Touken Ranbu (Touken Ranbu/Sword WIld Dance)
Touken Ranbu is a new game by DMM and Nitro+ that is pretty much like a male version of KanColle. If you don't know KanColle, its short for Kantai Collection which is a web browser game where you collect cards of warships anthropomorphized into cute girls. You make a deck or a "fleet" of these cards, and fight off enemies. Touken Ranbu is the same, but its set in ancient Japan period and its swords anthropomorphized into males. KanColle is highly popular with males so who knows if Touken Ranbu will do the same for females. Like KanColle, it is fanservice-y with clothes getting ripped and/or removed when they are badly hurt. Also they are voiced!
This is a web browser game so it does not work on mobile devices, and its also a Flash game. This game is only in Japanese so knowing it will be a plus. You also need to sign up an account on DMM. The big downside to this is that DMM games are region locked to Japan only. But there are work arounds to bypass it with either editing cookies or API links. I won't tell you how to do these, but Google can easily help you with that.
Once you get an account, start the game. It may ask you to set up a nickname, your birthday, and blood type. Then the game load and the tutorial will start with a cute white kitsune as your guide. This game may feel a bit overwhelming at first, buts its not much to it once you find your way around. So lets start with knowing what is what on the interface! Please note that my Japanese is limited so I may not be able to explain everything.
On the top red bar, the far left is obviously your name and level. The four icons are materials that you win, and use to create new things. Then theres the mail and sound settings.
On the far left menu starting from the top:
Inner Citadel (Home screen. Screenshot at the top of this post is what you see)
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To Battle (Battle enemies, PvP, and send 2nd unit on expedition)
Formation (Assign your swords to your main unit and/or 2nd unit)
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Sword Forge (Use materials to get news swords)
Equipment (Use materials to make equipment)
Repair (Heal your swords to full health)
Joint Training (Choose a sword and combine other swords, like duplicates, to make it stronger)
Internal Number (choose two swords for horse duty, field duty, or bout)
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Missions (main quests and daily quests)
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Military Record
Sword Album (Album of all the swords you've collected)
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General Merchant (Cash items)
Refinement (Change background)
First things first is the get new swords to fill your unit. Go to the Forge and start making swords. There are four materials with + and - and this is important since it will determine the kind of sword that will be made. If all are 50s you will get daggers so the more you add the bigger the weapon. Here's a general recipe for the different types of swords:
Materials Order: Charcoal/Tamahagane/Coolant/Grindstone
Daggers: 50/50/50/50 (20-30 mins)
Short Sword: 150/150/150/150 (40 mins)
Uchigatana: (1 hr 30mins - 2 hrs 30mins) 350/350/350/350
200/200/200/200
Long Sword: (2 hrs 30 - 4hrs) 350/350/350/350
500/500/500/500
600/600/600/510
Odachi: (2 hrs 30mins - 3hrs) 600/600/600/510
550/650/650/550
600/800/500/300
Spear: 500/50/500/500 (4 hrs)
Halberd: (5 hrs) 600/500/700/700
650/650/700/700
Both your main and 2nd unit allows up to 6 swords. Whoever you assign to the first spot will be the one who shows up on the Inner Citadel. In Formations, each slot has 3 little bottoms on the right: red is changing/assigning swords, black is removing the sword, and blue is where you equip your sword with equipment.
After having your unit set up, its time to go battle! Go to Battle and click on the top button with the kanji dice. It will take you the maps. The smaller colored buttons are eras, and each era has 4 regions. You need to finished a region to unlock the next one. Each region has at least two paths with dots. When you land on a dot you either battle (purple) or get goods (green). Then its scouting mode where you are given 6 battle formations. You may get hints: red outline means advantage and blue means disadvantage. The battles are automatic and will take you to the results screen. Then the right side will have two choices: continue or go back to home. The difficulty has quite a gap so you do need to grind a bit to even get to the next region.
Before when your sword hits 0 health it will be gone for good, but now it will only have 1 health when its defeated so it won't disappear. Yay! After a few battles you may notice some of your swords turn orange or red with a square emoticon. This means your sword is tired so either come back later or switch them out.
The other two buttons in Battle are Expedition (armored man), and PvP (two foxes fighting). Expedition is a passive way to get experience and materials. This is what the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th units are for. PvP is going up against other players' units, but this is not a real time event since battles are automatic anyways. A list will automatically assign players within your level. The good thing about this is that your swords will not keep the damages it gets from these battles. Also you still get experience from this so this is a very good way to level up your swords without worrying about healing and losing anything really.
There isn't much to it other than unlocking all the swords you want. It is strangely an addictive game though. The art style isn't really to my taste, but it isn't bad. Overall, its not a bad game and if you got time to waste try it out! There is also a Japanese wiki for this game so if you need recipe list to get certain characters or whatever it's there! There is also a English wiki for this game too so check it out for more information.
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