#can't recommend neo twewy because i haven't played it. i refuse to believe that any of the non-DS remixes can be as good as the OG however

[darkaac]

Ok finally finished ghostwire tokyo and, hm. Not gonna lie i'm a bit disappointed.

I'll concede part, perhaps even most, of it is my own expectations based exclusively on the reveal trailer from 2019 (lmao), how I thought it'd be about some sort of modern onmyouji dealing with youkai in current-era Tokyo, with gameplay not dissimilar to what to me is the King of First Person Games With Funky Hand Bullshit (Dishonored): snappy combat, acrobatics, stealth, maybe a power that teleports/slingshots you forward, normal things (Somehow I do have to give it props here for having the voice of a dead person as your companion, something something two nickels).

But of course, as is evident in the way I've framed it, it doesn't... do that.

Before even getting into the combat I have to mention the camera, because I swear no matter how I moved the sliders around there was no way to make it feel comfortable. Either it slingshot 180º as soon as I touched the stick or I'd have to pull it along like I was trying to walk a cat on a leash. This becomes a problem in combat, considering it's first-person and all, even if you slam on L2 to lock on (for it is a capricious little thing and it may not feel like doing that, admittedly it slows down the camera so it's easier to line your shots better). L2 also does 5 quintillion other things so maybe that's why the lockon doesn't quite work right.

Your combat equipment is as follows: you have 3 weapons, each corresponding to an element, you have a bow for longer range, a melee attack that is mostly for breaking objects in the environment (though you can upgrade it to give it more functionality in fights), and a variety of support talismans. Each of the elements has its own characteristics: fire is slow to charge but has good range and damage, water has great damage at the cost of a pretty reduced range, and wind. "Odd way to finish that sentence!" Well, you see, it's because wind doesn't really have, um, downsides, beyond its lack of (inherent) AoE damage*. It's supposed to have mid range and mid damage, but your rate of fire is so fast, you get so many shots with it (around 30 by the end of the game, compared to fire's ~6 and water's ~10), and the shards (ammo) for it are so numerous whenever you break anything, that the other two feel like they're just kinda there, you know. *There are explosive cans and barrels around sometimes, and it doesn't really matter what you hit them with

The combat itself! It's boring. You stand there, finagle with the camera until it's on the enemy, and start spamming R2. After enough damage you can press/hold L2 (depends on how far you are from the enemy) to finish them off. The animations for this are pretty cool, but you don't get i-frames or anything, and if you're hit during the Hold animation it will get interrupted and the enemy won't be stunned anymore. If anything gets close, press L1 for a shield or L3 plus a direction to dodge (NOT forwards you CANNOT dodge forwards if you press L3+Up you SPRINT because it's the SPRINT button). You deal with the bosses in the exact same way, just whaling on them until their core(s) are exposed. That is, except for one of them: the Chapter 3 boss is a stealth fight, where you have to hide out of its view as it patrols in order to snatch its cores away .

Neither I nor GwT itself consider this game a stealth game, but let's look at its options in this regard anyway! You can Crouch and Sneak Kill.

Moving on.

Fine just kidding you can also go over the rooftops and avoid 85% of the overworld enemies, leaving only sheet ghosts (who die in 2 shots anyway), and teruteru bozu - Evil and Fucked Up Edition, who WILL rock your shit because they fly all over your FOV and, as established, the camera doesn't want to collaborate. Remember how I mentioned you have a bow? Sounds like it'd be a good weapon for picking off enemies from a distance without others noticing, yes? Eh. The damage seems inconsistent (a fully charged shot may or may not kill a basic enemy) and the projectile falls off pretty fast. Plus, enemies don't really chainpull based on sound anyway, so it might actually be safer and quicker to just Wind them to death (arrows are also rarer than shards because you have to either find quivers at shrines or buy them).

Ok now we can move on.

The main story! It's there, it's serviceable, it made me say "wow that sure was a Story that I Experienced", no more no less. I've heard the stories for some of the side missions are pretty good, but I didn't feel like going through all of that. The characters are also Okay.

The sound! The SFX department did a pretty good job, impact sounds are appropriately weighty, each element and the transitions between them are nice and distinct, the ambient drone of enemies that haven't found you yet (but are orbiting your location) is unsettling. I cannot say much for the music because none of it really stuck out to me. The cast does a good job and their voices fit the characters well, I think (played with JP voices).

The graphics! This is A PS5 Game so of course it's going for superultraturborrealistic graphics, and of course I mean no disrespect to the artists and modelers and other such members of the team but I do have to wonder What's The Point, Really. I don't want to lay the blame at their feet necessarily but most I was hitting was ~25FPS, less so when it was raining, even less so (to the point of having to relaunch the game completely) after cutscenes stopped playing. Could it be that that's because I'm still using a GTX 960? Maybe so, but Elden Ring and BG3 had no problem with my setup, so maybe the answer here is to have actual graphical options so that I could've put this bad boy on Low and enjoyed a relatively stable experience. Beyond that, I enjoyed the enemy design and how the Visitors represent fears and stresses of modern life: faceless, office worker-looking guys, "lost" children in bright raincoats that summon stronger enemies if they see you, the legless, untethered ghosts of those who've been cut off from those around them, the lady that cuts you up if you answer a question wrong... There are classic youkai around, usually in side missions (nekomata are everywhere as shopkeepers), I have nothing in particular to say about them. The environments are also quite detailed, and I particularly liked the times you get to visit the spirit world, it really felt like a place you were not meant to be in, a serenity that remains unperturbed even while you're fighting for your fucking life against a bunch of guys. Shibuya on the other hand suffers from Open World Game Map Syndrome, so it kinda became a blur after a while, other reviews I read were wowed by how close to the real thing it was, however, so ?

Should you play Ghostwire: Tokyo? idk I'm not your boss, if you buy it now it's certainly not gonna be to support Tango Gameworks (rip), but maybe if you don't go in with the Lofty Dishonored Expectations it becomes a much more enjoyable experience. Honestly if you want a cool story about supernatural happenings in Shibuya with banger after banger in the OST just get your ds and find a copy of (og) TWEWY somewhere.