TouHou Makuka Sai ~ Fantastic Danmaku Festival Part II
It’s billed as a homage to Touhou 7, but this game stands out for more than its ability to simply recreate a classic, delivering an excellent STG that stands on its own.
Its mechanics are founded on a slightly modified version of Touhou 7’s border system, in which periods of immunity granted through pickups and bullet grazing can have their duration extended by continuing to graze bullets or grabbing pickups. This mechanic is also how the game distributes extra bomb and life pieces, with longer borders providing increased rewards.
– Real player with 35.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Bullet Hell Shoot 'Em Up Games.
–-{ Graphics }—
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Bad
- The graphics on this game are not AAA title level, and really it shouldn’t be expected. However, what really made this game standout is that … it’s absolutely beautiful. The stage backgrounds, the character sprites, the enemy sprites, animated spell card sprites and even the Danmaku and patterns itself are some of the prettiest I’ve seen among Touhou fan games, and actually, I’d even go as far as saying it beats even ZUN’s own mainline games in this aspect. I don’t know how the team managed to churn out such an aesthetically pleasing danmaku game, but they sure as hell did it. I’d also like to specially mention some of the things I thought were extremely outstanding in terms of graphics: Stage 4 in general, Alice’s patterns in general and Yuyuko’s patterns in general (also, her dancing spins while she throws out danmaku were nothing short of awesome!)
– Real player with 22.2 hrs in game
Touhou Kikamu ~ Elegant Impermanence of Sakura
Another great Touhou fangame for us to enjoy in these quarantine times.
Art and Visuals: 8/10
Portraits are a bit inconsistent style-wise, and have a very European doll-looking look. which might not be for everyone.
Additionally, sound effects could be more diversified (the same sound is used for bomb extends, life extends, capturing spells, and filling up the combo counter.
System: 9/10
The scoring system is really creative, and centers around dyeing enemies and holding your fire for the exact right moments. The -1 is because of its relatively limited use during boss battles (due to a lack of enemies to dye), but it’s still really good and creative.
– Real player with 121.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Bullet Hell RPG Games.
EIoS is probably my favorite Touhou game of all. The mechanics are fun and reward skillful play, it’s graphically and aurally a treat, and the difficulty scales really well leaving almost everyone with a mode that can be played.
Note: The game starts in Chinese. When you first start it, move the menu left a few times and you should see a settings menu (with English in parenthesis), inside is a language menu where you can select English, German, French, or Japanese along with Chinese.
There are three pairs of characters, which like Imperishable Night, has a human unfocused and a youkai focused. Each character in the pair has their own speed, shot type, and bomb type. The human will hit “elite” foes (those with healthbars and auras), but will not hit weak foes that generally die in one hit (“popcorn”). The youkai will hit popcorn, but will not hit most foes with auras. Both members of a team are able to hit bosses.
– Real player with 27.4 hrs in game
Hypersonic Speed Girl / 超速少女
This is a horizontally scrolling danmaku game, with a very unique mechanic of “Hyperspeed”, that allows you to go super fast in stages but at the cost of being way more vulnerable to dying to the obstacles while trying to achieve it. However, if you do achieve this Hyperspeed, you can skip a large portion of the stage, and also get a lot of points. Being able to route the stages to master this technique is very satisfying to do.
When it comes to the bosses, they play like the usual Touhou danmaku boss, with non-spell and spellcards. The danmaku of these bosses is relatively hard, but thankfully the game gives you a lot of resources so you don’t die immediately.
– Real player with 3.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Bullet Hell Female Protagonist Games.
This is an interesting race and shooting game.
Basic control:
Normal flight
SHIFT - Decelerate
Z - Accelerate
X - Bomb
Direction Keys - Move
ESC - Menu
(You can’t get any points if your speed is zero)
Boss fight
Z - Shoot
X - Bomb
Direction Keys - Move
ESC - Menu
(You can’t select your speed in boss fights)
About cautions:
Yellow caution - Obstacles ahead (brick wall)
Purple caution - Encounter special Fairies
Red caution - Boss inbound!
If you touch the left edge of screen, you will lose a life.
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
Touhou Luna Nights
You’re a knife throwing maid who can stop time and slow time and it’s awesome. Slowing time constantly and weaving through Patchouli’s almost unavoidable attack patterns just now was seriously some of the most fun I’ve had in a game since I was a kid. I haven’t even beaten it yet, but my feeling is this game is a solid 10/10. Boss fights are really quite fun. Marissa’s was great too. Regular enemies range from super easy to somewhat difficult and sometimes enemies or traps will be immune to time shenanigans. There are some neat time puzzles involving fluid dynamics too, but I think where the game really shines is the boss fights and the time mechanic. You can also heal a little bit by getting very close to enemies or their projectiles, so it encourages a high risk play style that feels great when you pull it off. The art style and music are good too. Great game.
– Real player with 20.8 hrs in game
A beautiful Metroidvania game. The music is incredible, the scenery is gorgeous, and the gameplay is fast paced. Even if you’re not a metroidvania fan, I feel that you could play this and enjoy it nevertheless.
– Real player with 20.0 hrs in game
Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity
This review might be biased based on my likings on anything Touhou related alone but here we go.
I’ve always had a liking for Touhou, every fanmade game deserves a try, but this one is special.
Touhou Koukishin ~ Adventures of Scarlet Curiosity serves up as a great example of a game completed by cult-like zealot - its own community. Its cover illustration came from Matsukichi , the guy who used to draw about 300 portraits of Momiji Inubashiri. The song made by Hachimitsu-Lemon, a doujin music circle I yearn for its great use of various orchestral instruments since Silver Scenery album released in 2014 (though they sometimes produce EDM/Rock genre). It’s shivering how the personalities I’ve been a fan of for years work together to make great content of a game.
– Real player with 113.5 hrs in game
When I see a new Touhou game, I buy instantly.
I literally refresh my page every minute just to buy it.
As a fan of the Touhou Project,
I have been waiting for this game to be released on the computer ever since I found out it can
only be played on the PS4. In this game, you play as either the vampire; Remilia Scarlet, or her devoted
! and dedicated maid; Sakuya Izayoi. Each of them possesses unique battle skills. Remilia specializes in melee combat, Sakuya specializes in ranged. There is also occasions to play as Remilia’s sister; Flandre Scarlet on flashback sequences. During the course of the game, you will be able to find equipments and accessories that would be able to boost Remi and Sakuya’s stats either by attack, defense, etc. Both Remilia and Sakuya each have their unique storylines depending on who the player picked to play as. As mentioned earlier, there is an option to play flashback sequences as Flandre. The gameplay combined with smooth frame rates makes it easier to dodge and play smoothly, however, there is an option to choose the settings before you start. There are some returning bosses players might find familiar with. Each of them has attack patterns players would need to memorize if they want to defeat them. Overall, the art combined with the interesting storylines are beautiful mixed with a relaxing soundtrack. This game can be hard even if you play on easy if you are a beginner. But you will soon get the hang of it if you practice.
– Real player with 34.4 hrs in game
Touhou Fan-made Virtual Autography
The earlygame / free demo didn’t really have me sold on this game, but later on it gets REALLY good. It takes a moment, but it seriously grows on you. Would highly recommend, probably my favorite shmup overall currently.
– Real player with 394.1 hrs in game
Yes, the gimmick is stupidly unbalanced.
Yes, it would be nice to have a scoring system.
But I still like this game. It has good patterns, and good soundtrack. The two things most important to a Touhou game. It also has some slight details which I appreciate, most notably limited progression on the boss music during dialogue in stage 4 and 5, as well as
! the midboss segment of the stage 5 theme having different instruments depending on the character you’re fighting.
Oh, and if you’re playing the demo, the diagonal movement thing is fixed in the full version, in case you were worried about that.
– Real player with 18.8 hrs in game
東方逆妙乱 ~ Ephemeral Unnatural Balance
Positives:
-
Very cute art (shaded pastel style)
-
Decent enough music
-
Interesting system
that being said, I feel like the balancing is kind of wack. The Discord system is great when you’re in a difficulty you have completely mastered, but if you dare to reach a bit above your comfort zone, it’s an absolute beatdown. Especially late in the game, you have almost no opportunity to activate Discord since it’ll just immediately kill you, wiping out any progress you had on the meter (if this were changed, I’d like it a lot more). I also didn’t feel the need for an overdramatic resurrection butterfly ripoff.
– Real player with 17.8 hrs in game
From what I’ve played so far I have pretty much nothing but praise for this game. Honestly it’s better than most of the main Touhou games. It avoids every typical fangame gripe I can think of: stage design is good, systems are good, visual clarity is good. Most importantly it’s determined to be a Touhou fan GAME rather than a Touhou FAN game, and most of its fanservice is based around things recognizable and enjoyable from the games themselves instead of Alice xx Marisa UwU or whatever.
Many of the patterns and spellcards are remixed versions of ZUN’s ones, but the developers seem to have a good feel for how to keep the fun parts without the annoying ones. Nothing is flashy to the point of being nonfunctional and so far I haven’t encountered anything that felt like total bullshit. Lasers and attacks coming from weird directions all have warnings on them so you’re not caught blind. The stages feel like a big melting pot of the styles and identities of different games in the series plus some original stuff and it just works well.
– Real player with 12.4 hrs in game
永远消失的幻想乡 ～ The Disappearing of Gensokyo
If you are a touhou fan FULL STOP; BUY THIS GAME AND IGNORE THIS REVIEW.
If you are looking for a good game, read more below and after that ask yourself if you still want to buy it.
TL;DR: Unpolished, badly translated game with very shallow depth on the story and baffling gameplay design decisions that make the game unfun.
The game features itself as a “ARPG” with bullet hell aspect which is prevalent on touhou themed games. There are a lot of flaws in this game, but the biggest problem in this game is it becomes unfair at the later stage. Touhou bullet hell games always has been hard but fair to me, if you die then it’s your fault. Unfortunately Halfway through the game, the game starts to throw more bullshit, at least give dodging I-frames(invulnerability) to at least to counter it (oh yeah, DLC characters might have I-frames with them LUL). It also changes the camera angle on boss fight to make the fight “harder” since it warps your perspective that you think you’re going to dodge a projectile.
– Real player with 49.6 hrs in game
Fun touhou fan game although the whole “fan based” style story is cringy at times. Dungeons and bosses can be cheesed with certain character even on Lunatic -coughnotReisenandMarisacough-
Pros:
-Decent cast of playable heroes that can be unlocked via Story/unlock requirments
-It is translated into english just change language in the options off main menu
-mix of bullet hell and meleeish
-boss fights are very fun and requires pattern memorization and HP management (certain bosses can mix their next stage attack with a current attack causing mayhem to the players tempo)
– Real player with 30.3 hrs in game
東方幕華祭 TouHou Makuka Sai ~ Fantastic Danmaku Festival
As a Touhou game, the quality here is high. It has what you would expect from a Touhou game and a little more; beyond the standard 6 stages and Extra stage, there are also Spell Card Challenges with many new difficult spell cards for each of the bosses in the game. The character options provide a second way to adjust difficulty, which I find helpful: Patchouli can be very easy bordering on overpowered (but is also slightly complicated to control), Sanae is fairly easy, and Marisa and Reimu are the most balanced. Whether intentional or not, I think it can help breaking into the higher difficulties as you can start out playing as Patchouli, then Sanae, etc.
– Real player with 62.8 hrs in game
Now, don’t let the hours played confuse you.
I’ve been playing this game before it ever released on steam, but with that in mind let me start explaining how good this game is.
Touhou Fantastic Danmaku Festival, is a fangame remake of Touhou 6: Embodiement of Scarlet Devil, with a few changes here and there made by the chinese developer StarX
Unlike Touhou 6, there’s some differance, some of which I won’t spoil.
There are four characters to play as, the four being Reimu, Marisa, Sanae, and Patchouli.
– Real player with 10.4 hrs in game
Touhou Multi Scroll Shooting
this game is sexy. i like it.
the game is really fun and cute, and i like the multi scroll aspect. the music is good. its a bit silly how the stage enemies just fall onto the floor when you defeat them, but its ok.
(key given by skydash)
– Real player with 2.5 hrs in game
Touhou Multi Scroll Shooting’s main gimmick is its plethora of perspectives. During levels, you’ll dynamically switch between a horizontal view, birds-eye view, a Space Harrier-esque view from the back of your character and free-roaming areas that are also viewed from the side. It’s as strange as it sounds, difficult to get used to but strangely appealing at the same time.
While the bullet patterns didn’t blow me away, the game is alright for the extremely low price point. Be warned that Normal Mode is already really brutal when compared to what usually counts as “normal” in Touhou games.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game