Maidens of the Kaleidoscope

~Bunbunmaru News~ => Front Page Headlines => Topic started by: Karisa on April 18, 2023, 07:52:26 AM

Title: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: Karisa on April 18, 2023, 07:52:26 AM
(https://touhou-project.news/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/th19_01.png)

Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2400340/Touhou_Juuouen__Unfinished_Dream_of_All_Living_Ghost/

Official announcement (in Japanese):
https://touhou-project.news/news/8892/

Quote from: DeepL machine translation, with character names fixed
~ Story.
Due to the opening of the market, the ownership of the ancient land has been lost.
The land that lost its owner will become desolate.
But there is no need to worry.
The spirits will naturally take possession of the land and it will regain its usual tightness.

Unless there are greedy beasts there. ......

 This time, it's an unusual game of competitive bullets against the world.
 
 The screen structure is based on "Touhou Kaeizuka," the ninth installment in the Touhou Project, but the system has been restructured so that the feel of the controls and the barrage is closer to that of the usual Touhou games.
 It is a speedy competitive game that requires constant improvised dodging, and simply put, the higher the Touhou ability, the more advantageous the game is.
 
 The massive story mode is designed to be enjoyed by a single player with a somewhat different system than the competitive mode, so don't worry if you don't have any friends. (Incidentally, the story also tests your Eastern ability.)
 
 Enjoy the dark, energetic, and slightly cute beasts of the mad party.
 
 Here are some snapshots.

   *The screenshots are under development and will change soon.

 The game is scheduled to be released in the summer.
 The demo version will be distributed at the Hakurei-jinja Festival on May 7 (Sun.) at the Big Sight.
 (Space: A01ab, Shanghai Alice Phantom Band)
 
 We will also have a downloadable version on Steam.

 The demo version will be available for 5 characters: Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, Aunn Komano, Nazrin, and Seiran.
 *Because of the character restrictions, the storyline of the demo version is different from that of the full version.

 See you soon.
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: OkuuFallout on April 18, 2023, 01:20:56 PM
Another thing to note is what Twitter user @richard_effendi said, who is a prominent fan in the English community that usually helps with translations.

https://twitter.com/richard_effendi/status/1648182398251835392?s=20

Quote
For the record, the Japanese title of the game is "Beast King's Garden", so, despite the English subtitle mentioning ghosts, unless Mima is the Beast King, it's unlikely for her to return in this game.
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: Suspicious person on April 18, 2023, 02:52:53 PM
Oh wow, the announcement was expected as we are nearing the titular announcement beriod before Reitaisai, but never would have thought that this time we would receive a phantasmagoria-style game (which incidentally may stop getting called phantasmagoria games with this one). The screenshots this time seems to be pretty stacked with bits of pieces of informations :

(https://touhou-project.news/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/th19_02.png)
First things first, seems like we're gonna have 19 characters ! That's about 3 more girls than in PoFV and about the same amount of playables as in aocf ! Not to mention the fact that we're getting first timers in the characters of Aunn, Nazrin, and Seiran, not coming with quite the new drip but enjoying a new ZUNart, which is quite lovely. This small lineup plus the plot's suggesting the involvement of the beasts has already led to speculations that part of the cast this time might have something to do with the Chinese zodiac animals. If we're gonna speculate on that aspect, imo we might end up with something like this :

- Rat = Nazrin
- Ox = Urumi ?
- Tiger = Shou ?
- Rabbit = Seiran
- Dragon = Kicchou ?
- Snake = ??? (or Kasen ?)
- Horse = Kurokoma ?
- Goat = Toutetsu
- Monkey = ??? (or Kokoro ?)
- Rooster = Kutaka ?
- Dog = Aunn
- Pig = Marisa ? (c'mon, her bow looks like piglet ears)

Might prove interesting but that would obviously pose problem against game representation per character

Nothing to take seriously there, and even big assumptions aside, it's reasonable to expect a somewhat large cast of new characters for this one since not only it's a mainline title, but even it's, uh, "predecessor" gave quite a bit of new girls (as in Aya, Medicine, Yuuka, Komachi, and Yabadabadoo). That means that even if the Chinese Zodiac Animals theory comes into fruition (and even remove Reimu and Marisa from the count), we'd have 2 slots for Reimu and Marisa, 12 slots for chines zodiac fitting characters, and 5 slots for brand new girls, some of which could either be fitted in the chinese zodiac or occupy a different place ; and if it doesn't ... we're gonna get a very crazy lineup.

As far as Touhou stories go, the ones with settings that aren't fully explored in one game but properly solved in another generally tend to be major (ie : ULiL into LoLK, WBaWC into SHoSS) : this game seems like it's gonna tie together the happenings from a Hell invasion game AND a marketing one, this is gonna be interesting at the very least

(https://touhou-project.news/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/th19_03.png)
(https://touhou-project.news/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/th19_04.png)

In these next two screenshots, we get to see PoFV-like PoFV sights where Reimu's bloodied yin yang orbs pop up in Marisa's side while some of Marisa's lasers get to pop up next to Reimu. Also a sneaky but noticeable NEW REIMU BOSS SPRITE

(https://touhou-project.news/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/th19_05.png)

Also, worthy of mention, back in the Seiran and Marisa screenshot, there seems to be icons reminiscent of TH 18 and TH 18.5's ability cards right below the girls's texts, suggesting that these cards may still come into play this time : Aunn's cut-in might take a big chunk of this other screenshot, but if you pay attention, you'll notice that Nazrin (yes, that's Nazrin) seems to be firing a sneaky Marisa laser, probably due to a certain equipment card.

It is not certain from the screenshots how exactly are the ability cards gonna be put to use this time, like how many are you going to have, are they all gonna be available from the get go, and whether they are going to have something to do with the stars at the bottom-ight of the UI (I believe there weren't any stars back in PoFV)

I might not have played PoFV, but even I have heard tales of how ... slightly differents controls were, considering how the game was meant to be played, and I wonder if the addition of the stars (which looks like consumables that shouldn't count as life points since these are represented by hearts in the upper middle of the screen) would add another button to press top do stuff. Can't be so sure what they're gonna be used for, especially if bullets clearing is gonna work the same as in PoFV, where it happens as you release your Spells.

(https://touhou-project.news/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/th19_01.png)

Still on the PoFV likeness side of things, since it's 2023 and since this game seems to feature a vs mode, I wonder if this game's VS mode is going to NOT end up going down in infamy and be serviceable without requiring outside tinkering, cuz that would make this game a little bit more interesting. Not so sure how much ZUN has evolved as far as netcoding goes, but I think I'm going to keep my expectations a bit on the lower side as when it comes to the early days multiplayer aspect of this new game. Touhou mainline games are first and foremost single players, making them a delight for single player experience seeking players and friendless basement dwellers alike. Competing with a flesh and blood creature may prove a bit relaxing compared to competing with a judge of the dead AI that fairly unfocus dodges through clumps of bullets, so something to look forward on this aspect too.

And a little bit more on the speculation side of things, as far as story goes, if this is gonna be a tie-in of sorts for the events of TH 17 and TH 18, which it seems to me, and I wonder if it could be an opportunity to re explore part of TH 17's settings that were not explored yet, just like in TH 17.5, namely the last and secret gang of the animal realm (also is it just me or the shadowy thing behind Reimu in the Title screen picture is oddly reminiscent of the shadowy thing from WBaWC ?)

Anyway, it's is always a good sight to see a new entry into this franchise. PoFV is notorious for being a bit of an outlier in various ways, and I'm expecting this game to receive a similar treatment too, somewhere down the line.
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: OkuuFallout on April 18, 2023, 05:33:15 PM
Quote
Snake = ??? (or Kasen ?)

Before anything, I just want to address this: Kanako, if anybody, would be the one to fit this role. Or considering the secret fourth animal faction and how they are described, we might get something new for this.

[attachment=1]

After looking closer, I noticed a few things.

First and foremost, the gohei is longer yet again :|

Another thing I noticed was Reimu's outfit. You can see that there are now some paw prints on Reimu's miko clothes, which is a nice (and cute) touch. While a lot less significant, I somehow noticed that Reimu's shoes are more detailed than we saw last in UM. Not very noticeable, but proof that ZUN's art skills are getting more attention to detail.

One other thing I noticed was a new menu option: Achievement. While achievements aren't new, it is notable that it is its own menu option.


That's as much as I've got for now. Here's to a great new Phantasmagoria game!
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: blackhorsehorse on April 18, 2023, 08:14:27 PM
Betting on Mima coming back in this game only for her to be treated like windows Yuuka in PoFV.
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: Branneg Xy on April 22, 2023, 11:15:27 AM
Touhou Wiki(under construction) article & entry about https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Unfinished_Dream_of_All_Living_Ghost .
EDIT :  I have read  the  translation of (the displayed screenshot on the opening topic by our administrator Karisa)  Marisa's Title  " Strongest Magician of the Primates / Primate Magician " = monkey.
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: williewillus on April 27, 2023, 02:20:07 AM
Why are the notches in the charge meters in the screenshots unordered?

I see some of the screenshots where Lv.5 is on a notch that is to the left Lv.4. Seems weird. Maybe each individual level attack has it's own "use it more and it levels" up system, similar to the bottom left number in PoFV?
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: agarpac on May 02, 2023, 03:03:34 PM
NEW REIMU BOSS SPRITE

well we also get to see aunn's new boss sprite (or atleast id believe it to be. it should be different from th16)
so cute. i love aunn
(https://touhou-project.news/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/th19_06.png)

like this is legit beautiful yet intriguing stuff, since it's proper pixel art unlike ZUN's usual ones. now i'm not sure about this, but maybe ZUN has graphic helper from other artist like alphes in PoFV; and probably also worked on new playable character's player sprites while at it (i think nazrin has more visible sprite on that screenshoot too and does look like proper pixel art).

PoFV is the first and was only main th that has help from other artist,
and as result looking very nice (one of my favorites for portrait art style overall, while there is no evidence that ZUN worked with alphes with that one or atleast not that i aware of, i assume ZUN only worked on drawing/lineart since it looks like his but has help on shadings from alphes)
it should be topic for another day, but i want to mention this one out since th9 looks... too nice? (sorry zun lol) and also has good ingame sprites that he would use for future titles yet we never saw new sprites with that kind of style (i mean boss sprite) ever again after th9.
Well until now with this i guess, and both are vs shmup which is definitely not coincidence. This game needs more art content than usual th (?) so i can see why he enlist others.
and yes, i do love this direction if that's the case.

in any case, finally we have more vs touhou yay! sadly not using 18th number as it would fit with PoFV's 9th.
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: williewillus on May 02, 2023, 04:14:06 PM
like this is legit beautiful yet intriguing stuff, since it's proper pixel art unlike ZUN's usual ones. now i'm not sure about this, but maybe ZUN has graphic helper from other artist like alphes in PoFV; and probably also worked on new playable character's player sprites while at it (i think nazrin has more visible sprite on that screenshoot too and does look like proper pixel art).

PoFV is the first and was only main th that has help from other artist,

That last sentence isn't really correct, Ki-san (ZUN's wife) drew the ability cards used in 18 and 18.5. So it's probably her that's helping him out again. Sprite work might be her specialty.
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: agarpac on May 04, 2023, 12:21:03 PM
That last sentence isn't really correct, Ki-san (ZUN's wife) drew the ability cards used in 18 and 18.5. So it's probably her that's helping him out again. Sprite work might be her specialty.

i... just knew this wth. is this confirmed? that is sweet, did not know those ability cards are her doing. but like isn't that basically part of shanghai alice then? (lol)
tho i'd say card ability isn't pixel art, so does she have pixiv or twitter or other site to put her works in? now i;m super curious
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: nintendonut888 on May 04, 2023, 08:28:08 PM
i... just knew this wth. is this confirmed? that is sweet, did not know those ability cards are her doing. but like isn't that basically part of shanghai alice then? (lol)
tho i'd say card ability isn't pixel art, so does she have pixiv or twitter or other site to put her works in? now i;m super curious

Yes, she's credited as the card artist in the credits for UM and HBM. I wouldn't underestimate ZUN though - he's gotten really good in the last few years.

As for the upcoming game, I'm cautiously optimistic. I was never a great fan of the Phantasmagoria games personally, but the reveal post sounds like ZUN intends to address a lot of the reasons I rarely if ever play them. Plus of course I'm looking forward to seeing just what characters get represented. Hoping to see some real left-fielders alongside the surprises we've already got.
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: Tengukami on May 05, 2023, 08:46:03 AM
PoFV was literally the first physical copy of a Touhou game I bought (at Otakon, no less), so this definitely put a smile on my face.

the reveal post sounds like ZUN intends to address a lot of the reasons I rarely if ever play them. Plus of course I'm looking forward to seeing just what characters get represented. Hoping to see some real left-fielders alongside the surprises we've already got.

I'm definitely in this camp as well. Already seeing some surprise is quite nice; looking forward to more to come!  :extend:
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: williewillus on May 06, 2023, 03:08:05 AM
Getting hyped for the demo tomorrow! I forgot if Steam demo releases along with Reitaisai, there might be a delay. Will probably play an upload on Saturday.
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: Suspicious person on May 06, 2023, 06:33:19 PM
Dear ZUNta Claus

For my imminent official game release, I want :
- A brand new Reimu theme
- A brand new Marisa theme and sprite
- Cool official music remixes for first timehus
- A super broke character that make the rest of the cast useless
- A somewhat serviceable netplay at the very least
- The return of Lily white along with a brand new Lily sprite
- An AI that doesn't make you feel like you're playing against a timer

I wasn't around when PoFV Demo came out, nor have I seen or bothered to look what exactly its demo was like. But at any rate, if we compare this game with the usual Touhou, it is clear that we're not gonna get the usual first three stages kind of package this time : how is the story mode going to be is what I'm the most curious about. After all, I think it'll feel very, VERY forced if we're gonna have to run into Seiran, Nazrin, Aunn, and either Reimu or Marisa  every single time on our way to solve the incident, even if it's gonna hypothetically be an incomplete story mode for the demo. I'm looking forward to how story mode is gonna make sense in the context of a demo release (which I assume to be incomplete).

The general plot aside, I hope what we're gonna have this time would be more than random talk of questionable relevancewith a random person of questionable relevance for like 70% of the encounters. We've had somewhat mature and sensible 2hu conversations these recent times, so I want something good as far as character interactions goes in the story.

As for additionnal speculation, if the girls are still gonna have some kind of passive bonuses and distinctive traits (for example low or high firepower, slow or fast speed), I think that the card system can be very helpfull for the potentially garbage tier character to viable : imagine if we can grab PoFV Yuuka and, dunno, give her a passive ability card that boost her movement speed, or give characters with narrow range or weaker fireopower equipment cards that cover more screen or just give you more dps : I think the cards have more potential this time, especially since there's probably not gonna be any magic circle to spam via Aunn cards.

Speaking of which, the only thing I can speculate as far as character goes is that Aunn could probably boast a very fast charging speed, consistent with how her card back in 100thBM was about fast charging.
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: williewillus on May 06, 2023, 06:43:24 PM
I wasn't around when PoFV Demo came out, nor have I seen or bothered to look what exactly its demo was like.

I tried finding it, but all the mirror links on ZUN's website to the PoFV demo are dead :(

But according to that same page (https://www16.big.or.jp/~zun/html/th09dl.html), that demo had 3 playable stages and 5 playable chars, so I'd expect about the same here.
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: Tengukami on May 07, 2023, 01:06:37 AM
how long's the gap (heh) between the physical release of the demo and it appearing on Steam, based on prior events?
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: williewillus on May 07, 2023, 01:44:50 AM
how long's the gap (heh) between the physical release of the demo and it appearing on Steam, based on prior events?

According to this tweet (https://twitter.com/richard_effendi/status/1651165867819008001) which is a translation of an interview(?), they are supposed to come out at the same time. I think there was a several hour delay for HBM though.
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: Tengukami on May 07, 2023, 01:48:44 AM
According to this tweet (https://twitter.com/richard_effendi/status/1651165867819008001) which is a translation of an interview(?), they are supposed to come out at the same time. I think there was a several hour delay for HBM though.

Oh, I even follow that account, I shoulda seen that lol
Thanks!
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: williewillus on May 07, 2023, 01:54:07 AM
The demo is on sale now and people have physical copies.

Here's a Chinese stream which should be going up imminently with gameplay: https://live.bilibili.com/262964

I'll ask everyone here to please spoiler mark spoilers until at least the Steam demo comes out. I'd like to go in blind so I'll be avoiding the stream and spoilers as well. Have fun!
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: Tengukami on May 07, 2023, 11:30:11 AM
The demo is on sale now and people have physical copies.

Here's a Chinese stream which should be going up imminently with gameplay: https://live.bilibili.com/262964

I'll ask everyone here to please spoiler mark spoilers until at least the Steam demo comes out. I'd like to go in blind so I'll be avoiding the stream and spoilers as well. Have fun!

OK this looks like a lot of fun. Digging the music too!

Actually looks a bit tougher than the first 3 stages of PoFV were at least
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: 2J on May 07, 2023, 03:43:59 PM
I found the demo of the game.(I don't know if I can post it, so I won't.)

I don't fully understand how the game works, but I can tell something already: I LOVE IT!!! For the record, I was playing on hard mode.

It feels nostalgic to find some stuff that were in PoDD : return of the classical bombs, Reimu's first attack is like the one she had in PoDD. There is probably a character who's skill allow her to launch a bomb à la PoFV, though, but it's not the system where you have to erase a lot of bullet. But like in PoFV, the scope will put the ghosts into a "stop" state for you to annihilate them. But what's more cool is that Zun implemented the card system(which was something I greatly loved in UM) into the gameplay, and the ghosts are not only humans, but animals too.

The last sentence I've said makes it like the story of the game will be directly linked to WBaWC and UM at the same time, which is quiet uncommon. Usually, a previous game will set the next plot like what happened between MoF and SA, but this time seems like what happened between WBaWC and UM really had a huge impact in Gensokyo, and I love it because it feels very immersive, like I am in a kinda chaotic Gensokyo, with spirits everywhere and cards ability being still active. I really want to know what is happening, because games like PoFV lets a lot of place for character development while setting up a story.

I heard the arrange Nazrin, Seiran and Aunn. I love the fact that, while arranging their themes, Zun still kept the style they had in their original game. For Marisa and Reimu's themes, I was more into PoDD and PoFV, not gonna lie.

Another thing I greatly enjoy is that I feel the characters are more balanced than in PoFV: I feel like a boss 1 can be as hard as Reimu or Marisa, AND that's a great thing because it allows for more variety when there are tournaments. Also, I was surprised because it feels like Marisa is kinda nerfed compared to how she was in PoDD and PoFV BUT at the same time, she feels more easily playable: her moves are slower and she is perfectly playable on focus.
 
As for my favorite character to play right now, without hesitation, Nazrin wins the first place. Her scope is kinda weird but it doesn't bother me. Her 1st ex attack is VERY strong, and she has great move, fast but not TOO fast on unfocused and slow on focus: this is exactly the kind of characters I loved to play in PoFV.(Youmu, Lyrica, Tewi, Medicine and Komachi) She definitely feels closer to how Tewi's moves were in PoFV.(I know it 'cause I finished defeating almost everyone on hard mode yesterday, I just don't even dream of defeating Eiki or Merlin)

Secretely, I kinda wish Yuuka will be back, because, she's kind of the "Phantasmagoria" girl of the serie, even going as far as being playable in Seihou.(She's my favorite character, so, yeah, cannot not wish for her to be playable)
Characters I'd like to see in that game ? Well, Mima, Kogasa, Parsee, Hina, Keiki(with animal spirits and all, maybe it's possible), Kutaka, Ran, Alice, Shizuha, Koishi. Many more. Of course, most of them wouldn't be since they aren't even animals, so...

I will play the game again and again in the meantime. But I am definitely excited to buy the full game!
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: williewillus on May 07, 2023, 05:52:56 PM
Just played a bit too, it's deceptively different from PoFV and I think people coming to it with expectations of PoFV aren't setting themselves up for a really good time. Some observations:

Charging and scoping now have the same key, X. C releases a bomb and drains your meter back to 1.

The scope shapes are all pretty unique, and scoping bullets slow-grazes them like it does in HBM, which releases the "Bullet Money" items to charge your meter.
Note that you have to pick these up (there's a POC, but unlikely it'll be useful given how chaotic things get).

Enemies have more HP, which incentivizes using Lv1 a lot more often (and thus scoping more often, and thus getting more meter for higher level attacks)

The boss sprites are drawn by Tasofro and look great.

The remixes are okay, but the title and early stage/Reimu theme are really really good. The early stage/Reimu theme reminds me a lot of the mid-stage theme in HBM.

I've already started seeing so-called "superplayers" mald about the damage/health/cards again, so get ready for more exciting "discourse" on the matter...

Overall, the game is pretty interesting, especially in a versus setting. Losing score and replays is a bit concerning, but my gut says this game will be quite fun for pvp. Also, keybindings are fully configurable for multiplayer now so no more struggling to use janky Y/G/J/B bindings like in PoFV lmao.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: williewillus on May 07, 2023, 08:20:56 PM
The early stage/Reimu theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PMdjMiKzSo has completely earwormed me now. It's so cute and happy.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: Tengukami on May 07, 2023, 10:39:41 PM
still waiting on this thing to come out on steam

i know i can get it elsewhere but idk i waited like 10 years for these games to be available via steam so i wanna keep doing that now lol
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: Felis-Licht on May 08, 2023, 10:08:49 AM
Some observations:
The boss sprites are drawn by Tasofro and look great.
How did people figure that out? I remember most saying it was ZUN's wife that did those.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: OkuuFallout on May 08, 2023, 01:17:52 PM
How did people figure that out? I remember most saying it was ZUN's wife that did those.

It's true that a lot of people have said that, but it was only a theory, and unfortunately people began interpreting it as a fact, despite it being spread before the demo was released.
Title: Re: Touhou 19 announced: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
Post by: williewillus on May 08, 2023, 05:06:22 PM
How did people figure that out? I remember most saying it was ZUN's wife that did those.

It's stated in the omake file of the demo
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: Tengukami on May 08, 2023, 05:52:17 PM
been hearing that the release of the steam version might be due to a couple of bugs that seem easy enough to correct; i.e., crashing on returning to title screen, one character misnamed for whatever reason, that kinda thing.

if that's so the delay makes total sense tbh
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: fsvgm777 on May 09, 2023, 05:11:35 PM
From what I've heard, there seems to be a bug where scores and/or replays get lost for some reason. Dunno if there's actual confirmation on that.

Been waiting for the demo release on Steam myself to actually check the game out.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: Tengukami on May 10, 2023, 09:50:01 AM
woke this morning to see it's on steam now!

yayy  :cirnotan: didnt take long at all really!

EDIT:

One hilarious possible bug that arose was while I was playing as Marisa against Seiran the stage just went on and on and on and no boss appeared and I waited entirely too long before realising what was happening and stopped.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: fsvgm777 on May 10, 2023, 04:42:33 PM
I tried loading the Steam store page for the demo, but it just boots me back to the Steam store front page. I can load store pages for other Touhou games (e.g. Violet Detector and WBaWC) just fine, so I have no idea what's up.

I assume this (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2400340/) is the correct page.

EDIT: Okay, so I got it to install. The app ID for the demo is 2400360.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: Suspicious person on May 11, 2023, 05:58:04 AM
(http://)
All right, took the game out for a spin and man, gotta say, this is the most buggy amongst the Touhou demos I've played in a long while. To illustrate :
- Game consistently crashes when I choose return to screen
- Massive slowdown when the "Let's fire" writing pop out
- Weird occurence such as Seiran boss sprite remaining on my side of the screen as I beat her
- Boss battles making no sense sometimes, for example, Reimu normally going into her spellcard phase after eating some bullets, BUT going back into nonspell phase after I beat her spell card and the explosion pop out and all ???!!!
- Boss battles still making no sense as I swear the stage 3 story mode battle ended much earlier after retrying

And my favorite, which totally caught me by surprise :
- GETTING SENT BACK TO THE BEGINNING OF STORY MODE after a stage 3 draw. This somehow happened after I beat Reimu but lost my last life : game didn't even ask me anything, HOWEVER, it LET ME KEEP THE CARDS I EARNED, and I returned to stage 3 with 4 cards in tow lmao.

So obviously, a bunch of stuff need fixing here. As this is my first time playing a PvP style 2hu game, I'm not so familiar with the mechanisms or the "meta" and way to play the game based off PoDD and PoFV. However, as far as game design goes, it seems it leans heavily towards the side of 100thBM, as we see the return of the slowing effect from the former magic circle mechanism, but also the fact that enemy spawns this time seems to happen in sets of consistent formations that are somewhat chosen randomly.

As far as this game goes, firepower seems to be considerably low. That seems to be a balancing decision ZUN seems to have chosen for ability card games such as UM and 100thBM, as cards gets super powerfull and scale massively well with synergies, so much so that the lack of power get less evident as the game goes on : for example, you have your maximum firepower to go with whatever equipment card you fancy in TH 18, and you could pick 3 cards at a time or even boost the equipment card's firepower with shooting power boosting cards in 100thBM. Weak firepower seems justifiable in consideration of that, but the problem imo is that such design choice is not necessarily pertinent for this game :

You WILL quickly notice that your regular shot is not strong enough to quickly dispatch these buff jojo fairies, and make it obvious that charged attacks is the way to go to fill the lack of firepower : what I'm trying to say here is that you'll be relying on charged attacks to deal damage most of the time this game, so the potential strong cards that the damage is balanced for becomes quite frankly redundant. Heck, there's not even a guarantee that the cards are gonna be super strong in the first place, as the ones we have in this game (besides Marisa's laser) doesn't seem to do a lot of damage AT BEST (Seiran's red ability card is a nerfed version of itself from 100thBM, shooting 2 missiles instead of 4), or are downright useless at worst (Seiran's blue ability card fires 2 random missiles at varied point from the bottom of your screen : it's got low firing rate, low bullet speed, too spread out and random to damage the target you want)

So yeah, I'm not sure why firepower gotta be weak this time. There is a clear imbalance in the value of the cards we see in the demo, where passives cards are probably still gonna be the stronger ones. Still speaking of cards, the demo doesn't give us any active cards, but at the same time it's not confirmed that there won't be any active cards in the full game : 100thBM had two extra keys dedicated to the use of the active cards plus the swapping between them : IF the actives cards are gonna make a return and IF it'll still be possible to equip a lot of these, we will have two extras buttons to consider for this game's controls, which is gonna be tough. I'm looking forwards to see whether ability cards are gonna be in or not, and if they will, how they're gonna play out.

Anyway, still on the topic of the cards and back to the 100thBM inspirations, one thing that absolutely did me dirty in 100thBM is the way randomisation worked : to illustrate, as a chad completionist, I've only played stages over and over until I obtained all the cards (I stopped playing like that by  the third market cuz pain and hearing about final card), and goodness gracious have I NEVER seen a randomisation system as HORRIBLE as in 100thBM : with 25 out of 26 cards in the first market, I would NOT run into the final one for a long time : beating same bosses over and over, getting Nazrin's item over and over, then finally, without anything exceptional done from my part, I ran into the stupid Tewi card, which cannot possibly have some kind of rare value even in an alternate universe. Likewise, for the third market, I had to hunt down Kutaka to get her card. I didn't pick it early on to focus on random card, as I expected to run into her soonish ... over the course of at least 4 LITERAL HOURS, I have LITERALLY run into her ONLY 3 TIMES. That is such an horrible and inconceivable randomisation system. I ABSOLUTELY hope that for this game, ZUN is NOT gonna do the randomisation system the same way he did it for 100thBM.

Randomness is no an issue in the demo, as we have only 5 characters to run into and 11 or so items to find, but come the main game, we're gonna have at least 2 cards per 19 characters, and uncertain numbers of non playable character unrelated cards (returning cards from 100thBM for example), and random character encounters to add to the pool in the story mode : there is nothing good about 100thBM's card randomisation from my experience, and I hope we'll get something reasonable on that front for this game instead of taking inspiration from 100thBM.

After all, for story mode, some encounters seems to be random ones, which is actually quite unique for a mainline Touhou game with a canon story. But I don't even want to imagine missing a certain encounter magically over and over because of some nonsense pertaining to randomisation.



Anyway, cards and randomness aside, as far as characters go, I like the fact that they play and feel differently, but they are definitely not balanced :
Reimu : solid focused shot damage, unimpressive unfocused damage, correct movement speed. her level 1 attack's 4 amulets trail for a bit before going their own way, but they deal damage for as long as enemies are in contact and are pretty much piercing projecting, making it a very reliable source of dps despite not being super bursty. Her pvp attacks are pretty tough as well. She is the ONLY girl (in the demo) with a level 2 that CLEARS BULLETS and deal damage around her, which give her an obvious edge

Marisa : basic shot is decent but not so impressive, very fast unfocused movement. She gets to fire a stationnary piercing laser at any of her charge levels that is very, VERY reliable. The fact that her, huh, zone is as a line that's like her laser gives her an easy time cleaning up spirits too. A bit of a low effort character as what you'll do with her is gonna be pretty much the same every time, as you'll charge and release, charge and release over and over. Her attacks are DANGEROUS as the lasers reduce the manoeuvering room of your opponent.

Aunn : a bit low tier here tbh, her shots are not bad but get cucked by the low firepower and buff enemies of this game. She's got an interesting charge attack that release bullets in a circle around her, but her charge attacks doesn't reach very far and doesn't boast impressive firepower : it's basically a very, very inferior version or Reimu's level 2, except it doesn't clear bullets, and enemies that gets past the killzone that is the perimeter where bullets gather do NOT get hit at all !
Her redeeming trait is that her attacks can prove dangerous against human players, as they force you to do some complex pattern reading in the middle of a hectic mach. But at any rate, uh, she's kinda weak.

Seiran : the surprise of the demo, she's got good firepower, her attacks seems to do splash damage (correct me if i'm wrong), she creates bullets spewing portals on your enemy's side, and she's got correct movement. Her Level 1 charge basically allows you to strafe mobs and can 2 shot a boss if you get a good hit in (I've done so on normal), and her level 2 shoots EVERYWHERE (although is arguably weaker for bursting). She fires huge clumps of bullets in her boss attacks, forcing your opponent to make huge movements and potentially cross though other falling bullets and animals. Pretty strong.

Nazrin : an interesting character, her shot is quite solid, with an aimed component for focus mode. Her level 1 is a powerful burst shot that last quite a bit, and her level 2 removes all spirits that were, uh, popped by her automatically tracking zone (seems situationnal, but there is definitely a niche where it can show its uses). She sends pendulums that not only occupy places in her opponent's territory but also block bullets, and is capable of having longer boss attacks thanks to their protection and also zone opponent out of the middle screen, making her an arguably great matchup against Aunn and a poor one vs Marisa. However, she suffers from a terrible, terrible problem : her focused movement speed is SLOW ! Seiran literally moves twice as fast as her if both were focused. Mobility is important in these dodging games, and focus is good as it gives better control. But her super slow speed make her unable to move away from some bullets. You will NOT be able to outrun Reimu, who is quite frankly Misumaru in disguise, and her huge ying yang bullets as they checkmate you by coming from three sides. Heck, you'll have close calls in plenty other situations ! I myself got hit from the back by one of Marisa's star bullets that spawned from the back in her spell, as it caught up to my Nazrin from behind. Nazrin is interesting and has utilities that other characters do not have, but she is so CRIPPLED from her super slow focused mode speed, I hope this gets corrected / buffed in the full release.



So yeah, from cards to characters, to bugs and design choices, the game has a lot of dangerous issues in its current state. That is the luxury of being a demo. However, there is a point that I'm pretty worried about, and it's pertaining to ZUN's attitude towards his completed games : a great example being Eagle Youmu from WBaWC, who is notorious for being extra weak and supposedly bugged even : to this day, she hasn't been touched by ZUN. Touhou may be very old school in a lot of ways, but we're in 2023, and attitude regarding competitive games has changed a lot, especially regarding the balancing and the meta : I'm worried that for the full game, it's possible that ZUN wouldn't rework characters that are established as bad or low tier by the player community. At the very least, I hope that every girl this time are gonna be correct and do what they're meant to do well, so that even in the case that ZUN neglect the game after release, there won't be an bottom or even unplayable tier of character, like Nazrin is currently.



So yeah, that's that as far as my observations for the substantial parts go. I hope that despite my unusually dark and pessimistic observations, ZUN'll come through and give us another game that future newfriends would come back to from time to time to play and compete in. As far as the more funs parts of the game goes :

Story : Some translations are available right now, although there honestly isn't much to go from. Aside from Aunn being a extra excited, which is honestly not so unusual as far as 2hu incidents goes, I'm much more interested in the jewel that Nazrin is looking for and is (or was) in Seiran's hands. I like it when characters actually play a proper role instead of just being forcefully shoved in the story. One thing I'm not really big on though, is the way ability cards are treated in this game : these are not occult balls obtained from beating people up, they are only acquired through trade : we unlock card as we beat people which is not consistent with UM and even 100thBM : I'm gonna need a proper explanation somewhere down the line, else that'd be propblematic : we can't have previous setting waived at convenience else they'd be pointless.

Music : the arranges are honestly hardly different from their originals, I actually prefer this approach more than the flower mixes from PoFV. I'm a bit disappointed with that Tiny tiny clever commander disrespect tho, I mean, at the end of spring is cool and all, but come on. Also I quite like the new STAGE themes, but a bit bummed that they supposedly doubles as a Reimu theme for one and a Marisa theme for the other. They're too quiet and tame to fit the main girls imo, but still my favorites tracks from this demo. And last but not least, the title screen theme is quite fancy and lengthy, it actually got me wondering whether it was meant to play as some kind of theme elsewhere but got scrapped and got reworked here.

Art : more improvement on the ZUNart side of things. I quite like that dark, green black color scheme plus that golden thingy we get for the title screen. Kinda eerie but not straight up edgy. ZUNart seemed like it has improved yet again, bar suspicious "knees" from Aunn, but the superstar this time obviously have to be the sprite works from Tasofro's Unabara Iruka ! There's plenty of talent in this fandom that are certainly willing to do things with ZUN, but he mainly does things on his own. It's not the first time he is getting help from elsewhere, but definitely a long while as far as a main game goes. I'm kinda hoping that he keeps doing that. I also find it hilarious btw that people's reaction at seeing the sprite are "how pretty, who drew these ?", straight up assuming that it's not ZUN who made them, haha.

Game was more fun than expected, even if there isn't a lot to do in its current demo state. There are a lot of phantasmagoria game inspired mechanisms that I'm not familiar with that might've been used as inspiration by this game, mechanisms that lead me to ask questions like "What's the deal with these white pellets ? What are these spirits for ? What are the levels even ? And so on and so on.

I'm kinda discovering some sub genre or something, and it's pretty interesting. Anyway, as always, looking forwards to the full game and I hope it won't be so riddled with issues nor end up getting neglected when fully released.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: nintendonut888 on May 11, 2023, 11:17:14 AM
Quote
One thing I'm not really big on though, is the way ability cards are treated in this game : these are not occult balls obtained from beating people up, they are only acquired through trade : we unlock card as we beat people which is not consistent with UM and even 100thBM : I'm gonna need a proper explanation somewhere down the line, else that'd be propblematic : we can't have previous setting waived at convenience else they'd be pointless.

I'm not sure there's really a contradiction here. The money exchanging is done off-screen and isn't a gameplay mechanic this time. Since ability cards are still in vogue people know to carry some disposable income by this point, especially if there's an incident. Boom, done.

Anyway to give my own, much more abbreviated thoughts, I'm pleasantly surprised by the changes this game's made to PoFV's system. While it still has that crunchy, overly random feeling to it (holy crap lunatic is dense), it feels like you have far more control over your destiny than before, and the danmaku thrown at you feels a lot more like the normal series fare. The characters are all interesting in their own way, but everyone other than Reimu feels varying shades of weird and slightly off - so business as usual so far as I'm concerned.

I'm very pleased by the new music so far. I'm in the camp that is slightly disappointed Reimu and Marisa don't really get new themes, but general themes with their flavor, but both are quite good. The World Is Made From Cuteness has not left my head all week (and I will insist on that name even if the current one is a more literal translation).

It's hard not to feel sad it will be another two years before a more traditional shmup, but there's a lot to like here. I'm looking forward to how the full version irons out the kinks, expands the roster, and where the story is going.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: Tengukami on May 11, 2023, 11:30:54 AM
As someone who has played, and enjoyed, the Phantasmagoria games, I too am really pleasantly surprised with Unfinished Dream thus far.

Echoing Donut, yeah, the randomness is there but you do indeed have a lot more control, it feels, in terms of how things turn out. Thematically I am really loving the animal sprites, not only for what they do in the game but also because of how they tie into the story. And one of my favorite parts of Phantasmagoria games--the shot types--does not disappointment me here.

I am really, really looking forward to seeing the full extent of the cards and playable characters and their shot types. And the story (admittedly always my favorite part of any of these games) has a lot of potential so I'm p excited about the full release for sure!
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: williewillus on May 12, 2023, 06:22:20 AM
Seiran : the surprise of the demo, she's got good firepower, her attacks seems to do splash damage (correct me if i'm wrong), she creates bullets spewing portals on your enemy's side, and she's got correct movement. Her Level 1 charge basically allows you to strafe mobs and can 2 shot a boss if you get a good hit in (I've done so on normal), and her level 2 shoots EVERYWHERE (although is arguably weaker for bursting). She fires huge clumps of bullets in her boss attacks, forcing your opponent to make huge movements and potentially cross though other falling bullets and animals. Pretty strong.

One balancing part of Seiran is that the density of her boss attacks supply the opponent with LOTS of not-bullet-money to charge their gauge, it's pretty crazy if you scope with Marisa as Seiran fires, you can basically C3 or C4 endlessly.

But yeah, I'm pretty bullish on the gameplay despite what some other people are feeling. The cards seem to be taking a backseat since in story mode each character only has 2 possible ones and the game randomly gives you one of the two. And it looks like all cards are unlocked by default, so there's no more collecting them all slowly by resetting with the Junko card like in HBM.

All the themes are good, particularly the new ones and the remixed At the End of Spring. The other two remixes are okay I guess.

For balancing, perhaps the competitive scene could separate the shots into tiers like competitive Pokemon does and characters in those tiers compete (and potentially cards can buff a character into another tier but I doubt it)
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: nintendonut888 on May 12, 2023, 06:48:36 AM
After some experimentation I definitely feel like Seiran's EX attack needs to be nerfed. It is by far the most random and dense of all EX attacks, and when summoned as an EX storm it can easily turn the entire screen into a solid wall of bullets you have no choice but to level 2 spam or bomb through, especially if it happens during her boss summon. Playing on lunatic I think all the other characters are fine if intense, but Seiran in particular can easily send things into undodgeable territory.

Still, I'm actually playing VS mode for fun - enough to make these kinds of in-depth observations. That is a huge compliment as someone who generally avoids PoFV when possible. I think some tweaking will be needed here and there but the full version definitely has the potential to be something special.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: 2J on May 12, 2023, 12:03:24 PM
After some experimentation I definitely feel like Seiran's EX attack needs to be nerfed. It is by far the most random and dense of all EX attacks, and when summoned as an EX storm it can easily turn the entire screen into a solid wall of bullets you have no choice but to level 2 spam or bomb through, especially if it happens during her boss summon. Playing on lunatic I think all the other characters are fine if intense, but Seiran in particular can easily send things into undodgeable territory.

I completely agree with you. That's why I said that, one good thing was that the characters were somehow balanced. Then I played again and, well, I think Reimu and Seiran are the most troublesome of the five. I would say that Marisa and Aunn are hard when the battle is lasting longer. Nazrinn is a little meh to fight, to be honnest. I've played several times against Seiran, I still haven't played as Reimu against her, but still haven't defeated her, while I have defeated the other four. I play on hard mode.

Also, I have played as Seiran and she CLEARLY has a broken ex attack. At first, I thought that Nazrin was the one who had the most broken ex attack of the five.(a little like Ellen in PoDD) But then I played Seiran a little more and was like: "wtf", the bosses are defeated very fastly.

I still have to dig this game more. I had some bug. Like, I was selecting Marisa's laser card as a subweapon, and during the next battle, the card that was selected was automatically the default one. So I had to reselect Marisa's card even though it was already selected...

Nazrin feels hard to play for me, so I have switched for Aunn. I like her gameplay and her moves overall, even though she has a weak shot, I boost it with Marisa's laser and that's it. Playing as Seiran feels a little ridiculous since you litterally crush down the bosses and I don't like fast characters on focus.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: williewillus on May 13, 2023, 04:16:41 AM
netplay has been acknowledged by ZUN! https://touhou-project.news/news/9173/

He says he's working on it but doesn't promise it'll work
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: Tengukami on May 13, 2023, 12:14:59 PM
been playing with vs mode lately!

specifically as aunn just to punish myself lol

vs mode is pretty brutal but for the first time I'm finding playing a touhou game with an xbox controller easier than with a keyboard.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: williewillus on May 13, 2023, 06:01:48 PM
I'm playing Nazrin vs Nazrin and this is surprisingly fun (I feel like ZUN balanced her around playing herself lol)
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: 2J on May 14, 2023, 04:09:12 PM
I think I have come to understand why I am bad at this game, and it's not necessary a criticism for the game but: there's just too much stuff.

Between the animal spirits, then they shoot their own bullets, between the swarm of ennemies(which seems more frequent than in PoFV or more troublesome, somehow), the ex attacks et the boss specllcards, I can't focus.

There's literally chaos everywhere, and that's literally one of the first thing I've said about this game: Gensokyo is in chaos, and I feel it when I am playing the game. Bullets are coming from absolutely everywhere at a certain point(even worse with Seiran), and I can't concentrate. It's not necessary a bad thing, but now, I understand WHY there's less small bullets like in PoFV and why it still feels hard.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: Suspicious person on May 14, 2023, 08:46:26 PM
There's an additional remark I'd like to put forward regarding the game that I forgot to put in my previous comment, and it's pertaining to the sound design. When you charge, you get the small "dun" noise every time you charge one level before getting a "BWAM" as you fill your meter entirely : with all the bullets noises, charging noises, and mob death throes, you will quickly notice that the "DUN" and "BWAM" noises get drowned quite easily. I can rely on the audio cues to figure out my charge level ONLY when things are pretty quiet, but just don't manage to do so when things get serious.

This got me to send charged skills of 1 level lower than I intended and set my plans back by a bit, and I found myself throwing quick glances at the bottom to compensate, which is an obvious risk when the game gets hectic (got quite a few misses due to this too). I think a bit of effort is needed on the sound front, at the very least it would be convenient if the important sounds gets clearer.

And speaking of sfxes, I hope that one day ZUN'll introduce new ones for bombs / strikes. It might've been a while now, but the Master Spark's distinctive noise getting downgraded to the generic bomb noise ifeels kijda boorish to me. We have new ZUNarts, new music, new backgrounds every new release, EVEN new sprites this time, so I think it would be neat if ZUN decided to add new sound effects sometime.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: Tengukami on May 15, 2023, 12:49:45 AM
Continuing on Vs Mode and I may be missing something but I feel like Marisa's shot type is pretty weak? At least compared to the others so far anyway; she can barely cut through green fairies for whatever reason. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

EDIT: nvm i'm an idiot lol

no idea why it took me as long as it did to work out how to use marisa effectively but yeah all sorted now  :cirnotan:
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: Suspicious person on June 03, 2023, 06:23:38 PM
https://touhou-project.news/news/9284/

An unusual demo update came up
It introduces netplay, supposedly

I've given up on the notion of getting a game from the random matchmaking system
Anybody knows some community or even a sweaty discord dedicated to the game ? Cuz I figure joining a lobby is probably my best bet for actually trying out online mode (haven't played any at this point)

EDIT : Gentlemen ... I have a confession to make ... for the sake of testing the lobby thing, I streamsniped someone and got a game rolling (pls no judgy). And sweet mother of mercy was that the LAGGIEST thing ever ! On top of that my commands took a WHILE to register, it was hard to charge things up as it randomly interrupts when you begin charging. After I thought I won the game, I checked the stream and lol, not only did I lose there, but the character I played in there was NOT even the character I actually picked lmao. So there's some desync issues going on too, now that's some of that good ol' jank. Is this the thing people who tell PoFV horror stories experienced ?

Funny thing however is that some other people seem to enjoy a "normal" game with a normal speed with no desync, so dunno what's going on
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: nintendonut888 on June 05, 2023, 03:45:08 AM
While I haven't tried online yet, I did notice a problem I wonder if other people are having: Custom.exe doesn't seem to work properly with this demo. Even if I change settings like resolution or input method in custom.exe, the game doesn't reflect them, and in fact with the update to 0.02 it simply reverts them back to default upon launching the game. This is a rather big problem for me because of a peculiar bug that's cropped up since UM that makes the player character randomly fly out of control when moving on diagonals unless the input latency method is set to fast.

While I'd love to figure out the root of that problem (I've found nothing about it online so I assume it's something very specific to my computer), if custom.exe isn't working for other people, that would give me hope that that at least is something that will be fixed by the final release.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: marus on June 11, 2023, 06:41:45 PM
I just tried out the netplay myself today. Via the matchmaking I was able to connect to one other person, but it was basically unplayable. The game lagged to about half speed in the menus and we disconnected a few seconds into the match. Reading around it sounds like most people are having similar experiences unless you play with someone close to you. Hopefully it gets improved when the full game is released, although good netplay is challenging to make so I wouldn't be surprised if it stays like this.

Quote from: nintendonut888
While I'd love to figure out the root of that problem (I've found nothing about it online so I assume it's something very specific to my computer), if custom.exe isn't working for other people, that would give me hope that that at least is something that will be fixed by the final release.

Sorry for the late reply, and this probably won't be helpful, but I haven't had that problem myself (playing the Steam version). The config files are stored in:
Code: [Select]
%appdata%/Roaming/ShanghaiAlice/th19tr/, so you might check and make sure that folder exists for you and that the game isn't haven't any issues writing to there.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: nintendonut888 on June 12, 2023, 11:06:37 AM
Oh yes, accessing and deleting the config files was the first thing I tried. I also tried installing it into all sorts of other folders just to see if that changed anything, and I even replaced the custom.exe with one from earlier games, and the problem never went away. I suspect what might work is if I can somehow directly edit the files to set the input latency method that way, but I'm not tech-saavy enough to know how to do that.

For clarification's sake though, does custom.exe work for you? Can you change options and have them be clearly reflected in the game?
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: marus on June 13, 2023, 05:17:58 PM
Oh my bad, actually you're 100% right. I thought config.exe was working because when I changed my setting and then reopened config.exe, I could see the settings I set were saved. But when I actually run the game, all of my changes get overwritten. If you watch the th19.cfg file, you can actually see the Date Modified timestamp update when the game opens.

I tried setting th19.cfg to read-only to see if that would prevent my settings from getting overwritten, but if you do that the game just crashes when you try to boot it up. So yeah I think this is an issue with the game itself.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: williewillus on July 18, 2023, 09:21:23 PM
Anybody knows some community or even a sweaty discord dedicated to the game ? Cuz I figure joining a lobby is probably my best bet for actually trying out online mode (haven't played any at this point)

There's the UDoALG Netplay Discord, discord.gg / GdE8RAyXeQ
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: Felis-Licht on July 27, 2023, 04:15:29 AM
Seems like the jewel case was leaked on melonbooks (https://www.melonbooks.co.jp/user_data/packages/resize_image.php?image=213001042451.jpg) according to this tweet. (https://twitter.com/_coco777/status/1684224451150241797) What's surprising is there's 3 characters on the cover
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: Suspicious person on July 28, 2023, 05:08:36 PM
Seems like the jewel case was leaked on melonbooks (https://www.melonbooks.co.jp/user_data/packages/resize_image.php?image=213001042451.jpg) according to this tweet. (https://twitter.com/_coco777/status/1684224451150241797) What's surprising is there's 3 characters on the cover
Can't see the melonbooks pic no more, but going by the silhouettes I can see in the twee- ahem, the x, my impressions are as such :

-Lefthu with the weird flamey fire thingies : either she's a ghost  with ghost fires OR is yet another god that's provided with the full weird flamey thingy package (and the weird circle at the bottom of her feet is part of the flamey aura thingy), just like 80% of the final bosses since 2015. Could also be associated with the natural spirits in this conflict since she doesn't seem to have obvious beastly features to me

-Middlehu with the long and straight staff plus a tail wrapping around it : let's be honest, there is EXACTLY one famous eastern figure that come with these, but I also feel like it might be a bit excessive to straight up add THE Sun Wukong into the cast. By the way straight and long thing obviously means lasers as signature danmaku, so fun time inbound

-Righthu with the ... bear trap ? My first reflex was assuming her to be Dave, Mike's cousin who's into forestry business, as Middlehu's tail plus the sharp thing that look like a cat ear made her look like a catgurl to me initially, but then again her using a bear trap kinda suggests that she might be the secretive leader of the fourth beast gang, who rely on cowardly and dirty methods like TRAPS, poisons and parasitism. So yeah, the not-cat-ear thing might be something else like a horn or something.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Trial release)
Post by: williewillus on August 11, 2023, 06:10:05 AM
Completion blog post: https://touhou-project.news/news/9810/

The cover's been posted by ZUN.

Two things of note in the blog post:
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: Karisa on August 13, 2023, 09:44:48 AM
Full release!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2400340/Touhou_Juuouen__Unfinished_Dream_of_All_Living_Ghost/
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: 2J on August 13, 2023, 10:46:26 AM
Okay, so...does anyone else have this problem while playing as Marisa?

(https://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2023/32/7/1691923614-sans-titre-1.png)

Even if I push the fire button or other buttons, nothing's happening. The stage continues to go on and I can't do anything else.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: kurzov on August 13, 2023, 11:32:32 AM
Okay, so...does anyone else have this problem while playing as Marisa?

(image trimmed)

Even if I push the fire button or other buttons, nothing's happening. The stage continues to go on and I can't do anything else.

Apparently it's a DirectInput issue. Make sure all controllers, wheels, pedals, game consoles, and anything else that acts like a gamepad/controller is unplugged, then restart the game.
I've heard that it defaults to having gamepad/controller as the P1 controls by default for some reason.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: 2J on August 13, 2023, 01:54:03 PM
Apparently it's a DirectInput issue. Make sure all controllers, wheels, pedals, game consoles, and anything else that acts like a gamepad/controller is unplugged, then restart the game.
I've heard that it defaults to having gamepad/controller as the P1 controls by default for some reason.

Thanks! I don't know if that's what resolved the issue, but I installed a file on Zun's tweet, the directx_jun2010, and disconected a controller that was plugged in.

I don't know which method solved the solution but it worked, at least.

But yeah, I remember that during playing the demo, I couldn't use the keyboard when the controller was plugged in. Strange thing is that, while the controller was plugged in, I could play Reimu's story fine, but not Marisa's.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: nintendonut888 on August 14, 2023, 07:26:32 AM
(https://i.imgur.com/tWyOZC7.png)

I did it. I beat the video game. First try at lunatic, though Reimu is Reimu as always.

I'm still very early into the full experience, but going through Reimu and Marisa's routes I've largely enjoyed myself. I do think, as has been pointed out in other places, that Zanmu turns into completely undodgable territory and becomes a resource race, and that's never fun. But the rest is a pleasure, and I look forward to experiencing all the fighters and picking apart the story.

Translations are still not up as of this writing, but with my muddled understanding of Japanese, this has to be a new hall of fame for Reimu:

Following her intuition and a few guides, Reimu goes straight for the mastermind of the incident right off the bat, despite not knowing who she is, what her scheme is, or what she is even supposed to be stopping. So after a token fight and brief chat she just gets confused and goes home without solving anything. This is why you shouldn't overrely on GameFAQs.

Also for the record, the custom.exe bug from the demo where settings aren't saved was fixed, so all is well. I'd still like to know the root cause of the bug I experience though, one day.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: Tengukami on August 14, 2023, 02:56:12 PM
Translations are still not up as of this writing, but with my muddled understanding of Japanese, this has to be a new hall of fame for Reimu:

Following her intuition and a few guides, Reimu goes straight for the mastermind of the incident right off the bat, despite not knowing who she is, what her scheme is, or what she is even supposed to be stopping. So after a token fight and brief chat she just gets confused and goes home without solving anything. This is why you shouldn't overrely on GameFAQs.

Reimu just likes to scrap!

Had a lot of fun with this game as Reimu so far; only now just unlocked Marisa and Sanae story mode. Very much looking forward to unlocking them all.

Honestly been wishing for a new phantasmagoria game for years and had no hopes of it ever happening, but this game has exceeded expectations.

And apparently this game is packed with content on account of ZUN's not so great feelings about AI or something? Something like that at least. Idk but hilarious if true.

EDIT: took me the better part of the afternoon but i got all of vs mode unlocked now

now to run an endless series of CPU vs CPU matches on Lunatic!
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: nintendonut888 on August 16, 2023, 02:14:30 AM
In defense of a certain cat's honor after the day 1 memes have taken hold of her, I made a pair of videos showing her squaring off against the final boss and hopefully looking good doing it - one on normal, one on lunatic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKh6eqdK91k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EZtAOQPut4

Honestly she's pretty fun. Probably my second-favorite of the five characters I've played so far after good ol' Reimu.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: 2J on August 16, 2023, 09:16:29 PM
I agree with you.

Orin isn't actually bad at all. She's one of the rare characters that can fight the three matriarch at an equal footing. Her ex attack 3 is actually a big hell(no pun intended) to deal with and she has a good penetrating shoot that can go over the wolf/otter/eagle spirits, so that's a REALLY plus against the three of them.

Also, with a card that boosts her firing power, she can deal decent damage. And I can't explain but, despite her being fast in focused mod, I have no problem for dodging. I feel like she has precise movements. Some characters are fast like her but can be unprecise, at least, that's how I feel.

The most annoying(annoying, not weak) character to fight for me is probably CHIYARI. I've got strong Medicine vibes from this character but even worse. At first, you would think it's a little similar to Youmu, but no, the will-o-the-wisp stuff that moves around you are atrocious, even worse when she launches her ex 2 attack that makes them bigger. Absolutely awfull to fight.
I really didn't like fighting Medicine in PoFV, but Chiyari is REALLY something else.
But, like Medicine, when you play as her, it's really fun to play, imo.

About the new themes, honnestly, I really love Enoko's theme the most. It's a very strong and catchy theme imo! I know a lot love the final boss theme the most, but for me, Enoko's theme is the one that wins for this game! I also like Chiyari's intriguing feel that the intro has, thanks it comes back during her theme too, it adds mysterious vibes to the character
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: Tengukami on August 17, 2023, 03:09:42 PM
yeah orin is loads of fun tbh. she handles well and, at least narratively speaking, i really enjoy seeing these older girls having adventures with newer ones

where themes go i really like Tiny Shangrila, Biten's theme. i dig that kokyū sound leading the melody a lot; very fitting with her personality i feel!

i'm still getting the hang of strategising attacks but i think this is my favourite of the existing phantasmagoria games

rip the translators, whole lotta content here
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: williewillus on August 18, 2023, 03:01:46 AM
After a few days of listening repeatedly to the new characters' tracks, I think I have a tentative ranking:

1. Zanmu

The throat-singing can be really startling at first, but it quickly distinguishes itself as one of the core components of this track. Also, the chord progressions below the voice and the ZUNpet are still very classical ZUN melodies. This theme grew really quickly on me.

2. Biten

ZUN's erhu samples are really clean, and the main verse is really nice. I had this in #1 at first, but Zanmu edged it out as I grew to like it a bit more.

3. Hisami

I am weak to 5/4 meter, enough said.

4. Chiyari

Weird but in a good way. The climax is oddly triumphant but nice.

5. Enoko

Good theme but most forgettable one for me so far.


Taking into account all the themes in the game, I think my top several are (in no particular order):

Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: Suspicious person on August 21, 2023, 06:28:02 PM
Hello, I've opinionated a tier list for this game's characters and why I believe such or such character would belong to a particular tier (keep in mind that just anyone, lowest tier characters included, is capable of killing when they scale up tho)

-The Chiyari tier, for the super broken, competion unfriendly ones :

Chiyari : she's got good firepower and more importantly the BEST PvP faculty in the entire game. She's got a very clear gameplan that is to pop her level 3 and follow up with her level 2, and it doesn't seem like there's much counterplay against that here. She lacks defensive tools that other good characters have, but there's not a lot of worry on that side if you can just destroy the opponent before they scale up seriously

The S tier, for the super good ones with high potential for undodgeable nonsense :

Reimu : all around pretty good, she's got good firepower, good level 3, good boss attack, and also the STRONGEST burst damage in the entire game : her level 1 fires 4 piercing projectiles that deal damage for as long as they are in contact but they trail before going off, meaning they deal MASSIVE damage to whatever they're initially on top of, and Reimu's level 2 deals lots of damage and clears bullets over a moderately sized area AND comes together with her level 1 : she can literally kill bosses near-instantaneously

Zanmu : firepower is pretty decent, but is actually not a concern as she's got a level 2 that basically transfroms pretty much everything over a pretty big radius into activated(?) spirits, which pretty much die when sneezed on (the explosions from killing mobs also adds additionnal damage): this means that not only can she conveniently get chains, but she also HARD counter the ex and level 3 spells of characters that sends mobs towards her side of the screen ; she's got a nasty ex and level 3 spell, and the needles(?) she send have quite a bit of staying power and reduce the place your oppinent can move around, the middle sides of the screen aren't safe either as some of the needles can pop around these parts, hit box and all, and can accidentally snipe you there.

-The A+ tier, for the characters that are very good and have tools that makes them even very gooder, so much so that their eventual weaknesses become pretty much neglectible :

Toutetsu : her firepower is, uh, kinda there I guess, but she's got a level 1 that clears bullets and instakill trash mobs at close range, and a level 2 that do pretty much the same thing slightly better. The big eagles she sends adds to the chaos with their bullets and them pretty much counting as big bullets themselves, but the most distinctive trait of Toutetsu is the fact that she can spread her zone INDEFINITELY, which gives her some serious cancer potential as she is capable of farming the bullets shooting mobs sent from the ex of some characters or more importantly farming boss attacks to increase her own gauge : she can spread her zone globally, slow bullets globally, charge her gauge with that global graze, and can clear bullets when in a pinch : solid cancer overall, if she was a pokemon team, she would be a stall team

Kicchou : defensive character like Toutetsu, her level 1 clears bullets over a small area and her level 2 does so twice over a small first then on a bigger area. Her ex and level 3, however, is particularly NASTY : her fat otters do basically EVERYTHING you don't want happening to you : fat and tanky bullets sponges that obstruct your bullets, actually shoot bullets, progressively go down on the screen and can bump into you, and them being slow means they have A LOT of staying power : otterly obnoxious. Only weakness would be her lack of offensive options as she's a defensive character (her level 1 doesn't make mobs go poof quite like Toutetsu, and her firepower, while decent, isn't all that), which means she'll struggle a bit when it comes to building up chain. Only reason I'm not putting her in a lower tier is cuz defense seems valuable in such an hectic game where undodgeable waves is sure to come, and also the fact that her fat otters are super nasty

Enoko : an all around solid character, she is basically a weaker Reimu. She's got good firepower and good spread, she's got a mid ranged charge attacks that deal damage AND clear bullets, her ex and level 3 send traps that obstruct the opponent's movement and can get very ridiculous. Also, her trap sprite having some translucent white means tgat the random snowball bullets can get hidden by them, meaning visibility issues for the oppinent as an unintentionnal bonus ... so yeah, she's got basically everything that's good to have and no real weaknesses

-The A- tier, for characters that are just solid overall :

Orin : an offense focused character with piercing shots. Piercing shots are pretty nice in this game cuz enemies are so TANKY, and the front mobs tank bullets for the sake of their friends behing them : piercing shots are nice cuz they deal even amounts of damage towards clumps of enemies. Her level 1 charge can, uh, be counted as a glorified piercing shot or something but isn't super impressive, and her level 2 feels like an inferior version of Zanmu's level 2. Her greatest strength however has to lie in her ex and her level 3, which is about sending these nasty red vengeful spirits on the other guy's side : these things are EXTREMELY tanky, shoot bullets, and simply freak out and start to pulse when accidentally popped by a zone

Marisa : very vanilla character, laser is decent but ain't all that, ex is correct and gets nasty when lasers start springing EVERYWHERE in the opponent screen when the ex pop everywhere. Her charge attack being an a stationnary piercing laser that reaches the end of the screen instantaneously and deal good damage gives her a relatively comfortable time dealing with bosses and making chains.

Toby's fox Ran : okay ish damage, her level 1 is a burst shot and her level 2 buffs her shots (and even affect her level 1's burst shot). She's very normal on the PvP side of things, with the most distinctive thing probably being the horizontal and vertical bullets from her ex and level 3 as well as big surprise cat from her boss attack.

Suika : correct firepower, bullets from options and Suika come in a V ish pattern but is still very reliable, and the options can awkwardly be repositionned through unfocused movement. Her level 1 recall her options and fire a burst shot in a straight line and her level 2 is an actual focus fire of doom with her options that last quite a bit and deal so much damage that you actually have a chance to shoot down one of Orin's red ghosts. Her ex and level 3 sends mini Suika to handle the dirty work at the other guy's screen, and they are surprisingly tanky. Also her Boss spell being a variant of deep mist labyrinth is not very nice. All in all a pretty solid character that has to be played in a weird way.

Seiran : very vanilla character also, she's got exceptionnal firepower by the standards of this game. She shoots good bullets, shoots a pack of bullets with her level 1, shoots even more bullets with her level 2 (although spread damage everywhere instead of being as compact as her level 1), her ex and level 3 shoots EVEN MORE bullets but on the other side of the screen. Did I also mention that her boss attack has her shooting more bullets ?. Anyway, she shoots bullets and is good at it

-The B tier, for the ordinary mortals that cosplays as youkai, who have some kind of idea and playstyle behind them but are hindered by their firepower (still plenty capable of killing if they manage to scale up tho) :

Hisami : good unfocused damage, but her focus shot has an aiming component : aimed bullets are actually bad in this game cuz they more often than not aim at some random enemy that you're not even facing, meaning less damage towards where you're shooting, and with mobs being as tanky AND surprisingly fast as they are in this game, the damage getting spread out doesn't necessarily pay off if the mobs that got some aimed shots run away. In the suspicious leggplant lady case it's slightly fine as the big zone that spreads from behind her can pop spirits for the aimed shots to feast upon, but other than that her focused shot damage gets spread about unnecessarily. Her ex sends wiggly lasers vines in the opponent's screen, her level 3 firest even more of that about everywhere, and her boss spell has those thing tracking you for a bit. Very high walling potential with this girl, a bit hampered by firepower issues

Biten : a very normal character that tries to pretend they're not vanilla by having fancy direction with her shots and a weird zone. Her zone only pops spirits on its periphery, which may seem bad, but it's actually quite large in exchange and can pop spirits pretty easily. Her level 1 a few waves of spread shot while her level 2 deals damage globally twice. I actually feel like she's supposed to have an easy time building chains and bopping acrivated spirits as part of her playstyle due to the focus on the spread damage plus big zone, but her actual firepower doesn't really allow her to optimaly do just that. She sends, uh, sticks(?) with her ex, and her level 3, despite looking simple, is VERY capable of boxing the opponent and killing. All in all a pretty correct character , only held back by firepower issues

Kurokoma : a very strange character. She's like some kind of a dysfunctionnal frankenstein's monster that's build with various parts that do not all have a proper use. To illustrate she's got an unsafe unfocused speed, secretly making her a slow character that can accelerate as focus is more safe ; she's got some kind of hybrid shot featuring a pretty narrow and weak piercing laser as well as regular bullets, so the lasers don't do much when front mobs tank the regular bullets for the mobs that are behind ; her zone justcdoesn't make any sense since it's too small in both length and reach, and doesn't work together with the piercing lasers she have, both regular and charged ; her level 1 fires piercing lasers in a narrow fanning direction BUT without the regular middle piercing laser for its duration, meaning the need for an awkward repositionning in order to actually get value from this, her level 2 fires more piercing lasers in a fanning direction including the center but still is limited in firepower and the fact that it's a level 2. Only reason she's not in the lower tier is because her ex and level 3 are VERY good, as she sends chonky woofs (who are not good boys btw) to handle business : they're somewhat slow, can change their trajectory , and shoot bullets. She's got a fairly simple boss attack that doesn't do much beside instantaneously getting erased by Kicchou's level 1 (bug ?). I'm actually not sure what's the main idea or the playstyle you're supposed to adopt for her in this game

Tsukasa : yet another victim of low firepower. Her level 1 is actually a bit of a trap as it shoots 3 bullets that fan out for the 4 directions, while her regular shot fires 4 bullets in front of her and in a compact manner (also fires some behind but I don't really see the point). Kinda weird. Her level 2 is also like her level 1 but has a zone expand with it (not sure what's its point. Charging gauge ?). Her ex is more PvP related as it sends a tube that shoots small popcorns (plus some occasionnally moving in a spiraling manner) BUT more importantly make the bullets that come in contact with them bigger : snowball bullets becomes round bullets, round bullets become menthos bullets, menthos bullets become big glow bullets, and big glow bullets are NASTY. She's a bit luck dependent as the effect of the tubes depends on them coming into contact with the various falling bullest or the ones she fires with her level 3 and boss attacks. Her relatively lacking firepower plus weird zone gives her a hard time building chain and bopping spurits tho. Very luck dependent but since bullets are pretty much everywhere, her ability is quite nice, even moreso when she manages to sends multiples ex in one go

Sanae : a victim of weak firepower AND homing bullets. She's got a fast expanding big zone, a level 1 that fires homing bullets around her and a level 2 that fires explosive and powerfull froggy bullets all around : it's pretty clear that she's designed to have an easy time building up chains and bopping spirits. Her ex and level 3 that brings horizontal fat lasers is not bad considering how many can pop up with her ability to build up chain, but her weak firepower plus her aiming really, REALLY make her struggle extra hard on boss attacks

-The C tier, for reasonably weak characters whose strength are hard to play with :

Mamizou : "decent" firepower, her unfocused shot is spread out, her focused shot is narrowed down, her ex, level 3 and boss attacks are more bullets. She actually has the BEST bomb in the game, and her level 2 giving bomb pieces to build bomb with makes it quite clear that bomb is her playstyle. However, her level 2 takes a long time to charge and don't do anything else like firing more bullets like her level 1 : this means that outside of the bombs, Mamizou is a pretty weak character that don't do much when played normally, and even going for the bomb farming playstyle makes her do EVEN LESS as she doesn't fire while charging her level 2. On paper, Mamizou played perfectly according to the bombing playstyle is capable of outressourcing opponents and even turn the table on them when the game turns into a ping-pong game of death, Mamizou might deserve a superior tier, but I think she's a mediocre character until she gets to do what she's best at, and even that she can only do a limited number of time before having to painfully grind for more ressources, which is not helped by the fact that bombing consume the gauge

Aunn : like in the demo, weak bullets, unimpressive ex and level 3 (just fancy looking big bullets), her charged level 1 and 2 don't have much range nor firepower. Aunn actually is the BEST at exploiting invincibility frames with her level 2, but it's the level 3 and 4 (plus opponents screwing up) that decides the game : invincibility frames are nice, but aren't exactly a very comfortable option like bullet erasing abilities. All in all, playing to her strengths make her a high risk BUT no real rewards kind of character. Aunn played to perfection might deserve a better tiering, but I'm really not sure if she can outlast and out nonsense the stronger characters

Nazrin : yet another victim of the weak firepower and aiming shot combination. She's got correct damage, but her focused shot has aiming that can go elsewhere, she's got a powerful burst shot in her level 1, but it's plagued by it's aiming component, even her zone is aimed, which, while useful at times, affects the behavior of her bombs, making them AIMED BOMBS that are UNCONTROLLABLE, easily making them the worst bomb in the game. Her level 2 is quite good at dealing with spirits, INCLUDING the fat and big ones from the beast Matriarchs (it makes them go poof), and her ex is still decent at restricting the place the opponent can move about and block bullets, but the fact of the matter is that there are quite a few characters that have tools not unlike Nazrin's (if not better) without being hampered by her various weaknesses plus slow focused speed.



So yeah, all in all, I'm surprised by the fact that the girls, at large, do have a distinct playstyle and feel despite them being so numerous this time. I'm curious where this game's gonna go in the future. Nowadays there's the yearly Touhou World Cup that works as an avenue for people to compete in Touhou games, be it in the survival or  score category. But this game's lack of score and shabby netplay makes me curious to see if there's gonna be a chance for it to be played in a greater community event or something. Also fingers crossed for eventual balance changes.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: Tengukami on August 23, 2023, 12:18:15 PM
I like the narrative structure in this game. For example, take the interaction between Nazrin and Seiran.

Playing as Nazrin, at one point after your battle Seiran says to you: "Though I must admit, I'm surprised by how sharp your sense of smell is. I did indeed have a jewel up until just now."

Playing as Seiran, after the battle there's pretty much the same dialogue only her internal thoughts are included: "(This mouse is so persistent!) (It's time for my trump card! Flattery and lies!) I'm surprised at how sharp your sense of smell is. It's true that I had the jewel up until just now."

I think it's neat how we're allowed insight into the POV of the different characters as they interact with each other, dependent on which one you're playing as. It's like you get the whole story by playing as everyone in Story Mode.

idk i thought it was neat anyway
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: 2J on August 27, 2023, 10:34:24 AM
I have been testing the normal difficulty this morning and, honnestly, I think I will stick to this, for the versus. As for the story mode, I will still stay on hard since it's really doable.

But yeah, the thing is: hard mode seems already a lunatic-...if not even more- difficulty, It's getting ridiculous at a certain point and there's nothing to do with almost all of the characters. It becomes April's-fool-rush-JynXish very fast on hard mode, while it's still hard but manageable on normal.

At least, I have more fun in normal since I can at least dodge and not bomb like crazy or juste be like "Oh, yes, guess I will just dies since even if I move, there's not even a space for me to protect myself.".

So yeah. The game is definitely harder than the previous phantasmagoria games, and, for me at least, certainly more fun in versus mode on normal. I play with 5 hearts and it's really fine that way.

I used to play lunatic on PoDD for versus and hard for PoFV, but for this one, it will be normal.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: nintendonut888 on September 02, 2023, 07:44:06 AM
Interesting note from the most recent Touhou radio interview: ZUN acknowledged the bugs and errors (presumably referring to stuff like Sanae's theme being misnamed) and that he will probably fix the most concerning ones. While he did not comment on Chiyari (other than saying that her EX attacks being unbombable was intended), he noted that Tsukasa of all characters is intended to be stronger, and her weakness was the result of a bug. This implies that when/if he releases a new version there may be a balance patch of sorts.

As for me, I finished playing through all the scenarios on lunatic. I managed a lunatic 1cc for Reimu, Marisa, Ran, Yuuma, Enoko, Chiyari and Suika, and would most definitely be able to get Zanmu if I tried seriously. Other than Chiyari clearly being broken and terribly unfun to fight, I was quite happy with how this game came out. It's messy, it's unbalanced, and yet it's the first time I've truly enjoyed a phantasmagoria. The story was unexpectedly dense and twisty with a lot of new character details, and the new music was fantastic as always. Overall, another great game, though part of me is sad we have to wait two more years for another orthodox entry.

Edit: To live up to my own words, went ahead and got the Zanmu lunatic 1cc. It's funny because her scenario is her absolutely plowing through the first four bosses, having a fairly easy time with stage 5, and then having what is probably the hardest final boss in the entire game. I'm glad Reimu finally has a good final boss showing again, it's been a long time.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: williewillus on September 03, 2023, 07:27:34 PM
Maybe the reason why he didn't include replays in this game was to leave himself an opportunity to make balance changes. He's stated in the past he usually doesn't do balance patches because it would affect replays, so with that out of the way he can pretty much do whatever he wants balance wise.
Title: Re: Touhou 19: 東方獣王園 〜 Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Full release!)
Post by: shockdude on September 09, 2023, 04:08:59 PM
Cleared all the Touhou 19 stories on Normal, great game. I enjoyed figuring out the strategy for the characters' unique shot types and charge abilities, which made even the weaker characters fun to use. The ability cards buffing your character is a cool feature that helps to offset the difficulty of the late-stage spellcards.

After clearing the story, I went for the no-life-loss achievement, thinking it was actually a no-hit achievement (it's actually bugged and not unlockable at all).
Reimu is incredibly OP in her story mode. Her charge level 2 clears bullets and deletes bosses in seconds (often before they even fire a bullet) while costing very little charge.
The no-hit normal run took an hour and a half. Afterwards, jumped straight to Lunatic and immediately pulled off a 1cc by deleting all the bosses lol.