When I reviewed IaMP it was a shitpost so now I intend to be a bit more in-depth.
This is the second Touhou fighting game and it is pretty rad. It looks the same but the mechanics have been overhauled so that it plays much more nicely. It relies on a flight mechanic to let you "dodge" bullets by just passing through them and is very projectile focused, with two of the three buttons being for magic shooting.
There's two things I find interesting here when compared to similar games. One close relative to this is Senko no Ronde, a completely different take on the idea of a shooter fighting game that's based mainly on the shooter mechanics. That game is also cool but I really love the chance for these characters to be viewed up close and lovingly animated. This is a really nice game to look at, though the backgrounds are a lot of corny CG. That also rules but in a different way.
Second: this game introduced the ability to customize your character with a "deck" of spell cards that have various effects you can invoke in a fight. In some ways this feels ahead of its time with similar ideas being played with in the more mainstream fighting game space. Netherealm has been doing a lot of it for example. All the usual pros and cons of the concept are here and I didn't spend a whole lot of time with it just clearing the story.
Speaking of which, this is a fun game to play single player, much better than IaMP. The campaigns are shorter, usually only having six fights. Most of your time will not be spent fighting your opponents as if you were playing the vs mode, but rather defeating their special spell card attack patterns. It makes the game feel more touhou plus it's a bit more fun that the slog of fighting games vs the AI. There's a lot of repetition involved in beating every single story mode but it can be done quick and breezy.
The story is a lot more involved this time too. The inciting incident involves a scarlet mist coming out of everyone that changes the weather according to their personality. This has nothing to do with Remelia Scarlet's red mist from Touhou 6, or the fog in IaMP or any of the other weird weather plotlines, and it's mostly just set dressing for the real story which is about folklore surrounding earthquakes. Even though the first few story modes you have available are similar, it actually develops and moves forward as you unlock more of them, until it ends with everyone just hanging out and having a party. The final boss' deal of being a spoiled girl who became a celestial being on a technicality and is just kind of an asshole is very good, and the writing is very charming. There's no particular point to any of it, just a rumination on various folklore and having fun with the characters.
I have not gotten too deep into the other fighting games before now, so I'm looking forward to that in the future, but this one, along with the expansion pack that is touhou 12.3, has apparently been modded to add rollback netcode so I feel pretty confident that I can recommend checking it out for a touhou or fighting game fan. It's at LEAST interesting.
This is the second Touhou fighting game and it is pretty rad. It looks the same but the mechanics have been overhauled so that it plays much more nicely. It relies on a flight mechanic to let you "dodge" bullets by just passing through them and is very projectile focused, with two of the three buttons being for magic shooting.
There's two things I find interesting here when compared to similar games. One close relative to this is Senko no Ronde, a completely different take on the idea of a shooter fighting game that's based mainly on the shooter mechanics. That game is also cool but I really love the chance for these characters to be viewed up close and lovingly animated. This is a really nice game to look at, though the backgrounds are a lot of corny CG. That also rules but in a different way.
Second: this game introduced the ability to customize your character with a "deck" of spell cards that have various effects you can invoke in a fight. In some ways this feels ahead of its time with similar ideas being played with in the more mainstream fighting game space. Netherealm has been doing a lot of it for example. All the usual pros and cons of the concept are here and I didn't spend a whole lot of time with it just clearing the story.
Speaking of which, this is a fun game to play single player, much better than IaMP. The campaigns are shorter, usually only having six fights. Most of your time will not be spent fighting your opponents as if you were playing the vs mode, but rather defeating their special spell card attack patterns. It makes the game feel more touhou plus it's a bit more fun that the slog of fighting games vs the AI. There's a lot of repetition involved in beating every single story mode but it can be done quick and breezy.
The story is a lot more involved this time too. The inciting incident involves a scarlet mist coming out of everyone that changes the weather according to their personality. This has nothing to do with Remelia Scarlet's red mist from Touhou 6, or the fog in IaMP or any of the other weird weather plotlines, and it's mostly just set dressing for the real story which is about folklore surrounding earthquakes. Even though the first few story modes you have available are similar, it actually develops and moves forward as you unlock more of them, until it ends with everyone just hanging out and having a party. The final boss' deal of being a spoiled girl who became a celestial being on a technicality and is just kind of an asshole is very good, and the writing is very charming. There's no particular point to any of it, just a rumination on various folklore and having fun with the characters.
I have not gotten too deep into the other fighting games before now, so I'm looking forward to that in the future, but this one, along with the expansion pack that is touhou 12.3, has apparently been modded to add rollback netcode so I feel pretty confident that I can recommend checking it out for a touhou or fighting game fan. It's at LEAST interesting.