Touhou Genso Wanderer RELOADED

Game: Touhou Genso Wanderer RELOADED

Developer: Aqua Style

Publisher: Mediascape and NIS America

Reviewed Platform: Nintendo Switch

Release Date: July 17, 2018

Touhou Genso Wanderer is a rogue-like dungeon role playing game.

STORY

Your character is a female protagonist named Reimu a shrine maiden of Hakurei Shrine. Her duty is to resolve problems involving yokai and such.

The story consists a series of mysteries, yes there is more than one meaning there more than one adventure (^.^) YAAAY!!!

Usually what happens there will be a situation that requires Reimu’s attention she must investigate and solve.

You travel by walking through dungeons and floors. In this rogue-like dungeon rpg each area is a dungeon and sections are floors.

The floors are filled with yokai attempting to prevent you from passing. While walking throughout the dungeon floors you’ll encounter traps: you don’t see the traps until you step on them and they can be random with either positive OR negative effects such as make Reimu faster/invincible OR drunk/hallucinate/confused/sleepy/immobile/etc...

ALL KINDS OF STUFF.

To move onto the next floor, you need to find a magic circle. This is the exit. You don’t know where it is until you’re in the area.

On the right side of the screen you’ll see a map, it won’t show much until you discover an area. If you have a certain spell card in your inventory you can use it to reveal the whole map of the floor indicating the locations of enemies, items, and the magic circle.

There ARE floors within dungeons where you can rest. These floors usually have a type of lodging for you to replenish Reimu’s health and a shop to buy items: food/medicine/talismans/spellcards/etc.

On these floors you encounter characters where interaction is in story type scenes like an anime.

There’s a lot of talking and if you’re not into reading dialogue you can skip it after the main introduction of each character.

Eventually some of these characters will act as your partner who help you tremendously defeat enemies throughout the dungeon floors. When your partner’s health is low you THROW medicine at them to heal. If they die you can use a talisman to revive them or if you don’t have any look for a shrine somewhere on the floor. Once you reach this shrine POOF your partner is back.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay is a Turn Base system, that means when the player takes one turn, the enemy will take another. A turn can be a move or action. An action can be using an item/changing equipment/executing danmaku.

Danmaku is like a special attack that require P items. There are 4 types of danmaku attacks, each requires a SPECIFIC NUMBER of P items. For example, my favorite danmaku attack is the double barrier, it casts a strong attack around Reimu damaging any enemy in the 8 spaces surrounding her. It’s VERY gratifying and requires 10 P items.

P items can be found throughout dungeon floors and from enemy drops. There is a P item bar at the top left indicating amount. Try to use danmaku attacks as much as you can because P items are plentiful and it’s such a waste to collect them when the P item bar is full.

The turn base system also affects your Health and Tummy, hunger bar. Moves replenishes HP but depletes the Tummy.

When the Tummy reaches 0 you will lose 1 HP per turn. The Tummy can be replenished from eating food items found, dropped, or bought.

ADVANCED FEATURES

As I mentioned before Touhou Genso Wanderer is a rogue-like rpg which means the difficulty can spike randomly as you play. One moment you’re breezing through the dungeon and the next thing you’re surrounded by enemies and die easily.

It can be FRUSTRATING when you’re not prepared.

How do you prepare you ask?

By performing NITO FUSION on items you find throughout the floors. NITO FUSION allows you to fuse, mix, produce items, or develop equipment. Reimu and her partners have equipment: weapon, armor, and a charm. Equipment have empty slots filled by seals. Seals are extracted from items and FUSED to your equipment by performing NITO FUSION. To utilize NITO FUSION you need NITO POINTS

which are acquired by finding them on dungeon floors, from enemy drops, or from items DISMANTLED by NITO FUSION.

Some dungeon floors will really limit your inventory capacity (its random), so you get in the habit of utilizing all your items in some way instead of hoarding for those “just in case” moments. Note: DO NOT HOARD YOUR ITEMS because they are plentiful throughout the floors, you will find the same items again and again. There will be times you can’t pick up anymore items. It seems a waste to leave the items on the floor, fortunately you can FUSE or DISMANTLE the item right there at the spot without needing to have it in your inventory. So when you find an item and can’t pick it up, perform NITO FUSION and fuse it with equipment or dismantle it.

EQUIPMENT

At first you may get worried if you have the right equipment or if you should swap for something better… DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, it won’t matter what kind of equipment you have after fusing with NITO FUSION because the equipment EVOLVES gaining fabulous abilities.

Filling in the slots with seals gives your equipment special abilities it didn’t have before. For example I got a “Zzz” seal on my weapon and I had the ability to temporarily put an enemy to sleep. They can’t move and I can attack them until the wake up or die. Plus when your weapon levels up those abilities get stronger. Awesome, right?! So FUSE THE HECK OUT OF YOUR EQUIPMENT.

FINAL THOUGHTS

First impression of Touhou Genso Wanderer, I didn’t like the game. I would get stuck in some floors because I died a lot due to being weak. I got frustrated from not being able to pick up items because my inventory was full of hoarding. Then once I got familiar with performing NITO FUSION, fusing items to my equipment and dismantling items the game became SO MUCH SMOOTHER and more enjoyable. My equipment got more powerful, I was kicking ass and I didn’t waste any items. I was able to go through the dungeons and floors faster as a result progressing through the story.

The story is what I looked forward to because you interact with different types of characters. The characters are SO cute and adorable. When I completed the first story I was disappointed because I thought that was the end and I didn’t encounter majority of the FEATURED characters. I was looking forward to meeting the tengu. Then I waited after the credits and she APPEARED. My hope was lit on FIRE. It turned out one chapter ended and another was beginning, which is what I’m currently on and I’m EXCITED.

Video Review posted on YouTubehttps://youtu.be/ZHW7wMg_tP4

Sources

NIS America, Inc. (2017). System | Touhou Genso Wanderer - Official Site. Retrieved July 6, 2018, from http://nisamerica.com/games/touhou-genso-wanderer/system.html