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| Touhou 18: 東方虹龍洞 〜 Unconnected Marketeers (Full release!) |
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| Suspicious person:
Heya, I've played the game quite a bit, and gotta say, I love what I see : For now, here's a list of the card in this game plus what they do : Heart card : gives you an extra life Star card : gives you an extra bomb, is free Heart piece card : gives you a life piece, not available in shop, drop in stage sections too Bomb piece card : gives you a bomb piece, not available in shop, drop in stage sections too Nazrin pendulum card : gives you 50 gold items, drop in stage sections, is free Ringo card / cute bunny with power item : gives you 0.50 power, drop in stage sections too, is free Mokou card / phoenix feather : gives you 3 extra lives, cannot be equipped (sad) Reimu card / yin yang orb : equipment item that gives you an extra option that fires homing amulets Youmu card / half ghost : equipment item that gives you an extra option that fires bullets in a straight line that follows you around Alice card / Shanghai doll : equipment item that gives you a friendly shanghai doll that moves around (cute), home in and shoot enemies Cirno card / dumb blue person : equipment item that gives you an extra option that fires around haphazardly Nitori card / open kappa wallet : passive card that gives you a larger item collection range Kanako card / big rope with a bunch of stuff : passive card that significatively lower the Point Of Collection line (like close to the middle of the screen) Eirin card / shady new drug of purple color : passive item that causes you to lose 2 bombs (or 1 if you only have one remaining) upon getting hit by a bullet (like TH 17 roar break) Tewi card / funny bunny & bunny foot : passive item that prevent you from losing gold item upon dying (yes, that's a thing) ; I've also heard people say that it gives you a longer deathbomb window Boss Kurokoma card / Wolf bro : passive card that increase your damage output Byakuren card / air scroll : passive card that empowers your bomb (think TH 17 Otter bombs, for the folks who may want to reminisce of their days of working for the otter mafia) ; also lower the cooldown of your active cards Koishi card/ Mr Hat : passive card that enable you not to get hurt by running into enemies (beside bosses), and will cause you to lose only 0.50 power instead of a full 1.00 one (yes, that's also a thing) Mike card / money cat : passive item that enable shops to have more card to choose from Takane card / closed wallet : passive card that halves the price of all shop items Sannyo card / dragon pipe : passive card that allows you to get life pieces (not life piece card) when you capture a spell Yukari gard / gap : active card that allows you to cross to the other side of the screen (press C + direction, doesn't work vertically), has no cooldown Shinmyoumaru card / miracle mallet : active card that allow you to clear bullet in a small radius in front of you and transforms them into point item, need to charge for a bit before activating Best girl card / Tenshi keystone : amazing active card that spawn a fantastic keystone in front of you to awesomely tank bullets, last for quite the lovely duration and bravely stays in front of you, probably the best card for no reason pertaining to no bias whatsoever Clownpiece card / red moon : active card that shoots a moon that clears away bullets for a distance that's like half the screen (Press D to swap active cards btw) Anyway, these are all I've seen for now, since I haven't run into anything else other the course of multiple gameplay, I believe these are all the cards available in the demo My thoughts on the demo (for whoever is into these hot, sexy wall of texts) : Gameplay wise, any problem or issue you might have can easily be offset by whichever card you equip. Not pleased with losing a whole life or even your gold items ? Koishi card or Tewi card! Lack of confidence over your dodging skills? Eirin card! Wanting to easily get items for subsequent playthroughts ? Mike and Takane cards! Not enough firepower for your taste? Boss Kurokoma card! Having a greedier, aggressive playstyle ? Kanako and Nitori cards! Wanting to try fun stuff? Multiple actives or equipment cards! There's plenty of way to go about this game and plenty of playstyle that you can try without getting punished by the game (so long as you equip the proper cards that support such or such playstyle). While some cards are better than the others, there are no cards that can be considered as truly useless. Game mechanic this time is actually one of the more reasonable ones, and is pretty balanced too : C button isn't as almighty as in TH 17's predecessors, even more so since choosing to have an active is choosing to not have another kind of advantage for a weaker bomb. As far as items go, imo passives are by far and away the strongest ones, while the equipment cards are on the weaker side. As far as gameplay goes, this allows for quite the replayability. I wonder how things are gonna work the extra stage, as you won't have access to shop during stage sections ... also, is the final boss gonna give something that can be used for newer playthrough or for the extra only ? The gameplay aspect is pretty solid for this game. As far as the bullet pattern goes, stage sections are not exactly super creative, but the rest, while designed in a rather creative and interesting way unbefitting of the early game (bullet coming from two sides for the first boss's nons, curvy patterns that can force you into a dangerous bottom hugging or lane-crossing situation, or heavy twitch dodging) : the early game is NOT free and take a bit of effort. Definitely on the harder side. I also like how very TH 17-ey some of patterns are. Losing a whole unit of power (1.00(plus a bunch of gold items but doesn't hit as hard)) combined with the sheer LACK of ressources definitely make this game EXTREMELY PUNISHING if you die. It doesn't matter which stage you're at, but being stuck at like 1 or 2 power just make hard patterns even harder. And to add to that, regular firepower seems like it's a bit weaker than how it would usually feel : Sanae for example (I say this as a Sanae main for games without Youmu) seems like a nerfed version of how she usually is : generally, when you fires froggy bullet as Sanae, it feels like it goes TAK -- TAK -- TAK -- TAK -- TAK (... you know what I mean) when she shoots, but this time it feels like (TAK ----- TAK ----- TAK -----) ... it shoot froggies slower and her spread is not so strong at lower power ... while it takes a long time to properly build up power ... AND despite THAT, she's like one of the best shot type for this game !!! The shot types feel weak and sluggish ! I get that Mr Hat and Wolf bro are here to save us from this hell, but if the full games still take away 1.00 power while giving you FEW ressources (like holy crap TD feels like goddamn stacked buffet in comparison), this game is gonna be one of the hardest games, not because of whatever difficulty it has, but because of the sheer lack of ressources ... btw, popcorn enemies also feel like they are surviving a split second too long than they normally should, without the firepower increasing cards ... As far as quality of life goes, honestly game seems a bit clunky on that side : I feel like I'm pressing more buttons than I should in order to switch ability cards, and pressing "down" in order to get to those is rather not very intuitive imo (even moreso since touhou players are used to choose their options just as they press the "shoot" button instead of doing it like this). I would also have loved to have some kind of audiovisual cue for knowing when the cooldowns are fully charged, looking at the side of the screen is not always something good to do during intense dodging. Music wise, personally, I found it pretty quiet. I still like 'em though (I usually do), and they also need time to grow fond of. Nothing particularly catchy, but they aren't draining to listen either : quite quiet. Early game generally don't get amazing bangers like the ones in stage 5, 6 and extra, so this is fair to me. Although TH 16 had some fine ass early game music and TH 17 had energetic boss themes for the early game. I think TH 18 doesn't quite compare to those in terms of catchiness and upbeatness. The more catchy ones imo would be the first and third stage boss themes, and even those sound bizarrely kind of "dark" to me. My definite favorite would be stage 3 theme, though, but I quite enjoy the rest as well. Presentation wise, things also look pretty nice, fro the "usual" green forest (creative) getting rain into transitioning into a rainbow, and stage 2's nice looking cliff. It's not quite UFO's level, but I like how the presentation's direction seems to be getting ever since touhou 17. Stage 3's pink haze and whiteness kinda make it hard to see the midboss pink bullet pattern tho, so there's that. Also a bit unrelated, but regarding ZUN's constant reuse of the "usual" green forest (creative), aside from being lazy, I like to think it's him obeying a secret Gensokyo map inside his head that says "green forest towards Youkai mountain", as we've ever seen the "usual" green forest (creative) whenever we had to go towards Youkai mountain (TH 15, TH 16, and now TH 18). Anyway, character wise, hmm, we don't exactly get "authenticity" here. Mike kinda stand out a bit, she's got cattitude and stuff, but stage 1 bosses are usually such minor players, I wouldn't be surprised if one of them literally had "minor" in their name. Her having stuff to do with monies and being capable of getting stuffed into the feline group is probably what she's got going for her. Takane is reverse Nitori by design, no question here, and is probably the one that I believe have a solid chance of being a reccuring character in the future, just like how Nitori gets to appear every now so often in manga. Yorihimain't Sannyo is probably the most distinctive of all, what's with her dragon pipe and running(?) a casino, but since she seems like she could possibly be like Nemuno, aside from potentially getting paired with her, I can't quite picture how she'd get a standing in the series. Youkai mountain folks are a big faction, but they ain't quite one big family, so let's see what the future's got for us. Story wise, no real comment from me. Aside from there being some kind of unbreakable rule demanding that the cards can only be sold (brute force won't avail anyone wanting to get them), and the money theme, I really can't see how that would connect to dragons. CoLA chapter 18 (I believe ?) has it that Dragons leave rainbow trails as they fly, and we have seen dragon cause rain not just in the backstory , but also from Kasen yound dragon from WaHH : stage 1's got BOTH rain and rainbow. If any game's gotta have a proper dragon (not weird ones like boss Kicchou), THIS game has got to be it ... I'm quite curious to see how things'll develop. Also, back on the cards thingy, since we have boss Kurokoma's card and since TH 17.5's probably chronogically happening before this (imo), I wonder if there is a tiny, tiny possible chance for ZUN to include Toutetsu's card in there ?! Extremely unlikely but I'd love it if he did that. So yeah, all in all, easily my favorite demo. I'd say the best thing is the fact that there's only a measly 2 months to way for this time ... I hope ZUN will properly polish this game in the meantime. Apparently there's also a shop abuse glitch, but I haven't experimented much with it. Not so interested in stuff that are so gonna get fixed in the full game tbh |
| nintendonut888:
After playing the demo for two solid days and getting my fill of the first half, my impressions of this game are very positive. I've seen various comments here and there saying the danmaku in this game - especially stage 1 - feel uninspired, and honestly I simply disagree. Pound for pound, I think this is the most vibrant and energetic first half since LoLK, and discounting that game probably the hardest one since Subterranean Animism. I wonder if the card system makes ZUN feel comfortable bringing out the harder stuff, knowing there's lots of ways to mitigate the difficulty? Regardless, while the stage 2 boss has some attacks that could be considered traps, for the most part everything is tough but fair, while still looking good. I'm excited to see where the full version leads. Music is always subjective, but while I didn't immediately fall in love with it like WBaWC's soundtrack, it quickly grew on me as I played the demo more and more. Stage 3 theme definitely blew me away when I first heard it, in particular. On the other hand, this is probably the buggiest demo I've played. Ignoring things like the shop glitch that was already fixed in a patch, I'm experiencing a bizarre control bug that causes the heroine to randomly fly out of control for long periods of time - sometimes over a second - unless I switch the input method in the custom.exe to fast. I've also heard reports of some people getting instantly killed on the stage 3 boss' opener until they game over due to a hardware-dependent bug, and just now I noticed my save data had been reset, with me losing all my ability cards. Given ZUN has the very ambitious plan to release the full version as early as May, I hope he can iron out everything for the full release and still deliver a second half worthy of the setup we've been given. I'm looking forward to finding out. As for spoiler territory: I happened to look up Youkai Mountain's PMiSS entry after playing the demo, and I found a passage that blew my mind, keeping in mind what Sannyo said of the interior of the Rainbow Dragon Cave: "Rumors say that within the mountain exists a large hollow cavity where a futuristic utopia just like the outside world is being built. In that place, the sun's light shines all day long, an automated factory produces the necessary items to meet the needs of everyday life, and the youkai drink sake while reading the newspaper and discussing the news, living blissfully. Within this hollow cavity, the forbidden act of opening a hole that connects to the outside world through the boundary is perpetrated, so other youkai and humans are not allowed to enter. At least, that is what they say... " If this is referring to the Rainbow Dragon Cave, that is one hell of a long game ZUN played - 15 years for that easily forgotten passage to bear fruit. |
| Felis-Licht:
--- Quote from: Karisa on March 24, 2021, 05:56:09 AM ---It's strange seeing a new Touhou announcement so empty, actually... I guess most people didn't stay on with v3 after all. Touhou 17 was mostly after registration stopped working on the old MotK, but even it had a pretty busy discussion thread. --- End quote --- I'm assuming most people are on Discord nowadays. --- Quote from: nintendonut888 on March 24, 2021, 07:01:02 PM ---As for spoiler territory: I happened to look up Youkai Mountain's PMiSS entry after playing the demo, and I found a passage that blew my mind, keeping in mind what Sannyo said of the interior of the Rainbow Dragon Cave: "Rumors say that within the mountain exists a large hollow cavity where a futuristic utopia just like the outside world is being built. In that place, the sun's light shines all day long, an automated factory produces the necessary items to meet the needs of everyday life, and the youkai drink sake while reading the newspaper and discussing the news, living blissfully. Within this hollow cavity, the forbidden act of opening a hole that connects to the outside world through the boundary is perpetrated, so other youkai and humans are not allowed to enter. At least, that is what they say... " If this is referring to the Rainbow Dragon Cave, that is one hell of a long game ZUN played - 15 years for that easily forgotten passage to bear fruit. --- End quote --- :o The plot thickens. Kinda reminds me of "The Peach Blossom Spring". |
| Mikuru:
A few more unconnected thoughts, now that I've had time to play a bit more. I was wrong about the open purse increasing the number of gold item drops. What I was actually seeing is that you get extra gold items from speedkilling some enemies, and I had gotten a little more used to the enemy formations when I first tried the purse. Easy caps the PIV at 200,000, so Easy runs have much more freedom to buy cards. From watching a video, I found that the cap is 1m on Lunatic; not sure about Hard yet. In spite of what the others have said, I still feel this will be a relatively easy 1cc game because you can buy resources as you go along -- if the phoenix feather comes up, you can buy at least 7 lives in a run plus whatever you get from life pieces, and you don't have to totally forgo other cards because you can start with two. However, the others are also right, the danmaku is on the tough side for early game, and the shot types feel pretty weak unless you power them up with the Wolf card. Sanae + Wolf is great. One thing I am very curious about at the moment: what determines which cards each shop will have for sale? (Asked about this on the discord; it seems to be pretty much random selection except that the life, bomb and power cards are always available. That will make things interesting for the full game....) |
| Suspicious person:
Somebody datamined a bunch of unused shot types from the demo Self explanatory, the Sanae one is reasonably expected cuz her ability card going around was already mentioned in the dialogues. Pretty interesting too to see multiple ability cards hailing from the same characters. I for one hope that the bouncy Sakuya knives gets to be a thing cuz it looks cool I'm kinda curious to see if the full game is implement all of those or if a bunch (or all) of them are gonna stay scrapped |
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