- Exceptional and extensive musical soundtrack.
- Masterful adaptation of Touhou Project.
- Overall outstanding game quality and value.
- Offers deep, engaging tactical SRPG gameplay.
- Suffers from drastic difficulty imbalance.
- Unintuitive user interface and controls.
Emotions
Players felt satisfied by the game's overall high quality, including its engaging tactical gameplay, captivating story, and excellent soundtrack. The successful blend of Touhou and Super Robot Wars mechanics, along with a proper English translation and quality-of-life improvements, greatly contributed to their enjoyment and perceived value for money.
Excitement stemmed from the remastered bundle and long-awaited full English localization, which fulfilled years of anticipation. Players were thrilled by the game's 'insane' battle animations, fantastic music, deep systems, and its ability to offer fresh challenges and unique boss mechanics, often surpassing modern Super Robot Wars titles.
Joy was primarily caused by the game's amazing overall quality, its thoughtful portrayal of Touhou characters, and its status as a favorite SRPG. The engaging gameplay, well-crafted story, gorgeous pixel art, and excellent localization made the experience a 'blast from start to finish' for many players, including newcomers.
Players appreciated the game's creative retelling of Touhou lore, detailed character development, and cohesive story. The visible passion of the creators, especially in the great music, attack animations, deep mechanical design, and comprehensive accessibility features, resonated strongly with the community.
Admiration arose from the game's status as a 'godgame' and 'masterpiece,' often considered superior to official SRW titles due to its comprehensive plotline, unique character playstyles, and incredible music. The meticulous craftsmanship, attention to detail, and deep understanding of the Touhou series demonstrated by the developers garnered significant praise.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 97% · Negative 3%. Score: 3 / 100
Positives:
- The game boasts an astounding 200+ tracks, featuring incredible remixes of Touhou themes and original compositions that perfectly fit the game's atmosphere and characters. Reviewers highlight the music's high quality, variety, and emotional impact, considering it a standalone masterpiece and a significant value.
- The game is widely praised as a "love letter" to the Touhou Project, creatively retelling its lore and characters from multiple eras (Touhou 6-12, PC-98) into a cohesive, engaging narrative. It's highly accessible, serving as an excellent entry point for newcomers while offering depth and fresh interpretations for long-time fans, supported by an extensive in-game lore library.
- Players consistently describe the game as a "masterpiece" with exceptional writing, engaging gameplay, and immense content (100+ hours). It's considered polished, well-crafted, and offers significant value for its price, standing out as one of the best fan games and a strong contender in the SRPG genre.
- The game delivers a highly strategic and satisfying turn-based RPG experience with deep character customization through unique skills, equipment, and a wide array of playable units. Its challenging combat, clever boss mechanics, and well-designed UI make it enjoyable for both SRPG veterans and newcomers.
- The writing is consistently praised for its stellar quality, developing character psychology, relationships, and offering a compelling, coherent narrative with a balance of humor and emotional depth. Every character, major or minor, is well-fleshed out with distinct personalities and engaging interactions, making the story a major highlight.
Negatives:
- The game presents a wide, inconsistent difficulty curve; Normal modes are often too easy, while Lunatic difficulty is deemed excessively challenging, unbalanced, and reliant on 'save scumming.' Furthermore, boss mechanics on higher difficulties feature frustrating instakills and retreats that hinder completionists. This significantly impacts player engagement and strategy.
- Players found the game's user interface outdated, unintuitive, and lacking essential usability features. Keyboard support is poor with no key mapping, and basic settings like volume adjustment are hard to find or access. Crucial control explanations are missing, forcing reliance on external manuals, and the PC version is limited to a fixed 720p resolution.
- Achieving full character strength or collecting all unique equipment requires an extremely high number of playthroughs (60-80+), making the progression feel like an excessive grind. This is compounded by bugs in New Game+ where using certain characters can cause progression-halting errors, and limitations on enhancing forced-deployment characters. The need for repetitive save/loads for low-probability actions further diminishes replay enjoyment.
- The game's narrative and characterizations are sometimes inconsistent with modern Touhou lore, potentially alienating established fans and making the content feel dated. The overall pacing can be problematic, with specific map designs feeling ridiculous or boring, leading some players to quit early despite the advertised long playtime. New players also struggle with stat prioritization due to insufficient detail.
- Players frequently reported encountering glitches, crashes, and other technical issues, including control-related jank, glitched combat animations, and music bugs. Long loading times and launch bugs further detract from the gameplay experience. These problems suggest a lack of polish and stability.
Gameplay:
- The game offers substantial content, including over 70 chapters and 70+ hours of gameplay across multiple story arcs and character routes. A comprehensive New Game+ mode further enhances replayability with new dialogue and a true ending route, encouraging multiple playthroughs.
- A central mechanic involves 'danmaku fields' generated by enemies, which debuff player units (movement, defense, evasion). Players can use 'Focus Mode' to nullify these effects, but it comes with trade-offs like reduced movement and converting dodges into 'grazing'.
- The game heavily borrows core gameplay mechanics, difficulty, and strategic elements from the Super Robot Wars series, particularly pre-PS3 and Winky era titles. Players familiar with SRW will find the system very recognizable and intuitive.
- Bosses utilize a unique 'Spellcard' system, creating special danmaku fields with varying effects like debuffs, buffs, or new attack patterns. Players must strategize around these effects, sometimes enduring or waiting out dangerous spells, adding a layer of tactical depth.
- The game offers multiple difficulty levels, including Normal, Normal+, Hard, and Lunatic, allowing players to choose their challenge. Critically, difficulty can be adjusted freely between battles, enabling players to experiment or tailor the experience without penalty.
Performance:
- Players consistently report that the game performs flawlessly on the Steam Deck, offering a smooth and enjoyable experience without any noticeable issues or performance drops on the handheld device.
- The game maintains a consistent and high frame rate during battle scenes, indicating good optimization for core gameplay moments. Players do not experience any drops in FPS even when action intensifies.
- Due to its development on the Game Maker engine, the game has a non-adjustable screen size. This technical limitation means players cannot freely change the resolution, which can be a point of frustration for some users.
- Some players have encountered font display problems, but only in very specific and rare resolution settings. This suggests a minor, uncommon graphical glitch rather than a widespread or critical issue.
Recommendations:
- The game receives overwhelming recommendations for fans of Touhou, Super Robot Wars, or Strategy RPGs, and is also considered an excellent entry point for newcomers to these genres. Many reviewers emphasize it as a must-buy for anyone with even a passing interest.
- A notable number of players recommend using a controller for the optimal gameplay experience. This suggests that a controller offers a more intuitive or comfortable control scheme for this type of strategy game.
- Players should be prepared for a substantial time commitment, as the game is noted to offer a very long and immersive experience. It promises many hours of engaging gameplay.
- Reviewers frequently suggest playing the demo to get a feel for the game before purchasing. They also encourage hesitant potential buyers to make the purchase, assuring them it is a worthwhile investment.
- While not mandatory, prior knowledge of the Touhou series can deepen the experience. The game also offers significant replay value, with some reviewers suggesting multiple playthroughs and noting its comprehensive in-game glossary for lore exploration.
Miscellaneous:
- The game successfully draws in both dedicated Touhou and Super Robot Wars fans, while also serving as an accessible entry point for newcomers to either franchise or SRPGs. Its well-crafted scenario and gameplay are designed for enjoyment regardless of prior experience.
- Many players expressed immense anticipation, having waited over a decade for an official English translation. Previously, access was limited to incomplete fan translations or playing untranslated Japanese versions, making the Steam release a highly significant event for long-time fans.
- The official Steam release brings an English translation and bug fixes, significantly improving accessibility. This version appears to be a port of the Switch version with rewritten code for better stability, though some minor content like specific mob dialogues from older PC versions might be missing.
- Players are eager for future content, expressing wishes for sequels that cover later Touhou games, additional DLCs, or further updates. This indicates strong engagement and a desire for the series to continue expanding.
- The game's narrative smoothly integrates world-building and character explanations through dialogue, making it accessible for new players. The story balances comical and serious tones, and the early 'Scarlet Arc' effectively serves as an extended tutorial.
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