There are only so many skills to unlock in Ghostwire: Tokyo, and some are much better than others. As you slowly progress through an apocalyptic Shibuya, you’ll earn XP by defeating enemies, completing quests, and rescuing lost spirits. Skills are a little funky in Ghostwire — you won’t find any damage output upgrades (save for exactly one) and most only seem fractionally useful. Some unlock new abilities, while others give you a small timer upgrade. The selection doesn’t look great from the start, but some of these skills are truly game-changing.
If you want to experience Ghostwire: Tokyo to the fullest, I highly recommend getting the following skills first. These skills let you kill enemies faster, recover from fights more efficiently, and travel around the map with ease. These skills can be unlocked as early as Chapter 3, and even end-game skills are not locked out at the start of the game. You might have to do a little yokai hunting to get them all, but that’s half the fun of this very strange open-world adventure.
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Best Skills You Need To Unlock
All skills cost skill points and magatama to unlock. As you progress through the story, you’ll unlock yokai side-quests — after completing the first quest, many more will unlock across the map. These are automatically marked on your map, and each yokai activity rewards you with one magatama. By completing these quests, you can unlock some of the best skills in the game much faster than if you rush through the story quests.
These are the skills we think you need to unlock ASAP. These skills aren’t as obvious as improving your damage, but they’re still incredibly good.
- Grapple – Summon Tengu: One of the best skills in the game. This ability allows you to summon a tengu on any surface and grapple directly to it, essentially allowing you to instantly climb onto any rooftop.
- There are some caveats — to use it, you need to be below a surface, and then aim — a tengu might appear and it might not. Even if this skill is finicky, it is the only way to reach certain spirits, and you can use it to easily dodge annoying enemy encounters entirely.
- Unlock Glide Duration Boost Level 1 at least with this skill. I never got the second Duration Boost, but that would only make traversal even easier to deal with.
- Prayer Beads – Extra Set: Prayer beads are the only way to increase how much damage you deal. There are different prayer beads for each weaving type and for your arrows. As you progress and unlock Torii Gates, you’ll earn more prayer beads — and upgrades to existing prayer beads.
- Basically, if you want to make all your attack types stronger, immediately get all three Prayer Bead slots. Then you can slot in Damage+ buffs for Wind Weaving, Water Weaving, and Fire Weaving.
- Melee Core Grab – Speed Boost: The fastest core grab in the game. After exposing a core, if you have the Melee Core Grab + Speed Boost, you’ll be able to defeat a demon in a split second. Combine with Core Grab – HP Restoration to earn back more health fast.
- Ground Attack Boost: This is the only skill in the game that increases how much damage you deal to enemies. The second level of Ground Attack Boost deals x2 damage to enemies on the ground — and that includes with all your regular attacks.
Everything else is up to you. Obviously, you’ll want to upgrade your favorite Ethereal Weaving abilities to max ASAP — for me, that was Wind Weaving, but Water Weaving becomes incredibly deadly once you level it up and unleash more shots per trigger pull. An upgraded Water Weaving can down multiple regular enemies at once, and ammo charges are common drops from enemies, so you’ll rarely run out, even if you use it often. Fire Weaving is always rare, so save those shots for only the biggest monsters.
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