Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity Review Summary

Enjoyable Gameplay & Balanced Difficulty: Players consistently praise the game's fun and addictive gameplay, highlighting its balanced difficulty that caters to both beginners and experienced players. The combat system, character variety, and overall design contribute to a satisfying experience.

High-Quality Touhou Fan Game: The game is highly regarded as an exceptional Touhou fan game, successfully adapting the series' essence into an ARPG format. Its quality, music, and adherence to Touhou lore are frequently commended, making it a standout among fan-made works.

Distinct Character Playstyles: The game offers two playable characters, Remilia and Sakuya, each with unique abilities and playstyles. Players enjoy the differences, with Remilia often noted for her mobility and power, and Sakuya for her devastating late-game abilities.

Exceptional Soundtrack: The game's music receives widespread acclaim, with many players calling the soundtrack wonderful, captivating, and a permanent addition to their playlists. The quality, remixes of original themes, and atmospheric contribution are frequently mentioned.

Effective Bullet Hell Integration: The integration of bullet hell elements with ARPG mechanics is a significant highlight. Players appreciate how bullet patterns are adapted to 3D, making boss battles visually impressive and challenging, especially in dedicated bullet hell modes.

Repetitive & Poor Map Design: Players found the map design monotonous, overly large, and confusing, often leading to a boring exploration experience. The lack of mini-maps in some areas and repetitive assets exacerbated the feeling of getting lost and made traversal a chore.

Clunky Controls & Camera Issues: The game suffers from clunky controls, especially for platforming, and an uncomfortable fixed camera that hinders visibility and navigation. This contributes to a generally unpolished and frustrating gameplay experience.

Repetitive & Grind-Heavy Gameplay: The core gameplay loop is criticized for being monotonous, repetitive, and requiring excessive grinding. This leads to a feeling of wasted time and a lack of meaningful engagement beyond basic progression.

Lack of Enemy & Boss Variety: The game features a limited number of enemy types that are reused across many levels, leading to repetitive combat. Boss fights are often described as bland, too easy, and sometimes exploitable, with annoying invincibility frames.

Sakuya's Gameplay is Unengaging: Many players found Sakuya to be significantly less enjoyable to play than Remilia due to her slower movement, stiff actions, and less effective abilities. This makes platforming and general traversal particularly frustrating when playing as Sakuya.

ARPG with Bullet Hell Elements: The game blends Action RPG mechanics, such as leveling up, acquiring skills, and equipping gear, with bullet hell combat elements. Gameplay involves hack-and-slash action, dodging projectiles, and strategic boss battles.

Two Playable Characters: Players can choose between two distinct characters, Remilia Scarlet and Sakuya Izayoi, each with unique skills, playstyles, and equipment sets. Remilia is often described as a power-type melee character, while Sakuya specializes in speed, precision, and ranged knife attacks.

Bullet Hell Mode offers challenge: The game features an optional 'Bullet Hell Mode' which significantly increases difficulty by adding more and faster bullets from enemies and bosses. This mode is recommended for experienced players seeking a greater challenge, as the base game is often considered too easy.

Boss Fights are Key: Boss battles are a central and engaging part of the gameplay, requiring players to learn attack patterns, dodge projectiles, and strike during openings. These encounters are often highlighted as the most fun and challenging aspects of the game.

Grinding for Progression: Progression often involves grinding for experience and items to level up characters and improve stats. While some players find this natural, others note that reaching the level cap or obtaining specific gear requires dedicated farming.

Graphics Scalability is Good: Players noted that the game maintains good visual quality even when graphics settings are lowered, and it can run stably on older hardware at lower resolutions. The Steam version also supports up to 4K resolution.

Inconsistent Performance & Stuttering: Many players report significant frame rate inconsistencies and stuttering, even on high-end systems, despite the game often being locked at 60 FPS. Some suggest adjusting graphics settings or playing in windowed mode to mitigate these issues, while others note that the original game also had FPS instability.

High Refresh Rate Tool Improves Experience: One player mentioned that using a specific tool with a high refresh rate screen significantly enhances the gameplay experience, suggesting potential benefits for those with compatible setups.

Generally well-received: Players generally enjoyed the game, with many giving positive ratings and expressing a desire for a sequel. Despite not being a 'masterpiece,' it offers a good amount of content and replayability, especially when players create their own challenges.

Primarily for Touhou fans: The game is highly recommended for fans of the Touhou series, especially those interested in 3D Touhou games or ARPGs. It serves as a good entry point for newcomers to the Touhou universe, but its appeal is significantly amplified for existing fans.

Recommended on sale: Many players suggest purchasing the game when it is on sale, particularly at a 40% discount or more. While considered worth the money, a sale price makes it an even more attractive buy.

Character choice impacts experience: Players recommend starting with Sakuya for a more enjoyable initial experience, then adapting to Remilia for a second playthrough. Remilia is also noted for quick achievement grinding.

Controller recommended: A controller is recommended for playing the game, suggesting it enhances the gameplay experience or is preferred over keyboard controls.

Touhou fan game with Ys influence: The game is a fan-made ARPG based on the Touhou Project franchise, often described as an 'Ys clone' due to its gameplay style. It appeals to existing Touhou fans and follows the series' incident-style plot.

Nostalgia and Steam release: Many players have a history with the game, having played pirated versions in the past or during high school. There's a general sentiment of happiness to see the game officially released on Steam.

Desire for Chinese localization: Multiple players expressed a strong desire for Chinese localization, both Simplified and Traditional. Some noted that a Korean patch was released, but Chinese support was either missing or came too late for their playthroughs.

Connection to Youyou Kengeki Musou: Some players consider this game a sequel to Youyou Kengeki Musou and hope its predecessor will also be released on Steam, indicating a desire for more games from the same developer or series.

Requests for quality-of-life features: Players suggested adding in-level save points, a 'Music Room' feature, and the ability to revisit previously explored locations after completing certain game segments.