This game is so much fun! And also so very infuriating! This game reminded me that I don't even really like roguelikes in general, I like Mystery Dungeon games as my first love was Shiren and this game is very similar to that, except it's even more addictive with its roguelite-inspired gameplay built around infinitely upgrading your equipment. Absolutely fantastic game.
At its core, this is a japanese-style roguelike where everything is turn-based and you make dungeon runs, with the important difference that you keep your e quipment upon death (in most dungeons) in this game, meaning that the key to victory is to keep upgrading your weapons over and over. When you start the game, you will think that level 90 is the maximum, but then you unlock the melding feature and find out that you can take equipment all the way to level 999 while also melding attributes from other gear onto your favorites (even though down to changing the sprite and attack animation for it). It's enormously addictive and there's always something to do in the game's dozens upon dozens of dungeons with various themes and challenges, especially when this is one of those games that lets you combine that god-tier weapon other games make you dream of but never allow you to craft. Want to combine the abilities of that fast sword with the damage of the slower one? Level up those bad boys, get the required resources and go ahead!
With 300 hours already spent on this game, probably more since I don't think I looked at the in-game watch for a while, it's tough to say that this game didn't deliver for the like $10 I spent on it and, at the same time, it's frustrating that I think that I'm giving up here, with only a handful of dungeons left. The problem with this game is that it just takes things too far. Complaining about content seems stupid, I know, but there is simply too many dungeons in this game with too much challenge in them. I've done about a dozen of the challenge dungeons and I'm just exhausted at this point. They're almost always 99 floors long and take an entire day, and that's if you succeed, and the game is relentless in throwing things at you don't exactly feel fair, considering how for example enemies don't seem to have any cooldowns whatsoever and only RNG decides which attack they launch, and in harder dungeons the RNG is heavily weighted towards their best attack, so they're allowed to just spam it and drive you insane. It's just plain too much.
Another thing to complain about, that I just touched on, is that the later dungeons are just straight up infuriatingly unfair at times, and enemies can really throw some unfair crap at you that the developers really could've calmed down with. I'm talking most specifically about Marisa's ridiculous laser that has a one turn charge and literally infinite range. You just walk into along corridor and, blast, your companion is now suddenly dead in one shot and it turns out a Marisa enemy was like 15 screens away and still got to kill you, which doesn't exactly feel fun or fair. The game does do that a little too often for me to be comfortable with purely praising it.
In short, this is a fantastic game that may have a few mistakes in the enemy balance design, but above all the major complaint is that it simply has too much damn content and that it takes a lifetime to truly complete. I know that's a weird complaint, but had this game offered "only" 300 hours of content and not like a thousand, I would've given it the highest score I can, but I like to feel finished with things and I will never get to feel finished with this one and as such can only rate it the second-highest score and regretfully uninstall it just to move on with my life and onto other games and life activities. We had a lot of fun, Genso Wanderer, but it's time to move on.
At its core, this is a japanese-style roguelike where everything is turn-based and you make dungeon runs, with the important difference that you keep your e quipment upon death (in most dungeons) in this game, meaning that the key to victory is to keep upgrading your weapons over and over. When you start the game, you will think that level 90 is the maximum, but then you unlock the melding feature and find out that you can take equipment all the way to level 999 while also melding attributes from other gear onto your favorites (even though down to changing the sprite and attack animation for it). It's enormously addictive and there's always something to do in the game's dozens upon dozens of dungeons with various themes and challenges, especially when this is one of those games that lets you combine that god-tier weapon other games make you dream of but never allow you to craft. Want to combine the abilities of that fast sword with the damage of the slower one? Level up those bad boys, get the required resources and go ahead!
With 300 hours already spent on this game, probably more since I don't think I looked at the in-game watch for a while, it's tough to say that this game didn't deliver for the like $10 I spent on it and, at the same time, it's frustrating that I think that I'm giving up here, with only a handful of dungeons left. The problem with this game is that it just takes things too far. Complaining about content seems stupid, I know, but there is simply too many dungeons in this game with too much challenge in them. I've done about a dozen of the challenge dungeons and I'm just exhausted at this point. They're almost always 99 floors long and take an entire day, and that's if you succeed, and the game is relentless in throwing things at you don't exactly feel fair, considering how for example enemies don't seem to have any cooldowns whatsoever and only RNG decides which attack they launch, and in harder dungeons the RNG is heavily weighted towards their best attack, so they're allowed to just spam it and drive you insane. It's just plain too much.
Another thing to complain about, that I just touched on, is that the later dungeons are just straight up infuriatingly unfair at times, and enemies can really throw some unfair crap at you that the developers really could've calmed down with. I'm talking most specifically about Marisa's ridiculous laser that has a one turn charge and literally infinite range. You just walk into along corridor and, blast, your companion is now suddenly dead in one shot and it turns out a Marisa enemy was like 15 screens away and still got to kill you, which doesn't exactly feel fun or fair. The game does do that a little too often for me to be comfortable with purely praising it.
In short, this is a fantastic game that may have a few mistakes in the enemy balance design, but above all the major complaint is that it simply has too much damn content and that it takes a lifetime to truly complete. I know that's a weird complaint, but had this game offered "only" 300 hours of content and not like a thousand, I would've given it the highest score I can, but I like to feel finished with things and I will never get to feel finished with this one and as such can only rate it the second-highest score and regretfully uninstall it just to move on with my life and onto other games and life activities. We had a lot of fun, Genso Wanderer, but it's time to move on.