I have never played a Touhou...

[-Bridget-]

I kinda get the impression that playing games like DOJ or Ketsui for score is hard without having to make everything slow for it to work.

Because their scoring systems isn't based around interaction with bullets. I thought the connection was pretty simple. Now I urge you to look at Psyvariar series' and Shikigami no Shiro series' bullet speed, and let's try it again. I guess while at it I could also mention a SnS II superplay by SWY, where he sits at the top of the screen barely moving an inch from one spot...

Mountain of Faith is so far the only Touhou game without any obvious interaction with bullets, with Ten Desires coming pretty close. Their bullet speed on Lunatic is quite comparable with arcade games. UFO has that kind of speed regardless, and is nails-hard to play for score on Hard and Lunatic as a result. It's probably the most hardcore Touhou game so far.

Someone else, on the first page, had said that the games overall were "slow" as well, and... I know exactly what he meant, but perhaps "slow" isnt the right word for it.

It really doesnt have anything to do with the bullet speed. Plenty of shmups by Cave or any other danmaku developer will often use quite slow bullet speeds. Yet the GAMES manage to often be fast paced and loopy. This is not an effect I've ever seen with a Touhou game.

I barely consider them shmups anymore, since it's all about "spellcards" and just moving your hitbox one pixel at a time.

That's definitely a part of it, but not all of it. The "one pixel at a time" bit certainly really, really doesnt help (and is an aspect of the entire SERIES, no less), and drastically slows down the overall "feel" of the gameplay.... as if it wasnt pretty slow to begin with.

Let's look at what we have here.

These are games with boss fights that are longer than the stages. The actual stages feel like they're just shoehorned in because players expect stages; they dont feel like they're in there as a part of the actual design. The boss fights take FOREVER. They're ALL fights against some tiny little sprite with WAY too much health that you spend much of the time not actually hitting, because it's so small. The game ends up being more about the "spellcards" as mentioned above, evidenced by the fact that each individual bullet pattern takes WAY TOO LONG. The fact that many of these bullet patterns, even on the hardest difficulties, are.... well, kinda easy, isnt helping. The fact that, for some patterns (and this is something alot of people seem to notice about this series) that you only have to move a couple of pixels every now and then to avoid it.... that doesnt help. WHILE the pattern takes a billionty years, no less.

Yes, I know there's patterns like that in other danmakus as well. But they seem to be WAY more common in Touhou games than anywhere else (and more DIFFICULT in non-touhou games).

All in all, the "pacing" of the games really DOES seem.... well, slow. That, again, may not be the exactly correct word here, but it's the most fitting one I could think of.

[KennyMan666]

And therein lies the reason that I put the Touhou games next to Cave's shmup library on the throne: I play shmups for the bullet patterns. Big, colourful, awesome bullet patterns (Cave gets bonus points for managing "colourful" even when all the bullets have the same colour) is all I really want. This is why I don't like Psikyo much. And why Battle Garegga's invisible bullets bother me in more ways than one. And why I consider a lot of old shmups to be utter crap.

[-Bridget-]

And therein lies the reason that I put the Touhou games next to Cave's shmup library on the throne: I play shmups for the bullet patterns. Big, colourful, awesome bullet patterns (Cave gets bonus points for managing "colourful" even when all the bullets have the same colour) is all I really want. This is why I don't like Psikyo much. And why Battle Garegga's invisible bullets bother me in more ways than one. And why I consider a lot of old shmups to be utter crap.

I can understand that (though I do like Psikyo and such myself).


I still dont think much of Touhou's patterns, though. But I do know what you mean.

[moozooh]

The "one pixel at a time" bit certainly really, really doesnt help (and is an aspect of the entire SERIES, no less), and drastically slows down the overall "feel" of the gameplay.... as if it wasnt pretty slow to begin with.

To be fair, the only times you would do that during aggressive scoreplay is boss milking — and make no mistake, barring several specific cases this is not the case of just tapping one direction to move completely out of the harm's way (something that can be seen in some Cave patterns as well, by the way). The rest usually involves camping around the upper third of the screen to take advantage of the item autocollection, strategic dying and bombing (so much that several Touhou games play very similar to Yagawa classics because of it), getting into the "eye of the storm" of patterns to reap graze points, and so on.

If you're talking about simply dodging an enemy attack by moving a hitbox's worth of distance away, well, that's hardly new. I remember doing that blindly in Thunder Dragon 2 because I couldn't see bullets behind my shot cone, and hey, it worked just as well. But in that game it didn't get in the way of scoring, while it most usually does in Touhou games.

They're ALL fights against some tiny little sprite with WAY too much health that you spend much of the time not actually hitting, because it's so small.

Huh? The boss would usually move in front of you most of the time unless she is fixed to moving in a fixed pattern or sitting in one spot. This is probably the first time I see this come up as a part of critique. Have you got the same problem with Gradius games as well? The bosses are pretty large there, but their vulnerable spots are indeed very small, and often conveniently blocked by appendages, other obstacles, and whatnot.

The game ends up being more about the "spellcards" as mentioned above, evidenced by the fact that each individual bullet pattern takes WAY TOO LONG.

I do admit that having a strict order of attacks looped unto itself and separated from each other is not as interesting as rotating or shuffling them, but each of them taking too long is, again, only something that happens in two cases: 1) you're milking it, 2) you flat-out suck at it. That simple.

I know you like many oldschool games, it shouldn't be a surprise to you that a great damn lot of them has abundant milking, in some cases without so much as timing out. Battle Garegga, a top shmup of the last two top-25s, has it in abundance, and it's not always the most exciting thing both to do and to see (cue Junky Monkey). Other Yagawa games are not particularly different in the boss fight length department, which somehow doesn't detract much from them in the eyes of the audience. Probably because it's not a big deal if you like the game, and at the same time it appears as an exaggerated eyesore if you don't like it in the first place. It's like when you get tired of your marriage you return home after a long day and start getting irritated by the most negligible, mundane things.

The fact that many of these bullet patterns, even on the hardest difficulties, are.... well, kinda easy, isnt helping. The fact that, for some patterns (and this is something alot of people seem to notice about this series) that you only have to move a couple of pixels every now and then to avoid it.... that doesnt help. WHILE the pattern takes a billionty years, no less.

Rehashing the same tired arguments. The bullet patterns that are easy in survival become progressively harder in scoring. Patterns that can be escaped by moving away a couple of pixels at a time are not prevalent and become even less prevalent if you're aiming for a high score. The patterns take at most 1.5 minutes each (because that's how long the longest timers are, the normal length is 30-60 seconds), and you're only going to sit that out of your own accord, otherwise they go down in as little as 10-20 seconds depending on the character.

You were praising my previous post, but it doesn't seem like you even read into it, because you're ignoring the same premises that I was using and stressing there, here. It's like the existence of that post itself mattered more than the content. I have stated and will state it again that difficulty and length in Touhou games (as well as many other games to a different extent) are voluntary, they aren't enforced as strongly as in Futari Ultra or something, but dismissing the games because you aren't playing them as intended makes for a shoddy argument.

Also, "outgrowing" is a yet another snobbish term typical of Western gamers predominantly, because Asian players I know have been playing Touhou games and arcade games/ports in parallel. Said GFA2-ISO has competed in Perfect Cherry Blossom for years, unlike the arcade releases he submitted scores for. That quite clearly indicates that even after all these years, and having played so many high quality arcade releases, he still considers these games worth his time.

[Funen1]

Mountain of Faith is so far the only Touhou game without any obvious interaction with bullets, with Ten Desires coming pretty close.

Well, we only know the first three stages for Ten Desires, where there are enough resources to use by the end of said third stage where grazing is simply overshadowed. While nothing is certain until the full game is released, I'm kinda hoping that strategic use of bombs and hypers gets spread out a bit more, giving what will probably still be a small handful of useful grazing spots a bit more prominence (Stage 2, for instance, gives ~3000 graze before the stage title even comes up). There's also the Extra Stage to consider, which we all know is much shorter than the main game and where any chance to increase the base Point value will be more important.

[-Bridget-]

The "one pixel at a time" bit certainly really, really doesnt help (and is an aspect of the entire SERIES, no less), and drastically slows down the overall "feel" of the gameplay.... as if it wasnt pretty slow to begin with.

To be fair, the only times you would do that during aggressive scoreplay is boss milking — and make no mistake, barring several specific cases this is not the case of just tapping one direction to move completely out of the harm's way (something that can be seen in some Cave patterns as well, by the way). The rest usually involves camping around the upper third of the screen to take advantage of the item autocollection, strategic dying and bombing (so much that several Touhou games play very similar to Yagawa classics because of it), getting into the "eye of the storm" of patterns to reap graze points, and so on.

If you're talking about simply dodging an enemy attack by moving a hitbox's worth of distance away, well, that's hardly new. I remember doing that blindly in Thunder Dragon 2 because I couldn't see bullets behind my shot cone, and hey, it worked just as well. But in that game it didn't get in the way of scoring, while it most usually does in Touhou games.

They're ALL fights against some tiny little sprite with WAY too much health that you spend much of the time not actually hitting, because it's so small.

Huh? The boss would usually move in front of you most of the time unless she is fixed to moving in a fixed pattern or sitting in one spot. This is probably the first time I see this come up as a part of critique. Have you got the same problem with Gradius games as well? The bosses are pretty large there, but their vulnerable spots are indeed very small, and often conveniently blocked by appendages, other obstacles, and whatnot.

The game ends up being more about the "spellcards" as mentioned above, evidenced by the fact that each individual bullet pattern takes WAY TOO LONG.

I do admit that having a strict order of attacks looped unto itself and separated from each other is not as interesting as rotating or shuffling them, but each of them taking too long is, again, only something that happens in two cases: 1) you're milking it, 2) you flat-out suck at it. That simple.

I know you like many oldschool games, it shouldn't be a surprise to you that a great damn lot of them has abundant milking, in some cases without so much as timing out. Battle Garegga, a top shmup of the last two top-25s, has it in abundance, and it's not always the most exciting thing both to do and to see (cue Junky Monkey). Other Yagawa games are not particularly different in the boss fight length department, which somehow doesn't detract much from them in the eyes of the audience. Probably because it's not a big deal if you like the game, and at the same time it appears as an exaggerated eyesore if you don't like it in the first place. It's like when you get tired of your marriage you return home after a long day and start getting irritated by the most negligible, mundane things.

The fact that many of these bullet patterns, even on the hardest difficulties, are.... well, kinda easy, isnt helping. The fact that, for some patterns (and this is something alot of people seem to notice about this series) that you only have to move a couple of pixels every now and then to avoid it.... that doesnt help. WHILE the pattern takes a billionty years, no less.

Rehashing the same tired arguments. The bullet patterns that are easy in survival become progressively harder in scoring. Patterns that can be escaped by moving away a couple of pixels at a time are not prevalent and become even less prevalent if you're aiming for a high score. The patterns take at most 1.5 minutes each (because that's how long the longest timers are, the normal length is 30-60 seconds), and you're only going to sit that out of your own accord, otherwise they go down in as little as 10-20 seconds depending on the character.

You were praising my previous post, but it doesn't seem like you even read into it, because you're ignoring the same premises that I was using and stressing there, here. It's like the existence of that post itself mattered more than the content. I have stated and will state it again that difficulty and length in Touhou games (as well as many other games to a different extent) are voluntary, they aren't enforced as strongly as in Futari Ultra or something, but dismissing the games because you aren't playing them as intended makes for a shoddy argument.

Also, "outgrowing" is a yet another snobbish term typical of Western gamers predominantly, because Asian players I know have been playing Touhou games and arcade games/ports in parallel. Said GFA2-ISO has competed in Perfect Cherry Blossom for years, unlike the arcade releases he submitted scores for. That quite clearly indicates that even after all these years, and having played so many high quality arcade releases, he still considers these games worth his time.

Haha.

I probably shouldnt have MADE that last post, when I think about it. That last post of mine came A: right after I woke up, and B: was made without caffiene (total caffiene addict. No caffiene and being half-asleep makes for HULK SMAAAASH).

Anyway, do forgive some of my phrasing there.

Like I said, I dont honestly think that the Touhou games are BAD, or anything. My previous post was me attempting to explain the concept of the games being a bit "slow", in terms of pacing. That's all. And then I think I went off on a tangent, like I do.

Also, since the scoring systems in the Touhou series simply serve to give me headaches, I've never bothered playing them for score (thus, yes, why I find them easy), so I cant really entirely judge the gameplay by how it's done when played for score. I have to judge them from a pure design standpoint (which is what I'm trying to do).

I mean, I understand the difficulty is voluntary. But still, in my mind, that doesnt really excuse the often boring attack patterns, lack of stage design, and stuff like that... that's why I tend to find the games as being "meh" instead of good. I prefer playing for score in any shmup, usually.... but there ARE still shmups that I think can stand on their own WITHOUT needing to be played for score (like the original Mushi. To this day, I *still* dont have the foggiest clue how that game's scoring works).


As for the aspect of "milking", since you'd mentioned that..... ooh, I've always HATED the concept of milking. A shmup that requires it, for scoring well, is often (no, ALWAYS) a shmup I pretty much wont even bother to play. I have no real patience for.... well, much of anything, so MILKING a boss, which makes it take infinitely longer is.... yeah. No. Just no. Not happening, not from me anyway.

This being said, I dont mind a long boss fight.... so long as it's done well, and.... yeah, I guess I just never found the bosses in Touhou to be whatsoever interesting. I couldnt care less about the characters, so that aspect sure as heck doesnt hold me, and I find the attack patterns uninteresting.... combine with the fact that the fights are long, and... yeah. Not my thing.


As for the bosses being tiny.... that's more a personal preference than anything. It always strikes me that a "boss" in a shmup should usually be something enormous, because..... it's a boss. When it's some little girl, I rather feel like a doof when fighting it. I dont even know what a "doof" is, but that word works as well as any. The games being a little easy for me.... in terms of survival difficulty.... I dont actually have much TROUBLE damaging the girls, but it still seems like they have WAY too much health.

This is probably the first time I see this come up as a part of critique. Have you got the same problem with Gradius games as well? The bosses are pretty large there, but their vulnerable spots are indeed very small, and often conveniently blocked by appendages, other obstacles, and whatnot.

This part brings up an interesting point. And a bizarre one. If I'm playing something like Gradius, I've always had the habit of, instead of trying to hang back and aim carefully, well, I'll instead press the ship up against the weak point and just rapid-fire it to death (unless of course the boss is like, dancing around way too fast or something like that). Point-blanking, essentially.... something I have a (sometimes bad) habit of doing in, well, pretty much every shmup, including danmaku types. I tend to be very aggressive overall in gaming, and that's how it manifests in shmups.

But come to think of it.... on the off-chance that I'm messing around with a Touhou game, it WILL NOT OCCUR TO ME TO DO THIS. It just wont. Why? ..... I havent the foggiest idea. But me trying to hang back and fire instead of doing what I usually do probably amounts, at least somewhat, to the healthbars taking longer than they should to go down. Hm, interesting.



Anyway, hopefully this post made SOME sense at least, cause I'm not entirely sure it did, lol. I'm more awake at this point, but still havent had caffiene (so I'm at "Hulk.... smash?" instead of "HULK SMAAASH"). But I apologize if any of my phrasing earlier (or now) sounded kinda snotty. It really wasnt meant as such.

[Bananamatic]

disclaimer: this is not trolling, rather an actual opinion

I would bother with scoring in touhou if it didn't suck so hard - fyi 99% of touhou players don't bother with it either

Actually I bothered once and that was UFO extra which was simple enough - grab all blues and don't fail a single spellcard and got a decent score after a day or two

It's stupidly overcomplicated and milk based with all that supergrazing, form switching, focused/unfocused border grazing and whatnot when it's already tedious enough to play the games without scoring

Touhou games are horribly paced because they are games built around the music, not the other way around.
The games have too many pauses - most stages have only 1 or 2 difficult spots and several seconds between enemy waves, pretty much static backgrounds where you can't feel the movement, dialogues, spellcard intros, attacks sometimes being 2/3 buildup and 1/3 actual dodging, etc. combined with the slow and generally unfitting music.

Now look at DOJ for the best example - actual backgrounds where you are constantly moving forward, enemies constantly coming in shooting functional bullet patterns instead of pretty ones, the entire stage being equally difficult with usually one really hard spot and at the end waits a 30-60 seconds long boss fight after being given no more than 5 seconds to take it easy - and after that you get thrown into another fast paced stage after a brief result screen.

it's like comparing an opera to a rollercoaster ride - or rather, it's a very un-arcade game in a fast paced arcade genre

[moozooh]

but there ARE still shmups that I think can stand on their own WITHOUT needing to be played for score (like the original Mushi. To this day, I *still* dont have the foggiest clue how that game's scoring works).

Haha, yeah, I have to agree about Mushi here: it's probably better off not played for score. It doesn't change much in the Original mode since it's 80% "don't die or bomb" for massive endgame bonus (and at least 10% "milk flowers in stage 2") anyway, but scoring in Maniac and Ultra is such a wild mix of chaining, point-blanking, and Guitar Hero, I still haven't found the underlying logic exactly explaining the principles and action sequences leading to score increases. It's all Greek to me.

As for the aspect of "milking", since you'd mentioned that..... ooh, I've always HATED the concept of milking. A shmup that requires it, for scoring well, is often (no, ALWAYS) a shmup I pretty much wont even bother to play. I have no real patience for.... well, much of anything, so MILKING a boss, which makes it take infinitely longer is.... yeah. No. Just no. Not happening, not from me anyway.

Understandable. To each their own. For the record, I'm not fond of it either; that's probably why I always found Mountain of Faith more convenient to play, even though I never liked its scoring system, while at the same time being completely fascinated by Perfect Cherry Blossom's elaborate "Armed Police Psyvariar" approach — which I still regard as one of the best and deepest complex scoring systems to date, further emphasized by the amount of strategic discoveries made every year without failure, even though the game is 8 years old and the single most important scoring contribution to it was made within a year of its release (GIL's 2.5 billion Lunatic replay that was the first to extensively adopt the constant bombing/suiciding). It's very unintuitive and an acquired taste, though.

As for the bosses being tiny.... that's more a personal preference than anything. It always strikes me that a "boss" in a shmup should usually be something enormous, because..... it's a boss. When it's some little girl, I rather feel like a doof when fighting it. I dont even know what a "doof" is, but that word works as well as any.

I fully agree with you, and ZUN has kind fallen a victim to his own setting here. However, he wasn't the first to do so, as some of the shmups featuring human-sized bosses have made the same mistake in the past, although it should be noted that Cave was quick to remedy it with "hitbox enhancers" such as the wings of Esp series' bosses. ZUN, on the other hand, has only done it a couple times, and with final bosses exclusively, unless I'm missing something, and the notion of size in his enemy design is grossly undervalued on the whole. Having only two basic sizes of enemies, with both of them being roughly comparable to the protagonist, has not been proper shmup design ever since we had a glimpse at the 16-bit era.

But I apologize if any of my phrasing earlier (or now) sounded kinda snotty. It really wasnt meant as such.

It's ok, apology accepted. :)

[Despatche]

but there ARE still shmups that I think can stand on their own WITHOUT needing to be played for score

and that's fine, as long as you can acknowledge that you're not really playing "the game", but only a part of it. i know this sounds snobbish, but there's no helping it; scoring would usually be an integral part of the game rules. even older games still operated on "shoot them all!" if nothing else.

[-Bridget-]

but there ARE still shmups that I think can stand on their own WITHOUT needing to be played for score

and that's fine, as long as you can acknowledge that you're not really playing "the game", but only a part of it. i know this sounds snobbish, but there's no helping it; scoring would usually be an integral part of the game rules. even older games still operated on "shoot them all!" if nothing else.

Oh yes, I can understand that. Most of the time, I *only* play for score, myself... if the scoring system in a shmup annoys me (DOJ!) I usually will ignore the game entirely. Usually.

Even so, I think that a well-designed shmup DOES stand on it's own without scoring, for many players. (usually. Some shmups are very clearly score-based right from the start, like Akai Katana)

It also serves to bring in more players.... I know a couple of people that are into the genre, but dont really play for score (they think they dont have the skill, basically). But they enjoy the stage design or bosses or patterns or whatever.... the non-score aspects of some shmups will still be enough to hold their attention, and keep them practicing at it. They wont touch the purely-score-based ones like Akai, though.

Giga Wing was like that for me, when I started with the genre. Even without playing for score, that was still a darned good game; and working towards a 1cc was a fine goal. Much later on, I'd get into playing these for score, but at the time, that really worked out well, and is one of the things that causes Giga Wing to remain as one of my favorite shmups.


I've forgotten where else I was going with this.

[Zengeku3]

Mountain of Faith is so far the only Touhou game without any obvious interaction with bullets, with Ten Desires coming pretty close. Their bullet speed on Lunatic is quite comparable with arcade games. UFO has that kind of speed regardless, and is nails-hard to play for score on Hard and Lunatic as a result. It's probably the most hardcore Touhou game so far.

We cannot say anything for sure about Ten Desires yet. I haven't seen what the later stages has to offer since the game isn't done yet. However, as of yet, we haven't really seen any fast bullets outside of boss fights.

EDIT: And according to most demo replays, the bosses will be outright skipped by trances and bombs to milk them for spirits. This is something I hope to see changed a bit in the full version so its either harder to build up a trance so you will need to use them on stuff with a lot of health instead of just on everything or maybe remove your ability to release spirits from bosses while you are bombing.

EDIT 2: Oh and I think I forgot to add this (3AM, tired and too lazy to go look). Voted the Hell yar! option since those maidens and that witch indeed are quite hawt.

[MasterCProgram]

I personally enjoy a bit of Touhou, though played mostly mid-series titles (From Scarlet Devil to Imperishable Night) and kind of got distracted over time by other, better shmups. One thing's for sure, though, they're good enough practice for the others.

As far as the music and art style goes, I don't really pay attention to those things as more than half the time I'm staring at bullets and my hitbox. Not to get off-topic, but I'd take a more hand drawn or 'flat' approach to shmup art style than the pre-rendered 3D junk that's in a lot of games, but that's just me, maybe. And the scoring is interesting, I like grazing mechanics, but I wasn't really playing for score when I tried them out, so I don't remember noticing.

Personally, I have no idea why people are so love/hate with this series. I wouldn't count it in my top 10, but it's not horrible either. If a few Touhou were ever ported to XBLA, I'd probably buy one.

[Naglfar]

Eh, it's definitely very different to most shmups. Whether or not you like it hinges on your level of interest in the setting and characters, which leads to the slightly cinematic pace. It's not really bad, some people like that. I can appreciate it. You can't say there's a "wrong" way to make a shmup just because of what the standards are.

protip: if patterns take too long, stop moving one pixel at a time and try moving beneath the boss

[shadowbringer]

- most patterns iirc last for two or 3 waves per spellcard (less if you're using a narrow-shot types and can consistently land shots)
- TD is different from the other Touhou games in that there are more openings for getting near enemies and bosses (so you can shotgun them for extra spirits/hyper). Maybe we'll see more hypers being used for resources (lives/bombs) or score (life/bomb shards are worth 2x when collected during hypers), depending on the player's choice to play for survival or for score (though there's also the option to not use hypers for getting lives/bombs but then using as additional bombs for bosses instead).
- I'm not sure if I would like graze to affect hyper meter, but could encourage and reward some risk for such a reward.

[Voxbox]

Personally, I have no idea why people are so love/hate with this series. I wouldn't count it in my top 10, but it's not horrible either.

Likely because the game is so extremely fringe. It will hit some people right on the spot, while some people will not get it at all.
And people will always hate on popular things they don't like just to be a counterweight.

Oh, and all that loli-porn doesn't help either.

[Naglfar]

Oh, and all that loli-porn doesn't help either.

I know, bored Japanese people who draw porn in their spare time just ruin games for me.

Now excuse me, I'll go play a round of Star Fox.

[RNGmaster]

I would bother with scoring in touhou if it didn't suck so hard - fyi 99% of touhou players don't bother with it either

Actually I bothered once and that was UFO extra which was simple enough - grab all blues and don't fail a single spellcard and got a decent score after a day or two

It's stupidly overcomplicated and milk based with all that supergrazing, form switching, focused/unfocused border grazing and whatnot when it's already tedious enough to play the games without scoring

Touhou games are horribly paced because they are games built around the music, not the other way around.
The games have too many pauses - most stages have only 1 or 2 difficult spots and several seconds between enemy waves, pretty much static backgrounds where you can't feel the movement, dialogues, spellcard intros, attacks sometimes being 2/3 buildup and 1/3 actual dodging, etc. combined with the slow and generally unfitting music.

Now look at DOJ for the best example - actual backgrounds where you are constantly moving forward, enemies constantly coming in shooting functional bullet patterns instead of pretty ones, the entire stage being equally difficult with usually one really hard spot and at the end waits a 30-60 seconds long boss fight after being given no more than 5 seconds to take it easy - and after that you get thrown into another fast paced stage after a brief result screen.

it's like comparing an opera to a rollercoaster ride - or rather, it's a very un-arcade game in a fast paced arcade genre

I endorse this post.

[Zengeku3]

@Everyone who haven't tried Touhou because of lame stages: Double Spoiler and Shoot the Bullet has nothing to do with the mainstream series. They are way more awesome. No boring stages and fun patterns. There just isn't much to do once you've beaten everything there is.

I endorse this post.

Yeah, me too except for the part about boss fights. I enjoy a long boss fight (granted the boss actually does something) and the spell system.

[Bananamatic]

long boss fights are fine if they aren't chopped apart into 30 second sections

[hwl]

The games are ugly, have no level design whatsoever, the music is bland, they're below average indie games. I find it puzzeling that this shit is drawing so much attention.

[Zengeku3]

long boss fights are fine if they aren't chopped apart into 30 second sections

It doesn't matter that they are split into sections. As long as the attacks are entertaining and/or challenging.
Most bosses in DOJ, DDP and Ketsui are the same way just with a smaller health bar which actually make you able to trivialize a difficult pattern with a bomb. In Touhou you'll just have to endure the same pattern for a longer time but it usually doesn't even take 30 seconds to do.

Now about the challenge, there might be only a few bosses that are difficult to flawlessly perfect in Touhou but they are difficult and rewarding to fight against for as long as your stamina can take the stages.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

The way I think about Touhou is kinda how I think about Jamestown, they do things differently to what most ppl think is standard STG design (Touhou: short stages boardering on a boss rush, JT, 4 player widescreen co-op) but that doesnt make it a bad game per-se, just a different game which is there as a side dish to our standard shmups. If think we have to careful when labelling one game design as bad and another as good, ofc theres nothing wrong with standards, but some game design rules can be broken. Overwise we run the risk of sounding just like everyother modern gamer who thinks that all retro games are bad because they have bad game design in them.

It just depends on the gamer, some ppl can ignore a games bad and still enjoy the good. Other gamers have higher standards and will only play games if it ticks all the boxes

Hmmm im constantly suprising myself that im defending Touhou like this, I keep having to hold down the urge to bad mouth it or troll a touhou fan. LOLI SUX! TOUHOU FANS CAN GO EAT A BAG OF DICKS! (sigh) thats better

[Voxbox]

Oh, and all that loli-porn doesn't help either.

I know, bored Japanese people who draw porn in their spare time just ruin games for me.

Now excuse me, I'll go play a round of Star Fox.

*Realizes rule 34 for Star Fox*

[Zengeku3]

*Realizes rule 34 for Star Fox*

Well at least rule 34 is more appropriate for Touhou.

[xbl0x180]

Nope. I've seen screen caps and videos of this game after someone else recommended it to me. The gameplay may be frantic and great, but the cartoon drawings look ugly - like some cheap North American doujin knock-off. If they're gonna have animu girls on these things, they should invest a little more time designing something which is aesthetically pleasing to look at.

[duckman]

The games have too many pauses - most stages have only 1 or 2 difficult spots and several seconds between enemy waves, pretty much static backgrounds where you can't feel the movement, dialogues, spellcard intros, attacks sometimes being 2/3 buildup and 1/3 actual dodging, etc. combined with the slow and generally unfitting music.

Now look at DOJ for the best example - actual backgrounds where you are constantly moving forward, enemies constantly coming in shooting functional bullet patterns instead of pretty ones, the entire stage being equally difficult with usually one really hard spot and at the end waits a 30-60 seconds long boss fight after being given no more than 5 seconds to take it easy - and after that you get thrown into another fast paced stage after a brief result screen.

it's like comparing an opera to a rollercoaster ride - or rather, it's a very un-arcade game in a fast paced arcade genre

Every point you just made about Touhou could be applied, word for word, to Shikigami no Shiro as well. (Am I the only person here who sees the similarity between SnS and Touhou? Hell, the first time I saw Imperishable Night my first thought was, "Hey, this is like that Mobile Light Force 2 game I once saw on X-Play.")

[AliceMargatroid]

Nope. I've seen screen caps and videos of this game after someone else recommended it to me. The gameplay may be frantic and great, but the cartoon drawings look ugly - like some cheap North American doujin knock-off. If they're gonna have animu girls on these things, they should invest a little more time designing something which is aesthetically pleasing to look at.

they should invest a little more time

It's "HE" not "THEY".
And he will NEVER learn to draw the characters.

IIRC this tutorial was made before the actual character was introduced.

[RNGmaster]

Every point you just made about Touhou could be applied, word for word, to Shikigami no Shiro as well. (Am I the only person here who sees the similarity between SnS and Touhou? Hell, the first time I saw Imperishable Night my first thought was, "Hey, this is like that Mobile Light Force 2 game I once saw on X-Play.")

SnS has walls and an interesting scoring system.

[Despatche]

High Tension Max can go eat a bucket of DDP laser dicks, as it should be doing.

[Zengeku3]

Nope. I've seen screen caps and videos of this game after someone else recommended it to me. The gameplay may be frantic and great, but the cartoon drawings look ugly - like some cheap North American doujin knock-off. If they're gonna have animu girls on these things, they should invest a little more time designing something which is aesthetically pleasing to look at.

No reason to bother. Everytime a cutscene pops up you'll just be holding ctrl anyway.