[REVIEW] 刀剣乱舞無双 Touken Ranbu Warriors
Finally finished this game after 55-hour gameplay on Steam! It was a fun experience overall despite some complaints that I have about the plot, so I'd like to share my review with everyone. ^^
My final stats:
Total Gameplay: 55 hour
Character Level: All Lv. 99
Character Skill: All Lv. 5/6
Honmaru: Lv. 30
Bonds: 100% unlocked
Memoirs: 100% unlocked
Shop: All items cleared
Game Achievements: 100%
Note(s):
Long post ahead, may contain spoilers
This review is written by an existing Touken Ranbu fan
My opinion does not represent the entire audience and players of the game
P.S. I will post a separate character gameplay review next week, as well as some mini-guide/tips and trick for those who haven’t played it.
SUMMARY:
In the year 2205, an evil force known as the Historical Revisionists attempted to alter history by sending their troops, dubbed the History Retrograde Army, to interfere with major historical events in the past. To prevent disaster from happening, the Government of Time deployed Saniwa, people with the ability to manifest the hearts of inanimate object, to intercept the enemy's scheme.
Each Saniwa was then assigned to a Honmaru. With their special ability, the Saniwa summoned the spirit of famous Japanese swords and became their master. These sword spirits, who took the form of young male warriors, are known as the Touken Danshi. Under the Saniwa's command, they would travel through time to battle against the History Retrograde Army and prevent the course of history from being changed.
Unfortunately, the enemies managed to locate one of the Honmaru and launched a massive attack on it, nearly annihilating the entire citadel as they pursued a "melody" that belonged to the Saniwa of this place. As the consequence, the Saniwa of this Honmaru went missing, and the remaining 15 Touken Danshi was left adrift in time.
However, one day a sudden enemy attack arrived once more in the drifting Honmaru to annihilate the surviving Touken Danshi. At the same time, Konnosuke, a fox spirit acting as the Government of Time's messenger, arrived to instruct the Touken Danshi to defeat the approaching History Retrograde Army.
What follows after this sudden turn of event is an order from the Government of Time to investigate a series of disturbance in the past, leading the 15 Touken Danshi to travel back to the Sengoku Era in order to pursue the truth and protect history.
STORY: 6/10
A typical Touken Ranbu plot where we have to prevent history from being changed, but the methods and twists of how it could be changed never failed to draw our curiosity. In fact, there are a lot of unpredictable factors and possibilities that the story always manages to keep us gripping the edge of our seats.
Usually, in other adaptations such as the musical/stage play, the movie, and anime, there will only be one historical event to be protected in a single arc, making the story's goal clear from the beginning. However, the game managed to chain multiple interferences by the HRA in a single historical period, sometimes even making the HRA messes up an event that we have fixed. This does not yet mention how these seemingly individual events are gathered up to slowly build up the game's main plot, so the suspense kept rising the further we progress through the missions.
Nevertheless, the delivery method of some scenes often does not equal the emotional significance of the said scene. On one hand, the game’s story has almost every single surprising plot twist imaginable, but at the same time, due to the way it was delivered, the emotional impact wasn’t as big as we expected, which is kind of a pity.
There are also several plot holes left after completing the game. A lot of important issues are left unaddressed; the ending itself resulted in more questions that answer.
During the livestream of Touken Ranbu Musou's trailer, the voice actor of Mikazuki Munechika, Toriumi Kousuke, seemed to hint at the possibility of another Touken Ranbu Musou game, but as there has been no confirmation or further update on this matter, for the time being we have to be content with the existing plot despite many of our questions still remained unanswered.
Aside from that, the game faithfully retains all of the characters' iconic lines from the original games, including their comments off-story (e.g. in the Honmaru, Menu screen, or during Mini-Games). Off-story conversations between the characters remain loyal to the characters' personality that the whole fandom is already familiar with
Another praiseworthy aspect is that Touken Ranbu Musou includes a huge educational value when it comes to history. Whenever the Touken Danshi departs for a mission, we are provided with an overview of how the actual history should go and a side-by-side comparison with how the enemies are changing it. The format and the explanation are easy to follow, allowing us to both understand the goal of said mission and learning history at the same time.
GAMEPLAY: 7/10
Overall, it’s not a difficult hack-and-slash game. Most of the time we can just keep hitting all the enemies, dodging occasionally with a couple of rare special-command actions and combo attacks. It's quite beginner-friendly but may prove to be rather boring for veteran hack-and-slash game players due to the generally uniform enemy types and battle patterns, save for every story arc’s Final Boss. The game has Easy-Normal-Hard modes, but to be honest, I see no difference in difficulty between Normal and Hard, except that the enemy would have a bit more health bar and maybe hit a little bit harder.
It's nearly impossible to die in battles, but it is worth noting that there is not a single healing item, except for a couple of accessories with occasional healing abilities when the specific requirement is fulfilled. On the other hand, this means the battle commands are made to be as simple as possible where we only need to remember the attack and dodging combination. Based on my experience, as long as we can avoid the bigger enemies' attack range, we may even get out of the battle completely unscratched.
Nevertheless, if there is anything that could make the game difficult, it would be the “Victory Requirements” assigned to each mission. Generally, the goal would simply be to defeat the enemies, but the further we progress through the story, the more diverse and complicated the requirements become. Sometimes it would be a simple instruction to defeat all the enemies while making sure some NPCs remain alive. But there are also stealth missions that strictly forbid us from drawing the enemies’ attention, investigations that make us look for clues or hidden paths, and many more. Even in a simple “protect the NPC” mission, sometimes there could be extra enemy troops appearing out of the blue and trapping us from the rear.
It is also worth noting that every mission has its own time limit, which means even if we are strong enough to one-hit-kill everything, if we can’t meet the mission requirements before the time limit ends, it will still count as a failure.
In general, the gameplay itself is almost similar to the MMORPG “Dragon Nest” minus its town exploration, as this isn’t an open-world game. We are basically made to keep switching between going out on missions and returning to the Honmaru to prepare for the next missions (e.g. upgrading characters’ stats and skills, buying booster accessories, etc). Among the many features in the Honmaru, there are interactive mini-games to get some bonuses like extra EXP or materials. The Honmaru navigation itself is not difficult to adapt to, which is another plus point for this game.
There are a total of 16 playable characters, but thankfully grinding for EXP isn’t too painful because first of all, we can bring a maximum of two Touken Danshi into missions, which means both characters will get their much-needed level-up together. In the meantime, we can assign a total of nine characters to various areas in the Honmaru (e.g. the kitchen, garden, veranda, etc). These characters will get some EXP every time we return from a mission, allowing them to also get some level-ups albeit more slowly.
Grinding for Koban and materials might prove to be more difficult, but not until the point of frustrating. There are also some accessories and occasional stats bonus that would result in an extra amount of Koban and materials dropped after every mission.
In addition, there is a "Post-game" feature where you can continue playing after completing the main story. Touken Ranbu Musou has quite a lot of "Special Missions" that can be cleared after fulfilling certain conditions, such as defeating X number of enemies with Y character, clearing a particular mission without taking damage, etc. Furthermore, it also allows "completionist" players to max out the characters level, bonds, and stats after the game.
GRAPHIC, MUSIC, & OTHER TECHNICAL ASPECT: 8/10
Although the visual is not the most realistic, they still capture the characters' expressions well (and the costume texture is superb). I am especially in love with the battle effects, especially when the characters are landing their special skills and Hissatsu attacks.
The music is downright beautiful. For Touken Ranbu fans, it is especially precious that they include existing character theme songs with a new arrangement for Touken Ranbu Musou. They also keep the same voice actors as the original Touken Ranbu browser game.
There are still some differences between the actual Japanese lines and the translated subtitle, but overall, it doesn't change our impression of the characters' personalities and relationships. I'm especially happy that they keep most of the iconic terms in Japanese (e.g. Honmaru, Hissatsu, etc), as well as the honorific used between the characters when talking.
There are some minor glitches. For example, when a character or NPC got pushed back, instead of stepping away, their entire person will be pushed around like you’re pushing a table. But since it’s really that minor, it doesn’t really affect the whole gameplay.
The Glossary is quite helpful to refresh our memory about plot-related issues that we forgot or missed during the story section.
CONCLUSION: 7/10
A great game for existing Touken Ranbu fans, but story-wise may be somewhat confusing for those who aren't familiar with Touken Ranbu. Likewise, the gameplay can be considered enjoyable, but those who wished for more challenge shouldn't expect too much.
It is a pity that the plot has a lot of unexplainable holes in the end. Hopefully there will really be a sequel to explain these questions.
And now let me close this review with Tonbokiri’s glorious manboobs.
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