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.
