What’s Touhou GensoWanderer -Reloaded-?   

What is GensoWanderer -Reloaded- all about? It’s a roguelike RPG where the layout of the dungeons, items, enemies and treasures you find will change every time you play the game!

Touhou GensoWanderer -Reloaded- is a rerelease of the original fangame Fushigi No Gensokyo 3, also known as Mystery Gensokyo 3. The games are both developed and published by AQUA STYLE, with localization being handled by NIS America.

While Mystery Gensokyo 3 was originally released in 2014, Touhou GensoWanderer -Reloaded-  is a localization of the updated version  Mystery Gensokyo: Tower of Desire -Reloaded- that was released on  December 22, 2016. (GensoWanderer -Reloaded- was released  Oct. 26, 2018 on Steam). Being both developed and published by AQUA STYLE, the game retains a sizable amount of consistency as it progresses for each update. The game also has a variety of arrangements of the original Touhou tracks and some original songs by the development team.

Mystery Gensokyo: Tower of Desire -Reloaded– earned a Playstation Award of 2017 under the Indies and Developer category, and received a 5-star award in the PS JPN store alongside the fangames Adventure of Scarlet Curiosity and Touhou Sky Arena -Matsuri- Climax. 

The story revolves around our protagonist; Reimu Hakurei, after an accident happened at Kourindou during her visit. The owner, Rinnosuke, was possessed by a dark power and threatened to cause an incident by duplicating Gensokyo’s population with his newfound abilities, in order to have Kourindou prosper.

He then attempts to defeat Reimu as she would hinder his plans. He succeeded in defeating her, but Reimu successfully escaped. On her way to the shrine, she met the Shikaisen Mononobe no Futo stuck in the ground, and helped her out. Futo then joins Reimu’s journey to defeat the evil-turned Rinnosuke, stop his plans for Gensokyo and prevent the spread of this dark power!    

The Gameplay

A Roguelike is a variation of RPGs, where every dungeon means a new, randomized layout and the items you find will change each time. They are turn-based; every movement or action you take (such as attacking, or using a spell) will also let the enemy have a turn and do their actions. If you’re not doing anything, the enemies will do nothing too!

As said before, GensoWanderer -Reloaded- is a Roguelike game, hence the following will apply. Some dungeons will have a unique set of rules or conditions that can alter the basic rules as you progress.

The game is turn based; meaning as long you haven’t done anything, your enemies will also do nothing. During your turn, you can take one of several actions, such as moving, picking up or using an item, attacking, using a spellcard, and more. Once you’ve done this, your turn will pass and all enemies that can move will perform an action until it’s your turn again. 

During dungeon adventures, you need to manage your character to prepare her for battles. You need to manage your health (your hitpoints) and Tummy (also called Hunger). Hunger decreases as turns pass, and once it drops to 0, you take 1 damage every turn. You can recover Hunger by eating foods you can see on the ground, or by drinking some potions. The characters in the game are also capable of using Danmaku, which varies from character to character, making them work differently than the others. Danmaku consumes “P” each time you use it, and each variety of Danmaku costs differently. Using it also passes a turn, so be sure to use it carefully and effectively! There is also the Power value seen under the character’s portrait. Power defines how much damage you can deal with your attacks and danmaku, and can be increased in some ways such as potions or equipment. 

Lastly but essentially, you need to pick up equipment from the ground to prepare your character and fend off enemies. There are three kinds of equipment in the game: Weapons, Armors and Charms. Weapons are equipment you can use to increase damage against enemies, armor reduces the damage you take and charms increase both by a slight amount. 

This doesn’t sound like much, but the real part of these equipment are the Seals, which gives said equipment special abilities to help in your adventure; such as more damage, damage resistance to certain types of damage/enemies, complete immunity to debuffs and more! There are multiple kinds of seals, namely; Removable Seals, Yellow Seals and Green Seals. Removable Seals can be moved from equipment to equipment, Yellow Seals are seals you cannot remove from an equipment, and Green seals are seals that are also not removable but only come into effect when the equipment has the same seal more than once. Mix and match these seals in order to find the best equipment for your adventure.

You also can pick up a variety of medicine you can drink or throw at your enemies for your advantage, or even find spellcards laying around to use. 

Be wary! Your enemies also have tricks up their sleeves, as they have unique gimmicks of their own! Some can remove your equipment, inflict debuffs on you, or even have spellcards!  No matter how prepared you are, the game wants you to always attentive and proceed with caution. 

Later, as you progress the story, you will be given the ability to use Nito Fusion! Nito Fusion is an integral part of the game that allows you to create, combine and dismantle materials in order to get what you want and need. You need to use Nito Points, which you occasionally find lying on the ground to be collected, or by dismantling objects. You will use it a lot in this game but basically put, it has 5 basic functions that you will use quite often: Fusion for combining your equipment, Mix for creating items such as potions, food, spellcards and gaps, Alchemy for creating equipment, and Dismantle to convert items and equipments to raw materials. Two more advanced functions, Appraise and Melding, are unlocked once you reach higher difficulties.

Appraise is a situational option in Nito Fusion, it allows you to identify an unknown item (usually found in Skin Diving dungeons, we’ll talk about those below) at the cost of Nito Points. For each number of appraisals done, the cost of the next one rises, and continuously goes on. It’s a nice option whenever you want to know what seal an item has or identify which is which when you’re not risking it, such as potions and gaps, but needs to be used sparingly due to its increasing cost.

Side-Story, Advance Dungeons and Mechanics 

Every time the players finish a main story segment, they open up much harder and advance dungeons and side-stories! These new segments also feature some unique mechanics that are not usually present in the main story of the game, some even being core gimmicks of their dungeons.

The game features a lot of side-stories, each being unlocked depending on your main story progression. These side-stories are much shorter, may have different protagonists and partners, different locations and completely different dungeon mechanics, but offer more perspective and story for the players to go through. Once you start a side-story, you can always go back and have your progress saved by returning to the Hakurei Shrine on the menu, but your inventory, Nito Points, money and storage are not transferred/shared to the main story progress until you finish that side-story. Finishing a side-story may also reward you with a new Nito Fusion recipe, which may be an item or equipment, and will allow you to move through the side-story with any character you have unlocked instead of being limited to the story’s main protag.The location where these side-stories can be accessed are easy to spot, but some require effort before you can access them.
Genso Wanderer -Reloaded- also features advance dungeons;  very special dungeons that have a variety of special gimmicks for the player once they enter it. The mechanics vary from dungeon to dungeon, ranging from no allies, unidentified items, enemies with special abilities, very limited turns, and multiple bosses. These dungeons are tricky and require a more in depth knowledge of the game if the player decides to clear them. A notable example of an advance dungeon are Skin Diving Dungeons, which makes all items found in the dungeon unidentified. However, your efforts are not wasted on these dungeons, for sometimes they reward the players with seals, exclusive/ powerful equipment and very unique items for the determined delver!

Some advance dungeons are hard to beat with simply raw equipment, which leads us to talk about Nito Fusion’s final option, Melding. Melding is the last unlockable function of Nito once you’ve progressed the story enough. Melding allows you to combine weapons and be able to transfer yellow seals to another weapon. The base equipment also needs to be max level before it can be used, but the materials used to combine with it can be any level. The base equipment also gains a portion of the material’s stats and experience, and increases its equipment’s level cap by 10. It requires a lot of Nito Points, but also provides the player with very powerful equipment as they progress. Melding can also further improve the yellow seals of the base equipment. Like Fusion, you can only meld similar types of equipment: you can only meld armor with armor, weapon with weapons and charm with charms.

This makes Melding your high-end equipment maker of your choice. Just remember that Melding is also the most expensive process and requires a hefty amount of equipment to get its full effects!

Evaluation

The game’s variety of gameplay material leaves a very wide and open space for a variety of mixing equipment and preparation. The story is also very interesting and connected to multiple side-stories that reward curiosity and exploration of side dungeons. The game’s graphics, voice acting for characters and music are also amazing and  makes the player feel connected to the story.  Opinion on the gameplay is varied, due to being easy to get used to as you start off, but the difficulty suddenly becomes very inconsistent with dungeons later on. It also provides a number of references scattered throughout the game, which adds to the number of jokes and details.

The game also has a number of DLCs for different playable characters, which are available for those who want to expand more of the current cast and experience more variety of gameplay from these characters. One of these DLCs also features another side-story, along with the new character.

As such, I recommend you give Genso Wanderer -Reloaded- a try: experience the game’s admirable details, and roguelike gameplay that is easy to learn but also prepares a variety of difficulty to those who wish to play further! There’s no need to buy any of the DLCs if you’re just interested in trying it out. I hope you can experience this game and see how it truly sets itself apart from the other games in its own genre- and perhaps it may even leave a strong impact on you, whether it’s a positive or negative impression.

The official site with NISAAmerisa:
https://nisamerica.com/games/touhou-genso-wanderer-reloaded/

The game’s steam link:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/931500/Touhou_Genso_Wanderer_Reloaded/