Touhou Genso Wanderer (PS4) Review

Touhou Genso Wanderer is a mystery dungeon style game.  If you aren't familiar with that, you basically run through multiple floors of a simple randomly generated dungeon to get to the end, fight a boss, and then leave.  You have to contend with limited item space, many enemies, traps, and hunger to survive.  Leaving resets your level at 1.  Dying means returning to base with little to no items.

Fortunately, Genso Wanderer lets you keep your items when you die.  You will lose all of your money, though.  This makes it easier to do subsequent runs, since you hold on to your main equipment, but also useful items.  However, the game seems very liberal with the traps that make your weapons weaker, in an effort to balance things out.

It also does a few other nice things.  The main character, Reimu, has four skills you can use while fighting, and each is useful in different situations.  There's a ranged one (my most used one), a skill that hits the three panels in front of you, a piercing distance shot, and an AoE that hits the eight panels surrounding you.  Each of these skills takes a certain number of Danmaki energy, represented by the red-boxed "P" under your health.  You collect a lot of these during your travels, so you can definitely use them when you need them.  Might as well, since they don't stay with you when you leave.

Reimu also has partners that can tag along on the dungeon excursions.  While they can get into trouble on their own, I found that they are extremely helpful.  They also have their own set of skills, but aren't the best judge of when to use them.  You get more as you go through the game, each with different abilities and stats.  Plus, you can also unlock other characters to play as, but I wasn't good enough to get any.

Instead of having smaller dungeons and more of them, Genso Wanderer has longer ones that change scenery every few levels.  The first dungeon changes themes at least five times, and is long enough to have three different shop floors.  The first shop area is a yokai town, which houses the kappa house.  Donating money to each of the three kappa girls (the amounts are separate, which I don't think the game informed me of) can upgrade their facilities.  Thankfully one of them lets you warp to the different shop areas, and as such, was my priority for donations.  Especially since the home base doesn't have a shop to sell your extra stuff to.  Since you lose the money when you die, might as well spend it on some useful items and upgrading the facilities.

To fuse weapons, armor and items, you need Nico points.  These are also dropped by enemies and can be stored at your home base.  Fusion is how you transfer skills and upgrades to other pieces of equipment.  This is probably my favorite aspect of the game.  There are a wide variety of skills, and it's fairly easy to move them to useful pieces of equipment.  More slots open up as the item's level increases, and you can see what skills transfer to what types of equipment.  Alternatively, you can also use Nico points to create some items.  Unlike fusion, item creation is cheap, but needs random drops as ingredients.

The game offers a good length of play, but a lot of it is trudging through the same dungeons over and over until you can complete it.  Even the first boss is stupid hard, necessitating several trips.  I'd prefer taking less damage, since your health is so low.  Equipping a shield didn't seem to help, as the extra damage from dual wielding made enemies die faster, and thus, do less damage.  There's also a couple of story arcs, each with their own dungeons.  You can also unlock a few extra locations, and some dungeons have up to 99 floors.

As mystery dungeon games go, Touhou Genso Wanderer is pretty good.  I prefer more dungeons but smaller, and ramping up to the longer ones, as opposed to what the game offers.  I like that you keep your stuff when you die, and the skills are nice and useful.  That's about all it does to distinguish itself from others in the genre.  I'm still not a huge fan of mystery dungeon games, but I'm sure fans of the genre will like Genso Wanderer.  It might seem easier at first, since you keep your inventory, but the later dungeons won't let you take anything in, and go to 99 floors, ensuring there is plenty of challenge for the diehards.


The Good:
A mystery dungeon game that lets you keep all your items when you die!  I didn't think I'd see the day...

The Bad:
First boss is pretty cheap, and, in the beginning, the dungeons are too long.

The SaHD:
I was very happy to see the attack range extension so early in the game.

(Review code for Touhou Genso Wanderer was provided by the publisher)

Shiren The Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate (PS Vita) Review

Shiren The Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is a mystery dungeon style game, and also a game with a very long title.  To change a sick woman's fate, Shiren must brave the three towers and retrieve the magical dice of Reeva, the god of fate.

For those not in the know, mystery dungeon games have many similarities to each other.  Their dungeons are multi-floored, and every floor is randomly generated each time you enter it.  Placement of items and enemies is also randomized, and what appears is random within a range.  If you die...sorry, when you die, you lose everything you have on you and are kicked back to the town.  Every time you enter a dungeon, your level is reset to 1.  You will automatically heal while moving around the dungeon, but only if you have some of your fullness meter.  It sounds a lot more complicated than is, but these are the basic tenets of the genre.

Shiren does up the ante by adding a lot of unique mechanics.  Well, at least I haven't seen them before in the mystery dungeon games I've played.  It adds so many little things that they have tutorials dedicated to all of them...seriously, all 9 or so pages of them.  In a nice twist, you will actually experience the tutorials, not just read about them, but they keep adding more.  Some of them would have been better as just a note, or text, instead of having to do a simple dungeon to illustrate them.  These tutorials open up well before you encounter them, so you have plenty of time to forget about them.

Most of the unique mechanics are pains in the butt for the player, with my least favorite being night.  Monsters get stronger, and you can barely see where you are going.  To compensate, you get skills that can only be used at night, but I'd rather it just not be in the game.  Sure, it is one of many on the list of mechanics that don't need to be here, so maybe it's just the metaphorical straw.

Thankfully, Shiren can have others follow him into dungeons on his journey.  Some are free, some are random, and some are actually useful.  They aren't the smartest bunch of NPCs, but they can be decent shields and extra attacks if positioned properly.  The only real downside to them (besides the ones that cost money, or leave randomly) is when an enemy actually manages to kill one.  This will almost certainly level the enemy enough to evolve into a stronger form, which will then almost certainly kill you.  Thanks, game.

Before Shiren can make his way through one of the towers to retrieve a Die of Fate, you have to do a 5 floor dungeon.  Every.  Time.  The towers have a recommended order, and each subsequent one adds a floor or two to the top.  After getting all three dice, you then go to another town, and have to continue through to another dungeon.  Guess what happens if you fall in there?  Yup, back to the first town, and through the 5 floor dungeon, the tower you last beat, and then to the dungeon again.  I don't know why they can't just let you warp to the town you made it to, or allow you to skip the first dungeon after completion, but they don't.

Maybe it's to keep your level high enough to survive the other dungeons?  That could work, but enemy damage jumps up every other floor regardless, lessening the impact you get from grinding.  Well, as much grinding as you can do.  They actually built a mechanic into the game that will make you auto fail a dungeon if you take too long on a floor.  So, you have to rush through, but take your time.  It just doesn't make sense.

Most of my gripes come down to the fact that the game is mean.  You are punished for not grinding and punished for grinding.  You are punished for the random number generator not going in your favor.  Oh, did you have items kept in that pot?  Too bad, this enemy just threw dirt into it and destroyed them.  Is that a good sword?  Too bad, you stepped on a trap that made it weaker.  Did you lose your strong sword but it was tagged?  Then go through 15 floors to find it again!  Since the game saves a lot without telling you when, it is a pain to save scum by using the cloud.  Making it through Shiren takes more luck than skill, which is something I don't like.

I should mention that there is a way to keep your stuff if you fail...but you have to be rescued.  You can only do it so many times, and you will have to wait for another person (nearby or over the internet) to actually come and rescue you.  It would be great if it didn't result in just sitting around for an hour or so waiting for someone to show up.  Maybe if they sold a million copies it would be feasible, but it's not a feature I got to experience.  There's also some versus multiplayer and co-op, but again, I don't know anyone with the game to be able to try them out, and I did sit around hoping for some random people to no avail.  At least the game has the option, even if less than 10% of players (my estimate) will actually be able to use it...

While it can take anywhere from a few hours to a lifetime to make it through all the normal dungeons, Shiren does throw some nice extra ones at you as well.  First is the two puzzle-like dungeons, Statue Cave and Explosive Rocks.  Statue Cave is moving around statues to their proper location, like a block-sliding puzzle.  There are many different stages of it, and each gives you a reward when you complete it.  Explosive Rocks is the mystery dungeon equivalent of Minesweeper.  So, if you actually like that game, you will probably like it here.  At least it is a decent way to get some items if/when you run out trying to get through the story.  Besides those, there are a host of other challenge dungeons that each have one or more unique quirks about them.  I'll definitely give the game props for having a variety of dungeons to delve through.

Overall, Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate is a tried and true mystery dungeon game.  For better or worse, it clings to the established formula, and doesn't offer any real modern amenities to help the player through the game.  While it does offer some other content, the game is just too unforgiving and mean for me.  Other games in the same genre are much more fun, while still being hard and unforgiving, leaving Shiren feeling too old-school and random.  Having some reliable method of actually getting stronger for harder dungeons, or not having to make your way through past dungeons to get back to where you fell would be leaps in the right direction.  As it stands, it is hard to recommend over previous mystery dungeon offerings on the Vita.  However, if you like this style of game, and are itching for a challenge against the RNG, then by all means dive in.


The Good:
The sprite artwork is really cool, and the extra puzzle and challenge dungeons are a nice touch.

The Bad:
As a normally unlucky person, I do not like leaving my progress to a RNG instead of player ability, learning and knowledge.

The SaHD:
Probably the only reason I got as far as I did is because I met a shape-shifting companion that would join me for free early on.  She's the best!

(Review code for Shiren the Wanderer was provided by the publisher)

Trillion: God of Destruction (PS Vita) Review

Can you defeat a boss with a trillion hit points?  That's the basis for Trillion: God of Destruction.  Even by JRPG standards, that is a colossal amount of HP, and it is your job to whittle it down and defend the Netherworld.  To accomplish this, you will need the help an Overlord sharing your power.  While the beast sleeps, you must train and prepare...lest it consumes you as well.

There are two main phases in the game.  There are the actual fights against Trillion, and the training period while it rests.  Before Trillion awakens, you have a certain number of cycles and days (1 cycle is 7 days).  Each of the training selections takes 1 day and has a particular focus, usually on a certain type of experience.  Each stat you raise and skill you purchase requires a certain amount of the different types of experience.  It's better for each character to go with their strengths and not round them out, as the normal enemies are easy and Trillion has, well, a lot of hit points.

Training will also increase an Overlord's fatigue, so you will need to tell them to rest (otherwise you risk injury) or use an item on them to lower it.  The blacksmith will increase the power of your weapon, which costs money.  Each weapon will also have up to 8 slots (that you also unlock with money) that you can put seals onto.  The seals offer various effects, most of which are stat boosts.  To round it out, there is also a shop that sells some items, seals and equipment.  You shouldn't have to buy much of that, as you can find a lot of things in the Sword Valley.  The shop also sells devil envoys, who are A.I. controlled helpers that will fight with you in the Trillion/Mokujin fights.  If they perish during the Trillion fights, they are gone for good, so make sure to buy and equip another.  They are actually pretty useful.

During the cycles, there are also random events that can happen.  These usually involve you choosing an answer to something, and they can have different effects.  Some can give you an item, extra experience, or even give your Overlord a status ailment.  You will see the same ones several times, but even then the choices don't always lead to the same result.  Eventually, you will learn which ones are worth doing, and some have no downsides to them.  All in all, you are subject to the random number generator (RNG) for many of them.

While each Overlord has HP and MP, and anyone who has played an RPG will understand those, they also have a third meter, called affection.  This represents their feelings toward the Great Overlord, and in battle acts as a shield for their HP.  It is very important, since having some allows you to retreat from the Trillion battles.  Giving the Overlords gifts and spending time with them (in the Rest menu) will raise their affection for you, and also give them more affection meter.  There are many gifts in the game, and each of the Overlords reacts differently to each one.  However, each has a few presents that they absolutely love, and giving it to them gives a big boost to affection and a little scene with them.  As their affection rises, spending time with them will trigger special scenes, some of which have a CG image that unlocks in the gallery.  Plus, sometimes you can find the Overlord in the hot springs, since I'm sure you were going to ask if that was a thing in this game.  Worry not, it is here!

There are other fights besides Trillion itself in the game.  While the training segments are more akin to a simulation game, the fights are like mystery dungeon games.  The area is laid out on a grid, and the enemy only takes an action when you do.  Normal attacks can be directed at any of the 8 surrounding squares.  You can change the direction you face without moving (which is very helpful), use items or active skills.  Being able to plan your actions is very helpful to avoid damage and get to your goal fast enough and safe enough.

Combat will be in one of three places.  The most obvious are the fights against Trillion, but they are also the least numerous.  The second is against a monster called Mokujin.  At the beginning of each cycle, Mokujin will take the form of Trillion and you can do a practice battle against him to better learn how to fight the final boss.  These are really, really helpful for learning strategies and gaining valuable experience.  However, they also stop when you need them most.  I won't spoil why, but needless to say there was a time I needed Mokujin and he wasn't able to help.

The third area for fighting is the Sword Valley.  These are randomly generated and you must reach the exit in the specified number of turns.  There are a set number of enemies and treasure chest strewn throughout the area.  You will want to get what you can, since every enemy killed is experience and the items and equipment you pick up may be useful.  If you are running low on moves, remember that some skills will move you multiple spaces with one move, provided you have the MP.  The fights in the valley are the easiest in the game, since by the time you dive in, you probably can kill everything in one hit.  This is the grinding area, though, not the hard part of the game.  That's what Trillion is for.

So, what happens when...I mean if, your chosen Overlord is overwhelmed by the gluttonous beast?  First, they get to execute their death skill.  there are a few to choose from, and can either do extra damage (I'd love to actually kill Trillion with one of these...so dramatic!), power up the next Overlord or other things.  The one I prefer is Demon Barrier, since it extends Trillion's rest period.  This gives you more time to buff yourself up.  After that, the next Overlord is chosen, and gains a portion of the experience earned from the previous one so you can hit the ground running.  During the fight, if you still have affection, you can retreat.  This will give you more time to train, but you can only do it a few times per girl.  Use it as much as you can...the extra time and experience really makes a difference!

Even when you know you are going to lose one of the girls, it can still be a sad experience.  The sense of loss is one of the driving themes of the story.  I figure it is possible to defeat Trillion your first run through the game, but it is very, very unlikely.  Or I'm terrible at the game, I'm not sure.  It's fine to me that you can't win the first time, since you gain so much while failing.  My only gripe with it is the end.  It's probably not a spoiler to say that if you run out of Overlords to fight against Trillion, you will lose.  When you finally do, it's a small scene and then a game over screen.  It feels really lackluster for such an inevitable outcome.  I'd prefer it more framed as a 'bad ending' rather than just outright losing, since most players that complete the game will see this as their first ending.

There are obviously multiple endings, depending on who manages to slay Trillion.  Since it is very likely you will fail to do so, the game has a nice new game+ feature.  Each girl will keep the experience they earned.  You will have to re-buy their stats and skills, and their weapons will return to the default state (meaning you lose its levels and seals).  I'm fine re-buying the skills, but the stats is a bit annoying.  It's not a huge deal, but you will end up holding the button for awhile to catch them back up.  The weapons returning to the default is the biggest bummer.  Lesson learned: don't spend much on an Overlord unless you plan for them to win.  You also lose any items they had equipped and any tokens for the prize machine and Sword Valley.  However, you keep all the money you had, along with all the items in storage.  This includes the affection items, so spend all the tokens you can before the end!

I'm not 100% positive of my playtime, since I don't see anywhere in the game to track that (which is annoying), but it had to have been over 40 hours.  The time is variable depending on what you do, the choices you make, and if you get more of it through the various means.  Still, it took a long time to get through the game once.  At times it felt a bit long.  Without spoiling anything, there were a few extensions that I did not expect that kept the first run longer than I would have initially thought.  It feels kind of weird to complain about a game taking too long though, but at times it felt this way.

Overall, I very much enjoyed playing Trillion: God of Destruction.  The concept is great and the execution is well done.  Training and combat are simple to understand, but offer some depth if you think a little outside the box.  It's also unexpectedly emotional at times.  The new game+ option is really good and helps you finish off the boss with repeated playthroughs.  I do have a few minor gripes with the game, but they aren't things that diminished how much I enjoyed it.  The game is long, almost too long, and offers a lot of value if you enjoy it as well.  I would recommend JRPG fans check the game out.  It is fun and one of a kind!

(Review code for Trillion: God of Destruction was supplied by the publisher)

The Witch and the Hundred Knight: Revival Edition (PS4) Review

Almost two years ago I reviewed a PS3 game called The Witch and the Hundred Knight.  Now the game has come over to the PS4 as the Revival Edition and boasts improved graphics, performance, a new area to explore and a new feature: the ability to play as the Swamp Witch Metallia in that new area.

Like most re-releases, I'll first give a quick recap of the game without too much detail.  If you want more, check out the full previous review here.  You control the Hundred Knight, who was summoned to this world by Metallia, the Swamp Witch.  She sends you to various locations to fight enemies and release special pillars that will spread her swamp (she cannot leave it, so expanding it is the way she can go elsewhere).  It is an action rpg with some mystery dungeon elements to the game.  You free run around each area (there is no grid), and have a stamina meter that drains when you attack, sprint or dodge.  It will quickly fill up if you have Gigacals left, which drain as you move around each dungeon.

This aspect is like systems found in many mystery dungeon style games.  You will refill your HP as long as you have Gigacals, but if you run out of both, you will return to Metallia's hut and lose many of the items you gained in the dungeon (the items are held in the Hundred Knight's stomach).  You can also activate a power-up mode, called Chaos Revelation, which increases your stats but burns through Gigacals much, much faster.

Combat is handled by equipping up to five weapons, which will be your combo.  You can get bonuses by equipping weapons in matching slots (there's a little die-like number on each weapon).  The Hundred Knight can also block and dodge.  If you dodge at the right time, you get a mystical dodge, which slows down time so you can counter attack.  Mastering it is really helpful on bosses, so you can inflict lots of damage when their defense is lowered.  The combat is pretty satisfying and fun, and the adoption of some mystery dungeon elements add a unique twist to the whole thing.

With that said, it is now time to check out the improvements.  The game does look better on the PS4, but it isn't that noticeable to me (maybe it has been too long since I played the original).  It loads a little faster, but again, not a whole lot of improvement.  The game is much more stable on the PS4, though.  Where the PS3 version had some random crashes, I have not encountered it or any other crashes while playing the Revival Edition.  This is great, but strange that "more stable" is a re-release bullet point.  The game felt a little easier than I remember as well, but I don't know if they balanced it more or if I somewhat remembered how to play.

Really, the biggest addition to this edition is the Tower of Illusion.  This dungeon opens up after completing the first 2 chapters of the story, and then you can freely travel to it from Metallia's home swamp.  To start a tower run, you must select a weapon you have to show it to the tower.  Your choice determines average enemy strength and things like drops and drop rates.  So thankfully it will be hard to bite off more than you can chew, since you shouldn't have weapons way above your level.

Once inside, you must complete a number of rooms and floors.  All monsters in a room must be defeated before you can move on to the next.  You still earn bonus ranks that you can cash in for stat boosts, but there is no bonus meter.  It's basically a random assortment of room of enemies you have to kill as you try to go to the top.  When you first load a room, it is loaded before it displays, and I've been hit with a few cheap shots when the enemy attacks before the game shows me the area.

The best part of the Tower of Illusion is the ability to play as Metallia.  When killing enemies, you collect Concentrated Mana that fills a meter.  As long as you have at least one full section, you can summon Metallia, which lets you play as her for a time.  She has a big and powerful sword for her attack, and three magic spells at her disposal.  Drop rates are also doubled while using her, but honestly, just using her is fun enough on its own.  To further entice you to go through the tower, enemies in the tower sometimes drop alchemy ingredients that the Hundred Knight can use outside to increase the stats of his equipment.

The Witch and the Hundred Knight: Revival Edition is a reasonably fun game that combines action, rpg and mystery dungeon elements together into a cohesive package.  The added Tower of Illusion does actually feel like a significant addition to the game.  It's really cool that you can play as Metallia there, and being able to power up weapons with special drops makes it just a little better.  It might be enough to tempt fans of the original release to double dip.  It's a shame you can't import your data from that release, as it would make recommending it a no-brainer.  New people should definitely choose this edition over the previous one if at all possible.

(Review code for The Witch and the Hundred Knight: Revival Edition was provided by the publisher.)