Touhou Genso Wanderer

Touhou Genso Wanderer packages together one of the most approachable roguelikes and one of the more mediocre Castlevania type titles into one complete package for any tourist of Gensokyo.

Genso Wanderer is a really well made roguelike, it’s great about introducing new mechanics at a steady pace, and it’s pretty easy to get into – even if you have no prior knowledge of other Touhou Project games. Unfortunately, for as well made as the game is, the story proves to be the weak link here. It’s certainly present throughout the adventure, but the general structure makes for a journey that feels a little empty. It’s hard to care about many of these characters and, for the most part, the events unfolding around Gensokyo just serve to give more reasons to crawl through dungeons. A larger focus on gameplay isn’t all bad, but I certainly would have liked to see a better realized story as well. That said, after over fifty hours of dungeon crawling, I’m glad I took the time to investigate all of the weird incidents surrounding Gensokyo. It’s a game that’s very much worth persevering through each obstacle thrown your way, no matter how demoralizing each death might be.

Touhou Genso Wanderer is a worthy addition to any roguelike fan’s collection, and even more so for Touhou fans as there are references to their other games throughout this one. The everyone takes one turn at a time system might not be for everyone, for this title is one of the better implementations of this format.

Interesting but simple. Fun but ugly. Addictive but not for very long... A nice game that does a lot of things well, but also fails on others.