There’s never been a better time in history for those upset with conservative shooters to set aside all preconceived notions and just experiment. Touhou deserves to be praised equally as a bullet hell and a fighter, performing like almost nothing else on the market. This, ladies and gentlemen, is bullet heaven.
The Western debut of this franchise is not the best possible, but we hope it's just the first game of many to come. At least, it's quite enjoyable with another player.
The first Touhou game in the west with a physical release and it's already getting unfairly review-bombed on Metacritic? Why am I not surprised...?
Anyway, this game is a good, fun multiplayer experience in the vein of Senko no Ronde starring the cast of the Touhou Franchise. The goal is to use danmaku to outmanuver and box in your opponent to whittle away their life bar. You can use Spellcards to act as a 'Boss Character' to force your opponent on the defensive. Every character has unique properties, like Reimu's smaller hitbox or Utsuho's shots covering more screen real estate.
The game includes a story mode and an Arcade Survival Mode where you face random opponents, as well as a Boss Survival Mode where you have to survive against spellcards for single player content. Although singleplayer is bare-bones, where the game truly shines is multiplayer. While the servers had issues on day one, human opponents are smarter than the AI, and even then, a high level AI is brutal and fun to fight.
As far as visuals go, they're what you'd expect from a doujin developer worth their salt. The visuals are beautiful for what the devs could pull off, and the artwork is very nice. While occasionally you will get lost when a melee attack is performed, characters rarely get lost in the hail of danmaku. There are only a handful of stages, but aside from the grid, they all look very nice and true to their locations in the canon games.
Finally, and an important note, the dialogue in story mode is amusing, even if it leans a little too close to Touhou fanon for my tastes. Story Mode is very lighthearted and a good way to kill an evening. In all, this is what a fan game should be: A love letter to the fandom.
The game has it's share of flaws, mostly being the servers on launch day being a little buggy in some cases. Also, you cannot just pick up and play this game. You will need the tutorial if you don't want your rear handed to you on a silver platter.
This game gets a 9/10. I would have given it a more fair score, but considering my contemporaries, I felt that the game needed a kinder review to begin with. At worst, it's an 8/10, and worth your time if you want a good multiplayer experience and am a Touhou fan.
Touhou Genso Rondo: Bullet Ballet is a crazy Japanese mash-up between a fighting game and a bullet hell shooter. Its gameplay mechanics are pretty good, but the lack of a good color code for letting player recognize which bullets are good and which will hurt him when the screen is loaded with any kind of stuff, may hurt the experience.
Touhou Genso Rondo: Bullet Ballet is a niche title, mostly enjoyable with other players. The idea of mixing shoot’em’up and fighting mechanics it’s not so bad, even tough there’s not enough contents to play.
Touhou Genso Rondo : Bullet Ballet is a weak title in every respect, especially from the point of view of content. The story mode is not only suffering from enormous narrative flaws, but it can be completed in less than four hours, and even one of the few playable characters is only available via DLC.
Touhou Genso Rondo: Bullet Ballet has something going for it and it is honestly something I had never seen before, but the way it plays mixed with a confusing tutorial that doesn’t explain things in the best way it could really make this game feel like I’m slogging through an interesting game while in the dark.
A few players will absolutely adore Genso Rondo, of that there’s no doubt. For most though, this is an interesting concept that falls short on quality.
Solid game mechanics with depth to each characters move set. I have put 4 hours or more into the game so far and have only made my way through 2 characters. Each one feels unique and is fun to try to master. I feel some of these reviews are unfair like someone else mentioned and this really is a solid game worth looking into when it is on sale (i got it for 7.99 on PSN) if this game retailed for 20 dollars I would rate higher
For what it is, it's a pretty solid game. I'm a **** for niche titles like these and bought it on a whim. Can't say I'm disappointed. I've played many bullet-hell games in the past and this one stands out with its interesting combat mechanics and 1 v 1 battles. I'd say it's at least worth it to get on a good sale for established fans of the genre.
A pesar de que la calidad del título no sea excesivamente alta, si que es de celebrar que por fin nos haya llegado un juego de la saga Touhou a nuestras tierras, lo cual es buena seña y puede que en un futuro podamos disfrutar de la saga al completo aquí.
En cuanto al título en cuestión, aunque la mezcla de géneros es original e interesante (SHMUP y juego de lucha), la escasez de contenido para un solo jugador, mecánicas algo complejas y un anticuado apartado gráfico, hacen que sólo los conocedores y fans de la saga Touhou sepan sacarle todo el partido posible y disfrutarlo como es debido .
En cuanto al resto, esperad a que llegue un Touhou "de verdad" (de la serie principal), porque desde luego este no creo que sea el título en el que iniciarse a la saga.
I actually thought this game was going to be good but it isn't that great. Its so lacking in content and I didn't really enjoy it for that long. I like how its unique to other Touhou games but other than that this game isn't that great at all.