Touhou 18: Unconnected Marketeers DEMO - Hard No Bomb No Cards (Sanae)

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Published on March 21, 2021 4:03:27 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX5GPg1nSJY

Game:

Unconnected Marketeers (2021)

Duration: 12:42

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About time I got to witness the release of another Touhou game demo, felt like longer than 22 months since WBaWC's demo.

So, Unconnected Marketeers! 4 playable characters this time, with both Sakuya and Sanae playable, a phenomenon unseen outside of Touhou Hisoutensoku.

Sakuya uses her B shottype from Perfect Cherry Blossom (tilting shot which stays in that angle upon focusing), with a few minor differences. There's two sides to her tilting shot, and they can actually spread out a little bit if you press down, or narrow down if you press up. They also are much slower at tilting in this game than in PCB, it feels like. Her bomb is that of her B shottype in Double Dealing Character.

Sanae is pretty much the same as in Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom - Cobalt Spread for unfocused, Sky Serpent for focused. Cobalt Spread seems to do a better job at covering the screen in this game, however. Bomb is the same, Wily Toad, instant screen nuke after 3 seconds.

Reimu and Marisa play like they did in Ten Desires, Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom and Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, complete with Marisa's speed during Master Spark from the lattermost being present here, which is always welcome.

Now, this game... has an interesting mechanic. There's these cards, and they come in 4 different types, Active, Equipment, Passive, and Item. I don't exactly know how to describe each type, but there's 25 of them in total for the demo.
You also collect money items during the stages by killing enemies and boss patterns. Speedkilling enemies also gives more than taking time on them. After every stage, you're forced to buy a card, some of them have different effects. For this run I decided to buy only Extends (which is one of the Item Cards) and nothing else. (Which counts as No Cards since they're not cards used in stages.) I put the effects of the cards (originally compiled by a fellow member from the Touhou Fanworks 'n Chill Discord server) in this pastebin: https://pastebin.com/HQuaPaxx

Now... I do have a few issues with this game. Mike, the stage 1 boss, is all over the place. Her nons are free but her spells are just RNG vomit, which gives me the impression that it's a bad sign from things to come when this is stage fucking 1. Might even be harder than Seiran. (For fairness's sake, I'm talking about both bosses on Hard.) Takane doesn't have too many bad things but her final spell is a bit wtf at first. Visibility in stage 3 is a bit ass, and Sannyo has weird ass nons. They're sorta learnable but there's also slight RNG. This game overall seems to have a weird jump from Normal to Hard, kinda like MoF. But the real biggest problem is - you lose 1.00 power on death. And yes, WBaWC's demo did that, while changing it to 0.50 power in the full release! However, this game gives you like, no power, at all! Bosses give you only 0.15 to 0.20 power after every attack, which is a lot less than in other games. I'm betting they want you to buy the 0.50 Power card at the end of one of the stages (which costs no money at all) but that's still ridiculous. Game is also really stingy with resources. If you don't buy any cards that increase resources or boost their gain, you're barely getting any, as only a select few fairies drop them. Who also take forever to die. Yeah. This demo did not leave me exactly excited, and I hope ZUN rebalances more things than he promised to do. (He said the cards were gonna be rebalanced, so that's one thing. Just... looking at you, Mike...)

Also, tweet in thumbnail: https://twitter.com/rube_cubed/status/1365697051808382977

My Discord server: https://discord.gg/Vgm9BeP

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