The Touryst

Genre: Action-RPG

Players: 1

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

The Touryst is a bit of an unusual game that’s a bit hard to define, but the best way I can think to describe it is that it’s an Action-RPG like the classic Zelda games if you removed all combat from the game. Players speak with various characters, solve puzzles, and even explore small “monument” dungeons with their own puzzles to solve. There are even “bosses” at the end of each dungeon that players don’t fight so much as work around.

Developer Shin’en Multimedia has long established that even though they’re a small company, they know their way around Nintendo’s hardware, with the impressive Iridion, Nano Assault, and Fast Racing series, and The Touryst is impressive in a different sort of way, taking boxy, voxel-style graphics and loading them with tons of personality through some nice animations, good detail, solid framerates and excellent lighting.

That said, a lot of The Touryst feels like an oddly minimalist experience. Much of the game is played without music, you never get any sort of story about who your unnamed tourist (touryst?) actually is or why he’s scuttling from one island to another solving mysteries, and in fact the start of the game just has the game’s title in the corner of the screen as you arrive unceremoniously at the game’s first island, just getting right into things without any sort of buildup or explanation.

In a way, this game’s personality is very videogamey, with the game’s puzzles often using very videogamey logic, and the characters behaving as if they know they’re in a videogame without ever actually saying as much. “Here, go on this quest! Why do I know you’ll do it? Oh ho ho, of course you will, because you look like the sort of guy who enjoys a good quest!” I’m paraphrasing here, but that’s the sort of attitude you’ll encounter in this game. Still, even with this being the case, it’s hard to deny that this game has its own unique personality that shines through its hand-waving of genre tropes, with a fun tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.

As for the gameplay, one of the things that really shines here is variety. Players will be engaging in a number of different activities, not just the more traditional Zelda-style puzzles, and seeing what new things the game will have you doing at each new location is a large part of the joy of playing through the game. In many cases, this comes in the form of various minigames, and The Touryst is absolutely filled with these games. You’ll be surfing, kayaking, drumming, seeking out specific things to photograph, even playing some old-school-style videogames like a 16-bit-esque predecessor to the Fast Racing series.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in the wide array of activities here, but I feel that I have to make note of a few huge problems the game has. Firstly, while these minigames are all fun, nearly every one of them felt shallow and under-developed to me. For example, I would have loved to play a retro-style game in the Fast series, but the minigame included here is just a single track that keeps going infinitely until you can’t reach a checkpoint in time, with controls that are over-simplified down to left/right/accelerate. The surfing minigame is fun for a bit, but sadly all you do is steer, and the only stunts you can do are spins and heading into the curl of the wave. I felt like this game was absolutely loaded with minigames that had immense promise if only they were developed with the depth to make them into something that delivered on that promise.

Secondly, this game loves to have the player back-tracking, hopping back and forth from one island to another. This wouldn’t be so terrible (it’s kinda’ a staple of Zelda-style Action-RPGs, after all), except that this often follows the same formula of “get to island A, get a task on island B, talk to captain to get to island B, complete task on island B, talk to captain to get to island A, talk to the person who gave you the task”… it can get tedious at times.

However, the biggest problem I have with The Touryst is the platforming. In short, the platforming in this game is terrible, with players constantly plagued by a camera that refuses to do anything to work with you, and often refuses to let you move the thing into the position you need it to be in. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I mis-judged a jump and fell into a bottomless pit because of this game’s damn camera, and while there’s no health to speak of and the only penalty is the game resetting the room and forcing you to try again, when you have to do this dozens of times, it gets aggravating very quickly. Heck, in one room I “fought” a boss (you don’t really fight, but whatever) and won, only to mis-judge a jump afterwards and have to do the entire thing over again. My jaw actually dropped at the realization that this game was forcing me to re-do the entire damn thing.

There are times that I absolutely loved The Touryst, and there are times I despised it. There’s a wonderful abundance of stuff to do and things to see here, much of it overflowing with personality and creativity, and it’s constantly compelling the player to keep pushing forward to see more of what the game has to offer. It’s just a shame that this variety wasn’t infused with more depth. And damn it, they should have either fixed the stupid camera or done away with the terrible platforming altogether.

tl;dr – The Touryst is an Action-RPG similar to the classic Zelda games, minus the combat, where players play a tourist exploring a series of islands and solving puzzles. There’s a lot of variety and creativity here, but it frequently lacks depth, and occasionally has tedious backtracking. There’s also absolutely terrible platforming with a horrible, uncooperative camera. There’s a lot to love in this game, but a lot to be frustrated with as well. Overall it’s still worth playing, despite its glaring imperfections.

Grade: B+

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

The Touryst Deluxe

Genre: Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Developer Shin’en Multimedia tends to take their time with new releases, so I have to admit it was a surprise for me to see that just a few months after their release of the excellent Fast Fusion on Nintendo Switch 2, we would receive another game of theirs on the platform, though to be fair this is an upgraded port rather than an entirely new title.

Unlike many Nintendo Switch to Nintendo Switch 2 ports, The Touryst Deluxe is not a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition game, but a new release of the game. However, that’s not to say that there’s no upgrade – players who have a copy of the Nintendo Switch release of the game in their game library can get the Nintendo Switch 2 version discounted to $5. This is actually better than a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, because it means that you can have the game sitting on both platforms at the same time, with no need for them to check in with each other if you want to play the game on one or the other.

The biggest advertised change here is to the overall game resolution, with the Nintendo Switch 2 release game upping the resolution from a dynamic 1080p in docked mode to a stable 4K, and dynamic 720p resolution in handheld mode to a stable 1080p, all while maintaining the original game’s stable 60FPS framerate. This falls short of the PlayStation 5 version’s 8K 60FPS but… well, not many people have 8K TVs in 2025, and I’m not sure if most players would even be able to see the difference even if they did have one.

I suppose if you’re looking at specs, there is one other improvement here, though it’s a “blink and you’ll miss it” thing – the time to load the game up has been reduced from 6 seconds on Nintendo Switch to 3 seconds on Nintendo Switch, with loading of game saves being near-instantaneous in both cases. It’s not much, but since I tested it and it is an improvement, I’m mentioning it here.

However, the improvements reach much farther than simple performance boosts. The Nintendo Switch 2 release of the game also features improved anti-aliasing, new dynamic ambient occlusion, and an improved “depth of field” effect blurring areas farther away, which is now farther out and less jarring. There are also subtle improvements to things like waves on the beach, which now carry voxel particles of seafoam along with them to give them added dimension.

There’s added content here as well, with some new locations and items, a new quest, and a new arcade cabinet with a retro-style Fast Zero racing game in addition to others that were in the original game.

None of these improvements and additions transform The Touryst into something truly new, but they do combine to make this into the absolute best way to play this game. It looks better and has more content, but it’s still very much the game, with all the same good and bad qualities. If you never bought the Nintendo Switch version of the game, this is still a pretty solid game even more worth trying out on Nintendo Switch 2. And if you bought the Nintendo Switch version of the game but it’s been rattling around in your backlog unplayed, the $5 upgrade seems well worth the price. But if you’ve already had your fill of this game, I don’t think the upgrades here warrant a double-dip, unless you’re a huge fan of this game.

tl;dr – The Touryst is an Action-RPG similar to the classic Zelda games, minus the combat, where players play a tourist exploring a series of islands and solving puzzles. There’s a lot of variety and creativity here, but it frequently lacks depth, and occasionally has tedious backtracking. There’s also absolutely terrible platforming with a horrible, uncooperative camera. There’s a lot to love in this game, but a lot to be frustrated with as well. Overall it’s still worth playing, despite its glaring imperfections. Also, if you own the Nintendo Switch version of the game, you can get the Nintendo Switch 2 version for only $5, which is a nice bonus.

Grade: B+

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