Touhou 13 announced - 東方神霊廟 ~ Ten Desires (demo is now out)

[Chaos Phoenixma]

UFO is more fun than this.

[Heartbeam]

There isn't much suicide for points to be had when each successive life takes more and more heart pieces to get, combined with the slow charging (on lower levels of course) for the spirit bar...

As per usual, this seems a pretty Yagawa-esque system. Early scoring replays I've seen involve spending the bombs to pointblank things risk free for more hyper charge. There's plenty of hypers to go around if you can keep it up.

Can you please link to some scoring replays? I checked Royalflare but they don't have a Touhou 13 section yet. I've been out of the loop so I don't know where else to look.

Look no further than your local scoreboard! The replays are a drool to sit through and watch though; I'll bomb and die everywhere in the name of scoring so I don't have to dodge anything. The older 198M replay dodges like...one extra noncard.

[Blackbird]

Why are all you fools comparing it to CC/etc when you fucking knew it wouldn't be anything close to it. It's Touhou. We got exactly what we expected. If you want to play CC then go play it.

They are indie games contemporary to each other, and Touhou 13 seems to be directly acknowledging CC's success by incorporating a hyper mechanic of it's own. I think Crimzon Clover comparisons are fair game.

Some people have disagreed with Clover's garishness. Valid criticism. However, that doesn't excuse a mechanic from being -boring-. The reason people like the Clover Hyper is because it is fun to use. Setting aside graphics, it has the interesting decision of Break or Double Break, increases offensive power, and increases the area of your attack. There is an element of risk that is exciting, because, although you get a few seconds of safety, you can be destroyed afterward, ending your hyper early. Touhou's implementation of hyper just doesn't look fun. It doesn't change gameplay at all. It's just something you activate to be invincible for a few seconds and point blank better. You know what already did that? Bombs. Hyper doesn't change the way you attack or play the game at all. It looks completely redundant in it's current implementation.

[Sapz]

Hypers also give you 100 bpv from every blue spirit instead of 10, and fills up two pieces instead of one for every life/bomb piece you get. It's a pretty crucial addition to scoring.

[Observer]

Indeed. However, by doing that it's a far less flexible tool than the Break Mode (which is an all-in-one box of awesome that still carries a challenge since it ramps up rank and the ship speed) since you pretty much have to enable the Spirit/Trance mode exactly when certain fairies carrying pink/green items show up to get doubles and to point blank things ASAP for the 100+ multipliers.

And I definitely noticed that if you are in Spirit mode by the time a spellcard is casted and spewing danmaku, you automatically failed it!

Regarding shot types, which one do you all think is the most balanced or the best overall?

If anything I think it could be nice to implement the same flashing red 1.5 seconds of Imperishable Night where you can decide whether to drop a bomb and keep the spirit mode or enter trance mode, lose a life and save the bomb for later. OR, even better, losing both trance mode and a bomb but at least getting away with a life, not powering down and doing some serious damage. It's not gonna happen.

Another thing that I'm not sure I asked before but I need to ask again: when you enter a forced Spirit Mode by getting "pichun~'d" (oh god...) do the orbs you collect still hold the 100+ value or are they worth nearly nothing?

Last but not least, I gave a thousand names to this mechanic... which is the official name that appears in the manual? Trance Mode?

[Sapz]

Yeah, even if it's during a death the regular rules for 'Trance' still apply. As for what to call it, I'll stick to hypers. :V

I think all the shot-types are pretty good this time around - so far I've pretty much just been using Reimu/Marisa since they're pretty straightforward. I imagine Youmu is pretty excellent for scoring once you know what to do, though.

[tinotormed]

Just downloaded this one and I had a great start with Reimu and Sanae. If you get killed, a temporal hyper is automatically casted for some enemies to destroy.

[Aisha]

Yeah, even if it's during a death the regular rules for 'Trance' still apply. As for what to call it, I'll stick to hypers. :V

I think all the shot-types are pretty good this time around - so far I've pretty much just been using Reimu/Marisa since they're pretty straightforward. I imagine Youmu is pretty excellent for scoring once you know what to do, though.

Apparently Sanae's special trait is that she can fill the spirit gauge faster than the other characters, so I guess she might have an edge when it comes to scoring, but her shot seems weak, so depending on how important speed-killing is, the trait might be moot.

The only advantage to Youmu that I can see is she can take out large clumps of enemies with her focused shot, which might make the chaining aspect of the game easier. But I'm thinking Normal here; it might not be a good idea to let enemies remain on the screen for too long on the higher difficulties.

[Elixir]

Checked out the demo. It's fun, but reminds me of Bullet Soul, which I have, and would rather play.

Definitely an improvement above SA, UFO, etc.

[Moniker]

Full version's out.

[DragonInstall]

My first touhou game.. and it left a bad impression. The game is terrible to me, and I would consider it as one of the worst shmups I've ever played... The music is ok though.

Is there a better touhou shmup than this one?

[Bananamatic]

My first touhou game.. and it left a bad impression. The game is terrible to me, and I would consider it asone of the worst shmups I've ever played... The music is ok though.

Is there a better touhou shmup than this one?

kiwami shooting

[Chaos Phoenixma]

I haven't tried the full version of this, but it doesn't look bad outside of the stupid scoring system.

But for other good games in the series, check out Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Imperishable Night, Mountain of Faith, and Subterranean Animism. And I guess UFO is okay for it's Extra, but the main game is total suck.

And once I try the full version and figure stuff out in Spell Practice, you'll probably be able to ignore what I said about UFO being funner.

[ncp]

My first touhou game.. and it left a bad impression. The game is terrible to me, and I would consider it as one of the worst shmups I've ever played... The music is ok though.

Is there a better touhou shmup than this one?

Mountain of Faith or Perfect Cherry Blossom (there's no videos that make MOF look fun on youtube ! but it's the most fun in the series TRUST ME BRO)

[RNGmaster]

My first touhou game.. and it left a bad impression. The game is terrible to me, and I would consider it as one of the worst shmups I've ever played... The music is ok though.

Is there a better touhou shmup than this one?

Phantasmagoria of Flower View is a nice randomized dodge-em-up. It's especially fun with the Ultra patch.

[AimeeSH]

I haven't played though all of them yet but from the ones I have, would say I liked Shoot the Bullet and Double Spoiler the most out of them.

They play a bit difference to the other ones too.

[Naut]

My first touhou game.. and it left a bad impression. The game is terrible to me, and I would consider it as one of the worst shmups I've ever played... The music is ok though.

Is there a better touhou shmup than this one?

Phantasmagoria of Flower View is a nice randomized dodge-em-up.

Until you play against anybody competent, then you quickly realize the game has nothing to do with dodging.

;_;



I'll add Undefined Fantastic Object to the list of infinitely better Touhous than Ten Desires that you should play, DragonInstall. It's not for everybody, though. If you can't collect three slowly moving predictable objects in a row that stay on the screen for a good fifteen seconds after being spawned then you probably won't like it. It's a good game to get in to if you've already cleared one of the others. Mountain of Faith and Perfect Cherry Blossom are very easy and good for beginners. I find PCB dreadfully slow, but I hear many people enjoy it's relaxed pace. Imperishable Night is fun for a beginner too, since you can practice each individual attack and unlock some pretty fun ones later on. Lots of content in it.

[duckman]

My first touhou game.. and it left a bad impression. The game is terrible to me, and I would consider it as one of the worst shmups I've ever played... The music is ok though.

Is there a better touhou shmup than this one?

Perfect Cherry Blossom, Imperishable Night, and Undefined Fantastic Object are the best if you want a "traditional" shooter. Mountain of Faith isn't bad, but it's a disappointing simplification from IN's system. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Lotus Land Story and Mystic Square are okay, but the later games are much more complex (just like in every good game franchise). Skip Subterranean Animism, it sucks.
Shoot the Bullet and Double Spoiler are awesome as well.
Phantasmagoria of Flower View is a good spin on the Twinkle Star Sprites formula.

Also, could you please say what you found terrible about Ten Desires? Not that I disagree with your judgement — it's just that honest, intelligent criticism of the Touhou games is so hard to find, since the fanbase is a herd of retarded weeaboos.

[Zorator]

All I want to know is if there is some way to circumvent the auto-hyper feature in the full version, either as an option in the menus or a command you can do to release the hyper before getting hit(or even with fan patch if nothing else). Every time it came out when I played the demo, I was only hit by one odd bullet after the greater part of the wave, making the hyper useless in most cases. I guess it all depends on how you play but anyone who approaches the game like any other shooter and is halfway decent at shooters is likely to experience this as well.

As much as I think Touhou gets a bad rap around here, Crimzon Clover really raised the bar for doujins in this decade. You can't really expect a franchise like Touhou to make leaps and bounds considering it's mass appeal and it's more than decade-old gameplay style but even after I get the full version I'm still going to be playing CC more.

[Despatche]

Skip Subterranean Animism, it sucks.

Note: Doing this may or may not be the biggest mistake of your life.

[Aliquantic]

I think the correct answer to "what game is better than TD" is "all of them" sadly, at least for the Windows ones You won't necessarily like Touhou still mind, but you can't really go wrong with trying a couple of the mainline games (okay other than Touhou 9)... there's a fair amount of difference between them so opinions abound as you can see! Look at high-scoring replays too if you want to see how demanding those games can be, and why some of the best Japanese players can spend thousands of hours on them

The game just feels too straightforward and easy compared to previous games in the series (but ZUN did say it was his goal to be simpler), without really memorable attacks or anything, and the key scoring gimmick (hypers) leads to ten seconds of full invulnerability and doing... erh not much at all, it's risk-free points and a great way to avoid fighting bosses The difficulty feels pretty lacking too aside from pointblanking everything in sight, and TD simply doesn't work as well as Futari BL Original for score leeching madness.

And no, you cannot disable the autohyper on dying, but it might have been one of the better features of the game by encouraging people to suicide... it doesn't seem to be really working in its present incarnation though, and I imagine it can get a bit frustrating when you're not dying deliberately.

[Zorator]

Every time anybody wants to suggest the Touhou games they think are good and list the ones to avoid there is always going to be a bunch of other people with completely different opinions. Your best bet is just to pick up a few and see if they click*, if still none do then don't bother, they are mostly pretty similar. There is a few that deviate from the formula but I can't speak to those personally, and from what I gather folks have even more extreme opinions about those games.

*IMO you should always try Lunatic mode before you make up your mind about any particular game. In every Touhou I've played the hardest difficulty is always more interesting than Normal.

And unless it's a rank oriented game, I think suiciding on purpose is plain retarded. Sure, I could learn the best parts of the stage to suicide and activate the hyper to use it more efficiently, or I could just go play Crimzon Clover and have much more fun without the moronic mechanic.