Nintendo Switch – Touhou Genso Wanderer Reloaded #197

Maybe I should have googled who these characters were before starting…

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Touhou Genso Wanderer Reloaded – Nintendo Switch – Released: 7/17/18 – $49.99

To set the record straight… I have no idea about the Touhou series. These characters are completely unknown to me when I started the game. The main character, Reimu Hakurei, has been in over two dozen games and the bulk of them she was playable in some way. Touhou Genso Wanderer is actually the third game in the Mystery Gensokyo series, if I am reading this right. The Touhou wiki page has all the titles in Japanese so hard to keep track. They made several “Plus” versions for their games so easy to lose track of what is what and which ones belongs to which series. I believe this is one of the first titles to come to consoles, at least in the States, since this series was primarily a PC game. Touhou Genso Wanderer is a mystery dungeon game much like the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon or Etrian Mystery Dungeon series. Levels are randomly generated and you go floor by floor until you reach the boss. After defeating a boss you will be able to progress the story further. While this style of gameplay can be great and rewarding, an issue I found with Touhou was that levels could sometimes be brutal. I could spawn on a floor that is crowded with enemies and have to take a death to retry. It never got too much on my nerves but it is worth noting that this did happen several times. Being the first game in the series for me, characters are already well developed or at least they expect you to know some of them. Having no idea who was who and why they were important is rough. If you know this series it maybe better for you but for me I would have loved to spend more time learning about characters before jumping right into it. I would give Touhou Genso Wanderer Reloaded a 7 out of 10!

Short Review (Review copy provided by NIS America)

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Story

Reimu and Rinnosuke are hanging out when Reimu finds a golden Bomberman (no kidding checking the gameplay video) and Rinnosuke is holding the golden sphere. Reimu tries to touch the ball as Rinnosuke easily dodging her tries and tells her that she cannot touch it. Reimu tries once more when she is able to touch it and the ball falls from his hands to the floor. The ball glows until it breaks and a beam of light come out of it. After Reimu regaining conscious she notices that Rinnosuke is possessed by something. Rinnosuke attacks her and says he must get rid of the Shrine Maiden to succeed in his plans. Reimu uses a teleporter to escape his attacks and it is now her job to find out what happened to him, relive him of the evil spirit and get rid of the evil currently spreading throughout the land.

Gameplay

It is a fairly basic mystery dungeon game but your character has several special attacks and a partner. You will pick up healing items, items to attack enemies from afar, hold items while in a dungeon so if you take a death you don’t lose anything. I found that making sure you had enough P points to use specials was the most important. The other gimmick in dungeons is your tummy, while it is full you slowly recover HP but if it goes to 0 you will slowly lose HP with each turn. The game has your standard traps and status conditions. Some traps can easily be taken care of though with the power to float, this will make you not touch the ground and allows you to find secret areas.

Personal Experience

This game is a fairly long due to CGI cutscenes and dialogue based cutscenes. I would say this is a bad thing but considering I don’t know anything about the characters it would have been even better to get more information about them. The only thing I didn’t like was that one of the characters has a side story that informs you what they were doing prior to joining the group. I feel as though this DLC should have been unlocked early on so if I wanted to check it out before meeting them I could have. It would have been a great way to streamline the DLC and prepare me when they group up. Another issue like I stated in the short review is that characters are already developed and we don’t get much back story. The other issue is the randomness causes some deaths that I felt were unfair. It is a shame since I like this game but I needed to know more about characters to be invested in them.

Final Thoughts

While Touhou Genso Wanderer Reloaded is a good Mystery Dungeon game with enough DLC to warrant the price considering DLC on other consoles would be $20-30 depending on region. It is a shame that nothing is really explained with the characters. You are expected to know them somewhat which is a pain for the new market or at least for people who purchased the Switch version. I would love to see more games ported over for the Switch since I want to know more but limited by this one game unless I purchase a Vita or PS4 and learn Japanese. There is something special here since I still enjoyed my time with the game but somethings could be better implemented when it came to characters. I would give this game a 7 out of 10! While a fun experience, the problems are more due to the lack of games in my region than the game itself. There is no way of learning about these characters unless I plan on spending hours reading about them on a wiki page.

My Gameplay Footage: