Welcome to our review of Gensou Skydrift, a racing game where you are a witch and you fly on top of another witch! And yes, you read that right…
The Touhou Project racing game is finally here. Run around in a beautiful unexplored region, Gensokyo! An unprecedented tag system that switches between board and rider. Kick off your rivals with a wealth of spell cards and deadly last words!
An exhilarating flight race is waiting for you ── not! Chase fast! The board/rider role can be switched at any time. The performance at the time of the race changes to the thing that plays the role of a board and
each can stock spell cards. Spell card gauge increases when passing through the ring. If the LV changes depending on the amount of gauge, or if you accumulate a golden LW gauge, you can release a deadly last word only once for each character.
Equipped with online battles using a random matching system. With a battle record such as rating and ranking.
The first time I read about this game, I just frowned and read it again. Yes, you really ride on top of a witch, being a witch yourself. So weird as a concept, but considering it shared developers from this little game called Mario Kart, you should know already that this game has the proper know-how behind it.
In itself, you really need to be able to look past the very unusual approach of this game and once you learn the game mechanics, you are actually left with a surprisingly fun game. While short in story and lacking of a great amount of other content, this is a game that can maybe be a contender for unexpected game of the year. Not the best game, but the one you never saw coming.
It can be called like a Mario Kart lite clone, where you do have a more than decent racing mechanic and the bonus mechanics like switching “seats”, boy, that sounds strange to write down, but that really is the way to describe it.
Now, despite being surprisingly fun, it is also apparently lacking a lot of content to keep playing. I had the storyline finished in under three hours, which I really found to be disappointing. Maybe I had expectations that were unrealistic? Compared to the King of the hill of these style racers, Mario Kart levels were not reached, but there were sparks of excellence at times, just not perfect yet.
In conclusion, Gensou Skydrift really caught me off guard, it looked stupid at best when I saw the trailer, hence my inclusion of the trailer in this review. But after playing it a few minutes and after skipping the storyline, I admit to being very pleasantly surprised by how smooth this game was. I played it on PlayStation 5 and it loaded pretty much instantly.
Maybe my biggest gripe is the lack of content which could have upped it from my 7 out of 10 score to a big 8 or even 9, but it is what it is. I do recommend it for a lighter play session.
