Touhou 东方雪莲华 ~ Abyss Soul Lotus - Lunatic 1cc + TLB (No-Miss)
306A clear of Lunatic without dying and getting all the secret spellcards.
Another ludicrously high-quality Chinese Touhou fangame just dropped.
China is absolutely cracked when it comes to these fangames.
东方雪莲华, no relation to the celebrity Vtuber of the same name, was made by the same team that developed Shining Shooting Star. It took approximately 7 years for them to make the game, with the first demo releasing in 2018.
This is also one of the first fangames made in Unity afaik, which means you can do things like run the game at 120 FPS and get buttery smooth controls, because game logic isn't tied to framerate like stupid engines.
System and mechanics:
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Abyss_Soul_Lotus/Strategy
Game is quite good, patterns are fun to dodge and stage design has a good flow. I especially like the part in stage 4 where it makes you go all around the screen.
The system also feels pretty thought-out and is fun to engage with. Chaining juicy cancels together is very satisfying. Planning around the chain timer and the multiplier bonus you get from character switching also adds a lot of depth to the routing.
Probably what sets this game apart the most is the timer.
You have a 24 minute timer to beat the game. However this will run out long before the game actually ends. And when the timer runs out you will be unable to get any more meter, essentially making you walking dead. You have to collect fragments to slow down the timer, while avoiding getting hit and dying as that takes off a big chunk of your time.
The game doesn't have a traditional bomb system, instead you fill up a meter by collecting fragments you get from bullet cancels.
This has three layers and getting hit eats one of these layers. Which means you can get hit quite a lot in this game and not die, so long as you don't get hit too many times in a row.
This system makes the game quite forgiving while still being challenging for score as you're constantly consuming meter for that.
You're far more likely to run out of time before running out of lives though, which is interesting. You basically need to do -some- scoring to actually survive.
There is also a True Last Boss, sorta.
If you beat stage 3 with 18 or more minutes remaining on the clock, you enter a sort of Ura route where all the bosses will have an extra spell at the end of their fights.
These spells are pretty wild and unique, you definitely need to practice some of these if you want to stand a chance against them. The stage 4 lanterns literally steal your lives and you can instantly game over there if too many lock on to you at once. The stage 6 spell also drains your meter and it's very easy to lose the no-miss there.
The biggest complaint you can probably give the game is that the practice options are a bit lacking compared to what is generally accepted nowadays.
At least it doesn't have a useless spell practice mode where the pattern instantly resets when you get hit like all the other ones.
Shoutouts to Eradrazil for gifting me the game. Thank you!
Buy the game here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1000440
00:00 - Intro
00:39 - Stage 1
04:03 - Stage 2
08:07 - Stage 3
13:25 - Stage 4
18:56 - Stage 5
26:25 - Stage 6
36:45 - Ending & Credits
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