ゲームを楽しもう!

Despite it being one of the most popular things in the sphere i operate in, I've never actually engaged much with touhou before now. I never played any of the mainline games or the fangames or the various fandom things and the only ways I'd engaged with it at all before now were back during the vita days with touhou genso wanderer and double focus. i enjoyed both of those a lot but i remember very little from them. this is to say I'm a total newbie to this series so if i get anything wrong then please accept my apology. That said I'd like to play more! and this is my attempt at that, i will eventually play the mainline games now that i have a PC and can probably run them, i love shmups and they seem like some of the better examples of the genre. i did enjoy this a ton though! it's one of the best playing, looking and sounding metroidvania's out there and it's one that had me hooked from beginning to end.

the gameplay is more on the RPG'y combat heavy side of the metroidvania spectrum, but it's one of the few with combat good enough to actually warrant that focus. the game has some of the most fun 2D combat out there and it makes for some of the best boss fights I've ever had the chance to fight. combat in games like this usually just isn't fun for me but here i always looked foreword to seeing a new enemy type or a miniboss that i could test out my moves with. the gist of the system is that you can throw knives out in front of you, these use MP which you can gain back by using items, collecting thrown knives or by grazing up against projectiles or enemies. you also get special abilities like being able to throw out a bunch of knives at once, summon a sword to auto-attack enemies, a chainsaw you can throw, a shield, a stun knife or even auto aim. it's a lot to use and that alone would make this a very solid system, but what ads to it and makes it so special is the time stop. you can stop or slow time at any point if you have meter and walk around unharmed, you can graze projectiles and throw out knives that will hit enemies once you resume time. it's such a fun system and it makes the speed of the game a lot more manageable since you can stop and catch your breath for a second and get some easy damage in. it feels really special in the moment when you manage to stop time at the best moment and get a ton of MP back from grazing enemy bullets, then throwing out a ton of knives and coming back with a ton of HP taken off of the enemy. you're not immortal in this mode though since some bosses can use attacks during it, that caught me off guard pretty badly my first time fighting the end boss. it helps that the boss fights are all good enough to actually let you make use of the systems. the last few fights are the obvious highlights with *spoilers* reimu and the scarlet twins but even the level bosses are all a ton of fun to fight and you can even do a boss rush with them when you beat the game. you will want to do that too, they're all just that fun. the time mechanics have use to them with puzzles too and there's also a more standard suite of platforming mechanics to unlock too like a double jump that can damage enemies, a slide you can work into combat , a knife you can stand on during time stop and an obligatory box pushing item. they work for what the game is going for, the platforming isn't the most technical or difficult so you don't need a ton to work with. the puzzles are more fun though. i loved using the time stop for platforming or to get passed moving doors and walk across water or to slow it in order to get through doors. It's used for a ton of small puzzles and they're all pretty fun, though i wasn't super into some of the door puzzles in the postgame. i even got stuck and softlocked at one point with one of those.

the game has some beautiful sprite work too, some of the best out there. all of the characters are super well animated and the backgrounds are all really pretty. there were some areas where you could use them as wallpapers if you felt like it, especially some of those rainy areas early on. there's a good amount of level variety with it too, the outside of the manor is all rainy with tons of bamboo, there's caves, huge libraries, bathhouses, a traditional Japanese manor, huge dining rooms, a clock tower, a shrine, crystal caves and even a whole castle segment. each is super detailed and a lot of fun to explore. the character sprites too, they're all really cute and impressively animated. a lot of the enemies are adorable and the boss sprites are all really detailed with a ton of movement to them. some of those final fights where they have the huge sprites with tons of bullet patterns are especially impressive. those boss fights also have some of the best backgrounds, i loved the clock tower one especially. i like the character designs too, especially sakuya, pachouli, marisa and reimu, though i like the rest of the cast too. there isn't much story but the dialogue is charming and it's very cutely written. i like the characters a lot, even if only a few of them really get much dialogue and the story is just a few cutscenes before and after boss fights. i was able to follow along super well considering how new i was to it all.

it's on the more difficult side i would say but it does ease you into it over the course of the game, it's also not super punishing either. the boss fights get really difficult but you don't lose money upon death and there's plenty of save spots and healing stations around, you can also grind and level up to help overcome things and buy items to make those boss fights more manageable. it'd take you around 3-5 hours for a quick run through, an extra hour or two for grinding and there's a postgame level that's around another hour or two if you want to beat it's 3 bosses and 100% the map. a 100% save file should only run you around 8-10 hours.

the OST by beat mario and pepo is pretty great! the former hasn't worked on much beyond "touhou spell bubble" but the latter has had a pretty illustrious career with games like blade chimera, SMT synchronicity, lodoss war: deedlit in wonder labyrinth and needy streamer overload. it's a pretty great tracklist full of remixed music from other touhou games and for the most part they're all really solid versions of those tracks. i haven't played those so i couldn't tell you what's from what but i did recognise more than a few melodies in here. the shop theme "candid friend" gives me steins gate energy for some reason and i loved listening to it. the stage 1 theme "lunar dial" instantly won me over on the games music from the first time i heard it, it's so catchy and it hypes you up so perfectly. the first stage boss theme is pretty solid too, the track "shanghai Alice in 1884". i really like the stage 2 theme "the maid and the pocket watch of blood", the second half of the track is amazing and the piano is beautiful. i feel the same way about the piano and the violin on the stage 2 boss track "love-colored master spark". the stage 3 theme "volle, the magic library" is really pretty. the boss theme for this stage "locked girl" is also just so nice, it's really catchy and it's the track that sounds the most castlevania'y on the OST. i feel mixed on the stage 4 track "the young descendant of tepes" but i like its piano work a lot, the boss theme "sepette for a dead princess" is a lot better, i love that track and it might be the best boss theme in the game. the final stage theme "flowering night" is one of the prettiest in the game, the piano work is beautiful. the first of the final boss themes rynosuke Akutagawa's kappa" is really good too and the other phases live up to it too with "U.N. Owen was her?" which is an amazing track. and the third final boss theme! "Night of nights" is a great track to end the game with and it fits the tense fight perfectly and the credits theme you get after is also really pretty, the track "crimson beyond a fleeting eternity". there's some extra music in the bonus stage too, with the stage track "scarlet beyond a crimson dream" which is a really traditional sounding track that i love. the boss track for this zone isn't my favourite though with "maiden's capriccio", it's good but i don't think it holds up to many of the main mansions themes. the hidden boss theme "beloved tomboyish daughter" is amazing though and one of the games best overall tracks. there's a few non boss and stage themes too that i like. "child of are", "a maid and her mistress", "reconciliation", "An Eternity More Transient than Scarlet", "fabricated reality" and "the chaotic space"

The game is available on basically everything these days and even has a physical release you can pick up. personally i played the PS4 version that i imported from Japan a few years back and it worked great. it's not super expensive and you can generally get it for around £25-30 depending on system and region. it's worth the price i think. there's no sequel but there are a few other touhou metroidvania's out there, like double focus for the vita that i really enjoyed or the koumajou rameilia games that seem really fun. those latter games also have some amazing box art, but i haven't played them myself. check those out of you like this! the developers, team ladybug, have a pretty solid track record. they've worked on games like lodoss war: deedlit in wonder labyrinth, SMT synchronicity prologue, drainius and blade chimera. it's a very solid tracklist and deedlit is already a personal favourite of mine, i need to get around to SMT as well. i know I'll love that game. the game doesn't have a director listed though, but Daichi Saito is credited as a producer and has worked on most of team ladybugs games as well as stuff like angels of death, all in abyss and even a hololive fangame about fubuki. I'll absolutely need to check that last one out, it looks super high quality and it's called " Fubuki: Zero in on Holoearth - Hololive Alternative". luna nights is an easy recommendation, it's unique, fun, has some of the best combat out there and it's short too, you can easily breeze through it in a weekend and have a great time in doing so. even if you aren't very familiar with touhou like i was it's an easy game to get into and enjoy, please check it out.

+ a little song reccomendation for those who stuck around until the end!