Touhou 19 東方獣王園 ~ Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (Demo) - Perfect Lunatic 1cc (NMNB) (Reimu)
309Okay no-damage, no-bomb run this time.
Demo for the new Touhou game came out.
After almost 18 years we're actually getting a new versus Phantasmagoria-like game, who would have thought.
The more I play this game the more it basically feels like a repeat of Touhou 18.5.
Stages with random enemy formations with random bosses that use uninspired repeated attacks, with basically the same mechanics and even using the same engine. It even has that same unpolished and underdeveloped vibe that game had. Where the implementation of the mechanics was half-baked, the random enemy formations were shallow, and the boss attacks copy-pasted.
Even just compared to Touhou 9 and 3, who both had unique mechanics and a breakneck pace.
There are just some fundamentally wrong decisions being made here. Being underpowered at all times really ruins the game flow, nothing dies and it really makes your shots feel like they don't have any impact or weight to them. And with no exciting visual feedback it all just feels very unsatisfying to play.
As a Touhou versus game it's very much a poor man's Phantasmagoria so far.
The actual versus part seems kinda tacked on as well, where the opponent screen is kinda there just for show. The CPU won't ever die from getting hit and you're just waiting for it to send its boss over so you can defeat it and end the stage.
I've heard using level 3 and 4 charges makes it send the boss quicker, and this might be a way to circumvent the old Phantasmagoria problem of just waiting for the CPU to die, but I dunno, it just doesn't feel as satisfying.
In my first impressions video I mostly chalked most of these problems up to the ability cards making a return.
Where the game is purposefully gimped so that the cards can have a meaning, which is fixing the parts of the game that were sabotaged before. But I'm not so sure now.
A big reason for this is that you CANNOT select starting cards. Only in VS mode can you select -one- card at the beginning. Meaning that the action of grinding card unlocks can't make the overall gameplay experience better. There aren't that many meaningful card abilities either (in the demo at least). Though there are a select few drops that definitely make a big impact, like being able to charge faster or getting a smaller hitbox. But again, it's entirely random if you get these or not, which sucks.
All card effects so far: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/507305721759662112/1104718853801521294/Screenshot_20230507_051743_Discord.jpg
I said before that this game is more PoDD-like than PoFV before, but this seems to be entirely based on which character you use.
Reimu's level 2 can chain bullet cancels quite well, but Marisa has zero bullet cancelling abilities whatsoever. A pretty big downside in a game that can throw some complete nonsense at you.
Speaking of nonsense, the balance!
Reimu and Seiran have insane spam abilities and are waaaaay more powerful than all the other shots. You can see Seiran's nonsense in action in this video, and Reimu can randomly do things like this: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/888726291724009512/1104842451384029276/image.png
Meanwhile Nazrin is worthless. Her focus shot also has a baffling slow movement speed that makes her basically unplayable, she moves at like 1 pixel per frame (yes she's a mouse but don't make a character in your video game useless over a joke).
I used Reimu for this run because her lvl2 is very strong and it can cancel bullets (not all bullet types), if you place the lvl2 on top of a boss it can also basically instakill them. The downside of her lvl2 is that you can't see any bullets while it's up. She also has the advantage of well... not having to fight Reimu.
HOWEVER, she has to fight stage 3 Marisa, who is competing for the most bullshit boss prize.
Marisa's lasers can -completely- wall you if you're unlucky, which happened more times than I'd like to admit. Reimu can somewhat mitigate this by using level 2's, but lasers can't be fully cancelled, so sometimes a random hitbox just flies through the cracks and you still just die.
Also this demo is insanely unstable.
I lost count how many times it has crashed for me now. Restarting a run makes the game crash more often than it does not.
Bizarre bugs as well, like Marisa's shot lasers randomly stop working, making you lose huge damage for no reason. And the game softlocking if you lose under certain conditions.
There is no scoring whatsoever, even though there is a chaining system? Huh?
Not seeing much replay value in this game other than maybe netplay if that's a thing, but the demo at least didn't have it. Maybe the Steam version will have something?
Also no replay system, -again-.
Losing more features each game.
Anyway go play Twinkle Star Sprites.
00:00 - Intro
00:05 - Stage 1: Seiran
01:23 - Stage 2: Aunn
04:00 - Stage 3: Marisa
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