- Engaging and addictive photo-based gameplay
- Excellent entry for Touhou series
- Beautiful bullet and boss design
- Excessive and unbalanced difficulty
- Lack of content and lore
- Disliked photo mechanic and poor controls
Emotions
Players felt satisfied by achieving 100% completion, overcoming difficult challenges, and finding optimal strategies in the game. The unique boss-only gameplay, rewarding mechanics, and the game's ability to solve inconveniences of traditional STGs also contributed to a sense of accomplishment and enjoyment.
Enjoyment stemmed from the game's unique photojournalism aspect and its departure from typical Touhou titles. Players found the core gameplay loop, creative mechanics, challenging puzzle-patterns, and excellent controls to be very fun and addicting, especially after the initial learning curve.
The game's high difficulty, particularly in clearing all stages and navigating complex bullet patterns, was a significant cause of challenge. Players found the increasing difficulty and specific stage requirements to be demanding.
Excitement was generated by the game's ability to offer a new niche in gaming, providing intense engagement and stimulating gameplay moments. Players were enthusiastic about recommending the game due to its overall experience.
Frustration arose from issues such as RNG reliance for scoring, difficulty adapting to Aya's operation switching, and poor operability. Specific difficult attacks, extreme difficulty, and a perceived lack of options also contributed to player annoyance.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 85% · Negative 15%. Score: 15 / 100
Positives:
- Players find the core gameplay loop extremely fun, challenging, and addictive, especially after the initial learning curve. The game offers deep scoring mechanics and creative puzzle-like bullet patterns, making it enjoyable for both short sessions and extended play.
- This spin-off is considered a strong and unique entry in the Touhou series, offering a fresh approach to bullet-hell gameplay. It's praised as a good entry point for new players and helps existing Touhou players improve their dodging skills with some of the best patterns in the franchise.
- The game features beautifully designed bullet patterns and bosses that communicate character spells effectively. This visual appeal enhances the overall dodging experience.
- Certain stages and attacks are excellent for practicing various dodging techniques, such as unfocused dodging, bullet streaming, micro-dodging, and maintaining calm under pressure, while also encouraging players to move beyond the bottom of the screen.
- Players enjoy playing as Aya and engaging with her photojournalism aspect. Her comments and the little story add extra charm to the game.
Negatives:
- Players consistently report the game's difficulty as extremely high and unbalanced, with specific stages and spell cards being overly challenging or repetitive. This leads to frustration and a feeling of being stuck, especially for 100% completion.
- Players note a lack of substantial story, valuable lore, or character interactions, which detracts from the overall experience. The game also has a limited music selection.
- The core gameplay mechanic of using a camera to take photos is not enjoyed by some players. Issues include difficulty with vertical camera angles and the inability to take photos while moving slowly, impacting overall enjoyment.
- Players find the game's controls and operability to be poor, leading to accidental actions like swapping between photo shooting and charging. This makes adapting to character operations, such as Aya's, difficult.
- The game's reliance on Random Number Generation (RNG) can be a significant source of frustration, particularly for players focused on achieving high scores.
Gameplay:
- The core mechanic involves taking photos of bosses to clear stages, which also clears bullets in the photo's area, serving as a defensive and offensive tool. Players must strategically time photos, dodge complex bullet patterns, and aim for high scores by capturing bosses and bullets effectively.
- The game is a challenging boss-rush style Touhou title with no selectable difficulty, requiring many attempts to clear stages. Difficulty progresses incrementally, with later levels demanding precise dodging, strategic planning, and often hundreds of retries per scene. Players have unlimited attempts per scene, encouraging persistence.
- Many stages are gimmicky and require players to figure out specific strategies or 'solutions' to complex bullet patterns, akin to 'time spell' modes. Success often depends on observing patterns, precise movement, and mastering photo timing, rather than brute-force dodging.
- The game prioritizes its unique gameplay and challenging boss battles over a detailed narrative. It is an early work in the series, featuring Aya's comments on spell cards.
- The game includes a scoring system, though only one good score is needed for progression. Game progress is saved after each boss is cleared, and there are 85 scenes in total.
Performance:
- Players reported issues with gamepad functionality, often resolving it by launching the game through Steam Big Picture or directly via the executable. This indicates a potential conflict or detection problem with standard Steam game launching.
- Some players experienced occasional key-stuck issues, specifically with directional keys on laptops. This suggests a potential input recognition problem that could affect gameplay.
Recommendations:
- The game is strongly recommended for players who are already familiar with bullet-hell (shmup) games, especially those with experience in the Touhou series. It offers a challenging yet fun experience for this demographic.
- Despite the high difficulty, players can clear all stages with perseverance. It's advised not to get stuck on one level; taking breaks or trying other levels can aid progress, especially on stages requiring many photos.
- Newcomers to the genre or the Touhou series may find the game difficult. It's suggested that beginners complete a main series Touhou game, like Imperishable Night or Mountain of Faith, on normal difficulty before attempting this title.
Miscellaneous:
- The primary gameplay involves collecting 'scoops' and taking photos, such as those of sunsets. This mechanic is central to the player's progression.
- The game's icon features Marisa from another Touhou title, which can be confusing as Marisa does not appear in this particular game.
- Based on limited feedback, some players find the character Aya 'cute.' Another comment, likely a joke, praises the game for including Kaguya.
- Some players encountered difficulties launching the game, with one user finding a workaround by plugging in an audio headset, suggesting potential audio driver conflicts.
- Players express a strong desire for more Touhou games, especially older mainline and fighting titles, to be released on the Steam platform.
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