Before we really discuss more about this game, I want to preface that Ghostwire Tokyo is a creative marvel from the team over at Tango Gameworks. The Asian inspired action horror is some of the most aesthetically Japanese folklore you can see in any media. I was in awe at the designs of everything as I played through its 20-hour story, however there is a lot of other shortcomings that just made me lose interest.
Firstly, Ghostwire is an open world experience with lots of side quests and collectibles, exciting at first especially within the honeymoon period of a brand-new game in your library. It just fails to really hold your attention as you realise its mindless collection adds nothing of substance to your time in Tokyo outside trophies and achievements.
Its narrative is a tale of a demonic entity stealing the souls of the general public for malicious intentions which have yet to be revealed. The protagonist and sidekick is Akito and KK, a melding similar to Shadow Of Wars dynamic in recent years of a spirit possession you for their own motivations. Nothing ground-breaking but it works fine in this setting. Akito simply wants to find and save his sister from the mysterious antagonist and while this is a fine motive for pushing the player forward, I just did not care enough as we didn’t know anyone well enough to be invested.
Combat focuses on 4 elemental powers such as water and wind, but I found fire the most overpowered and easy way to deal with a group. You can also use a skill tree to adapt and upgrade your abilities like any standard triple-a game we see. There is even clothing options and cute cats to find that act as shop owners in a desolated Tokyo. These aspects are what redeem its creativity for me and make me realise sometimes a game can be excellent in some respects but lack in others, and that’s okay.
Its not a bad game but its not brilliant either, the game being open world is not really needed either, it would have served better as a linear and shorter experience in my honest opinion. Enemies are varied and interesting to fight for the first 5 hours and then it becomes a real slog, rinse and repeat format to get any combat encounters over with. This is ghost wires biggest issue, its fine at a lot of things and gets you interested but it just does not do enough to keep me playing so unfortunately, I ended up putting it down.
While creatively its fantastic, aesthetically its beautiful and totally respectful of its source material on Asian culture and folklore, it just is not enough to warrant a full price tag. Gameplay is tedious after a while and with a less than stellar story, it begs the question, is this worth my time? For fans of Asian horror or just if you’re a interested in Japan, this could be an interesting time but I would wait for a sale and not splash out.
(Written By John.P)
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