A title with a level of style and art direction that is off the charts, Ghostwire: Tokyo shows off all the glitzy parts of next gen gaming in the best way possible. From meticulous environment design to legitimately scary enemies, a lot of the love in Ghostwire: Tokyo is seen everywhere. While there’s a lot to love and explore in the open world, there are certain aspects about this horror-adjacent game that fall short or just feel half baked. Combat gets repetitive very quickly, and there is very little variety afforded in terms of how to approach enemies. A lack of movement options makes combat feel even more one dimensional, and limited ammo reserves serve to hamper and annoy rather than feel integral to a horror experience. Even with this being the case, Ghostwire: Tokyo impresses on other fronts.
Ghostwire: Tokyo is framed to be a bit of both a horror and action game, with a lot of the ambience leaning more towards horror. This is expressed incredibly well in the opening segments and tutorial, which see the world warping around the player and forcing you to navigate an empty hospital with monsters on the loose before getting the ability to fight them. These enemies, known as “Visitors”, can range from mildly weird looking to being downright terrifying. Genuinely, the very basic Rain Walkers are incredibly unsettling, and this can be attributed to how they move and look. Ghostwire has the horror elements down pat, with enemies getting increasingly scary as the game goes on, with some enemies being based on folklore or urban legends. The Kuchisake is a great example, being based on an urban legend and being quite a powerful enemy. The only issue with this is the approach to combat. There are three different elemental settings to use: Wind, Fire and Water. Wind is a single shot, Fire is an explosion, and Water is a large arc. The differences in ammunition are staggering between the three, and collectibles are the only way to increase that. In fact, most of the game’s progression hinges on collectibles- even your leveling. Leveling might be the most esoteric of the bunch, as combat is not the primary means of getting stronger. Rather, the player is tasked with finding stray spirits and capturing them in a limited quantity of Katashiro, which are paper effigies used for transporting the spirits. Once some have been captured, they are turned in at a telephone booth in exchange for a bit of money and experience. With all the spirits scattered about and how many appear after engaging with the environment, there’s no trouble finding them mostly, the system is just strange as a means of progression.
Ghostwire’s style is unmatched, and frankly carries most of the game. Certain set pieces like the environments that get distorted with high spiritual activity are downright phenomenal. The way some buildings will contort and try to mess with you is not only interesting, but engaging when you need to traverse them. Being transported by the demon parade was an incredible experience, even though it was super hectic. That, combined with this incredibly meticulous recreation of Tokyo makes the game feel incredibly rich. Secrets are packed into dark alleys, enemies walk around as if they’re people, adding to their eerie-ness, and you’re forced to take note of your environment as you fight since there’s not a ton of open space sometimes. The level of “real” the environment adds to Ghostwire makes it all the creepier to sneak up on enemies or be attacked out of nowhere. Again this horror element is where the game shines, using the environments and enemies to create a really unsettling atmosphere that is only broken when the main characters quip at each other. Going into the relationship of the main characters is a bit of an early game spoiler, but their commentary and development really shine through the general silence of the game. There’s a free visual novel meant to accompany the game that shines some light on characters featured in this game as well, so that would be a pick up for the more lore-inclined.
Ghostwire: Tokyo really demonstrated the power and ability to immerse a player through their use of next gen features like the PS5 haptics in combat, as well as breaking stylistic molds with their trippy environments being commonplace adjacent to the normal city. While there are features like combat that aren’t engaging, or traversal being absolutely lacking, Ghostwire: Tokyo delivers on a unique experience that can’t really be pinned down by a single particular genre. This is a very dense game with not many different ways to engage with things, but the sheer amount of content can leave completionists entertained for hours. A game for open world and folklore enthusiasts, Ghostwire: Tokyo puts a modern spin on old entities and flexes its style to great effect.
Score: 8 out of 10
Reviewed on PlayStation 5