Review: Touken Ranbu Warriors

destructoid.com:

Originally released in 2015, Touken Ranbu is a free-to-play browser game where players take up the role of a Saniwa who has the power to turn historical, mythical, and even a few imaginary swords into pretty boy warriors known as “Touken Danshi”. The Danshi are mankind’s greatest weapon against the History Retrograde Army, a group of absurd-looking skeletal bugs that are traveling backward in time to change the course of history. As the Saniwa, it is up to you to protect the historical timeline by sending your Danshi back through previous eras of Japanese history to defeat them, even if it means restoring unquestionably cruel moments from the past.

The game was given an international release just last year, which is when I first became acquainted with it. But before you start downloading it to your iPhone, know that it is very much a free-to-play game from 2015. The gameplay is largely made up of clicking through menus. As for the many battles you’ll undertake, these have a minimalist presentation with little to no input from the player. It’s about as hands-off as you can be without being considered a clicker game, which actually makes it a pretty perfect candidate for a Warriors crossover.

Touken Ranbu Warriors (PC, Switch [reviewed])Developer: Omega Force, Ruby PartyPublisher: Koei Tecmo AmericaReleased: May 24, 2022MSRP: $59.99

Think about it: players of Touken Ranbu have to use their imagination when it comes to the game’s combat. And if you have to use your imagination, those battles can really look like anything, including a 1-versus-100 hack ’n’ slash RPG. That’s pretty much what Omega Force and Ruby Party, (Koei Tecmo’s female-oriented development team best known for its never-localized Angelique series), have