Gensou Skydrift Review (PlayStation 4)
Finally, a Touhou Project racing game! Race down courses set in the magical land of Gensokyo! Use the tag system to swap rider and board! Lots of spell cards and Last Words! Features online VS mode and multiplayer. You can check records and win races after races. Get a move on and get racing!
Pros:
- Nice anime graphics.
- 1.57GB download size.
- Platinum trophy.
- Works on Playstation 5.
- 3 modes-campaign, versus and free run.
- Set your own in-game name.
- Save replays-on/off.
- Manual region selection.
- Fast loading times.
- Initial race shows controls as you play.
- Racing gameplay.
- Gates- drive through to charge spell power to then be able to cast magic.
- Simple drifting mechanics.
- You play as two characters (witches) who take it in turns to be the one flying and the other one on top shooting.
- Can store up to two powerups/magic spells.
- Seven tracks.
- Free run-plays like a time trial, you pick your two characters and play against a timer.
- Online multiplayer.
Cons:
- All story is told via walls of text.
- No idea what the spells do.
- Basic track design.
- Feels flat.
- No way to rebind the controls.
- Can’t skip cutscenes even when replaying a level.
- Horrible performance even on the PlayStation 5 with slowdown and pop up.
- Ai gets faster respawns.
- Alow to respawn and recover from hitting the wall or falling off the stage.
- No straight-up Ai races outside of campaign.
- Campaign mode doesn’t give character choices or difficulties.
- In campaign you have to finish first or you fail and have to retry.
- No restart race option.
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Graphics - 7/107/10
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Sound - 7/107/10
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Accessibility - 6/106/10
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Length - 7/107/10
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Fun Factor - 6/106/10
Summary
Gensou Skydrift is a racing game with little life to it. The campaign is walls of unskippable text met with a tedious race and so on. The whole affair just feels flat and uneventful, even the racing is dull with you flying around a track going through gates to power up spells and beating your opponents. The spells as they call it are basically power-ups as they seem random and until you play a lot of it, you will never know which is which and what they do but hey. The Ai is cheap with perfect handling and shot aiming but the faster respawns are the real killer. In terms of controls, it’s a simple hold a button to fly and press the brake with it to Drift but drifting slows you down. The fave buttons are used and you cannot change the bindings at all. Online was so dead I couldn’t find a game, free-run is basically a time trial as it’s just you and a timer with a campaign already explained but it’s just a huge long text wall with occasional race breaks. Overall it’s not fun to play and is in no way rewarding or worthy of your time, to be honest.
