I was asked to review this game by the developer and after playing over a week I still have yet to finish this game. Unfortunately I cannot dedicate any more time to TouHou Fantasy due to the volume of other games I still have to review, however if/when I get the chance to complete the game I will write a follow up review for it. I did play up until the point when Reimu and the rest fall under the school but after going through about 3 different levels I couldn’t figure out a way to continue. According to the internal game clock my official time playing is 12 hours and 47 minutes but I know I spent more than 20+ hours playing if you include the sheer number of times I died in the game.

-SIDE NOTE-

Prior to playing this game I hadn’t even heard of the TouHou games before but after researching them online and watching gameplay videos, not only do I see the attention to detail with the characters, I can also understand the severity of difficulty in the game. There are many references to the main set of games and a number of inside jokes I’m sure that I would understand better had I played games within the TouHou series and all of the references are done tastefully without any blatant connections. In short, TouHou Fantasy does a nice job of being a fan game without outright saying that it’s a fan game inside the gameplay.

-INITIAL THOUGHTS-

After a week dealing with this game I can’ help but admit that I have a love/ hate relationship with this game and it pains me that I was unable to finish it within a week’s time. Looking at it overall, the game is spectacular. The artwork is amazing with loads of unique animations and graphical assets with great music to go with it (I used the default Vanilla Pack). However, using an analytical eye, the game has a long way to go. As it stands right now, TouHou players would understand the story a lot better than any outsider but I’m not sure if even they would be able to play this game to completion due to the lack of communication to the player. How is the player supposed to know in the beginning that they can only save the game on the world map or at save points? I finally found out a little more information from NPCs but the majority of them had something story related and not very player related. I went through the first half hour of the game learning about the story before I went into my first battle and realized it was using an Action Time Battle system. Then after playing for a while I realized the player was never able to tell if the enemy was successfully frozen or confused as the enemies neither have any status effect animation or even a name bar to see if it is affected by anything. Not to mention that all relevant information is told through cut scenes and dialogue interactions with other characters so if the player wasn’t paying attention or wasn’t able to understand the information then they are left lost. For example, several times after a boss battle the main character will say “let’s go to ____ next” but will not give the player any direction on how to get there or even its general location. This in particular could easily be fixed with a world map or a journal of information that the player can access but generally this game as a whole needs tutorials to explain everything as everything is not so clear. I didn’t even realize I could escape from battles until yesterday because generally the escape button is blacked out in the beginning of the fight except in certain situations. What I didn’t figure out until yesterday though is that there is a secondary escape button in each character’s list of actions in the player scrolls down past items, which is not commonly done as the other main slots are taken up by the attack and skill command buttons in relation to the character’s class and ability; so why would the player ever need to scroll down further unless they were told that there was an escape button there too. I would like to mention again through that the game itself is really good. The expansive storyline and the ATB Boss fights are really superb but as it stands right now the game is throwing the player in without explain anything in the sense of “learn or die”. This brings me back to the relationship with the main TouHou games as far as I can tell, they too usually thrust the player in with no real explanation of the controls. However the difference between the main series and TouHou Fantasy is that TouHou Fantasy is an RPG and the main series is a bullet hell. Bullet hell games don’t really need all that much instruction and generally are pretty straight forward, however RPG’s are more story driven and needs the player to fully understand what is happing at all times otherwise the player could easily stop playing the game due to boredom or totally being lost. I myself found myself lost several times and just happened to find out where to go by stumbling around randomly or asking the developer directly – a luxury that not all players will have.

-PRESENTATION-

The presentation is absolutely amazing. I was surprised not only by thee (assumingly original) artwork but also the fluidity of the animations. Every character feels alive during the battle and the additional animations for each status effect really adds depth to the game. That being said though, some of the animations for certain status effects either don’t show up or aren’t properly sized correctly to fit the main character. Anytime I was successfully hit by “Fog” for example, the character affected would disappear until I used an action for that character. This happened with other moves as well and without the animation or any indication of how my character was afflicted, I had no way of fixing it. The music, which I believe is directly from other TouHou games, is absolutely wonderful and well used and the visual graphics are absolutely spectacular. As for the story though, although it is rushed through in places, I feel that the main message and the severity of the problem is communicated to the player easily. The mapping on the other hand has me at odds. In some places, the mapping is done wonderfully and exceeds perfection but other parts of the map just seem thrown together and doesn’t flow well. This is true for the “world map” especially. However, overall the music, visual graphics, and story all make the Presentation of TouHou Fantasy top notch.

-ENGAGEMENT/GAMEPLAY-

Engagement for me was just to see how the story expands. There are a variety of plot twists which start from the beginning of the game and helps to really draw the player in. For others though, simply the game being in the TouHou universe would allow members on the fandom to be easily engaged by the game overall. I would also say that the boss battles were an engaging factor for me as well due to the complexity of some of the bosses and trying to figure out the best strategy to beat them. One of the hardest for me was Mystia as I didn’t realize that all of Aya’s attacks healed her until I used her Intel ability to see the growth of health of the boss. The battle system though itself is used very well and is woven into the core fabric of the game. Again though, the downside is that the information isn’t communicated well to the player so how is the player supposed to know what element the enemy is or which element is weak to what without anyone explaining it. Then with a game as big as this, it may be hard for some players to even remember all of that information during a battle and will just try out whatever until the enemy is defeated or they die. The other misfortune of the gameplay is that the game itself is very unbalanced when it comes to battles. Not only are some troops of enemies harder to beat than the bosses but the large groups of enemies usually give out a lot more EXP points than the player would get from beating a boss, which the EXP requirements for up leveling too is a bit sparse for my taste but I guess then that the enemies make up for it.

-BUGS/GLITCHES-

The red devil mansion ballroom exits deposits the player on the wrong sides. After Cirino or Marisa leaves the party, the player is unable to buy new skills for them at the store but the player can still buy skills for Aya when Aya leaves party and Meling joins. As I said earlier, certain status effects have no animation and leaves character with black image. Music transitions can be fixed a little as going into the southern village leaves the player with silence for a good 15 seconds. Also not a but I think that the maids in the mansion could be re-arranged a little as it is easy to bump into them when the player transitions from 1 room to the next and they are standing at the new entrance. Either that or make their deaths permanent. Other than that I found no other bugs.

-OVERALL-

TouHou Fantasy is a great RPG that’s on the right track but needs to communicate all the information to the player easier. It’s hard to believe that the game is still in development as long as it is now so when it’s fully done and released I know that it will be full on fun and engaging content. I say play if you like the TouHou series, RPG games, or any games with an Action Time Battle system. Great job to the developer for what you’ve done so far and keep up the good work!

http://rpgmaker.net/games/3758/