If you aren’t familiar with the Touhou Project, it’s a series of ‘bullet hell’ shoot ‘em ups developed by Team Shanghai Alice, which actually consists of a single person who uses the nickname ZUN. Since his first release in 1997, ZUN has made a whopping 17 Touhou shooters, all of which enjoy a cult following for their hard-as-nails action. So obviously it’s the perfect franchise to spawn a karting game where you surf on girls. Hang on, what?
Gensou Skydrift is a fan-created racing game starring many of the young ladies who feature in the Touhou games. Rather than blasting their way through countless enemies against insurmountable odds as usual, though, this time they’re taking part in a series of races, albeit without a vehicle of any sort. Well, not a non-living one, at least.
You see, each race has you controlling two characters, rather than one. One character will be active at a time, and they’ll navigate the track by – putting this as bluntly as possible – riding on the back of the other one, who is able to fly because reasons. Think of it as a Sonic Riders game, if the hoverboards were replaced with girls stuck in a perpetually planking pose.
They don’t stay that way forever, to be fair. Both your character and their ‘steed’ have a power bar that slowly builds as you race, and can be increased quicker by flying through speed rings. When your power hits a certain level you can hit the L button to swap characters – meaning the rider becomes the... um, ridee – and get a little speed boost in the process.
The power bar is also the gateway to your other special moves. There are no item boxes to run over in Gensou Skydrift like there are in other karting games; instead, you have to let your power bar continue to build until it fills, at which point you can then hit the R button to trigger the usual slot machine-style item gimmick karting fans will be used to. Each character has their own item slot, so if you’re in the lead and you get a homing missile, it may be a good idea to swap to the other character and get another item, saving the missile in case you need it later.
It’s claimed in a press release that the game’s development staff includes “a former Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe developer” (not Double Dash!!, as some have falsely guessed). It’s not quite clear whether we’re talking someone with major clout here or just the guy who got coffee for everyone else; we’re reminded of the claims that the distinctly average Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up was developed by some of the Super Smash Bros. Brawl team. To be fair, though, of all the non-Mario karting games on the Switch, this is definitely one of the better efforts – at least when it comes to handling.
Steering is a breeze, and the drift system only takes a race or two to get used to; this is where the potential Mario Kart influence seems clearest, because drifting in karting games can be a hard thing to nail but it’s very much spot on here. Once it clicks, it can be extremely satisfying pulling off long drifts around lengthy bends, weaving left and right to pass through all the gates in the process and getting a nifty speed boost each time. When it all comes together, it does feel surprisingly like Mario Kart.
It doesn’t always reach that bar, however. Some of the tracks can be a tad on the frustrating side, with plenty of sharp turns and bottomless pits. They can all eventually be learned and overcome with practice, but there’s a level of trial and error here that features to a degree far greater than in the Mario Kart series. It’ll likely take you a number of playthroughs until you can simply get through some stages without falling, let alone win the race.
A more important downside to the game, however, is the severe lack of longevity for single players. There’s a Campaign mode, which is a very brief story that consists of 10 or so races, split up by a load of dialogue-based cutscenes (plus a secret episode once you beat that). If you aren’t familiar with the Touhou universe these scenes are fairly throwaway: there’s a clear sense of humour there but there’s no point trying to learn who’s who because you’ll have the last race beaten and be sitting watching the credits within an hour or two if you’re any good at Mario Kart.
Other than that, the only other options available to you are a single race or a time trial mode; there’s no Grand Prix mode, no difficulty or speed settings, and generally no real incentive to keep playing unless you’re the sort who’s happy to take on time trials over and over in an attempt to beat your previous best time. Karting games generally aren’t lengthy solo experiences at the best of times, but they at least tend to give you a few cups to try and clear you can at least spend some time with it. This one basically exhausts its single-player value in a single evening.
In terms of multiplayer, there’s local split-screen for up to four players – which works fine, with no major issues – as well as online multiplayer for up to seven players. Don’t get too excited about the latter, though; at the time of writing the game is only a week old and the online is already as dead as Manchester United’s league title hopes, so you may as well just assume there’s no online at all.
What we have, then, is a real shame. We’ve got something that at its core is that rarest of beasts: a karting game that isn’t Mario Kart but still plays solidly regardless. But that core isn’t fleshed out with anything like enough content, meaning we can only really recommend it to two subsets of players: those who are only interested in local split-screen multiplayer, and those happy to play time trials forever.
Conclusion
Gensou Skydrift is one of the few karting games on Switch to come even slightly close to Mario Kart in terms of its racing mechanics, and when it all comes together it's a fun time. Unfortunately, the lack of meaningful single-player content and the fact that the online is dead on arrival means this should be strictly considered a local multiplayer game if you want to get your money's worth.
Comments 23
This is one that I've been on the fence about. It actually looks really fun but if the online is dead then that might be reason enough to pass on it sadly.
How many tracks are there in the game?
This game is just lol
Never been a fan of Touhou, but the concept on surfing on your partner is way too dumb to ignore this game XD
A shame the game feels lacking in single player, but if the mechanics are good enough to manage a comparison to Mario Kart then I definitely have to keep this game in my wishlist ready to buy it eventually.
Anything requiring "ONLY" Online is easy pass for me. OverWatch that is different but this no.
@nimnio even if that were true, this game just feels flat from all the other kart copycats out there. It's a wonder why I haven't even purchased CTR nitro-fuelled yet.
Let's not kid ourselves, this game is definitely no Garfield Kart or Race with Ryan. Can't compete with those.
@nimnio To be honest, having a game where it has this hilarious concept but lacks content and the online is dead, this score seems fair.
Sure, I do agree some of their past reviews on anime games were bad, but this review is actually well written.
@nimnio Nintendo Life isn't some big hive-mind, it's made of separate writers. I wrote this review and my views on anime (which I like, incidentally) had nothing to do with the score here.
There are so many touhou games and spinoffs its basically impossible to become a new fan
Wondered what people who haven't played this would score it...
It's a fun game but only if you had some local friend to play with who also like anime just like you otherwise this is a solid pass.
@scully1888 How many tracks does the game have? Does "ten races" mean ten tracks? Thanks for the review!
@ermzzz
@scully1888 I for one would like to see Jun'ya Ōta (ZUN) make a compilation console ports of the original Touhou Project shoot 'em up games from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil to the more recent game. What do you think?
Bookmarking.... Might get later on sale
@Woomy_NNYes I'm out just now so I don't have the game to hand, but there's something like 15-16 tracks.
"Online is so dead, not even the tumbleweeds bothered to turn up"
Sadly, this is pretty common in online games that are niche like this. Even Killer Queen Black's online is a ghost town. Ranked matches basically don't even exist in that game.
Sorry to those defending but over the years I've followed this site NintendoLife absolutely has a bias against anime or anime style games. You can try denying it all you like, that's fine, but it's also inaccurate.
That said, this appears to be one of their more fair reviews of a game with an anime-like style. That a game with a dead on arrival online got even a 6/10 is impressive.
Every time you guys give 6/10 verdicts, I keep thinking of that old Barack Obama meme.
This game is a blast, someone please buy it and exchange friend codes with me, I will play with you.
I bought it because it just looked so ridiculous I couldn't resist. The drifting is different than Mario Kart, and the game punishes you for doing it poorly, there are also 2 key differences from Mario Kart in my opinion:
-Items are not random placement, you have to hit the boosts on track to get energy back for spells.
-Both characters can stock items, so the switching means you want to drive fast but also stock the items so that later on in the race you can fight back.
Overall I feel that the game does a better job of making me think about strategy in the races and learning the course because the racetracks and the items remove a lot of the random elements of Mario Kart.
To me this felt like a more difficult Mario Kart. When it works though, it feels incredible. The review is right that there is NOBODY online. Please play with me lol.
Last thing, the story mode is literally screens of just text sometimes, it makes zero sense, and is extremely short. If you buy this it is literally just for the racing.
Of course the game isn't very long in content, which explains the low price tag and the 30-minute campaign. There's no Grand Prix or Battle Mode either, but for the $20 I paid for? Things could be worse...
Otherwise, this game is an 8/10. It's very tight control-wise (if not as good as the likes of Mario Kart and such), the tracks that don't revolve around ugly turns are fun, and the unique ideas it tries actually work.
If you want a 6/10 racing game, go play Mario Kart Tour.
Damn it, Japan.
So it has a longer single-player campaign than Mario Kart...
I think you have to take into account the price tag of this game. For the asking price it's a really solid game. Some of the levels are hard, but in a learn the track you'll have no issues kind of way.
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