If this were an isolated example then it could be forgiven but too many times would-be straightforward fights suddenly turn against me and leave me dying with a scenario that never felt in my hands. So you decided to take on the living umbrella and fancy your chances of making it through that door, you have full health, what could go wrong? Well, you immediately miss two attacks and the enemy gets two lucky shots – instantly annihilating your poor character before he even made it out of the first room. That is until you realise your decisions matter less and the randomness of the game will decide how things go. Do you run from a group of enemies, hoping to escape? Or fight your way through them to get through that door on the other side of the room? The turn-based nature helps to alleviate any sort of skill checks found in other rogue-like games, in theory opening the genre up to more people. You control one of the fabled Yokai and guide them through a dungeon in a turn-based manner, every movement or attack is a turn so every decision matters. The gameplay certainly doesn’t help either. For a game that uses Japanese folklore as inspiration, it was disappointing to see it all reduced to this. The scoreboards are about the only compelling reason to keep playing, there are loose story lite elements in the form of scrolls you collect which help unlock more characters to play as but there was never really enough for it to be intriguing and worthwhile. Every time you die, no matter which game mode, your score is displayed and you can compare your run with others from around the world – comparing stats such as floors cleared or enemies defeated. There are 3 modes to play the normal Yokai hunt, a slightly easier version and another that simply tasks you with getting as far as you can before you die.

It’s straightforward and that just about sums up the entire experience. Yodanji is a rogue-like RPG that has you crawling through dark dungeons in search of scrolls to unlock more Yokai to play as. A 101 in how to make Japanese folklore dull.

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