What exactly is Touken Ranbu?
Originally released in 2015, Touken Ranbu is a free browser game where players take the role of a Saniwa who has the power to turn historical, mythical and even some imaginary swords into beautiful warriors known as “Touken Danshi”. “. The Danshi is humanity’s greatest weapon against the Retrograde Army, a group of absurd-looking skeleton bugs that are traveling back in time to change the course of history. As the Saniwa, you have the power to protect the historical timeline by sending your Danshi back to earlier eras of Japanese history to defeat them, even if that means restoring the past. unquestionably devastating moments in the past.
The game was released internationally only last year, that’s when I first got acquainted with it. But before you start downloading it to your iPhone, know that this is a very free game from 2015. The gameplay is largely made up of clicking through menus. As for the many battles you’ll be doing, they have a minimalistic presentation with little or no input from the player. It’s really as good as it can possibly be without being considered a clicker game, which actually makes it a pretty perfect candidate for a game. Combatant intersection.
Warrior Touken Ranbu (PC, Switch [reviewed])
Developer: Omega Force, Ruby Party
Publisher: Koei Tecmo America
Released: May 24, 2022
MSRP: $59.99
Think about it: the players of Touken Ranbu must use their imagination when it comes to combat of the game. And if you have to use your imagination, those battles can really look like anything, including the hack ‘n’ slash 1vs 100 RPG. That’s pretty much what Omega is. Force and Ruby Party, (Koei Tecmo’s female-oriented development team is best known for Angelique series), completed with Warrior Touken Ranbu. They took the core of Touken Ranbu experience, upgrade humanized swords for combat and replace non-interactive combat with that classic combat Combatant how to play.
As it turns out, it’s a pretty good combination, as long as you don’t expect this to be as widespread as tradition Combatant game. There are no big maps you need to conquer here, no big changes to the fight as new heroes and enemies arrive. Warrior Touken Ranbu Simplify the experience with short missions called Sorties, where you’ll choose from Touken Danshi’s predetermined selection to stop the evil plots of the Upstream Army. Each Sortie is divided into three or more “investigations” that are primarily your task with eliminating specific creatures or historical figures or certain enemies. Some are a bit more complicated with additional details that you will have to uncover.
Like with a tradition Combatant In the game, you are free to kill every enemy that stands between you and the end goal, but you intend to target the main enemies marked on the map with an exclamation mark. The game enjoys throwing in a few curved spheres with escort and stealth missions. While these tasks help keep things alive, they are few and far between and are never difficult or time-consuming. Most surveys last only a few minutes due to the small nature of the map.
But how does it play?
In combat, Warrior Touken Ranbu play similar to everything else Combatant the game comes before it. You have weak attacks you can chain together with special attacks, a powerful Hissatsu solo that is tied to meters, and team attacks you can do with a partner AI also depends on meters. Before each investigation, you will choose from a number of characters available in that chapter to choose your team leader and a partner. The more characters they investigate together, the stronger their relationship will grow. Characters with strong relationships will enjoy new perks. While fighting is the best way to build a bond between your swordsmen, they can also grow close while in Honmaru.
Honmaru is your base of operations. Normally, Saniwa is Honmaru’s master, but in Touken Warrior Ranbu, no Saniwa is seen. Instead, Konnosuke, a colorful Kudagitsune, is ordering and assisting in the investigation of these disturbances in the past.
For Danshi not joining Sortie, Honmaru is a place to sit or stand still as they gain XP. If you place two characters in the same spot around Honmaru, they will get a little closer to each other after each investigation. They will also give players the chance to earn more items, money or XP with a few simple mini-games. You can take pictures of your Danshi here, as well as on the battlefield, but this feature restricts camera movement more than necessary, and pose, filter, and framing options are limited a bit. unfortunately way.
Expect to spend a lot of time at Honmaru. Part of the appeal of Touken Ranbu admiring the graduate students of porcelain leather swords as they sparkled against the elegant background. An attempt was made to recreate that kind of appeal in Warrior Touken Ranbu, but with graphics and character models straight from the PlayStation 3’s early days, the game isn’t as engaging as it might have been. Most of the characters look like low-rent Kotobukiya characters, while a few, like Hyuga Masamune, are very plain. Outside of the battlefield, the world is colorful with some proper lighting and design, but nothing remarkable when fighting through a bunch of different castles, towns, and wooded areas.
Musou Oops! All Swords
No matter what you get from Warrior Touken Ranbu Pretty much depends on what angle you’re approaching this game from. If you’re coming from the position of a longtime fan of Koei Tecmo’s hack ‘n’ slash franchise, you probably won’t find much here that will satisfy you. Small maps, short quests, easy gameplay even when playing hard, you can’t skip any of the complex attack animations and, because all the characters are sword users, no much variety between their playstyles. If all of that doesn’t sound smart to you, it’s probably best to wait for anything Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes turn out to be.
But, if you are looking at this game through the lens of a Touken Ranbu fans, then I think it’s really fitting. There’s a ton of gameplay here with an extended story mode, a cache of unlockable dialogues, and side chats, as well as plenty of ways to level up and improve Danshi. It also runs fine whether you’re playing handheld or connected to a TV. And, if you’re completely unfamiliar with Combatant‘gameplay, there is an “easy mode” control scheme that will simplify things for you. Plus, you never have to wait for your Danshi to be repaired.
Briefly, Touken Warrior Ranbu not a traditional game Musou/Combatant fan. This is aimed directly at the crowd that didn’t have to search for the term “Saniwa” on Google when reading this review.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]
