永远消失的幻想乡 ～ The Disappearing of Gensokyo

Koishi check : DLC

Combat is super bland and lacks feedback like hitstun and invincibility frames. The most interesting characters/movesets are locked behind a paywall (yet featured in promo videos). Even for it's lower price of $11 I just can't recommend it even on sale. You might like this if you enjoy the characters but the writing is poorly translated and lacks any satisfying presentation.

The combat is something I can only describe as carelessly designed. The complete lack of i-frames coupled with the high projectile density & enemy count means it's easy to die instantly, especially on higher difficulties where you will instantly die over small slip ups (Some individual enemies like the kamikaze sinsacks will one-shot you at full health too). On higher difficulties at least, the only realistic way of dealing with groups of enemies is to constantly run away from them & attack them from distance, OR spam bombs where applicable. In other words, avoiding actually engaging with enemies & their patterns as much as possible is how you win. And yet with a few exceptions, the boss fights are the worst part of the game. Their telegraphes tend to be non-existent, and they move & attack instantly before you can even react. On higher difficulties you will die over and over again not because of the encounters being challenging & testing your skills, but because they are extremely unfair & constantly 1 or 2 shot you with unreactable and/or non-telegraphed attacks. Some boss patterns outright require preemptive dodging to realistically avoid. Well then, why not just not play …

This is a pretty good top down adventure game featuring Tenko and an assortment of touhou characters fighting their light/dark counterparts or something silly. I can finally live my fantasy of the Tenshi/Utsuho team up of the century, but both characters have drawbacks so I can't live it long. The goal of the game is get through the levels, picking and choosing which touhou characters benefit more from the current situation, and experimenting with character combos to clean house of the enemy. For boss fights, generally high dps spam, i-frame abuse from bombs, or high mobility is key to surviving, especially later when bosses will stunlock and kill you in seconds, positioning and timing is key. The steam guides are your benefactor to figuring out bosses, the DLC may end up saving your ass more than you would think, and you will need the puzzle pieces to get perks that aid in your journey. I waited 11 years to play this game, 7/10 for silly engrish and moments of Tenshi getting called profane things. Wait for a sale as usual.

Cleared the game on Hard. Rating: 3/5 TL:DR fans of twin stick shooters should try this, and Touhou Project fans have a lot to chew on here both gameplay-wise and thematically and should play it through to the end. If you don't care at all about Touhou, though, you're not missing much if you skip it. When this game clicks, it can be a very satisfying bullet hell + twin stick shooter hybrid. The character variety is the main selling point here, supporting a number of different playstyles where each character feels like they have a strong niche...in the stages, that is. There's a nice variety of enemy types, with new ones being introduced basically right up until the last stage. While most stages are linear affairs, they're broken up with enough event-type stages and boss fights to not get stale. The problem is those boss fights, though - it's clear that many of them needed a second design pass that they just didn't get, as the quality there sharply increases as the game goes on. The final boss is the one that feels the most fair, which is really strange. I found myself settling on a single dominant strategy: Marisa + some character that deals high damage at close range (for me …

A Touhou doujin game that strikes a great balance between being too easy/repetitive and being brutally difficult. This is basically New World but better in every single way, and I've only just started playing it. It also goes on sale for less than two bucks fairly often, and from what I've heard this is a relatively lengthy game, so there's many opportunities to jump in and get more than your money's worth. Also, Touhou stories all feel like they're written by some guy with autism doing speed, and this game's story is no exception. I'm not complaining.