Touhou - Wandering Souls

So this is my second review and i played it on normal.

Story:
The story revolves around 3 girls trying to find out who is responsible for the incident of kekkais(barriers) and wandering souls and try to collect all wandering souls as get rid of all the barriers as find the culprit behind all this.
The girls are Reimu Hakurei(miko),Marisa Kirisame(the witch) and Sakuya Izayoi (maid),latter in the game more characters join them.The story is pretty straight forward and simple like a real touhou game resulting in battles between touhou characters just because they don't want to give info and a wandering soul.I do wish there would be more to collection all wandering souls.

Audio:
All the music is from different original touhou games which fit very well for different areas and battles which i enjoyed the combination fighting enemies.
Sound is made by Estheone,ZUN (touhou games),Enterbrain (rpg maker i think)which belong into the game like it should,from
shooting bullets,laser,fighting,blocking,dashing,jumping,to casting spellcards and many different stuff.

No complaints here everything has a proper sound to it.

Graphics:
Graphics are by Estheone,Zeus81,Daheji,Benben,Tasogare Frontier (Touhou Fighting Games),LION HEART (Mystical Chain),Wizet (Maple Story),Rareware (Donkey Kong Country),Konami (Castlevania SotN),Enterbrain (RPG Maker).

What I like is how colorful everything is it's like eye candy even though they are mostly rips the graphics do not dissapoint how well they are combined in this game.

Gameplay:
This is the golden part of the game it's very addicting and i love this game very much with everything it offers,I played on normal with gamepad while I didn't have any specific problems fighting in the first three areas that have several stages I did begin losing in the 4th area because I fighted too much normally and didn't use my skills and spellcards enough which are important to level up to make the game easier,something what was quickly fixed with a few level ups and using skills,spellcards and appropiate accesories.

You don't fight a boss in every stage sometime there will be a formation of enemies at the last part of the stage the last part of the stage is marked with a red flag.

So about gameplay, I am gonna try to explain everything I can remember. This is a side scroller A-RPG, Beat'em up, Platformer, Danmaku(bullet hell). You start as Reimu in a tutorial and then get Marisa and Sakuya in a stage,you can change the characters to let the other one heal,you use three characters and only one can fight while others rest,if you change your character where there are enemies you have to wait 15 seconds to change to an other character,if your character dies he will regenerate in a while and the two other characters will replace her,if all die you get teleported out of the stage into the area.

You can move left, right,double right or double left is dash,down is block,jump,air dash,you can also dash jump,using with hyper mode makes you faster,leap of a platform and jump while falling which you can even dash before,hold jump to hover down slowly,double down in air to dash down or jump down from a platform.

Hyper mode makes you stronger increases your damage on enemies and get less damage on yourself and also protect from statuses,dashing also halves your received damage.

There are also special effects with combos in this game Reimu combo final input up x kicks your enemy away from you,down x decreases attack strength of enemy,Marisa down x stuns your enemy which is very useful to prevent a charging attack or any attack,Sakuya up x freezes the enemies which slows them down.

The green bar is your health,the blue bar is your spellcard and the yellow bar is your skill bar.

In the equip menu you have weapon and accessories dependent on element like fire,water,wind,earth.

Some accessories have only 1 available element equipment slot,some have 2 elements and other have 4 elements which allows you to equip it in any of the elements slot.
Weapons and accessories level up with ap points which you gain from defeating enemies or finding or getting ap point drops,there are also health drops,shield drops,hyper mode drops,increased strength drops and more.
Every weapon also has a skill which requires a certain level to allow it using it there are 5 levels on weapons as well as accessories.While weapons increase your attacks and also other stuff,accessories can protect you from certain elements or make your elements stronger,protect from statuses and many more.

Stats menu are attack,defense,dexterity which is for critical hit chance and then there is critical hit power other stuff is self explanatory.

Pressing right in the equip or stats menu will show you how to use your skill or spellcard.

There are 4 different barriers in this game violet requires beating all stages in the current area to get wandering souls and they dissolve the barrier,red you have to beat all the enemies,blue defeat all enemies and go to the barrier to dissolve them and white which requires destroying a white device with blue lines.

There is money which enemies can drop or you find it there is even a special stage open that every time you beat 100% of the enemies you get money.You can use money at Rinnosuke's shop to buy weapons and accessories.

Enemies are monsters, fairies, Alice dolls and many more,each enemy has his own regular attack and a few chargeable attacks which can use an element against you one can fire bullets at you or it uses earthquake,some can give you status effects you can also block and you won't get a status effect unless it breaks your guard and hits you then you have to wait to refill your guard meter.

Bosses are touhou character also have regular attacks and chargeable attacks, which is better to evade them,you have to learn their pattern to know how to defeat em.

There are also amulets how I at least call them the ying yang balls which shoot a barrage of bullets at you that you have to evade them or block them,there are different ones and you can't defeat them you can only wait until they have nothing anymore and disapear, sometimes they are there as long as the enemy is there and in certain stages they are obstacles you have to evade while doing platform jumps.

This game has hidden paths,challenges like defeat 30 enemies for a wandering soul,chests.

Well normal mode isn't actually that hard as long as you properly evade,attack,block,use skills and spellcards.It can get a little difficult changing to a new weapon that still needs to be leveled up for skills,remember to change your characters if low on health,enemy fights are fun and boss fights are pretty awesome,after you defeat the main story boss you get a new mode on stages which gives you new enemies and more challenging enemies overall and more.
Oh yeah and the extra final boss in the mode I mentioned defeated me first so it can be pretty challenging even on normal.Getting 100% means you have to get all weapons,accessories,wandering souls

Needs a load menu after you already loaded the game,would be nice if something
more would happen when collecting all wandering souls, otherwise wonderful game.
I give it 4 stars because of rips even though they fit in the game and there really could have been something special done in this game for collecting all wandering souls but it wasn't.Amazing gameplay which probably a non touhou fan will enjoy.