The (over)analysis of a Google document

[CountVonNumenor]

Oh boy, it's been a long time since I last tackled one of these....

Recently, and in preparation for a thread I will try writing tomorrow, I stumbled upon this funny document thanks to a post on r/touhou. This time, instead of me writing a lot about each of the paragraphs/chapters (it took me about 6 hours debating the topic of TheOVJM and his video). Therefore, I will post first what the person had to say, then link the original file and write some of my conclusions below (it is a 42 pages long document, not even I would be enough of a masochist to go through all that). Therefore, let's go:

Spoiler

The dissection of a generation-long rise and fall. Introduction. 

A common video essay topic in the Touhou fandom is taking a look at where the series  started and how it “evolved” (which is misusing the word “evolve”, but we might as well  omit that little detail for the sake of creative liberty) 

You start out here, in a pixelated game for a some abandonware (only remembered  because of the series, other PC-98 games are almost never looked at… for a good  reason, the amount of eroge games is overwhelming) and then arrive at the shiny peaks  of the modern day, slowly traversing the path the series went through, while being told  fables of how kind and good-willed the developer, ZUN, is, and how great everything  about Touhou is, starting from the games themselves, and ending with fanmade  creations. Usually this brings quite some views and likes, alongside positive comments  and overall channel activity. Because why yes, it is indeed quite the sight – transitioning  from 1997 to 2022 is bound to look interesting. The fandom, despite being already  pretty big and even semi-mainstream, pretty similar to JJBA – being just one step below  mainstream, still likes to think of itself as “obscure” – and, just like in any obscure  community, the creator will be praised as a hero, bringing some “much needed attention  of the public''. Flaws and errors will be often overlooked, while positive moments, and  even the very existance of the video, will be hyperfocused.

However, that is not quite what I’m going to talk about. My tale is different, and it is of  how we got here. From all the great games, to this. To this disappointment of a game,  the new rock bottom of shmup design. Looks fancy, you may ask? Then you are  probably unfamiliar with what it is… 

Of course, one cannot describe a fall without first describing the rise and the peak itself  – that kind of perspective would be flawed and one-sided. 

Before we start though – a few things require clarification. I will try to include any  and all slang words in a little dictionary at the very end, just in case, as well as a  few extra ones. If a word is written in bold the first time it appears – it will be  clarified there. Secondly, Touhou was never a real competitor to many games in  terms of quality, but it does have quite some strong sides and is overall not a bad  product. At least before the descent… Lastly, yes, I did play those (all of them,  except 18.5 and the new fighters). Not too well, enough to clear most lunatics and  do a bit of other fancy stuff, but that’s about it.

 

Chapter 1. The dawn. 

It all started with a college project, two games, an arkanoid and a shmup, made by a  group of college students known as Amusement Makers. The arkanoid, The Highly  Responsive to Prayers, included some interesting mechanics, but was wonky and  required learning, as well as buggy and crashing sometimes. The shmup is much less  notable, being a clunky template-ish shmup with all the mandatory features of the genre  and nothing more. Glitches and inconveniences are common, as well as noticeable  input lag without a good emulator – which is a big issue, since many reviews and guides  tend to recommend neko project 21, a pretty bad emulator. Or, rather, should I say,  accurate? It lags as much as a real machine would, but you are not looking for that kind  of experience. The public’s reception was nonexistent – not even a hundred copies  were sold. 

Yet, there was one noticeable thing in those two games, the music. A student named  Jun’ya Ota (ZUN) used the project as a vessel for his music to be served to the public. And was he a musical genius even back then – one thing the reviews never get wrong  is the quality of the music. 

The next installment didn’t take long – a Twinkle Star Sprites inspired game,  Phantasmagoria of Dimensional Dream. Much like its source of inspiration, it’s a dueling  shmup about canceling bullets (this is not like TSS, however) on your screen and  sending them to your opponent’s screen, as well as scoring combos to send extra  attacks and even bosses (which can also be done via charging). The music is notably better, as well as the overall quality. Additionally, because of what I believe to be a  chain of coincidences and mirrored design choices, the game works extremely well,  especially in the scoring department.  

Lotus Land Story and Mystic Square were released on the next year. Those two  installments had defined a trajectory for the rest of the series – and it was both inspired  and somewhat unique. A big part of the formula was taken from arcades, the games,  which almost the whole fandom, up until 2020-2021, despised and thought to be  stupidly difficult games that were difficult for extorting credits out of people. That, frankly  speaking, foolish and baseless belief was formed by a few reviewers who would justify  the lack of research about “other shmups” by coming up with this absolutely idiotic idea.  It'd also compliment the whole “ZUN is different, ZUN is kind-hearted and genuinely  good, much unlike the other developers”. Not to put any shame on ZUN from that time,  but the disrespect for other developers is staggering. I apologize for the little deviation,  but it had to be done. It’s an example of one of the common misconceptions which  cloud the view a lot. Early Touhou games would deviate from certain arcade standards,  such as having six stages, and having graze being a major (in the PC-98 era due to  grazecaps, not that major*) source of score. 

The public’s reception was, once again, abysmal, only a few hundred copies were sold.  ZUN had decided to stop working on PC-98 and wanted to experiment on the growing in  popularity Windows platform – and he was right about it having a future. 

He had been experimenting for the following four years…

 

Chapter 2. The conception of a philosophy. 

It’s been four years since MS, which was all but completely forgotten. ZUN didn’t waste  that time though – he graduated and learnt how to code on Windows, which resulted in  the first non-PC98 installment – the game itself, the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. No  matter how popular it is now, back in 2002 without a series to back it up, it went pretty  much unnoticed, just another shmup with noteworthy music. Although its popularity was  an order of magnitude higher than MS… 

The game brought some of the long-lasting issues that are here to stay, however. 

For once, the game was pretty buggy on release, and ZUN released a patch to fix it.  The patch broke all replays that were recorded before it, resulting in what I call “ZUN’s  childhood trauma” – he would never release a patch more than a week after release,  fearing the same might happen. That would go on to be one of his initial downfalls – a  paranoidal fear of mistakes, and form quite some flaws… 

ZUN was also pretty lazy with pattern design, and often would let randomness do the  job for him – some people would call it fun, but it’s objectively lazy pattern design, and  just overall not a good decision. That caused another problem – the scattershot difficulty progression, which would just absolutely not follow the normal “later=harder” path and  had a lot of spikes and pitfalls – for instance, the whole fourth stage is pretty boring, and  consists of just streaming, while a single section is responsible for most of its  challenge. A random, unfair and straight up bad section. 

Poorly made extend thresholds is yet another one. All extends are reachable in a pure  survival run that sometimes collects items and makes no efforts at scoring whatever – the theme is there to persist whenever a system with a fixed amount of extends is  introduced with some exceptions. Even an average Hard/Lunatic run would score  double the final extend threshold at the end (120 million). This is just a lazy way of  balancing a proper resource system, once again, a poor design choice. 

And, of course, mainly poor stage design with boring or random stages with next to no  interesting elements or real learning. 

But, enough of that. All those are just beginner mistakes which should get fixed later on. 

An interesting upside of the game is that the scoring system worked… well… against  the developer’s intentions and in a way he didn’t expect. Yet it worked pretty well. 

In a year, the world saw the seventh installment, Perfect Cherry Blossom, which  improved many things, including slightly alleviating the issues covered above, as well as  improving a lot of technical aspects of the game, sound quality, sprite quality, et cetera.  The amount of content was greatly increased compared to its predecessors. It also  featured an actually impactful system that was rather well-thought out, which didn’t work  against the developer’s intention this time, and actually behaved as intended. Extend  threshold issue was alleviated by technically (of course there is a hard cap, but still) endless item-based extends, which would reward active item collection with extra 1-3  lives compared to a defensive run. Stages were made slightly more interesting, barring  a certain two, which are still snoozefests, and randomness was toned down, albeit not  by much. The game is also a lot less troublesome to get running on a modern device,  which is an extreme technical issue of its prequel. 

“To truly balance a shmup, one would have to make stage performance irrelevant and  give everyone the same bomb (as if we won’t see it happen)”. That doesn’t cancel a  major balance issue that came with PCB, however. ZUN thought it was a good idea to  have varied bomb counts per character, as well as having two bombs per character – with one of them being almost always inferior to the other. The decision was extremely  poor, and ZUN decided to never do it again without proper balancing. Kind of… 

And another issue rose with this game… The last game had an extremely powerful  shotgunning shot – so how did ZUN react? That’s right, by introducing a damage cap  and prolonging superarmour periods on spellcards to punish playing aggressively and  speedkilling, as well as nerfing all further shotguns into the ground. At least the bombs  were exempt from the cap, for now. An extremely poor move, caused by the same fear  of mistakes. Even more childhood trauma for our subject.

The public’s reception was different. ZUN has now become a prominent figure in the  (still niche) doujin community, and this is the time when fanworks actually began being  produced. He felt that power, and aspired to make a change. 

Which he described really well in the Afterword of the next game, Imperishable Night.  There is a lot to talk about here, but the Afterword is the biggest part of the “Conception  of a philosophy”. ZUN sees patterns as the main way of telling the story, and everything  else, from cover art to gameplay, is but a way to supplement them, to have them not  simply exist in an abstract void. He wanted his game to be… an artwork. Not a “mode to  unlock practice”, which he was strongly against, and adding spell practice in IN was a  really hard decision for him, as he feared it might not complement his vision of what a  shmup made by him must be. He mentioned how he is making games for one person – himself, and he doesn’t think introducing quality of life mechanics as the audience  demands is required – that’d reduce art to a technical game, just like many shmups  already are. His persistence was admirable, as well as his policy regarding fanmade  content and piracy – he didn’t care, as long as no blatant asset theft is performed. This  is where I see his birth as a philosopher, this is where ZUN became that benevolent  entity praised so frequently – and he deserved every one of those. The Afterword is  truly touching and must be read by anyone looking into the death of the series, as death is just the conclusion of a life cycle, and cannot be understood without understanding  the birth and the adolescence. 

IN was… a really good one. It would almost outright fix the randomness issue, make a  lot more interesting stage segments, fix the difficulty progression (not completely), and  add a ton of content, such as basically two distinct routes, 12 shottypes, a really good  scoring system, a lot of polish, technical fixes (no more two extra frames of input delay  

because reasons), visual enhancements, and… balancing. It was the start of ZUN’s  prime, rookie mistakes were eliminated, a philosophy was attained, a visual style and  worldbuilding was set as well, the music was good as usual. 

It was at that time, in 2004, that the interest of the doujin community peaked, and the popularity had to expand somewhere… 

A year later, due to the amount of art and fanworks, what would later be known as the  first popularity boom took place. Touhou suddendly started spreading in the West, and  with it came translation patches and overall performance issue fixes (for EoSD).  Imageboards and forums hosted most of its activity, which was still rudimentary,  compared to the modern day. Some of the well-known memes of the community have  originated from the following few years, and lured a lot of people in, resulting in quite the community. Yet, the next game released while this was still accelerating, and as such,  its scale didn’t yet reflect it. ZUN wanted to take a step back, and release a “PoDD:  Definitive Edition”, also known as Phantasmagoria of Flower View. It was a polished  and improved version of PoDD (inferior in some ways, but still). ZUN admittedly spent a  long time playtesting it, and it’s quite evident. The public didn’t like it, however. It was  different, and required much more than just dodging – something the 2005 “purists”  didn’t take kindly, with their profound hatred for cancels. It’s still a divisive topic even  nowadays, although it is treated a lot less harshly. 

The netcode is indeed of extremely poor quality, but that’s because it was a community  effort… for a game that didn’t really intend to expand past playing via LAN. It’s being  worked on… has been, for years, to no avail. 

The same year, another game saw the light of day. A spinoff game made for just a  single character, a scene game, which means basically a giant spell practice menu. An  interesting camera mechanic was introduced, as the player couldn’t shoot and had to…  shoot. The title reflects that with a pun, Shoot the Bullet. Often overlooked, but  important for our purposes. Spells were original, often containing references, were  heavily balanced around camera usage and rewarding risky approach quite a lot. It was 

a genuinely made game, that was, however, disliked by many due to the learning  required and the difficulty. 

As mentioned above, a cult was forming, the so-called “purists” who despised many  things and advocated for an image of “pure” Touhou. As extreme as their beliefs were,  they had a point. A point which was overlooked and antagonised due to how extreme  they were in enforcing it… The general public failed to understand and listen, as it  always does. 

It was that time that many false beliefs originated from. For once, “fanon=canon” was  referring to the fact that ZUN would sometimes accept publically accepted headcannons  if there was nothing to contradict that in pre-established canon. It is no longer the case,  hasn’t been in a long time. The community would see itself as “niche” specifically at that  time, and for some reason, that belief would stay until the modern day. While back then,  it used to be true, now this is no longer the case, and it seems the myth is here to stay.  The arcade misconception covered earlier might have had begun here, although I  cannot say for sure – the roots of it seem incredibly elusive. There was a time when  Touhou was just another shmup – and then that belief just randomly popped into  existance, and there was no real transition. ZUN’s philosophy and policy regarding  piracy from that time for some reason have gotten engrained into the minds of  everyone, and most people still think ZUN is the person he was specifically during those  years. 

So not only is it a period when ZUN’s philosophy came into existance, it was also the  time when most things the fandom believes were true. However, ZUN would prove a lot  more capable of changing than the community… And, for a time, this would lead to the  so-called “golden age”. The peak will be reached. Of course, the saddest part about the  peak is that it’s only down from there, but trust me, the golden age is worth it.

 

Chapter 3. The golden days. 

In almost any franchise, there is that distinct “golden age” where the popularity is at its  highest, and so is the quality. With Touhou, there is next to no doubt about this  particular era being “golden”. Let’s see why is that so. 

As mentioned above, ZUN wanted a soft reboot to the series – in two years from the  ninth game, he made a new title, which had a lot of differences compared to the other  games. Meet Mountain of Faith – the start of “modern 1”. Sprites, previously made for  PoFV, were still used in that game and became a standard – to this day, they are still  used in all titles. The new power system, having four power tiers (five, if you count  power 0 and six, if you count power 5, which didn’t affect the shot at all), with each tier  simply adding a new familiar to the base shot would stay as well – and so would almost  all the UI changes The powerbombing system, which removed bombs and let the player  bomb at the cost of a power level wouldn’t stay for long though – it was extremely  breakable and would allow for 2-3 times more bombs than any of the other titles. Lazy  and easily reachable score extend thresholds were back and just as bad as in EoSD. Lastly, it would increase the hitbox differences dramatically, with Reimu having a 4*4  square and Marisa having an atrocious 7*7. But what about the actual gameplay?

First of all, the game would break the difficulty progression back to PCB levels, with  occasional randomness being 90% of the game’s difficulty, and the rest being a  snoozefest. The scoring system was actually interesting, encouraging chaining and not  missing – except it was also extremely easy to approach the theoretical cap, and  current WR improvements are extremely miniscule (due to the removal of grazing),  consisting of using extremely risky strategies or grinding for good boss movement – which was randomised as well, for some reason. Before MoF, the boss would always  follow the player, now it has a 25% chance to move the opposite direction in an instance  of moving. That would stay as well, somehow…  

Bombs were also changed to be the same for each shottype – just a big damaging  circle, a bit smaller and more damaging for Marisa, and that was the only difference. It  was an attempt to balance the game, but… 

Balance is not something this game did either. Two of Marisa’s shots were bugged – one would deal 10x more damage at a certain power level (due to a typo), the other one  would deal much less damage than intended – it was meant to be the highest-damage  shot in the game, and it ended up being much worse than even homing (which was  incredibly overpowered). While the former was quickly fixed by a fanmade patch with  ease, the latter was a fundamentally broken damage calculation mechanism, and a fix  never came. That also shows the poor quality of playtesting the games – if what ZUN  called the higest damaging shot in the game did such poor damage, the testers must  have had some questions and concerns – they either didn’t or were ignored. I cannot  say for sure if it was caused by ZUN choosing to not listen or the testers being  incredibly incompetent, but both of those are alarming, to say the least. 

ZUN obviously learnt about the bugs – and instead of fixing them, he’d introduce an  even harsher DPS cap for the new era and all games to come. Once again, childhood  trauma kicking in, preventing him from actually addressing the issue and instead  introducing crutches which would harm the games’ quality. Indeed, the quality would  take a decline compared to what IN established, but it definitely had potential for  improvement – and that improvement did come. 

It wouldn’t come in the form of the next title, however. While Subterranean Animism did  a lot of things definitively better than its predecessor, it’s not much of an upgrade. 

The powerbombing system would stay. Effort was made to ensure it’s more balanced,  but due to bombs being different once again, it would still not be – certain shots were  able to melt bosses by chaining a bomb after a bomb, while also receiving power items  to bomb even more. Extend thresholds were gone, but the new system looked like a  placeholder you’d see in an alpha – complete a boss attack without getting hit to receive  a fifth of a life. As for the new systems – now you could graze to autocollect all items on  the screen, in addition to the whole thing being close to MoF, but now with grazing and  some other changes.

Onto some upsides, though. The game almost entirely eliminated run-defining  randomness, apart from a certain stage 1 issue, it introduced a pity mechanic to prevent  bullets killing the player right after spawning, half the shottypes had really interesting  mechanics, probably the best ZUN’s attempt at shottypes to this day and even though I  scolded the power system earlier, it’s a definitive improvement over the last game. 

The public’s reception was really positive, apart from some people scolding it for being  too hard on the normal difficulty. ZUN, however, thought it wasn’t hard enough, and was  too breakable, some change was really needed… He questioned the powerbombing  system, fixing it didn’t seem viable, so he went back to the usual bomb counter. 

It was a step in the right direction, with a lot of improvements and realisations – the step  would then turn into a march towards the peak. Undefined Fantastic Object would  double down on improving the formula, and it’s one of the best maingames from a  technical perspective. The boring resource system was thrown out of the window and  was replaced with a vastly superior UFO system, which required planning and knowing  the game – and it would provide lots of lives and some much-needed stage cancels if  done right. Bombs were back, which was a welcome change as well. Stage design was  pretty good even on its own, and it worked wonderfully alongside UFO collection  mechanics. The shot balance was… not great again, but the best shot no longer breaks 

the game and makes it trivial, unlike all the modern games starting from PCB. The  scoring system played alongside UFOs pretty well, despite a minor bug that caused the  score counter to be wrong after a certain value (fixed by a fanmade patch as well).  Randomness was back, but the difficulty progression was finally proper, with only a few  occasional peaks.  

The public’s reception was really negative due to the difficulty and all the learning  required, but that’s only natural – especially after the last few games being cheesable into oblivion… 

On the issues however. This game introduced a very harsh power loss system – which,  in 2009 was already being abolished in many games, and ZUN just randomly decided to  make it much worse – the player loses a full power level on death, and there is a  staggering difference between level 3 and 4. It’s highly unlikely to mess a regular run  up, but two deaths in a succession (for any reason) invoke some Gradius-level panic…  It also kept the bad character hitboxes of MoF – including a 6 by 6 square for Sanae as  well. 

It was a well-made game, a really well-made one, still with some flaws, but nothing is  perfect. Yet, it wasn’t the peak yet.

Neither was the next spinoff game, Double Spoiler, also known as 12.5. Some people  would say it’s better than StB, some would say it’s worse, but generally, it’s really close  to StB, and a worthy successor to it. Not much to say about the actual game though,  just StB, but with two playable characters, new spells and new bosses, which were still  creative and heavily revolving around camera usage. It would even fix some of the  atrocities of the last game, taking the most infamous spell from 9.5 and reworking it to  be actually decent, and overall not having really “bad” spells (such as taking 500+ tries),  unlike the other game. 

However, it also introduced even more shot balance issues. The other playable  character has a notably different camera – she can charge it much quicker, but cannot  take long range shots and cannot charge the orientation of the scope. On paper that’s a  good tradeoff, but in the actual game it trivialises a heavy chunk of the spells and many  feel simply not balanced for a different camera. This should show how even slight  changes may break a scene game’s balance, and how experimentation is not always a  positive thing. 

The next game is nothing short of excitement though. Yet another spinoff, this time  taking 8/10 as its decimal, Great Fairy Wars, and that “great” truly belongs there. At a  first glance, nothing special – one plain shottype and three stages (with six routes). The  life counter is replaced with a %-based healthbar, with every hit subtracting 100%, and  the bar capping at 1000%, and bombs working identically, except that they cap at  300%. Most of the UI text was also reworked – silly difficulty names, motivation, and  perfect freeze replacing lives and bombs. 

But… doesn’t it all sound like simple UI changes? It would indeed be just a shallow  retexture without the keystone of GFW’s creation – the freeze mechanic. Chargeable  exactly like the camera in the other spinoffs, it lets the player plant an ice shard at their  location. Any bullet touching the ice shard will freeze, becoming harmless and  increasing the size of the frozen territory – which could escalate really quickly into  covering the whole screen. The more you cover – the more score and bomb percentage  you gain, as well as the more charge on the spot. You can also gain it by grazing and  charging manually. In addition, once the ice expires, it explodes, damaging everything  nearby, which can cause really heavy damage on the bosses. The loathsome power  system was removed outright, now power is an accumulating % gained for… freezing,  of course. That % cannot be lost through means other than restarting the run. Bombs  instantly cover the whole screen in ice and provide iframes. Additionally, they are  capable of freezing the unfreezable bullets. 

The scoring system is… an odd one. Some would say grazestalling makes IN too long – but this just takes stalling to a completely new level. On one hand, it sounds boring, on  the other one – the player has to find ways to freeze a lot of the screen (and survive  while doing so) without killing the boss, which gets pretty interesting, considering the  game doesn’t mind being near-impossible (without freezes) at times. Definitely an  interesting one, and definitely not for everyone.

The stage and boss design is finally of proper quality, with a lot of learning, even more  (significantly more) than what UFO had. At a first glance, having such a busted system  should make the game a breeze – but it’s finely crafted to be still really interesting (and  

hard for a first clear). It also had some bullets (fireballs) that resisted freezing and some  bullets (needles, a.k.a. lasers), which would break the ice into shards that can  potentially be hazardous. That is a crutch, of course, but it’s not overdone and doesn’t  spoil the game that much. Many cancel-based games can fare really well even without  uncancellable bullets, it’s often viewn to be lazy. Revenge bullets from dead enemies  are also back, and it makes them all the more interesting. 

The public’s reception was extremely poor, and it still is, to that day... But still, this, this  is the peak that we’ve been approaching. Sadly, it’s only down from here… 

Not to be too upset with that though, not yet. The next game is still of high quality, and  it’s still a good title. Ten Desires is yet another experimental game, and it’s a worthy  spiritual successor to UFO, albeit a step down from the last game. 

It changed many things – such as the UI and hitboxes, which are now circular and much  bigger (as well as fixing the atrocious hitbox differences), and both of these changes  were to stay. The system that wouldn’t stay though, is dynamic extend requirements. 

Before, you’d need 5 or 3 pieces for a life in SA and UFO respectively, now you need 8  pieces for the first life, 10 for the second one, and so on. Sounds like a lot – and it is,  reaching full lives in this game is quite the challenge, even without taking deaths into  account. Just like in UFO, however, the system for obtaining them is really interesting  and encourages learning, and the game is made around the trance gauge. Due to the  amount of spirits increasing drastically if the player is close enough to the enemy, the  game revolves heavily around pointblanking. It’s complimented by two of the  characters being proximity-based as well – Marisa’s damage is pretty weak at the  bottom and really good close up, and Youmu is that, but even more polarised – the  slash will not damage the boss at all if cast from the bottom and is the strongest shot at  medium/close range. That makes her one of the most interesting shottypes in the  series, and one of the strongest as well. 

Interestingly enough, the game also had a pretty good progression, and not much  randomness/artificial difficulty. The powerloss system was nerfed as well – so ZUN  definitely knew what he was doing 

Even though graze=PIV is still a thing in TD, grazing is entirely irrelevant, and scoring  resembles speedrunning more than anything. The system is liked quite a lot, and many  people find it to be the best one in the series.

The game, however, has a flaw – the awesome resource system might as well not exist  for a casual survival run, as many people tend to ignore it. Considering the game has a  pretty relaxed shottype (Reimu) and is overall relaxing pattern-wise, it’s not hard to beat  it while ignoring the system completely, and using the trance as a backup bomb. That is  something ZUN will be guilty of countless times in the future as well, but more on that  later. 

The public’s reception was much unlike any other game before. Commercially, it was a  large success, and many people found this break from the last few games to be great.  But this was the title that made some people speak about “the death of Touhou”. Even though many like it, a lot of people placed the series’ gravestone on this game. Perhaps  due to how sleep-inducing the Normal difficulty is, or perhaps due to all the changes. Or  perhaps some people foresaw what was to come? 

Despite that, many people were excited for what the new era has to show – the visuals  were a lot better, and ZUN had showed quite a level of skill in designing actually  interesting systems. It was also at that time that fangames started being made in much  larger quantities, although many of them were still primitive, really underwhelming even  compared to the official games (and sometimes just bad, looking at Len’en…). The  popularity of the series may have slightly gone down compared to 2009-2012, but not  by much. One could say, the series entered its “cruise flight” after the takeoff and the  peak. It was also slowly shifting out of the relative obscurity, before it was something almost every non-Japanese advanced internet user knew, after that it would start slowly  drifting into the masses, with some of the memes and videos receiving a lot of traction. 

It seemed as if everything was going perfectly well – and the “purists” are nothing but a  group of rambling conservatives that reject any and all chance. It was so simple back  then – ZUN is a hero, Touhou is a charming rabbit hole which you’d never want to leave  and the future shines brightly.

 

Chapter 4. The golden days? 

Oh, had it all been so simple…  

Between UFO and TD, some changes have happened, however. Gift, the company that  was making nendoroids (one of them, at least) have asked ZUN to license the  production of Touhou-related nendoroids, also known as fumos. After a bit of thinking,  ZUN realised the commercial potential the series had, and agreed to a pretty good (for  him) deal, which was the cause for the high price those had. That, of course, changed a  long time ago, now their price is high simply because people will buy them anyway. That  serves as a milestone for the beginning of an end – now ZUN started seeing the series  as something that can be commercialised. 

That transferred into TD as well. Remember when ZUN said no more spell practice and  IN had it just as a cautious experiment? TD has it as well, because the fans have been  asking for a long time. Remember when ZUN said he is making the games for himself?  

TD Afterword contains apologies for the last few games and openly states that this  game is watered down specifically to address the outcry. It is one thing to respond to  criticism and nerf, say, a bad power system or another poorly designed aspect of the  game… but responding to “game too hard dont wanna learn pls make easy” is  something else entirely. 

It was now that ZUN realised the power of having a game include two completely  different ways to play it, one for the casual audience, the other one for everyone else.  This way he could avoid outcries, still design good systems and appeal to good players,  as well as reaching quite the financial success. Sounds like a win-win… 

And the next game was almost a win-win, if not for a two enormous issues. DDC tried to  split those playstyles by having three easy shottypes and three hard shottypes. Now an  issue with that is that the three easy shottypes are way too easy, allowing for infinite life  duplication, overall an extremely easy run with zero memorisation or learning required  or just a really strong shottype. Meanwhile on the other side there’s a plain shottype that  is outperformed in DPS by the homing ones, a flamethrower-type weapon in a game  that aggressively punishes any attempts at meleeing and a shottype that trades  everything for score potential. The gap is absolutely colossal, and there is no middle  ground. What makes it worse is that most of the bosses are designed extremely poorly,  which is why DDC is often regarded as the most random game in the series, with how it  makes “vomit” its main pattern type.  

Messing with the player’s controls is a dirty trick as well, but what makes it even dirtier is  that the invertion system is clunky and sometimes just fails to properly work. For the  final boss, ZUN seems to be forgetting that he cranked up the hitbox sizes, and still  imagines the bullets to be modern 1-sized. Ten Desires would go along that change and  make the patterns notably more sparse to compensate for that – and DDC just doesn’t care.

Enough with the downsides, however. The game features a really plain resource system  that looks boring at the first glance, but the stages are wonderfully made to utilise that  system fully. Playing without using it is heavily discouraged, since, much unlike the last  game, knowing what to do makes a world of difference. It’s really interesting and  rewarding to learn, ZUN managed to make yet another great system once again. 

As for scoring – the game features a good system for obtaining resources and a  functional system for exchanging those for PIV, making it pretty good. MarisaB is, of  course, something else entirely, yet another one of the unintentionally good systems,  like PoDD or EoSD. 

The game was received rather well, although some more people found the series to be  “dying”. I sincerely believe that most of them were repulsed by unfamiliarity, cancels  (which are a painful topic) and poor balance, and I cannot judge them. Some, however,  had a point… 

As for ZUN – noticing the success of the “toned down” games, he made a toned down  spinoff game. It would feature much more equipment than all games before it, including  some semi-original things, and the cards which were designed around finding the right item – no more grinding, The Impossible Spellcard resembled a puzzle game more than  anything. 

Of course, it wouldn’t be ZUN without screwing something up – this time, it was two of  the items being much more powerful than the others. “Who would’ve thought giving the  player 12 seconds of iframes wasn’t good for the overall balance of the game?”. (That also raises the question of how the testers approved that). As such, these two items  result in the majority of the cards being overly easy. Without them, however, the whole  puzzle shtick is still upheld, the cards are decently creative and fair. Not for the no item  clears, however, but this is not the intended way to play, and is more of a joke. A point  could be made about the achievement, however, not all achievements reflect the proper  way to play the game – if a game includes an achievement for not getting hit once, it  doesn’t mean that this is the intended experience, and it doesn’t mean the game will be  fair and balanced for a no damage run. 

The public’s reception was overall positive, it was just a neat little game to give the fans  an easier time compared to the camera games. The balance was lacking, and it was  perhaps too easy, but overall, it wasn’t a bad game.

However, ZUN further saw the power of catering to the casual audience – and this time,  the division was unlike anything before – last time it was about the shottypes, in Ten  Desires it was most likely unintentional, and now ZUN decided to straight up split the  game in two game modes… with the second one including checkpoints and powerloss  per death, as well as no lives. The mode definitely worked and most definitely fulfilled its  purpose, but it’s more of an exotic practice mode than anything. The Legacy mode is  quite well-made, however. It features a seemingly simple system, just like in DDC, and it  flows with the game just as well. The only major issue is that it scales with the amount  of bullets, and as such, would almost always grant a life piece on Lunatic. Additionally, it  would provide the player with a bit too many lives, allowing for a rather relaxed run once  the player learns what to do. Speaking of relaxations, two shottypes absolutely  decimate it while two others are just regular ones. While Sanae’s grazebomb abuse was  likely not intentional, there is no way that ZUN, seeing what a shield bomb did in the last  game, would implement a triple (almost permanent as well) shield bomb and think it’ll  work as any other. Yes, the balance was as good as none. 

The public’s reception was interesting – the game was instantly flagged as the hardest  in the series, but also really liked, and the only criticism it faced was regarding the  difficulty. Sadly, ZUN would comply… instead of addressing some of the actual issues the game had, mainly balance and broken progression, which made difficulty stay  almost consistent throughout the game, except for some peaks and the final boss. 

In the scoring department the game would have been rather lacking, without any  interesting mechanics and just grazing, if not for Reisen and her bomb increasing the  size of the grazebox, as well as every broken shield autocollecting all items for maximal  value (except for the last*). Still, it’s nothing exciting and surely, it’s just a misstep… 

That’s what many people thought, until the next game. ZUN had listened to the wrong  side of criticism too much, and thought the casual side of LoLK may have not been  casual enough. So HSiFS would go on to feature the most broken system to that day – season releases. While they may remind you a lot of GFW freezes, there is a crucial  issue here – GFW is a game entirely made around freezing, and everything is balanced  from the perspective of the player optimally freezing the bullets. HSiFS is just an  average Touhou game with that system slapped on top of it. It’s just there to make the  game easy and breakable, the game isn’t designed around the player using it, it even  feels like an afterthought. A point could be made around there being four different  seasonal attacks, and balancing the game around all four would be tough. However,  three of them are just circles with varying sizes and DPS. Additionally, in the Extra  stage, the player is limited to one seasonal weapon, yet balance is nowhere to be seen.

The final nail to the coffin is the final spell, the epitome of bad mechanic design – usually, in a game with a special mechanic, the player is tested at how well they can  use it at the end. This is not the case, and instead, the player is given a spell that lasts  60-70 seconds even if the player attempts to kill it as fast as possible, mainly includes a  lot of random things (depending on the season) and sets the player’s power to zero,  turning it into a really long and sometimes unfair spell… in an attempt to balance the  system being broken, I presume, for there isn’t a better explanation. 

What this game did well however, is finally equalising all character hitboxes – no more  silly advantage for one character, and having actually solid score extends – the average  run that doesn’t use releases much cannot grab the last 3-5 extends, and that is how it  should be. Lastly, shottype balance is pretty solid, if you ignore seasonal weapons,  where there is a clear hierarchy from the best to the worst. Funnily enough, the  strongest release also scores the best by a giant margin. 

Speaking of scoring, however. The system itself is pretty solid, but it’s definitely out of  sync with the game, and the only boss that feels like it was specifically made for  releases is the first one – all others are the usual bosses being milked into oblivion. 

The game was received fairly well – and that sealed ZUN’s fate in a downward spiral,  because this was the game in which he completely neglected experienced player  experience in favour of making the game fun for the more casual audience – something  he was once so afraid of doing. Meet the new ZUN, he is here to stay. 

HSiFS would also be the first game to be put on Steam, which would then lead to all  other games being put there – at the time of writing this, PoFV is the last one to be  ported. Was it to make it more accessible? Or was it to make more money? 

As ZUN fell, the community saw a rise in quality of the fangames. While an average  fangame was still pretty bad (I even had the unfortunate experience of meeting a person  playtesting some of them. They couldn’t care less for design issues and balance issues,  and would approve the game as long as it’s at least fun for the casual perspective and  has no major crashes or glitches. Their actions were met with criticism from certain  people, and… they would essentially cancel whoever called out their testing for being of  extremely poor quality), some gems were getting made – they would be far better than  almost any official game, featuring original and extremely interesting systems, and  being much more balanced. Sadly, the community forgot names like Phantasmagoria  Trues, Magical Singular Day, EIoS, Blue Devil (this one’s recent), Infinite Blade  Pavillion, IKUSAAAAAAAN, and plays exclusively poor-quality graphic-oriented  fangames such as FDF or extremely bad games that have zero intent to be even  remotely balanced, fair or well-designed, like the Len’en series. 

But not to rush ahead of time, the experienced community still saw HSiFS as a slipup.  It’ll get better, surely it will.

 

Chapter 5. The end. 

The next game would indeed make things better… Now everyone had an incredibly  poor-quality product and HSiFS looked pretty decent next to it. Meet Violet Detector, the  undisputed worst Touhou game at that point (that would change as well, but later…). It  was a camera game, the third one. People were fairly hyped for it, and still hoping for  ZUN’s redemption, which could come at anytime – he couldn’t not have noticed, there  was no way. Well… the hype was all for nothing, to say the least. The first stages are at  most decent, albeit extremely guilty of reuse. The teleportation controls are garbage,  ZUN’s phobia of introducing new buttons at its finest. But it all would have been  acceptable, had ZUN not chosen to paste two spells at once for each scene of the  lategame. This was unbalanced and at times, downright idiotic.  

The reception was incredibly negative, the game was flamed. ZUN once again likely  misinterpreted it and decided that the complaints were about camera games as a whole  – so instead of fixing the actual issues, he’d simply make his next scene game different. 

I unfortunately fail to see the reasoning behind VD’s design – it doesn’t seem to appeal  to either audience, and doesn’t seem inspired by anyhing, so it remains an enigma.  There was simply nothing to be achieved, unless ZUN aimed for a middle ground of sorts. If so, that would go on to show him that a middle ground is a terrible solution,  worse than siding with anyone specifically. So he’d have to make a choice, and, if that  wasn’t obvious enough, he’d choose the “casuls”. 

Ten main games ago, ZUN realised how much harm varied bomb count can do. A good  realisation and a rookie mistake, so what would he do as a head of a pretty big brand?  That is right, bring that stuff back! Indeed, meet WBaWC. This title is ridden with issues and poor design choices, for example, almost all stage sections are as boring as PCB  stage 4 – pure streaming for minutes. Speaking of stage 4, it suffers from extreme  visibility issues, although it’s not like the whole game doesn’t – “fancy” player shot  effects obstruct bullets a lot of the time. Having a flaming aura doesn’t help either,  although it’s not like the player needs to see the bullets to rhythmically tap. Youmu’s  slash is back, but this time, it’s outclassed by a simple forward-focus shot that doesn’t  require close range shenanigans or charging, rendering it obsolete. Not to mention it  being copied from TD with zero changes – except for the Wolf shottype adding an extra slash on top, making it even more silly, as it effectively negated the only downside.  Although who even cares about it when there is a shottype that allows to triple bomb  effects, obtain one more bomb per life and have prolonged otter hyper shields that  shred most patterns, which absolutely don’t feel like they were designed for that.

But what about the resource system? This time, ZUN was somewhat creative and let  midbosses drop additional life/bomb pieces if certain conditions are met… some of  which are pretty silly and some are trivial. Not to mention that it would at best give an  extra life or two compared to a usual run and literally all other life/bomb pieces are static  drops. 

The scoring isn’t any better – just like the last game, a single shottype type (Otter) has  an immense advantage over all others, except it’s even worse now. The whole scoring  system feels like an afterthought, “what if we made otters generate PIV when cancelling  bullets… and removed graze, I guess, who even needs it”. While other hypers can  generate PIV by dealing damage, this isn’t even remotely close to otters. Simply  adjusting the numbers would’ve been so easy (it wouldn’t fix the system as a whole but  would definitely make it better) – yet ZUN chose not to. Of course, there are some  people (who am I kidding – one person. I hope you are not reading this) that like that  kind of thing, but the reason they like it is due to all the improvisation required – since,  unlike UFO tokens, beasts are randomised… 

Yet, the game saw immense commercial success, and around the time of its release,  the second popularity boom went off, and by 2022, Touhou almost became mainstream.  Many popular videos doubled their viewer count, and, for instance, Bad Apple saw a  quadruple increase since 2019. This moment signified the loss of hope – ZUN is now  motivated by commercial success and aims for the casual audience, he no longer cares  for experienced players or replay value, he no longer cares for quality, the games are  rushed, raw and unoptimised. WBaWC has issues with pretty bad lag during cancel  animations on low-end devices – all because of decade-long code reuse (more often  than not, assets wouldn’t even be deleted and hastily covered up. This is evident  through some unlock codes still working in later games, spritesheets including  unnecessary sprites and many, many other things) and overall poor optimisation. 

The public’s reception was just like with HSiFS, praised by many and despised by a  select few, although the latter have increased in numbers and reinforced their beliefs  even further. Yet, not many people even among them were truly hopeless – perhaps the  next game will be better? 

The next game was unlike anything before… Astonishingly… bad. A really poorly made  game which aimed to add replay value via a cards system, but became probably the  least replayable one to that day. Now, what made it so bad? All the issues that WBaWC  had found their way into this game. The stage design has now been almost fully ruined  with generic circles and a staggering overdose of streaming. For the first time since  PoFV, there was a bullet which had its hitbox extend beyond the sprite. UFO powerloss  was back and even worse, now that all shots are relatively much weaker than before  (compared to boss healthbars). Unique shots were gone as a whole, Sakuya’s one only  encourages shooting straight ahead for the absolute majority of the time, SA ReimuC  and IN Youmu (both relied on the same mechanic) were completely different. 

The biggest strawman savior the game has are the cards… cards, while they did have  some fun combos (zero hardcoded interactions too), they were easily broken and all the  cool combinations were so numbered that people found them all on day 1. Even better,  ZUN refused to balance any cards, because he “didn’t have enough time”… with a team  of testers. Family may weigh him down, but his testers are on an actual paid job, and  the simplest two-card breaks anyone reading the wikipage can think of are still in the  game. Speaking of day 1, people also managed to counterstop the game on the  second day. WBaWC’s counter was considered to be a poor decision since it was  counterstopped in mere months, but this was on a whole new level. Lastly, the hardest  boss in the game bases her whole difficulty around clippy bullets with enormous  hitboxes and circles, instead of being creative or doing literally anything else. 

Additionally, graze was removed… Despite particles and sounds still being generated  and the value still being kept track of – that should be a testament to how “well” ZUN  clears up the assets when creating a new game on top of the old one. This (of course,  not just the graze system, but the poor optimisation) led to the game having a lot of  performance issues on low-end devices, and many average PCs experience lag during  cancels, especially if recording software is used.

WBaWC’s issue with having all the scoring tied to a single hyper type with barely any  PIV gain for others (in comparison)… persisted. Or, should I say, became infinitely  worse. Now all the scoring is tied to 1.5 items (the hand literally just passively increases  gold gain) and all the serious scoring is tied to 1 character – if you are not using the  mallet with Sakuya, you get next to nothing. While in some of the more recent games  PIV caps were an annoyance (kicking in around stage 5-6, or stage 3-4 in HSiFS), UM  allows to reach the cap on the first boss.  

Now that was a disaster… or was it? Its commercial success was far greater than that  of WBaWC, and its Steam purchases amount (days after release) was greater than  EoSD’s downloads on Moriya Shrine – so more people were willing to pay for it in the  first week since release than download the most popular Touhou game from the “Pirate  bay” (unfortunately, not anymore) of the Touhou games. This rushed atrocity of a game got much more downloads than anything else in the series. 

A few years ago, a joke prophecy was told. “ZUN’s last game is going to be BPoHC, but  worse. How is it possible? Only ZUN will know”. Now, what is BPoHC? For the  unaware, that’s a textbook example of a euroshmup. A euroshmup is defined as a  shmup which has roguelite elements incorporated by a developer (usually a  corporation) who thought this would be a good idea. Usually they include healthbars,  randomly generated levels, intercredit progression (this one is a telltale sign of a  euroshmup), poorly designed patterns, oftentimes unfair and made to be tanked  through, difficulties nearly impossible without upgrades, and of course, a currency and a  shop to spend it in. BPoHC popularised the belief “shmup with healthbars =  euroshmup”, but it’s perfectly possible to have a normal shmup with a healthbar system  (see GFW, this one is essentially a healthbar) or have a euroshmup without those. It’s  just that healthbars are a cheap way of “balancing” unfair patterns and randomness. 

BPoHC was guilty of all of those, which should have made for a terrible game – and  sure thing, the game is terrible from a normal shmup perspective. Yet, much unlike UM,  it had some redeeming qualities – hundreds of various upgrades allowed to plan a  broken build in dozens of ways, and that would indeed add replay value – searching for  ridiculous combos and ways to break the game, with new ones being found months  after release (in comparison, the last way to break UM was found out on day 1, because  all of them are incredibly obvious just from reading the wikipage). Additionally, BPoHC  included thousands of lines of dialogue, which was for every team interacting with every  boss, as well as endings and prologues. In comparison, UM’s entire plot (with every line  being written out fully, and nothing being shortened or left out) can probably fit on 2 A4  pages. Lastly, the attacks, no matter how unfair, still had flair. They still represented the  boss really well, and while stage design is surely not Jynx’ thing, I can most assuredly  say – there aren’t any “generic” boss attacks. 

None of that saves the game from being horrible, unfair and poorly designed, of course.  But they serve to make the game at least not straight up bad.

Which is not true for the next ZUN’s game. The prophecy has come true! The new scene game, 100th Black Market, is the very rock bottom of ZUN’s shmup design. UM  card system was reworked… for the worse. Many cards have been swapped out for  boring numeric stat upgrades, and the others are either cancelling bullets in some form  (which are a simple cooldown move, so no interesting plays or anything remotely  learnable), blocking familiars, THE CARD THAT CLEARS THE WHOLE STAGE,  resources or equipment, none of which is original, all borrowed from UM and the  phantasmagorias. Score is removed, but… It’s still clearly calculated in the background,  once again showing the laziness. But now, UM’s only redeeming quality is gone – all the  abuse combos have been reduced to simply “haha 3 -33% to cooldown cards allow to  spam the circle with zero cooldown” or other stat-related builds instead of any sort of  creative ways to break the game. The difficulty is improper - Overdrive is around the  usual Hard. Bosses are bullet sponges, and stages are all incredibly boring,  randomised and sometimes unfair. The amount of dialogue is miniscule, and there are  no routes and next to no secrets, making it literally a direct downgrade of BPoHC.  Replay value is just nonexistant – two secrets, collecting all cards and completing all  stages takes 5-7 hours, and there is literally nothing to do after that – stages are  nothing, the bosses are overly easy and uninspired, and all the remotely interesting  combos were likely already found during those 5-7 hours due to how few of them exist.

Scoring is… removed. For the first time in 25 years, a game made by ZUN didn’t include  any form of score. Even though score is still calculated in the background via the same  system as UM, as well as the graze particles still appearing, which should serve as a  really nice demonstration of how lazy ZUN’s approach to new games is – and it’s getting  progressively worse. 

Yet, the public liked that game, against all odds… Because of Marisa and her bare feet  on the title screen, of course, people aren’t even ashamed to admit it. Steam reviews  serve as a nice piece of evidence, literally 80% of positive ones look like the one shown  below. Of course, the more experienced players absolutely flamed the game, it was the  new VD, except even worse this time (note the amount of hours played, as well as the  awards) 

It should come as no surprise that the next game is highly unlikely to be even half decent, seeing how relentless ZUN is on his downward spiral. Touhou 19 is planned to  be released around the early summer of 2023, while the beta will be published in spring,  so there isn’t much time left to wait – and perhaps ZUN will start working on it just  around now. 

However, Touhou was never just the shmups. Fighters present an interesting rise and  fall of an initially small doujin circle, and other licensed projects offer some insight about  ZUN’s current goals. The printworks which I’m not too familiar with provide even more  concerns, and so do CD’s. Of course, none are nearly as interesting as the maingames  or even the fighting games, but they most assuredly deserve a mention. 

And, most assuredly, the biggest offender will not go without a mention…

 

Chapter 6. Tasofro, printworks, Lost Word, CDs and Cave. 

Back in the days of PC-98, ZUN wanted to make a fighting game. Yet, issues arose – the character roster was rather lacking, and the coding was too complex for one person  to handle, let alone a college student. 

After the release of PCB, however, ZUN became a prominent figure in the doujin  community and a circle, Twilight Frontier (a.k.a. Tasogare Frontier, Tasofro or Kusofro)  offered help – ZUN would write the plot and the new music tracks, while they would  remix some of the old ones and do all the coding for a fighting game. A year later,  (slightly later than IN, but still 7.5) Immaterial and Missing Power was released. Now,  “missing” is an understatement – the game was lacking, raw, clunky and rushed. The  balance issues would go far beyond the usual fighting game power tiers with weak and  strong characters, some would decimate the story mode while some would get  destroyed themselves. The controls were pretty bad and often faulty, which resulted in  most people just mashing their way through the game. The continue system attempted  to be “quirky”, but ended up being weird and silly, and to this day, many people don’t  understand it.

Yes, the game was bad, and nearly universally disliked, however… For an  inexperienced doujin circle being tasked with making a fighting game from scratch in  under a year, it was acceptable. 

Three years later, the world saw Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. As visually similar to IaMP  as it may be, there is a world of difference between the two. For instance, the combos  were reworked, and now were a lot more consistent, mashing is no longer a viable tactic  for story mode, PvP is actually functional (nobody plays SWR PvP, the reason will be  specified later), some new characters were added, the spellcard system was reworked  and made much more interesting and some of the more extreme edges of the IaMP  balance ladder were curbed, resulting in overall better experience. The game is also  interesting to learn, and I mean for both combos and the story mode, the spellcards get  really creative (to the point of messing with altitude) and it doesn’t crash as much. 

This game was perceived a lot better than the last one, and it was far from undeserved.  However, it still had issues – mainly PvP, and it was missing a lot of the recent  characters. As such, Touhou 12.3, also known as Hisoutensoku or Unthinkable Natural  Law was made to fix that. It wasn’t technically a game, simply a DLC for SWR with a  few more characters and a bit of story mode. It also doubled down on all the changes  SWR made, fixed a lot of balance issues and finally made PvP actually decent – which 

made Soku one of the two most popular Touhou games for tournaments (it’s impossible  to compare it to PoFV due to the tournaments involving vastly different parts of the  fandom). To this day, Soku is loved and praised… and just like how ZUN peaked  between 12 and 13, so did Tasofro. It’s their magnum opus, and it’s only down from  here. 

However, many people found SWR to be overly difficult. That was not the case, the  game was simply learning-heavy, and, well, not much different from normal fighting  games. The combo system was getting a lot of hate from the casual players too, so, just  like ZUN, Tasofro turned their attention to the casual audience. Meet Hopeless  Masquerade, the game with no hope of redemption. Combos were removed, the  spellcard system was greatly nerfed, and now the games revolve around mashing. In  addition, the story mode would just include the same scenario being fought over and  over again, with the same three fights at the end, which nobody liked. The popularity  system didn’t do much either. The difficulty was, of course, much less than before, and  “Lunatic” wouldn’t compare to SWR Normal. 

It's worth noting that this game must not receive the same level of pitying as IaMP – it  had roughly the same amount of production time as SWR, and the team was much  more experienced than back in 2004. 

In two years, a direct improvement for the game would be released, Urban Legends in  Limbo. While it certainly improved the story mode (and the balls lines get a laugh out of  me as well) and made some mechanical improvements, it was pretty much HM in every  way. Really not much to say about this one.

And there isn’t much to say about Antinomy of Common Flowers either. It doubled down  on what ULiL did, had a lot of creative storylines and improved PvP – which is why it’s  the second most played fighter. Still, it mainly revolved around mashing.... The difficulty  was still rather casual, and the spellcard system wasn’t as good as in SWR/Soku either. 

Additionally, the game was rather divisive – people that loved UNL would refuse to  invest time into AoCF, and people that played AoCF wouldn’t even touch Soku because  of its relative complexity. Yet, for now Tasofro remained mediocre at worst, their newest  games were a disappointment, but nothing fatal or anti-fanbase. However… 

In October, 2019, they’ve announced a new game, which, just like HM, was made with a  completely new engine and included a total overhaul. They presented some footage,  and promised a beta in just a few days. The beta was, as all betas are, somewhat  clunky and unbalanced, but it certainly had a charm to it. So they’ve announced the full  game to be released next summer, and there was a fair amount of anticipation.  

The release date drew near, and Tasofro announced a delay, due to COVID-19, as well  as clarifying that the game is nearly finished. Just a few months later, they would be  ready to deliver the product. Or not, once the new release date came, it was postponed  again, this time by a month. And again. And again. And again. And so, it was drawn a  year away from the initial release date. Reasonable, one might say? Absolutely not. If in  July 2021 they claimed it was almost ready and 3 months was enough even with COVID  regulations, why did it take them a full year to complete the game? There was  definitively something shady about all those delays – and the fact that the game didn’t  even have all the playable characters (all other Touhou fighters and TSS-esque games  had all the opponents be playable with their own storylines, unless the opponent was a  bizarre enemy, like the catfish), crashed quite a lot, was still clunky and felt raw. If  SHoSS was nearing completion in the summer of 2020, how come it released  unfinished a year later? 

Yet the fanbase was pleased – why? The game included quite some characters that  haven’t received proper screen time in a while, and many people were excited about  their favourites, absolutely ignoring the game and all the issues in process. That awfully  resembles some of the ugliest strategies gacha game companies use… 

Speaking of gacha, the irony… A company named Goodsmile released a highly  predatory carrion eater of a game that fed on all the popularity the series had amassed,  and sank its teeth into the secondaries’ time and wallets. Granted, it wasn’t just the  secondaries, but they were the target audience.  

Yes, indeed, the next subject is Lost Word. While there was a fair amount of fanmade  Touhou gachas, they mainly went unnoticed with mediocre to decent player bases, and  many shut down over the years, this one really stands out. The creators bought a  license for the game to be made from ZUN himself, and offered him a cut of the  earnings, in exchange for the game to be advertised by ZUN himself on various Touhou  events, Reitaisai, as well as the ability to advertise it under the brand as well. 

The game itself feels predatory in every aspect – the gameplay is rather mediocre  compared to some of the actually decent gacha games, the characters and their  dialogue is tailored for fanservice, made to appeal to the secondary fans and just people  obsessed over their waifus in general, the plot is specifically able to be stretched 

indefinitively while introducing practically any character without any damage to the  narrative (not like people would care anyway), fanon personalities are all the game has  to offer, and the writers clearly don’t know the lore of the series, aside from some quick  references to “”obscure”” things here and there. And, of course, lootboxes,  microtransactions, grinding, time-limited offers – you name it, usual gacha business. As  well as stolen music which makes people frequently praise the game’s OST (even  though almost all the praised tracks are stolen). 

Licensing a gacha game marketed for teenagers (people that don’t know the value of  money, love their waifus and spend a lot of time online) is an action the legalty of which  is questioned in many countries, and the moral aspect of the decision is deeply rotten  as well – so what made ZUN do it? Money? Unless it’s greed for the sake of greed, it’s  unrealistic – just from the Steam sales alone ZUN made at least 600 thousand dollars  over the last 2-3 years, and that is without taking any other form of income he has into  account, selling CDs, printworks, taking a chunk of the profits of Tasofro, Gift and  Reitasai (and other conventions) – his income likely exceeds a million dollars a year,  which is perfectly enough for a family to live extremely well, with a lot of money saved  up for retirement. ZUN is anything but short for money – so then what is the reason? A  pattern is forming… Additionally, a lot of content creators (Yumemey, BEATMario and  others) have been sponsored by LW to promote it. I cannot blame them, at least not as  much – their deed is like signing a deal with the devil compared to licensing the devil to  sell those in the first place. 

The degradation of printworks and CDs isn’t something I was too familiar with, so I’ll  keep it brief. CDs used to include a lot of both remixed and original tracks, and were  released pretty often… Until a pretty large break that lasted almost a decade, and the  CD that came after it featured one original track and two remixes. Yeah, Rainbow Coloured Septentrion was a disappointment. The printworks used to include a lot of  humour, but also with a lot of actual worldbuilding and some philosophical/existential  discussions. Now it all has been thrown out of the window in favour of even more fanon y jokes and just “cute girls doing things” – my best guess is that it all started from Inaba  of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth being rather liked. 

ZUN also tried expanding into arcades – and sold Exa-Arcadia a license to port FDF II  to arcades. Even though Exa Label usually comes with some improvements, I do not  think it was the right choice – the game is still mediocre, graphics-oriented and overall  boring, which is really not what people want when they visit the arcade. There are  dozens of games that would fit that perfectly – yet he chose the one that was simply  popular among the casual fans for looking fancy. 

So, is all hope lost? Perhaps not, for ZUN has sold Cave a license to make a fangame  as well. However, considering ZUN has been out of touch with the shmup industry since  at least 2012 (probably much earlier), he may not even be aware of Gothic wa Mahou Otome. And Cave pretty much confirmed that the game will be a mobile gacha game,  the only thing we can hope for is for it to at least be a shmup.

ZUN started out as a developer trying to project his ideas onto the world. In the middle  of his career, he learnt how dangerous not catering to the casual audience is – so he  decided to always include some form of a casual “mode” in his games – easy shottypes  at first, which was alright, a completely different mode afterwards… and completely  dismissing the non-casual audience later on. Perhaps he sought money, perhaps he  sought appreciation, perhaps both.  

He started realising just how profitable the series and everything surrounding it can be,  and, of course, took advantage of it. At the end, he decided to create something for  each type of audience with at least some representation (sorry printwork fans, you are  left out of the equation, as well as CD enjoyers), maingames catering towards the more  casual and relaxed people (as well as spinoffs), LW being an option for non-shmup  fans, and Cave’s new game… perhaps he thought it’d still be a good shmup game to  please the demographic he stopped catering long ago, due to him being completely out  of touch with the world. As charming as he may have been, now he is but an average  developer seeking profits (not above all else, but there is no more art or passion left).  

“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself  become the villain”

 

Chapter 7. Omake.txt. 

The conclusion has been reached, yet there are some things that went unspoken. For once, scrapped materials. 

1. A more thorough analysis of the printworks and their degradation. Deemed  unnecessary and subjective. 
2. A bit more detail about the first two games. Charming and interesting as they  may be, they were written off as unimportant, nothing but rookie mistakes that  didn’t affect ZUN’s career much. 
3. An analysis of the community, specifically of the community leaders, poor  moderation, hypocrisy and many other things. Too many personal gripes, and I  simply couldn’t write anything on that without either being too brief or too  emotional. 
4. “Better alternatives”. Resembled cheap advertising too much, and wasn’t a part  of the series’ downfall. 
5. Many jokes. While I can let one or two slip every once in a while, I’d rather keep  them out. 
6. Gold Rush, even though it could serve as a nice foreshadowing for 18.5, is not  canon and too insignificant to cover. 

 

Dictionary 

• PC-9801(21) - NEC is a pretty old Japanese computer (abandonware), used mainly for  eroge games. 
• Shmup or shoot’em up, a term referring to vertical or horizontal autoscroller shooter  games (the term STG means roughly the same). 
• Arkanoid is one of the first video games, a game about using a platform to keep a ball  in the air while making it hit cards. 
• Twinkle Star Sprites – a 1997 dueling STG by ADK, the predecessor of PoDD/FV. 
• Graze – a term for having a bullet fly a certain distance away from the hitbox, usually  affecting score. 
• Extend – an extra life. 
• Resource system – a system responsible for giving the player lives, bombs and other  resources (in Touhou, ice charge, trance charge, season charge, et cetera). 
• Streaming – dodging aimed bullets by rhythmically moving in one direction. 
• Stage performance – a shottype’s ability to clear stages, the less effort the better the  performance.
• Super(or Hyper-) armour – a period at the start of every attack where the enemy takes  reduced damage. 
• Shotgunning – attacking at close range with a spread shot (same as pointblanking). Cancelling – same as destroying a bullet. 
• PIV – Point Item Value, the value that is added to score if a point item is collected on  top of the screen. 
• Classic era – EoSD through StB. 
• Modern 1 – MoF through DS. 
• Modern 2 – GFW onwards. 
• Iframes – invincibility frames. 
• DPS – Damage Per Second. 
• Counterstop – a certain score value after which the score counter is stuck displaying  the same value infinitely. 
• Clippy – with uncomfortably big hitboxes. 
• Intercredit – between runs (credits). 
• Bullet sponge – a boss/enemy whose HP pool is disproportionately huge compared to  the player’s expected damage, a cheap way of inflating the difficulty. 
• Reitaisai – Touhou’s own festival for fanworks, merch, games, printworks and cosplay. 
• Gothic wa Mahou Otome – a mobile shmup gacha game by Cave, including  thousands of skins and hundreds of characters. Their only continuation of their shmup  games ever since SDOJ. 
• Secondaries – fans (that call themselves fans) who don’t play games or read  printworks. They want you to believe this word is insulting and/or controversial, but only  a secondary would say that. 
• Touhoomer – initially, a person who does silly restricted runs in Touhou (or fangames).  The term was invented to mock the stupidity of “LNN” runs and other things the  touhoomers would engage in. However, later on, it would be expanded to include  pretty much any fallacy a notable part of the fandom falls victim to (first expansion). Then it would even be expanded even further to include doing certain things in other shmups… (second expansion) They want you to believe this word is insulting and/or  controversial, but only a touhoomer would say that.

 

Special thanks: 

• SsjacsS – graphical design (a textbook touhoomer of both first, second and third  order) 
• VoidWrath – proofreading (kind of a textbook secondary/touhoomer of the second  order) 
• Juanca – Len’en assistant (a very textbook len’en-leaning touhoomer) 
• And me – writing (a textbook touhoomer of the third order, and the core reason for the  second expansion of the definition of a touhoomer)

 

With all this in mind, let's come to some conclusions, or at least appearances brought by the sheer quantity of text and its content (or maybe I should take them as some common themes through the whole text?):

• this text seems to be written by one of the tryhards, something that GensouChronicle has called a "cryptid species" among the Touhou community; those who are so into the games that they will complain if something is too easy; maybe a little bit of a canon purist as well
• Ten Desires was the last good Touhou game 
• ZUN always had a lot of flaws in his games
• ZUN did the greatest mistake in listening to the wrong public with the recent games; instead of listening to those who were always playing his games of hardest difficulties and for scores, he listened to casual side of the community (seen as the plague of everything wrong with modern Touhou) and made the games too easy and stupid; because obviously a game casual fans can enjoy = bad game
• the latest games are a sheer dumpster fire
• Tasofro should no longer be allowed to make Touhou spin-off games
• ZUN has become greedy, and is adopting soulless corporation tactics by allowing stuff like LostWord, Arcadia Record and the most likely upcoming gacha game from CAVE even exist (to be fair, if sources are reliable, apparently ZUN is earning 600K US dollars a year from Steam, and if we add up stuff like DanKagu, LostWord, Arcadia Record, the upcoming CAVE game and other similar stuff he licensed, the sum could go up to a million dollars a year
• "secondaries" are the bane of Touhou, they are not really true fans

 

This was literally a "guy A like game, guy B writes a while 42 pages long article why guy A's opinion is wrong". And it all started just because some guy liked Touhou 18.5... Becuase that is where it all started from, the whole 42 pages being a build-up towards the fact that 100th Black Marker it the crowning achievement of ZUN's downfall as a creator. And that the series is beyond any redemption...

I have initially read the whole thing, and left an answer to the poor guy left in confusion:

"I have unironically read this whole thing (I know, what am I doing with my life?!). The conclusion I got to is that it caters a lot towards the more elitist side of the fandom. Some of the analysis on game mechanics and bullet patterns is interesting (even if I am mostly unfamiliar with it), but I am not very sure how much I agree with some of the opinions towards the community, reception and people playing the more recent games in the series. Might have lost a few braincells here and there, but I guess it was worth it?"

 

Besides me, u/Akyuuposting also made an interesting point about the whole idea of this file, and probably quite a good conclusion:

Quote

"Yet, the public liked that game, against all odds... Because of Marisa and her bare feeton the title screen, of course, people aren’t even ashamed to admit it."

Like just glossing over it, this is a meandering rant about stuff the author doesn't like including a sudden segway into lostword ranting, complaining about games they haven't even played, claiming the elitists were always right and that 'touhou purism' was correct, accusing the 17.5 delays of being 'shady' (????), and accusing ZUN of being profit focused and dismissing the non-casual audience.

which, y'know, that's fine, people can have their opinions, but this is just some dude mad about stuff he doesn't like and claiming 'ergo, touhou is declining.'

Like always, I will link the source material, so that people can enjoy it at their own pace. The original Google document (it also has shiny pictures, yay https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MA3MNSHSFK2mXJzpNXG-ep6fMisA-Eeo/view) 

[Tenkko]

When you're so mad you write a 40+ page doc about it.

Sorry that I got nothing to add to this, it's all the same song and dance. Been there, seen that, done that.

[SoundOfRayne]

Y'know, I'm torn between 2 very strong emotions reading this: a seething anger and an immeasurable amount of pity.

I really wanna just clown on this guy; just go to town on him for all the awful, awful things he decides to put in his little manifesto. But, you don't write a 4-page thesis because Touhou is just "whatever" to you. It's abundantly clear that this guy is passionate about Touhou, probably to an unhealthy extent. And Touhou is changing. It's easier to get into than it ever has been, and people are flooding in from new channels. The way Touhou "used to be" isn't "what it is" anymore, and that means some people are just gonna be left behind. It's a shitty feeling. I've had things that used to be a big fan of, and then when things started changing with sequels or expansions or the like, I didn't like what they became and just had to hang up my jacket and leave. Change can bring in new people, sure, but it also comes at the risk of alienating the people who were already there. I get that, and part of me wants to sympathize with the poster on this.

And hey, I watched that same video from TheOVJM when you posted about it. It's been a long time since then, but I remember being largely on board with the things he was saying. And I see some of those points being brought up here, granted without any degree of self-restraint. I have to take them at their word when critiquing the games; they just aren't going to be for me. I don't have the time to try out every game in the series to compare how they stack up to each other, and even if I did, I wouldn't want to. But, message received. Older fans of Touhou are feeling alienated by the direction that Touhou has been moving in recently.

However, the poster isn't here lamenting that the new climate doesn't have a place for him; he's out here taking shots at anything and everything he can find. Sure, I don't like the gacha games either, and I hate that they literally print money for exploitative companies despite being called out so frequently. But saying that casual players aren't welcome and that it's wrong to consider them when making games is inexcusable. And of course, he starts gatekeeping and declaring who is and isn't a "real fan." Any pity I wanna feel for his situation goes right out the window as soon as that shit starts up. Anyone in defense of labeling people as "secondaries," kindly and respectfully go fuck yourself.  Fans are fans, no matter which parts of the fandom they decide to make their home.

 

 

 

4 hours ago, CountVonNumenor said:

ZUN also tried expanding into arcades – and sold Exa-Arcadia a license to port FDF II  to arcades. Even though Exa Label usually comes with some improvements, I do not  think it was the right choice – the game is still mediocre, graphics-oriented and overall  boring, which is really not what people want when they visit the arcade. There are  dozens of games that would fit that perfectly – yet he chose the one that was simply  popular among the casual fans for looking fancy.

Also, he trash-talked FDF II, so he's actually a monster. He deserves no mercy.

Edited December 30, 2022 by SoundOfRayne
Cleaning up the post, adding a bit I felt I should've talked about, and including the very important Kita gif.

[AlexandruUnu]

Now, I didn't play any Touhou game made after UFO, so I don't have much of his knowledge on the game's mechanics, but I still want to point out some things in the doc.

So let me get this straight: this guy didn't like that the newer games are "oriented" towards the casual playerbase, and so he made a 42 pages long essay just to say that he doesn't like that? I'm sorry, but this whole charade could be easily summarised in just one phrase: "I am a very dedicated hardcore Touhou fan, and the last few games were too easy for my likings, therefore, the series is on it's deathbed, all casual Touhou fans are bad and ZUN is a greedy man. Also, the recent mangas and the gacha games suck ass."

It's true that ZUN has made some less good decisions from time to time, but this guy thinks that he should make games only for the most hardcore of fans out there, and that casual fans are the main reason why the franchise is """dying"""

Also, "secondaries"? Really? Do people still use this and "primaries" to determine what kind of Touhou fan are you? Excuse me for not being the type of person that plays the games 24/7 on lunatic, but that doesn't make me less of a Touhou fan than the so called """primaries""". Simply enjoying the franchise is enough to make you as much of a Touhou fan like everyone else in here, be it either because of the games, the mangas, or the fan creations. 

And what's the problem with being a casual Touhou fan? I can call myself a casual fan since I barely even play the games (last time I played an official game was in June), the only games I managed to finish on normal was EoSD and PCB, and I mostly get my daily dose of Touhou from fanworks (mostly fanart).

[ACE_DEUCE]

The part where it says barefoot Marisa is what caused HBM to be well-received among the more casual audience has me convinced that this is an elaborate shitpost of some kind. There's no way anyone who's actually a hardcore Touhou fan doesn't know about the meme where you put dumb shit into Steam reviews of Touhou games like just "it's touhou" with a positive score, someone copy-pasting Clownpiece's entire wiki article as a review for LoLK, or various internet copypastas remixed to revolve around Touhou characters. The fact that the author doesn't seem to be named anywhere in the document (I couldn't find their name at a glance anyway, didn't read the entire thing in detail), leads me to believe the Reddit post is probably staged as the OP also just kept saying it was "someone". I'd also be surprised that SsjacsS willingly and genuinely put his name on something like this, as I'm pretty sure he enjoys the newer mainline games quite a bit, despite considering them to be very easy.

In any case, I'll humor the ideas as genuine for a bit and say that personally I always thought Touhou was super-casual compared to most mainstream shoot-em-ups. I'm no pro player, but the idea that Touhou games have to be hardcore at some base level is weird to me, as they never really were, and skilled people have been doing NMNB, unfocused, no vertical and other assorted arbitrary challenges for years and years when they felt like enjoying the game at their own pace. The document is mostly correct in saying that HM/ULiL/AoCF are a significant downgrade from Soku, but blaming Tasofro exclusively is misguided as the trend of streamlining within fighting games has been going on for some time. I can reluctantly admit that it's a matter of preference - there's nothing stopping people from still playing Soku with fanmade patches for matchmaking and some bugfixes, and I'm sure AoCF will see a spike in playerbase once fanmade rollback comes out in like 300 years.

Also, regarding the "shady" delays of 17.5, Tasofro only has one lead programmer (Nonotarou) and one assistant programmer. It was my understanding that Nonotarou fell very very ill for a prolonged period during the game's development, leaving a lot of the work to be done by the less skilled and less experienced assistant which inevitably caused delays and a somewhat buggy and unpolished release.

Overall if my assumption that this is bait is correct, good work to however wrote it, made me chuckle a bit.

Edited December 30, 2022 by ACE_DEUCE

[buskerdog]

Oh boy, some of the language in this really does make me chuckle. "Advanced internet user".

I share the same opinion as everyone else in that I can't take this seriously. As @ACE_DEUCE pointed out, there is evidence that this is just a bait shitpost, but at the same time, the length of it makes it hard to believe. Either way, although I do of course have my own sentiments on things like recent game quality (cough cough Gouyoku Ibun) and licenced games (cough cough Lostword), I don't see my disappointments as reasons to attack the creators or anyone who enjoys these games, and I also see them as relatively minor points of contention in a series that I greatly enjoy. The criticisms in this document are entirely non-constructive and amount to nothing more than elitism. Also, there are several statements made in this document about ZUN (and Tasofro) listening to the "wrong side of feedback" which I would very much like evidenced sources for - you know, not every change is in response to public reception, sometimes people make something different just because they want to make something different - wouldn't you, if you were responsible for a game series that is now 25 years in the running?

In response to the opinion that TD is the "last good Touhou game", and in response to this document as a whole, I have just four letters:

LoL, K

[CountVonNumenor]

16 hours ago, Tenkko said:

Sorry that I got nothing to add to this, it's all the same song and dance. Been there, seen that, done that.

It sure is. Also welcome back, it's been a while since I last saw you in one of my threads.

 

16 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

It's abundantly clear that this guy is passionate about Touhou, probably to an unhealthy extent. And Touhou is changing. It's easier to get into than it ever has been, and people are flooding in from new channels. The way Touhou "used to be" isn't "what it is" anymore, and that means some people are just gonna be left behind. It's a shitty feeling.

I have seen this argument used quite a lot by people. I have seen it when we were talking about TheOVJM, I have seen it about other franchises as well. Some put it on "seasonal rot", others just on the feeling that the series no longer sparks the same emotions it used to. And from there, probably the terrible feeling that a series you used to like so much no longer represents you. Especially if you ended up investing a lot of time and energy into that thing. I happened to all of us at some point (and recently got that feeling as well).

 

16 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

However, the poster isn't here lamenting that the new climate doesn't have a place for him; he's out here taking shots at anything and everything he can find. Sure, I don't like the gacha games either, and I hate that they literally print money for exploitative companies despite being called out so frequently. But saying that casual players aren't welcome and that it's wrong to consider them when making games is inexcusable. And of course, he starts gatekeeping and declaring who is and isn't a "real fan."

Of course. Feeling that a series may have lost the appeal that got you into said thing is a valid opinion. However, accusing the community itself (or at least a part of it) for the downfall of a franchise is not the answer. Just as saying something is objectively bad because you do not like it - "I don't like this, therefore it is bad". On the issue of "what makes you a real fan", I am going to talk more later today. So take a seat, it will be an interesting experience. 

 

16 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

kindly and respectfully go fuck yourself.

I absolutely love the use of color in here. I should definitely try it at some point in the future. 

 

16 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

Also, he trash-talked FDF II, so he's actually a monster. He deserves no mercy.

Yeah, even if I have not played any of the Fantastic Danmaku Festival games. Personally, I would have gone for the insult towards Len'en being trash (I forgot to mention that in the conclusion section), but I guess all of us have their own beef on the overall statement. 

 

16 hours ago, SoundOfRayne said:

and including the very important Kita gif.

Oh, most definitely. It's a cute GIF, I will not lie. 

 

10 hours ago, AlexandruUnu said:

"I am a very dedicated hardcore Touhou fan, and the last few games were too easy for my likings, therefore, the series is on it's deathbed, all casual Touhou fans are bad and ZUN is a greedy man. Also, the recent mangas and the gacha games suck ass."

Good summary. I could have used it as my summary of the text, but in the nature of these (over)analysis threads, I had to write as much as I could (in the limits of decency of course, since I was doing the whole project at about 1 am last night). 

 

10 hours ago, AlexandruUnu said:

It's true that ZUN has made some less good decisions from time to time, but this guy thinks that he should make games only for the most hardcore of fans out there, and that casual fans are the main reason why the franchise is """dying"""

Yeah, this was used as part of a narrative I have heard more and more this year. After a lot of silence, suddenly some people, "the illuminated heads", start talking about the idea that the casual fandom has basically ended up treating ZUN like a god and loves licking his boots for whatever trash he allows being published. And that he can never do wrong. Or at least so goes the narrative. Sometimes, I do wonder how much of a point they really have (I am completely unaware of the Japanese side of the fandom, but I could imagine people worshipping ZUN), and where does the argument go over the top. But I would not blame casual fans for being the death of the series (even if looking back at my narrative from spring, during the "Touhou mommy (issue)" wave, i was showing some concern in regards to the health of the group as a whole).

 

10 hours ago, AlexandruUnu said:

Also, "secondaries"? Really? Do people still use this and "primaries" to determine what kind of Touhou fan are you? Excuse me for not being the type of person that plays the games 24/7 on lunatic, but that doesn't make me less of a Touhou fan than the so called """primaries""". Simply enjoying the franchise is enough to make you as much of a Touhou fan like everyone else in here, be it either because of the games, the mangas, or the fan creations. 

Yes, it is still unironically being used. And I have met it quite a bit on social media, especially in places like Reddit or Discord. And sometimes even in unexpected places, totally unrelated to Touhou itself (again, more about that in my next thread). For some, it is just not enough to regard you as a member of the "tribe" if you do not adhere to certain conditions of quality. 

 

5 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

The part where it says barefoot Marisa is what caused HBM to be well-received among the more casual audience has me convinced that this is an elaborate shitpost of some kind. There's no way anyone who's actually a hardcore Touhou fan doesn't know about the meme where you put dumb shit into Steam reviews of Touhou games like just "it's touhou" with a positive score, someone copy-pasting Clownpiece's entire wiki article as a review for LoLK, or various internet copypastas remixed to revolve around Touhou characters.

Personally, I did not know about this part, perhaps due to the fact I am not checking the Steam pages for the officia games, or at the very least not read the comments for them. But the image of someone copy-pasting the whole Clownpiece article in there is definitely a sight I would love to see. As for people talking about feet, this year made the border between shitpost and unironically thoughts within the Touhou community very thin. Especially with the developments on YouTube in the first half of the year, when it looked like the average Touhou fan was hornier than ever before. So I may even say I little skeptical to claim all of them are actually just shit-posting, or there are some legit, even if rare, people of the kind who are serious about it too. 

 

5 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

The fact that the author doesn't seem to be named anywhere in the document (I couldn't find their name at a glance anyway, didn't read the entire thing in detail), leads me to believe the Reddit post is probably staged as the OP also just kept saying it was "someone".

Interesting point. I really have not thought about it before. But again, with how people can be (an then you have lunatics like me who wrote over 6000 words on the question why are Touhou fans horny or in my review for Memories of Phantasm), it is not impossible to see someone unironically writing that much on the topic. Hell, if there can be 9 hour long serious rants on YouTube about how Star Wars Episode 7 is the worst film ever, so there can be a grudging Touhou fan writing 42 pages about the so-called "downfall of the series". But sure, a farce may be the most reasonable explanation of what happened. 

 

5 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

I'd also be surprised that SsjacsS willingly and genuinely put his name on something like this,

May I know  little bit who SsjacsS is? The it is the first time I hear that name (I mean when I read the document itself). He sounds like an important member of the community. 

 

5 hours ago, ACE_DEUCE said:

Also, regarding the "shady" delays of 17.5, Tasofro only has one lead programmer (Nonotarou) and one assistant programmer. It was my understanding that Nonotarou fell very very ill for a prolonged period during the game's development, leaving a lot of the work to be done by the less skilled and less experienced assistant which inevitably caused delays and a somewhat buggy and unpolished release.

I never knew this part. It is an interesting point, which I think you are the first person who have brought it up. I ave not sen it mentioned by TheOVJM, I have not seen it in the file, I have not seen ti mentioned in the community in general. Which is very weird to be honest. 

 

4 hours ago, buskerdog said:

Oh boy, some of the language in this really does make me chuckle. "Advanced internet user".

"Advanced internet user" really sounds like something I would see written on someone's CV application. 

 

4 hours ago, buskerdog said:

The criticisms in this document are entirely non-constructive and amount to nothing more than elitism.

Isn't the point of criticism that you could, or should, also come up with constructive comments? Like not just trash something, also give some ideas on how would you see it become better if you already feel so entitled so comment on the issue. That is why "constructive criticism" exists, and is supposedly so promoted. Looking down on things with a high sense of entitlement, like a lord to his subservient peasants, is not a constructive solution if you want things to actually become better. Do not just complain, actually do something (huh, this is something I should actually do in general, not just peak about it...)

 

4 hours ago, buskerdog said:

In response to the opinion that TD is the "last good Touhou game", and in response to this document as a whole, I have just four letters:

LoL, K

I see opinion are very mixed, even within the "downfall of Touhou", in regards to LoLK. Some call it the peak of Touhou games, and from there on just a downfall, while others already take it into the pile of bad games... for various reason. For me, someone who has never played the game but read some of the lore surrounding it and about the characters, all I can say is that it gave me two of my top 10 2hus on my first sorter list ever (Junko and Hecatia - they are cool, have good music, design is interesting, have awesome fanart, and Hecatia is a redhead; I am just a simple man). 

Funny, I start thinking that putting this side-by-side with the (over)analysis of TheOVJM and his video might actually be not a bad idea after all. Just for reference, I will make it visible again for anyone interested (I am very surprised to see that he seemed to be very positive, or at least highly optimistic about his hopes regarding Touhou 18.5):

...and just as I was about to praise him, he has returned back to inflammatory takes about not just Touhou, but also real world politics. The Gensokyo Boiz (I even forgot PerlDrop is a channel and it is relevant tbh, since I have not seen anything made by sim since God knows when) at its finest (I am extremely surprised Surnist is associated with the group):

(I have one more, but I will keep it for the next thread)

[Nekofire]

I guess the guy who wrote this is just interest by the gameplay and difficulty of Touhou games, he is not pointing out the evolution of Touhou content as the story, characters, music etc.  I'm not going to blame him for what he wrote because we don't play Touhou for the same reason and this guy has a very confusing vision on ZUN and his game : that's not because Touhou have the reputation of being a hard game that Touhou is supposed to be a hard game. Touhou is just supposed to be a fun Danmaku game, so ZUN changed the game mechanics many time in order to experiment something new for almost each games. 

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The same year, another game saw the light of day. A spinoff game made for just a  single character, a scene game, which means basically a giant spell practice menu. An  interesting camera mechanic was introduced, as the player couldn’t shoot and had to…  shoot. The title reflects that with a pun, Shoot the Bullet. Often overlooked, but  important for our purposes. Spells were original, often containing references, were  heavily balanced around camera usage and rewarding risky approach quite a lot. It was 

a genuinely made game, that was, however, disliked by many due to the learning  required and the difficulty. 

As mentioned above, a cult was forming, the so-called “purists” who despised many  things and advocated for an image of “pure” Touhou. As extreme as their beliefs were,  they had a point. A point which was overlooked and antagonised due to how extreme  they were in enforcing it… The general public failed to understand and listen, as it  always does. 

 

The author of this document kinda invented an excuse for this one, okay the public didn't like StB at first but it was only because Aya was the main character, some fan claimed back then that she doesn't deserve a game for herself : she was new and fans wanted to see Reimu or Marisa instead of this unknown character.

 

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Undefined Fantastic Object would  double down on improving the formula, and it’s one of the best maingames from a  technical perspective. The boring resource system was thrown out of the window and  was replaced with a vastly superior UFO system, which required planning and knowing  the game – and it would provide lots of lives and some much-needed stage cancels if  done right. Bombs were back, which was a welcome change as well. Stage design was  pretty good even on its own, and it worked wonderfully alongside UFO collection  mechanics. The shot balance was… not great again, but the best shot no longer breaks the game and makes it trivial, unlike all the modern games starting from PCB. The  scoring system played alongside UFOs pretty well, despite a minor bug that caused the  score counter to be wrong after a certain value (fixed by a fanmade patch as well).  Randomness was back, but the difficulty progression was finally proper, with only a few  occasional peaks.  

 

ZUN wanted to pay homage to Space Invaders and mark the 30th anniversary of the game so i won't detail more for this one because I've never really played Space Invaders so I can't point out if the gameplay changes is a part of the homage. Anyway, some spellcards are also references to some PC-98 shmup/Touhou games which explains why it's sometimes easier than usual. ZUN also introduced new religious stuff to give this game a new "flavour"

 

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However, ZUN further saw the power of catering to the casual audience – and this time,  the division was unlike anything before – last time it was about the shottypes, in Ten  Desires it was most likely unintentional, and now ZUN decided to straight up split the  game in two game modes… with the second one including checkpoints and powerloss  per death, as well as no lives. The mode definitely worked and most definitely fulfilled its  purpose, but it’s more of an exotic practice mode than anything. The Legacy mode is  quite well-made, however. It features a seemingly simple system, just like in DDC, and it  flows with the game just as well. The only major issue is that it scales with the amount  of bullets, and as such, would almost always grant a life piece on Lunatic. Additionally, it  would provide the player with a bit too many lives, allowing for a rather relaxed run once  the player learns what to do. Speaking of relaxations, two shottypes absolutely  decimate it while two others are just regular ones. While Sanae’s grazebomb abuse was  likely not intentional, there is no way that ZUN, seeing what a shield bomb did in the last  game, would implement a triple (almost permanent as well) shield bomb and think it’ll  work as any other. Yes, the balance was as good as none. 

 

ZUN's intention when creating Ten Desires was to make an easier game in order to make it suitable for a wider audience , he also wanted to make it like a "bridge" between old and modern Touhou games.

 

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So HSiFS would go on to feature the most broken system to that day – season releases. HSiFS is just an  average Touhou game with that system slapped on top of it

 

ZUN wanted to return in some form to the Touhou parts of the early Windows era with a less complex game mechanic and Extends reward when the player have a higher score.

 

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While they may remind you a lot of GFW freezes, there is a crucial  issue here – GFW is a game entirely made around freezing, and everything is balanced  from the perspective of the player optimally freezing the bullets.

 

Since the protagonists of the game are fairies, the game was intentionally short and easy.

 

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 Indeed, meet WBaWC. This title is ridden with issues and poor design choices, for example, almost all stage sections are as boring as PCB  stage 4 – pure streaming for minutes. Speaking of stage 4, it suffers from extreme  visibility issues, although it’s not like the whole game doesn’t – “fancy” player shot  effects obstruct bullets a lot of the time. Having a flaming aura doesn’t help either,  although it’s not like the player needs to see the bullets to rhythmically tap. Youmu’s  slash is back, but this time, it’s outclassed by a simple forward-focus shot that doesn’t  require close range shenanigans or charging, rendering it obsolete. Not to mention it  being copied from TD with zero changes – except for the Wolf shottype adding an extra slash on top, making it even more silly, as it effectively negated the only downside.  Although who even cares about it when there is a shottype that allows to triple bomb  effects, obtain one more bomb per life and have prolonged otter hyper shields that  shred most patterns, which absolutely don’t feel like they were designed for that.

Toby Fox is the reason why the game trial was avaible on Steam, maybe he was implicated in the game devlopment ? 

 

I wrote this comment as fast as I could so there might be a bunch of mistakes in it... sorry :3

[Eulogous]

Oh boy, another "Touhou is dying guys, trust me" post pretending to be a well-thought-out deconstruction essay. Who is this even meant for? The author constantly makes claims and fails to back any of them up without resorting to speculation, and is largely unconvincing as a whole.

[ACE_DEUCE]

16 hours ago, CountVonNumenor said:

May I know  little bit who SsjacsS is? The it is the first time I hear that name (I mean when I read the document itself). He sounds like an important member of the community. 

He isn't a super important figure or anything, he's just a skilled shmup player who mostly posts Touhou content such as 1ccs, difficult spell clears and other challenges on YouTube, often providing detailed descriptions of his strategies and opinions regarding what he plays (and generally seems pretty chill overall). The reason I was puzzled when I saw his name on here was because:

• He described Touhou 16 as "really interesting" and noted that he enjoyed the season gimmick
• He said Touhou 17 was "easy but really fun"
• Said Momoyo was a "really epic boss" and was one of his favorites

Granted, these quotes are from a year or two ago, so maybe his opinions have changed since? It just seemed like a bit of a weird and extreme shift to me.

[sodaodaoda]

Oh damn, this whole thing reads like a shitpost, hahah

Bro is really malding over how the games are easier huh?
Some of these takes are absolutely abysmal...

>PC98 reception was abysmal, selling less than 1000 copies
My brother in christ, did you perhaps think about how Zun was making bullet hells for a system which had eroge as the primary games? It's not the reception that was abysmal, but rather how known it was.

>mentions HRtP, says the next game is PoDD, doesn't even MENTION SoEW, which is the FIRST bullet hell game in the series

>says that SA was cheesable, I understand MoF (Marisa B exists), but SA...

>says that the UFOs were the best mechanic

>sAYS THAT UM IS THE LEAST REPLAYABLE GAME

I get that this person is passionate about Touhou, I am as well, but damn, this whole doc seems a bit nitpicky.
Some of you may know that I adore the PC98 and the Classic Win era of the games, and that I don't like Modern era 1 and 2, so I may be a bit biased, but I can also say with confidence that the newer games aren't hot garbage.
I did not like HSiFS and WBaWc at first, but now, I love them a lot. The atmosphere is great, the songs are good, even though it took them a bit to grow on me. but they are NOT garbage. They still have loveable characters and I think that Keiki's theme is one of the most popular in modern Windows final boss themes.
The part about UM is pure garbage as well. The game is really fun, and it's so fun to make card combos. Idk if me and that guy played the same game.

> 100th Black Market is pure dogshit.
Wh, how? It's genuinely the most fun I had with a Touhou game in a while!! Yeah, the RNG can be a bit of a headache, but goddamn, it's fun!! The waves are fun, it feels good to graze, what the hell?!

Not to mention the hilarious Fumo section

On 12/30/2022 at 12:18 AM, CountVonNumenor said:

Gift, the company that  was making nendoroids (one of them, at least) have asked ZUN to license the  production of Touhou-related nendoroids, also known as fumos.

HOW CAN YOU MESS UP THAT BAD?!?!?
A simple research would've net correct results!! Gift/AngelType made Fumos, Nendoroids are made by fucking GOODSMILE!!!!

If the person who made this doc made it with the itention to be a ragebait post, they did a good job, because I lost so many braincells due to this post that it's insane.

[CountVonNumenor]

On 12/30/2022 at 10:19 PM, Nekofire said:

The author of this document kinda invented an excuse for this one, okay the public didn't like StB at first but it was only because Aya was the main character, some fan claimed back then that she doesn't deserve a game for herself : she was new and fans wanted to see Reimu or Marisa instead of this unknown character.

Is that the same era when Aya was nicknamed "ZUN's girlfriend"? I mean it did happen a few more times afterwards, most vocally about Sanae and Sakuya, I think.

 

On 12/30/2022 at 10:19 PM, Nekofire said:

Toby Fox is the reason why the game trial was avaible on Steam, maybe he was implicated in the game devlopment ? 

This is the first time I hear the statement. I would like to learn more about it. What else happened, or what is the larger/full story behind? If it's true, it is awesome. I know that Touhou 16 was apparently the first Touhou game that made its way to Steam, so it really took ZUN quite a while from his 2009 interview where he talked about the issue of western piracy and until 2017 to actually release content on that platform, therefore making t easier for Western fans to access his games. 

 

On 12/31/2022 at 4:00 AM, Eulogous said:

Oh boy, another "Touhou is dying guys, trust me" post pretending to be a well-thought-out deconstruction essay. Who is this even meant for? The author constantly makes claims and fails to back any of them up without resorting to speculation, and is largely unconvincing as a whole.

Sure, this kind of speeches happen every now and then. However, through 2022, I feel like I have seen an intensifying of the apocalyptic discourse regarding the fate of our series, its decline in both quality and community quality control. Is there any legit fear for that, or people are taking things a little too personally?

 

On 12/31/2022 at 2:40 PM, ACE_DEUCE said:

He isn't a super important figure or anything, he's just a skilled shmup player who mostly posts Touhou content such as 1ccs, difficult spell clears and other challenges on YouTube, often providing detailed descriptions of his strategies and opinions regarding what he plays (and generally seems pretty chill overall). The reason I was puzzled when I saw his name on here was because:

• He described Touhou 16 as "really interesting" and noted that he enjoyed the season gimmick
• He said Touhou 17 was "easy but really fun"
• Said Momoyo was a "really epic boss" and was one of his favorites

Granted, these quotes are from a year or two ago, so maybe his opinions have changed since? It just seemed like a bit of a weird and extreme shift to me.

Thank you for the explanation. He sounds like an interesting figure. Is he usually associated with any fan group? The only ones who I know to have an active discourse towards the game quality decline from the past years has been the Gensokyo Boiz, which surprisingly has quite a large number of people, some of them vey vocal through their own YouTube channels. 

 

On 12/31/2022 at 7:15 PM, sodaodaoda said:

and that I don't like Modern era 1 and 2, so I may be a bit biased, but I can also say with confidence that the newer games aren't hot garbage.

Just a little question to clarify something: are you part of the people who consider there are 3 Modern eras? Or more exactly the fact that Touhou 18 has been the opening of the "Modern 3" stage for Touhou games. I am asking because the concept is interesting, and there is constant arguent even for where Modern 1 ends where does Modern 2 begin. 

 

 

[Eulogous]

54 minutes ago, CountVonNumenor said:

Sure, this kind of speeches happen every now and then. However, through 2022, I feel like I have seen an intensifying of the apocalyptic discourse regarding the fate of our series, its decline in both quality and community quality control. Is there any legit fear for that, or people are taking things a little too personally?

I feel like there is a conversation to be had about the quality of Touhou as the series goes on. An honest open discussion, instead of people who spew their bile everywhere looking to insult others. Personally, I believe that since there are more Touhou content creators nowadays, viewers tend to see them as voices-of-authority and begin to absorb and regurgitate specific ideals. I tend to see the same tired complaints, so there has to be a source for it.

[sodaodaoda]

On 1/2/2023 at 1:29 AM, CountVonNumenor said:

Just a little question to clarify something: are you part of the people who consider there are 3 Modern eras? Or more exactly the fact that Touhou 18 has been the opening of the "Modern 3" stage for Touhou games. I am asking because the concept is interesting, and there is constant arguent even for where Modern 1 ends where does Modern 2 begin. 

Well, I am a part that thinks there are 3 Windows eras:
Windows Era 1 (Or Classic Era): EoSD to StB
Windows Era 2 (Or Modern 1): MoF to UFO
Windows Era 3 (Or Modern 2): TD to Present

Technically maybe GFW would be the start of Modern 2? I noticed that in that game, the characters speak in speech bubbles and bosses have the circle healthbar, something which appeared in the newer engine of Windows games, and TD onwards is like that.

So technically, if we were to look at engines, I'd classify the eras like this.

WE1 or the Classic Era engine has the line healthbar, no auto collect at start, textbox dialogue and has the 128 power system. The games that are in that engine are:
EoSD, PCB, IN, PoFV, StB.
WE2 or Modern 1 has the same line healthbar and textboxes, but has the 4.0 power system and always has autocollect. Games there are:
MoF, SA, UFO, DS.
WE3 or Modern 2 has the circle healthbars, speech bubbles and I also remember that the items are maybe easier to get in that engine? It's like the items magnet to you, can't remember about WE2 tho. Anyways, games there are:
GFW, TD, DDC, ISC, LoLK, HSiFS, VD, WBaWC, UM, HBM.

It's weird for me to start a generation with a spinoff tho, so I just say TD instead of GFW.

[buskerdog]

1 hour ago, sodaodaoda said:

Well, I am a part that thinks there are 3 Windows eras:
Windows Era 1 (Or Classic Era): EoSD to StB
Windows Era 2 (Or Modern 1): MoF to UFO
Windows Era 3 (Or Modern 2): TD to Present

Technically maybe GFW would be the start of Modern 2? I noticed that in that game, the characters speak in speech bubbles and bosses have the circle healthbar, something which appeared in the newer engine of Windows games, and TD onwards is like that.

So technically, if we were to look at engines, I'd classify the eras like this.

WE1 or the Classic Era engine has the line healthbar, no auto collect at start, textbox dialogue and has the 128 power system. The games that are in that engine are:
EoSD, PCB, IN, PoFV, StB.
WE2 or Modern 1 has the same line healthbar and textboxes, but has the 4.0 power system and always has autocollect. Games there are:
MoF, SA, UFO, DS.
WE3 or Modern 2 has the circle healthbars, speech bubbles and I also remember that the items are maybe easier to get in that engine? It's like the items magnet to you, can't remember about WE2 tho. Anyways, games there are:
GFW, TD, DDC, ISC, LoLK, HSiFS, VD, WBaWC, UM, HBM.

It's weird for me to start a generation with a spinoff tho, so I just say TD instead of GFW.

This exact topic is something I had the idea to create a thread on, actually. But I haven't done it yet, because... uh, I forgot what exactly the point was that I wanted to make : /. Well, it's something for me to write about, so I'll work on it at some point.

[Nekofire]

On 1/2/2023 at 1:29 AM, CountVonNumenor said:

Is that the same era when Aya was nicknamed "ZUN's girlfriend"? I mean it did happen a few more times afterwards, most vocally about Sanae and Sakuya, I think.

I guess it is but the origins of this nickname is unknown to me 

 

On 1/2/2023 at 1:29 AM, CountVonNumenor said:

This is the first time I hear the statement. I would like to learn more about it. What else happened, or what is the larger/full story behind? If it's true, it is awesome. I know that Touhou 16 was apparently the first Touhou game that made its way to Steam, so it really took ZUN quite a while from his 2009 interview where he talked about the issue of western piracy and until 2017 to actually release content on that platform, therefore making t easier for Western fans to access his games. 

You can find on Touhou 17 wiki page (In the press category) the following statement "On May 20th, he announced the trial of Wily Beast and Weakest Creature would also be available on Steam, which is, according to Team Shanghai Alice's legal representative Fumio Oyamada, the result of a conversation with Toby Fox.[4]" the source is a video in Japanese :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFEbWqs_Hh4&t=6396

 

[CountVonNumenor]

On 1/6/2023 at 9:51 PM, Nekofire said:

I guess it is but the origins of this nickname is unknown to me 

I don't know for sure where it started from either, but I have seen lots of connections towards this image:

Not the image I was originally looking for, but the Touhou wiki decided to make me the funny surprise of discovering this when reading about "ZUN's girlfriend" bit of fanon. This is what they say on the topic: "Aya has also been referred to as "ZUN's girlfriend" because of her recurring appearance in the games." The image I was actually looking for is this one (the black section might be for meme template, like with the example below):

[Nekofire]

@CountVonNumenor well thank you for the pictures this might help me to find the origins of Aya's nickname 

I'll make some research laaaaater

[Nekofire]

On 1/10/2023 at 11:38 PM, CountVonNumenor said:

I get it now, it’s really because of this outfit, it’s the same as Anya’s in MoF. In Japanese culture, couple often wear the same outfit to show their love it’s called "osoroi code" (おそろいコーデ) ^^