Touhou: Lost Branch of Legend
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About the GameWhile the princess of the moon, Kaguya Houraisan, was hosting the Lunar Capital Exhibition, the Divine Treasue known as “The Jeweled Branch of Hourai” was stolen!
Reimu Hakurei is now tasked to find the culprit, resolve the incident, and recover the precious Lunarian Exhibit!
Lost Branch of Legend is a roguelike deckbuilder starring the girls of Gensokyo, where you collect cards, find exhibits and face off against the girls and their awesome powers!
The various Shining Exhibits can permanently add Mana to play cards. The different colors of mana provided by each can drastically affect your deck’s playstyle.
We have designed over 500 danmaku patterns,each and every one of them capturing the charm of Gensokyo. Don’t worry, they can safely be blocked by a barrier!
Reimu Hakurei
The Hakurei Shrine Maiden, who’s always seen when an incident occurs.
If she gets the Lunar Treasure, she won’t have problems with donations or worshipers for the rest of the year.
Reimu specializes in using Red and White Mana.
An all-rounder good on both offense and defense, such a minor incident is easy with her expertise in resolution!
Marisa Kirisame
An ordinary magician living in the Forest of Magic and a compulsive collector.
She already had an intrest in the Lunar Treasure, but she’s seeking treasures in general, so of course she’d be involved with the incident.
Marisa specializes in using Black and Red Mana.
Brew potions, charge up your power, and finish them off with a flashy blow! Nothing’s impossible with firepower!
Sakuya Izayoi
The elegant head maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion and a servant of the ever capricious Scarlet Devil.
Surprisingly willing to get her knives dirty, she’s eager to get any incident resolved ASAP.
Sakuya specializes in using White and Blue Mana.
Toss knives, stop time, and welcome your foes to a world filled with silver blades pointed at them!
Cirno
A fairy from the Misty Lake who regularly pulls pranks on people.
In search of prank material, she brought her friends to the expo.
Cirno specializes in using Blue and Green Mana.
Freeze your enemies, call on Teammates, and show everyone the might of the The Strongest Fairy!
And More!
• Five playable characters, each with two starting loadouts.
• Over 160 Exhibits to recover!
• Over 500 Cards to collect!
• Over 55 enemies to fight, 23 of them being familiar faces of Gensokyo!
• 37 events to encounter!
Steam User 20
A very well done Slay the Spire alike with enough different takes that make the game significantly unique and overall feels much more enjoyable than vanilla STS. By introducing MTG-style mana system, it's differentiated its gameplay by adding different layers of consideration, mainly in sequencing the line of play and deciding boss exhibit (or relic in STS terms). For example, going pure would increase mana consistency, or branching to off colors would add different cards to the pool. You can also add a card pool of other playable characters by picking their boss exhibit. Each character also has 2 types with different exhibits, spell card, and starting mana, which diversifies the playstyle even more. Overall, deck drafting really makes players feel a lot of freedom as there is a very large amount of agency given from many approaches you can choose.
Different design choice leads to various quirks existing within the game. The first one is regularized map layout which is being perceived as pretty mixed despite I personally really like it since it reduces variance from bad map layout. Secondly, we have a bunch of neutral cards that are added to the pool depending on the mana base, depending on the colour there are certain thematics and mechanics. The closest equivalent to spell card that I know is Gwent's deck ability (previously leader ability) that we can use for emergency situation. Card types are also classified differently. Instead of potions we have tools (probably a nod to Gensokyo mod of STS), and many more.
The difficulty and balance overall are pretty adequate and fun to play, with a few outliers. Difficulty wise, the game is definitely easier than STS even at the hardest option (Lunatic 7 requests). However, it does have a problem. Notably the Long Night request which is extremely meta warping and restricting; it effectively makes you play with 4 mana in 1st turn throughout the game. Encounters overall are pretty thematic and interesting, but some are overtuned(2 kappas + 2 drones, 2 dolls + fox girl) some are quite binary (Aya where you just lose when you have 0 accuracy, failing 50 attack check of Doremi spells disaster, lacking multi hit in moon rabbits is run ending), some fights have massive variance(Reimu, Tenshi, most notably Seija with her random gimmick). Cards balance wise, some cards are just beyond broken like Breaking Boundary and Trace on with their stalling gameplay that resembles "the plan" in STS, or Doppelganger that's game winning almost on its own. Despite all of this, the game is still incredibly fun to play with so many whacky synergies that it could pull off.
Also, don't be discouraged by the early access tag, the game is very solid with I only encountered like 1 bug at the time of writing the review. The core gameplay is mostly done and it basically only lacks the last character (and story mode I guess?). It has a very strong and beautiful visual representation as you can see from trailer and screenshots, with most cards' art, characters, and event illustrations being phenomenal, as well as banger remixes from familiar melodies from Touhou if you're no stranger to the IP.
In conclusion, despite the rather high price tag, I definitely think that every money that I've spent on this game is worth the experience.
Steam User 19
As a veteran player of card battlers, this is one of the best.
I have played Slay the spire, tainted grail, last evil, take me to the dungeon, hearthstone etc.
This game is 100 times better then slay the spire, not joking. (I am going to keep referencing STS because that is probably the most well known besides hearthstone).
The artwork and graphics are 100 times better than STS.
The card options , variety and combinations are 100 times better and 100 times more options.
The game is more challenging then STS ( honestly slay the spire is kind of a joke for difficulty).
5 characters to choose from (only 4 atm in early access), 2 variations of starting mana choice per character, each with their own possible deck building, and here is where the game really blows away other card battlers: It has the standard 3 tiers of exploration, with multiple paths/events , bosses, etc. But when you complete a tier, you have 3 options at end to add a type of mana, and depending on the color you choose, it changes the cards you can choose from after every fight.
So lets say you started out with red and gold , then fight (they have names but i'm going to just use colors) "green girl", it will unlock all of green girls cards as possible options, while still randomly giving you "your" girls color, and as well as combination "red and green" and "gold and green" hybrid cards.
By the 3rd tier you have made this choice 3 times and you can pick different colors each time, so the options of cards and hybrid combination cards are almost endless. You can also chose the same starting color mana if you want more red or gold mana, and you want to just stick with your girls colors the whole run.
Yes, the game is in early access, The story mode isn't finished, but the "free mode" is basically story mode with less dialog and no plot, but lets be honest, card battlers don't need a plot, we play them for the combat and deck building, and this game excels at both.
I bought this like 5 days ago and already have 27 hours on it, it is just that good.
Although some of you wont care about my next statement, it's worth mentioning the soundtrack is really really good, with a good variety mix that will work for you no matter what genre of music you prefer.
I can't recommend this game enough, 100% blows slay the spire out of the water in every way possible.
Steam User 13
I have become simply obsessed with this game. I've never played Slay the Spire and have only once played Magic: the Gathering, but I'm freshly Touhou-pilled and a huge fan of roguelikes, so that was enough to get me started. The room for player expression and creativity is enormous - you have an incredible amount of leeway in choosing which direction to build your deck, and even then, you never know how it'll take shape. You might find a rare card early on and build your entire strategy around it, simply stick to your character's fundamental mechanics (and each character has two to pick from!) or go with my favored approach, starting with a random Shining exhibit and wrenching your character in a strange new direction from the get-go. I've completed this game on the highest difficulty at the highest ascension level, but I'm going to keep finding excuses to come back - and since the game is still getting new content, I won't be short on reasons!
Steam User 12
(Some background: I’ve played 155 hours of Slay the Spire and played more hours of Magic the Gathering.)
Amazing rogue deckbuilder. It’s pretty much a complete game (with 4 out of the 6 characters being fully playable).
It closely resembles Slay The Spire but added some mechanics (inspired by Magic The Gathering) to make the deck building more interesting. This game has tons of replay value, with harder difficulties and modifiers.
What this game improves from Slay the Spire (no mods):
1. Some cool new exhibits (relics)
2. Almost every card is viable. Very few useless or ultra-specific cards.
3. You’re encouraged to mix and match different strategies instead of simply picking cards from one archetype.
4. After every stage/act, you can add another character’s card pool to card rewards, letting you mix the mechanics of different characters. It is handled the same way Magic the Gathering handles mana colors (having fewer colors is more consistent but having more colors is potentially more powerful).
5. The Spell Card gives you more control in combat. It can be used proactively to set up synergies. Or you can use it reactively to get yourself out of a sticky situation like when you really need to kill an enemy.
6. Random events remain ‘fun’ and rewarding throughout all the difficulty modes. It doesn’t make events punishing in higher difficulties.
****
It has a learning curve but I’ve found all the difficulty modes to be very doable (although Lunatic mode with all the modifiers toggled on can be daunting and unfair, but still fun).
So yeah, if you like these kinds of games, give this a try!
Steam User 6
I just wanted to play this because it looked pretty and has Touhou in it. What’ve got are dozens of hours of playtime racked in mysterious but extremely addicting circumstances!
I’ve never played Slay the Spire, so I cannot tell you how Lost Branch of Legend directly compares to it’s very popular inspiration. However, I can try to tell how much fun this Touhou-based deckbuilder game is, so hopefully you will get an image why I find it so great and special.
The crux of the matter are the cards. There are currently over 500 different cards in the game, divided between different characters and many “public” ones that can be used by everybody. You would think that quality will be sacrificed for the sake of quantity, but it’s absolutely not the case here! Decks you build throughout your runs can be a playground for your wildest strategy crafting dreams: finding subtle interactions, synergies and plethora of stackable abilities.
Thanks to the card roster alone, your runs are always fresh and full of surprises… but then add exhibits (passive abilities), character specific super moves and ability to “steal” other characters’ card pools… AND THEN fiddle with Magic the Gathering's mana system and choose between different colors to open new strategies or stabilize your build with more of your character's base mana... What do you get out all those gameplay levers and gimmicks is a true banger of a rougelike experience, that reminds me of good, old days of FTL. That's a great feeling to have.
Game part is great, but presentation is also truly stunning. Music is a freebie – it’s all based on Touhou music, so you know it will be good. However, I do need to give strong shout-outs to art, animations and UI design. This is as clean, as a brand new card from a top-tier dealer. Colors, lasers, explosions, sound-effects, information-popups. Nothing requires guessing and everything looks slick.
Artworks on cards also require a mention: those are either true testaments to artistic craftsmanship or genuinely funny pictures with high violence memetic energy. What is more awesome? You can sometimes choose between both types in the collection menu!
Issues of the game mostly sit in the fact that this is still an Early Access title. There are tons of variety in already mentioned areas (cards for example) but in some places I would wish for more content to be added. I’m mostly talking about variety of enemy mobs, locations and random events. From updates it seems that those elements are slowly being beefed up, but I do judge the game for the state it is in right now.
Potential in this game is monumental but overall, current state is already pretty impressive. You absolutely get fair share of content for the money you pay. I recommend getting the game right now, if you like cards, turn-based thinking, board games, pretty art and/or Touhou.
Those Touhou-fan game producers… They are build different
Steam User 9
So after an few more hours I write an little bit more in detail why I love this game even in EA so much:
- The artstyle is just beautiful.
- Gameplay is engaging and fun even on more harder modes. The fun part comes from the carefully deckbuilding and combos you can unleash. Its something super satisfying when it makes "click" in your head.
- The soundtrack is good too!
- The replayability is, even in EA, very high. It gives tons of archivements, cards and "exhibitions" to unlook.
- "Exhibitions" are items that can radically change your playstyle or by minor ones just help you
out to punch your enemy :x I know that I will reach over 40-50 hours to unlock all the things^^
- The quality overall is astonishing even for an EA title. Flashy card effects. illustrated characters and so on.
Big things that must still be updated (28.01.2024):
- Story mode is not yet implemented.
- The last of the 5 playable characters.
- Some translations could be improved. But its still very readible.
Overall when you like the Touhou world I instantly recommend it. Even for non StS, Chrono Ark or other deckbuilding game fans I recommend it then the experince here is very nice even for EA.
Yes I know the pricetag from 30 isnt really cheap. But I atleast think its very good and will get better. Hope you will give this piece of an gem a chance.
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First review:
Its super awesome! I adore this piece of an gem. And yes I played it for the first 30 minutes but I am confident enough to just say it: Its super so buy it! :-)
Steam User 7
As a newer installment of the various Slay The Spire-likes and a shining example of Touhou Project's willingness to introduce the wonderful cast of Gensokyo in just about any format? Touhou: Lost Branch of Legend pushes Slay the Spire's formula to greater heights as well as capture the mystical charm of the Touhou franchise.
Positives:
High Replayability - With 4 currently released playable characters, regular updates, difficulty selection, and request modifiers? You will have plenty of fun exploring the full extent of each character you play as well as the Relics and Exhibits you manage to find along the way. Having each act have the potential to branch off into various paths is an additional bonus too.
Synergies and Combos - From something as simple as doubling your Firepower Buff Statuses in your deck to using the Infinite Shop Restock with a generous amount of gold generation and potentially playing through an entire deck's worth of cards as Sakuya or Marisa? Any offensive or defensive style is fair game to build towards when you have the right upgrades and a little luck with the board encounters.
Intuitive Gameplay - Touhou: Lost Branch of Legend sets itself apart from other Spire-likes in a couple of ways through its gameplay. First, by introducing a 5 color mana system? It takes inspiration from a card game I loved dearly growing up, Magic: The Gathering. The Mana system provides a clear archetype for each character's strength depending on what Shining Exhibit you choose to focus on as well as a growing sense of freedom and experimentation as you defeat act bosses and expand the colors you have available in your mana pool and deck. The second way this game proves itself to be one of the best Cardbuilding Roguelikes out there is the Spell Card Move. The inclusion of Spell Cards as a Super Option for each character grants a variety of effects such as Area of Effect damage or outright taking an additional turn before the enemy phase, and allows both older and newer players to save themselves from an overwhelming challenge or save HP and other resources for the stages they need them most.
Art and Sound: A Touhou Game is not without one of its strongest draws, the art design and soundtrack of the series. For the character design and card art? Lost Branch of Legend does a fantastic job of doing both highly detailed and elegant portraits of each of the major Touhou characters as well as the various adorable Chibi and Fumo artstyles that will light up just about anyone's smile just by looking at them. The music can be described in the same way, with a melodic balance between electronic breakcore, guitar, and synth music along with classical orchestra and woodwind instruments to bring the legendary soundtrack of this Touhou Fangame to life. An additional mention goes to how multiple boss themes carry their own weight by being arranged in the style of this game while still holding true to it's roots.
Negatives: Certain Elite Minibosses can end a run before it truly takes off or prove to be a serious roadblock, and sometimes your deck and relics may not have an answer if you don't have any momentum during the earlier stages of the game.
Early Access and various balancing patches may be seen as an overall positive for some, but in other times? You may have to permanently adapt your strategy if an enemy buff or card nerf proves to be too heavy handed in the higher difficulties.
Compared to Slay the Spire, there are significantly less mods and crossover potential for features like extra playable characters, relics, and online multiplayer.
Conclusion: Touhou: Lost Branch of Legend excels in nearly every definition in the world of Spirelikes and Deckbuilding Roguelikes as a whole, the engaging game mechanics combined with the captivating sights and sounds of Touhou Project make this a must buy and a modern masterpiece in the Roguelike scene. With enough time, innovation, and support? Lost Branch of Legend can even stand on its own as a new direction for future Spirelikes and Touhou Fangames.