Ghostwire: Tokyo — Quick tips for new exorcists

Ghostwire: Tokyo is an open-world game with a lot to see and consider. Some aspects of it won’t be completely clear immediately, so we put together this handy quick tips guide to help you get your spirit journey in Ghostwire: Tokyo off to a good start.

After all, you can never have too much help when it comes to saving the world.

Blue and green are plentiful

When you defeat enemies and break floating objects in the environment, little shards are left behind. Although you have green, blue, and red elements at your disposal, red shards are far less common than the other two. While it makes sense to only use red attacks on more imposing enemies, you should go hog wild with the green and blue ones. Use them however much you feel like; you’ll rarely find yourself running low without being able to get more.

Buy more Katashiro

In Ghostwire: Tokyo, you use Katashiro to absorb souls to exchange for goods. At first, the game gives you a couple of free Katashiro for the first shrines you purify. Afterward, though, getting more is up to you. All you need to do is buy them from convenience stores. They seem pricey at first, on account of being 3,000 yen and all. But the game gives you so much cash that you might as well buy as much as you can justify. I recommend having about 25 of them, which means buying 13. You can do that and still have a ton of money left over for if you want to buy arrows and talismans.

The perfect parry works on everything

Some of the game’s enemies hit very hard, but the parry window is quite judicious. No matter how strong an enemy attack is, blocking it at the right time will nullify all damage. This makes the perfect parry indispensable for making quick work of more dangerous foes, such as the scissor ladies. It shouldn’t take much to figure out the timing for blocking attacks, so get some practice in with the weaker enemies and then reap the fruits of your effort when nastier baddies start popping up.

You’ll never use all the healing items

It can make sense to hoard healing items in some games, but Ghostwire: Tokyo isn’t one of them. The world is absolutely covered in food and drinks you can pick up, plus you can buy them (although you find so many that you’ll never need to). Don’t worry about healing too much, so just go ahead and snarf something down whenever you feel like it. Since everything you eat gives you a permanent health bonus, this will help you in the long run as you’ll see a substantial health increase from eating regularly.

Don’t go for cores if you’re not safe

When you damage an enemy enough for its core to become grabbable, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should try to grab it. If you grab a core at range, you’ll pull it with rope. But getting hit during this animation will cancel it, which allows the Visitor you were about to kill to heal their weak point. Ghostwire: Tokyo is crazy about having enemies take ranged potshots at you while you’re grabbing cores, so only grab from a distance when you know it’s safe to do so.

Additionally, most of your grabs should be of the close-quarters variety. You can unlock the ability to do this via the skills menu. And, unlike the ranged grab, this one is impossible to interrupt, making it a much better choice for disposing of foes. However, there is still a risk here, as you’re vulnerable to enemy attacks during this animation. If you’re surrounded by enemies and grabbing a core puts you in range of them, consider just attacking like normal and mowing enemies down that way. You’ll get ’em all eventually.

Check the map for Jizu and investigation notes

Two of the most important (and valuable) collectibles in the game are Jizu statues and KK’s investigation notes. These are small, hard to find, and offer great rewards. Jizu statues give you more ammo for your attacks, while KK’s investigation notes give you 20 skill points and a neat short story. Due to their size, picking either out using spectral vision isn’t really all that reliable. Instead, you’ll want to look at an area once you’ve purified its main shrine. This will tell you how many of both you’ve found. Afterwards you can narrow your search considerably, which will make it a lot easier to find them.

Arrows can be purchased at convenience stores and found at shrines

You can’t hold very many arrows by default, so it’s probably best to use them sparingly. However, if you want to use them a lot, it isn’t difficult to get more. You can either pony up the cash and buy some at any convenience store, or you can fast travel to a shrine — most will have arrows in stock. They’re frequently just sitting inside a small building with openable doors you’ll see near the main shrine area itself. By that same token, you can also buy talismans from convenience stores, but they’re very expensive.

Don’t forget to use Wire

Wire is an ability you get partway through the game and it is incredibly useful. You have to fight enemies to build up a meter before using it, but it doesn’t take long to fill up at all. Wire is another thing you may feel like hoarding but, just like with food, there’s no reason to do that. Use it when you have it and you’ll have a lot less trouble fighting off the game’s enemies. It slows down time and makes enemy cores expose themselves with less damage than before, so there’s no good reason you shouldn’t make frequent use of it. Affordable skill upgrades will even extend the time it lasts up to nearly a minute.

You can’t get ’em all

You might be interested in getting all of the skills in one playthrough, but you absolutely can’t. There aren’t enough magatama to unlock all the special skills and, even if you find all the spirits and investigation notes, you won’t have enough skill points to buy everything. It’s better to be selective of what you spend your skill points on, as wasting them will end up locking you out of getting better skills.

That’s it for our Ghostwire: Tokyo quick tips. Just remember: when in doubt, hit it with a fireball. That solves most problems you come across. Unless you’re just hungry, at which point you should probably eat some Yakuza Puffs or something. I doubt Yakuza appreciate that snack, but everyone else in the game is dead, so it’s not like they can complain.