Touhou - Project Shrine Maiden

Malintex_Terek

Wow, I didn't even notice this was a sub-forum. I seem to learn new things everyday. :blink:

In any matter, anyone here play Touhou? It's a series of doujin-soft shooters developed by the bad beer magnet ZUN. He does all the work and everyone else does the testing! The games are notoroious for being hard, but I never found them that challenging…but then again, I have yet to beat Perfect Cherry Blossom's Extra stage, and anything above Easy difficulty on PCB. >_>

The games I've played are Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil and the aforementioned PCB. EotSD is my favourite, by far - PCB is just lame-like in comparison, the art is also worse at times IMV, particularly for Marisa. ZUN's artwork for Marisa has just gotten WORSE.

I'm best with Marisa B, though I can manage with Marisa A and Sakuya A. I suck with Sakuya B and all incarnations of Reimu, who I passionately dislike.

Thus far, I've beaten EotSD (with Marisa B) on Normal, PCB (with Sakuya A, Reimu B and Marisa B) on Easy. My high score on EotSD (before my laptop melted) was something like 100000000 points, on PCB it was 300000000+. It's easier to get points in PCB because of the exponential point curve, and the cherry point boosts.

I haven't delved into the doujin community itself because I don't believe I have entitlement to it until I beat all the Touhou games on Hard at minimum, and I've heard Imperishable Night is a bloody nightmare (pun not originally intended, but kept after realizing there was pun-ny material).

So, how about the Master Spark?

Ekila

Don't mean to bump such a old thread, but wanted to talk about the Touhou series.

Anyways, I mosty have played Touhou 8 - Imperishable Night which I have beat on Easy Mode. And I've played Touhou 10 - Mountain of Faith which I almost beat, I made it as far as to Stage 6 on Easy Mode. Hope to try out the others in the future. Also, I like the music a lot in the Touhou games too.

Silence

I have never touched this mostly because I am afraid that it will suck my life away and leave me staring into the abyss of something deeper and darker than I have ever known.

Captain Shmeckie

Tried 'em. They're pretty damn bland. That, and they're basically harder than they need to be. Instead of trying to be fun, they seem to exist solely for the e-dicks of Japanese kids. Bragging rights trumping fun factor, and all that. Also they're populated by nothing but lolis. And as a fighting game junkie, I felt cheated by Immaterial and Missing Power. Which is also populated by nothing but lolis, so that made it an extra chore.

Soundtracks are balls-awesome, though. Certainly more than the series deserves.

Silence

Ew lolis. ): .

Malintex_Terek

@Captain:

Tried 'em. They're pretty damn bland. That, and they're basically harder than they need to be. Instead of trying to be fun, they seem to exist solely for the e-dicks of Japanese kids. Bragging rights trumping fun factor, and all that. Also they're populated by nothing but lolis.

What do you mean by bland?

Masha

I used to be obsessed with playing Touhou but now I just play them from time to time…
But really, I suck at playing them... I've only beat Imperishable Night on Easy mode... There's always something that distracts me and I end up dying!
Still, this game is pure eye-candy and the music is wonderful!

Captain Shmeckie

@Malintex_Terek:

What do you mean by bland?

Backgrounds, environments, and general interface is very bare-bones. Mega-Mari, for instance, feels less Mega Man, and more "one floor tile and background panorama per stage." And compare Immaterial and Missing Power to other doujin fighters like Melty Blood and Big Bang Beat.

It's like they figure the screen's going to be filled with ridiculous one-color beam spam anyway, so why bother with how anything else looks.

And it's so damn character-driven, yet all the characters are archetypical lolis. Who could give a damn about any of the characters, and thus want to play as them?! This made IaMP almost impossible for me to play. The final nail in the coffin being that the gameplay is ass.

Yet, as I said, it has a better soundtrack than it deserves. Listen to this:

Bzlrlsw9o2o

It's the final boss theme from IaMP. Keep in mind this theme is given to a little grinning girl in a frilly dress with horns, even though it sounds more like an RPG boss theme.

Another reason why it's bland: that's what passes for a boss character. A happy little horned girl. As far as I'm concerned, the whole franchise is for otaku, though it does offer at least something for soundtrack collectors like myself.

SomeRandomGuy

@Captain:

Bad superficial opinions

I hate to necro a nearly 6 year old thread, but it ending on an incredibly ignorant hate post rubs me the wrong way. Especially the "it has a better soundtrack than it deserves" crack.

It has exactly the music it deserves. The main games of the series have all been made by only one guy for the last 20 years.(Yes, touhou's 20 years old now) The art, the programming, the music and the story, all one guy. And get this: he does it for fun. Touhou's not commerical and despite offers to go commerical with anime, dev studios, marketing, etc, Zun has turned it down every time. He wants the series to stay as only a hobby. He even has a real job unrelated to his games. So of course the quality of the games are going to be simple, they're made by one guy as a hobby. Being unable to look beyond superficial appearences doesn't mean it's music is "undeserved."

Yeah, sure it's got lolis in it, but if you're willing to look beyond appearances and your prejudices you'll find out real quick they're not just a bunch of typical "kawaii-uguu moe-blobs." At first I was turned away from the series by the looks of it, too, but I gave it a chance and found out it's got a deep inspiration behind it that could possibly rival the depth of inspiration that Oda puts into One Piece. The fact that everything is so cutsey looking is just a difference of culture in that japan puts a higher value on cute things than the west does.

Oh, and one last important thing to note about it: Touhou's totally clean. No sex, no romance, not even a single pantyshot. Zun has gone on record as saying he thinks it's sad that the japanese doujin community being full of R-18 content and cites putting more clean games into the community as being one of the main reasons he started sharing his games with the public. Say what you want about the all the colorful frills and amateurish art, but the man's got integrity.

Sorry for such a huge ranty necrobump, but seeing the games of one of the few people in the video game industry that won't to sell out getting slammed triggered the hell out of me.

Dom64

I see this old-ass thread getting bumped and I have a question.

Wasn't there news about the game being officially released in the West? And updates on that?

Hiroy

Oh boy… What an old thread.

@Dom64:

I see this old-ass thread getting bumped and I have a question.

Wasn't there news about the game being officially released in the West? And updates on that?

The 13th game, Double Dealing Character, was localized by Playism and it was already released several months ago.

http://playism-games.com/games/touhou