A word of warning to completists
Ghostwire: Tokyo has started popping up regularly on PlayStation Store and Steam sales, and given the less-than-great reception it received at launch, many people are just now cracking up on this supernatural action-adventure game. I am one of them! I recently finished the story, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t shake this game. I refuse to delete Ghostwire: Tokyo from my PS5 until I complete my 100% completion goal, and there’s one annoying problem standing in my way: slow spawning parades, known in-game as Hyakki Yako.
Think of this as a friendly heads up that may or may not come in handy one day.
Without going too deep into the actual story, a big part of the game is rescuing stranded souls in Tokyo after a supernatural event – 240,300 souls to be exact. not you need to save everyone, and you’ll eventually get tools to make the initial (phone booth deposit) collection process less of a chore. Many of the ghosts are found out in the open, whether that be on the sidewalk, on rooftops or in alleys. The open-world map is divided into easier-to-manage zones that keep track of how many ghosts you’ve collected. That said, even if you get 100% in every area, your job isn’t done.
Some ghosts are found underground (which you can happily revisit later in the game), some are trapped in randomly appearing Containment Cubes (which you can free by defending them from an enemy attack), and some poor souls – perhaps way too many – are connected to the frustratingly rare Hyakki Yako events. They are hard to find.
Strolling the (beautifully detailed) city streets, stumbling upon a parade of devils holding umbrellas and being drawn into a fight – it’s a cool idea!
The problem is, Ghostwire: Tokyo doesn’t do a particularly good job of explaining that in advance you want to participate in these parades as often as possible. The crowds can seem intimidating from a distance, so unless you have a gamer’s sixth sense it’s easy to avoid them outright in your open-world exploration until you’re on the post-game cleanup shift.
I wasn’t going to collect every ghost, but Ghostwire: Tokyo became a fun, not too stressful podcast game for me, and things snowballed. Now I’m missing about seven thousand ghosts, but they’re… all tied to the Hyakki Yako, and they sure are tricky to find when you need them the most. If you are considering pick up Ghostwire: Tokyo, watch out for parades all the way. That will help reduce mindless grinding later on.
Where to look for the parades
Some players have tried to brutally force the parades to appear by traveling quickly to familiar locations over and over, but it’s a bit of a losing battle. From everything I’ve seen online, the parades have a real-time spawn rate and there are some confirmed locations to check out. I’ve had the best luck running down the main streets semi-casually rather than trying to be super accurate with a checklist.
This wouldn’t be such a big deal if there were more events Ghostwire to keep you busy, but after a certain point the battle stops evolving and the world feels static.
On the Ghostwire subreddit, a player called GeminixDragon had similar advice:
“I found that the easiest way to get them to spawn is to walk up and down the big streets twice where they come from one end to the other, until I get into the fog or it becomes a smaller street. They usually travel north to south and back (except for the street under the overpass south of the Kuo Shrine which runs east to west) and if they don’t spawn, move on to the next spawn point in the order you saw them for the first, walking along the major streets where possible. By doing this I managed to spawn five of them in two and a half hours. I didn’t travel fast, but walked everywhere.”
Officially, Bethesda says the “Hyakki Yako will reappear after a certain amount of time — even with save files reloaded.” The developers recommend that players “Explore Tokyo or dive into some missions for a while and the event will return after a while.”
Is it worth it? Not really. But that doesn’t stop us.
Ghostwire: Tokyo isn’t the (horror) game I thought it would be – and it either feels too corny or too bloated depending on how you look at it – but I really admire the cultural attention to detail, and that’s what made it worth it worth. It’s a game you play for the setting – the all-out vibes – more than anything. Not a bad price-cut pick-up.
As more curious players look at it over the years, I hope this tip helps.
Jordan Devore
Jordan is a founding member of Destructoid and poster of seemingly random photos. They are anything but random.
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