[Touhou Gensou Eclipse] Reimu-Route Reimu Extreme No Continue CLEAR [CC Commentary]
8Let's face it, CAVE is not the same anymore since they released SDOJ. They have moved on from arcades + consoles. Gacha games and license their old games all the way, baby! And NFT projects. I don't even know if Shinobu Yagawa is still at CAVE or not, but we do know Ikeda still works at CAVE. Some notable employees have quit CAVE though, for obvious reasons. Check out Senxin Aleste, Rolling Gunner and Aka to Blue. But give them a credit. They have outlived Toaplan and Compile.
There are at least 3 things, however, that they still cling unto in their gacha games, probably thanks to Ikeda:
1. They can't keep their grubby hands from experimenting the formula, for better or worse.
2. They just have to involve curtains of bullets when possible.
3. They are too addicted to their Hyper formula to let it go.
In short, Touhou Gensou Eclipse, their latest gacha game output that is actually too good and complex for its own good! It's too solid and you can smell Ikeda's touch here. Bullet limit, pointblanking, Hyper, called Break, sophisticated scoring system, and so on! It has to be sprinkled with stats shenanigans, but personally it's similar to Deathsmiles Smartphone arrange, which I mean, not too painful. That's gacha game for you. The most surprising thing, however...
THIS IS AN IDOLM@STER SHINY COLORS CLONE!?
Have you heard of the create-your-card genre? Of all genre to implement this formula, like horse gambling, turn-based RPG, and real time card RPG, CAVE opted to make the raising process a NORMAL ARCADE SHMUP! Oh, CAVE. You sure are addicted to risks! This is a very risky genre since not many survived and it's a delicate genre where the 2 phases of rougelite starting-from-zero adventure and produced cards must be well-tuned in harmony! I don't know how the proposal went, like it was initially a Deathsmiles-branded game then when they had the license for making a Touhou game, then they converted it to Touhou, who knows. I am confident to say that they still have the touch to make good shmups, better than anyone in the industry, at least, in the gacha game space. Not even Yoko Taro could beat CAVE!
The basics are you can shoot, use skills with the spellcard that always consume 50% of MP regardless of MP max as the starter, or use a skill that consumes MP at a fixed value that gets to be inherited from the support cards, and Break, this game's hyper. It's basically DFK Hyper, just without the nerfing from overusage due to Rank System. If you're only familiar with Touhou, forget it. There is close to no trace of actual Touhou game design here. Treat it like a CAVE game. If you're used to Deathsmiles and DFK, then you'll be at home with this game! Sort of.
The annoying part, of course, is the stats management. The important stats are Attack, the main shot damage, then to simplify things, Defense, boosts the effectiveness of Shield-type Breaks, Magic Attack, boosts Spell-type Breaks, and Dexterity, boosts Shot-type Breaks. It's like Vocal, Dance and Visual, essentially. For example, Reimu is Shot Break type. Best to pick up Dexterity for more comfortable bullet cancelling using the Break! Not that other stats is completely useless, it's just this stat is more relevant for her Break.
The resources are surprisingly both generous and tight. Spellcards are your bomb, but you can use it either for scoring or defensively. Finish a boss with the bomb when Break is active, the Break items will get converted into the purple score / EXP items. That's the ideal scenario. At the result screen, aside of learning randomly chosen skills within the skill pool based on the support cards, inherited skills and stage route, you can also heal and refill your MP at 50%. Exactly the amount to use spellcards. The Shield usually will protect you from more than 8 hits and getting hit won't give you direct punishment aside of lowered stage rank, will be explained in the commentary. Essentially, you can only carry 2 bombs at a time. Don't deploy them willy nilly!
Yes, the game is quite fun! It's more of an assmbled sets of stages and bosses like Odin Sphere, really. But it's paced well enough to scratch the arcade CAVE itch, albeit in a console leniency. The enjoyment does depend on how much you like the create-your-card genre, though! Remember this well before trying.
I'll comment some nuances and frame-by-frame decisions to the raising part, because that's the point of the create-your-card genre. But my explanation would be pretty limited. I'll explain what I can from my experience.
#CAVE #Touhou