REVIEW: Birushana: Winds of Fate


Title	Birushana: Winds of Fate
Developer	Idea Factory/Red
Publisher	Idea Factory International
Release Date	May 26, 2026
Genre	Otome, Visual Novel
Platform	Nintendo Switch
Age Rating	Teen
Official Website

Author’s Note: This review is for a fandisc for Birushana: Rising Flower of Genpei, and will therefore contain light spoilers for that game.

Back in 2022, I had the opportunity to review Birushana: The Rising Flower of Genpei, a historical fantasy otome taking place in the Heian era during the last years of the conflict between the Genji and the Heike. Our heroine Shanao — assumed to be the youngest male heir to the Genji clan and raised at Kurama Temple as a boy — is actually a girl who has to hide her identity in order to fulfill her destiny of defeating the Heike. She is forced to flee Kyoto and eventually takes on her historical name of Yoshitsune Kuro Minamoto as she fights to restore the Genji name.

Winds of Fate is split into two sequences: Epilogue and Main Route. The Epilogue explores life with Yoshitsune and her chosen love interest from the first game, while the Main Route stories kick off directly after Shanao is forced to flee Kyoto with Shungen and Benkei, essentially skipping the base game’s common route. Her love interests this time around are Shigehira Taira, Tomomori’s younger brother and a Heike general; Tsugunobu Sato, the eldest son of the Sato clan in Hiraizumi; Tadanobu Sato, Tsugunobu’s younger brother; and Takatsuna Sasaki, a trusted vassal to Shanao’s half-brother and leader of the Genji, Yoritomo Minamoto. Each love interest from Winds of Fate was a side character in the original game, and the fandisc expects you to have played through Rising Flower to have a base level understanding of each of their personalities, as well as the basic plot structure of the war between the Genji and the Heike.

I will not be discussing the Epilogue routes in detail in this review and the Main Route stories will only consist of my general thoughts through Chapter 1 and my overall impression of each love interest. My play order for the Main Route stories was Shigehira, Tsugunobu, Takatsuna, and Tadanobu.

As an heir to the Heike, Shigehira is a conceited, temperamental, coddled young man bored with a world that poses no challenge to him. He’s enraptured by his brother and confused why Tomomori is so obsessed with Shanao. At his brother’s bidding, Shigehira leaves Kyoto to find Shanao and bring her back, but his curiosity over Tomomori’s obsession leads him to choose instead to hunker down in Hiraizumi with the young Genji so he can learn more about her. He doesn’t understand why Shanao is so kind to her vassals or why she trains so hard, day in and day out. To him, the Heike are the fated rulers of Japan, and there’s no reason for her to fight against them. It’s wasted effort. This attitude leads to some fun interactions where he’s unable to accept a sparring loss, throwing a temper tantrum and finding excuses for why he lost. Compared to his brother’s cool, detached and psychotic behavior, he feels so much more relatable. I had fun with his route.

After fleeing Kyoto with Shungen and Benkei, Shanao eventually makes her way to Hiraizumi in Oshu, where she’s waylaid by the Sato brothers, who are fiercely protective of their home and question why Shanao is there. Their initial suspicions are easily assuaged, and the two samurai become fast friends with the Genji heir. Tsugunobu is the calm, thoughtful older brother type who offers Shanao an ear for her worries and a shoulder to lean on in times of trouble. He’s easily exasperated by his younger brother Tadanobu, but their banter is always playful and affectionate. A warrior scholar, Tsugunobu places value in both strength and intelligence, often to his younger brother’s chagrin, but he pairs well with Shanao, who has a deep love of learning. He’s observant in ways the other boys aren’t, which in turn leads to his suspicions that Shanao is not, in fact, a boy. I respect that Tsugunobu is the more intellectual type capable of doing some mischievous things, but his route overall left me disappointed.

Being an outsider from the Hiraizumi group, Takatsuna is surprisingly scarce in his opening chapter. Shortly after Shanao flees Kyoto, she appears in Izu where her brother lives in exile. She’s come to let him know she is willing to fight in his army should he raise one, but before she has the chance to meet with him formally, Takatsuna catches her loitering outside Yoritomo’s mansion late at night. He’s cold and precise, holding Shanao at knife-point to demand why she’s there. When she claims to be Yoritomo’s younger brother, he releases her reluctantly, and the next day greets her with a broad smile and chipper attitude. His ability to swap between dangerous and delightful is unnerving to Shanao, but she doesn’t have much time to think on it as she, and her entourage, continue onward to Hiraizumi to train until such a time as her brother needs her. Takastuna eventually reappears, chipper as ever, to inform her that his brother has prepared his army and she’s required. Takatsuna’s insistence in always finding a reason to smile is charming and infectious, though it never comes across as fake, either. I was surprised at how much I ended up liking him, since I tend not to enjoy bubbly characters.

Much like Tsugunobu’s route, Tadanobu’s begins with Shanao et al. appearing in Hiraizumi. Unlike Tsugunobu, Tadanobu is the definition of Big Dumb, with a boisterous personality and a heart worn on his sleeve. He’s dramatic and spirited, but incredibly capable in battle. He focuses on the present, doesn’t worry about the future, and is, surprisingly, emotionally intelligent for a man who hates books with words. Of all the routes, his deviates the most from the established events of the first game, instead finding Shanao and the others embroiled in a conflict with the Emishi people, who frequently clashed with the samurai of Oshu. While patrolling the Shiratori Gate, the group are attacked, with Tadanobu and Shanao giving chase deep into the woods. There they come across an Emishi village, and Tadanobu is forced to reckon with his deep-seated animosity toward the people with whom his have fought for generations. It’s an interesting parallel between how Kyoto views his own Hiraizumi, and made for a really compelling story hook. Of all the characters, I ended up loving Tadanobu most, with his bright, pure, and loyal personality winning me over.

For a fandisc, I found the Main Routes to range from okay to genuinely enjoyable. They are five chapters each and each route took me about five to six hours to complete, putting them a little on the shorter side. I would not have complained had each new love interest been given a little more room to breathe. That being said, much like in Rising Flower, if you don’t want to know what ending you’re gunning for, turn off the Love Catch. If you’re only looking to read the new boys, you’ll sink about 20-25 hours into Winds of Fate. The Epilogue routes are also on the short side, coming in around two to three hours each, but they tied a nice bow on the base game’s endings and I got what I wanted, specifically from Benkei and Yoritomo’s Epilogues.

When I initially reviewed Rising Flower, I was overly lenient on the amount of grammatical mistakes littering the game. I’m happy to say that Winds of Fate does not suffer from the sheer amount its base game did, but there are still some glaring errors. The dictionary entry for “Shishigatani” misspells as Shisihgatani; Fuji River is also referred to as Fujikawa; Katsuura is misspelled as Katsura; and Kanehira is misnamed as Kanetomo despite the line being voiced. These are infrequent, with I believe only one instance each of the mistake, but they stuck out to me. Less easily pointed out, but prevalent, is the looseness of the translation. Birushana, as a historical fantasy, screams for a more elevated translation akin to what Ivalice Chronicles or Unicorn Overlord received, but instead leans a little too modern. Takatsuna especially suffers the brunt of this, with his chipper attitude and informal way of addressing even his superiors. It’s not a deal breaker by any means, but considering the sheer amount of characters who are high society, it does leave me craving something a little more eloquent that hews closer to what we’ve seen in other historical adjacent fantasy war games.

Just as with its predecessor, Winds of Fate has impeccable music and sound design. I’m a fan of the game’s mix of traditional Japanese instrumentation and modern styles. Battles are always a joy thanks to the visceral clanging of weaponry. I am usually all for the love interest menu voices, but I had to turn them off here because they would add several seconds of delay whenever I wanted to do anything, and that rapidly wore down any charm from hearing them reference what I was doing.

I enjoyed reading through Birushana: Winds of Fate. It’s on the shorter side, with no real post-game content, but if you enjoy the world of Heian-era Japan and Shanao’s story, you will likely find something to pique your interest here, especially if you were craving a route with the new boys after their “If” stories in Rising Flower of Genpei.