Finished touhou 19 on hard (first run)
The game is incredibly short, with each run being only 14 minutes long! and honestly? I love it.
This is not a main campaign kind of game, it's a vs shmup game and last time it was done was on PoFV (touhou 9). Back then in TH09 there were 16 fucking characters and they all had to fight with eachother atleast once or so, so you ended up playing for more than 40 minutes until the AI decided to just lose. I remember I once was testing stuff with a invencibility patch because and the run went a full hour and a half on a single stage alone and it felt tedious and exhausting and boring too! Because the patterns weren't hard for me, but if I died too much, I had to restart and hope the boss died in less than 40 minutes.
This doesn't happen here. This time you fight 4-5 characters and your run is done. No enemy lasts for an stupid amount of time, and for a game this replayable that makes you learn every character, I really am happy that runs aren't long.
The enemies, characters and boss attacks are very well designed and you will always have atleast one surprise or another with new sprites and.. I don't know, it's like you can really tell ZUN's experience as if he peaked here in terms of fluidity and overall feeling. TH18 already felt incredibly good and updated to play, but TH19 takes this one step above due to it's main mechanic of doing damage because we finally have a better way of doing damage other than just pressing Z until you're tired. This new mechanic makes you do a small attack and for each enemy killed, you spawn more stuff to your enemy's screen while also receiving a damage boost, for what I've felt. It had come to the point where I'm straight up going head in into every boss as if I was trying to do a quick kill and I love this. I've always loved doing shit like this in Touhou and I'm so glad it finally got addressed as a main mechanic high risk high reward.
While it's fun to me, it does have some flaws and missing features like the replay system which is a shame because I would love to see the bot and how it behaves against me. Visual pollution is still a thing too. The game in Lunatic has straight up impossible to dodge patterns, forcing you to abuse the new mechanics which some can see it as great and others can hate it (I personally love it).
The card system is there again to make the gameplay more interesting, and rewarded after each boss without letting you choose, which can help when there's no power bar but the lack of choice and meaningful upgrades makes it more like a "oh sure" instead of "omg yes! this is great"
I wish there was a "go against every character" extra mode or smth because I'm curious to see all cards acting at the same time
It really is a great, and I am loving it despite never being a fan of PoFV or these kind of vs shmups. Maybe that is why it's so fun and refreshing to me lol
EDIT: After playing for a while, I can say that the game is good but suffers quite a lot from badly designed characters. I don't mean weird characters to play as such as Sakuya in PCB or clunky, just characters that are literally useless and will give you a complete headache even in normal. I have a lunatic 1cc in every touhou but Sanae and Nazrin's route are the hardest things I have ever witnessed in this game and it's so tilting because you can't really do much against full RNG with characters that can't kill at all due to the lack of damage. The hitboxes are weird and the visual pollution can be incredibly annoying not because "there's too much shit on screen" but rather because you literally can't see what hit you because your powers can hide bullets and it's incredibly annoying.
It is a good game but the only main entry I would encourage people to skip unless you really want to play this one.
The game is incredibly short, with each run being only 14 minutes long! and honestly? I love it.
This is not a main campaign kind of game, it's a vs shmup game and last time it was done was on PoFV (touhou 9). Back then in TH09 there were 16 fucking characters and they all had to fight with eachother atleast once or so, so you ended up playing for more than 40 minutes until the AI decided to just lose. I remember I once was testing stuff with a invencibility patch because and the run went a full hour and a half on a single stage alone and it felt tedious and exhausting and boring too! Because the patterns weren't hard for me, but if I died too much, I had to restart and hope the boss died in less than 40 minutes.
This doesn't happen here. This time you fight 4-5 characters and your run is done. No enemy lasts for an stupid amount of time, and for a game this replayable that makes you learn every character, I really am happy that runs aren't long.
The enemies, characters and boss attacks are very well designed and you will always have atleast one surprise or another with new sprites and.. I don't know, it's like you can really tell ZUN's experience as if he peaked here in terms of fluidity and overall feeling. TH18 already felt incredibly good and updated to play, but TH19 takes this one step above due to it's main mechanic of doing damage because we finally have a better way of doing damage other than just pressing Z until you're tired. This new mechanic makes you do a small attack and for each enemy killed, you spawn more stuff to your enemy's screen while also receiving a damage boost, for what I've felt. It had come to the point where I'm straight up going head in into every boss as if I was trying to do a quick kill and I love this. I've always loved doing shit like this in Touhou and I'm so glad it finally got addressed as a main mechanic high risk high reward.
While it's fun to me, it does have some flaws and missing features like the replay system which is a shame because I would love to see the bot and how it behaves against me. Visual pollution is still a thing too. The game in Lunatic has straight up impossible to dodge patterns, forcing you to abuse the new mechanics which some can see it as great and others can hate it (I personally love it).
The card system is there again to make the gameplay more interesting, and rewarded after each boss without letting you choose, which can help when there's no power bar but the lack of choice and meaningful upgrades makes it more like a "oh sure" instead of "omg yes! this is great"
I wish there was a "go against every character" extra mode or smth because I'm curious to see all cards acting at the same time
It really is a great, and I am loving it despite never being a fan of PoFV or these kind of vs shmups. Maybe that is why it's so fun and refreshing to me lol
EDIT: After playing for a while, I can say that the game is good but suffers quite a lot from badly designed characters. I don't mean weird characters to play as such as Sakuya in PCB or clunky, just characters that are literally useless and will give you a complete headache even in normal. I have a lunatic 1cc in every touhou but Sanae and Nazrin's route are the hardest things I have ever witnessed in this game and it's so tilting because you can't really do much against full RNG with characters that can't kill at all due to the lack of damage. The hitboxes are weird and the visual pollution can be incredibly annoying not because "there's too much shit on screen" but rather because you literally can't see what hit you because your powers can hide bullets and it's incredibly annoying.
It is a good game but the only main entry I would encourage people to skip unless you really want to play this one.