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Why 100th Black Market is ZUN's least ZUN game - a short analysis


buskerdog

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Black Market of Bulletphilia ~ 100th Black Market is a game made by ZUN. It is a game I personally enjoyed extremely. It is not without its flaws, given the exploitable nature that comes with the ability card system, but nonetheless ability cards are still a fun mechanic and I like what this game in particular did with them. Some people were disappointed by this game due to expecting a greater emphasis on roguelike mechanics - I'm not one of those people, and as a matter of fact roguelikes are the game genre I dislike most, so I'm happy that 100th Black Market is the game that it is and isn't a roguelike. However, that's not what this topic is about. What this topic is about is how 100th Black Market, despite being a ZUN game, is the most un-ZUN like thing he has ever made. And that's something that brings me a lot of excitement.

Game Structure

Being a spinoff, this game is laid out in a much different way to the traditional Touhou experience, using what is essentially a level select instead of the usual linear path Touhou has. This is far from the first time ZUN has implemented this sort of thing in a spinoff game, but what sets Touhou 18.5 apart is the randomisation of patterns you encounter throughout a stage. This random attack waves are structured in a pretty simple manner - there is a pool of possible attacks you go up against, and then a difficulty modifier for all of them that increases towards the end of the level (not forgetting a random boss to cap off the level). Some levels also make "new" patterns out of facing you with two easier patterns, but stacked simultaneously. It's not the most sophisticated procedural generation you've ever seen, but it works for a Touhou game. And that variety in how a stage plays is important here, because the other thing this game is built on is repetition - repeating levels to collect as many cards as you can, earn cash to buy those cards, and defeat all the bosses to get each of their unique cards and to power up Marisa's starting equipment capabilities. This kind of macro progression system, alongside the random generation, are two things we don't normally get to see from ZUN...

Screen Real Estate

There's another way this game deviates from ZUN's usual design, too. In fact, it's something absolutely massive that jumped out at me right as I started playing, and that's the UI. The right-hand side of the screen that is usually reserved for a flashy life and bomb counter, alongside other information like your power, and of course very importantly a stylized logo, is instead completely barren in this game. Most of the things you'd usually expect to see on Touhou's UI simply aren't in this spinoff, but even lives, which are still present, have instead been moved to small icons occupying a corner of the play area. So, what gives? This area instead serves as a tab of all your character stats. As you collect cards that effect things such as power level, damage multiplier, cooldown reductions, and so forth, all of it gets tracked here, with actual numerical values to boot, so you know exactly how much a given effect is helping you. It's a UI that gives you a very tactical presentation of what you're doing. But that's not even the most unusual thing about this Touhou game's UI. There's something missing among this game's mechanics that is incredibly uncharacteristic of ZUN - and that's the score. This game has no scoring system. We know ZUN likes his old-school way of making games, and a good old fashioned high score mechanic is the one thing that has tied every one of ZUN's creations together up to this point (well, apart from the kickass music and oops, all bullets). The complete absence of a score is something so unexpected it that is took me a good moment to take it in once I realised it. It shows that ZUN knew this was a very different kind of game he was making, and that things ought to be done differently.

Story?

A problem I've stated in the past with Touhou games is how the context of the story's beginning is never well communicated to the player. You pretty much always have to look in the game's manual to find out what's going on, or figure it out along the way after a few dialogues. 100th Black Market seems to address this directly as if ZUN himself has read my comment. When you hit start game for the first time, before even being taken to a level select you are thrown straight into a tutorial level that introduces the spinoff mechanics to you, and right at the start of it is a prologue that explains what is currently happening and why Marisa is here. It's just a few boxes of text across the middle of the screen, certainly not the most elegant way of conveying this information, but the point is, it's there. And I appreciated it a lot. It's not what ZUN usually does, but now it is something I want him to do more.

 

 

I think that Touhou 18.5 does a lot of other interesting things a spinoff, which I could certainly talk about. However, these are the things I want to bring attention to as particularly un-ZUN things to do. Now, I don't think this means ZUN is going to start drastically changing the way he makes his games. Future mainline Touhou games are sure to stay very traditional, just the way ZUN likes it. However, the changes demonstrated here do make me excited for how Touhou will evolve in the future.

I'm sure he's not throwing away scores in mainline Touhou anytime soon, but that doesn't mean that Touhou doesn't have any space to grow - or that ZUN is completely unwilling to take a new direction.

 

Now, I've got another thread I need make tomorrow. Something that's been a long time coming...

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18.5 is probably my 2nd favorite spinoff shooter, right behind Impossible Spell Card. I like the creative take on the formula it has.

Any reasons for disliking the roguelike genre? Lack of permanence? Uninspired generated layouts? Just curious.

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I'm also glad ZUN is finally taking some chances to experiment with the formula and honestly, so far it's worked really well. I remember talking somewhere that the card system from UM was the most fun I've ever had with a Touhou game for a long time, so making a spinoff that builds on that mechanic was such a perfect idea in my eyes. Though I still, wouldn't wanna see it become a mainstay of the series...

Wasn't the story handled the same way in the last two shooter spinoffs though? Haven't played ISC in a while but I'm p sure it did that, even if it's less of a story and more of a.. "situation".

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everything is just peachy tonsh.gif.0b4075faabf61d7265e5c3fea342964f.gif

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12 hours ago, Tenkko said:

Wasn't the story handled the same way in the last two shooter spinoffs though? Haven't played ISC in a while but I'm p sure it did that, even if it's less of a story and more of a.. "situation".

It may have been to be fair, I skipped on VD and still haven't played ISC.

13 hours ago, Eulogous said:

Any reasons for disliking the roguelike genre? Lack of permanence? Uninspired generated layouts? Just curious.

I acknowledge that my experience with the genre is limited, but I have yet to find one I enjoy. On paper I understand why roguelikes are popular - in fact, I like a lot of ideas in their design. However, I am convinced the genre is just not for me.

Even games that have just a sprinkling a roguelike mechanics frustrate me easily - take how Minecraft, for example, makes you drop your stuff when you die. I really like Minecraft, and I don't think anyone would call it a roguelike game, but having my hard earned stuff just taken away from me - that's not something I like.

Procedurally generated levels aren't my thing either, because if I die (which will not only send me back to the beginning, but also discard most of my accumulated valuables), I can't learn that section and try again to overcome it. Furthermore, I'd take a hand-crafted, carefully designed experience any day over something that's replayable but inconsistent.

And then there's the matter of runs often feeling like they come more down to luck than skill - if you don't get the right items on a given run, it could essentially be a doomed mission from the start. I can see how that can be entertaining, doing your best to improvise with what you've got. I'm not against that idea, but it just makes it feel bad when you have the knowledge that you could be playing with something better.

Permanent upgrade systems don't alleviate my pain much either. At that point, it just feels like the objective of the game is to keep playing from the start up to that point where you're stuck over and over again until the game just lets you be strong enough to overcome it. Which ties back in to one of my previous points as well, about not being able to retry - when it comes to more consistent elements, such as bosses, if I want to put the time into challenging them until I learn their patterns I simply can't, not without playing through an entire game to return to that point. (I suppose Touhou can be a bit like this too, but the difference is that the randomness in roguelikes turns this into a struggle).

Oh, and this is more a problem I have with the roguelike community than roguelikes themselves, but don't get me started on the term roguelite. If a game has roguelike mechanics in a significant capacity, it is a roguelike to me. I don't like this subgenre that's been invented because certain roguelikes aren't similar enough to rogue, or aren't hardcore enough, or have a strange gimmick...

Maybe I just haven't found the right game for me, but roguelikes that I have completed felt like a hollow victory.

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1 hour ago, buskerdog said:

 

Maybe I just haven't found the right game for me, but roguelikes that I have completed felt like a hollow victory.

A bit of a simple suggestion, but I would try enter the Gungeon. It may still have the same mechanics that frusturate you, but personally I felt a good sense of progression from it, learning how each thing works and all. it felt the most skill based roguelike to me, with very few instances where it felt like i died because the game was bad.

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5 hours ago, buskerdog said:

I acknowledge that my experience with the genre is limited, but I have yet to find one I enjoy. On paper I understand why roguelikes are popular - in fact, I like a lot of ideas in their design. However, I am convinced the genre is just not for me.

Even games that have just a sprinkling a roguelike mechanics frustrate me easily - take how Minecraft, for example, makes you drop your stuff when you die. I really like Minecraft, and I don't think anyone would call it a roguelike game, but having my hard earned stuff just taken away from me - that's not something I like.

I'm not much into the genre either, with really the only roguelike game I enjoy being the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. Though, even that series has its issues at times. I like PMD because the entire game doesn't reset upon death, there are multiple dungeons that have been crafted to house specific enemy types and items, and you can recruit said enemies into your party.

Then there's something like Genso Wanderer, which I thought would be like PMD at first. Turns out, it wasn't. Any sense of permanence is tied to your gear, and you need to level and maintain them as well as customize it to your liking, only then the game has so many enemy types that actively try to destroy your items you spent so long grinding up.

I pushed through and finished Genso Wanderer in the end, but I absolutely didn't feel accomplished. So I definitely can see why people would be turned off to roguelike systems.

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