Had lots of fun with the game, got no real complaints, imo it's the most reasonable game in term of mechanics. I personally got my 1cc on my fourth try (kinda rusty, huh), and that was by switching from Sanae to Reimu (got it first try with Reimu), before getting another one with Sanae right after (got potion and Mokou feathers in the same run lmao). Reimu doesn't seem to be as garbo as she was from the demo, she is actuallly very strong now, to illustrate, she CAN kill the yin yangs mobs from the beginning of stage 1 easily now (pretty low bar, just to show how trash she was in the demo). The main appeal of the game being the use of more items in your subsequent playthrough, this game can be a bit of a noob killer, since dying takes away 1.00 power and a fair bit of gold (both stuff you use to buy cards), making it harder to get good stuff for newer runs. Luck regarding the items that pop in the shop is probably something that matters when it comes to casual runs, as you'll need luck in order to find that oh so precious Mokou feather (3 lives !) or any other good item : I only managed to find the much praised Okina door item after around 4 or 5 literal hours (at least) of proactively searching for it in shops, so yeah ...
Cards are not exactly "balanced", in the sense where a bunch of them have so much more utility compared to others, and the price of the cards in the item shop is definitely not representative of how usefull they may prove to be in reality : a good example will be the Okuu card vs
fox girl's card: while Okuu's ability card allows you to casually invoke the power of the sun to absolutely delete everything, it drains your power and has an EXTREMELY long cooldown, so much so that you're probably not gonna get to use it twice in the same stage, for the price of 450 gold items, while
fox girl's ability card cost a bit less than 200, have a very short cooldown, and virtually does the same thing as it allows you to use a bomb in exchange for a loss of power. There are, however, not a lot of questionable balance desicions like that one in the game.
As far as cards go, imo the best and strongest active card ought to be
blue Aya's, since besides clearing and protecting you from bullets for a bit, you can casually receive a whole 1.00 power (or a bomb item if you're at full power), and it allows you to get FULL POWER BEFORE REACHING THE STAGE 1 BOSS, if used on cooldown, and finally allows you not to suffer from this game's massive power loss.
And speaking of power loss, honestly, it didn't seem to be much of an issue to me in the full game compared to the demo : some bosses give a whole bunch of ressources at some point in their fights, and there are a number of ability cards that have something to do with power (for example Mr Hat, the tanuki card, and the previous item I mentioned up top), not to mention the possibility to buff your damage with the more offensive equipment cards.
Some cards synchronise well with some others, and can make strong cards even more stronger, for example
fox girl plus either the blue Aya or the Byakuren ability cards, or Eiki plus either Shinmyoumaru or Kicchou's ability cards, or multiple bullet erasing passives and equipments ... I like the kind of games where creativity is allowed.
All in all, the absence of "proper" gameplay mechanic for getting ressources means the game does not demand you play in a certain way lest you get destroyed : you pick whichever card you want to supplement your playstyle, and try to roll over or even cheese the game : for example the possibility to go for a number of actives to try erase dangerous patterns as they come, but the cooldown and the lack of invulnerability frames make it so that active cards are not so almighty
Also gotta also appreciate how absolutely bunk the economy surrounding the cards is :
- You can buy money for free
- Some kind of privilege pass that literally halves the price of everything is available on the market
- Life is objectively worth 200 gold items since the Yama's card say so
- You can buy life for 80 gold items
- Buying life in bulk takes 450 gold items
- For like 280 you get a pipe that can periodically give you 1/3 lives
- For like 140 you can get 1 life and can periodically give you 1/3 lives
- You can buy an artifact that convert bullets into gold items (why is something like that on the market)
Patterns are tough but fair : bullets come from ABSOLUTELY EVERY DIRECTION, but the large majority of this game's patterns do not require having especially good RNG in order to clear : it is a fairly learnable game. Gotta say I really like how the newer games seems to be distancing themselves from the over reliance on RNG to make a good challenge.
As far as character goes, I think the big winner this time's gotta be
blue Aya (who, despite the jokey comparison, stand out as a character (she's got a never used color on her even !)), plus a honorable mention for
fox girl, who honestly pull whatever look Sannyo was supposed to have much better imo. The rest of the cast's design seems overly loaded and noisy. Imo the safe way of going about designing characters is like having them have 1 or 2 main colors, a few supporting colors, and either hair, tool, or cloth that makes them distinctive, like recognizable-by-their-silhouette kind of distincitive. You look at Bad Apple, you instantly know who is who (provided you know Touhou girls). I'm kinda ok with stage 4 madam and Extra girl, particularly the stage 4 madam (c'mon, she looks old), but I'm not so sure about the
Tenkyuu. Personally, I'm not so hot about how Okuu, Hecatia and Kurokoma looks like in ZUNart, but I've seen a LOT of cool fanarts of them that I've grown to appreciate their design (especialy Hecatia, she's got like the coolest and unironically stylish pics), so I'm really, REALLY,
REALLY curious to see if fanarts are going to manage to make
Tenkyuu look nice in that getup
I think
fox girl is in a rather awkward position : she's got a lot of mid-boss battles, is involved a lot of conversation, and is relevant story wise, but not being a proper boss on her own means no character theme nor even spellcard background ... not exactly unusual for mid-bosses, but if you consider all that, but still ...
Regarding this game's music, I quite like em. Stage themes are pretty chill, relaxed and atmospheric (plus a fair dose of epicness for the extra stage theme), and boss themes can be quite intense. My favorite would be
blue Aya and centipede girl (cuz apparently that's a centipede ?!), I like those catchy boss-like boss theme with a relaxed and chill part. I was expecting the average final boss-like grandiose theme for
Tenkyuu, probably a bit cutsy and emotional considering how "nice" and round and colourful she looked to me, but then her theme plays and it's like
ANXIETY : THE SONG so it completely took me off guard. Dunno what to think about the song, might take a while to grow on me.
But what will not take a while to grow, however, would be my appreciation for the absurd speed of the artists of this community. I mean, check out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtQS8fuOFks, there's already a vocal arrange of her theme
Nothing to say story wise until proper translations are out, but
Tenkyuu's situation is pretty interesting considering how gods should work in Touhou : instead of getting powered by regular prayer or the like, doing business in a the marketplace under certain conditions is what count as an act of worship towards her ... like, even a non-believer unwittingly worship and therefore power her up just by getting involved in the market. The way her ability works is also kinda bizarre too : since her power is what, uh, powers the various ability cards, clearly her ability is not limited to the loss of ownership but probably also governs the conditions regarding the things that lose ownership and what happens to them. I think for this game, Tenkyuu and the cards are slightly similar to how Okina and the season doors were for HSiFS : she is powered by the act of worship that is the buying and selling of the cards, and she uses her power to empower the cards that are bought and sold under her rules. Kinda interesting. I have absolutely no idea however what all this money thingy have to do with her rainbowness
