Ghostwire: Tokyo

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Recommended to me by a friend, I was blown away by the visual spectacle that was displayed in the trailer. After playing it through to near 100 percent, I wanted to share my thoughts on this game. What I came for did not disappoint. This game is beautiful in its environments, props, characters, and animations. What you see is what you're getting and I couldn't be happier. I loved learning about Japanese history and culture through the collectibles present throughout the map, as well as the attention-to-detail with areas like the shrines. Movement played a huge role in enjoying traversing across Japan. Using the glide and portable tengu was a lot of fun, if a bit janky with their movement/controls. They give you an ability that acts as wall hacks, which helps in finding specific items. I don't think I would've enjoyed looking for stuff without this feature. Combat was alright, even though I felt I overpowered myself which made some enemies a cake walk (even when on hard). This game doesn't really challenge you too hard with combat, but I think that was intentional (more on that later). The only enemy I didn't like fighting was the sanguine dancer (the flying red umbrella enemy). Visually amazing, terrible implementation into gameplay. The one thing I think this game lacked was the story. Spoiler for the story in this section. My biggest gripe was the detachment of the main story from the gameplay. Not in the "you can go anywhere without urgency to the main plot" way, but in the "nothing I'm doing helps push my character towards their arc at the end of the game" way. Akito and KK are supposed to be confronting their past and letting the grief wash over them to move on, but Akito doesn't get much dialogue or side missions that help build this arc out. KK gets a somewhat nice conclusion, but it didn't feel as earned as it could've been with more dialogue/missions that focused on their fear of grief. I may be wrong, of course, but I didn't really feel a strong impact as Akito walked up the torii gate stairs as I think the story writers wanted there to be. With all being said, what really kept me hooked was the exploration of Tokyo and the satisfying animations that played. They made combat a visual treat, but didn't really hone in on making it the most interesting thing. My guess is they wanted to focus a lot on the world building and creating a 1:1 of Tokyo. I don't know how accurate it is so I can't judge it, but I'd say from a glance it's very faithful. Exploration was solid, combat was alright, music was good but kind of forgettable, story was whatever. Try getting it on sale, but full price isn't bad for what you get.