Hot takes

[Vance_croowa_08]

Do you have any hot takes about Touhou Project, opinions that might be considered controversial or just uncommon? 

[williewillus]

LoLK is one of ZUN's best games.

Likely a lukewarm or warm take nowadays, but definitely a flaming hot take when the game came out.

Stages 2 and 3 are kinda sleeper stage sections but outside of that every other part of the game is peak.

[SeroVich]

LoLK is one of ZUN's best games.

Likely a lukewarm or warm take nowadays, but definitely a flaming hot take when the game came out.

Was it that bad when it was initially released?

[Felis-Licht]

Touhou should add more actual male characters to the games, it'd liven things up.

Sumireko was a bad addition to CoLA and ruined it. I wish ZUN never let her take over Rinnosuke's domain.

[Velociraptor]

Allowing mobile games was a mistake. The obligatory freemium revenue model that comes with phone games has tarnished the series with the negative practices associated with mobile games. I'll admit they do tend to have more content than your average dime-a-dozen shovelware games littering every app store, but they still operate on shady marketing practices that feel scam-ish. This YouTube video explains the revenue model pretty thoroughly. Maybe what I'm trying to say here is I'm tired of hearing these games get a pass because they're Touhou. Looking behind the curtain one quickly realizes most are just F2P mobile games with a paper-thin Touhou facade to them.

Probably not what you expect to hear on a Touhou forum, but many concerned fans have voiced similar criticisms. Most people I've spoken with are not against the series becoming more mainstream and therefore 'commercialized', but these mobile games feel more like a sellout than a step in the right direction.

[Kyflovskie]

My favorite Touhou game is Lotus Land Story, it just has a charm I absolutely love so much.

[williewillus]

Was it that bad when it was initially released?

Many a flamewar was had in YouTube comments and Reddit about it so to my newbie's perspective it felt like people really hated it.

I'm sure you can find some discourse on it on MoTK2 as well.

[SeroVich]

Allowing mobile games was a mistake. The obligatory freemium revenue model that comes with phone games has tarnished the series with the negative practices associated with mobile games. I'll admit they do tend to have more content than your average dime-a-dozen shovelware games littering every app store, but they still operate on shady marketing practices that feel scam-ish. This YouTube video explains the revenue model pretty thoroughly. Maybe what I'm trying to say here is I'm tired of hearing these games get a pass because they're Touhou. Looking behind the curtain one quickly realizes most are just F2P mobile games with a paper-thin Touhou facade to them.

Probably not what you expect to hear on a Touhou forum, but many concerned fans have voiced similar criticisms. Most people I've spoken with are not against the series becoming more mainstream and therefore 'commercialized', but these mobile games feel more like a sellout than a step in the right direction.

I am 100% with you, because it's annoying to deal with a barrage of ads whenever I try to play some mobile Touhou Shmup games. I just wanna play the game damn it!! It is just better if they were like .99 cents, so then we'll not deal with these freemium ads hell.

There's potential for Touhou games on mobile, but the mobile gaming market in this day and age is nothing but pitiful and downright shameful to even look at. Maybe if there is change going to happen to the market, then probably we can play some mobile Touhou games in peace, and that's a big IF. But only God knows what will happen next.

[Velociraptor]

Here's another hot take: The trance mechanic from Ten Desires was actually fun and interesting, especially with it activating upon getting hit.

[CyberAngel]

Here's another hot take: The trance mechanic from Ten Desires was actually fun and interesting, especially with it activating upon getting hit.

How so?

[Velociraptor]

Just found it fresh and different at the time? Though Ten Desires leaves much to be ... desired in other aspects though! 

[williewillus]

Here's another hot take: The trance mechanic from Ten Desires was actually fun and interesting, especially with it activating upon getting hit.

Is that really a hot take? Idk how it's received by the general fanbase but in most gameplay circles TD's system is regarded as pretty well designed. You don't really want to use it by getting hit though, because dying in TD in general is a huge penalty.

[Suspicious person]

I've always felt that TD's trance activating on hit AND applying the 1.00 power loss penalty AFTER the trance ends was rather poorly designed : you can gather power items while in trance after being hit, but it's pointless cuz the power loss apply later ... and you can't stop the trance until its gauge is FULLY exhausted as well (while activation requires it to be 100% full). Any miss in TD therefore leads to a ridiculous ressource loss when compared to other games (I myself used to delay killing bosses so that I would have some power items to pick up after forced trance from getting hit). It's also tough since doubling the value of life pieces and bomb pieces items requires trance, which cannot be deactivated once used ...

But on the high level score runs, TD's system allow / encourage calculated suicide plays, and massively reward understanding of timing, item drops, and ressource management, WHILE still keeping skill's importance (as you want to die on your terms and bomb at specific places rather than doing so because of mistakes). it's a level where players deliberately get hit after filling a single bar of trance at a point if the game where they know they'll get rewarded. Look up a high level TD score run, it's played in a completely different way and it's not even super grindy like in HSiFS or WBaWC score runs.

All in all, for casual play, TD is arguably poorly designed and has a VERY unfriendly ressource nanagement system (as trance takes a while to fill up but ALWAYS get 100% consumed when used) ; while TD's design allow for more interesting score runs (although I doubt such direction was intentionnal)

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As for my own "hot" takes, I think ZUN should get out of his comfort zone and enlist other circle's (besides just Tasofro) help in the making of decimal games. I kinda feel like there'd be plenty of talent ready to chime in if he just ask, somewhere outside his group of friends ... that should bring something new and interesting.

[williewillus]

although I doubt such direction was intentionnal

It actually probably is, TD came out one year after Dodonpachi DFK which has a pretty similar hyper system. ZUN was probably playing it quite a bit and incorporated bits of it into TD.

TBH, I wish ZUN played more shmups nowadays for inspiration, because some of the recent games' gameplay like Touhou 17 have an obvious "idk I'm just gonna try whatever" vibe to their gameplay design.

[NovaDelta]

Two things.

1. ZUN's old art isn't terrible per say. While it doesn't have as much skill or consistent proportions, it does well with the philosophy of "less is more", at least in the PC-98 games and Windows games credits.

2. Visible hitboxes aren't as important as people think they are, at least to me. I usually am looking at the patterns ahead of me rather than the patterns on me (unless it's a really dense pattern) and I estimate where the bullets will be when they reach near me. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil isn't hard because I can't see the hitbox, it's hard because it has a slightly sluggish feeling on X-Input. It also has a slightly different gameplay style of faster patterns that rely on reaction time rather than precision.

[williewillus]

1. ZUN's old art isn't terrible per say. While it doesn't have as much skill or consistent proportions, it does well with the philosophy of "less is more", at least in the PC-98 games and Windows games credits.

ZUN's hand-drawn art in the classic era was peak. He still does hand drawn pieces every so often (usually for some sort of activity), and they're actually beautiful. Example: https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Miscellaneous_illustrations_by_ZUN#Tsurugaoka_Hachimangu_Shrine_2024_Bonbori_Festival

I wish he still did hand drawings and just scanned them for his game art because my god.

PC98 art is traced and of suspicious quality anyways so I'd have to side with the common view and say it's pretty bad.

[Vance_croowa_08]

Two things.

1. ZUN's old art isn't terrible per say. While it doesn't have as much skill or consistent proportions, it does well with the philosophy of "less is more", at least in the PC-98 games and Windows games credit.

Finally someone who gets it! i prefer his old art honestly, it's not perfect but it's still somewhat good enough. Sure the proportions are mostly off (Satori's T-rex arms...) but every character looks unique and different from each other, plus it has some very nice shading and color

[FamilyTeam]

Yeah I think ZUN's art is okay for the most part. Joking about how his art is supposedly terrible is so 2012. He absolutely has a collection of wonky pieces but for the most part his art is just perfectly serviceable. Not only that but it mostly looks cute and unique even. I certainly think Touhou would have a much different, arguably inferior vibe if it just looked like a cleaner, more stereotypical anime style.

I don't really think I have many particular "hot takes" of my own because I think just about every opinion about this series has been already stated to death. I do agree that TD's resource system is not very well thought out in some aspects - I feel like this was just a big recurring issue that permeated throughout the Touhou games of that era (SA, UFO, GFW, TD) which all have systems that are very interesting and rewarding the better you play but have some pretty glaring blindspots at 1CC level play, which is ironically the only (survival) category these games are supposedly balanced after!

I guess I do believe that EoSD MarisaA would be seen as being every bit as good as ol' reliable ReimuB in a universe where she didn't have to fight Satan Patchouli on Lunatic, but if this is a hot take it absolutely shouldn't be: EoSD ReimuA is dogwater for NB/NN and MarisaB has very little to nothing over A if Bombs are out of the equation. That would kinda only leave ReimuB and MarisaA left, and I feel like all things being equal they have an interesting give-and-take dynamic where they're better for some sections than the other is. I kinda already feel like this is the case when you're playing the Boss Rush patch for the game. But alas, this isn't the universe we live in.

Maybe not disliking UDoALG is a hot take of its own. I feel like a lot of people just had a very bad impression from playing the game at launch day and their judgement starts and ends with whatever little you can do with the game on first boot. I will admit UDoALG, especially 1.00a, leaves a terrible first impression: you're railroaded into playing Reimu, the single least interesting character in the game, then most people either get stuck because the game is admittedly not great at communicating how you actually progress through the matches or they immediately find out Reimu is hilariously overpowered and get a low miss LNB their first time ever playing the game. If your extent of interacting with the game doesn't go past that I can't blame you for disliking it, but UDoALG has 19 characters, and by my calculations at least 17 of them are not Reimu or Chiyari. There's more to the game than just them, people.

[NovaDelta]

ZUN's hand-drawn art in the classic era was peak. He still does hand drawn pieces every so often (usually for some sort of activity), and they're actually beautiful. Example: https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Miscellaneous_illustrations_by_ZUN#Tsurugaoka_Hachimangu_Shrine_2024_Bonbori_Festival

I wish he still did hand drawings and just scanned them for his game art because my god.

PC98 art is traced and of suspicious quality anyways so I'd have to side with the common view and say it's pretty bad.

Oh yeah a LOT of stuff for the first three games was traced LMAO. But you can still more or less tell what ZUN did and didn't draw. And iirc he stopped tracing at Lotus Land Story

You can see in some of the credits (?) scenes of Highly Responsive to Prayers some of his hand drawn sketches (in choppy uncolored PC98 form) and I really wanna see more of those. Or just sketches from that era and the in-between era of Windows and PC98

I think PC98 art has a silly cartoonish style compared to the Windows era's watercolor painting style, and thats okay. I think it fits that era

[CrNTD]

In the first chapter of Curiosities of Lotus Asia it says that Reimu is the only shrine maiden in Gensokyo, so Sanae is a retcon and should not be allowed to live.

[Velociraptor]

In the first chapter of Curiosities of Lotus Asia it says that Reimu is the only shrine maiden in Gensokyo

ZUN has explained that the games' events occur roughly the same years as they are released. According to this wiki page the first chapter of Curiosities of Lotus Asia came out in 2004 and Mountain of Faith was released in 2007. That would mean that Sanae, Kanako and Suwako were still years away from traveling to Gensokyo, since it's stated in the story of Mountain of Faith that they appeared/arrived some time before the playable story takes place. So it's not really a retcon, as the year the first chapter took place there would've only been one shrine maiden in the story.

[CrNTD]

ZUN has explained that the games' events occur roughly the same years as they are released. According to this wiki page the first chapter of Curiosities of Lotus Asia came out in 2004 and Mountain of Faith was released in 2007. That would mean that Sanae, Kanako and Suwako were still years away from traveling to Gensokyo, since it's stated in the story of Mountain of Faith that they appeared/arrived some time before the playable story takes place. So it's not really a retcon, as the year the first chapter took place there would've only been one shrine maiden in the story.

*tips witch hat*

But seriously I wish there wasn't so many characters. I know that that's just the way it goes every game adds new characters but it's interesting to think why that is and what if it wasn't so. For example what could be advantages and disadvantages of having more and more characters? I guess that with more variety it's easier for varied people to latch on to Touhou because there are more characters that you might identify with. And newer characters can take new developments in the world and the tastes of new generations into account which is good. But it also makes everything harder to keep track of, at least for me so when I interact with Touhou now it leads to a sort of tunnel vision where I blend out newer characters and don't think of them much and don't feel much of a connection with the latest games except for just enjoying the game and seeing what's new. So I guess that's my real hot take.

[LincInTheDescription]

Sunken Fossil World is my favorite Twilight Frontier game, and I would prefer another one like it over a new fighting game.
I think the boss rush style gameplay fits the series very well, and it gives lesser used characters who probably wouldn't have made a fighting game a chance!

I don't dislike the fighting games at all though I really like them too lol

[SeroVich]

I don't know why some Touhou fans actually want Mima back when there are other PC-98 characters that didn't get the chance to even appear in other games other than their debut. Heck, I believe that Rika is the suitable rival for Reimu besides Marisa, since she believes she can beat her using just tanks. I believe that Mima have seen her days, and it's for the best of her not to always appear in every Touhou games.

[CrNTD]

Another one I just thought of while I'm listening to Touhou music that uses drinking imagery: https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/%E7%88%86%E9%80%9F%E9%BA%A6%E9%85%92-2015

I don't like that Touhou is sometimes associated with beer and drinking via ZUN drinking beer. It's personal but for me drinking has always been icky and it feels like one of those things that's a grey area with when people associate it with a franchise. As in we don't always know everyone's sensitivities so it would be better to keep those kind of sensitive things to ourselves if we do associate it with a franchise or character.