Touhou Genso Wanderer Reviews
The two genres that Touhou Genso Wanderer is tackling have seen a bit of a resurgence in recents months and years. This is an enjoyable entry into either one, and while it is far from perfect and has quite a few flaws, there still is enough to find exciting about it and to wonder what will be next in the Touhou project. Unfortunately though, there’s just a bit more negative aspects that really hindered our experience from the positive aspects.
The strange structure and difficulty curve means that newcomers to this style of RPG might not make it much further than the tutorials. While there’s some fun Touhou flavour for the items and gear (I was pleasantly surprised when a status effect temporarily turned everything into creepy “yukkuri” heads), it never really elevates the game from being more than another Mystery Dungeon clone.
Touhou Genso Wanderer is still easily the best ‘Mystery Dungeon’ style game you can buy in English right now with a far better combat system and a great sense of humour. It is just sad that the game seems to take every opportunity to stop you from getting to that fun, by either making movement far more complicated than it needs to be to unusual localisation decisions. These are things that just get in the way of a game that has been released at an incredibly competitive time of the year. With loads of other games also coming out that will be demanding attention, Touhou Genso Wanderer needed a bit more polish than it got to stand out.
Touhou Genso Wanderer can feel like a lot to take on at times. As beginners to the series, a lot of time was spent feeling as if we were on the back foot and had missed chunks of tutorial content. The game's fun enough to begin with but becomes frustrating very quickly, and ultimately doesn't offer enough excitement to sustain any interest that it may have piqued early on.
I’m sad to say that I can’t in good conscience recommend Touhou Genso Wanderer for anyone outside of the anime fandom, unless if they’re a genuine Touhou fan.