Tokyo Exorcist
As an avid survival horror fan, Tango Gamework’s previously released series “Evil Within” is a favorite of mine with Evil Within 2 specifically being one of my favorites of the genre.
As much as I wanted some DLC for that title or just a sequel in general, Tango Gameworks instead opted for a brand new IP, which on its initial reveal did not show much of anything other than an interesting premise of the streets of Tokyo being littered with clothes of its now spirited away inhabitants as spectral entities patrolled the now deserted city.
Suffice to say, I was intrigued from the very beginning but the more that was revealed, I couldn’t help but feel that the emphasis on combat might take away from the horror elements.
Now that I have completed the game and had time to see all that it has to offer, I see that my concerns were well founded but it turned out that the biggest issue plaguing the game isn’t its action focus but something else entirely.
Akito is having a bad night.
MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: PS5/PC
Played on: PS5
Voice over options: JPN and ENG
Length: 11~ hours
Waking up in the middle of the street seemingly having been in an accident, Akito quickly finds himself caught up in a paranormal phenomenon as a mysterious mist sweeps through Tokyo and spirits away any human that it touches, leaving only their clothes behind. Worse yet, he finds that the only reason why he wasn’t spirited away himself was due to him being possessed by the spirit of man that calls himself, “K.K.” Setting their differences aside, Akito resolves himself to use the spiritual power of “K.K” in order to bring the perpetrator to justice.
The initial setup of the story is quite clear and focused as Akito’s quest to get his sister back and K.K’s hunt for revenge leads to them hunting down the same culprit. The dynamic of Akito and K.K. gave me a sort of buddy cop vibe where K.K. was the rugged veteran who has seen it all and Akito being the rookie copy being exposed to the world of mysticism for the first time and I enjoyed the banter between the two even though it was repeated quite a bit. What is odd however, is the way the overarching storyline doesn’t really evolve from that initial setup and after arriving at a certain point, it becomes a mad dash to the finish, to the extent that I couldn’t help but feel like it was at a rush to wrap things up just as I was starting to get invested in the characters.
To put that into perspective, the first few 4 chapters marked about 10 hours of my playthrough while the final few chapters only encompassed about an hour and a half of playtime. I know that there might have been some developmental issues for this title with a key member of the staff leaving during its development, but it’s unclear at this time if that has any relation to how the story felt rushed and incomplete by the end.
I did appreciate how the game let me know when I was going to a point of no return and what quests I would lose access to when I got there.
From a combat standpoint, Akito has access to three spiritual powers revolving around the elements of wind, fire and water. Wind is a sort of a rapid fire handgun, capable of delivering quick shots to rack up the damage. Water was like a shotgun with a powerful but short ranged blast that would cover a wide area directly ahead. Fire was like a grenade launcher that could inflict massive damage with the stipulation of very limited ammo.
Despite the actual gameplay implications being pretty familiar with types of weapons in other FPS titles, the reason why they standout is due to the excellent animation work on the hands when wielding the spiritual power. It reminded me of ninja hand seals not unlike those found in Naruto and the way they transitioned into each other not only looked smooth but the actual act of launching these attacks gave them a certain impact. This was helped along thanks to the use of the Dualsense controller which would shift in sensitivity on the trigger buttons to emphasize the feeling of charging/launching these powerful attacks.
When Akito is separated from K.K. or just wants to use something a bit more stealthy, he can take out a bow to inflict massive damage on unsuspecting spirits. However, the ammunition was a premium and I found myself not relying on it too much except for those situations where I had to.
Another highlight aside from the animation work on combat was the various enemy types, known as “Visitors”. While there wasn’t too much of a variety of them with only a handful of truly unique enemies being available, their movement and animation work really brought them to un-life and made them fun to take down. Even though I could just deal sufficient damage to exorcize them, I could also stun them for a time and expose their cores and use the wire to take out multiple enemies at the same time but the process left me vulnerable to counter-attack so it became a balancing act of choosing the right moments.
One big issue with combat itself is that even though it’s fairly entertaining to fight the visitors and use the tools that I have to fit the situation, it’s that my tools did not really expand after everything was introduced within the first few hours of the game. So in that, I was using the same tactic of “block enemy attacks, spam spirit attacks to kill enemies” from the beginning all the way to the end with upgrading of skills merely improving the abilities I already have instead of introducing new ones.
Cleansing Torii gate, climbing a radio tower, what’s the difference?
As for the open world itself, there’s a great sense of atmosphere and feeling of dread walking the empty streets of Tokyo with the clothes of all its denizens strewn across the ground. However, aside from some large and notable landmarks, the streets kind of blended together and I found myself opening the map constantly just to figure out where I was. Even though this is an open-world game, there is white fog blocking access to certain areas which must be cleared up by cleansing Torii gates in the area. The act of cleansing the many Torii gates around the map also showed various quests and collectibles in the area and it immediately gave me the impression of lazy openworld design.
Luckily, at the very least, many of the side quests around the map delved into various folklore and urban legends native to Japan which I found to be quite interesting and I was happy to complete all marked side quests that I was presented with even though some of them ended up being repeated content. Speaking of repeated content, there is a lot of that in the open world. Collecting lost spirits and sending them to the outside using telephone terminals was one of the main ones and even though it was very obviously a repetitive busy work, the experience reward was good enough that I was picking them up whenever I could. There were also various types of yokai to track down for Magatama and more “activities” but in truth, I only found that the side quests were really worthwhile in their content to actively track down and complete.
Open world games don’t need to follow one formula but sometimes it feels like that they do.
As a brand new IP, Ghostwire: Tokyo shows a lot of promise with its strong animation work, solid combat and interesting world design, but it falters along the path to the finish line with a story arc that feels rushed along with an excessive use of typical and tired open world game design tropes.
Fun Tidbit: I tend to be a bit more lenient on brand new IPs than I am of sequels as I believe that the industry is in dire need of new ideas instead constantly treading familiar grounds.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
