While Ghostwire: Tokyo takes the time to explain every mechanic and ability you have to use pretty well, having even a tutorial window with all the explanations you have so far, there are some general recommendations that can help you in your adventure purging yokai.

From how to best explore the streets of the city to how to administrate your inventory, here are nine tips especially thought for the players spending their first hours in the game. So prepare your hand seals, recharge your SP, and get ready to fight spirits.

Updated December 13, 2023, by Sean Murray: Ghostwire Tokyo tips are right around the corner. We've updated this guide with improved formatting and more links to other helpful Ghostwire topics.

Look Up To The Sky

During Chapter 2, you’ll meet a tengu for the first time. These are flying yokai that will be near tall buildings, making a distinct sound. Tengu are not hostile: they work as a hook point, which you can grab from the street level. Simply zoom-in to a nearby tengu and press the buttons on-screen.

It’s pretty important to keep an eye on tengu locations and visit the close building’s roof as they usually have spirits, meika, torii gates, and other collectibles. You can always check the already spotted tengu by looking at your map — they have a black and white circle marker.

Some tengu are stationary, but others move from one roof to another. Keep an eye on this, so you can explore other buildings.

Disable Time Limits

Some main story and side missions will ask you to do a specific objective, such as escaping a location or destroying some hidden objects, under a time limit. The amount of time that you have is normally more than enough to complete your objective, but this will ultimately depend on you.

If you get too much nervous during these kinds of time trials, don’t panic! You can actually disable all of them by turning off the option from the main menu. Simply go to ‘Options’, ‘Game’, ‘Disable Time Limits’.

Check Every Corner Of The Map

Every street of Ghostwire: Tokyo is full of collectibles and elements to interact with. KK’s notes, Takuni, files, dogs, magic cats, and the list goes on and on. Apart from being an action game, it’s clearly focused on exploration, so you should check every corner of the city when you have the chance.

More importantly, after some hours of playing, you’ll find out that you can stock up your inventory with healing items pretty fast if you go out looking for bags. They are everywhere, and they usually have some important consumables.

Always Save Manually

While there’s an auto-save option and a forgiving checkpoint system for everything important that you do, using the manual save option won’t hurt. Quite on the contrary, this game has a lovely saving system in which you can save the exact spot that you’re playing. Pretty useful to avoid repeating sections or battles.

Plus, you can create multiple save files, so take advantage of them whenever you might need to use them.

You can’t save while in combat, exploring a building, or doing some specific missions.

Quick Purge Is The Way To Go

Obliterating your enemies in Ghostwire: Tokyo is super fun, but sometimes you can end up being overwhelmed by the number of enemies you’re facing — especially when taking your first steps and not having a lot of upgrades. This is why you should use stealth whenever you can.

If you get behind an enemy without alerting them, you can perform a 'Quick Purge': a strong take-down that will automatically exterminate a spirit as long as they aren’t one of the strongest ones — like the scissor lady, Kuchisake. Using this move will let you clean rooms and streets without exposing yourself.

You can upgrade the speed at which you move while crouching. This upgrade is under the “Abilities” branch.

Your Map Is Your Best Friend

If you like collecting a ton of items, you’re in luck: this game has way too many collectibles waiting for your magic hands. This would be an intense task if you didn’t have a map that you could use by just pressing a button.

Furthermore, many items and elements such as relics, torii gates, tengu, special merchants, and other types of yokai will be marked on your map as soon as you pass near them.

Unfortunately, you can’t mark multiple points on your map, only one at a time. On the other hand, you can filter what information and icons you want to see on it, making the map a bit less busy.

Spectral Vision Is Your Second Best Friend

Unlocked early in the game (Chapter 2), Spectral Vision is the “special radar”, also known as “Eagle Vision”, that Akito can use at any time in the game. This ability lets you see what enemies are around, their cores’ locations, and it also marks breakable and collectible objects nearby.

Spectral Vision will become one of your most useful tools when fighting and exploring. It doesn’t have any cost and its cooldown is pretty short, so you can use it as many times as you want. You can also upgrade the radius of this ability in the “Abilities” branch.

Interact With The Dogs And Cats, You Monster

Have you seen how cute the animals in this game are? You won’t stop petting them any time soon. However, apart from being a beauty, they can also help you in your exploration.

Dogs are the most basic NPCs in the game — it seems like Tango Gameworks is full of cat people. By giving them the generic Dog Food, you’ll receive some meika or other consumable items. Cats, on the other hand, won’t ask you for food, but they will give you tips and directions on unique collectibles, like the Tanuki. Plus, magic cats are the merchants of Ghostwire: Tokyo, so you’ll want to meet them all.

There are unique vendors called Handicraft Nekomata that will sell items like KK’s Notes and Magatama. You can also give them the relics you found in return for rewards.

All Updates Are Actually Good

For sure, this will be highly dependent on how you play, which equipment you like to use (if any), and other factors. At the end of the day, some upgrades are far better than others.

However, all of them can be quite useful. From moving faster, gliding for more seconds, and carrying more items, to just making your Weaving better and deadlier, there are many upgrades that deserve your interest. Check the ‘Skills’ window and explore every ability when you can.

You’ll be able to unlock every upgrade in a single file. However, you might only unlock half of them if you dedicate your time to exclusively completing the main story missions and avoid all the optional content.