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Charming, and difficult without being pointlessly hard.

  • Kel
  • 10/25/2014 09:09 PM
  • 3254 views
I feel I should get this out of the way before we get started, if you're thinking about playing this game make sure to look at the game's description page so you know exactly what to download.

I'd personally patch the game myself with the map fix and then upload the updated game as is without the music to have as one download, and then two separate links afterwards for detailing what music packs to download. If you want to save on file size, just download the 2 parts of the file named "Vanilla Music Pack". Doing this will put your download size just past the 350MB mark at 368MB.

If you want to take it to the next step musically (And many tracks are from the Touhou games, which are worth listening to), then go ahead and get the "Extended Music Pack" which will bump up the final download to the 685MB mark. You don't need to touch anything else, and a relative of mine who wanted to get the game for herself after watching me play some, ended up fairly confused and downloaded the Beta5 music packs as well nearly doubling the actual download size.

Maybe her reading comprehension isn't the best, (God bless her soul, I'm her cousin so I can say that) but I think it would help to spell things out a bit more, and make less files to download (by combining the map patch to the newest build). As it is, those who are new to the Touhou universe or those who like to just jump into downloads all willy-nily will have less incentive to play through the game with the sound intact than they could.

With that semi-rant out of the way, onto my thoughts about the game itself:

Story
I'll say this now, if you've only heard of Touhou in passing on the internet and know little else besides the main games of the series being Bullet Hell games, then you might not really get much out of the story besides the "save the world" plot introduced in the very beginning with the Pandora's Box. Without knowing the world of Gensokyo, at the very least players will know with a name like Pandora's Box, it's going to be a wild ride.

However in regards to the characters who carry the plot, even me who only played a couple of the games and obtained secondhand knowledge from a few rabid fans over the years, could pretty much follow it. This game's charm shines through with the character dialogue, and the characters I knew about firsthand (like Reimu and Marisa for starters) fit their game personalities very well.

The dialogue is actually pretty well done for any JRPG-Styled game. The only problem is that I nearly drowned in the sea of ellipses (Pac-Man would go into a food coma) that rarely ever let up throughout the game. For some characters, it's expected, but usually you can do a pause in dialogue just fine with comma or period. The semicolon could use some more love. Moods were conveyed really well, to the point a simple comma would still have me thinking of their voice trailing off.

The bottom line is that those going in blind to the source material may see it only as a loose string of events, but the creator actually did a good job of remedying that, even though a big part of the game's fun factor in the story is from knowing the in game universe beforehand. It's a game by a fan, for fans.

One explanation that would make sense of the story, is describing it in akin to crossover rpgs like Chaos World and Trinity Universe, except all characters are from the same world. What I mean is that the game's intro is meant to tie together the events that allows us to see all the different generations of characters interacting with one another, so knowing about some or all of the game's citizens is paramount to enjoying the storyline, as it's all about them.


Gameplay
As is the case for many RPGs, here's where a bulk of your time will be spent. At the very start of the game you're given the choice whether to start the intro, skip it, or the inevitable curiously labeled "????". I clicked on that first, and realizing it was a debug room (at least hoping as much) went back and started the beginning of the actual game. I don't know any man or woman who could resist picking that third option first, so I'd really think about taking out that choice for release builds. Debug rooms can be fun, but so can the game.

And the game does a serviceable job in battle. In the beginning the attack button was good enough to use. Many a 2k/2k3 RPG Maker game will make the attack button become completely useless when a developer over-relies on skill use to take down enemies, and for a long time rationing your MP is a valid choice.

The player also wouldn't die in two hits if sufficiently leveled as many games love to do, but you may have to grind a level or two first before each dungeon, even the game's Beginner's Hall (a nice touch for those who go to town first) will let you know that grinding out a level before the next dungeon is recommended. Worth mentioning is that each dungeon has a hard and easy path, usually as separate maps, but by telling the player the rewards are much better on the hard path, or course I'm going to be taking it. I also tended to just go through both paths anyway for completion's sake, and also to help with going through the game without grinding in place.

Besides choosing which path suits you, some dungeons have rudimentary puzzles to complete, whether in the traditional sense with an assortment of keys, to the dungeon themselves being the puzzle (The water pathways you have to walk across in the Misty Lake; easy enough to spot by paying attention). You can also find all kinds of items on the ground in dungeons that have properly been revamped for this version of the demo.

There's also a fairly extensive elemental system in the game that's important when forming strategies, as it can make or break your ability to survive after the first dungeon. There are ways to deal with weaknesses through equipment in the game, plus more than 10 characters to choose from later on. You can see their element by looking at their Title from either the game's main menu, or status menu. The Beginner's Hall in the human village will also list the elements and what they are weak against, so it's definitely advantageous to go there before the first dungeon.

Lastly I feel I should touch on skills. There are a servicable number of them for each character to start, which can be expanded and upgraded by buying them. As is the case with many RPG Maker games though, accuracy can be hit or miss (heh) depending on what you prefer in a game. Skills do a good job explaining what each one does, even the accuracy in a percentage, but Lady Luck must get a hard on for seeing me miss. Skills labeled 95% actually missed 1/5 of the time for me, while anything below 80% was a lost cause that I usually avoided when possible. When I play games I prefer not to miss half the time, unless low weapon accuracy is an integral part of the gameplay to be improved as the player does. A few times spamming attack had the same result as trying to use a damaging skill because I ended up missing twice or more in a row. I took 80% to mean I'd hit 1/5 of the time, but it was more like 1/3, which really adds up in the miss department against bosses.



Graphics
Let me just say this first, there's a map patch that goes with the game download, where many(not all) maps look good, much better than the game's image pages would lead you to believe. A word of advice would be to update your gamepage's images to reflect the current build.

I say many maps though, because in the first town you can access is still largely empty space:

It's like this townsperson was begging me to screencap her for this section of the review.

However, many outdoor dungeon maps look beautiful in comparison:


This is usually relegated to forested maps though, as many interiors still have large empty spaces, but many of them, I bet, look much better than they did before.

The world map itself is also largely empty green pastures, but what detail is there looks very well done. I noticed the rips, beautiful Final Fantasy rips, and speaking of FF rips, there were also quite a few FFVI enemy graphics littered throughout the game.

I assume enemy graphics not related to Touhou were also all rips, but it's all fine if the end package looks good together. The character animations in battle also look pretty good for the frame limits, although shrinking in size when hit with a status effect looked pretty odd in-game. The game is called Touhou Fantasy, so it's to be expected that particular game would also be an influence.

The faces largely fit the characters, though some of them don't go so well together both in style and color.


Sound
It's the girth of the game's filesize, so is it any good? I can confidently say that there will be a few songs from the game that may become infectious and get stuck in your head. Much of it is from the various games from the source material, while others I noticed are from other games. I'm pretty sure I heard Chrono Trigger and Valkyrie Profile among them, but each tune mostly fit the situation.

I say mostly, but some music's tempo didn't exactly match the areas themselves. The pounding music in the starting village would have been better suited somewhere else, but that's really the main one that stood out. It'll probably be better when the town is up to snuff with other places that have been revamped.

So yes, the music is awesome. It definitely didn't disappoint in this area. As for the in-game sound effects, all but one did what they were supposed to and became background noise for me. One sound stood out like crazy though, and that was the sweatdrop sound effect using a water magic SE from the RTP. It's a bit harsh for the occasion, and I'd look for something more subtle that sounds less like a wave crashing down on the character, and more of what's normally associated with the sweatdrop emote.


Bug's for the Dev
♦ At the starting shrine, the Japanese Torii Gate to the north is missing a piece of itself.
♦ Ellipses usually come in increments of three. If you're keeping them, I'd weed out the ones that were four or more in between words, but I'd also take most of them out where not needed.
♦ Brown tables of Kourindou are passable and I can walk all over them.
♦ You should blend in world map tiles that don't mix, like the snow from the Winter Forest right now is really blocky on the world map because the tiles don't mix together, I'd make a separate tile as a fusion of both so they blend together properly.
♦ There's a noticeable lag after every battle is finished where I can't move or open the menu for nearly a second.
♦ It's not a bug, but I'd suggest making the directions easier for where a player should go in the very beginning. It's not that bad now since I stumbled upon it quickly, but that's because a lot of areas aren't accessible yet. When they are it'll be good to specify where the Misty Lake is besides just north.


Stray Observations
♠ Giving each character their own personal command was a nice touch. I loved finding random items with Marisa before battle.
♠ Speaking of items, it was fun looking for hidden items, but they were usually only found in updated maps. If a map looks like the first screenshot in the review, you can count on finding little if nothing, but it was cool to find items hidden in maps like old times, which a lot of games don't do anymore.
♠ Lots of places I can't access yet, it'll be interesting when they open up.
♠ I've never seen so many birds flying around in one game.


Overall you can tell when a part of the demo has been updated, and when it still needs updating, which makes it hard to give this game a starred review, even as a demo. Instead I'll answer the personal question whether or not I'd recommend this title to anyone.

The battles are decidedly average, but not bad and there is room for strategy which keeps things interesting, and the banter between characters was fun to read in between the ...

So, it boils down to whether you'd enjoy the game or not if ZUN's(creator of the Touhou Project) characters are something you're interested in experiencing. If you're a fan, then I can easily say yes, download and play through the game. I think you'd have a blast, as with my minor knowledge I still had enough fun where playing the game and reading the dialogue wasn't a chore.

If you've never heard of the games, or Touhou only makes you think of a Japanese film studio or lion tamer, then I'd say if you're willing to try it and itching for a game to play, see if you like the characters first. The game lets them shine, and is a major source of whether you'll end up liking the game in the end or not. If they don't gel with you, then it'll be hard to recommend.

In closing: Play this game if you're a Touhou Project fan, otherwise you should probably find another RPG, as the story will mostly confuse you.

Posts

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Ah yes...the whole multiple file syndrome. At some point I'll have that resolved. Eventually...it's troublesome with so many things in the game >_<

Onto the review though!

Story:

*Yeah, when it came to characters and their dialogues and actions, I tried to capture them as closely to their canonical selves as possible. Some characters were really hard to capture though. @_@;
*The ellipses...if you think it was bad now, you should've seen it prior to the version you played. It was even WORSE then. That's something I need to personally tell myself to avoid. x_x;
*As for the whole "Not knowing characters thing", if you take a look into the game files and look at the Pictures folder, you'll see a little thing known as "Perfect Memento" (named after the actual book for Touhou done by ZUN). In fact, it's meant to be kinda the same deal as the actual book, detailing who the characters are and whatnot. It's something being implemented to remedy this situation as I realize it's something that is problematic. It'll be an item in-game at a specific new location (or when entering the Human Village) which the player can use at save points or world map only (to prevent breaking events and the like. I MIGHT make it so you can use it at any given time but have to go through EVERY event in the game to make sure that you can't use the item otherwise).

Gameplay:

*Odd...I thought I had renamed that to Debug Room specifically? Huh...maybe it was an older build you had there, as it shouldn't be that way at all. o_o;
*I don't understand why skills miss that much at all. I've seen several 95% skills miss often myself, and never understood why. Quite annoying, that's for sure...

Graphics:

*Ah...yeah, many maps are still in-development. Dunno how far you got into the game, but judging from you talking about new Misty Lake, Scarlet Devil Mansion got heavily revamped as opposed to previously (the old one was horrible). I'm not that great with indoor areas at all, mostly being better at outdoor areas. Dunno how that works out but it does! As for the world map, that's one of the maps I never revamped at all, simply because even moving a single location event would be painful to fix. x_x;
*Status sprites still use the original sprites (back before I started using battle animations for characters), and I haven't found anyone to help me with status sprites since then so I'm stuck with using the original sprites (or none). It's a problem, I'm aware...even moreso when multiple statuses stack but that's 2k3's fault there. ^^;
*Facesets are pretty hard to find some good ones to match I feel. I do need to update some of them, but perhaps you can be of assistance and tell me which ones you think don't fit?

Bugs:

*Huh...that's an odd thing that I missed. o_O
*Yeah, that's something I've been fighting with forever now. And probably will be stuck fighting. ^^;
*Bwuh? How'd I screw that up? o_O;;
*Yeah, one of the few things I need to touch up on, but haven't. Not sure HOW to deal with that. I tried shift mapping but it doesn't work well on that tile at all. >_<
*That's probably due to there being a lot of after battle events running (seriously, take a look in common events and you'll see like 17 Battle Cleanup events. Yeah, there's THAT much stuff to clean-up after battles, and it's mostly related to the Weapon/Armor Bless systems). @_@;
*Hmm...if it's only Misty Lake you're referring to, then yeah, I'll probably have to fix that up. But if it's going to the Human Village, it shouldn't be too difficult to find since the game tells you outright to go there, and there's a green path to follow.

Stray Observations:

*It was a way to make them more unique. Before, they just had their skillset and that was it. Maybe some secondary commands like Marisa's Steal, but other than that, they felt very lacking. In addition to a subcommand, they all have an in-battle passive (such as Marisa finding random items during battles or Reimu having a chance to fully heal from statuses) as well as overworld abilities (for instance, Marisa having a 50% chance of finding an additional item from a set list when opening chests). The Read Me talks about each character in that regards, and the Perfect Memento item will try to as well. I am not working on that bit, btw, as it's being handled by someone else.
*Yeah, I limited areas so the player didn't get TOO off-track from the main game and get themselves too murdered. Eastern Forest was already a big murderzone. ^^;
*I try to make places lively. ^^;


I'm glad you enjoyed the game at the very least though! As for battles, I intend on spicing them up at a later date to give more element of strategy to them, since I'm trying to make the game have that in it (the game lacks it a bit in some areas. The very first dungeon in particular mostly because it's the tutorial dungeon really. Dungeon #2 (Forest of Magic) was meant to introduce status effects, etc. etc. until it builds up). But yeah, battles need touched-up on, which I may need peoples input on. ^^;

The maps will take quite a bit of time to fix up though, as some I have no idea how I'm even going to, nor what tilesets to use (Human Village in particular is the one suffering from this, and why it hasn't been updated at all yet). If you do plan on playing more of this, do let me know if any other bugs pop up or what your thoughts are on areas and whatnot!

(And why yes, the story is a bit confusing at first. I actually INTENTIONALLY made it that way. There's a good reason for it, but I COULD probably trim down on it to make it a bit less confusing).
Well the version I downloaded was the one labeled 1.120, after extracting that I added the map fixes, so if you changed the ???? into debug room, it'd be weird that I didn't see it.

I actually got through what the demo offered thus far, but I kept spoilers to a minimum which is why I didn't specify certain places. The Forest of Magic was actually a really good dungeon though, in terms of preparing me for future dungeons, even moreso than the first one did since I could basically attack spam and kill anything in the first dungeon. The Scarlet Devil Mansion didn't look bad, but some places still looked quite bare imo. It is harder to do indoors as there are less objects to fill those spaces that would make sense.

I'd suggest floor patterns, maybe different types of carpets of just general things the player can walk over, wouldn't do good to make it harder for the player to move around.

As for faces, Sakuya, Aya, and Yuuka's faces stood out the most, since I can remember them from memory as clashing with the others. It's mainly because the quality is different, as the three I mentioned are higher quality in looks than the rest. They aren't grainy at all, if that makes sense.

And yes, the game was definitely lively. I'm going to be seeing birds everywhere now.

Hmm...maybe I changed that later and never uploaded that version then. Though I swear I recall uploading a version that included all of the various new battle animations. Weird. @_@;

Oh, so you finished it already? What was the time on the finished version? Quite curious to know just how long it took you so I can see if it's about what I'd expect on average for an average player to get through the game thus far.

Yeah, first one was just tutorial to really, really basic stuff and was basically a worry-free dungeon (unless you got really unlucky with the Hornet or Alligator). The boss does need updating really badly though. I tried to cut down on how long some dungeons were for the most part, but also try to accumulate the difficulty curve (there's a set pattern for difficulty curves, actually based on the Touhou series. Easy mode is basically the first couple dungeons, while Normal mode is dungeon #3 to dungeon #10 I think. Hard mode picks up during beta3, Lunatic somewhere in beta5, Extra picks up even later, and of course there's Phantasm which is endgame stuff). Sometimes I wonder if I went a little TOO far with some difficulties though (Eastern Forest comes to mind when you actually HAVE to go there...but I don't stop to grind or anything so...).

Hmm...that is true. I tried to keep the areas as close to the source as I can (with liberties taken of course for obvious reasons). Sometimes, I wonder if I did good with that lol.

Ah, those three. Yeah, the other ones I'd LIKE to have higher quality, but getting good high-quality images that's befitting of characters is kinda hard sometimes. x_x;

BIRDIES! BIRDIES EVERYWHERE!!!
It took me nearly 17 hours to complete the game, and that was with fairly liberal grinding in the beginning. After that though I didn't grind unless you count going through both paths to look for chests and dolls grinding.

I understand the difficulty you're going for though, and honestly it's working fine so far, though I doubt everyone would agree with me. My own game is going to be hard as hell (so I may be biased) without it being damage based. By that I mean enemies whittle you down through strategy instead of damage output against our poor heroes.
Ah, 17 hours? That's almost around the time I'd expect (sometimes I get around 20 hours, sometimes 30). So I think you finished it even quicker than I lol. Then again, I never played through the entirety of the newer version so maybe I somehow shaved off 3 hours with revamping and stuff. That'd be nice o_o;

Yeah, the difficulty is meant to still be tough, but not ridiculously tough. This is taking after Genius of Sappheiros and Defiant of Shrine Maiden, a couple other Touhou fangames which are both insanely hard (DoSM is disgustingly difficult from what I've seen). I didn't want my game to wind up in that side of things (plus it seems whenever people think Touhou, they think it should be super difficult or something, which isn't always the case. Touhou Mother wasn't too difficult and was just fine, which is KINDA the role model for this game in a way. Different series and ideas, but role model nonetheless). Hopefully the FF elements were shown fine enough throughout the game since I know there was a guy on DeviantArt that wrote a "review" that didn't think there was enough FF elements at all (I don't know how you can miss most of them though). ^^;

Perhaps you can PM me your full thoughts on the game to avoid spoilers here. I'm quite curious to know your thoughts on everything, especially on the more difficult aspects of the game, the story, systems, dungeons, etc.. Can probably further help me with touching the game up more in areas that it may need it in too!
Sure thing, I'll pm you sometime tomorrow with my thoughts (it's 11pm here and I have to get up early for a wedding, not mine lol)

The FF elements were pretty obvious indeed, besides some music choice and some of the graphics. It also had a similar feel at times.

Also, if you haven't tried it before, there's a really cool first person dungeon crawler called Labyrinth of Touhou, probably the only other fangame I've played other than this. (of Touhou anyway)
Righto then~ Oh yes, the Chrono Trigger and Valkyrie Profile music? They are exactly as you thought they were. ^^

Which makes me wonder how exactly the guy WASN'T seeing them. The monsters, abilities, etc. were pretty much taken from there.

Ah yes, I've seen that one. Not my cup of tea sadly (dungeon crawlers killed me after playing Digimon World 2 years ago. 6 months to beat that game...ugh...).
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