I've been quite busy in the last week and I think I won't have time to play something for myself in the near future and it's quite bothersome I must say I've become quite fond of my daily 2hu failures. >:[
But in any case count me in the group of people interested on demidar's opinion, especially if you're going to play Imperishable Night, it may be the most complex Touhou ever and it's a beautiful beautiful game.
About your problem with Yuyuko first spellcard I fear I can't be much of help since I've never had problems with it... Try to visualize the diagonal path to take amongst the small bullets and then adjust yourself between the large ones, if you can mantain the rhythm it shouldn't be that hard.
For dealing with Flowery Soul I try to draw a triangle, starting on the bottom left of the screen and then going to the right and then again in the middle of the screen between Yuyuko. I don't really know if this is the best strategy but the hardest part should be avoiding the tiny white bullets she shoots at the beginning of the spellcard, after that it's really easy and I find it really fun and relaxing. I am still having huge difficulties with Subtle Melody, the cherry bullets drive me crazy and it isn't helping that I was trying to do a Hard 1cc well before I've managed to master the Normal one, but I was having tons of fun, the gap in difficulty between Normal and Hard is less harsh than I would have though, at least for this game.
Haha well I just finished all shot types on normal so I'll be moving on to IN. Marisa B was my last shot type and you'd figure surviving would be easy since Master Spark is so powerful. After a couple of failed runs (I died twice in the first stage) I just blitzed Yuyuko. Didn't die to the first non-spellcard (got lucky when Yuyuko moved right instead of left leaving me a large-ish gap), didn't die to Flowery Soul (I had just realized the strategy you described Sking, moving around in a triangle by darting forward and to the side to bait the homing butterflies then pulling back to increase the gap between bullets for safe horizontal crossing), didn't need to bomb the non-spell after that (the one with streams of curving daggers with a barrage of large bullets). I just nailed that shit to the wall, and I even cottoned on to the resurrection phase and I now find it fairly easy. Finished with one life (can die two times) and one bomb remaining.
Subtle Melody is quite relaxing, when you're not being a dumbass and dodge towards the corner and get yourself trapped T_T. But yeah those butterfly bullets have an abnormally small hitbox, and thank god for that.
It's getting fairly late here and I have to get up early tomorrow so I declined to install Imperishable Night because I know I'll get sucked in and sleep at 5 am. So instead I'm just winding down by playing through the Extra stage (who the fuck winds down by playing death in bullet form?). I've managed to get Ran down to Princess Tenko (where she teleports to where you are and shoots a nova plus an aimed stream) but I just can't beat it. Oh well.
An interesting behaviour I've noted about myself. If I'm just concentrating on the game, I tend to play super recklessly, like stick to the top of the screen all the time and deny using bombs and instead risk dying from intense micrododging. So I have to "calm" myself by listening to podcasts--loud enough to comprehend what's being said but soft enough to still hear that sweet, sweet Touhou music--so my mind is occupied. Though it does have its risks, I was listening to the latest Idle Thumbs and I was laughing so hard I'm surprised I didn't die since I spent entire seconds looking away from the screen (pausing didn't come to mind at the time ).
I'm gonna go futilely bash my head a few times against Ran and then go to bed. Can't wait to listen to Plain Asia in-game tomorrow!
Oh, I just remembered that the guys who made the Last Comer and Mystical Power Plant danmakufu games just released their new game. Not sure if anyone here has played those games before but just a quick heads up.
I was originally going to get it as soon as it hit, but I found out that the Futo/Miko team aren't added in yet (and I really want to be play the game with them first :/)
Oh, I just remembered that the guys who made the Last Comer and Mystical Power Plant danmakufu games just released their new game. Not sure if anyone here has played those games before but just a quick heads up.
I was originally going to get it as soon as it hit, but I found out that the Futo/Miko team aren't added in yet (and I really want to be play the game with them first :/)
I admit I've never been interested in danmakufu scripts or danmaku fangames in general, from what I've seen they all lack the polish of the main serie in terms of visuals or mechanics, even though this is just my first impression I've never played a single one of them BUT playing with Futo sounds fantastic so I made some research about RSS and I found this:
Which led me to this:
I'm weak and I want to play a game just because Marisa has a scarf and looks ridiculously cute sue me.
Also reading about other danmakufu script I've found The Last Comer which tells about an incident involving (put under spoiler in case anyone might care about the plot)
Lucifer, Joan of Arc, The Archangel Michael and Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and obviously they are all depicted as little girls!
I've been laughing like an idiot for seven years this is the funniest thing I've ever found in all the Touhou fandom.
It'll take me some time to see the final bosses, but yeah this game's villains seem to interact more.
A couple more impressions. This game has a lot more evolutions from PCB than from EoSD to PCB. EoSD felt like ZUN coming to grips with making stuff using DirectX so bullet patterns were simple-ish. They got more complex in PCB after he got some experience and when he didn't have to spend time learning dev tools, what with the shoot back, the increased speed, more elaborate spell cards and higher number of bullets in general. In IN, more complicated gameplay mechanics are put in, like night-blindness and that crazy bullet shift thing Reisen does, and also final spellcards. The game also seems to ramp up a lot faster but that might just be me being befuddled by the new systems in place. I've also noticed a trend of making the decision to focus or not focus become increasingly important. It didn't really matter in EoSD, but you indirectly get less score for focusing in PCB (get less Cherry Point Max per graze while focusing), and now this core mechanic Youkai gauge is influenced by focus state.
I completely forgot that the game had rival fights (Reimu or Marisa) which is fucking awesome. Love Coloured Master Spark best character theme or bestest?
I have a question - I've seen pictures and screencaps of Touhou things that were more of a inside view: one looked like some kind of documentary/making of, the other like some kind of article (I think it was about pattern generation?). If anyone knows things like that, I'd appreciate links to them (if they're available publicly) - translated or not (although hopefully some of them are).
Quick summary is a horizontal SHMUP + Katamari games where you can pick up lots of items as you go along. You can go from Nitori armed with a few Kappa guns to a fridge/television/missile/flower/pinwheel/grimoire/turret toting Nitori.
It's an okay game. Honestly it seems like they just designed the levels, made sure the gimmick was working properly and called it a day.
At first it's okay since you just go along destroying everything in your path but later levels ask for a lot more precision than the game's main mechanic really allows for. Suddenly you have a lot of dumb obstacle dodging which is obviously less than optimal when you have so many weapons that you can barely move or see anything on screen.
The best thing about this is the also the visual style and levels. The sprites are awesome and the stages can be pretty hilarious (like destroying everything in the Human Village and even picking up the 3 Fairies of Light to add to your arsenal was great). Even Seiga got an appearance.
The bosses are kind of eh. Most, I ended up killing within 10 seconds because of the weapons I was using so I can't really comment on them properly (though I can say that the last boss is painfully unfun). At least a few of them are funny
(like fighting an appliance levitating Keine or the Palaquin ship)
I only played it on easy. I tried it on later difficulties but meh it just doesn't really work imo. You'll never get a significantly large cache of weapons on later difficulties and using an itemless Nitori for most of the game doesn't sound that appealing to me.
I have a question - I've seen pictures and screencaps of Touhou things that were more of a inside view: one looked like some kind of documentary/making of, the other like some kind of article (I think it was about pattern generation?). If anyone knows things like that, I'd appreciate links to them (if they're available publicly) - translated or not (although hopefully some of them are).
For the first thing, you are probably thinking of the documentary from NHK's MAG.NET program.
...Which surprisingly don't have a good English sub version on youtube now (because the old upload was taken down)? You'll have to do with this one translated from Spanish. Or if you can read Chinese subtitles, this one. The untranslated video can be downloaded here.
The second thing is an interview about game development. What you saw were its sample page released on the web. The full interview is translated into Chinese here.
For "insider looks" into Touhou, a surprising amount can be found on the internet, but not all are translated.
Trying to 1-cc with Marisa and Alice, man Kaguya is really kicking my ass, I guess it was a fluke that I beat her with Reimu and Yukari. There aren't really any easy phases, and all the spell cards are way trickier than previous final bosses'. The one giving me the most trouble is Dragon's Necklace, which are three lasers fired in a rotating pattern with medium sized bullets raining down. I honestly can't find a good strategy for it, the lasers constrict you into narrow paths while the bullets block the ends (sometimes fully blocked by multiple bullets requiring a bomb to get out). About maybe 15-20 seconds in to the spell card instead of one layer of lasers, it's two or three layers making dodging even harder. The only way I can find to get past this is using a bomb (and not too early since this spell card has a lot of health) or just die and use a bomb when I respawn.
In regards to non-final boss difficulty, my ranking goes something like this.
Marisa (Stage 4) >= Reimu (Stage 4) > Tewi (Stage 5 midboss) > Reisen (Stage 5).
That's a pretty weird curve. I usually lose 2 to 3 lives on Marisa/Reimu while I lose up to 2 on Reisen. Sometimes I die to Tewi once, the reason why I put her above Reisen is because with Tewi I try to not bomb both her life bars to save up for Kaguya and her pattern looks easy enough, whereas Reisen has 5 life bars which I can get through fairly easily; Tewi has a higher life cost to life bar ratio.
Also does anyone think Wriggle's Last Word is harder than both Mystia's and Keine? Keine's Last Word is pathetically easy.
Youmu's shot is super weird. Given how much trouble I am having with Marisa + Alice, I'm not sure if I could even 1-cc with her team. Sakuya and Remillia I might be able to though, but I haven't even beaten Ending A with her either so who knows.
Youmu is unbelivevably powerful and fun to use when you learn how to manage her shot, since we've had the IN challenge I play in human (half ghost) form for the 95% of the first three stages without problems, she's that much badass. And then I proceed to get wrecked in the 4 stage because I still try to play unfocused all the time and Marisa makes me cry every single time.
Actually I find the hardest team to be the Magician Team, Alice's shot is too thin and I'm still not able to follow the Enemy sign at the bottom of the screen to stay close to the boss while I'm busy watching my surroundings for avoiding the bullets. I love Marisa's speed though.
And yeah Wriggle's last word is harder than both Mystia's and Keine's though it doesn't say much, I find all of them piss easy.
Youmu is unbelivevably powerful and fun to use when you learn how to manage her shot, since we've had the IN challenge I play in human (half ghost) form for the 95% of the first three stages without problems, she's that much badass. And then I proceed to get wrecked in the 4 stage because I still try to play unfocused all the time and Marisa makes me cry every single time.
Actually I find the hardest team to be the Magician Team, Alice's shot is too thin and I'm still not able to follow the Enemy sign at the bottom of the screen to stay close to the boss while I'm busy watching my surroundings for avoiding the bullets. I love Marisa's speed though.
And yeah Wriggle's last word is harder than both Mystia's and Keine's though it doesn't say much, I find all of them piss easy.
Yeah I guess so. I think Master Spark got nerfed from PCB so it's not quite as strong in exchange for having 3 bombs. All Marisa has now is always auto-collect (which is great) and blazing fast speed (good for cutting through streams). But the narrowness of Alice's shots does make fighting bosses a lot harder since you'll be focusing a lot during the latter part of the game, as opposed to everyone else which either has homing shots or wide spread while focused. I did manage to beat the game with the Magician team though so I'll be moving on to the Scarlet team.
That would be great, but personally I would like to own all the discs. It would shoot up western accessibility though, since importing is fairly expensive and installing the translation patches is a bit of work.
not really sure if this sort of posts are allowed but,
Out of curiosity (and in an attempt to stir up discussion), how did the rest of you folks got into the series? Or what was your first exposure to the series?
For me, the first thing I ever knew about the series (this was back in 2009) was from this video which featured a remix of Flowering Night.
The song itself was catchy and upbeat, though I initially dismissed the series thinking it was some sort of waifu simulator of sorts with good music (good thing I was wrong about the former part).
The same year I stumbled upon this absolutely beautiful arrange of Blue Sea of 53 Minutes.
I was slightly surprised to discover that it was from Touhou as well, as the description of the video (which detailed the plot sypnosis for Concealed the Conclusion) depicted something which was far more complicated and intriguing than what I initially thought of the series. (I actually thought CtC was canonica at the timel) Though I never really did much research into the series back then as I wasn't interested in Anime or the sort at the time (like many others I thought Touhou started out as an anime or something similar)
Fast forward to 3 years later, I was browsing through a thread on GAF on video game remixes where someone posted a link to a 1 hour long compilation of UN Owen was Her? remixes. I somehow knew that UN Owen was a popular song on the Internet (despite never having actually listened to it before) so I went ahead and clicked the link. I didn't really liked it, but one of the related videos on the side had this song (it's a remix of Nazrin's stage and boss theme) in display.
Upon listening to it, I was hooked. The music was unlike anything I've heard at the time,it was fast, rapid and it was catchy and memorable as all heck.
And from there, I went and discovered this gorgeous remix of Girl's Sealing Club, which to date, remains one of my favourite remix of a Touhou theme.
The image in the video of Girl's Sealing Club got me really curious, unlike the rest of the videos, it depicted a shot of 2 girls looking into the distance onto a collapsed observatory (the image in the video I linked is different as the original video was taken down). Up to that point I though Touhou had a medieval-fantasy setting and that sci-fi esque picture got me interested.
So I went ahead and read the TVTropes entry for the characters in the series (and wrongly deduced that the characters were Sakuya and Remilia because of Mary's mob cap). Soon I got addicted to reading about the character's bios and eventually started reading entries in the TouhouWiki all night. And from that point I started reading various fan web comics and fan art and Touhou became my favourite series of all-time.
Addendum : I never actually played any game in the series (though I do enjoy watching Lunatic 1cc runs by professionals) aside from the demos for Hopeless Masquerade and Double Dealing Character (in which I was convinced I can never get through any game in the series seeing as Kagerou's stage cost me all my lives and bombs).
Addendum 2: I was only aware of the existence of popularity of fan videos/memes such as Altroemeria Record's Bad Apple!! Remix and Marisa Stole the Precious Thing in 2013 after becoming a fan of the series.
I actually found out Touhou about last year-ish and only properly got into it about exactly a year ago (give or take a few days). I even made an LTTP thread about it last year (that failed miserably after about a page lol)
I'd sort of known about Touhou from TvTropes since it seemed to pop up a lot in the articles I'd read (but I had no idea what it was supposed to be about just from the linked page). I ended up listening to Smooth McGroove's remix of UN Owen was her last year. Then I looked Touhou up properly this time, played EoSD which piqued my interest and then I finally discovered the fan content and then the rest is history.
I've known about Touhou for a while, on the periphery. It wasn't the games that was my first exposure but the fanart and the arrangements. After doing a little digging I found out the source was a series of shooting games, and since I was bad at games back then I just shrugged them off. The arrangement was probably U.N. Owen Was Her or Bad Apple, one of the super popular ones, and I'd recognize Reimu because she's fairly distinctive. Anyway I never followed the fan creations so it just lay dormant.
I've dabbled a bit in shooting games since, nothing from Cave and the like, just the eXceed series I picked on a whim from Steam. I played those games and while I found them tough, it was manageable (with continues), but I became attracted to the idea of dodging bullets from then on. I also picked up Ikaruga 4(?) months ago, but I kinda dropped it because the ship moved too slow and I got my ass beat by stage 4. Then about 2 months ago this thread popped up, bringing Touhou to the forefront of my mind again. Now that I had experience with STGs, and I actually had an income with which I could import the games, I finally pulled the trigger and bought EoSD and now I adore Touhou.
I actually played eXceed 3 yesterday, and boy it sure is pretty close to the Touhou games. Points items used to extend, graze (though I imagine this mechanic is universal in STGs) and a spell card system. The only new thing it does is there's a true ending that requires more than 1-cc and a special attack that's similar to Ikaruga's.
I first heard about Touhou something like... Seven years ago?
It was on 4chan on the /u/ board in a topic about doujinshi game and I found a link of Touhou 10 demo which I downloaded because why the hell not and I played a couple of times without understanding anything about the game at all, except that both the music of the first stage and the boss theme were excellent. To this day I still regards Shizuha's and Minoriko's theme as the best first stage themes\first stage boss theme couple of the entire series.
Since I was young ad stupid(er) I quickly proceeded to forget everything about this game untill a couple of years later I found the video of Stops at the affected area and immediately dissolves ~ Lunatic Udongein by IOSYS and I was hooked. I spent ridicolous amount of time listening to it and Marisa Stole the Precious Thing (which was found by my gf at time? Or maybe she found both of them? I don't remember) so I decided to try playing the games again and this time I decided to focus on Touhou 8 because Reisen is the best 2hu ever and I wanted to battle with her and hear her glorious, glorious theme.
I played Imperishable Night for a good amount of time clearing the game in easy mode with all the teams, and I kept reccomending the series to anybody I knew but nobody ever listened to me ahaha.
After some time I got bored of playing the same game again and again, I tried playing Touhou 10 and maybe Touhou 11? But they failed to interest me as Imperishable Night (though I always loved Mountain of Faith's OST), so once again I stopped caring about the franchise.
Fast forward to last year when I met a person who sparkled my interest for Touhou again, and I tried to make up with all the new games and characters I've missed in all this time. I've also began to step out of my comfort zone playing IN in Normal and trying some other game in the series, though it wasn't untill I found this topic and I saw the weekly challanges that I sit down my pc and tried to play a Touhou game seriously.
Since then I got my first, legit Normal 1cc and I'm still playing every time I trying to stay focused and to learn how to better myself and I love it.
Thanks to the friend I talked about before I also found myself exploring the dark pit that is the musical side of Touhou and now that's all I listen to, and since I've always listened to an uncomfortable amount of music I'm spending my days listening to tons and tons of arrangements on youtubem, finding new circles and artists and it's beautiful.
Since is too hot here I don't want to read again all the stuff I've just written so please forgive me for my poor grammar and incomprehensible ramblings maybe later I'll try to clean it
I heard of Touhou around five years ago, when a friend showed me Bad Apple!!, and was impressed by the animation. After some time of constant exposure to it by said friend, I got interested in it and looked it up. However, I'm rather terrible at the danmaku games and was more interested in the fan-made RPGs and Hisoutensoku, which I played extensively with my friends.
For people who play danmaku, have you tried the Len'en Project games? They are not Touhou fan games, but are obviously inspired by Touhou. They are also more than a little hard.
The first two games can be downloaded for free (link, including the games and patches)
I already knew about a ton of stuff by the time I started playing (dunno exactly how long ago, but a couple of years) but when I started playing the games all the other content got to the back burner, haha. I should really catch up on some artists and circles and mangas and fangames because I'm so behind on everything.
I'm pretty sure my first first encounter was a Super Mario World Touhou romhack. There's an infinite amount of them, and I played a ton of them and they were really well designed and had so many crazy ASMs and stuff. I never consciously looked for anything Touhou until I started up the games, though, and before then, barely knew anything besides Reimu/Marisa/Cirno, although pretty much the entire music library was in my head. Even in non-Touhou SMW hacks or other unrelated videos, Touhou music is used everywhere.
My image of the games before playing them was pretty much all those insane Lunatic 1cc videos on Youtube and Niconico.
For people who play danmaku, have you tried the Len'en Project games? They are not Touhou fan games, but are obviously inspired by Touhou. They are also more than a little hard.
The first two games can be downloaded for free (link, including the games and patches)
Whoa yeah that definitely looks inspired by Touhou haha. I looked at some videos and it seems to focus on smaller amounts of faster bullets which seems extremely scary.
I imagine I'll get to the spin-offs and inspired stuff once I'm done exhausting the Touhou games, which will take quite a while.
Status update: I've just finished Imperishable Night with all shot teams (excluding solos of course). Both the Scarlet Team and the Netherworld Team went by quite quickly but I can't tell if it's because of experience and pattern familiarization, or if they are overpowered. I've managed to get to Kaguya with both teams toting 5 extra lives (and inevitably losing 4 of them due to a mixture complacency and arrogance).
Remilia's ability to set up a shooting platform makes a few spell cards easy as, such as Reimu's Barrier spell cards and most of Reisen's spell cards since they just stay in one spot while forcing you to dodge horizontally. It also seems like Remilia's damage when combining both the shooting platform and her own bullets are very powerful compared to other teams (or I could just be imagining it).
Whoever said Youmu wrecks everything, you were right. She wrecks 90% of everything. Super high unfocused damage when you learn how to wrangle Youmu's Phantom, super high spread from Yuyuko meaning you can kill everything sitting at the bottom of the screen and tracking bosses isn't even necessary. Youmu's bomb is immensely powerful even if the clearing ability is narrow since the enemy will be dead anyway.
I'm confident in declaring Marisa harder than Reimu. Whereas Reimu's attacks are directed or are fired with reference to you, Marisa has that plus a lot of random direction shot, shots coming from opposing directions, shooting a massive amount of bullets that are extremely difficult to cross (mostly from that one non-spell) or screen rumbling from Master Spark. Reimu's most difficult spell card is Evil Sealing Circle since it's suffocating, but it's also manageable with good micrododging. Stardust Reverie is probably Marisa's hardest spell card, because she gets a sizeable invulnerability period, the pattern is restricting and bullets come from the front, behind and the side due to the familiar.
Reisen continues to be a pushover. Tewi continues to be deceptively fatal.
Kaguya's Dragon's Necklace feels more easier as I broadened my awareness, now that I know how the lasers are fired. Still gonna use a bomb though. I can usually get through Fire Rat's Robe without a bomb or a death, the key is leading lasers until the last moment and knowing you can cut through the front 20% of the laser without dying. All the other spell cards are hard but doable with raw dodging so not much to say there.
I was taking a couple of runs at Mokou, and she seems beatable, until I got to Honest Man's Death. For those who haven't seen it before, there are four familiars on the side of Mokou, two per side. They spray a stream in a wave-like fashion, not directly at you, but towards your sides to restrict your movement. Then Mokou fires a multiple vertical streams radiating outwards, also aimed towards your sides for restricting movement even more but at a faster pace and narrower space. THEN Mokou fires a rotating laser, starting from one side and swinging towards your position, killing you if you don't cross it before it materializes, and to do that you might have to cross the narrow vertical streams. This is near impossible, but I'll keep at it until the next games come.
Speaking of next games, I have Phantasmagoria of Flower View installed and I've dabbled in that game a little. That game is weird and Shiki Eiki really hurts. I also have Shoot The Bullet and Mountain of Faith on the way.
I'll also throw out a question: Who has beaten an Extra Stage and how long did it take?
I feel bad about making about half the posts in this thread.
Since it wasn't mentioned in the OP I tought I tell you about the Touhou OVA series 'Fantasy Kaleidoscope The Memories of Phantasm' made by Manpuku Jinja.
Maybe at least one person hasn't heard of it before.
There are currently 3 Episodes and the 4th will release sometime in the future.
The first episode covers the events of Perfect Cherry Blossom, the others so far are a retelling of EoSD.
Also the fandub is amazing, all characters are voiced by one girl.
Oh and if you are concerned with the legality, Manpuku uploaded the episodes themself, just without sub and dub, so this shouldn't be an issue.
Personaly I bought an artbook to support them.
Since it wasn't mentioned in the OP I tought I tell you about the Touhou OVA series 'Fantasy Kaleidoscope The Memories of Phantasm' made by Manpuku Jinja.
Maybe at least one person hasn't heard of it before.
There are currently 3 Episodes and the 4th will release sometime in the future.
The first episode covers the events of Perfect Cherry Blossom, the others so far are a retelling of EoSD.
Also the fandub is amazing, all characters are voiced by one girl.
Oh and if you are concerned with the legality, Manpuku uploaded the episodes themself, just without sub and dub, so this shouldn't be an issue.
Personaly I bought an artbook to support them.
Several years ago I found a video titled "THE HARDEST VIDEO GAME BOSS EVER!"
From there I found other bullet hell videos and saw at least one Touhou gameplay video. While they were cool, at the time I thought they were too hard and that they could only be played in arcades, so I forgot about them.
In 2012 I saw my friend playing one of the Touhou games. Recognizing it from the videos I saw years ago, I did my research and soon sought a copy of EoSD. I've been playing Touhou games ever since.
I didn't discover the doujin scene until a few weeks after I started playing. The arranges and fanworks are cool, but I'm primarily in it for the games.
For me it required weeks, if not months, of on-and-off play to beat Mokou. Granted, the more you play, the less time it will take to beat other extra stages. I've beaten Mokou with all four teams.
Honest man's death is a trick.
The laser's hitbox is not always active, even after it spawns.
I was spoiled by watching a video before I played the actual stage, so this wasn't an issue for me.
Since it wasn't mentioned in the OP I tought I tell you about the Touhou OVA series 'Fantasy Kaleidoscope The Memories of Phantasm' made by Manpuku Jinja.
Maybe at least one person hasn't heard of it before.
There are currently 3 Episodes and the 4th will release sometime in the future.
The first episode covers the events of Perfect Cherry Blossom, the others so far are a retelling of EoSD.
Also the fandub is amazing, all characters are voiced by one girl.
Oh and if you are concerned with the legality, Manpuku uploaded the episodes themself, just without sub and dub, so this shouldn't be an issue.
Personaly I bought an artbook to support them.
There's also another anime series, Musou Kakyou: A Summer Day's Dream which I think is an original story. It's notable in that it has professional voice actors (you can see them in the link). I love the voice Marisa has in this 3-episode series, it fits perfectly in my opinion.
You can find the subbed versions on Youtube if you want to watch. Only two episodes have been released though.
For me it required weeks, if not months, of on-and-off play to beat Mokou. Granted, the more you play, the less time it will take to beat other extra stages. I've beaten Mokou with all four teams.
Honest man's death is a trick.
The laser's hitbox is not always active, even after it spawns.
I was spoiled by watching a video before I played the actual stage, so this wasn't an issue for me.
Yeah, that was the first time I went to Youtube to find out the trick, because I couldn't make anything out while playing. Seems possible with a bit of work with the new found knowledge.
There's also another anime series, Musou Kakyou: A Summer Day's Dream which I think is an original story. It's notable in that it has professional voice actors (you can see them in the link). I love the voice Marisa has in this 3-episode series, it fits perfectly in my opinion.
You can find the subbed versions on Youtube if you want to watch. Only two episodes have been released though.
Two episodes + a 2.5 episode which was translated just a few months ago.
You can watch it here.
Regarding Stardust Reverie I remember quite clearly I had found a nice method to capture it consistently, maybe later I'll give it another shot to see if I can replicate it... But still I think that Magic Sign Milky Way is one of the most difficult spell card in the entire game, I just can't deal with it.
Oh man, a half episode. So watching that when I get the time.
Magic Sign Milky Way only poses moderate difficulty to me since I'm pretty good at reactionary dodging, though I often just curtail the risk altogether with a bomb. You can't bullet clear Stardust Reverie which is one of the reasons why I place it as a higher difficulty spell card.
My method for Stardust Reverie is to align myself with Marisa while sitting in between two bullets from a string, that way when it starts collapsing I'll have one less line to dodge. Then when the lines start rebounding back I circle around until the string ends, crossing any other string in the process. There's usually a pattern after that, but Marisa usually goes down before it starts moving so I can't comment on that part.
Today I've tried ~40 times to capture the spellcard and this happened to me one time. And this happened because every time I just allign myself with Marisa (I try to move a little bit in the beginning because in a real run you don't spawn exactly in the centre of the screen) and then I put myself in the bottom of the screen and then wait, but it's really simple to adjust yourself just beneath the second to last star string and then go down between two stars in the last one, and then it's just a matter of doing easy horizontal micrododges.
By the way I'm playing a lot Touhou 14 in these days, I'm working towards a Normal 1cc with Marisa B and it shouldn't take me much longer, even though the last boss is still giving me tons of problems, I've got to put some time in spell practice. The game is tons of fun, the various shot types are really satisfying to use and I love the mechanic that ties resources to the number of items you collect going above the POC line, it forces a more aggressive playstile which I find really really funny.
Also the music is really good, the first stage theme is maybe the second best in the serie after Paradise ~ Deep Mountain (Touhou 7), and it makes sense since both in Th 7 and in Th 14 Cirno is the first stage midboss.
When I get back home I'm itching to find out how it's like to play the games (especially IN) with an arcade stick, as a guy who can't use a keyboard at all, d-pad controllers only. I'll be sure to report back.
So I just got Shoot the Bullet and Mountain of Faith. Only tried StB so far though. It's pretty interesting as mechanics go and a smart way to reuse assets. Of course, the bullet patterns are waaaaay harder to account for the new mechanics and the game format. It's kind of like Super Meat Boy, hard as balls levels (levels constitute a single bullet pattern or spell card) but instant restart (without having to play through the stage portion, or the entire game) dissipates most of the rage. But no, those bullet patterns are hard as fuck. The big thing in this game is playing as Aya with her camera, which has to charge up before you can shoot a photo. In order to beat a level, you have to capture the boss in a photo X amount of times, X being variable on different levels. The photo shot is very short range, medium size area of effect attack (though you can hold down the shoot button to extend it somewhat) but the bullet patterns are much, much more intense to keep you out of shooting range. Photo shots also bullet cancel, so combined with the long cooldown of a photo shot there is a lot of importance on when the optimal time to take a photo is either for score (dodge right up next to the boss and take a shot while she's doing something special) or for survival (get to the very edge of your camera's range and take a corner photo).
Alice wasn't this powerful in PCB. :/
I really like the game, but I think after PoFV--which I have finished and almost beat the Extra stage with Komachi--I'm craving traditional Touhou gameplay. I will probably return to StB after finishing MoF as I do enjoy dodging the insane patterns.
Edit: Welp, just finished MoF with a Reimu B on the day I got it. I should probably start playing on hard. And to swerve, Suwako's theme is super great.
Impressions so far:
--Idk if it's just me having a bad comp to play this on but I'm getting ridiculous slowdown. On Stage 6 I was getting 0.6 FPS. Ugh. It's surprisingly playable on some spellcard that I'd expect it not to though.
--On my firstish try (it would be my second try technically since I restarted after dying on the first stage by accident), I was able to get to the Stage 6 boss and at least her third spellcard before losing all my lives. I'm not sure whether it's because this game is a bit too easy or if it's because of all the slowdown making it easier though.
--Music is pretty good, though I haven't had any tracks really pop out at me quite like MPP's first stage theme
--Resource collection is pretty easy. I got way too many bombs at first (but then I found out the hard way that resource bombs don't carry over onto your next life if you die...)
--The characters are pretty interesting. I thought it was kind of lame that the Kodama from MPP, Cirno and Yuyuko were all here (since I like this creator's original characters) but the later characters are pretty cool. I definitely like the girl that
seems to be the shrine maiden of the stage 6 boss from MPP, and also that guy who looks like a soldier Rinnosuke
.
--The patterns are really great, if a bit easy. The only I really hate is that stupid Master Spark/Slash fakeout from
Kaguyoumu (the stage 4 boss)
. Easily lost 9 Bombs because of that :/
EDIT:
-Also just found that if you continue, you are given 9 lives + bombs and you have to start the stage right from the beginning. I think this might be a useful addition to anyone that plays this and isn't particularly good at SHMUPs. I definitely like it better than the way ZUN does continues (I don't like the way ZUN does it, especially on a first playthrough when I'm just trying to unlock all the stages for practice mode).
So the other day, I stumbled across a video that reminded me of the existence of a lesser known Touhou community - or rather, a community that exists right under our noses.
These "superplayers" are not just players who can do lunatic perfect runs of every Touhou game with one hand behind their back. These players have long transcended mere survival. They play for score, and they will do anything to push their score to the max. It's fascinating stuff.
I can't remember whether the upcoming action RPG Touhou Koukishin (or its predecessor starring Youmu) has been brought up in this thread. But here's a new trailer announcing playable Sakuya: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k96wn_xTb0
So I've put in a bunch of time in MoF, and I also went back to EoSD just for kicks.
The first thing that hit me with MoF is that the "production values", for lack of a better term, have increased so much. I guess this is why it's considered the start of the modern era of Touhou games. Change of fonts in boss names, more elaborate backgrounds, and weirdly going back to using score for Extends. Spell cards are still pretty elaborate and maybe a bit more creative than the previous mainline entry. It's nice that ZUN has discovered a way to cut off lasers rather than have them persist through bullet clears and bombs or have the entire laser disappear.
Not sure how I feel about standardizing the bombs though, I liked how the different bombs served to differentiate the characters. I do like how bombs are now tied with shot power because it's less punishing with regards to losing spare bombs to a stupid mistake, and I think the penalty for using a bomb is fairer as well. You're given more bomb uses throughout the game to help survivability, but using bombs during boss fights is much more harsh to encourage players to actually try and learn how to beat a certain spell card/non-spell rather than just bombing your way through. Using a bomb reduces your shot power by 1 (power goes up to 5 as opposed to 128, each whole number of shot power except 5 gives you an option like in Gradius) so using too many bombs during a boss battle will only make the rest of the fight harder due to weaker shots, while still giving chances to come back by beating a life bar flawlessly by giving power items upon depletion and regaining bomb uses. And since you spread the same amount of power you lose when you die (except if you have less than what you'd lose, in which case you're getting extra bomb uses), it ensures bomb uses carry over.
The game's presentation and music is what I describe as "majestic as fuck". It has a very idyllic and romantic (I think that's the term) depiction of nature, and the majestic part is covered by the theme of gods. I'm not musically inclined so my descriptions are gonna be 90% inaccurate, but the OST has a lot of sweeping and swelling compositions and is in general conservative and simple compared to the brashness of previous OSTs. The use of synthesized or artificial-sounding sounds is reduced but not completely gone (I know the music was created through some music production software and not from actual instruments but you know what I mean), but they are sometimes present to give a bit of energy or frenetic feel to more intense parts of the game (bosses and the later stages). I think I also heard a harpsichord somewhere. Lots of piano pieces which is par for the course, but also a lot of woodwind pieces as well (and trumpets but that's ZUN's key instrument) so the music sounds more natural (as in not artificial) and traditional, although I suspect intentionally avoiding being influenced by modern music theory is super hard to do so some of it leaks into these pieces (though that's not a bad thing, gotta keep the 2hu feel). Drums are also present, I don't really have much to say about it other than I appreciate its beats, iunno. I especially like the second stage's theme, it's very different to the rest of the soundtrack, has a dark feeling about it yet is also optimistic? The backgrounds are a lot more elaborate, featuring more detail and a more vibrant colour palate, well as vibrant as using earth-y colours allows. This helps the game feel a lot more majestic. One of the stages is literally just a huge, gushing, bright waterfall, how is that not majestic and grand?
I probably offended every single musician on the planet with my ignorance :lol
The Faith system is one I don't have strong opinions on. Besides doing well in it to get score faster to get more lives, it doesn't give any defensive options or have a score-survival inverse relationship like PCB's Cherry system or the unnecessary complexity of IN's Time Orb/Youkai Gauge system. It feels a bit basic but that's not bad. It is however boring and almost entirely detached from the rest of the game. It's pretty important for score obviously, since it is primarily a scoring system. I also don't like the fact it depletes during the calm times when the stage name and logo shows up and no enemies are on screen.
As I've said in a previous post, I've started playing through on hard. The spike in difficulty isn't insurmountable, I'm able to get up to first part of Aya before I get final dead (no continues). I forget that not only do spell cards become harder, but midbosses may also have/have more spell cards. Although Kanako is gonna be super difficuly, I had enough trouble with her on normal, especially her last spell card. I only beat it last time because I got completely in the zone and dodged everything from 2/3 of her health bar down. Not sure what has changed in hard mode as I haven't even seen her, but it won't be nice. Proper bomb-shot power management is important here and going in with less than 4 power is really, really bad.
I like Nitori so much, her design is great as is her personality. "Kappa's Pororoca" is the trickiest (but not the hardest) spell card, seems randomized to me, besides the overall wave shape. Could have an easy path through the wave, or see nothing or a path too dangerous and have to bomb. However since I've started playing hard, "Diluveal Mere" is both the hardest and trickiest, though hard mode's version of Pororoca ain't no slouch either. Wait, Nitori uses a variation of Kaguya's "Dragon Necklace"? Guess I hate her with the fury of a thousand suns now.
jk she's still great
Aya is difficult-ish, but most of my problems are with the spell cards that have degrees of randomness to it, as well as her final spell card which is strictly patterned but induces complacency in me. I haven't found a way to get through "Crossroads of Heaven" without using a bomb, unless I'm lucky enough to get a good, clear path. I actually find its hard mode version "Saruta Cross" easier, though I still sometimes need a bomb to get through. "Wind God Hidden..." is also pretty dependent on RNG for me, if I get a wide intersection it's easy, if I have to risk micrododging I tend to lose my focus/where my character is and proceed to get dunked. Usually defeated with a bomb but can sometimes get through without one. Same thing with her survival spell card Illusory Dominance. Her final is simple stream crossing but eh.
Sanae is 50% easy, 50% hard. "Grey Thaumaturgy" and her last spell card "God's Wind" are easy to dodge with a bit of foresight and planning. The two problem spell cards are "Daylight Guest Stars" and "The Day The Sea Split". For the former, I've always been bad at drawing laser trajectories in my mind, especially if they are fired in a intersecting fashion so moving at the last moment is what I'd usually do, except there's random debris and targeted shots as well. I can't deal with it. For the latter, I just get dazzled by the side lasers and am unable to focus, eventually getting hit by those same lasers when I just assume I'm in the clear and I focus on the streams of knives.
This post is running a little too long so I'll be short with Kanako. Despite the fact that "God's Rice Porridge" is a variation of one of Reisen's non-spells that I don't have trouble with, this one just trips me up. The gaps between novas starts off large, then begins converging and getting smaller with each successive wave. I always think I'm clear, but apparently the hitbox of the bullet is larger than usual and get hit. I cannot find a way to beat "Miracle of Otensui", It's two rotating streams on the side and four aimed stream in the middle. I get that to cross the aimed stream I have to dash in one direction to increase the distance between the shots so I can safely cross, but I can't couple that with dodging the rotating streams.
Not gonna say much about the Extra stage besides its music is goddamn awesome and Suwako sure loves her lasers.
I can't remember whether the upcoming action RPG Touhou Koukishin (or its predecessor starring Youmu) has been brought up in this thread. But here's a new trailer announcing playable Sakuya: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k96wn_xTb0
I can't remember whether the upcoming action RPG Touhou Koukishin (or its predecessor starring Youmu) has been brought up in this thread. But here's a new trailer announcing playable Sakuya: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k96wn_xTb0
I wish more games would use characters other than the SDM crew for playable
It still looks legit cool though. The Palace of Earth Spirits, Kourindou and the SDM itself look really great. I'm just wondering how they have Remilia in levels that seem to be set during the day.
