As a card-carrying Japanophile who spent a semester in Tokyo and has been back to visit multiple times, I can’t help but feel that Ghostwire: Tokyo was made just for me. I’ve browsed Shibuya’s underground record stores, sang karaoke on the 12th floor of a random high rise, had coffee at the Shibuya Scramble Starbucks, recreated here as Tulitorbucks, and even inched through suffocating crowds in the JR station to catch the last train home. On the other hand, I’m definitely not a local, and my recollection of Shibuya’s more granular details is hazy to nonexistent. If the streets are in the wrong place or the scale is off, I wouldn’t notice. As far as I’m concerned, Ghostwire’s Shibuya feels like the real deal. My only disappointment is that I can’t go toe-to-toe with CD-chucking poltergeists in Tower Records.
But how does it play? Well, if you’re not completely burnt out on Ubisoft-style open worlds, you’re in luck. Ghostwire provides a dense map to explore, full of quests and collectibles. Instead of climbing towers to open up the map, our protagonist Akito and his buddy KK clear the fog over Tokyo by purging cursed torii gates of malicious spirits. Side-quests are doled out by troubled souls with unresolved business that’s keeping them tethered to the mortal plane. Collectibles, meanwhile, come in many varieties. Some simply require you to find them, while others must be won from yokai – traditional Japanese monsters – by either lending a helping hand or through trickery, depending on the monster in question. Collecting everything is an undertaking, to be sure, but in contrast to many modern open-world games in which hitting 100% can take well over a hundred hours, going full completionist in Ghostwire is a more reasonable proposition. I put 50 hours into the game and I don’t regret a second of it. (Time-strapped gamers, don’t let that number scare you away. If you avoid the side content, you can wrap up the game in 12 hours or less.)
It doesn’t hurt that traversing Tokyo is a hell of a lot of fun – at least once you’ve unlocked a few key abilities. One major misstep Ghostwire makes is hiding its best abilities in plain sight as optional skills. If you don’t thoroughly explore the skill tree and invest time collecting spirits and magatama, you will miss out on powers that completely reshape how Akito traverses Tokyo’s concrete jungle. With his base abilities, Akito can only clamber up ledges and glide a few feet in the air. After acquiring a few key upgrades, however, he basically becomes Japanese Spider-Man with spirit-powered hover boots. Swinging around the rooftops of Tokyo is an absolute joy, and it’s a shame that most players won’t get to experience it.
I still haven’t mentioned the story, which is solid if not particularly deep. It does feel like the developers decided to recreate Shibuya first and only later turned to making a game out of the space. The plot is thin, and the characters lean heavily on archetypes – the brave young man, the cynical old mentor, the villain with a tragic backstory, the calm, collected female sidekick, the younger sister in trouble. While the story won’t win any awards, I do appreciate the way it employs traditional Japanese folklore and explores life and the afterlife in a way that games seldom do.
I can see why Ghostwire: Tokyo largely flew under the radar when it launched. It looks like a horror game but it’s really an open-world adventure with horror themes. I’ve also heard that the gameplay originally felt underbaked; thankfully, the recent one-year anniversary update (available on all platforms) has deepened the combat mechanics and improved the experience across the board. A masterpiece Ghostwire is not, but players looking for an experience that’s familiar yet offbeat could do a lot worse than diving into phantom-stricken Tokyo.
But how does it play? Well, if you’re not completely burnt out on Ubisoft-style open worlds, you’re in luck. Ghostwire provides a dense map to explore, full of quests and collectibles. Instead of climbing towers to open up the map, our protagonist Akito and his buddy KK clear the fog over Tokyo by purging cursed torii gates of malicious spirits. Side-quests are doled out by troubled souls with unresolved business that’s keeping them tethered to the mortal plane. Collectibles, meanwhile, come in many varieties. Some simply require you to find them, while others must be won from yokai – traditional Japanese monsters – by either lending a helping hand or through trickery, depending on the monster in question. Collecting everything is an undertaking, to be sure, but in contrast to many modern open-world games in which hitting 100% can take well over a hundred hours, going full completionist in Ghostwire is a more reasonable proposition. I put 50 hours into the game and I don’t regret a second of it. (Time-strapped gamers, don’t let that number scare you away. If you avoid the side content, you can wrap up the game in 12 hours or less.)
It doesn’t hurt that traversing Tokyo is a hell of a lot of fun – at least once you’ve unlocked a few key abilities. One major misstep Ghostwire makes is hiding its best abilities in plain sight as optional skills. If you don’t thoroughly explore the skill tree and invest time collecting spirits and magatama, you will miss out on powers that completely reshape how Akito traverses Tokyo’s concrete jungle. With his base abilities, Akito can only clamber up ledges and glide a few feet in the air. After acquiring a few key upgrades, however, he basically becomes Japanese Spider-Man with spirit-powered hover boots. Swinging around the rooftops of Tokyo is an absolute joy, and it’s a shame that most players won’t get to experience it.
I still haven’t mentioned the story, which is solid if not particularly deep. It does feel like the developers decided to recreate Shibuya first and only later turned to making a game out of the space. The plot is thin, and the characters lean heavily on archetypes – the brave young man, the cynical old mentor, the villain with a tragic backstory, the calm, collected female sidekick, the younger sister in trouble. While the story won’t win any awards, I do appreciate the way it employs traditional Japanese folklore and explores life and the afterlife in a way that games seldom do.
I can see why Ghostwire: Tokyo largely flew under the radar when it launched. It looks like a horror game but it’s really an open-world adventure with horror themes. I’ve also heard that the gameplay originally felt underbaked; thankfully, the recent one-year anniversary update (available on all platforms) has deepened the combat mechanics and improved the experience across the board. A masterpiece Ghostwire is not, but players looking for an experience that’s familiar yet offbeat could do a lot worse than diving into phantom-stricken Tokyo.