Alright, finally played enough of the game to an extent that I can probably express an educated opinion of it (there's a LOT of stuff to talk about). Derusting process took quite a bit, but I got around to getting a bunch of clears. I got a normal clear on all shot types, quite a few clears on hard mode, one clear on lunatic and even one on easy mode. Brain's about fried from the intensity of it all, I close my eyes and see bullets and gems falling
The
gameplay is quite straightforward : the vertical bar get charged up by killing enemies or damaging bosses, the more and the quicker you kill them, the faster the bar charges, and once filled, a wonder stone / abnormal enemy pop up and shoot a bunch of bullets ; and the horizontal bar get charged up by picking up whatever ressources there are, especially gem items, and automatically release an ability / abnormal attack that depends on the story stone you picked up (plus grant a temporary "border" / bullet cancel in case you get hit for its duration): since killing enemies and picking items up are actions that you'll naturally do in game, this game's gimmick pretty much play itself.
Even so, the way of getting there is a bit complicated, cuz the firepower you have in this game is a bit on the low side : chaining enemies kills + killing wonder stones can be a bit complicated on weaker shot types, while the timing you get used to for the wonder stone spawning is not gonna be the same depending on the shot type you're playing with, as the weaker ones unavoidably lead them to spawn later, and the opposite for the stronger shot types.
Furthermore, ressources this time is SCARCE : there's not a lot of power items dropping, while bombs and life shards primarily come from killing wonder stones : if you want your ressources, you want to chains lots of kills fast then pop the wonder stone, however your overall firepower is quite low, wonder stones are surprisingly tanky (and get tankier and more dangerous) and the performance of the various shot types is not on the same level ... and getting wonder stones on the field is dangerous as not only they shoot bullets and get stronger everytime they come back, but they also can pop up during boss fights ! Super brutal.
The regular maximum life you should get by the end of the demo, assuming no death and finger not leaving shoot button, is 4 (I've managed to reach 4 and an additional life shard with stall tech, not sure if there can be more) : that is NOT a lot compared to the usual Touhou game, especially considering you're gonna enter late game ...
Stage section in this game also become very hectic because of the need to play around the wonder stones, as you want to chain kill enemies to spawn wonder stones, but also because wonder stones and their bullets add to the bullets you get on stage : stage section are therefore far more dynamic and less monotonous than how they are in other TH games (and that without heavy reliance on RNG !), even the streaming sections that would otherwise be considered boring in normal games are not free when there are speedkill routes and wonder stones to take into account. I've always been quite lenient and not super critical of stage design as far as TH games go, but having experienced this game's very intense stages, I can kinda see why people keep on railing on the previous newer games and their stage designs. There is never a moment where you can just snooze off this time. This is an early game where I'm confortable with spending a bomb or two without feeling a sense of waste.
As for
boss attacks, I didn't feel any true walling potential overall plus no real presence of RNG (aside from the movement RNG of wonder stones when they pop out) as a defining factor of such or such attack. Player's reading and positioning capabilities are heavily tested, and the patterns are generally hard but fair.
So, all in all, TH20 is a pretty intense game that rewards AGGRESSIVE play, and heavily encourage the players to have routes that takes the wonder stones spawn and ability proc timings into account, while still leaving much room for experiments, be it for aggressive speedkill focused routes or slightly stally ones (I myself for example delay killing the stage 1 boss on her 2nd spell with Marisa G2 (green 2) in order to get another wonder stone spawn from killing mob fairies). Definitely not a noob or a conservative / defensive player friendly game. DDC is supposed to rewards aggressive play by giving multiplayer and bonus ressources to those who go for the PoC with lots of ressources around, but can't do that quite correctly because of the sheer density of its bullet patterns even during stage : TH20 definitely succeed in being the kind of game that rewards aggressive play, and still allow room for alternative play through the various other other stones that it allows you to put in your loadout.
As for the
stone select part of the game, it's defintely a cool thing that gives a replay to unlock aspect to the game. It's pretty cool on a surface level, but only because this game allows you to unlock new magic rocks upon completion WHILE being ONLY 3 stages : come the main and 6 stages, the early mix-and-match aspect of the game is gonna be a bit crippled if you're gonna need to beat the game a bunch of times in order to get to unlock magic stones to do funny combinations with : imagine doing a higher difficulty run with a single type of stone until you get a clear : hopefully ZUN's gonna allow a bunch a combinations regardless of the clears. Also hope he adds new magic stones with new magic effects, doesn't need to be story stones, that would be cool too.
Anyway, as far as
shot types go, I feel like the spread ones have a bit of an edge over the narrow ones (bar those with high power or shotgun potential) cuz they get to deal damage to a bunch of mobs before picking them off en masse, which plays into the chaining game better and easier ; while the aimed shot types are VERY BAD on stage sections : it's the return of a TH19 problem where you have weak shots that aim for different enemies in a game where your shots are weak and the mobs are tanky : this problem is further aggravated by the fact that important targets such as the wonder stones are present, as your aimed shots are highly unlikely to hit them during stage sections because of the various trash mobs that get aimed at first. Anyway, to keep things simple, I'd say that this game has 1 VERY good shot, a bunch of decent shots that consistently allow you to barely summon a wonder stone after the wave of fairies that pop up after the stage 1 title drop and barely reach 2.00 power before the stage 1 midboss (you don't want to fight the stage 1 midboss at 1.00 firepower on higher difficulties, nearly guaranteed to bomb when the stage fairies jump in the action), and a bunch of VERY painful shots to play.
Anyway, assuming it's the very first play, here's my experience on pure story stones based shot & build (can't review all combinations) :
RR1 (Reimu Red 1) : Absolute buttocks. Trust me. The narrow shot doesn't hit a lot of enemies and the one you hit don't die fast enough, so racking up chain is very tough. The worst part however's gotta be the hyper. It scales based on your firepower and options, and doesn't even last that long ... this mean that its attached abnormal attack is a single file of slightly stronger bullets at 1.00 power, 2 shots at 2.00 and so on. This is deeply unimpressive when compared to RR2. You don't even feel the supposed focused shot buff ...
RR2 : Very decent, the attached passive effect is a fast charging of the horizontal bar and the abnormal attack is a POWERFULL spread hyper : bullets are strong on their own, and its brutal if you manage to shotgun it.
RB1 : Like I said, it suffers from the aimed shot problem of TH19, and is not helped by the fact that important target are present this time around. Like RR1 the hyper is also based on your firepower / options, so it's pretty weak when you're weak. Its saving grace lies in the fact that its quite reliable at focusing down the boss when she is alone in the screen.
RB2 : Honestly, a shot that's sounds bad on paper but is actually quite reliable. It looks like it shoot backwards, but they actually aim at mobs that are 180° or below the option's horizontal line, and since the options is located at a decent distance in front of Reimu, its easy to have all the bullets (the basic shots from Reimu, the frontal bullets AND the backward aimed bullets of RB2) focus down an enemy : very powerfull shotgun potential, add to that a pretty decent firepower. It requires a very aggressive playstyle to wring out the value out of this, tho, but a pretty fun shot type to route. Heck, even the abnormal attack's got excellent defensive prowess : it creates a zone that erases all bullets based at and below the horizontal line from Reimu's hitbox : it follows you up to the middle of the screen but doesn't catch up to your hitbox instantly : this means you can go to the middle of the screen to pull it up then go slowly down and have the bullet erasing zone SLIGHTLY trail off in front of you before catching up to you : this allows a lot of very generous horizontal-only dodges, slowly backing down to not get hit by bullets (and keep the effect going), or, my favorite, massive U manoeuver where you go down the blue safe zone and go up a place with less bullets. It's a very shark-y gameplay, where I'm hiding below the blue wave before jumping and attacking, and I love it. The fact that you get bullet cancel emboldens the available plays too, while the hyper shot buff it grants you still play into the super aggressive shotgun style. Very interesting and non standard.
RY1 : A very weird archetype. Options are far forward, so the idea is to shotgun enemies at safe distance before they reach you down there, at which point you got nothing but basic shots to defend yourself with. The difference in the option's position between unfocused and focused is so massive and grating, it's very hard to get a proper feel for this, just that you somehow deal damage. It's got a powerful shotgun potential at higher level, but even then, you don't get kills near instantaneously, and the focus version of this shot is just so hard to explain just besides it somehow working and dealing damage. I hope ZUN increase this thing's damage in the full release, it's interesting but too weird. The chance for bullet deletion upon grazze ain't super reliable either but it's there and can make a difference, while its attached abnormal attack, which is a barrier, is a bit too passive and not super helpful : takes a long time to charge and last for quite a bit but also not that long ...
RY2 : This storty stone is, honestly, super busted. Quite overtuned. The option move in a very unnatural way and fire slow bullets. But that's just about all the awkaward part its got. It's got a chance to erase and reflect bullets into your own shots, and that chance becomes 100% when the abnormal attack is online. As for the abnormal attack ? It grants you a global bullet delletion and aimed reflection on hit or when it run its course. But the really powerfull part is the way hyper / abnormal attack works in this game : they generate gem shards on hit : for other hypers, that doesn't mean much as you don't refill your gauge during use, but for this particular story stone (yellow 2 / moon stone), the hyper bullets that generate gems come at the END, meaning you'll have plenty of gems to pick up based on how many reflected bullets hit target, meaning a very solid chance to refill a good part or the entirety of your horizontal abnormal attack bar. So busted. This is a return of a game design IMBALANCE from LoLk AND HSiFS imo, where ZUN failed to take in consideration the bullet density in relation to the ressource system : in LoLK for example, you need like a percentage of kills multiplied by graze for ressources : so long as the calculation per chapter hit 1 000 000, you get a life or a bomb shard, however, lunatic had so much bullets that the graze part of the calculation (which didn't change from lower difficulties) just shoot up, based of the number of bullets and graze items from lunatic : lunatic therefore allows to easily farm ressources compared to lower difficulties. The same thing goes for HSiFS, where the season items created from season release is much higher due to higher bullet density, especially in lunatic, meaning possibility to have autumn season release available at a virtually all time at an acceptable level. For this game, that design imbalance is present too for Y2 (not just RY2), as high number of reflected bullets translates into MASSIVE quantity of gem items, which can INSTANTANEOUSLY fill up the horizontal bar and therefore proc the abnormal attack again : it's a trick that works easier in higher difficulties, and honestly trivializes a big chunk of the game. Prolly try for yourself.
RG1 : fast narrow fanning eagle bullets that can be shot from a fixed place when you press focus button. Easy shotgun setups here. So basically a turret archetype. I personally don't like this kind of shot type, but mmanaged to get some very good results with Reimu, I think I'm probably gonna get my first clear on the full game with this cuz I've grown to respect this one (not super amazing tho). The true value of G1 story stones lies in the fact that its abnormal attack is just a "border" kind of thing that REWARDS you with a bomb piece if you don't get hit : in a game where bomb remains at a constant 1/3 bomb shards AND there is a serious potential for easily activating the abnormal attack, it VERY easy to farm ressources with G1. To illustrate, I've used 2 bombs in stage 1 BUT still ended with 2 ENTIRE BOMBS at the end of stage 1. High potential for a clean clear with G1 imo.
RG2 : Another stinker that suffers from the ssame problems as RB1 (just read my paragraph there), and suffers exactly the way UDoLG Sanae suffers. Enemies going up the screen also baits the aimed snakes into nothingness, an embarassing sight. A crying shame considering how nice the corresponding abnormal attack is, a bullet clearing and damage dealing zone with a short-looking horizontal gauge. This particular abnormal attack has a bunch of timing setups for item pickups, so a bit more brain despite appearances.
MR1 (Marisa Red 1) : Just a strong and honest laser, its corresponding hyper is pretty reliable due to good power and piercing lasers. Pretty strong focused firepower
MR2 : Narrow fanning missiles at low power, but at 3.00 or 4.00, it honestly rivals this game's best shot type (if not better in focused mode). Fast charge from R2 story stone allows to spam devastating spread splash damage missiles
MB1 : Uhhh decent, I guess ? Spread-ish type. It's hyper is aimed bullets and scales based on your power / options. Hyper at least are somewhat strong so can get excused from the usual aimed shot problem, but it's not super amazing either. To illustrate, I managed to get a clean setup where I activated this abnormal attack against Chimi midboss (at full power too) : I didn't kill her, only took like 90% of her health bar, even with a proper focus on the boss. A decent shot type overall. Its focused shot kinda helped me on lunatic, but at the same time, it's not the most impressive thing ever
MB2 : Back shot Marisa with a pretty decent front shot, the abnormal attack start slightly above Marisa's instead of strating below like Reimu, meaning it'll clean a few more bullets, but overall, it's inferior to RB2 and can't perform shotgun with all the bullets. Backshots are pretty nice and strong, but have a pretty limited use, and even when the abnormal attack is launched, the most you can do with your backshots is have them aimed at rear or horizontal targets, but it's not super useful as the front shots remain fron shots. Bunch of strategies that are valid with RB2 (with the exception of shotgun ones) remain viable here. It's pretty alright
MY1 : Probably my least favorite Marisa shot. Option are somehere up front too, but there are no real shotgun potential cuz they're lined neatly horizontaly, while you only got your basic shot for what's in your immediate vicinity. Erasing bullets with graze remain not that reliable too, plus barrier not being the most amazing thing either. Pretty weak overall
MY2 : Same explanation I've brought up for RY2 remain true here too. Marisa's Y2 stone is however better than Reimu because of possible shot types combination, as Marisa's got the best shot type of the game, and that can be used with this story stone (when unlocked)
MG1 : A turret shot type. The power seems decent, but it's pretty painfull to play cuz the wolf bullets, compared to the eagle ones, are SLOW. There's no proper true shotgun potential either cuz the wolves are lined neatly in a horizontal line over a pretty respectable distance : consistent damage can be expected with the setups, but nothing super amazing. The wolves's slow speed is vvery painfull in a game where you have important targets to go for who happens to MOVE A LOT. Resetting the position of wolf shots is a sad thing to do cuz you gotta wait a bit before they reach up ... this is like SA Marisa C expect in a game where you have low firepower and tanky enemies. I have to zigzag on stage 1's opening to make this somewhat viable (for ease of building chian), and such approach is not very consistent on high level difficulties. Painfull but serviceable, which is a shame considering how great G1's associated abnormal effect is (bomb shard as a payoff)
MG2 : The best shot type of the game, honestly. This fires Sanae frog bullets at a fast pace, and even at 1.00, you already fire them at 3 DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS. That's a lot. You can build chains super fast with this one and deal respectable damage too. The abnormal attack dealing damage plays into its firepower too, so this shot type is the one that plays into the game's design the best.
So yeah, there you go. All shot types can do great things at full power, but the part of the game you will FEEL the most is the 1.00 part in stage 1 ... and hoo boy, if that part isn't painfull to play with a crappy shot type. I quite like how shot types archetypes are in this game, cuz we don't get the wacky one that depends on movement for setup.
Presentation wise, honestly very nice. Stage 2 and 3's nature laden but dark background is just so easy on the eyes and make it pretty easy to see what's going on with the bullets. Only visibility issues I experienced would be with Marisa R2, cuz the missile's thick sprite doesn't go super well with stage 1 boss's final spell pellets as well as stage 3 boss's small pellets too. Likewise for Marisa B1's hyper shot and pellets still.
All in all, I like this game's gameplay quite a lot. I just hope ZUN's gonna adjust the firepower values in the future, and probably even rework some of the assist stone / passive effects (and probably make the Y1 shot's weird zones have an additional effect)
Last gameplay related thing I'm not too big on is the way the wonder stones level up, as I think a certain stone of a certain color going from level 1 to 5 in freaking stage 1 is rather excessive. I think things would be better if you get all the various stone types first, THEN the leveled up versions. Not exactly certain about the condition for the type of stone spawning in, but I feel taht it's probably got something to do with the story stones + loadout maybe, as I've had nearly the same color wonder stone pop up in a row (and therefore level up fast) because I primarily played one-kind -of-stone runs before trying mixes.
So, overall, I'm very satisfied with the demo and had quite the fun experience (barring frustration from rust-related mistakes). Gameplay wise, I hope ZUN will do the following :
- Buff up firepower overall
- Rework RR1 and probably Y1
- Change the way wonder stone spawn, in regards to leveling up too fast
Also as an addendum, the highest level of Touhou play has traditionally been LNN, with no use of gimmicks whatsoever, while this time gimmicks plays pretty much automatically. I fully expect this game's LNN's scene to be exclusively based off Green 1 story stone with no yellow assist stone, as that one doesn't have favorable gimmicks besides "border" (and for which no border break can be added as a condition) : this seems viable and logical to me as the alternative would require runs to be semi- pacifist (in order not to use the shots). I'm curious to see routing and timing prowesses that this game is gonna give birth to
Story wise, we finally get to learn what the true incident is : the same day repeating over and over, with youkai losing their power, with the anomaly being sensed to originate from the sanctuary. The pyramidey things that the wonder stones + title screen thingy have such an obvious possible association with pyramids, so the reaction I have towards seeing the stage 3 pyramid is basically the same someone who heard a dumb joke would have. Could the pyramid secretely work as portal to some Otherworld ? Cuz an incident that's clearly non beneficial to Gensokyo's overlords (youkai) should probably be caused by a complete stranger.
I hope that the various stones apparently leading to a particular entry point of some kind is gonna lead us to different places (although I can see how difficult it's gonna be for ZUN to design more stages and characters), that would make thing more exciting.
Also as far as the stones go, we have R1 for EoSD, B1 for PCB, B2 for HSiFS, Y1 for SA, Y2 for the Moon (TH8 and / or TH15 ?), G1 for WBaWC (+ related games), and G2 for Moriya gang. However, we seem to have a R2 : Scarlet Creature, which doesn't strike me as particularly familiar. Either it's a DDC thing or WBaWC again (unlikely), OR, and I hope this is the case, it's gonna be a special stone related to the incident. ULiL for example had the Lunar Occult ball, which was a secret intruder among stones that were related to Outside World locations and played a critical role in the final stage of ULiL's plot. If R2 : Creature Red happens to be exclusive to this incident, then it may give an insight to one of the parties involved this time.
As far as
characters go, my "fun" pick would be the suspicious Egyptian cosplayer Nareko, but I quite appreciate Michi too, specifically for being Houjuu, just like a certain toxic cutie from Myouren temple : what would their relation be ? I now imagine the presence of a secret Houjuu clan of unidentified beasts. Like what if their head was the 4th gang leader or something. Anyway I hope ZUN's not gonna do us another Shoutoku's horse with no interaction with Miko, this seems interesting to me. I quite like the ZUNarts for Nareko, Michi, and the other one, uh, Ubame was it ? I think her name was Medicine Yatsuhashi or whatever. I'm just a bit bummed that we didn't get animated sprites, TH19 style.
Music wise, honestly, the game has a very music CD style off soundtrack. The drums on the stage 2 and 3 bosses make the songs quite catchy while instrumentation for stage 3 initially made me think of Satellite Torifune for a bit before it continued into something else. I quite enjoyed the soundtrack. My favorite would be stage 3, followed by the various bosses themes. I don't find the bass opener for stage 1 particularly catchy or memorable, and hearing that same soundbite playing by the Xth replay can get very old. I also appreciate how Chimi's theme's got part of Nue's intro's motifs in it, way to highlight their association.
On the
quality of life side of things, honestly, the stone select in the selection screen feels very clunky to me, even moreso when I want to swap a stone I put in the wide shot space with one in the narrow shot space. It's unfortunate that it probably won't be changed in the final release. I also find interesting the fact that retry button doesn't restart the game entirely but the stage you're at. I'm used to restarting the game at retry so this is a bit of a weird change to me, but as I get more confortable with it, I feel like it's a good change, at least for the demo : we don't have practice mode yet, but can already retry stages : this is convenient in the context of a demo, but may seem a bit redundant come the full game, with practice mode and the like. Curious to see what's in store for this option.
As for the
achievements, honestly, there's not much creativity here tbh. Just various achievos for getting clears with Reimu or Marisa with such or such story stone or difficulty ... could put some challenge like get X incident level, get X chain, do LNN or whatever ... that way achievements would be more interesting to pursue.
And finally on some technical aspects, I feel like the hitbox is probably slightly smaller than usual, considering some risky dodges I've performed. Additionally, I've experienced a few minor bugs in all of my experience :
- Short but massive screen shake at the beginning of stage 1
- Graphic bug with Marisa shot type, where unanimated sparkle special effects of her option are left in place (after abnormal attacks probs)
- Another graphic bug with Marisa B2, where the special effect for the abnormal attack doesn't show up
- Replay desync, checked up some things with MG1 and saw an consecutive deaths that are both impossible nor have happened
- In the stage selection of the replay section, if you press up you'll end up selecting nothing (and have no choice highlited) instead of getting the stage 3 choice (spooky). Trying to play the replay of the nothing in question will crash the game, unsurprisingly
Some hitboxes are horribly offset
I haven't run into these hitbox issues in the only spellcard with fireball bullets, so no idea what that is about. I wouldn't be surprised if the guy's tool is the one with issues
Actually no
https://files.catbox.moe/5puukc.png
People be calling anything AI these days. Just the other day, Mizusoba tweeted that some overseas bro called his art AI. I wouldn't put any stock in these kind of accusation unless it comes from someone who actually know what they're talking about, even less so considering how ZUN generally use some stock jewel case image for spell card backgrounds ...
So yeah, cool game. When TH17 popped up, I wonder how TH18 was gonna up the ante, then when TH18 did so, I thought the same for TH19. TH19 kinda had things reset for a bit, and TH20, the way it is now, already show pretty great potential, especially for aggressive play and routing enjoyers. Hopefully ZUN is not gonna heavily water it down the gameplay (just boost the firepower hopefully) like for LoLK's full release for the full game.
