Time to ask some rough questions. What's your least favorite Touhou game?

[KingDeath]

So, we all know Touhou, we all love Touhou, and more specifically, we like the games. Most of them, anyway.

I'm here to find out what doesn't fit that last category. If you had to think of any of the games, starting from Touhou 1 to the New (demo) Release of Touhou 18, what game do you think is outright bad, no matter how you look at it?

 

For me, that answer would very easily go Touhou 7.5. The game's controls are extremely unforgiving, mapping anything spell related to the dash button, (which by the way, w h y), and it feels nothing like the later Touhou Fighting games they look like (being SWR or Soku).

I may like Suika and Yukari, and seeing how Yukari was used just one game earlier, it was cool to see her return so quickly, but the game can't be so fast paced when your attacks half of the time won't even work.

(And yes, I know that it's fighting game button combinations, and I'm completely fine with that when it's done right. This, in my opinion, shows it's a product of it's time, only really being the debut of Suika and that's pretty much it.)

[buskerdog]

I'll admit the controls are jank but I like 7.5, even if I'm not very good at it. And I actually find the controls of SWR/Soku more frustrating to deal with, since it's super difficult to high jump without accidentally buffering flight (unless you high jump by pressing down and then up, but I don't like that input). Attacks probably control better, but this hiccup makes movement feel off to me. But I'm trash at fighting games anyway so what do I know, I mostly just like 7.5 because I like the soundtrack and the campaign mode.

I wouldn't say there are any Touhou games are "outright bad", but there are certainly some mechanics I don't like in some games. In fact, there's one in particular that exists within the entirety of modern era 1 that kinda ruins Touhou for me, so if you'll excuse me, I'm going to rant about it here.

Spoiler

Modern Era 1 Continue Rework is BS

In retro era (PC-98) and classic era (Touhou 6-9) games, if you lose all your lives and use a continue, you pick up right where you left off. This is something I have always loved about Touhou, firstly it gives it this really good pace of always moving forward, almost like a sense of speed, which is ironic for an autoscrolling shooter, but secondly because it means that you never lose any progress you worked for (extra lives, etc), which is incredibly important in a game where you can't backtrack. Say I worked my ass off getting to the final boss with a bunch of lives because I keep dying there. But then I screw up and still lose all my lives and have to use a continue. Well, I failed my 1cc, but I can still finish the game so working to get the final boss with as few mistakes as possible payed off.

And yes, it's possible to use all continues in a run and game over, but that's not a problem because A)It puts you back at the beginning of the game, so you can try again to get the same place with the same number or even more lives than before, and B)There does need to be some kind of gatekeeping so you can't beat the game with infinite amount of mistakes, so that it gives players who can't get to the end of the game the first time something to come back to and try to improve at.

BUT NOW FOR CONTINUES IN MOF, SA AND UFO. If you lose all your lives here, you get sent back to start of the level. Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad if the game saved your life and bomb count before resetting, BUT NO, GO BACK TO DEFAULT LIVES. GOT ALL THE WAY TO BYAKUREN WITH 7+ LIVES AND GAME OVERED? DON'T WORRY, YOU CAN TRY AGAIN AS MUCH AS YOU WANT! BECAUSE IF YOU CAN'T BEAT STAGE 6 WITH 7 LIVES, YOU CAN TOTALLY DO IT WITH JUST 2!

By disadvantaging the player when they use a continue, and forcing them to replay part of the level they already did, it effectively makes it so that the skill difference between a 1cc and a continue clear is... nothing. The only difference is that 1cc has to do it one go, but they don't have to make less mistakes than a continue clear to do that. In fact, the person using continues to clear has to make less mistakes than the 1cc player to beat the game, because they get resources taken away from them, making it harder for them to brute force through difficult sections. So if you're good enough to beat one of these games with continues, you are, by definition, good enough to beat it without continues. THAT'S NOT HOW IT'S MEANT TO WORK! YOU'RE MEANT TO BE ABLE TO BEAT THE GAME WITH CONTINUES FIRST, THEN LEARN THE GAME WELL ENOUGH TO 1CC IT!

Look, everything else about these games is fine. There's nothing wrong the bullet patterns or stuff like that. But with how difficult SA and UFO are, combined with this continue system, it just makes the game ultra punishing. MoF is easier so it's the only one I've been patient enough to beat (and yes, I beat it with a 1cc). But that still doesn't mean I like the way it handles continues. Going back to the old continue system is the best design decision ZUN has ever made, and I couldn't be more glad.

 

 

 

 

BTW Shinmyomaru's "You Grow Bigger!" Spellcard gets my vote for worst designed spellcard in the entire series. 

 

[Neevee]

My least favorite game in the series that I've played is Touhou 3, Phantasmagoria of Dimensional Dream.

 

What is there to say, it's really bad, firstly most of the game feels broken, very glitchy, awful controls, and incredibly hard to 1cc even on Normal, don't get me wrong the soundtrack is great and the graphics are fine but there's is a ton of stuff that makes the game hard to enjoy, some of the bosses become near impossible to beat, most emulators can't run the properly either, this overall makes the game very unfair to play compared to other games in the series, there hasn't been any games I've actually said were terrible but this is pretty bad, this is just my personal opinion and if you do like the game, that's great, I'm glad you can enjoy it.

[Ken Hisuag]

I can't remember if I've said this before, but I haven't played any of the games except 15.5 yet. I'm really bad at curtain-fires, so I typically just leave them alone. I was really excited about the rumors of 17.5 being a platformer, that being more my forte. But for all that, reading about y'all's perceptions concerning gameplay nuances is fascinating.

Musically, 9.5 and the first half of 14 are my least favorite