it'. Nobody talks about Brigador and that's fine, but nobody talks about this game that apparently grossed 7 million players and that's alarming.

In my quest to find out anything about this game, I came across a multitude of reviews and pretty much all of them say the same thing:

"It's mid, but it's pretty."

Now, I like mid, so this was a decent sell for me. It was only £3 on a site I frequent too, so I figured why not?

Anyway, this game is bad, and it's ugly.

GT feels like someone lay under the mattress while 2010s game trends were being conceived and then scooped up the leftovers with a bucket. A somewhat promising if drab opening cutscene immediately dumps you into a flavourless combat arena where you hammer left mouse button to throw energy blasts at Slenderman until they go into a weakened state and you perform a DOOM 2016 glory kill on them to regenerate health.

This is every single combat encounter in the game.

There are lots of them.

Immediately, frame 1, right at the starting gun, the first thing GT did to earn my ire was not have any feedback on anything. I'm something of a mid-open-world conossieur, you could say. A lot of those games get by just by making the base combat and movement feel stellar, and in GT everything is like existing in a world made of sand. Your main 'weapon' is energy blasts with unsatisfying impact sounds and an excess of particle effects, and while the hand signs used to carry them out are cute, the entire act of 'fighting' in this game is kinesthetically unsatisfying. Same for the movement, it's like playing Mirror's Edge on morphine. You do unlock two other elemental blasts later, but the same issues apply.

After a series of gormless, unsatisfying combat sequences, you're told that you can stealth and soon you get The Far Cry Bow in all of its glory. I take it that this game has aspirations of being a stealth-action game, but I don't think the devs did their research here. Far Cry, Horizon, Cyberpunk, RAGE 2, Ghost of Tsushima, Batman Arkham, blah blah these games all had outposts. Setpieces. Encounters you could approach from multiple angles. Cyberpunk was dropping entire immersive sim levels in the world as sidequest dungeons. This game? Doesn't have any of that. Stealth is superfluous and arguably detrimental to any sane player, who I assume wants this game over as fast as possible and thus will shun the slow approach. Just huck your elemental blasts and talismans for that DOOM glory kill.

No really, it is a DOOM glory kill. You've heard of games being "best-of" compilations, GT is a worst-of. Soon after all of the above you're given a 1-2-3 punch of Ubisoft towers, pointless puzzles that do nothing but further break up already bad pacing (though there is a skip button), and the standard open world side quest/collectable padding. The entire time, you have TWO voices in the player seat that're making quips about everything.

I'm also not entirely sure if it's just a PC port issue, but this game was horrific to look at. Even with upscalers disabled and true anti-aliasing forced via Nvidia control panel, everything seemed to be smeared in a thick layer of goopy dry vaseline and the reflections had the kind of artifacting/ghosting I expect from using AMD's older upscaler. Everything about 10 feet from the camera was blurry and when it rained it was profoundly hard to make anything out. It feels like an early PS4/XB1 game, around that time developers were finally making games that weren't ports but massively struggling to feel out what the hardware was capable of.

This isn't helped by the art direction being profoundly uninspired. I'm sure this game is fascinating if you're one of those people who thinks Tokyo is a place that was made up for Shin Megami Tensei, but having played enough SMT and Yakuza to last me a lifetime, GT offered nothing other games haven't done better. If you want a photorealistic Tokyo, Yakuza has that. If you want to see Tokyo get fucked up, SMT has that. GT does neither concept well, and despite the premise the design of both the supernatural phenomena and the yokai are boring. You'll be lucky to see a supernatural event that is anything more than "normal place covered in black ink".

There is a story here, but it's more flaccid and atrophied than half of the girls I know, and it borders on an excuse plot. The sidequests are far more engaging, and considering they're still bad that's almost impressive.

At times I wonder if this game was made out of spite. For a team like this - who would later go on to release the phenomenal Hi-Fi Rush - and a publisher with this much money, I can't think of any other explanation.

Quite possibly the best hand acting I've experienced in any piece of media.

I think it'd be disingenuous of me to write Ghostwire off as a Ubisoft-like even though it certainly falls into a lot of the same trappings as those games... I guess the compromise I'm most comfortable with is a Ubisoft-like but you know, back when they were good?

You're not immediately overwhelmed with stuff to do and the side quests, while occasionally repetitive have some absolutely stunning set pieces that rival moments in the main story.

The open world is quite bare sure, but I still combed every inch of Shibuya just to see. It's probably one of the best looking open world maps we've had in a long while. Traversing around feels good and there's always just one more cluster of spirits in the far distance encouraging you to explore that liitle bit further.

As far as game mechanics go there's nothing exciting going on. The combat is fairly shallow and it's very much a collect-a-thon game between gathering spirits, yokai, relics, tanuki and what have you. None of that stopped me from sinking 50+ hours into this thing so take from that whatever you'd like.

The story has absolutely no surprises whatsoever but there's a lot of heart to it. Akito and KK develop a nice friendship over the course of the game and Rinko is a welcome supporting character in a story that is, by design devoid of any human life. Hannya man... has a cool design. There's some nice emotional payoff at the finale as well.

A flawed game that i enjoyed very much.

(you can pet every dog you see and attempt to pet every cat so it's actually the most perfect game ever made and I'll hear no more about it!)

I went into this game completely blind; I'd not seen any trailers, and I'd only heard it mentioned in passing. So I was pleasantly surprised at the fact that it was good. The gameplay loop is what drew me in; it's unique and addictive, and using your hands as ethereal weapons against slender men was pretty cool. The game requires a lot of grinding, which I have issues with; I found it tolerable enough to enjoy my time, but it made up too much of the core game, and collecting spirits gets old. The sound design was fantastic, as was the look of Tokyo.

the story is an odd one, it's not bad, but it's paper thin, the villain was just your stereotypical bad man. What did shine was KK and Akitos relationship, seeing them bond over shared trauma and becoming a badass team, I think that's what kept me playing. The last thing I liked was just the infusion of Japanese culture and the informative pieces you find all around. It's good but it can do better.

One of the most average and safe games I've played in recent memory which is beyond disappointing to me because I was very excited for this game and I absolutely love The Evil Within 1 & 2.

The story was very generic, main villain kidnaps the protagonist's sister, the protagonist, Akito goes on a revenge quest to save her and teams up with a wraith and former detective called KK who possesses him. The story does have some nice thematic elements of family bonds, love, learning to forgive yourself and finding a purpose for your life again, but it really just scratches the surface of these themes and just wasn't fleshed out enough to leave much of an impression on me.

The Ethereal Weaving magical based FPS combat while fun is simplistic and gets very repetitive the longer you play the game. There's only 3 different Ethereal Weaving powers which you unlock very early on, Gust which acts like fast wind bullets, Aqua which is more of a shotgun blast and is good for wide bursts that attack groups of enemies and Fire which acts like a powerful grenade launcher that has very limited ammo. You also get some various Talismans which stun and expose the enemies spirit cores so you can take them down fast, however these are expensive and I found myself rarely using them because using your base Ethereal Weaving powers is just more effective and cheaper. You also have a bow which you can use to snipe targets, but ultimately it still feels pointless and I hardly used it as well.

There are obligatory skill trees and level up systems which let you unlock abilities and strengthen your powers, but I feel like much like the combat or story these systems weren't deep enough and I had almost everything unlocked and at max level before even beating the game. Plus you hardly get experience just for fighting enemies or completing quests and most of your experience comes from finding Lost Souls through the city and transferring them through the phone lines. This is another part of the game that gets very repetitive seeing how you constantly have to do this just to level up.

The open world is very much the most typical overused Ubisoft checklist gaming formula down to a T (Hell, the protagonist even gets a damn 'Spectral Vision' Assassin vision power to show enemies and items on the map). Cleanse the Torri Gate, uncover more of the map, unlock a bunch of map markers for side objectives, find useless collectables, rinse and repeat. I will say some of the side quests are interesting because they highlight Japanese folklore, but at the end of the day a lot of encounters feel very samey and a few of them like cleansing corrupted Cherry Blossoms or capturing various Yokai you do multiple times so it cheapens the encounter and makes something cool at first feel repetitive the next 5 times you have to do it.

The devs went to great lengths to represent Japanese folklore, history and culture and there are tons of interesting database entries and things in the world that do achieve this goal, like collecting Tanuki, seeing Nekomata run convenience stores, using Tengu to grapple and glide etc, but at the end of the day you can only do so much to disguise the Ubisoft formula and this is one we've seen far too many times before and I'm personally beyond sick of it (I could at least tolerate it in a game like Ghost of Tsushima because the story was so compelling), especially even more so after just recently experiencing the peak of open world gaming that is Elden Ring.

I will say however one of the strongest elements of Ghostwire is its visuals and atmosphere. Tokyo looks great and really captures the bleak and isolate feeling of being one of the last people left in the city after everyone has been spirited away. You'll find remnants of the lost souls everywhere you look from clothing and phones to abandoned cars, which makes for good environmental storytelling. Tango primarily being known for horror games is evident by the creature design that's inspired by Japanese folklore and Yokai because though limited it's still very good and I also enjoyed the moments when the environment and world shifts around you in a psychological way which reminded me of The Evil Within or Silent Hill.

When all is said and done I think the best way to describe Ghostwire Tokyo is simplistic and repetitive. The devs put so much care into crafting a detailed beautiful supernatural version of Tokyo that represents Japanese folklore, culture and history, but if only they put that much care into crafting the gameplay mechanics and story. For games focusing on Japanese folklore, culture and history I'll just stick with Nioh.

Ghostwire: Tokyo was one of two PS5 demos I remember seeing early-on that actually looked next gen: the dark rainfall, heavy polygons, and full-fledged modeling making prior tech seem average by comparison. Alas, like most titles, the actual product doesn’t quite live up to those lofty trailer heights, its final assemblage ultimately being a box of good and bad components.

Since I already mentioned them, let’s dive into the graphics. As stated before, Ghostwire relies on a realistic schema, albeit one tinged with blatant anime influences. What this means is particular effort went towards the proportioning and detailing of the many effigies in the game (from the enemies and dedicated NPCs to of course your protagonist), however, they’ve been layered with a fantasy stylization reminiscent of Shounen cartoons. You’ve got hand seals from Naruto, dashing from Birdy the Mighty, charge-ups from DBZ, floating from Bleach, and even the finger ray from Yu Yu Hakusho. Poses, movements, actions; all boast a similar exaggerated flair that’ll no doubt be familiar to fans of the aforementioned genre -- when Akito screams, it can’t help but bring to mind scenes out of Berserker or Evangelion; when he rides a bike down Tokyo Avenue, Akira is instantly evoked.

And yet, this is decidedly against the looming verism about you: buildings and apartment complexes are photographs straight out of a tourist guidebook; humans actually look Japanese; the metal on cars and railings echo ferric sheen; heck, even the Kanji-shaped rain about you splashes and drops like the real deal. It’s an interesting contrast, and one that very much works in the game’s favor, its contents often playing like a CG version of a Katsuhiro Otomo work.

I’m still not done with the praising- a gorgeous chromatic aberration effect has been programmed into each of your abilities, turning their transitions, surges, and discharges into chipped specs of prismatic wonder; puddles and water surfaces galore reflect the shifting firmament above you; and Akito’s hand may be the first video game appendage I’ve ever seen to hold hair, veins, AND flexion creases in one go.

Tl;dr - Ghostwire is a stunning achievement (in some ways too stunning, though more on that later). Really, my only true criticisms come from the performance side for fellow PC gamers out there: this was not the best port. I’ve read stories about the game crashing on computers, and while I was thankfully free of such freeze-ups, I did have to cap the framerate at 30 to prevent noticeable lag. Given that I don’t expect these issues to be officially resolved anytime soon, you’re better off playing Ghostwire on the PS5 (lest you find time to fidget around with the settings).

On a petty note, I would’ve liked to have seen some greater illumination effects, particularly from Akito’s strikes, as they were pretty sparse in the main game. The lack of collision impacts from spells was also disappointing despite technically making sense in the scheme of things -- see, for most of your playthrough, Akito is granted access to the spirit KK’s powers, these gifts manifesting themselves as three blasts: a weaker green one, a stronger water one, and an all-purpose (yet sparsely loaded) fire one. With combat manifesting, more-or-less, as a glorified first-person shooter, you’ll need to utilize all three of them in your hours of skirmishing.

It seems fine at first, but the problem is the whole system ends up getting repetitive due to the lack of variety; there’s minimal difference between the abilities, leaving their utilities no more varied than swapping between your two main guns in a Call of Duty game. Yes, fully upgraded, you gain access to some changes like freeze fields and flamethrowers, but these drain your ammo significantly and, more importantly, don’t fundamentally change up the scope of the combat- you’re still blasting away at the exact same foes in the exact same manner. There are occasions where Akito is separated from KK, “forcing” you to rely on Akito’s bow and stealth takedowns (the same insta-takedown system seen in other games); however, these are either meticulously scripted to the point of easiness or short-lived courtesy of it being simple to remerge with the specter.

And it’s a shame because so much effort blatantly went into the crafting of the numerous archetypes you’ll run across, from prancing headless schoolgirls to flying banshees, yet you’ll rarely ever have to deviate from your standard tactic of simply spamming them until their core crack opens to be wrenched out. Even the bosses, which feature some of the best creative designs I have ever had the privilege to witness in gaming, come down to simple trials that do a massive disservice to their virtuosity. And that really speaks to what I was saying earlier about Ghostwire being heavy on visuals to a fault; it’s a game that dedicated so much time and money towards the art assets, that it failed to give players any reason to consistently engage with said assets.

Nothing exhibits this better than the playpen you’re set off in, a free roam Shibuya that stands as one of the worst open worlds of this generation. Yes, it’s gorgeous, the neon signs, Chinese lanterns, and innumerable decorations giving it an enriched feel; however, it’s utterly pointless, existing purely to capitalize on the open world hype that has flooded the industry post-Skyrim. Why do I say this? Well, I’m so glad you asked. For starters, the streets are lifeless, devoid of any persona courtesy of the opening Rapture event, and while other titles like the Arkham games have indulged in similar premises, they at least made-up for it with engaging enemies: thugs who would banter and taunt like three-dimensional human beings. The most you get out of Ghostwire’s phantoms, au contraire, are hapless growls mixed-in with the occasional jump scare.

Next is the anti-wanderlust attitude implemented for most of your journey in the form of a toxic fog. The only way to clear it is to engage in the tried-and-true Ubisoft tactic of “syncing” viewpoints (depicted here as cleansing Shinto gates), an aspect that would’ve been fine were it not for the fact that the game all but goads you into freeing them in a specific sequence, no doubt to artificially elongate the story’s runtime (more on that later). If that weren’t enough, Akito’s primary option for city traversal is simply dashing about as though we were back in the Morrowind Days. To the game’s credit, Ghostwire features a rooftop traversal system that’s actually quite fun to use, but the problem is it’s often a pain in the @ss to even get to those heights and initiate the flying. Hovering tengu offer Hookshot-level access points from the streets; however, they’re placed so inconsistently you’re better off finding nearby stairwells to ascend to the top, which as you can guess, is just as tedious and dull as the real-life exercise.

Finally, much like LA Noire, there’s simply nothing interesting to do here. Collectables are a dime-a-dozen, collecting spirits as numb as pressing a button, and side missions hampered by a severe lack of cinematic structure (more on that later). To add more sludge to the dredge, each of these activities almost always comes with a helping of combat, meaning you’re constantly thrown into the world of repetitive fighting again and again with little break. Ghostwire is a game that truly would’ve been better off adopting the Witcher 1 or Alpha Protocol format of free roam levels; stages where the artisans could’ve handcrafted some unique experiences versus fitting everything into this fruitless sandbox.

The fact that I haven’t touched on the narrative once should give you an idea as to how little it elevates the gameplay. It begins on an interesting note with the aforementioned mass disappearance of Tokyo’s denizens, yet quickly falls from that perch when you realize the writers had no idea how to stretch things into a solid 8 hours. I’m not lying to you guys when I say a good third of the game’s length comes down to Akito darting around blessing specified Shinto gates, and it’s not like the other two thirds are that memorable either. Missions often involve the the duo either doing reconnaissance or investigating some lead only to screw things up in the inevitable confrontation. It’s not that it gets monotonous ACI-style, but more-so that it’s nowhere near as invigorating as a ghost tale should have been. Heck, a lot of the game’s deeper storybeats (Akito’s feelings of regrets towards his comatose sister Mari, the main villain’s tragic motivation, KK’s mysterious backstory) are turned into exposition dumps ala cutscene or in-game speechwads, as though the writers couldn’t figure out how to naturally incorporate them into the main campaign. Due to this lack of build-up, it should perhaps come as no surprise that the ending feels very unfulfilling to the point where I was actually hoping for a sequelbait post-credits scenes.

Not everything is morose; in fact, one of the greatest accomplishments Tango achieves is their development of Akito and KK’s friendship. Two people of different generations (and corporealities) are forced to work together, and it’s honestly a delight to see their relationship go from reluctant (if slightly hostile) acquaintances to partners who trust each other wholly, and a large part of that success derives from the fantastic chemistry between Kensuke Nishi and Kazuhiko Inoue. I played Ghostwire in the default Japanese, and these two actors do a phenomenal job bouncing off each other in a way that never veers into naggy girlfriend territory: a seed of mutual respect underlies each of their convos even as they trade jabs seriously and unseriously. I criticized the sidequests earlier, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t engage them primarily to hear more banter between the leading men; THAT’S how great their interplay is. I have to give a particular shoutout to Inoue as he does a masterclass in wading between sarcastic wit and serious melodrama (the Eastern equivalent of Dave Wittenberg’s Kakashi). Nishi is great, but there were times where he veered a little too heavily into screaming shounen boy.

Regarding the rest of the bunch, you’ll encounter KK’s former team members every now and then, and they also have some solid castmates behind them: underutilized, but otherwise well-met. The remaining major players, namely Akito’s sister and head honcho Hannya, unfortunately, stand as the weakest links, the former being overly-cloying, the latter giving that deep boring accent heard a dime-a-dozen for anime villain subs aplenty. Besides them, sidequest NPCs suffer from the TES problem of being a select few rehashed (though I suppose they did serve their purpose), whilst cats sound awful to the point where I’d recommend plugging your fingers in your ears as a favor to the organs.

Of course, Ghostwire had an English dub, and while I only listened to it briefly, I don’t think I’m out-of-step in saying that the Japanese version is superior, largely due to the stronger chemistry between Akito and KK’s VAs. Those concerned about following subtitles need not worry as Ghostwire, unlike Metro, actually does a great job focusing dialogue on non-actiony parts: I would say the end fight was the only place where it got difficult concurrently scanning and duking it out. That said, for those who want to stick with the English acting, know that it does do a better job with the two aforestated average Japanese voices, Mari and Hannya (unfortunately, they chose not to redub the cats…).

SFX, on the other hand, is respectable, standing as a successful sonoric assemblage of AAA engineering. Though the artisans admittedly had their work cut easier with the lack of city life, the smooth aural transition from ability-to-ability, no matter how quick, more than exhibits their proficiency. I just wish they had programmed more gnarls and wails for the enemies as these entities not only came across as indistinguishable from the other, but were genuinely unmemorable in retrospect.

The score by Masatoshi Yanagi sadly stumbles into similar territory. It’s evident he wanted to lean into leaden spiritualism, but in doing so completely forgot to write memorable tunes. The majority of his tracks are atmospheric to a fault, too eidolic to be backgroundy yet prosaic enough to be indelible. His OST does change-up with the boss compositions, all of which incorporate some bass synth; however, they’re miniscule in the grand scheme of things, with Same Path being the sole piece I actively/passively enjoyed.

Overall, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a fine game. That it was robbed of an artistic achievement nomination at both the BAFTAs and Game Awards is a crime, a sentiment you will very much agree with should you explore the metropolitan bastion Tango has crafted before you. For many players, prancing around a real-life Tokyo with a razor-tongued Yūrei will be reason enough to jump on board; for all others, evaluate the entire enterprise and decide accordingly.











NOTES
-The streets of Tokyo are eerily clean. At first I thought this was just the developers being lazy with the trash placement, but no, having recently gone to the city, it is THAT litter-free (and a sign of just how behind the rest of the world the US is in some areas). That said, the fact that the developers didn’t insert a SINGLE undergarment into the myriad of clothes piles you happen upon strikes me as bizarre self-censorship.

-Strangely, Akito expresses surprise at phone booths existing in Tokyo, despite me seeing plenty of them during my trip there (like, the EXACT same green version as the one in the game).

-The sheer amount of small talk crafted between Akito and KK is astounding- you’ll be hearing new lines even towards the endgame.

-Loved the laser lines that go through the duo’s hands.

-You can tell the team at Tango fell in love with their country’s culture. From a database full of Shinto/Buddhist lore to sidequests centered around specific figures, you could learn so much from playing this game.

-For the record, not every side mission is blandly crafted -- an escapade set in a schoolhouse, in particular, stands as one of the best secondary outputs in video game history. I just wish they could’ve dedicated a similar effort to at least half of them. There are a number where you think you’re going to be facing some unique critter, only to encounter a slightly-reskinned version of someone/something you already fought.

-There’re light RPG elements in the form of a skill system, but it’s very basic -- you’ll get the hang of it without me needing to type up a paragraph explaining things.

-There are no stealth upgrades as far as I remember.

-Like other Sony IPs, there’s a heightened sense here called Spectral Vision, and it’s pretty cool, taking the hand drop from Dead Space and combining it with a filter reminiscent of Detective Mode.

Gonna go against the grain and say I had a great time with Ghostwire: Tokyo. I was really excited for it to come out and it didn’t really disappoint me. If you’re able to engage with it on its own terms and recognize that the combat is, yes, not fantastic and will get a little old by the end of the game, I think you can have a good experience.

This game got essentially no press, so I feel it's worth pointing out how excellent the open world truly is - it’s like Kamurocho in terms of the player:building scale and detail but spread out over a much, MUCH larger distance. This is probably one of my favorite open worlds in gaming and if you’re into the type of virtual tourism of Japan that Yakuza or Persona offer, I think you’ll get something out of this. The first area you really get to explore does a great job showing off the amazing number of unique objects and rooms and textures they managed to stuff into this game. Signs, objects, buildings, etc. All of this in a PS5 game that only comes out to 18 gigabytes! Which does lead me to the actual looks of the game, which are great! Okay, the framerate is lower than it needs to be and the FOV should be higher, but this is a damn good looking game with some excellent lighting. I spent WAY too long in the photo mode just snapping pictures of cool alleys and buildings. I’ve actually gone to the trouble of selecting a few of those screenshots and compiled an album of them if you’re interested - [album coming soon when I can find my USB3->C adapter].

One of the best ways to approach this game IMO is more of a ghost / supernatural meets modern world art piece with a focus on cultural exchange rather than a pure game. I say this because the combat is, as noted by many people, not incredible. In general, you have 3 types of ammo to fire from your fingertips, fulfilling basically an SMG / handgun, shotgun, and grenade launcher archetype each. You have a fairly ineffective shield with a perfect parry and a really bad melee attack as well as a bow to use for stealth encounters. Every fight will basically boil down to swapping between your elemental types and keeping a variety of the enemies at bay as they charge you or fire projectiles. Now, I played about half of Ghostwire at launch in March of 2022, and then came back to it a couple weeks ago. In that time, Tango pushed more than a few updates to the game, adding a bunch of pieces of content and extra missions, but more importantly a whole new set of mechanics as part of the “Spider’s Thread” update. The key addition being new alternate firing modes as well as the INTENSELY needed dodge. The fact that this game shipped without a dodge is kinda baffling, since your insanely slow walk speed and the limited camera use on PS5 meant that combat, especially hectic combat, could be really overwhelming and you could be left with few options for escape. The dodge isn’t amazing, but it does the job well enough and you can bind it to different things. They also added new charms, new tags, and an aerial ground pound and a chain assassinate technique, which I used often in the final hours. The actual enemy designs are great, I love how each draws from different parts of the Japanese cultural consciousness - the lady with the scissors, the child lost in the rain, etc. - and they have pretty disturbing looks. In terms of gameplay, they don’t usually impress too much and one or two are way too annoying to deal with, but they have a variety of different attack patterns and can feel threatening and the game keeps throwing new ones at you throughout the 25+ hours. The bosses are actually a pretty great highlight. I really enjoyed the Ko-Omote fight, which forces you to deal with the boss in a completely different way. Long story short, the shoot ‘em up gameplay is not deep enough to make the player seek out a fight for fun, but it will stay more or less engaging enough as the game progresses, especially with the additions made in the most recent update.

I love how genuine the whole thing feels, from the loving recreation of basically an entire ward down to the extremely detailed historical summaries and cultural contexts of the food items carried in your inventory. Tango and their localization team went the extra mile to give you tons of information on every single detail of the game’s world, down to the consumables and fill in the checklist collectibles. Sometimes it can feel like Atlus, for example, releases only make it to the West incidentally, like they never actually thought a Westerner would play their games but hey, cool if they do - Ghostwire feels like the opposite, like a game made by Japanese devs with the Western audience explicitly in mind. The post-launch support has also been really good, so it’s clear that Tango / Bethesda were listening to criticism and player feedback.

Most climactic moments include a lead up, whether that be making your way down into the bowels of the subway system or climbing up through a tiered shopping center / department building / office building, usually culminating in a big setpiece wherein the spirit haunts the area, messing with reality and sometimes outright placing the player in an alternate dimension. These are easily the best part of the game. The art team clearly had a great eye for interior design and the stuff they do to show off the “haunted” nature of any place is really neat - shifting objects in the room, flickering shadows, textures that flow from room to room, and my personal favorite: a hallway floating above the whole of the open world - and add a ton of character to these moments. In a way, it takes a page out of PT's book with the emphasis on these room and indoor segments - juxtaposing the go anywhere (and relatively rote) exploration of the open world with the controlled and contained experiential setpieces of the indoor.

The side cases are the best showcase of the aforementioned ideas and are usually pretty unique and fun, like mini ghost hunts. They often take classic ideas from Japanese cultural folklore and ghost stories to craft a little investigation for you. The bathhouse and inkwater dragon were particular favorites of mine.

The main story itself is nothing to write home about. The setup is genius, and the scattered clothes and empty streets of Shibuya are an absolutely prime setting for the game which never wore off for me - but the actual plot is kinda whatever. Hannya is creepy enough but he’s the only real character besides Akito and KK. His reasons aren’t super deep or super complex and the game’s beats are relatively cliche. Still, I enjoyed the banter between KK and Akito all the way throughout and they do feel like partners by the end. I did actually play the short little VN ahead of release, which, while hilarious in its own way, hardly adds anything to the game’s story or background. Hannya should’ve been built up a bit more or there should’ve been a few spoken characters running around Shibuya besides you that could act as allies or enemies, other sorcerer / detective types, perhaps? The calls from Ed and Rinko do not do nearly enough to fill that void.

The bulk of the fun of this will be down to the player. Do you enjoy the exploration of a gorgeous, nearly 1:1 recreation of a ward of Tokyo while doing Jujutsu Kaisen-esque modern-day onmyōji type stuff? You’ll have a good time. Are you looking for a deep story and deeper combat? Probably look elsewhere. For me, it ticked the right boxes.

Detestei

Ruim de jogar, combate que, apesar de simples, não é bom. Consciente de seu péssimo controle em joysticks, o jogo usa um semi autolock que torna a "gunplay" que já é péssima ainda mais sem alma.
"Lock" a mira e atire. As variações de elementos são insignificantes na maioria dos casos, só a munição vai ditar qual elemento usar, os inimigos reagirão da mesma forma e possivelmente você vai derrotá-los independente do elemento.
É perceptível a intenção de um combate melhor com p elemento água sendo de curto alcance, mas o balanceamento erra aqui e você não sente que abrir mão de alcance e se arriscar no combate próximo vale a pena pelo dano ridículo que o golpe de água causa. Logo, água só se torna inútil na vasta maioria da gameplay.
Acredito que nem devemos cobrar muito do combate já que cada elemento só tem 2 variações de ataque, o combate desse jogo não permite nenhum tipo de expressão, tornando-o estupidamente monótono. Repita as mesmas notas e você acerta a música.

Mundo aberto que se não fosse pelo tema(única coisa boa no jogo) teria dropado. Ele vai se estendendo a um nível que, como não existe meio de locomoção mais rápido, você se cansa só de ir de um quarteirão a outro. Senti falta de mecânicas de navegação fora "planar".
A campanha principal é esquecivel. Com personagens esquecíveis e tramas esquecíveis que vão se estendendo para além do tolerável.

Francamente, parecia que não iria acabar, mesmo durando 7 horas.

Achei que seria divertido, só foi irritante

I can see why I barely heard anything about this game, its nothing special. Being a PS5 exclusive at launch, as well as releasing the same day as Kirby and the Forgotten Land didn't help I'm sure.

Graphically its fine to pretty good but I found it to be quite dull style wise. Realistic Tokyo with some ghostly happenings. I have no problem with the designs of the enemies, it was nice to see how many I recognized. Majority of the traversal options were given to you very close to the beginning which was the smartest move the game did, with only one new ability being locked behind the skill tree.

This game has an absurd amount of collectables as well. The main collectable is over 200,000 but each are collected between a 90-600 batch and then the other 566 are a range of things tied to either upgrades or character and world backstory/building. Getting all of the collectables, which the game puts you back before the point of no return once you beat it so don't worry about missing anything, didn't seem to change anything about the ending other than the rewards which, while good, are now pointless cuz I've already 100% the game. They at least made it mostly easy to find most of the collectables, lots of ways to either get markers straight up added to the map or things to point you in the direction every time you activate your detective mode pulse.

Combat was pretty one note, monotonous and dragged on. Despite having a handful of different tools alongside your 3 main attacks, on normal there was rarely a time I had to use anything but the green and red shots. The talismans might as well be worthless in my opinion cuz the enemies you actually want the effects for are not effected by them. The only other thing worth its salt was the bow due to its power. Just about everything has a resource but its all so abundant its barely an afterthought.

As I said above I have no problem with the design of the enemies, but I do have a problem with the variety. Excluding bosses you'll be fighting the same 7 enemies, 4 of which have 1-2 reskins with little to no differences in attacks. This is the main reason for the combat being so boring to me.

Didn't give a damn about the story, its generally milquetoast and the music is forgettable. I'm not gonna remember any of these characters come tomorrow morning.

TLDR. The very definition of a mid game, combat gets old fast but traversing the open world isn't a chore. Its nothing special and unless you like Tango Gameworks, Shinji Mikami, or see this on sale for like $20 or less, you have better games to spend your time on.

GhostWire: Tokyo deceived me. While I was pretty on-and-off about following this game's very turbulent press cycle, I was still pretty interested to see a western game that goes into one of my favorite settings ever with such a heavy emphasis on Japanese mythology. The first chapter exemplified this, going through the hospital with really trippy and creepy visuals, and unique uses of the Dualsense's adaptive triggers. That one scene in the hospital with Hannya was amazing and completely hooked me. However, the moment I left the hospital in chapter 2... the reality of the game set in, and realizing what the game was doing turned all of my excitement into dread.

Once you peel off the mask of its aesthetics and its mythology influences, what you're left with is the most generic and formulaic open world experience possible. It becomes a mindless loop of running from waypoint to waypoint, only broken up by bad feeling UDG-ass combat and sidequests where the main appeal is "oh, it's a thing from mythology I recognize". And like most other open world games these days, it shoves in RPG mechanics that I think it would've been better off without. It's indistinguishable from its contemporaries outside of its setting.

Even then, GhostWire has the most bland experience of running around Tokyo that I've ever experienced. Due to its premise it inherently can't have the liveliness that makes me love the city in games like TWEWY or even P5, but it also doesn't do anything interesting with with going around an abandoned or wrecked Tokyo that the Shin Megami Tensei series excels at. It's perfectly content with turning one of the most fascinating places on the planet into a drab, repetitive slog to explore. It's such a shame, because its more mystical and trippy visuals are really strong throughout, but they fail to impress after they have the same tricks for the 50th time. I feel like it would've been much better if it took a more linear design approach over this. If I knew this would be how I felt about my first full game that released 2022, I'd've just kept waiting for Xenoblade 3 instead.

EDIT: It turns out it isn't actually a Western game. It was made by Tango, a Japanese company founded by Shinji Mikami, and just published by Bethesda. I was under the impression that it was an in-house Bethesda joint. My bad!

I love everything about Ghostwire: Tokyo, except for actually playing it.

The game has massive Vibes, and feels almost like a first-person action spinoff of Shin Megami Tensei. The blend of supernatural elements and technology is interesting (transferring spirits via payphone devices is very SMT), and the art design is top-notch. The story is good enough, following a guy who is brought back from death by a spirit that co-inhabits his body. There's nothing incredible there, but the banter between the two can be entertaining.

It's unfortunate, then, that everything else doesn't live up to the game's style. The combat, where you launch various projectiles via hand-signs, looks pretty, but has no sense of impact. Your default "rapid-fire" attack, Air, particularly feels like an ineffective peashooter. Water is far more useful, being the equivalent of a shotgun, and Fire is your "rocket launcher". They can all be upgraded, but that's another issue...

See, almost every upgrade only exists to make the game feel slightly less sluggish. Normally, when you damage enemies enough, you can rip their cores out to finish them. You don't actually have to, but it gives you some ammo back. Kind of like a Glory Kill from DOOM or something. The problem is that enemies can interrupt this animation. So the game's solution? Give you a bunch of upgrades that make it faster. Or give you other core-ripping abilities that can't be interrupted. My solution? Just stop doing it and hit them a couple more times to kill them.

Other upgrades are similar: higher rate of fire. Slightly wider splash damage radius. It's all very incremental and feels like a waste of time. That's appropriate, though, because most of this game feels like a waste of time. If it had simply been a straight-ahead, linear first-person action game, the combat's flaws could be more easily overlooked. However, because More Hours = Better Than, the fine folks at Tango Gameworks (or, speculating, their parent company Bethesda) decided this should be an open world game with copy-pasted sidequests and, uh... 250,000 spirits scattered around the map to absorb.

Yeah. 250,000. Sure, those are in bundles of, like, 100-300 at a time, but holy cow, that's still a LOT of things to absorb!

And then, if all that wasn't bad enough, there are segments of the game where you're separated from your Ghost Man, so you have none of your shitty little magics, and instead have to rely on the Very Good™ stealth.

I liked talking to the Tanuki. They were cool.

Um cenário marcante e um combate mega satisfatório com certeza é a principal atração de Ghostwire tokyo.
Mas infelizmente não chegaram a usar todo o potencial que esse jogo poderia ter
ja que seu mundo aberto/secundárias são tão simples e rasos que nem sequer dá vontade de fazer (eu não fiz).
A notícia boa é que ele não é um jogo longo
então se você quiser apenas uma gameplay menos entediante, confie em mim e vá caçar umas almas e fazer apenas a principal,
vai valer a pena.

Sometimes I need a open world check list every once in a while to cleanse my palate, just a game I don't have to worry to much about and chill out. Tokyo is great looking and detailed. The visual effects in this game are top fucking notch and make me want more. The combat isn't too crazy, but it is definitely satisfying to the brain.

The combat can be a little weird at first, cause (at least on mouse/keyboard), it feels like they want to you be very precise. Targets are usually skinny and your magic bullets are pretty small. If there was a accuracy %, I would probably be pretty low. However, sometimes I felt myself get into zones where I wasn't missing shots and that felt pretty good. The arsenal is kind of lackluster to me tbh. The green energy is the best one, shoots fast. I didn't use the red or blue ones until basically end game when I had them fully upgraded, then I saw their uses. Red one just does high single damage, or big AOE; blue is also crowd control to hit multiple people horizontally. They all have special upgrades (from the Spider Thread update I think) and they kind of blow I think. Red is a flamethrower (feels pointless), blue is a freeze zone around you (feels too small/slow), and the green is the only good one (rapid fire a bunch of small bullets). The talismans i didnt use cause, 1.) I dont use throwable type items ever really 2.) they didnt seem too helpful. Grabbing cores is basically at the 'core' (teehee) of the combat and that is about as fun as any other glory kill system, its dope you can do it from a range, and do multiple at the same time.

The open world collectables felt pretty similar to Saints Row 4 to me. Just going on tangents of collecting things cause they are in your vision, then returning back to what you were doing (brain loves that). The side missions are usually pretty cool. Most are unique (story wise, gameplay not really).

This game hits you out of the gate with cool visuals though, probably the best part of the game. This right here i am obsessed with. The ending shot is fucking crazy, and it feels like some 90's CG art (with modern power). These Torii Gate animations also just look like CG cutscenes to me, like shit from FF7. It's probably because my computer just isn't good enough to for them to run recommended, but if it produces that effect I'm happy as hell. The game will tap into a lot of wonky visuals when going into the spirit zone(im just gonna call it that). Textures going crazy, impossible geometry, eye tricks; just so cool. There is a side mission where a painted dragon comes off the wall and you gotta chase it around an area. It's texture slithers on the ground and eventually leads up to a huge mural on the wall and it looks fucking cool. There are some spirit zones that are just kind of Blame! type shit if instead of clean concrete squares, it was just a bunch buildings. Or there are just beautiful serene areas. Point is, the game has a good ass style.

The story is whatever for the most part. Wasn't attached to characters, even though Akito and KK were fun together. The ending sequence though is great. Akito goes through walking sim of his memories. The visual effects and music really captured the power of "wading through your troubled past" for me. Even past that to the end is just a solid ass ending for the characters and I was very pleased.

Overall, yup open world check list game, if you want one of those, I think this a great one to try. Sets itself apart with the Tokyo you explore and the visual effects they play. Combat is fun and the supernatural stuff is fun flavour.

o jogo é bem legal e bem bonito, a ambientação é fantástica, as animações são maneirissimas e as missões secundárias são legais apesar de meio repetitivas, o problema é que o jogo é curto, vc tem poucas magias e elas tem pouca variação, é um jogo que tinha bastante potencial mas que se apoia só em gráfico, vc faz a mesma coisa do começo ao fim com uma história meio rasa, ele me lembra bastante shadow warrior 1, só que com bem menos variação, acho que uma sequência corrigindo esses problemas seria muito bem-vinda

I'm a big fan of Tango's games so I was excited to check this out, I finally played it just now, so my first run is including the Spider's Thread update and it's additional cutscenes, enemies, quests etc so keep that in mind in my review.

Let's start with the good:
The sidequests are charming and interesting, the map of Toyko is made with so much love and care and honestly its kind of a relaxing and meditative game in the downtime. The dub is also fantastic as that is what I personally played with. It's not a very scary game its just a horror themed action game (outside of one more traditional horror side quest added with the DLC). It's very much a collectathon too which honestly I really enjoyed it probably has...too many collectibles for too little gain but hey I love checking things off a list what can I say.

The negatives:
Oh boy the combat...is actively harming the game I think. It's almost fun? But enemies are extremely common, extremely repetitive and have way too much health. I love a challenge in games but the game is incredibly easy and fights, even with everything maxed out, can just drag on and on. I'd have enjoyed hte game more if combat was either touched up and more fun or used more sparingly. This is sadly made even worse by Spider's Thread which adds extremely annoying enemies to the game including one that loves to spawn quite frequently towards the end, has tons of hp, and can dodge all normal attacks making the fight drag.

The story is also surprisingly safe and simple. I wouldn't say its...bad? It has kind of interesting characters but it is extremely safe and by the numbers which is really dissapointing coming from the people who made The Evil Within and Hi-Fi Rush, the former having lots of interesting lore and the latter being a lovely character driven narrative. I rarely ever feel burn out about anything but by the time I finished this I was kinda glad it was over. I don't know...if they ever made a sequel and punched up the story, added more characters to interact with and made the combat more fun and less exhausting I'd be all in but as it is now its a beautiful game with a lot of heart that is unfortunately kinda forgettable in some places.

O jogo que se propõe a equilibrar as caracteristicas dicotomicas de seus protagonistas, um representando uma juventude desesperançosa e o outro um trabalhador de meia idade que perdeu sua vida em prol de seu serviço.
Com a união dos dois exploramos o além vida e lidamos com problemas pessoais e misticos desse mundo, e diferente do que eu esperava a mensagem não vangloria o desapego que tem nucleo em parte da mitologia apresentada, ela é uma jornada de apego a vida que por vezes soa como uma maldição, mas é dentro do espiritual que ela acha forças pra ressoar forte nesse mundo morto-vivo onde apenas o coletivo pode nos reerguer.

I wonder if you know how they live in Tokyo

A cultura nipônica é mto bem representada nesse game. A beleza e seus conceitos estão por todo o lado, capricharam em cada detalhe que você procurar, desde pequenos objetos no cenário até na iluminação.

E é nesse quesito que o game realmente se destaca, sua ambientação excelente. Uma Tokyo deserta porém mto viva, belíssima e de se admirar. A trilha sonora tem seu valor e o game comporta um dos melhores modo foto que já experimentei, provavelmente o melhor.

Por outro lado peca em exploração limitada e repetitiva (Ubi vibes), particularmente não foi algo que me incomodou, tive uma experiência bastante agradável.

Seu combate é estilo demais e divertido até o fim. Comporta mecânicas simples e boss fights nada desafiadoras.

Quanto a história é no máximo ok, bem executada porém clichê e um tanto previsível. Suas sidequests inicialmente são interessantes mas depois de um tempo se tornam monótonas.

Conclusão: fotógrafo digital, esse é o seu game!