Touken Ranbu Warriors

Despite its massive popularity in Japan, this franchise has only managed to eke out a niche audience in Western markets. Koei Tecmo is hoping that changes with Touken Ranbu Warriors, yet another of its Warriors series, this time featuring the literal "swordsmen" from the free-to-play browser-based game. A collection of historic Japanese swords given human form would seem like the perfect fit for a hack-and-slash action game. After all, why play a character with a sword when you can play a character that is a sword? On the surface, it's an interesting concept with a lot of potential. But in practice, Touken Ranbu Warriors feels less like a samurai's sword and more like a butter knife.

Right off the bat, the game assumes players are already familiar with the Touken Ranbu franchise. It's like you're catching a movie at the halfway point without having any context for what's come before. In fact, short of a few almost throwaway lines, you wouldn't know that the characters are humanized swords, which is the core of the franchise. From a gameplay perspective, Touken Ranbu Warriors lacks some of the complexity of Koei Tecmo's other Warriors games. It's very streamlined, with simplified controls that require little in the way of skill or strategy. This is made even more apparent in the game's "Easy" mode, which takes things a step further by making attacks more contextual and handles most defensive moves automatically. While this might make for a good introduction to the Warriors-style hack-and-slash genre, the game's simplistic approach and assumptions of familiarity with the source material leave it catering to a select group of preexisting Touken Ranbu fans.