I've now officially beaten two Touhou fangames while having not beaten a single actual Touhou game. I don't know what to say, I'm not really a shmup person but Touhou Luna Nights blew my ass out with how good it was so I feel the need to give these games a chance, especially if it's a 2D platformer like this one.
YuuYuu Jiteki no Yuukarin feels like sort of a love letter to the best platformers on the SNES. It's very "pure" in that sense, no side modes or rogue-lite elements or attempts at "INFINITE REPLAYABILITY". Just choose a difficulty and you're off. Gameplay-wise, the game mostly prioritizes movement and attacking in the air rather than on the ground. On the ground, your character is slower than most platformer characters, even when running, and your attacks have a shorter range. In the air, you have the ability to hover, which gives you a slight boost upward, along with an attack that launches you further upward and one that has the highest range out of any attack. In both states you have a dash that turns into a Kirby Super Star suplex-style grab attack. In fact a lot of the moveset feels very Kirby-like, like someone took their favorite Kirby power-ups and put them into one character. Attacking enemies has that chunky Kirby attack feel as well, and the ability to stay in the air by chaining these moves together feels incredible, it's like there's always a move to fall back on if another fails.
While the gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of Kirby, the game series I kept being reminded of here was the Donkey Kong Country SNES trilogy. The level design feels inspired by that game in terms of the way it introduces new level mechanics and enemy types to tackle very frequently, and in the way they require a bit more careful observation and planning than your average Mario level. Rushing in this game is often what will kill you, it encourages stopping every now and then to really think about what to do next. Also it's fucking hard, like as hard as those original DKC games at many points. Thankfully this game also uses DKC's method of balancing, which is "let's just give the player a shit ton of lives constantly so that they won't game over that many times". Of course getting game over in this game just means having to do the entire level again, and not going back to some save point on the world map, so in that respect it's a bit kinder. This game does not let up in it's difficulty, but it also never feels like it's presenting an impossible challenge. Parts of levels can be brutally difficult but every death feels like a step in learning how to solve it. This is a game about mastering every move in your arsenal, knowing which moves to chain into others and what actions to take when faced with certain obstacles. Every time I completed a level it felt like climbing to top of a new, even bigger mountain than the last one.
Some deaths can feel a bit unfair, at least in my opinion, due to the fact that there were times I wasn't totally sure what the main character's hurtbox was. Your sprite in this game is pretty big, but that's not necessarily a problem since the game is designed around your sprite being bigger than the average platformer sprite. But there were times where it felt like a projectile barely scraped the bottom of my feet and it hit, as well as moments where I couldn't even tell where a projectile hit me, mostly due to the fact I didn't know which parts of the sprite actually mattered when being hit. To be fair though, in the many deaths that I went through in this game, this situation only represented a small minority of them. Also, like another review on this page said, these levels can go on a bit long, but thankfully there are frequent checkpoints (can't imagine playing the original version of this game that didn't have more than one checkpoint in every level).
In terms of presentation, one of the highlights of this game is the sprite work. All of the main and supporting characters have really good, charming sprites with a lot of personality in them. The main character has so many good little animations for different actions and levels, you can tell there was a lot of love put into them. The fact that in the mid-checkpoint of each level you sit down at a little kotatsu to eat a piece of cake and drink tea while talking with another character, it's so good and clearly made by someone who cares a lot about this cast. I guess if I had to say something I didn't like about the presentation, it's that a lot of the enemy design can feel a bit generic at times, and the same can be said for the environments. Also everyone in this game is tiddied the fuck out, which may be a turn off for some but I never found it too, overpowering.
Overall, this was a really good time, would recommend to anyone looking for a classically hard 2D platformer. After beating the main game, if you collect the secret collectible in every level (it's not actually that secret, it's usually pretty easy to find), you unlock a set of EX levels and holy shit they are no joke. With 50 lives, I only made it 3/4ths of the way through the first EX level before getting game over. Thankfully grinding for lives in this game is fairly easy, but I'm gonna go play something else before diving back into that nightmare.
YuuYuu Jiteki no Yuukarin feels like sort of a love letter to the best platformers on the SNES. It's very "pure" in that sense, no side modes or rogue-lite elements or attempts at "INFINITE REPLAYABILITY". Just choose a difficulty and you're off. Gameplay-wise, the game mostly prioritizes movement and attacking in the air rather than on the ground. On the ground, your character is slower than most platformer characters, even when running, and your attacks have a shorter range. In the air, you have the ability to hover, which gives you a slight boost upward, along with an attack that launches you further upward and one that has the highest range out of any attack. In both states you have a dash that turns into a Kirby Super Star suplex-style grab attack. In fact a lot of the moveset feels very Kirby-like, like someone took their favorite Kirby power-ups and put them into one character. Attacking enemies has that chunky Kirby attack feel as well, and the ability to stay in the air by chaining these moves together feels incredible, it's like there's always a move to fall back on if another fails.
While the gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of Kirby, the game series I kept being reminded of here was the Donkey Kong Country SNES trilogy. The level design feels inspired by that game in terms of the way it introduces new level mechanics and enemy types to tackle very frequently, and in the way they require a bit more careful observation and planning than your average Mario level. Rushing in this game is often what will kill you, it encourages stopping every now and then to really think about what to do next. Also it's fucking hard, like as hard as those original DKC games at many points. Thankfully this game also uses DKC's method of balancing, which is "let's just give the player a shit ton of lives constantly so that they won't game over that many times". Of course getting game over in this game just means having to do the entire level again, and not going back to some save point on the world map, so in that respect it's a bit kinder. This game does not let up in it's difficulty, but it also never feels like it's presenting an impossible challenge. Parts of levels can be brutally difficult but every death feels like a step in learning how to solve it. This is a game about mastering every move in your arsenal, knowing which moves to chain into others and what actions to take when faced with certain obstacles. Every time I completed a level it felt like climbing to top of a new, even bigger mountain than the last one.
Some deaths can feel a bit unfair, at least in my opinion, due to the fact that there were times I wasn't totally sure what the main character's hurtbox was. Your sprite in this game is pretty big, but that's not necessarily a problem since the game is designed around your sprite being bigger than the average platformer sprite. But there were times where it felt like a projectile barely scraped the bottom of my feet and it hit, as well as moments where I couldn't even tell where a projectile hit me, mostly due to the fact I didn't know which parts of the sprite actually mattered when being hit. To be fair though, in the many deaths that I went through in this game, this situation only represented a small minority of them. Also, like another review on this page said, these levels can go on a bit long, but thankfully there are frequent checkpoints (can't imagine playing the original version of this game that didn't have more than one checkpoint in every level).
In terms of presentation, one of the highlights of this game is the sprite work. All of the main and supporting characters have really good, charming sprites with a lot of personality in them. The main character has so many good little animations for different actions and levels, you can tell there was a lot of love put into them. The fact that in the mid-checkpoint of each level you sit down at a little kotatsu to eat a piece of cake and drink tea while talking with another character, it's so good and clearly made by someone who cares a lot about this cast. I guess if I had to say something I didn't like about the presentation, it's that a lot of the enemy design can feel a bit generic at times, and the same can be said for the environments. Also everyone in this game is tiddied the fuck out, which may be a turn off for some but I never found it too, overpowering.
Overall, this was a really good time, would recommend to anyone looking for a classically hard 2D platformer. After beating the main game, if you collect the secret collectible in every level (it's not actually that secret, it's usually pretty easy to find), you unlock a set of EX levels and holy shit they are no joke. With 50 lives, I only made it 3/4ths of the way through the first EX level before getting game over. Thankfully grinding for lives in this game is fairly easy, but I'm gonna go play something else before diving back into that nightmare.