When I started to play Gensokyo Defenders, I was not sure what to expect, since I was going in blind. After some research on Touhou, I was overwhelmed with the amount of games released. I decided to keep my knowledge minimal of the characters or background of the game.
As you might have guessed, Gensokyo Defenders is a tower defense game, but with the unique traits of the Touhou series (games in the series are mostly bullet hell shmups with some spinoffs like this one). If I could give it a genre, it would be a tower defense twin stick shoot ’em up game. The story mode is where all the action takes place, and in each stage, you use a different character. I think that is good, since each plays differently, even with the same basic mechanics.
The game play consists of defending your magic circle from waves of enemies who try to get to your base and defeat you (as expected). Each wave consists in two phases: the building phase in which you can set up traps and obstacles to slow down enemy movement and the battle phase.
Speaking of the building phase, I found it interesting because in each stage, you are given certain amount of gold, and this gold is used to purchase the obstacles and traps you can set in the stage (one thing I did to make each stage easier, I put traps right at the beginning so that way when enemies start walking towards my base they start getting damage, and then I just run for a quick and easy kill so hit and run tactics worked for me). Once you spend all the initial gold, you can earn more by defeating the enemy waves, and in the next build phase you can put more traps and obstacles for the win. There is a good amount of traps all with different placement situations (there is one that sends enemies out of the field granting an instakill if the pass over them). This leaves a lot of room for experimenting.
Where things start to get interesting is in the battle phase. In this phase, the enemy waves start coming for you. To engage them, you have full control of your character. You can move around and shoot everything on sight. This is a good thing, since the character shoots automatically. Just press the button once and let them feel your rage! Also, while in this phase, you can continue to build traps and such as long as you have the gold needed and that there aren’t enemies around. Each character has their own shoot style (some are fast machine gun-like; others are slow but deadly). Some magic attacks use MP (the blue gauge bellow) and a special move called “Last Order.” This is pulled off after you fill a meter. Said meter fills out as you destroy enemies, either by your attacks, traps, or magic.
As you play through the stages, they get more complicated to the point that the game doesn’t feel as much as a tower defense game but a shmup. I like how different genres blend together and that the action doesn’t stop. At times during your defense, some more powerful versions of enemies will appear. These take more time to defeat and are faster. Some have completely different attack patterns, so this adds even more to an already intense game. This is something really good in my opinion because some tower defense games tend to be stale; you just send troops and when they are defeated, send more. Here ,it is only you against an army, and this type of reasoning makes the game engaging.
There is also an online mode, but as of time of writing, I couldn’t find anyone online to play with. It is a shame since playing with another player would make the completion of stages easier (or harder).
Graphically, the game could look a little better. It is not ugly, but is not that pretty either. Maybe the developers decided to go with chibi characters due to the amount of enemies on screen and bullets flying and spells? Even so, the game is really fun.
The music is really good, and there a lot of catchy tunes, which kept playing in my mind after beating the stage. The dialogue is funny (I found it funny for someone not acquainted with the series). It feels in line with some comedy anime that I have seen, so I have no complaints in that area.
The only thing that I must say that felt short is that for single player, there is only the story mode to play. Once you finish it, you unlock more traps and characters. While you can replay previously beat areas to get three start rating, once you do there is not much to do. The online mode could give you more replay value, but with almost no one online, your mileage may vary.
Bottom Line: Gensokyo Defenders is a fun Tower Defense/Shmup game. With good game play elements from both genres, a great cast of characters in the Touhou universe, and tons of thing to unlock, it’s quiet a fun game. However, the lack of single player modes besides Story Mode, and the fact that I found no one online, I can only recommend this game to fans of the series. If you want a fun Tower Defense game, Gensokyo is for you but be warned once you finish Story Mode, there is not much to do afterwards.
A Review Code was provided for this review.