Nintendo Switch Critic Reviews

Bite-sized but very tough to chew, Yōdanji is a devilishly tricky roguelike with a fun theme, addictive, goal-based gameplay and massive replay value. Its 21 unlockable characters are the key to the latter, with each yōkai essentially acting as its own unique class, and discovering and trying to master the mechanics of each monster is pure old-school joy. Its anachronistic presentation won’t be for everyone, and clunky controls make for a sometimes confusing crawl, but anyone looking for a tough-as-nails good time with plenty of personality will get more than their money’s worth here.

It’s the most enjoyable Kemco game I’ve played to date. More of this and fewer generic RPG Maker-like “retro” JRPGs and I will become a real fan for this company.

While there certainly will be a market of people that will enjoy Yodanji I think that selection of people will be fairly narrow. In a year that has seen dozen of roguelikes becoming increasingly popular, one from a text based era may have some issues finding a following. For me personally, although I have enjoyed many of the recently released permadeath titles, the prospect of the collection of yokai just wasn’t enough to overlook the minimalist gameplay and 80s inspired graphic design.

Yodanji manages to take Japanese Folklore monsters and turn them into a dull turn-based rogue-like. The random nature of the game completely undermines any interesting ideas and, unfortunately, the whole experience ends up falling a little flat as a result.