Ghostwire Tokyo Prelude Visual Novel Impressions

After a surprise release yesterday, we finally have the chance to get a glimpse of the upcoming world of Ghostwire Tokyo, through the eyes of supposedly one the most important characters, the KK spirit that accompanies the protagonist. However, this time we get the chance to see the world through his human eyes 6 months prior to the events of the upcoming main game, and investigate a peculiar case of unusual disappearances that are somewhat related to supernatural forces beyond the understanding of normal people.

The Detective Team of Ghostwire Tokyo Prelude

The narrative of the game is mostly told through a third person narrator that does not only portray the characters but also goes in depth about their feelings and other important folklore points related to the system of the world. A young boy in Shibuya is interested in the articles of the detective KK, and his endeavors in uncovering the answers behind unsolved cases, and takes the initiative to contact him and his team of associate detectives: Ed, Rinko and Erika.

As KK, you connect to your team through your cellphone, which is utilized as a simple mechanism throughout the game for checking out news and choosing whom you want to talk to. This adds the replyability value that you will have to repeat the game 3 times at least to see KK’s interactions with every member of the team, and see how each of them approaches the same case differently. It also counts as a self exploration of KK’s character through each of them respectively.

Authentic Translation and Technical Issues

The translation took great care to keep the original Japanese terms and explain them for non-Japanese speakers, which is part of the identity of the game. The investigation does not only involve looking for clues and talking to witnesses., but also involves talking to spirits and fighting with paranormal entities throughout a simple scripted battle where you choose to apply defensive barriers or wind techniques to damage the enemies. After an hour you will get to escape peacefully and save the boy’s friend, while getting ominous glimpses of what’s yet to come and the changed world of Tokyo.

I have been really enamored with the narrative and how it’s told, but Ghostwire Tokyo Prelude could still use some touches on the technical side. There are a lot of instances where I found the text overlaying itself with each button press to the point that it has become unreadable, and sometimes sprites disappear even though they were there during the same scenes. The text also is not only confined to the boxes themselves, and sometimes breaks the boundary of the text books like it’s floating in air.

There is also no backlog button, and the game does not make it clear what interactions support the normal buttons and what actions are done through the touchpad button. This has caused us a bit of confusion until we realized the game actually supports the touchpad during certain choices.

The adventure also does not reveal any interesting details or explain how the events in Ghostwire Tokyo Prelude leads to the weird developments hinted in the trailers. It can be considered as a random adventure and nothing more until the game confirms it’s relative importance, but for now, I feel it’s not important to try this product before the main game, and it’s totally ok If the player wants to miss it, but since it’s already free, and contains only 1 hour of content, or two hours if we count the replay value, it does not hurt to try, or wait until the technical issues have been resolved.