Touhou Genso Wanderer

s on our market after a wait of about two years. Let’s start with the narrative premise of the title: the story, relatively simple, has the sole purpose of making us able to play: we will interpret the heroine

of the series, Reimu Hakurei, who will witness a strange transformation of the human friend Rinnosuke after touching a curious golden sphere from which he did not want to break away. Curiously, in our proven version, the initial cutscene with which

the story was introduced featured only Japanese subtitles: a lack of English language curiously curious by the translators, however unresolvable with a timely patch. Do not worry, however, because the events will be explained in the dialogues, this time entirely subtitled in English: a choice more consistent with the knowledge of the European public.

As for the dialogues, as the custom of numerous Japanese productions, we must point out that there are enormous quantities throughout the introductory phase and even at certain levels of the game; unfortunately most of them are not inspired and hard to entertain the player during the adventure. We therefore find it opportune to

have made them leapable or, in any case, not useful for the final understanding of the plot. To make a comparison, also the Neptunia seriespresents a great deal of dialogues, but in that case the humor and the good general level of the script c

an make them enjoyable enough. Other negative points on which we nose a little nose are the overly simplistic graphic style, the result of a cross-platform nature, which is especially noted in the version for Playstation 4, and also a soundtrack in our opinion too anonymous .

Concluding this necessary premise, we can focus on real gameplay analysis. As mentioned above, this is a roguelike, clearly inspired by

series like Mystery Dungeon or Shiren the Wanderer : we will have to try to cross the different dungeons from start to finish in one go, as long as we have to start over again, returning to level 1. As the game can be very punitiv

e because the dungeons will be generated procedurally in every run of ours, and many deaths arise from situations (not anticipated) which can not be practically avoided; a minimum of frustration is therefore inevitable, especiall

y if we had a “run” so far practically perfect.

Unlike other exponents of the genus, we must point out that  Genso Wanderer tries not to overturn the player, allowing him to keep all the objects that have been collected so far; These include equipment, which can also gain levels during the dungeons and thus evolve parallel to what the player did. 

he adventure: There is even possibility of grinding, since the game will try to punish us if we were for longer than normal at a level we can only advance with no access to maps already addressed. The only way to survive is therefore to try to defeat as many enemies as possible during the natural stages of exploration in search of the access poin

t at the next level, always trying to keep a perfect inventory for every type of situation. In this game we will not only have the life bar, which can be refilled automatically or consumed objects, but also a “tummy” bar (literally, “belly”), which will need to be filled regularly with certain foods in order not to get it to the fateful “0”: If this is to happen,

We can decide to run our own runs alone or accompanying a partner, and we may also set certain priorities in its way of action (whether to f

ollow us, if we start attacking, etc.). We can move in any direction we want and attack by using one of the spells we have recovered, certain objects to be launched on enemies, using the weapon we have equipped (and thus finding us alone in front of our opponents, expecting an immediate counterattack in the case the shot was not enough to kill them) or use one of the dantamas at our disposal.