Those of us looking forward to the Touken Ranbu Warriors title got two big surprises on May 17th, 2022. The first was a playable English demo. The second, Touken Ranbu Warriors was getting a PC release.
On the fence for #ToukenRanbuWarriors? Give the playable demo a try!
⭐️https://t.co/zU9mLXY0FH
💻https://t.co/e0DV69KNJdYou can carry your save data over to the full game at launch!#KTFamily #ToukenRanbu pic.twitter.com/hTIBZQntEt
— KOEI TECMO AMERICA (@KoeiTecmoUS) May 17, 2022
I decided to give the demo a go on PC. Honestly, though I think I would have liked it a little better on Nintendo Switch. The game starts out with some explanation of the lore behind the game, and about the factions in the game. Touken Ranbu originally was a web-based video game originally done by DMM and Nitroplus where you would stop an external force from messing with time. Touken Ranbu Warriors seems to be a similar idea but the one who goes in time is a little fox character named Kunosuke. Kunosuke is going around and gathering the characters and dividing them into teams to protect history from Revisionists who want to change it. It appears that Kunosuke was appointed to this task by the Government of Time.
The demo itself is extremely short. It gives you a feel of all the characters but in very small maps as it lets you go through the tutorial with ending the tutorial by introducing a partner mechanic. You can choose to have the gameplay be easy by putting all combos to just one button, or you can make it more like a traditional Musou game from Omega Force by having the normal attack, special attack, and a very powerful attack that uses a gauge.
Judging by the demo itself, it definitely feels like it wants to be an entry point to Musou-type games. Short maps for short play times, not a big roster of characters, a lot of different difficulty settings, and not a very complex story to follow. That is one of the reasons I think the Nintendo Switch is the perfect platform for this game. Handheld mode runs pretty decently and it has short maps so you can do a few runs and be off. You won’t need a lot of time invested into this title from the looks of it. I won’t know for sure until the full game releases but it seems shorter than most other games in the warriors library.
Touken Ranbu Warriors releases May 24th, 2022 on Nintendo Switch and PC.