izigame.me

The map is absolutely gorgeous and detail-rich, I've played alot of games set in Shibuya and this rendition blows everything out of the water by order of magnitudes. It is quite simply one of the best maps I've ever seen in a videogame.
(EDIT: I've taken a closer look at the street layouts and it seems that while major landmarks are in the game, less known places and backstreets aren't accurate to the real Shibuya, instead just imitating the Tokyo look in general. Places like, Shibuya Stream, Miyashita Park, Modi, Spain Hill, Cat Street, Udagawa, Takeshita Street, etc. aren't in the game. Nonetheless, it's a gorgeous map even without its accuracy.)
But that's where the good things end. This is a game entirely carried by its presentation. The combat is underdeveloped and gets dull quickly, there's barely any enemy variety, the open world activities are basically a bunch of Ubisoft-style collectathons, and the story feels like a complete afterthought with how uninteresting it is.
It feels like what happened here is that they made the map and then realized they had to make a game around it, so they scrambled to fill it up with content and shipped it as soon as possible. This is a rushed product, not in the usual sense of being buggy, but in the sense that its core concepts haven't been developed enough.
I'd love to see Ghostwire becoming a series that takes us to different places across the world with their local environment und culture on display, but before that can happen, Tango Gameworks has to sit down and rework the mechanics of Ghostwire. Make the combat deep and engaging beyond some sparkly animations. Give us a great range of different enemies that we actually have to approach differently from each other. Invest time into making a compelling story with interesting characters. And make open-world content that makes the exploration of your beautiful worlds even more fun rather than less so.
Ghostwire has alot of potential and can become a great game series, but as it currently stands it's not there yet.
Final verdict: great map, mediocre gameplay. 5/10.
Buy it if you want to walk through Shibuya, but otherwise your time and money is better spent elsewhere.
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REVISION:
I came back to finish this game almost a year after first playing it on launch. I was a bit over-dramatic in my original review. At the time I was really disappointed about the Ubisoft-like open world design and it rendered me unable to appreciate other parts of the game. I had a better experience finishing the game now, and I want to detail that.
Combat is better than I remembered. The animation does most of the heavy lifting here, everything looks and feels spectacular. There's also a bigger toolset at my disposal than I remembered, although I do have to say I didn't feel the need to use a majority of it. Enemy variety still feels lacking, but I think that's more because you can really approach every encounter in the same way, by just keeping your distance and shooting projectiles. That's probably also why I didn't really use every ability I had as often.
The story isn't as horrible as I first thought, but it's still a huge missed opportunity. The foundations are set to create a great narrative here, but you go through the main campaign so quickly that you don't really have the time to get attached to any of the characters. Another huge issue in my opinion is that the initially mysterious villain and his motives are essentially an open book after the opening missions, robbing the game of any intrigue on that part.
Side content is still a mixed bag, but there are some parts of it that deserve more praise. The side missions range from alright to absolutely stellar, with some being given a level of care that I didn't expect. Coming back, this was genuinely the most enjoyable part of my experience. Not quite on the level of CD Projekt Red side quests, but miles ahead of whatever Ubisoft is doing. The rest of the side activities are still extremely lacking though. The collectathons reign supreme and they are still draining as ever. There's some particularly gruelling challenges here, like the 240'000 spirits you have to collect or the 123 relics you have to find on the map. The latter were especially hard to do as there's no way to track them and they don't show up on your map unless you happen to run past them at a proximity of like 5 meters.
Also, something that I completely omitted in my original review was the huge optimization issues I was experiencing. I was playing most of the game at around 25-30fps with frequent stutters at launch, which undoubtedly impacted my experience at the time. This has been fixed now. I played most of the game at 60fps and had virtually no issues.
Something that shines through way more now is the focus on Japanese culture and especially urban myths and general mythology. It really ties the game together and I'm honestly kind of ashamed of having originally accused the game of being rushed and directionless.
Overall, the game is still a mixed product, but it's nowhere near as fatally flawed as I originally thought. I'd give it a 7/10 and would recommend it, although maybe at a discount. Definitely looking forward to what Ghostwire as a franchise can offer in the future though!