REVIEW

Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle Review

by Rob Pritchard, October 31st, 2017

First introduced in 1996, the Touhou Project is a series of Japanese video games that focus on the bullet hell subgenre. The franchise centers around a young shrine maiden named Reimu Hakurei, who defends the realm of Gensokyo from the yokai that threaten the human population. Originally released for Japanese PC owners back in 2010, Touhou Koubutou was a 3D fighting game which allows you to compete using the many characters established in the series lore. Seven years later, Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle is an updated remake of this older release, similar to how the Street Fighter series has multiple iterations of the same entry.

Each match in Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle consists of your player character seeking to eliminate the other player’s vitality, which is essentially their health bar. In order to damage your enemy, you must use one of three beam styled attacks, which can be triggered using the square, circle or triangle buttons on your controller. Although this sounds fairly standardized, it is not possible to create combos with your attacks or to create hybrid attacks, which is slightly disappointing given that titles in the same genre such as Pokken Tournament offer more in the way of altering your battle styles. The only variant to this is if the player is close enough to their opponent, they will perform a physical melee move instead of a beam attack.

While it is possible to charge a special attack by collecting the P icons that drop from opponents, it is not described anywhere in the game’s documentation on how to perform this action. This omission means that the player will need to experiment before they can use each character’s ultimate attacks, leaving them at a clear disadvantage when the opponent can use their special moves whenever they choose Each character can also guard, dash or jump at their leisure with a unique animation, such as Marisa riding her broomstick, but it is often unwise to dash as you will not be able to easily dodge an attack as you are temporarily immobile once it has worn off. While the attack systems feel solid and responsive, the animation for each character feels slightly stiff, and the limited range of possible offensive tactics drains most of the excitement from a fight once you have exhausted them all.

If you have played a 3D fighting game before, you will be pleased to note that Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle contains many of the modes that are common to the genre, such as Story Mode, Arcade Mode and Score Attack. A disappointing omission is the lack of image galleries with the game’s concept art, and unlockable bonus content such as additional characters that were not in the original release. Another small negative issue is with the presentation of the remaster. While the 2D manga artwork during the visual novel cut scenes and the 3D character and arena models look polished with their HD upgrade, the user interface during battles and the in-game menu are bland and uninspiring by comparison.

The game’s soundtrack is a mixture of softer emotional music during the menu scenes, and fast paced JPop styled sequences during the many fights that you will undertake. Although the characters do speak lines at the beginning of each match, the various cut scenes throughout the story mode are free of any voice acting, which is a slight disappointment as many recent games of its genre tend to offer a voice track as a standard option.

Overall, Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle is a reasonable remaster of a fairly average battle game that lacks the refined gameplay experience offered by its competition. Despite the enhanced in game graphics offered by this port, the boring battle system along with the lack of a stylized user interface make this a game that only hardcore fans of the Touhou Project will be able to appreciate.