TOUHOU GENSOU MAHJONG

Kinda expensive for what it is. The UI looks really cheap, extremely limited options menu, and the game keeps showing controller input even when playing with mouse and keyboard, which I find really distracting. The adventure mode is an interesting concept, so I might keep playing for it and see how that goes. Touhou Unreal Mahjong Revision 2 had a lot more charm in my opinion, this version just feels like a downgrade. Also, I miss being able to select the BGM tracks freely. Needing to activate all of them one by one for each room is atrocious.

Recommended as this is an overall quality product, but wariness is advised as even at half price it costs a premium compared to even paid competitors. I'm not interested in the campaign, I don't have fellow masochists to play with, and I'm not a Touhou fan, so my perspective is purely from the experience playing the AI. That considered, I will list about everything I like/dislike below + The most pad friendly mahjong game I have experience with, feeling slightly better than Yakuza. Every button feels well-mapped, and the board can even be zoomed into with the right analog stick (though this probably wouldn't be needed if the tiles were slightly less pixelated for toimen). Has a nice toggle that allows pressing RB/R1 to discard the latest draw instead of having to move the cursor all the time if looking to discard further away from the right + Dora tiles are a comforting urine yellow. Feels comforting to collect and - more importantly - satisfying to toss aside when it splashes onto the board + Aesthetically very appealing, with over 100+ characters to choose from with overall nice, varied art and over 2 dozen boards. The music is varied and well-made, but the default board is th…

Gensou Mahjong is a complicated game to talk about, especially due to its history. There used to be a few other Touhou Mahjong games released before this one, which were significantly cheaper, but a lot harder to access legitimately. So for the rest of this review, I will talk about my experience with Gensou Mahjong and whether I think it's worthwhile to pick up or not. I picked this up very early, maybe not quite day 1, but pretty close to it, so I paid not quite full price, but it still ended up $70CAD. From the offset, well the art as well as the music, all of it is very professional; numerous artists you'll likely recognize if you're in the doujin scene at all. Presentation is only one part of the game though, so how is the gameplay? Well, it's Mahjong but with cheater abilities. Which is an amazing concept explored in the earlier entries when playing against other humans! Against the AI? I hope you're ready for a miserable time in Adventure Mode. Some missions got altered overtime, but overall it's...well it's fine for about 80% of the journey, but once you get to that last 20%, hoo boy. There are some missions that could easily take over 2 hours, if not longer to complete …

Horrible UI for setting table rule. You gotta go through 1 by 1 in a fixed list for 27 tables rules with no way to set what rule you want. There is no speed up for playing with cpu, so clearing nodes is a chore in adventure mode since it's just rng fest most of the time.

Bought it on sale, interesting to see how the illustrations of the characters are a community effort made by different artists, but the art styles changing is a bit off putting. Better to buy when it goes on sale

If you ask me a year ago whether I would recommend this game, I would say no. The price is way too high for a single player mahjong experience which is absolutely not everyone. However, the price is lower, and the multiplayer room is suddenly populated again, I can regularly find multiple game rooms at 8:00 AM EST. The music in this game are incredible, and I'm sure you would recognize the artists for a lot of illustrators in this game. If you are looking for a mahjong game with fun abilities or a fan of touhou, I definitely recommend this game.