Touhou Kobuto V: Battle Burst is an action bullet hell fighting game with chibi characters. Learn more in our Touhou Kobuto V: Battle Burst review!

 

and polished vibrant 3D graphics along with very decent upbeat music. Despite all that Touhou games are notorious for being difficult games to play, so if you’re up for the challenge, the path to platinum could be quite difficult but very rewarding if you’re committed to achieving it.

The combat playing field is on a 3D arena rather than an open world and the game revolves around dodging and guarding your opponents projectiles as well as defending against their spell cards and you unleash yours. We will get to that in a short while. The story portion of the game is told from the perspectives of each fighter, so it’s not a deeply story driven game. The focus is mainly on gameplay, which is not all bad. Most fighing games do tend to be gameplay focused. There are some cutscenes and voiced segaments dotted through out the game. But Action is the name of the game.

Unfortunately you cannot win games by button mashing, you need to learn to dodge projectiles effectively and study the attack patterns of your opponents to win matches. Also worth noting that dashing too much can stun you, and that could be a nail on your coffin if you’re not careful. So use the dash skill very wisely and don’t abuse it. Balance, patience and developing a good rhythm is the key to success and win win matches.

As for the characters there are eight of them nine if you include the downloadable bonus character from PSN. As cute as they are, i elt they could have been a bit more fleshed out, and the number of available characters increased so there is a decent variety. Each character does have some uniqueness about them, but their moves list are basically the same, while there is room for experimentation beyond the story mode. The uniqueness is not the same as you would expect. As an example all characters have two charge attacks, they are all the same, but work slightly different for each one which is where the uniqueness comes in. Remilia’s charge attack works like a shield and Marisa’s charge attack is an offense attack. It’s the same for the spellcards for all characters. While i appreciate what CubeType was trying to do, but I felt the characters would have benefitted from having different skill sets to experiement with and add an extra layer to the game. It’s a shame the characters are not very fleshed out.

For the main story campaign you are stuck with one character for each story until you finish the main campaign and the. You can use the characters you want for other game modes such as Score attack, Arcade mode and you can play in local or online multiplayer. If you’re stuck on a particular match or struggling with a boss battle, then Arcade mode will be the place you can practice your moves on. So it’s a pretty handy mode to have.

One thing that i found annoying while playing was the lack of tutorials on how to master the spell cards . Most games that involve cards usually give you a basic walkthrough on how to use them effectively, in this case you are playing blindly without knowing how to activate cards, it’s frustrating and extremely annoying. So lots of experimentation and luck is required when trying to master the spell cards without some form of handholding, was that the point? I’ve really no idea at all, but even a basic understanding of how the cards work would have gone down nicely.

The actual game itself is not all that long but the platinum roadmap probably is depending on your skills at bullet hell shooters. Aiming is not the best, and can cause frustration and can easily spell the end of your match if you make too many misses.

Koishi Komeiji is a downloadable character available at launch, not sure if it’a a free character, it probably will be as NIS are known for releasing free and paid content over a period of a few months. The environments look really decent and colourful, there are only five to fight in so the variety is in short supply unfortunately.

As for the multiplayer portion, while bullet hell games are generally perfect for local and online multiplayer, but Japanese style bullet hell games really doesn’t suit online multiplayer, it felt tacked on as it’s not needed, but i would have suggested releasing the online portion as free DLC for those who do like multiplayer. So it may be hard to find populated servers to play online. So don’r be surprised if this is the case.

The main issue is lack of of modes, variety and repetitiveness, question is is it worth the $60 price tag? Well i would only recommend the game to hardcore Touhou fans, who know what to expect and could get far more enjoyment that a non fan would. That aside the game is flawless, no bugs and glitches, i don’t think i’ve seen any problems in past NISA games as far as i can remember so that is a big bonus!

Disclaimer
This Touhou Kobuto V: Burst Battle review is based on a PS4 copy provided by NIS America.