Info about 東方幕華祭 TouHou Makuka Sai ~ Fantastic Danmaku Festival: Official game description: Fantastic Danmaku Festival Part II ================================== Fantastic Danmaku Festival Part II now on sale！ About the Game ============== _Notice: If screen tearing or the game speed is abnormal, try playing in full-screen or turning on/off vertical sync with a refresh rate of 60Hz._ The Scarlet Devil Mansion brings disaster to Gensokyo again?! The girls take their way towards the scarlet mansion, meet familiar (and also unfamiliar) rivals to fight in spell cards battle! ★Keyboard controls ------------------ **The Arrow Keys** Move **Z** Shot;Confirm **X** Bomb(Spell Card);Cancel **Shift** Low-speed mode **Esc** Pause ★Gamepad controls (Xbox | Play Station) --------------------------------------- **Left stick/D-pad** Move **A | ×** Shot;Confirm **RB | R1** Bomb(Spell Card);Cancel **LB | L1** Low-speed mode **B/START | □/OPTIONS** Pause _If you want to change your controller setting, please use Steam Controller Configuration._ ★Background story ----------------- The night falls, Gensokyo was falling into tranquility... All of the sudden, strange aura shrouded the land. The miko of the Hakurei Shrine perceived the disaster. The magician of the magic forest is also very excited about the news. Even the miko of Moriya Shrine became aware of the abnormal activities of Youkai. Another disaster? With that question in mind, the girls started investigating. Seems like the owner of the scarlet mansion was planning something... ★New character -------------- **○The Messenger of the Night** **_Nix_** Species: Unknown Abilities: Capable of making the darkness fall A Youkai that appeared in the forest lately, we never encountered her before, probably because of weak perception. She likes darkness (it's the feature of this kind of Youkai) but she doesn't include human in her diet. If there is human near her, she would use her ability to drive them away and warn them. We have no clue where she comes from. Half of her wings is hidden in the void of darkness. She holds a candlestick in her hands that seems to be able to collect light. She didn't seem like a strong Youkai, but definitely more mature than the others, she's most likely preserving her power. **○The librarian** **_Little Devil_** Species: Devil Abilities: Unknown She's a devil lives in the Scarlet Devil Mansion, not very strong in particularly. Little devil was trusted to manage the library because Patchouli's rare absence. She has learned several magic tricks, and considered quite talented. Looks like she's into mischievous magic. ★About Patchouli ---------------- When she was wandering about and looking for grimoire, she felt an abnormal scent. She called it'strange scent' because it contains unusual composition. She went out alone,trying to find it for the development of a new kind of magic. Because of her health issues, she was prepared for the trip and entrusted little devil to manage the library before she left. Even though she still can't stay in the outside world for a very long time, so she didn't go farther than the nearby forest. During the trip, she found out the Youkai that she ran into were all diffusing that 'strange scent' while leading themselves to the Scarlet Devil Mansion. At the same time, the Youkai also became very agitated and ferocious. She then quickly went back to the mansion because things weren't right... Release date: 16 Aug, 2018 Categories: Bullet-hell, Single-player Story, Resource Management, High Score Chasing, Arcade, Endgame Content - Hardware Profile: No data Feature extractions: - Community Price: No data - Playtime Metrics: No data - Time-to-fun: No data - Player Archetypes: No data Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category. Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews. What players like: - Excellent Gameplay & Visuals (weight 0.99): Players consistently praise the game's well-designed and enjoyable gameplay, beautiful graphics, vibrant art style, and creative bullet patterns. The overall presentation and mechanics are considered top-tier, offering a visually stunning and engaging experience. - Outstanding Soundtrack (weight 0.94): The game's music receives widespread acclaim for its high quality, catchy melodies, and fitting compositions. Both original tracks and remixes are highlighted as exceptional, enhancing the overall game experience and often being cited as a reason to play. - Diverse & Balanced Characters (weight 0.82): The game features a cast of well-balanced playable characters, each offering distinct playstyles. Specific characters like Patchouli, Marisa, Sanae, and Miao are highlighted for their unique abilities and effectiveness in different scenarios. - Accessible & Balanced Difficulty (weight 0.82): The game strikes a good balance in difficulty, being enjoyable for both newcomers and seasoned players. Easy modes are genuinely accessible, while higher difficulties offer a satisfying challenge without being overwhelming. The difficulty curve is well-designed, making it a good entry point for the genre. - High Replayability & Content (weight 0.79): Players appreciate the game's significant replay value, attributed to multiple playable characters, varied difficulty levels, and the inclusion of achievements and Spell Card Challenges. This content ensures many hours of engaging gameplay. - Developer Dedication & Optimization (weight 0.68): Players acknowledge the developers' continuous efforts in updating and optimizing the game. Significant improvements in performance and bug fixes across various versions have greatly enhanced the overall player experience. - Exceptional Touhou Fangame (weight 0.48): The game is widely regarded as one of the best Touhou fan games, often surpassing official titles in quality. It offers a fresh yet familiar re-imagining of Touhou 6, making it an excellent introduction to the franchise for new players while satisfying long-time fans. Common complaints: - Confusing & Unfair Bullet Patterns (weight 0.21): Many bullet patterns are criticized for being visually confusing, using misdirection, or appearing off-screen without warning. Issues like similar colors for bullets and backgrounds, or excessive light effects, make dodging difficult and frustrating. - Unresponsive & Unchangeable Controls (weight 0.14): Players report significant issues with controls, including unchangeable key configurations and buggy slowdown functions. This makes precise movement, crucial for a danmaku game, extremely difficult or impossible, rendering the game unplayable for some. - Poor English Localization (weight 0.14): The English translation is widely criticized for being low quality, rough, and awkward. This leads to dialogue that is difficult to understand, and achievement descriptions that are often incorrect or confusing. - Buggy & Tedious Achievements (weight 0.09): Achievements are frequently reported as buggy, unlocking incorrectly, or not at all. Some are also considered overly tedious, requiring excessive playtime on a single character, diminishing the incentive for completion. - Visual Strain & Poor Aesthetics (weight 0.09): The game's visuals are noted for causing eye strain, especially at higher resolutions due to stretched pixels. Some backgrounds and bullet designs are considered unrefined or overly flashy, detracting from the overall aesthetic experience. - Limited Originality & Appeal (weight 0.08): The game is perceived as lacking original elements and may not appeal to players unfamiliar with Touhou lore due to insufficient explanations. The overall experience is described as 'weird' or 'uncomfortable,' suggesting a lack of unique value beyond supporting developers. - Lack of Spell Practice Mode (weight 0.07): A significant complaint is the absence of a 'Spell Practice' mode, a feature common in official Touhou games. This omission hinders players' ability to practice difficult spell cards and improve their dodging skills. - Lack of Player Progression Feedback (weight 0.06): Players struggle to feel a sense of improvement or joy in dodging, often feeling that progress is merely memorization rather than genuine skill development. Hit feedback and sound effects are also considered weak, reducing immersion. Gameplay feedback: - Variable Difficulty & Learning Curve (weight 0.48): The game offers multiple difficulty levels (Easy, Normal, Hard, Lunatic, Extra) catering to both newcomers and experienced players. It's generally considered easy to pick up but challenging to master, with a significant jump in difficulty on higher settings and in later stages. The initial version was criticized for high difficulty, which seems to have been adjusted in newer releases. - Touhou 6 Remake/Reimagining (weight 0.3): This game is a fan-made remake or reimagining of Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (EoSD). It retains core gameplay elements, characters, and story themes from the original, while introducing new mechanics and a slightly different narrative. It's often seen as an accessible alternative to official Touhou games. - Detailed Stage & Boss Strategies (weight 0.27): Players have provided specific strategies for navigating various stages and defeating bosses. These tips include recommended dodging patterns, target prioritization, and optimal character positioning for different bullet patterns and spell cards, particularly for later stages and challenging bosses. - Combo Gauge Mechanic (weight 0.14): A central gameplay mechanic is the combo gauge, which fills by defeating enemies and grazing bullets. When full, it automatically collects all on-screen items and grants a resource fragment. This gauge resets per stage and is locked during boss fights. - Resource Management System (weight 0.13): The game utilizes a fragment system for gaining extra lives and bombs. Collecting five fragments of either type grants an additional resource. These fragments are primarily obtained by capturing boss spell cards without taking damage, defeating specific enemies, or filling the combo gauge. - Extra Stage & Challenge Modes (weight 0.12): Beyond the main six stages, the game includes a very difficult Extra Stage, unlocked by completing a no-continue run on Easy difficulty. There's also a 'Spell Challenge' mode featuring unique and difficult spell cards not found in the main story, offering additional content for mastery. - Strategic Bomb Usage (weight 0.08): Bombs are presented as powerful tools that should be used without hesitation, especially in dense bullet patterns or against difficult bosses. The game is generous with bomb drops, and their strategic use can significantly lower the perceived difficulty, even allowing for life fragment acquisition after boss patterns. - Score System & Blue Points (weight 0.07): Blue point items are primarily for scoring and are not critical for progression unless aiming for high scores. They can be collected automatically when the player reaches a certain point on the screen or manually for a higher score value. - Player Experience & Achievements (weight 0.05): Some players have shared their personal experiences, such as mastering the game, achieving all achievements, or using specific controllers. This feedback, while less about game mechanics, indicates a level of engagement and completion. Performance notes: - Performance is generally good (weight 0.09): The game generally maintains 60fps on various PC configurations, even with many effects. However, some players reported occasional stuttering, lag spikes, and flickering character portraits, suggesting minor optimization issues. - Screenshot key conflicts (weight 0.03): Players reported issues with taking screenshots, specifically when using Shift key combinations. The game's input handling seems to interfere with standard screenshot functionalities. - Minor UI text bug (weight 0.02): A humorous but minor bug was noted where menu texts could move off-screen when rapidly navigating with arrow keys. This issue resolves itself upon starting a new game. Recommendations: - Highly Recommended for Touhou Fans (weight 0.38): The game is overwhelmingly recommended for fans of the Touhou Project series and bullet hell games in general. Many consider it one of the best Touhou fangames, offering a good experience for both veterans and newcomers to the genre. - Consider the Sequel First (weight 0.11): Some players advise against buying this game, or suggest buying the sequel instead, implying it offers a superior experience. There's a concern that playing this game first might diminish interest in the sequel. - Not for Casual Players (weight 0.05): Despite any 'casual' tags, the game is considered challenging and not suitable for casual players. It's recommended for those seeking a test of skill, especially for achievement hunters. - Advanced Scoring Mechanics (weight 0.03): For players focused on high scores, the game requires careful management of items and minimizing misses, particularly in later stages, to achieve optimal results. - Soundtrack Pack Recommended (weight 0.02): It is strongly suggested to purchase the game along with its soundtrack pack, implying the music significantly enhances the overall experience. - Suggests Profile Backgrounds (weight 0.01): A player hopes that initial images from the game's promotional videos could be used as profile backgrounds, indicating a desire for more customization options. - Recommends Miao for Casual Play (weight 0.01): A specific character, Miao, is recommended for players looking for a more casual gameplay experience, suggesting character choice impacts difficulty. - Suggests Prominent Miss Sound (weight 0.01): A player suggests making the 'miss' sound more noticeable, which could improve player feedback during gameplay. - Warns of 'First-Time Kill' Patterns (weight 0.01): New players are advised to be cautious of specific bullet patterns designed to catch them off guard, highlighting a learning curve aspect. - Humorous Recommendation (weight 0.01): One review humorously suggests buying the game to 'ward off evil,' indicating a lighthearted positive sentiment rather than a serious gameplay point. This is based on limited/low-quality feedback. Other player notes: - Sequel Anticipation and Praise (weight 0.1): There is significant anticipation for a sequel, with some players already praising the 'Spring Snow chapter' and looking forward to future installments like the 'Imperishable Night chapter'. - Developer's Return and Steam Release (weight 0.07): The game marks the return of a developer team after a long hiatus, bringing a 'lovely game' to players, now conveniently available on Steam. - Controller Configuration Solutions (weight 0.06): Players have found workarounds for key configuration issues by utilizing Steam's controller settings or external tools like Joy2Key for remapping gamepad buttons. - Fan-Specific and Low-Quality Feedback (weight 0.06): Some feedback consists of highly specific fan references, memes, or personal skill assessments, which offer limited constructive insight for game improvement. This includes a review bomb-like comment about 'big fairy's legs'. - Support for Developers (weight 0.05): Players are encouraged to purchase the legitimate version to support the production team and developer StarX, ensuring future official Steam releases and showing tolerance for independent game developers. - Technical Workarounds (weight 0.03): Solutions for common technical issues include using borderless gaming for alt-tab problems and a specific file deletion method to fix the 'Thanks for Support' achievement bug. - Story Context for Beginners (weight 0.03): New players are advised to read the prologue of Touhou 6 to better understand the game's story, although Touhou is not primarily known for its narrative. - Minor Gameplay Observations (weight 0.03): Some players noted specific character balance observations, such as Cirno being weaker than Nix in Stage 1, and unfamiliarity with certain character interactions. Emotions: - Satisfaction (weight 0.34): Players felt satisfied due to the game's overall high quality, including enjoyable gameplay, balanced difficulty, and excellent music and graphics. Many appreciated it as a well-made Touhou fangame, often noting its accessibility for newcomers and replayability through achievements and challenges. - Frustration (weight 0.11): Frustration stemmed primarily from high difficulty, particularly in later stages and the Extra stage, and specific unfair spellcards. Technical issues like unchangeable key configurations, poor controller settings, and occasional bugs causing loss of control also contributed to player annoyance. - Excitement (weight 0.08): Excitement was generated by the game's fantastic quality, engaging and challenging gameplay, and stunning character art and music. Players were thrilled by improved mechanics, new spell cards, and the overall reimagined Touhou experience, often urging others to play. - Disappointment (weight 0.07): Players expressed disappointment over a perceived lack of challenge, unbalanced shot types, and the absence of original elements or expected features like a spell practice mode. Technical issues such as unplayable states, poor translations, and bugged achievements also led to disappointment. - Admiration (weight 0.07): Admiration was directed at the game's exquisite graphics, gorgeous and unique bullet patterns, and incredibly good music and remixes. Players also admired the developers' talent, persistence, and dedication in creating such a high-quality fan work. - Joy (weight 0.06): Joy was experienced through the game's fun and beautiful presentation, engaging story and characters, and excellent OSTs. Players expressed happiness from achieving milestones like all achievements and simply enjoying the overall positive gameplay experience. - Appreciation (weight 0.04): Players appreciated the game's overall high quality, especially as a splendid remake that improved upon the original Touhou Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. Specific elements like different spell cards, the art style, and the charm of its presentation were also highly valued. - Enjoyment (weight 0.03): Enjoyment came from the game's fun reimagining of the bullet hell genre, interesting bullet use, and enemy variety. Players also found pleasure in the pleasant UI, beautiful art, engaging gameplay, and generous life system. - Challenge (weight 0.03): Players felt challenged by the game's difficulty, even on easier modes for newcomers, and particularly by tricky spell cards and the EX stage. The complexity of bullet patterns and boss mechanics also contributed to the sense of challenge. - Amusement (weight 0.02): Amusement arose from humorous observations about player statistics, the inclusion of memes like 'Neko Miko Reimu,' and awkward or whimsical Japanese translations. Humorous descriptions of characters and stages also contributed to this feeling. - Nostalgia (weight 0.02): Nostalgia was triggered by the game being a remake of an early Touhou title, especially for players whose first experience with the series was Touhou 6. Recalling past memories of playing the original also evoked this emotion. - Surprise (weight 0.02): Players were surprised by unexpected mechanics lifted and improved from other Touhou games, the game's release on Steam, and changes in boss roles. Some also expressed surprise at the game being easier than anticipated. - Engagement (weight 0.01): Engagement was driven by the desire to play challenging modes like EX mode and the addictive Spell Card Challenge mode. The challenging nature of these spell card trials kept players deeply involved. - Helpfulness (weight 0.01): Players felt helpful when providing strategies, solutions to problems, and useful tips for new players. This desire to assist others indicated a positive community interaction. - Enthusiasm (weight 0.01): Enthusiasm was characterized by a strong desire to recommend the game to others and share insights and recommendations with potential players. This indicated a high level of positive sentiment and advocacy for the game. - Hope (weight 0.01): Players expressed hope for future game improvements, such as DLC, a boss practice mode, bug fixes, detailed graphic options, and sequels. This indicated a desire for continued development and expansion of the game. - Support (weight 0.01): Players felt supportive by purchasing the legitimate version of the game to back the developers, especially domestic ones. This demonstrated a commitment to contributing to the game's success and future. - Confidence (weight 0.01): Confidence was shown through strong recommendations of the game to all players. This indicated a firm belief in the game's quality and enjoyment for a broad audience. - Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion arose from initial misunderstandings of difficulty settings, difficult-to-interpret achievement descriptions, and unfamiliarity with certain characters or plot points. This suggested areas where clarity could be improved. - Amazement (weight 0.01): Amazement was caused by the visual feast of danmaku and the gorgeous design of the bullet patterns. This highlighted the game's strong aesthetic appeal in its core gameplay.}