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(https://touhou-project.news/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/th18_01.jpg)
Official announcement:
https://touhou-project.news/news/3368/ (DeepL machine translation (https://twilightnewspaper.wordpress.com/2021/02/27/touhou-18-unconnected-marketeers-announced-trial-version-at-reitaisai-on-march-21st-full-version-in-may/))
Available on Steam!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1566410/Touhou_Kouryudou__Unconnected_Marketeers/
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These mainline games announcement keep being so sudden. You know they pretty much come once every two years, but they still get you by surprise. This got my heart to pump blood into my system again. So we're supposed to get 17.5 AND a mainline game demo, aside from that rhythm game mobile game ? Seems like a hefty contribution towards making 2021 a better year.
Can't comment nor speculate on anything in particular, don't see anything to start working on with rainbow, marketeers, dragon cave (?), power of dosh and suspicious stuff inside card. Like what, we got someone who is making a business selling other people's powers ? Or something
Other things :
-Rainy stage 1, aside from "the usual" forest background
-Cliffside of some suspicious place for stage 2, probably youkai mountain cuz we got Sanae ?
-Yellow items seems to get collected slowly like for points items from a bygone era ... do they get spent when you buy item or having more simply allows you to have access to more items ?
-Kinda curious about how this equipment system is gonna work too : are there gonna be "consumable" items with limited number of uses or all of them are gonna grant some kind of passive boost ? (like for exemple a possible increase in the monies items thanks to the mallet (if it does that like I'd assume))
What I'm most curious of is to see if this game is gonna have some shop system of sorts for buying new equipment ... if it does, I hope it'll be implemented in a way where it doesn't screw the game's pace.
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First of all i think ZUN tried to modernize Sakuya's pose from EoSD but the way she holds the knives is very weird and it looks like Reimu is not the only one whose gohei gets longer in each game and Sanae's resembles WBaWC Reimu.
I feel like the game is going to be ISC but as a main game. Also considering Touhou 11-14 has the japanese name being an important location in the game its possible that "Rainbow Dragon Cave" will be the setting of at least stage 4+.
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Hopefully Zun calms down on visual effects for this game. In Wily Beast I legit struggled to separate my own attack with enemy attacks. Wolf Reimu was disgusting to use, especially when you had to dodge bullets the same color as your special wolf shot.. When I went back to imperishable night, enemy bullets felt so clear.
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Welp, time to buy another Touhou and proceed to not clear it :cirnotan:
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(https://touhou-project.news/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/th18_01.jpg)
https://touhou-project.news/news/3368/
The best translation I can find right now is this DeepL machine translation (https://twilightnewspaper.wordpress.com/2021/02/27/touhou-18-unconnected-marketeers-announced-trial-version-at-reitaisai-on-march-21st-full-version-in-may/).
Initial thoughts:
- This will be the first main series game with both playable Sakuya and Sanae.
- Cards seem to be a major theme. There are several cards featured throughout the screenshots, including the Miracle Mallet, Cirno, and some kind of purple potion (perhaps the Ultramarine Orb Elixir from LoLK?). There seem to be 3 card equipment slots on the right side of the gameplay screenshots; each of those 3 cards occupies a distinct slot.
- Only power items and some kind of gold item are visible in the gameplay screenshots, no point items. The translation mentions buying upgrades during the game (the cards?); I wonder if those gold items replace point items? There's also no visible graze counter or point item value at all this time...?
- Sakuya's shot seems aimed diagonally to one side, reminiscent of PCB SakuyaB?
Much Much Much Thanks for the current heads-up and the future ones!
So...! Touhou 18 Unconnected Marketeers=(T)UM, with hints it is going to be "especially intertwined" with Double Dealing->Impossible Spell Card(->Amanojaku's Gold Rush) ?
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Trial CD: https://touhou-project.news/news/3587/
Girl on the cover appears to be a maneki neko :3
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Trial CD: https://touhou-project.news/news/3587/
Girl on the cover appears to be a maneki neko :3
If that’s the case, then would she be an actual bakeneko, or a tsukomogami of a maneki neko?
Major edit: A rumor on YouTube has put the cat character’s gender into question! Ladies and gentlemen we may or may not have a cat boy as a new character! The “proof” of said rumor is in maneki neko lore and in the picture itself: left hand means girl, right hand means boy.
Any thoughts?
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Major edit: A rumor on YouTube has put the cat character’s gender into question! Ladies and gentlemen we may or may not have a cat boy as a new character! The “proof” of said rumor is in maneki neko lore and in the picture itself: left hand means girl, right hand means boy.
Any thoughts?
I thought the lore was that the left hand raised meant more customers and right was more money. As much as I'd like to see ZUN introduce a new male character, this one can't be since there's a noticeable chest. That and the fandom would go insane.
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Demo set to hit steam on 23 march
So proud to see our boy ZUN getting on with the times
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I thought the lore was that the left hand raised meant more customers and right was more money. As much as I'd like to see ZUN introduce a new male character, this one can't be since there's a noticeable chest. That and the fandom would go insane.
The cat has boobs?!? I honestly didn’t see that. Also, someone on YouTube did mention that...
Also, wouldn’t the fandom going nuts be like every game?
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The cat has boobs?!? I honestly didn’t see that. Also, someone on YouTube did mention that...
Also, wouldn’t the fandom going nuts be like every game?
The shading gives it away. And yeah, the fandom does go nuts over every game reveal and details, but I've noticed over the years the mere possibility of a male character in a main game just drives people mad as if it destroys Touhou's integrity instantly. Even when a fan game like Fantastic Danmaku Festival Part II did this, I saw quite a few people getting up in arms over it.
But anyway, the demo's out, and just like I thought, the cat is a girl :V stage 2 boss is a mountain kappa (yamawaro), and stage 3 is a yamajorou (related to yamanba.) The card buying system reminds me of Len'en's BPoHC. But the soundtrack doesn't sound too great to me; feels too same-y.
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So, has anyone else played the demo and wants to share impressions? Also, I'm not sure of the protocol; should any information from playing the game as opposed to speculation be in spoiler tags? I'll use spoiler tags for now to be on the safe side.
First impressions: The game looks gorgeous and plays really smoothly, even on my PC that is now almost eight years old. Music is decent but no real stand-out tracks yet. The Stage 3 theme is the best track in the demo. Character artwork is great.
The catgirl is called Mike, which is kinda funny for obvious reasons; I know it's a legit Japanese name and pronounced differently.
Gold items do indeed replace point items. They are also, as Karisa said, an in-game currency, and you can buy one card, life or bomb after each stage. Lives are super cheap (80 gold items), so the game should be on the easy side to 1cc.
PIV is 1000 x number of currently held gold items, with caps of 10,000 and 500,000. With the purse (passive card that increases gold item drops) it's easy to hit the upper cap by Stage 2, so there's no worry that scoring will require never spending items.
After playing a bit more, my thoughts on the card system:
The cards you can buy are of four types: active, equipment, passive, and item. The first three correspond to the three "slots" in the UI; "item" is just things like lives, bombs and power increments. You are not limited to one card per slot; you can have at least four passives at a time, though I haven't tried having more than one active yet.
If you don't have enough gold for a card, you can buy it with power instead, although this is probably a bad idea.
Active cards are activated with C, and they are not just one-use. I've tried out a couple. Yukari's gap is, unsurprisingly, the gapping power from Subterranean Animism. The Miracle Mallet clears bullets around you, with a recharge time in between uses, and doesn't fail spellcard bonus.
The purple potion card is a passive, and gives you auto-bomb.
You can select two cards to start the game with, so even if you are going for score, you can have auto-bomb for the entire game. Yup, this should not be hard to 1cc :)
Some enemies drop mini-cards, but I don't yet know what these do. They don't seem to give you a new card. Maybe you have to collect a certain number of the same type?
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I'm not actually sure if we have a spoiler policy, especially given how empty this thread has been, but that sounds like a reasonable one.
It's strange seeing a new Touhou announcement so empty, actually... I guess most people didn't stay on with v3 after all. Touhou 17 was mostly after registration stopped working on the old MotK, but even it had a pretty busy discussion thread.
Some enemies drop mini-cards, but I don't yet know what these do. They don't seem to give you a new card. Maybe you have to collect a certain number of the same type?
The generic cards are just a new design for life/bomb parts. The cards that look like your character give 0.50 power. I think there might be a type that recharges your ability card? I'll need to look into it further.
Also, the wiki's list of cards is up, with translated descriptions:
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Unconnected_Marketeers/Ability_Cards
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Full game's coming in May right? Glad the demo's on steam.
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Heya, I've played the game quite a bit, and gotta say, I love what I see :
For now, here's a list of the card in this game plus what they do :
Heart card : gives you an extra life
Star card : gives you an extra bomb, is free
Heart piece card : gives you a life piece, not available in shop, drop in stage sections too
Bomb piece card : gives you a bomb piece, not available in shop, drop in stage sections too
Nazrin pendulum card : gives you 50 gold items, drop in stage sections, is free
Ringo card / cute bunny with power item : gives you 0.50 power, drop in stage sections too, is free
Mokou card / phoenix feather : gives you 3 extra lives, cannot be equipped (sad)
Reimu card / yin yang orb : equipment item that gives you an extra option that fires homing amulets
Youmu card / half ghost : equipment item that gives you an extra option that fires bullets in a straight line that follows you around
Alice card / Shanghai doll : equipment item that gives you a friendly shanghai doll that moves around (cute), home in and shoot enemies
Cirno card / dumb blue person : equipment item that gives you an extra option that fires around haphazardly
Nitori card / open kappa wallet : passive card that gives you a larger item collection range
Kanako card / big rope with a bunch of stuff : passive card that significatively lower the Point Of Collection line (like close to the middle of the screen)
Eirin card / shady new drug of purple color : passive item that causes you to lose 2 bombs (or 1 if you only have one remaining) upon getting hit by a bullet (like TH 17 roar break)
Tewi card / funny bunny & bunny foot : passive item that prevent you from losing gold item upon dying (yes, that's a thing) ; I've also heard people say that it gives you a longer deathbomb window
Boss Kurokoma card / Wolf bro : passive card that increase your damage output
Byakuren card / air scroll : passive card that empowers your bomb (think TH 17 Otter bombs, for the folks who may want to reminisce of their days of working for the otter mafia) ; also lower the cooldown of your active cards
Koishi card/ Mr Hat : passive card that enable you not to get hurt by running into enemies (beside bosses), and will cause you to lose only 0.50 power instead of a full 1.00 one (yes, that's also a thing)
Mike card / money cat : passive item that enable shops to have more card to choose from
Takane card / closed wallet : passive card that halves the price of all shop items
Sannyo card / dragon pipe : passive card that allows you to get life pieces (not life piece card) when you capture a spell
Yukari gard / gap : active card that allows you to cross to the other side of the screen (press C + direction, doesn't work vertically), has no cooldown
Shinmyoumaru card / miracle mallet : active card that allow you to clear bullet in a small radius in front of you and transforms them into point item, need to charge for a bit before activating
Best girl card / Tenshi keystone : amazing active card that spawn a fantastic keystone in front of you to awesomely tank bullets, last for quite the lovely duration and bravely stays in front of you, probably the best card for no reason pertaining to no bias whatsoever
Clownpiece card / red moon : active card that shoots a moon that clears away bullets for a distance that's like half the screen
(Press D to swap active cards btw)
Anyway, these are all I've seen for now, since I haven't run into anything else other the course of multiple gameplay, I believe these are all the cards available in the demo
My thoughts on the demo (for whoever is into these hot, sexy wall of texts) :
Gameplay wise, any problem or issue you might have can easily be offset by whichever card you equip. Not pleased with losing a whole life or even your gold items ? Koishi card or Tewi card! Lack of confidence over your dodging skills? Eirin card! Wanting to easily get items for subsequent playthroughts ? Mike and Takane cards! Not enough firepower for your taste? Boss Kurokoma card! Having a greedier, aggressive playstyle ? Kanako and Nitori cards! Wanting to try fun stuff? Multiple actives or equipment cards! There's plenty of way to go about this game and plenty of playstyle that you can try without getting punished by the game (so long as you equip the proper cards that support such or such playstyle). While some cards are better than the others, there are no cards that can be considered as truly useless. Game mechanic this time is actually one of the more reasonable ones, and is pretty balanced too : C button isn't as almighty as in TH 17's predecessors, even more so since choosing to have an active is choosing to not have another kind of advantage for a weaker bomb.
As far as items go, imo passives are by far and away the strongest ones, while the equipment cards are on the weaker side.
As far as gameplay goes, this allows for quite the replayability. I wonder how things are gonna work the extra stage, as you won't have access to shop during stage sections ... also, is the final boss gonna give something that can be used for newer playthrough or for the extra only ? The gameplay aspect is pretty solid for this game.
As far as the bullet pattern goes, stage sections are not exactly super creative, but the rest, while designed in a rather creative and interesting way unbefitting of the early game (bullet coming from two sides for the first boss's nons, curvy patterns that can force you into a dangerous bottom hugging or lane-crossing situation, or heavy twitch dodging) : the early game is NOT free and take a bit of effort. Definitely on the harder side. I also like how very TH 17-ey some of patterns are.
Losing a whole unit of power (1.00(plus a bunch of gold items but doesn't hit as hard)) combined with the sheer LACK of ressources definitely make this game EXTREMELY PUNISHING if you die. It doesn't matter which stage you're at, but being stuck at like 1 or 2 power just make hard patterns even harder. And to add to that, regular firepower seems like it's a bit weaker than how it would usually feel :
Sanae for example (I say this as a Sanae main for games without Youmu) seems like a nerfed version of how she usually is : generally, when you fires froggy bullet as Sanae, it feels like it goes TAK -- TAK -- TAK -- TAK -- TAK (... you know what I mean) when she shoots, but this time it feels like (TAK ----- TAK ----- TAK -----) ... it shoot froggies slower and her spread is not so strong at lower power ... while it takes a long time to properly build up power ... AND despite THAT, she's like one of the best shot type for this game !!! The shot types feel weak and sluggish ! I get that Mr Hat and Wolf bro are here to save us from this hell, but if the full games still take away 1.00 power while giving you FEW ressources (like holy crap TD feels like goddamn stacked buffet in comparison), this game is gonna be one of the hardest games, not because of whatever difficulty it has, but because of the sheer lack of ressources ... btw, popcorn enemies also feel like they are surviving a split second too long than they normally should, without the firepower increasing cards ...
As far as quality of life goes, honestly game seems a bit clunky on that side : I feel like I'm pressing more buttons than I should in order to switch ability cards, and pressing "down" in order to get to those is rather not very intuitive imo (even moreso since touhou players are used to choose their options just as they press the "shoot" button instead of doing it like this). I would also have loved to have some kind of audiovisual cue for knowing when the cooldowns are fully charged, looking at the side of the screen is not always something good to do during intense dodging.
Music wise, personally, I found it pretty quiet. I still like 'em though (I usually do), and they also need time to grow fond of. Nothing particularly catchy, but they aren't draining to listen either : quite quiet. Early game generally don't get amazing bangers like the ones in stage 5, 6 and extra, so this is fair to me. Although TH 16 had some fine ass early game music and TH 17 had energetic boss themes for the early game. I think TH 18 doesn't quite compare to those in terms of catchiness and upbeatness. The more catchy ones imo would be the first and third stage boss themes, and even those sound bizarrely kind of "dark" to me. My definite favorite would be stage 3 theme, though, but I quite enjoy the rest as well.
Presentation wise, things also look pretty nice, fro the "usual" green forest (creative) getting rain into transitioning into a rainbow, and stage 2's nice looking cliff. It's not quite UFO's level, but I like how the presentation's direction seems to be getting ever since touhou 17. Stage 3's pink haze and whiteness kinda make it hard to see the midboss pink bullet pattern tho, so there's that. Also a bit unrelated, but regarding ZUN's constant reuse of the "usual" green forest (creative), aside from being lazy, I like to think it's him obeying a secret Gensokyo map inside his head that says "green forest towards Youkai mountain", as we've ever seen the "usual" green forest (creative) whenever we had to go towards Youkai mountain (TH 15, TH 16, and now TH 18).
Anyway, character wise, hmm, we don't exactly get "authenticity" here. Mike kinda stand out a bit, she's got cattitude and stuff, but stage 1 bosses are usually such minor players, I wouldn't be surprised if one of them literally had "minor" in their name. Her having stuff to do with monies and being capable of getting stuffed into the feline group is probably what she's got going for her. Takane is reverse Nitori by design, no question here, and is probably the one that I believe have a solid chance of being a reccuring character in the future, just like how Nitori gets to appear every now so often in manga. Yorihimain't Sannyo is probably the most distinctive of all, what's with her dragon pipe and running(?) a casino, but since she seems like she could possibly be like Nemuno, aside from potentially getting paired with her, I can't quite picture how she'd get a standing in the series. Youkai mountain folks are a big faction, but they ain't quite one big family, so let's see what the future's got for us.
Story wise, no real comment from me. Aside from there being some kind of unbreakable rule demanding that the cards can only be sold (brute force won't avail anyone wanting to get them), and the money theme, I really can't see how that would connect to dragons. CoLA chapter 18 (I believe ?) has it that Dragons leave rainbow trails as they fly, and we have seen dragon cause rain not just in the backstory , but also from Kasen yound dragon from WaHH : stage 1's got BOTH rain and rainbow. If any game's gotta have a proper dragon (not weird ones like boss Kicchou), THIS game has got to be it ... I'm quite curious to see how things'll develop.
Also, back on the cards thingy, since we have boss Kurokoma's card and since TH 17.5's probably chronogically happening before this (imo), I wonder if there is a tiny, tiny possible chance for ZUN to include Toutetsu's card in there ?! Extremely unlikely but I'd love it if he did that.
So yeah, all in all, easily my favorite demo. I'd say the best thing is the fact that there's only a measly 2 months to way for this time ... I hope ZUN will properly polish this game in the meantime.
Apparently there's also a shop abuse glitch, but I haven't experimented much with it. Not so interested in stuff that are so gonna get fixed in the full game tbh
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After playing the demo for two solid days and getting my fill of the first half, my impressions of this game are very positive. I've seen various comments here and there saying the danmaku in this game - especially stage 1 - feel uninspired, and honestly I simply disagree. Pound for pound, I think this is the most vibrant and energetic first half since LoLK, and discounting that game probably the hardest one since Subterranean Animism. I wonder if the card system makes ZUN feel comfortable bringing out the harder stuff, knowing there's lots of ways to mitigate the difficulty? Regardless, while the stage 2 boss has some attacks that could be considered traps, for the most part everything is tough but fair, while still looking good. I'm excited to see where the full version leads.
Music is always subjective, but while I didn't immediately fall in love with it like WBaWC's soundtrack, it quickly grew on me as I played the demo more and more. Stage 3 theme definitely blew me away when I first heard it, in particular.
On the other hand, this is probably the buggiest demo I've played. Ignoring things like the shop glitch that was already fixed in a patch, I'm experiencing a bizarre control bug that causes the heroine to randomly fly out of control for long periods of time - sometimes over a second - unless I switch the input method in the custom.exe to fast. I've also heard reports of some people getting instantly killed on the stage 3 boss' opener until they game over due to a hardware-dependent bug, and just now I noticed my save data had been reset, with me losing all my ability cards. Given ZUN has the very ambitious plan to release the full version as early as May, I hope he can iron out everything for the full release and still deliver a second half worthy of the setup we've been given. I'm looking forward to finding out.
As for spoiler territory:
I happened to look up Youkai Mountain's PMiSS entry after playing the demo, and I found a passage that blew my mind, keeping in mind what Sannyo said of the interior of the Rainbow Dragon Cave:
"Rumors say that within the mountain exists a large hollow cavity where a futuristic utopia just like the outside world is being built.
In that place, the sun's light shines all day long, an automated factory produces the necessary items to meet the needs of everyday life, and the youkai drink sake while reading the newspaper and discussing the news, living blissfully.
Within this hollow cavity, the forbidden act of opening a hole that connects to the outside world through the boundary is perpetrated, so other youkai and humans are not allowed to enter. At least, that is what they say... "
If this is referring to the Rainbow Dragon Cave, that is one hell of a long game ZUN played - 15 years for that easily forgotten passage to bear fruit.
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It's strange seeing a new Touhou announcement so empty, actually... I guess most people didn't stay on with v3 after all. Touhou 17 was mostly after registration stopped working on the old MotK, but even it had a pretty busy discussion thread.
I'm assuming most people are on Discord nowadays.
As for spoiler territory:
I happened to look up Youkai Mountain's PMiSS entry after playing the demo, and I found a passage that blew my mind, keeping in mind what Sannyo said of the interior of the Rainbow Dragon Cave:
"Rumors say that within the mountain exists a large hollow cavity where a futuristic utopia just like the outside world is being built.
In that place, the sun's light shines all day long, an automated factory produces the necessary items to meet the needs of everyday life, and the youkai drink sake while reading the newspaper and discussing the news, living blissfully.
Within this hollow cavity, the forbidden act of opening a hole that connects to the outside world through the boundary is perpetrated, so other youkai and humans are not allowed to enter. At least, that is what they say... "
If this is referring to the Rainbow Dragon Cave, that is one hell of a long game ZUN played - 15 years for that easily forgotten passage to bear fruit.
:o The plot thickens. Kinda reminds me of "The Peach Blossom Spring".
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A few more unconnected thoughts, now that I've had time to play a bit more.
I was wrong about the open purse increasing the number of gold item drops. What I was actually seeing is that you get extra gold items from speedkilling some enemies, and I had gotten a little more used to the enemy formations when I first tried the purse.
Easy caps the PIV at 200,000, so Easy runs have much more freedom to buy cards. From watching a video, I found that the cap is 1m on Lunatic; not sure about Hard yet.
In spite of what the others have said, I still feel this will be a relatively easy 1cc game because you can buy resources as you go along -- if the phoenix feather comes up, you can buy at least 7 lives in a run plus whatever you get from life pieces, and you don't have to totally forgo other cards because you can start with two.
However, the others are also right, the danmaku is on the tough side for early game, and the shot types feel pretty weak unless you power them up with the Wolf card. Sanae + Wolf is great.
One thing I am very curious about at the moment: what determines which cards each shop will have for sale? (Asked about this on the discord; it seems to be pretty much random selection except that the life, bomb and power cards are always available. That will make things interesting for the full game....)
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Somebody datamined a bunch of unused shot types from the demo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEw_IzGlIrA)
Self explanatory, the Sanae one is reasonably expected cuz her ability card going around was already mentioned in the dialogues. Pretty interesting too to see multiple ability cards hailing from the same characters. I for one hope that the bouncy Sakuya knives gets to be a thing cuz it looks cool
I'm kinda curious to see if the full game is implement all of those or if a bunch (or all) of them are gonna stay scrapped
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To tell the truth, I wouldn't be surprised if these are placeholders, given all but two of them are just isolated versions of the player shot types. I wouldn't be surprised if Marisa/Sakuya/Sanae's cards are something like these, but I'd be cautious calling these confirmed cards. The bouncy knives is a pretty cool idea though, if visually noisy as heck.
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Hmm, decided to replay TH 18 after a while and the extra card slot, the unlocked items, the high scores, the clear marks, and achievements I previously got are all gone (replays still there tho)
Did this also happen to anyone else ? I mean, it's not such a big deal for me since it's only a demo, but it kinda took me by surprise ...
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Hmm, decided to replay TH 18 after a while and the extra card slot, the unlocked items, the high scores, the clear marks, and achievements I previously got are all gone (replays still there tho)
Did this also happen to anyone else ? I mean, it's not such a big deal for me since it's only a demo, but it kinda took me by surprise ...
Occasionally with Previous Early Touhou Demos,it is noted of as "occasionally"...It is advisable is the practice of " copy(or double copy) installation while always copy-paste the original updated installation's saved data on the copy/copies installation "
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Game's cover is out, and newhu silhouette is in ! (https://www.melonbooks.co.jp/detail/detail.php?product_id=901930)
(Same one where you can zoom in at Akiba Hobby) (https://shop.akbh.jp/products/2100000122295)
Looks like a dragon girl fabulously sitting on her huge dragon tail to me
Also the newest solo character appearing on an official game cover after a good while
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Game's cover is out, and newhu silhouette is in ! (https://www.melonbooks.co.jp/detail/detail.php?product_id=901930)
(Same one where you can zoom in at Akiba Hobby) (https://shop.akbh.jp/products/2100000122295)
Looks like a dragon girl fabulously sitting on her huge dragon tail to me
Also the newest solo character appearing on an official game cover after a good while
I just noticed that the game's only compatible with Windows 8/10 and not 7...
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I just noticed that the game's only compatible with Windows 8/10 and not 7...
Windows 7's support has ended over a year ago. Not surprising. Even then, even if Zun doesn't support it, it should technically work. Unless the game is somehow made with Direct X 12.
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Akiba-Hobby posted a promo video to YouTube! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prI89LQBTlo) It's a video that idles on the title screen to show off demo replays, which I hear is the same sort of footage that's been used for other games' Steam promo videos already.
Featuring a mine tunnel background (presumably Stage 4), equipment cards for Marisa's laser, Sakuya's knives and Sanae's frogs, active cards with Raiko's drum (effect unknown) and Miko's... imposing aura? (full-screen wipe, erases some but not all bullets), a passive card with a widdle Mamizou tanuki (effect unknown), and... three default card slots on Stage 1?? wild
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Akiba-Hobby posted a promo video to YouTube! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prI89LQBTlo)
That stage 3 death caused an entire 1.00 power loss (fun), so I guess that's how things are gonna be for the full game. Also the amount (or the lack) of power items from stage 4 enemy drops seems to confirms how scarce ressources are gonna be for this game. Koishi hat is not bad but was only so-so in the demo considering it only featured the early game, but it's gonna have more value for the full game, even moreso thanks to the additional card slot
The stage 4 patterns gives me the impression that it's gonna require some heavy crowd control in order not to suck to much, and the patterns seems to mostly involve bullets that come from side directions instea of just the front along, just like the patterns that we already received from the demo, and there is also the return of criss-cross patterns (fun) : active's are gonna find themselves nerfed quite a bit since they tend to help you against the bullets that come from the front (since they clear a small patch for a short instant) rather that the ones that come from the sides : ZUN's design philosophy for this game seems to be about making sure patterns don't get easily cheesed with the actives imo
The stage itself is dark and gloomy, unusually boorish and not super fancy looking at all, so I hope there's gonna be some transition of some kind after the midboss or something
Regarding the new cards, we indeed got to see a number of the leaked equipment cards, although the Sakuya card knives we got doesn't seem to be of the bouncy variety (big sad). I'm also a bit surprised that we didn't get to see ZUN's beloved camera gimmick.
As for my wishes regarding the full game, since I'm still not sure what graze does in this game, I hope that for the full release we'll get some kind of passive card that allows graze to do something a bit more concrete, like dunno, being some kind of LoLK graze that produce gold items and slightly shortens the cooldown of active cards or whatever : it'd make score runs more interesting if there were other cards besides the mallet that produced gold items. I also wish there would be some kind of passive item that increase the item drops from the enemies (like dunno, a Jo'on item to that effect) in order to counteract the scarcity of ressources.
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I just noticed that the game's only compatible with Windows 8/10 and not 7...
Windows 7's support has ended over a year ago. Not surprising. Even then, even if Zun doesn't support it, it should technically work. Unless the game is somehow made with Direct X 12.
The game still uses DirectX 9.0c like all the previous games. I tested it on my own Windows 7 PC and it ran perfectly fine. (Vista should be good too) The box art probably just doesn't state it since, as quoted above, support ended for them and it's probably not a good idea to advertise for an OS that is no longer receiving security updates.
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The game still uses DirectX 9.0c like all the previous games. I tested it on my own Windows 7 PC and it ran perfectly fine. (Vista should be good too) The box art probably just doesn't state it since, as quoted above, support ended for them and it's probably not a good idea to advertise for an OS that is no longer receiving security updates.
Well aware Windows 7 isn't being supported anymore (yet I still get security updates for it somehow anyway), but this is good to know.
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Apparently the full game just released on steam 19 minutes ago????
edit:OK
I'm not a fan of most of the character designs but the danmaku is GREAT (spoilers below)
I'm pretty sure the stage 4 boss just cast fantasy seal on me
The stage 5 boss actually looks pretty ok and HELL YES GIVE ME THE LASER LIGHT SHOWS
Meanwhile capitalism jesus and the amazing technicolor patchdress shows the world that you don't need to know how to sew, you just need more fire trucking zippers
This is probably the most I've enjoyed a mainline touhou game since UFO.
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Just finished 1ccing normal with all four shot types. I can't make a final verdict until I see how the game is on lunatic, but there's a lot to like. Some of the songs took a few listens to grow on me, but others like stage 5 and extra boss theme are instant winners in my opinion. The extra boss is also really fun in general, and I think her survival is one of the most creative survival cards in a long time. It makes me happy to know ZUN still has patterns and ideas in him after 25 years and 30 games.
EDIT: (https://i.imgur.com/84ZXpUh.png)
Against all logic, I managed to 1cc my first try! Honestly, I'm quite happy with these patterns just on a cursory run, but boy are they hard. I can only owe this outcome to the very generous amount of lives you can get. Awesome game as always, and I'm looking forward to actually learning the patterns.
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Had lots of fun with the game, got no real complaints, imo it's the most reasonable game in term of mechanics. I personally got my 1cc on my fourth try (kinda rusty, huh), and that was by switching from Sanae to Reimu (got it first try with Reimu), before getting another one with Sanae right after (got potion and Mokou feathers in the same run lmao). Reimu doesn't seem to be as garbo as she was from the demo, she is actuallly very strong now, to illustrate, she CAN kill the yin yangs mobs from the beginning of stage 1 easily now (pretty low bar, just to show how trash she was in the demo). The main appeal of the game being the use of more items in your subsequent playthrough, this game can be a bit of a noob killer, since dying takes away 1.00 power and a fair bit of gold (both stuff you use to buy cards), making it harder to get good stuff for newer runs. Luck regarding the items that pop in the shop is probably something that matters when it comes to casual runs, as you'll need luck in order to find that oh so precious Mokou feather (3 lives !) or any other good item : I only managed to find the much praised Okina door item after around 4 or 5 literal hours (at least) of proactively searching for it in shops, so yeah ...
Cards are not exactly "balanced", in the sense where a bunch of them have so much more utility compared to others, and the price of the cards in the item shop is definitely not representative of how usefull they may prove to be in reality : a good example will be the Okuu card vs fox girl's card: while Okuu's ability card allows you to casually invoke the power of the sun to absolutely delete everything, it drains your power and has an EXTREMELY long cooldown, so much so that you're probably not gonna get to use it twice in the same stage, for the price of 450 gold items, while fox girl's ability card cost a bit less than 200, have a very short cooldown, and virtually does the same thing as it allows you to use a bomb in exchange for a loss of power. There are, however, not a lot of questionable balance desicions like that one in the game.
As far as cards go, imo the best and strongest active card ought to be blue Aya's, since besides clearing and protecting you from bullets for a bit, you can casually receive a whole 1.00 power (or a bomb item if you're at full power), and it allows you to get FULL POWER BEFORE REACHING THE STAGE 1 BOSS, if used on cooldown, and finally allows you not to suffer from this game's massive power loss.
And speaking of power loss, honestly, it didn't seem to be much of an issue to me in the full game compared to the demo : some bosses give a whole bunch of ressources at some point in their fights, and there are a number of ability cards that have something to do with power (for example Mr Hat, the tanuki card, and the previous item I mentioned up top), not to mention the possibility to buff your damage with the more offensive equipment cards.
Some cards synchronise well with some others, and can make strong cards even more stronger, for example fox girl plus either the blue Aya or the Byakuren ability cards, or Eiki plus either Shinmyoumaru or Kicchou's ability cards, or multiple bullet erasing passives and equipments ... I like the kind of games where creativity is allowed.
All in all, the absence of "proper" gameplay mechanic for getting ressources means the game does not demand you play in a certain way lest you get destroyed : you pick whichever card you want to supplement your playstyle, and try to roll over or even cheese the game : for example the possibility to go for a number of actives to try erase dangerous patterns as they come, but the cooldown and the lack of invulnerability frames make it so that active cards are not so almighty
Also gotta also appreciate how absolutely bunk the economy surrounding the cards is :
- You can buy money for free
- Some kind of privilege pass that literally halves the price of everything is available on the market
- Life is objectively worth 200 gold items since the Yama's card say so
- You can buy life for 80 gold items
- Buying life in bulk takes 450 gold items
- For like 280 you get a pipe that can periodically give you 1/3 lives
- For like 140 you can get 1 life and can periodically give you 1/3 lives
- You can buy an artifact that convert bullets into gold items (why is something like that on the market)
Patterns are tough but fair : bullets come from ABSOLUTELY EVERY DIRECTION, but the large majority of this game's patterns do not require having especially good RNG in order to clear : it is a fairly learnable game. Gotta say I really like how the newer games seems to be distancing themselves from the over reliance on RNG to make a good challenge.
As far as character goes, I think the big winner this time's gotta be blue Aya (who, despite the jokey comparison, stand out as a character (she's got a never used color on her even !)), plus a honorable mention for fox girl, who honestly pull whatever look Sannyo was supposed to have much better imo. The rest of the cast's design seems overly loaded and noisy. Imo the safe way of going about designing characters is like having them have 1 or 2 main colors, a few supporting colors, and either hair, tool, or cloth that makes them distinctive, like recognizable-by-their-silhouette kind of distincitive. You look at Bad Apple, you instantly know who is who (provided you know Touhou girls). I'm kinda ok with stage 4 madam and Extra girl, particularly the stage 4 madam (c'mon, she looks old), but I'm not so sure about the Tenkyuu. Personally, I'm not so hot about how Okuu, Hecatia and Kurokoma looks like in ZUNart, but I've seen a LOT of cool fanarts of them that I've grown to appreciate their design (especialy Hecatia, she's got like the coolest and unironically stylish pics), so I'm really, REALLY, REALLY curious to see if fanarts are going to manage to make Tenkyuu look nice in that getup
I think fox girl is in a rather awkward position : she's got a lot of mid-boss battles, is involved a lot of conversation, and is relevant story wise, but not being a proper boss on her own means no character theme nor even spellcard background ... not exactly unusual for mid-bosses, but if you consider all that, but still ...
Regarding this game's music, I quite like em. Stage themes are pretty chill, relaxed and atmospheric (plus a fair dose of epicness for the extra stage theme), and boss themes can be quite intense. My favorite would be blue Aya and centipede girl (cuz apparently that's a centipede ?!), I like those catchy boss-like boss theme with a relaxed and chill part. I was expecting the average final boss-like grandiose theme for Tenkyuu, probably a bit cutsy and emotional considering how "nice" and round and colourful she looked to me, but then her theme plays and it's like ANXIETY : THE SONG so it completely took me off guard. Dunno what to think about the song, might take a while to grow on me.
But what will not take a while to grow, however, would be my appreciation for the absurd speed of the artists of this community. I mean, check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtQS8fuOFks, there's already a vocal arrange of her theme
Nothing to say story wise until proper translations are out, but Tenkyuu's situation is pretty interesting considering how gods should work in Touhou : instead of getting powered by regular prayer or the like, doing business in a the marketplace under certain conditions is what count as an act of worship towards her ... like, even a non-believer unwittingly worship and therefore power her up just by getting involved in the market. The way her ability works is also kinda bizarre too : since her power is what, uh, powers the various ability cards, clearly her ability is not limited to the loss of ownership but probably also governs the conditions regarding the things that lose ownership and what happens to them. I think for this game, Tenkyuu and the cards are slightly similar to how Okina and the season doors were for HSiFS : she is powered by the act of worship that is the buying and selling of the cards, and she uses her power to empower the cards that are bought and sold under her rules. Kinda interesting. I have absolutely no idea however what all this money thingy have to do with her rainbowness
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Where can I download the game soundtrack?
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Here I am just kinda stunned we've finally got to see
The Chief of the Crow Tengu
. Although she is specifically the Crow Tengu chief; not overall leader; that still seems to be Tenma? So for example; Megumu is Aya and Hatate's boss but not Momiji's
Also getting DDC vibes again; where the primary antagonist/mastermind is the Stage 5 boss, and the Stage 6 boss is more a support to them/being used. Like Seiga was the one behind the Mallet incident, and was using Sukuna who is enough of a moron to trust a species literally known for compulsive lying...
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My understanding is that it's more like Chimata and Megumu were using each other for their own ends. Chimata figured she was going to be thrown under the bus sooner or later, which is why she prioritized restoring her godly power before then so she wouldn't need Megumu anyway, all while Tsukasa bided her time and played everyone against each other so she wouldn't have to do anything and still profit. So basically, a healthy capitalistic relationship.
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I've cleared the game in hard mode with all the characters. Honnestly, I've enjoyed this one a lot. It's hard, but not that lunatic-hard or normal-hard, it's hard like it should be, at least for me.
There's still a lot I have to learn about the paterns of the last stages and the bosses, but I'm doing fine until Misumaru, the 4th boss, I just have a problem with her second spell card but I'm doing the rest relatively fine. Some part of her stage are a little difficult for me right now and I still have to bomb.
Tsukasa (stage 5 midboss) can be a little tricky depending on the stage and oh boy how Megumu can be hard. That said, if you took Misumaru's card, some of her attacks are a little laughable since a lot of them come from the sides (except for LASERS).
And about Chimata....it's beautiful. It's probably because I've always loved rainbows since I was a kid, and I've always loved Meiling/Kogasa for that since they have some colorful attacks and I absolutely LOVE colorful attacks. I must say it was interesting that her fist spellcard was a semi-survival. Right now, I've captured all of her spellcards, but not in the same run. The one that I have a hard time with is "Rainbow Ring of People", I have managed to capture that one but only once.
I've only beaten the extra boss twice right now, so I can't say a lot, BUT can say that, again, I enjoy the fact that this extra stage doesn't feel too easy or too hard, I had no trouble at all clearing 17's extra while this one took me longer to beat it. So, again, difficulty wise, it's a win for me !
About the music...in the full version the ones that tend to cross my mind a lot are Misumaru'stheme and the extra stage theme right now.
As for the plot, I've read a lot, and I must say
it's really nice to see a new wicked character, I mean really wicked. Seija is like that, but it's more because of her specie rather than her personality. Tsukasa makes makes me think of Mai a lot, the two of them are wicked and tend to sweettalk people and showing their true nature later. I also love the fact that her design feels the "simplest" of all the cast with her white dress and this stylish green motif. Also, I personally like her haircut.
As for Misumaru...I hope that Zun will dig the character more, because she can potentially furnish a lot of details. She was the one who crafted Reimu's yin yang orbs, so she probably knows some backstory about the Hakurei Shrine, we can understand in her dialogues that she's obviously "old", probably less than Yukari/Eirin/Yuuka.
The nice thing about the this game concerning the characters is that it introduced characters that can be somehow "useful" for backstories about some things, Megumu the crow chief tengu or Misumaru. I think Tsukasa will just stay a partner of Megumu, probably like Futo and Soga. Not the thing we had with Tewi for exemple when, she appears a lot in the lore of touhou.
Anyway, like 17, I've enjoyed this game a lot, I was fully surprised since the demo didn't really charmed me at the time, but the full game feels really great. I think I might like this one more than 17 on some aspects.(also the fact that it's not flashy because seriously, beasts coming from everywhere + flashy shoot is a pain for me in 17, at least we have a patch for that to reduce the visuals...)
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Regarding the comment about the stage 4 boss above, Misumaru is apparently based on Ame no Akarutama, a god from the Kojiki that participated in some of the legends surrounding Amaterasu. So it's safe to say despite being a stage 4 boss she is far older and presumably more powerful than she displayed in her boss fight (and she is already quite a challenging stage 4 boss). She's definitely the biggest question mark of this game, and I get the sense we have not seen the last of her.
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Here I am just kinda stunned we've finally got to see The Chief of the Crow Tengu
. Although she is specifically the Crow Tengu chief; not overall leader; that still seems to be Tenma? So for example; Megumu is Aya and Hatate's boss but not Momiji's
Also getting DDC vibes again; where the primary antagonist/mastermind is the Stage 5 boss, and the Stage 6 boss is more a support to them/being used. Like Seiga was the one behind the Mallet incident, and was using Sukuna who is enough of a moron to trust a species literally known for compulsive lying...
Specifically, " Megumu Iizunnamaru " https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Megumu_Iizunamaru is not "Tenma Boss of the Tengu " https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Tengu#Tenma.2C_Boss_of_the_Tengu but rather a " Dai Tengu/Great Tengu Crow Boss "https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Tengu#Great_Tengu",even more specifically in her Unconnected Marketeers - omake.txt :
" ... One of the Great Tengu who live near the mountain's peak.
Tengu society is vertically-oriented, with Great Tengu corresponding to a mid-ranking boss.
As such, they can give orders to (ALL) regular tengu as well. The Great Tengu's orders are absolute.
They can give orders to other mountain-dwelling youkai as well... but in that case, some tend to disobey the orders"."
However there could also be disagreements between Great tengu and Regular Tengu such as Hatate's Suspicions and Complaining during Double Spoiler about their conduct about "eventual encounters with Oni and dealings with Kanako&Suwako(and viceversa)".
About Mastermind(s)
It turns out that,story-dialogues explained and omake.text explained /,the " Original Mastermind-Culprit" is https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Megumu_Iizunamaru ,while the " Opposing Mastermind-Culprit" is https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Chimata_Tenkyuu is , a case of "Both Support/Right-Hand Woman for Megumu but also an "Exacerbating Factor" is https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Tsukasa_Kudamaki ", the " Supportive & Used One ( mainly by Megumu but ,indirectly through her orders, also by Kudamaki and ,indirectly through their 'business plan',also by Tenkyuu) " is https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Momoyo_Himemushi
About Tsukasa (Midboss of Stages 5-6-Extra)
Her"Wicked Side" seems to come from her "Youkai Nature as a Kuda-Gitsune" but passable enough to be kept as "Reliable Right Hand-Woman by a Great Tengu(Megumu" https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Tsukasa_Kudamaki
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" 東方虹龍洞 " Video-Tag Search about " Touhou Unconnected Markeeters " on NicoNico douga https://www.nicovideo.jp/tag/%E6%9D%B1%E6%96%B9%E8%99%B9%E9%BE%8D%E6%B4%9.
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This game is dope.
And the translators have their work cut out for them, that's for sure.