If I made this review closer to the 80 hour mark, I would have called this unconditionally my favorite game on Steam, but given I went out of my way to do nearly all of the dungeons, I did notice that the quality of the content and the pay-off for doing some of the dungeons is drastically less good the more optional it is.
I would also say that the game features a steep learning curve for those unfamiliar with Mystery Dungeon style games.

This is a Japanese styled dungeon crawler roguelike, often also referred to as Mystery Dungeon(after the most known series that does this sort of style) which is based specifically on the really old school roguelike games.
The difference between Western and Japanese roguelikes is a bit hard to explain since it is mostly a lot of very technical subtle differences, but mainly Western roguelikes shied away from being item-centered(often even having unidentified items that could lead to total chaos) to be more character and weapon ability focused.
Mystery Dungeon is very item focused so it may come as a surprise to people used to the modern Western style of roguelikes.
Genso Wanderer does feel like a Mystery Dungeon/JRPG hybrid though, particularly when it comes to the boss fights.

So for the main story content(and the character sub-story campaigns) you get some really high production value writing presented in a visual novel format, but the level of detail in those VN style scenes surpasses many high profile VNs.
They actually managed to create a very anime looking battle scene that plays as a continuation of a boss fight, purely in that VN style presentation using different static images, filter effects, sound effects and those images being moved around and blinking in and out. That is one of the best suits of this game, the level of detail when it tries.
That and also this game has a number of well made FMV cutscenes as well as excellent voice acting.

The best parts of this game are the character side campaigns, the game fully embraces the more casual rogue-lite nature and lets you have some meta-progression as you do them, but it gives you a new base of operations, as well as restrict access to the items and equipment of your main game inventory.
So you end up fully immersed with the various equipment upgrade, enhancement and seal systems, but not to an extent where the min/maxing required is too extreme, but also not be able to outright skip it by bringing your old gear from the main game.
DLC wise Sakuya's DLC comes with a side story and is worth checking out, the rest are just characters to give some variety to your options for gameplay.

Length of the game is around 90 hours for the juicy and well made story bits, and anywhere up to 1000 hours(depending on where you choose to stop) of optional bonus content.

There's a lot of factors that add up to the length, lots of careful inventory management back at the shrine if you get invested in learning the entire crafting menu.
There's also around 25 dungeons that are at least 99 Floors in this game(as opposed to 2-6 of them the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games had) I'd say they could use a reduction on floor count and faster enemy scaling, there's a lot of downtime in them.

And what really adds up to playtime if you decide to fully complete every dungeon, would be Innocent Heart and the series of similar dungeons. The game full on goes Disgaea for them, ditching any permadeath with full on progress saving, with you limit breaking your weapons dozens of times leveling far beyond the level cap where you deal hundreds of thousands of damage in one hit, but still be far from a 7 hit kill on some enemies. Oh and Innocent Heart is 1000 floors long, I personally did not pursue that set of grindy dungeons, but most people I know that did, end up clocking over 1000 hours in this game.

In spite of being a roguelike it follows the weird JRPG party concept where your partner can be KOd as often as needed and revived fairly easily, but it is an instant game over if the player goes down to 0 HP.
The game lacking auto-revive items like Reviver Seeds from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon makes for an interesting approach to certain bosses where you play support while your partner tanks(for some reason in spite of being able to be disposable, partner characters have a much higher HP growth rate than the player).
But due to the fact you can die abruptly to some ridiculous crap without an auto-revive fallback(see some weird balancing down below) the community has a taboo to mention, but generally accepted view of save scumming this game.

Balance wise some of the end-game optional dungeons have some real weird design choices, considering the developers seem fully aware and specifically made the game's "ultimate dungeon" called The Beginning Trial balanced in a unique way where they don't have certain types of commonly problematic enemies be Big-rank, but instead just have slightly buffed stats compared to their same rank counterparts.
You can really feel the absurdity that are some of the Big-rank enemies, largely because often that means their special ability can hit the entire room which ends up raising some balance concerns when you run into them in a Pandemonium room(ambush room crowded with lots of enemies)
Two worst offenders to serve an example are:
Big Flandre, explodes the entire room dealing massive damage to allies and enemies and destroying all items, this is a particularly nasty one, since the game lacks the "Look around" option the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games have so it is hard to tell if there even is one in a big crowded room while the damage she deals is likely to one shot you if you don't have increased HP, and worst of all, the enemies she kills in the process can drop items, which makes her do it again, if you survived the first blast.
Big Kogasa, this is a general catch all for making any situation worse, she startles enemies making them use their special abilities almost every turn, normally Kogasa is balanced around having to approach enemies to do it, but Big Kogasa just hits the entire room in one turn and all hell breaks loose in dozens of different ways.

Overall this is a great game, suffering from content bloat and a lack of clear direction on how to approach dungeon order, you can miss whole features of the game for long periods of time if you happen to not go to specific places and focus on other dungeons instead.
Given that your experience can completely change based on if you get the recommended dungeon order wrong or not, if you played Mystery Dungeon style games in the past or if you don't poke your head into some of the obnoxious dungeons.
Generally do not recommend it to people who just like Touhou stuff in general, but not so much Mystery Dungeon, as this would be a very uphill struggle with a tutorial that's sink or swim where one wrong input makes you lose, that's not even remotely as lethal as the actual game proper. As well as have the first dungeon in the game be 40 floors long with rest stops, as opposed to a series of smaller dungeons that lead to the arc finale.

If I made this review closer to the 80 hour mark, I would have called this unconditionally my favorite game on Steam, but given I went out of my way to do nearly all of the dungeons, I did notice that the quality of the content and the pay-off for doing some of the dungeons is drastically less good the more optional it is. I would also say that the game features a steep learning curve for those unfamiliar with Mystery Dungeon style games. [h2]What is this game?[/h2] This is a Japanese styled dungeon crawler roguelike, often also referred to as Mystery Dungeon(after the most known series that does this sort of style) which is based specifically on the really old school roguelike games. The difference between Western and Japanese roguelikes is a bit hard to explain since it is mostly a lot of very technical subtle differences, but mainly Western roguelikes shied away from being item-centered(often even having unidentified items that could lead to total chaos) to be more character and weapon ability focused. Mystery Dungeon is very item focused so it may come as a surprise to people used to the modern Western style of roguelikes. Genso Wanderer does feel like a Mystery Dungeon/JRPG hybrid though, particularly when it comes to the boss fights. [h2]Story and presentation[/h2] So for the main story content(and the character sub-story campaigns) you get some really high production value writing presented in a visual novel format, but the level of detail in those VN style scenes surpasses many high profile VNs. They actually managed to create a very anime looking battle scene that plays as a continuation of a boss fight, purely in that VN style presentation using different static images, filter effects, sound effects and those images being moved around and blinking in and out. That is one of the best suits of this game, the level of detail when it tries. That and also this game has a number of well made FMV cutscenes as well as excellent voice acting. The best parts of this game are the character side campaigns, the game fully embraces the more casual rogue-lite nature and lets you have some meta-progression as you do them, but it gives you a new base of operations, as well as restrict access to the items and equipment of your main game inventory. So you end up fully immersed with the various equipment upgrade, enhancement and seal systems, but not to an extent where the min/maxing required is too extreme, but also not be able to outright skip it by bringing your old gear from the main game. DLC wise Sakuya's DLC comes with a side story and is worth checking out, the rest are just characters to give some variety to your options for gameplay. [h2]Game length and amount of content[/h2] Length of the game is around 90 hours for the juicy and well made story bits, and anywhere up to 1000 hours(depending on where you choose to stop) of optional bonus content. There's a lot of factors that add up to the length, lots of careful inventory management back at the shrine if you get invested in learning the entire crafting menu. There's also around 25 dungeons that are at least 99 Floors in this game(as opposed to 2-6 of them the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games had) I'd say they could use a reduction on floor count and faster enemy scaling, there's a lot of downtime in them. And what really adds up to playtime if you decide to fully complete every dungeon, would be Innocent Heart and the series of similar dungeons. The game full on goes Disgaea for them, ditching any permadeath with full on progress saving, with you limit breaking your weapons dozens of times leveling far beyond the level cap where you deal hundreds of thousands of damage in one hit, but still be far from a 7 hit kill on some enemies. Oh and Innocent Heart is 1000 floors long, I personally did not pursue that set of grindy dungeons, but most people I know that did, end up clocking over 1000 hours in this game. [h2]My gripes with this game[/h2] In spite of being a roguelike it follows the weird JRPG party concept where your partner can be KOd as often as needed and revived fairly easily, but it is an instant game over if the player goes down to 0 HP. The game lacking auto-revive items like Reviver Seeds from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon makes for an interesting approach to certain bosses where you play support while your partner tanks(for some reason in spite of being able to be disposable, partner characters have a much higher HP growth rate than the player). But due to the fact you can die abruptly to some ridiculous crap without an auto-revive fallback(see some weird balancing down below) the community has a taboo to mention, but generally accepted view of save scumming this game. Balance wise some of the end-game optional dungeons have some real weird design choices, considering the developers seem fully aware and specifically made the game's "ultimate dungeon" called The Beginning Trial balanced in a unique way where they don't have certain types of commonly problematic enemies be Big-rank, but instead just have slightly buffed stats compared to their same rank counterparts. You can really feel the absurdity that are some of the Big-rank enemies, largely because often that means their special ability can hit the entire room which ends up raising some balance concerns when you run into them in a Pandemonium room(ambush room crowded with lots of enemies) Two worst offenders to serve an example are: Big Flandre, explodes the entire room dealing massive damage to allies and enemies and destroying all items, this is a particularly nasty one, since the game lacks the "Look around" option the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games have so it is hard to tell if there even is one in a big crowded room while the damage she deals is likely to one shot you if you don't have increased HP, and worst of all, the enemies she kills in the process can drop items, which makes her do it again, if you survived the first blast. Big Kogasa, this is a general catch all for making any situation worse, she startles enemies making them use their special abilities almost every turn, normally Kogasa is balanced around having to approach enemies to do it, but Big Kogasa just hits the entire room in one turn and all hell breaks loose in dozens of different ways. [h2]Conclusion[/h2] Overall this is a great game, suffering from content bloat and a lack of clear direction on how to approach dungeon order, you can miss whole features of the game for long periods of time if you happen to not go to specific places and focus on other dungeons instead. Given that your experience can completely change based on if you get the recommended dungeon order wrong or not, if you played Mystery Dungeon style games in the past or if you don't poke your head into some of the obnoxious dungeons. Generally do not recommend it to people who just like Touhou stuff in general, but not so much Mystery Dungeon, as this would be a very uphill struggle with a tutorial that's sink or swim where one wrong input makes you lose, that's not even remotely as lethal as the actual game proper. As well as have the first dungeon in the game be 40 floors long with rest stops, as opposed to a series of smaller dungeons that lead to the arc finale.