- Highly engaging and addictive gameplay loop
- Accessible entry point for Touhou fans
- Charming pixel art and cute characters
- Challenging and unfair boss battles
- Inconvenient save system and long grind
- Repetitive gameplay can become tedious
Emotions
Players feel satisfied by the game's high quality, engaging gameplay loop, charming characters, and beautiful art/music. Achieving in-game goals like completing achievements, mastering mechanics, or finishing content also contributes significantly to this emotion. The game's value for money, accessibility, and ability to introduce players to the Touhou IP are frequently cited as sources of satisfaction.
Joy stems primarily from the game's cute art style, delightful characters, and warm, relaxing atmosphere. The fun and casual gameplay, engaging character interactions, and the overall enjoyable experience of playing the game contribute to a sense of happiness and lightheartedness. Many reviewers express pure enjoyment and a feeling of childhood gaming happiness.
Excitement is driven by the game's highly addictive and engaging gameplay, often leading to intense play sessions and strong recommendations. The anticipation of new content, the thrill of expanding the diner, and the overall high quality of the game contribute to a sense of enthusiasm and eagerness to continue playing. The game's ability to cure 'gaming fatigue' and its status as a 'masterpiece' also generate excitement.
Frustration arises from various gameplay and quality-of-life issues, including repetitive late-game content, difficult boss battles (especially in DLCs), and inconvenient save systems. Players also express frustration with high controller sensitivity, unclear mechanics, and the grind required for certain aspects like maxing relationships or acquiring ingredients. Minor UI/UX issues and incomplete translations also contribute to this negative emotion.
Enjoyment is broadly caused by the game's fun and addictive gameplay, appealing art style, and engaging story. Players appreciate the interesting restaurant management mechanics, character interactions, and the overall pleasant experience of playing. The game's ability to provide a fun time, even for those not typically fond of the genre, is a key factor.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 96% · Negative 4%. Score: 4 / 100
Positives:
- Players consistently describe the game as fun, engaging, and highly addictive, often losing track of time while playing. The core gameplay loop, combining casual elements with strategic depth, keeps players hooked for extended sessions.
- The game is praised as an excellent Touhou fan game that is highly accessible to both long-time fans and newcomers. It serves as a great entry point to the Touhou universe, allowing players to enjoy the characters and lore without prior knowledge.
- The game's art style, particularly its exquisite pixel art and cute character designs, is a major draw. Players find the visuals warm, appealing, and contributing significantly to the overall charming and cozy atmosphere.
- Reviewers frequently highlight the game's exceptional value for its price, often noting the substantial amount of content in the base game and the worthwhile nature of its DLCs. Many players purchased all DLCs due to their enjoyment.
- The game is widely appreciated for its relaxing and healing atmosphere, making it an ideal choice for unwinding. Features like the ability to pause gameplay and a gentle difficulty curve contribute to a low-pressure experience.
Negatives:
- Boss battles are frequently cited as poorly designed, frustrating, and having sudden difficulty spikes. Players often feel they require external guides or excessive trial-and-error, detracting from the overall experience.
- The inability to save at any time, only at the end of a business day, is a major point of frustration. This forces players into long sessions and can lead to significant progress loss if they need to quit unexpectedly.
- Many players find the core gameplay loop, especially gathering and cooking, becomes highly repetitive and boring in the mid-to-late stages. This leads to a lack of motivation and a feeling of being tired or overwhelmed after extended play sessions.
- The game requires a significant time investment, particularly for maxing out character relationships and completing all content, especially with DLCs. This extended grind contributes to feelings of tedium and can wear players down.
- DLCs are perceived as expensive, sometimes repetitive, and can introduce content that feels padded or difficult to integrate without guides. Some DLCs are seen as fan-service rather than substantial additions for all players.
Gameplay:
- The game features a distinct two-phase gameplay loop: daytime for gathering ingredients, exploring, completing quests, and building relationships, and nighttime for managing a restaurant, cooking, and serving customers. This structure provides varied activities and strategic depth.
- Players must carefully manage customer preferences, especially for 'rare guests,' who have specific likes, dislikes, and order based on dish tags. This often requires consulting an in-game encyclopedia and customizing dishes to meet complex requirements.
- Building relationships with various characters is crucial, as it unlocks new recipes, skills, outfits, auto-gatherers, and even boss fights. Players need to understand character preferences and engage in dialogue and quests to deepen these bonds.
- The game offers a substantial amount of content, with a long playtime for completionists. Multiple DLCs further expand the game with new maps, characters, recipes, challenges, and even a roguelike mode, enhancing replayability.
- A core objective involves earning money to diligently pay off debts, which drives progression. The game also features shop reinforcement and a system for collecting reward spell cards, providing clear financial and strategic goals.
Performance:
- Some players experienced excessively long map loading times, exceeding ten minutes, accompanied by significant hard drive noise. This issue was resolved for one player by upgrading their old HDD.
- Players report that the game runs smoothly even on older, less powerful hardware, including integrated graphics, at decent resolutions. This indicates good optimization for a wide range of systems.
- The game frequently crashes for some users, with one player speculating that Windows 11 might be a contributing factor. This significantly impacts game stability.
- The game offers very smooth and responsive gameplay when using a PS4 controller, suggesting good integration for gamepad users.
- One player noted that the game exhibits high GPU utilization, suggesting potential optimization issues despite running well on lower-spec machines. This could indicate inefficient resource management.
Recommendations:
- The game is overwhelmingly recommended for both existing Touhou fans and newcomers to the series, often serving as an excellent entry point. It also strongly appeals to fans of simulation management, cooking, and tycoon games, regardless of Touhou familiarity.
- Many players recommend purchasing DLCs, especially during sales, to enrich the gameplay experience and provide additional content. Some suggest buying the base game first, while others advocate for a bundle to unlock the full potential.
- Players advise enjoying the game at a slow pace, playing for short durations daily to prevent repetition and burnout. Rushing through the content might diminish the overall enjoyment.
- A significant number of players specifically recommend playing the game with a controller, suggesting it enhances the experience, particularly on handheld consoles.
- Some players feel the game's difficulty curve could be improved, with suggestions for both increasing and adjusting the overall challenge.
Miscellaneous:
- Many players, including those unfamiliar with the Touhou IP, found this game to be an excellent and accessible entry point into the series. Its high quality and engaging gameplay attracted new fans and deepened existing ones' appreciation for the Touhou universe.
- Players are eager for future content, including more maps, DLC characters, and potential new games from the developer. There's also a desire for a multiplayer version of the game and a guest invitation feature.
- Players have offered constructive feedback regarding the recipe system, suggesting improvements such as an enhanced preset recipe system, custom naming functions, and a button to automatically inherit the last recipe.
- Some players lightheartedly noted a perceived lack of cultural depth, though this observation did not detract from their overall positive experience with the game.
- The game currently only supports English, Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese translations, which might limit its accessibility for a wider international audience.
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