Combat in Ghostwire: Tokyo doesn’t leave you with a massive amount of options, but there’s honestly a lot of subtlety to the game’s systems that won’t be clear until you dig a bit deeper into it. Well, it normally wouldn’t be clear until then, but you’re reading this guide that’ll give you those dirty details right off the bat. I’m going to break down some of the less obvious complexities contained within the game, so grab a bucket of popcorn or, well, actually don’t do that. Unless you just want to give it to me.
First things first, ethereal weaving. That’s how you’re going to be fighting most everything. Sure, you can use arrows, but those are much more rare, making them a sometimes thing. You can also use your melee strike, but it’s super weak and borderline useless in many scenarios. Ethereal weaving comes in green, blue, and red forms. Red, which is fire, is the strongest attack at your disposal, sure, but ammo for it isn’t nearly as common as wind and water is. Therefore, you’ll want to use it sparingly. When you come up against stronger, tankier enemies, that‘s when you’ll slam them with fire. Weaker enemies aren’t worth wasting it on.
Because of how often you’ll find blue and green ammo, however, you can go hogwild when using those, even considering how much more limited your blue shots will be compared to green. The basic gist of when to use these attacks is as follows. When you’re just going up against a few enemies, it’s a better idea to just pelt them with green shots, either regular or charged. You can back away as enemies creep up on you and jump on top of cars and the like, so green is more than enough to deal with these foes.
Fight ’em ’til you can’t
By “these,” I’m mostly referring to your skinny umbrella and high school Visitors. You know, the girls and boys in the uniforms. They’re easy to knock down too, so you can use a ground finisher on them once you’ve purchased that skill. It’s time to switch to water when the enemies start surrounding you or mid-tier foes show up. Water can make very short work of weaker Visitors, but you’ll want to try and hit more than one at once, so if there are a bunch of weaker enemies, hit them with your water attack and you’ll thin the herd quite quickly.
With mid-tier enemies, such as the heavier umbrella guys, you’ll want to get in close and spam your water weaving attacks. It can’t be overstated how effective water weaving is. For scissor ladies and freaky shrine maidens, though, you’ll absolutely want to hit them with all the fire you’ve got before swapping to water weaving. Another thing to consider are cores. Make sure and buy the skill for melee core grabbing and finishers for ground enemies. The default core grab is so risky that you’ll often not want to use it. Enemies in Ghostwire: Tokyo are very into pelting you with ranged attacks, after all.
When you go to grab a core or finish a downed enemy, try and do so if they’re not next to other enemies, as you can still take a lot of damage from getting hit during these animations. Skills to speed them up are also quite beneficial. But the root of the advice I have is simply to not be afraid to use as much water weaving as you want. You’ll steadily get ammo, so don’t think you have to mostly lean on wind. That alone will make combat in Ghostwire: Tokyo notably more manageable. Also, you can perfect parry anything and not take any damage. Whenever you’re up against a stronger foe, make sure you make proper use of that if you’ve got the timing down.
