Maidens of the Kaleidoscope
~Hakurei Shrine~ => Help Me, Eirin! => Topic started by: williewillus on October 11, 2024, 02:33:20 AM
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Thought I'd make a thread for this fangame. First new thread here on motkv3 for a fangame in a long time, I think?
This series probably needs no introduction, but I'll give a brief recap anyways.
The first game (https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Fantastic_Danmaku_Festival) in the Fantastic Danmaku Festival series came out a decade ago, in March 2014. The first game was a free remake of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, and its initial versions were notoriously difficult. It was notable for being one of the first fully-produced full-length fangames.
Obviously, there were many full-length danmaku fangames that had come before it, but FDF1 was one of few danmaku fangames that managed to break out of the danmaku fangame niche and attract attention from the mainstream fandom, an honor it shared with games such as Concealed the Conclusion. Lastly, it was one of the very first notable danmaku fangames to come out of the Chinese fandom.
On a more personal note, FDF1 was one of the first fangames I played alongside Shining Shooting Star.
After several years of dormancy, FDF1 suddenly received a free update early in 2018 that removed all assets taken from the official games (sound effects, mainly), and significantly rebalanced the game to be easier. A few months later in August of 2018, it was officially released on Steam for sale.
A sequel remaking Perfect Cherry Blossom, Fantastic Danmaku Festival Part II (https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Fantastic_Danmaku_Festival_Part_II), was announced in February 2019 and released for sale only a month later in March 2019. It was widely praised for its impressive visuals, most notably the animated spell card cut-ins, and also managed to reach a broad audience, many of whom had not played danmaku fangames before. A phantasm update was released in August the same year.
The team then went quiet, surfacing in 2021 and 2023 respectively to release two adaptations of FDF2 (Perfect Sakura Fantastica (https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Perfect_Sakura_Fantastica)) and FDF1 (Scarlet Diabolique Fantastica (https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Scarlet_Diabolique_Fantastica)) to the EXA Arcadia arcade system.
Finally, on June 14, 2024, the project leader posted a promotional video for the third installment in the series. As everyone expected, it's a reimagining of Imperishable Night. The Steam page (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2877170/) was made public the same day. On October 9th, 2024, a new PV (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DKzhGucdFc) showcasing the gameplay was released.
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My thoughts so far are, this game look a lot more arcadey this time around. The player sprites are huge, lots of CAVE style glowy/flashy bullets, and enemies occupying structures in the background. Curious to see what the style is because on the surface it certainly looks quite different from FDF2.
System wise, from the second PV it seems to at least keep the surface system of IN, which is graze and shoot for time orbs (or whatever the blue drops are going to be called). Not sure how the gauge in the lower left is managed, because it doesn't seem to move around like it does for IN. Some sort of power burst or release seems to happen when it reaches max.
The shots are likely to be Reimu, Marisa, Sanae, and Mokou, as they are the four mentioned prominently on the Steam page.
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This is one of the games I'm most excited for. I had a ton of fun learning how to score in FDF2, and I wasn't actually expecting this game to ever come out, so I was pleasantly surprised when this got announced.
From the few screenshots and videos I've seen, it looks like there's a good variety of enemy types and the backgrounds play a large part in the stage design. I feel like this is something that's lacking in most Touhou games, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how that turns out in this game.
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This is a late notice in itself, but the game's been delayed, and they also announced they'd be releasing a demo (a departure from the previous two games which appeared in fully-complete form)
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The demo's out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2877170/
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Gathering my thoughts from some other places and posting here.
The aesthetics look amazing as always, though the proliferation of non-standard bullet types can be a bit confusing until you get them down. I don't mind too much though.
The music is alright. FDF team has been going for ambience since FDF2 which I'm ambivalent about, but the Stage 3 and Stage 3 boss theme were great.
In general, the game is too easy. I cleared Lunatic on my first attempt with 6 extra lives remaining. In that version, breaking a border doesn't even fail a spell (that did get changed so the current version of the demo so it does now).
In Stage 3, there's an exciting chase scene but it's just tap streaming and has little gameplay depth.
The "lantern" system is just a copy paste of the FDF2 border system, down to the three levels of borders and how you extend it. There's even graze-to-increase-spell-bonus and decrease-PIV-on-bomb-or-death. There's no published numbers but I suspect they work exactly the same way as they do in FDF2.
The only thing unique is the "overheat"/Rampage system, but I have yet to trigger it in normal survival play, so it seems pointless.
The system is also much less tactile than it was in FDF2.
In FDF2, it is very clear whenever you start a border (the gong sound + big pink circle). It's clear when a border extends (it glows brightly and changes pattern). It's clear when it ends (bubble pop sound and effect). It's clear when you break one by accident (different bubble pop sound).
In this game, it's not obvious at all when these things are happening, you do get a circle around you when the system is active but it's blue and easy to miss. You also don't get that much of a hint when you extend your border, which is important to keep track of in this game because of the overheating mechanic. As a result I constantly have to be moving my eyes to the lower corner to check the bar which interferes with dodging.
It's also really hard to notice whether a border ended naturally or if you accidentally ran into a bullet and broke it, the sound effect is too quiet and not distinct enough between the two cases.
They're regularly patching the demo to fix bugs and rebalance things, but a concerning thing that happened was in the "Day 13" update they increased the difficulty of patterns slightly and decreased the resource amount, which is great! Then buffed the resources right back in the Day 15 update. Apparently people are somehow getting mad about the difficulty, even though this game is probably one of the easiest danmaku fangames to exist currently? What is going on.