I have never played a Touhou...

[xbl0x180]

I don't even know what "hold [ctrl]" means, but it'd look way better without the drawings. Coincidentally, it wouldn't matter anyway since I don't play pc games.

[Zengeku3]

The ctrl button skips cutscenes. Its basically the "shut up loli - you have nothing to say anyway" button.
I don't really look at the art all that much except for when the bosses deploy their spellcards. I don't really mind their presence. After years of extensive playing you become immune to the art and most people are so lovesick with the games that they don't realize the art is bad until they are ready to ignore it completely. That was the case with me anyway.

Another thing about the art is a huge level of inconsistency. Sometimes he enlists other people to help him out, something he should be doing all the time, and other times he just draws worse than normal, most recent in the Ten Desires demo.

To be fair though, he did do some pretty good art for UFO and IN. Other than those though, we're looking at sterilized failure in the art department.

[xbl0x180]

The ctrl button skips cutscenes. Its basically the "shut up loli - you have nothing to say anyway" button.
I don't really look at the art all that much except for when the bosses deploy their spellcards. I don't really mind their presence. After years of extensive playing you become immune to the art and most people are so lovesick with the games that they don't realize the art is bad until they are ready to ignore it completely. That was the case with me anyway.

Another thing about the art is a huge level of inconsistency. Sometimes he enlists other people to help him out, something he should be doing all the time, and other times he just draws worse than normal, most recent in the Ten Desires demo.

To be fair though, he did do some pretty good art for UFO and IN. Other than those though, we're looking at sterilized failure in the art department.

If he employed help from Urushihara Satoshi or Utatane Hiroyuki (I think both still do the occasional/raer doujin), I'd be sold on getting those games

[duckman]

Zun's character art is bad, but his graphics effects are really good and his danmaku patterns are beautiful.

[RNGmaster]

graphics effects are really good
graphic effects

What the sweet fuck are you on? Do you mean his backgrounds? Jamestown and ESP RaDe have far better sprite-art than ZUN (they were also done by small teams) and his rendered backgrounds are almost all shabby except for IN Stage 5 and UFO stage 6.

I get that the patterns are beautiful, but that also doesn't mean anything since their beauty makes them static, slow, and easy to dodge.

[Age of Kings]

Zun's character art is bad, but his graphics effects are really good and his danmaku patterns are beautiful.

I actually find it both hilarious and pathetic that some people actually say one of the reasons they get into Touhou is because the character art is so terrible that they're encouraged to make beautiful fanart to make up for it. I've seen it in every "why people like Touhou" threads on different sites. Getting into something because the quality of the source material is shitty is one of the worst reasons I've ever heard for liking something. Hence why I find some of the doujin circles pathetic because instead of using their talents to make beautiful original work, they're improving on shitty lolicon. I understand making fanart to glorify something you like, but come on. (also applies to music, fangames, etc)

EDIT;; This is an actual quote from a thread in a Touhou forum on the matter:

Touhou is awesome cause it sucks. The mundane stories, the awful ZUNart, the beautiful melodies ruined by ZUN's obsessive use of chirpy MIDI trumpets, etc.

The defining characteristic of Touhou is not the games, but the fanbase making stuff far superior to the games.

[xbl0x180]

Oh, man. I feel BRUNED from reading the above post because I collect videos and I especially love the cheep b-movies because of their... badness (this would also include bad animation/cartoons)

[Naglfar]

I get that the patterns are beautiful, but that also doesn't mean anything since their beauty makes them static, slow, and easy to dodge.

I love how people here like trying to negate Touhou's merits, or establish what's objectively good and bad to have in a shmup because they've been playing them for years and their skill level is more suited to much harder games that have few comparison points to Touhou anyway.

[Zengeku3]

I get that the patterns are beautiful, but that also doesn't mean anything since their beauty makes them static, slow, and easy to dodge.

You ever play LFO, VoWG, PWG or Greatest Treasure?

I love how people here like trying to negate Touhou's merits, or establish what's objectively good and bad to have in a shmup because they've been playing them for years and their skill level is more suited to much harder games that have few comparison points to Touhou anyway.

There is no need to look at a game's merits if its gameplay is lacking. Its a shooting game. Its all about the gameplay. Who cares what the heck else it can do?

[JoshF]

There are a hundred danmaku games with good patterns and scoring, and most of them have more advanced graphic effects like backgrounds that aren't just screensavers that make a Triangle Service game look compelling in comparison.

Its all about the gameplay.

You should send an e-mail to Zun telling him that for his next game he shouldn't bother placing graphics over the hitboxes and leave them as plain white boxes since it's all the the gameplay. It could give him some time to take drawing lessons.

[Despatche]

Oh dear, you too. Well, maybe this thread will go somewhere.

[Naglfar]

There is no need to look at a game's merits if its gameplay is lacking. Its a shooting game. Its all about the gameplay. Who cares what the heck else it can do?

It's hard to come up with something to say to a post that disputes and yet illustrates my point at the same time. Not getting into an internet argument though, because those are 90% each side misinterpreting the other.

[Zengeku3]

You should send an e-mail to Zun telling him that for his next game he shouldn't bother placing graphics over the hitboxes and leave them as plain white boxes since it's all the the gameplay. It could give him some time to take drawing lessons.

I have no notable concern with the games graphics as they are now. If I was sending an email, it would be with request to fill up all those deadzones where nothing is going on and making the first three stages in a game actually capable of something. Something that isn't just easily memorizable stuff with no elements of randomness to it.

[Illyrian]

Holy crap at this thread.

So no-one else here just played touhou cause they were easy games to play when they were introduced to the genre like me?

No-one else is just rather ambivilant about the art and character design?

I fail to see why everyone has to be totally on one side of the fence or the other, I mean jeez I like them but that doesn't mean I'm in love with them, and I can't honestly say I care one way or another about the art.

Also, if you're gonna try and say they aren't intense at times really that's just factually incorrect.

I agree with the last poster about the first 3 stages though. Mostly they're kinda dumb.

[Bananamatic]

I played touhou because I wasn't even aware of what a "shmup" is back then

[Funen1]

So no-one else here just played touhou cause they were easy games to play when they were introduced to the genre like me?

Well when you're just introduced to the genre, "easy" and "hard" are all relative. It's not like you can, say, 1cc SA Lunatic within your first month of playing shooting games, unless you're a prodigy or something.

No-one else is just rather ambivilant about the art and character design?

Here?

Look, it's pretty obvious ZUN's not the best artist out there. At the same time, I think his style has its own little charm to it. I don't pay that much heed to the art when actually playing, but a part of me is willing to let it slide.

Also, if you're gonna try and say they aren't intense at times really that's just factually incorrect.

This. Even disregarding when you're playing for score, plenty of attacks require quick thinking. You know all those slow, random, but really dense attacks you see? You have to be constantly analyzing everything going on in order to consistently (I stress "consistently") find a way through them without dying or bombing.

[Bananamatic]

except you don't really have to dodge them because you have fifty lives

SA lunatic in a month should be possible as you can just bomb most of the game with reimuC anyways

[Funen1]

A person "just getting into shooting games" probably wouldn't understand how to space bombs correctly in SA. And by staying at low Power, said person won't be able to flat out kill anything (not that ReimuC's shot is very good at killing things anyway :V) and thus keep the difficult attacks going much longer than needed.

[STGnoob]

Hi! Low skilled player reporting in here, so apply salt liberally.

I can definitely confirm what funen says... I've been playing shmups for a while now, pretty casually so I'm not very good. I've been playing for a lot more than one month though and I would have some difficulty bombing my way to victory in SA normal, much less SA lunatic. I think maybe some of you have been playing for too long to remember just how difficult these games can be for the novice I also feel that touhou has an altogether different kind of difficulty than most STGs. I'm not going to say it's harder, because it's not. But it's hard in different ways. For example, touhou is a very good game for learning how to tap accurately, because all the patterns are so dense and tight. For an expert player sure, this isn't that difficult. But as a novice, this is very challenging. An example for me would be IN stage 3 with marisa. There's nothing she has that I can dodge consistently, and I typically blow 2 lives worth of bombs on her in *normal* difficulty. Most STGs just aren't made the same way touhou is. The challenges are just different. Faster bullets, more enemies or what have you.

Here's a fun list of some of the games I've played and how far I've gotten in them:
Touhou: IN - easy 1cc, normal stage 6, lunatic stage 3
Touhou: MoF - easy stage 6 (game over on final card), normal stage 5
Touhou: UFO - easy stage 5, lunatic stage 2
DDP - stage 4 boss
DoJ - mid stage 4
Ketsui - stage 3 boss
DFKBL - final boss novice, stage 4 normal
hellsinker - stage 7 or 8 with some slowdown, stage 5 without
espgaluda - final phase of final boss
crimzon clover - stage 4
Ikaruga - stage 2
exceed 2nd - final stage

Apparently lunatic touhous are harder for me than anything other than ketsui and ikaruga! How I've managed that when you are all convinced they are so easy for the genre I do not know. Of the above games I've played DDP, hellsinker, ikaruga and UFO the least, then espgaluda and exceed, and the rest about are about even for playtime.

[RNGmaster]

VoWG

I'll make an exception for VoWG.

[Bananamatic]

Apparently lunatic touhous are harder for me than anything other than ketsui and ikaruga! How I've managed that when you are all convinced they are so easy for the genre I do not know. Of the above games I've played DDP, hellsinker, ikaruga and UFO the least, then espgaluda and exceed, and the rest about are about even for playtime.

lunatic touhous have harder earlier stages and around st4 the difficulty becomes rather stale for the rest of the game

normal shmups start off really easy and eventually shit hits the fan

and yes VoWG is cool

[Despatche]

No one else is just rather ambivilant about the art and character design?

I don't have an issue with the art at all. It simply isn't as bad as people think; I don't know how anyone in their right mind would ever say something like "cheap North American doujin knock-off", and it has absolutely nothing to do with word choice this time (even if the word choice is still poor, as it always is). I really don't think these people understand what it means to be "bad art", or even "bland art", for that matter. Now that's fine, since they don't want to and they will attack my post anyway. I don't care, because it's going to happen and because this thread sucks.

[RNGmaster]

Apparently lunatic touhous are harder for me than anything other than ketsui and ikaruga! How I've managed that when you are all convinced they are so easy for the genre I do not know. Of the above games I've played DDP, hellsinker, ikaruga and UFO the least, then espgaluda and exceed, and the rest about are about even for playtime.

lunatic touhous have harder earlier stages and around st4 the difficulty becomes rather stale for the rest of the game

normal shmups start off really easy and eventually shit hits the fan

and yes VoWG is cool

Then I guess Crimzon Clover Unlimited isn't a normal shmup, since the difficulty is balls-to-the-wall at the start and then settles down a bit.

[Funen1]

lunatic touhous have harder earlier stages and around st4 the difficulty becomes rather stale for the rest of the game

And now we've once again reached the point where no one can take you seriously. :V

[Rozyrg]

I have nothing against the art, either... obvious imperfections are all part of the charm of games like this and you come to expect them. That doesn't really figure into it for me, as it's the game beneath an arguably flawed exterior that doesn't look all that appealing from my point of view.

I admit don't find them visually exciting and there's other things I'd like to be playing as rather than little doll-like girls; but in a genre you'd just as likely have a beveled geometric shape or a laser spitting llama as a character, it doesn't really hinder anything if the game's already fun. I honestly don't care what they're all *supposed* to be, just give me things to dodge, things to blow up and lots and lots of points.

[xbl0x180]

No one else is just rather ambivilant about the art and character design?

I don't have an issue with the art at all. It simply isn't as bad as people think; I don't know how anyone in their right mind would ever say something like "cheap North American doujin knock-off", and it has absolutely nothing to do with word choice this time (even if the word choice is still poor, as it always is). I really don't think these people understand what it means to be "bad art", or even "bland art", for that matter. Now that's fine, since they don't want to and they will attack my post anyway. I don't care, because it's going to happen and because this thread sucks.

I'm in my right mind and the art looks unappealing and ugly, as if it were a cheap North American doujin knock-off. I've seen some good doujin artwork by comparison and this is bad in comparison. It's pretty simple, so what else is there for anyone to... understand?

[Despatche]

Why would you quote my post only to prove my point, ignore my point, repeat yourself, and say almost nothing, all in the same few rehashed sentences? More importantly, why do more and more of these kinds of people flock to the forums every month?

[Krimzon Kitzune]

I actually like ZUN's artwork. It's almost like something out of a children's fantasy book. There's no excuse for Zombie Reimu though.

[STGnoob]

The backgrounds in touhou are pretty weak, and the portraits aren't that great, but the character, bullet and enemy sprites seem just fine to me, and personally I find MoF at least to be quite pretty, and it actually has backgrounds. I can think of a lot of games that I would call uglier than MoF, although from the list I provided earlier I could only point to DDP and possibly exceed as examples of being outright uglier in my eyes. So the hating on touhou's art seems a bit excessive to me, when there are much uglier shmups out there.

[ncp]

The backgrounds in touhou are pretty weak, and the portraits aren't that great, but the character, bullet and enemy sprites seem just fine to me, and personally I find MoF at least to be quite pretty, and it actually has backgrounds. I can think of a lot of games that I would call uglier than MoF, although from the list I provided earlier I could only point to DDP and possibly exceed as examples of being outright uglier in my eyes. So the hating on touhou's art seems a bit excessive to me, when there are much uglier shmups out there.

ddp is probably the best looking game on your list... MAYBE behind ketsui