REVIEW: Touhou: New World


Title	Touhou: New World
Developer	Ankake Spa
Publisher	XSEED Games
Release Date	July 13th, 2023
Genre	Action RPG
Platform	PC, Nintendo Switch
Age Rating	E10+
Official Website

Back in 2016, XSEED Games released one of the first Touhou games I’d ever really sat down and played through. The name of the game was Touhou: The Scarlet Curiosity, and it was touted as being a hybrid of a Bullet-Hell game and an Action RPG, which I thought was a bit crazy at the time. I ended up loving that game, and it’s probably what got me into checking out the official and fan games in the franchise. So, when I got to check out Touhou: New World, which comes to us from the same developer as Scarlet Curiosity, I jumped on it. Let’s see if I love this release as much as the previous one.

The story here beings as Reimu and Marisa discover the barrier between the outside world and mystical world of Gensokyo has been breached. Our protagonists end up in a world outside of their own, and soon encounter a girl named Sumireko. She is obsessed with Gensokyo, and ends up traveling back with our two wayward protagonists. This of course is not without incident, as both worlds are now thrown into chaos. Reimu and Marisa will have to solve the mystery here, and put this incident to rest.

I thought the story here was pretty good, and the localization team did a pretty good job giving these characters we know and love a lot of personality. There is nothing here that is gonna blow you away, but the story keeps the game moving along and is interesting enough that you will want to see how it all plays out. I was pretty interested to see which characters would be included here, as well, as I progressed.

Graphically, Touhou: New World looks pretty good. The world is nicely detailed with many of the different environments around Gensokyo being represented. These include the human village, ice caverns, Hell and many others. While the character models and enemies aren’t very detailed, they have a ton of style. This was the case in the previous game, Scarlet Curiosity, and I think it looks great here as well. Scenes with dialogue have some well done character portraits too. I didn’t see any real performance issues running this on my PC. There are some graphic options if you need to adjust things for your rig.

In the audio department, you will find some remixes of your favorite Touhou tunes here. Each stage has a wonderful theme, and the boss music is top notch, as you would expect. The sound effects here are nothing to write home about, but they get the job done. There is no voice acting here, which may be a bummer for some folks, but I don’t really mind the lack of it, personally.

The gameplay here hasn’t changed much since the last game. You run through stages, beating up enemies with normal attacks and special moves until you reach a boss. These special moves will level up the more you use them, and the enemies will drop a variety of equipment. As you would expect, this equipment will have a great impact on your stats, depending on which ones you equip. Some will give you more life, while others may get you better drops or increase your critical hit rate. How you build either protagonist is completely up to you. Completing both normal missions and side missions will earn you Power Stones that you use to upgrade your base stats or give yourself some more heals in battle, so be sure to use these wisely.

I felt like the boss fights in this game were a bit easier this time around, or I’ve just gotten better at dodging the Bullet-Hell. Either way, each boss is a very unique fight with different attack patterns and specials for you to navigate. You can also guard against striking attacks, and doing so perfectly will slow down time, allowing you to blast foes with your overpowered spell card, or use the time to heal up if things are going south.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with Touhou: New World. It had the same fun gameplay as the last game, the soundtrack is top notch and the story, while nothing amazing, is good enough to keep you interested. I would have no issue suggesting fans of Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity to pick this one up, you will find more of what you love here at the cost of $24.99. If you haven’t played the previous game and are a fan of Action RPGs that do something a little different, I think you should check this one out as well. You may just find it’s your first step into the bottomless pit of Touhou.