The thing that gets me the most about Ghostwire Tokyo are the vibes, the mildly spooky playground with fascinating creatures carries a lot of what I enjoyed in the game.

Even though it is an open-world game, it is actually very linear, it feels designed like smaller levels and set pieces that happen to get connected as you go, you can probably just play it ignoring the open-world filler and still have a great experience. Side activities can have some interesting scenarios, and meeting yokai is interesting, but the game will test your patience if you try to get all the spirits.

While the world is very impressive, the gameplay takes a bit of a backseat, it is serviceable (once you adjust aim sensitivity), but it does feel overly simple. The economy somewhat discourages you of engaging with various tools, the talismans used for combat feel like a waste when you have to save money for skill points. And then the basic act of spamming wind shots gets the job done easily, so you don't even feel like you need the tools at all, feels like there was some missed potential here.

Even considering the simple systems, the game was still very fun to go through, exploring and admiring the environment was very relaxing in some way, even with all the creepy vibes there is a certain beauty of the supernatural in everything, and I was all in for it.