With a slight delay due to an overcharged beginning of the week and lack of energy as a result, the news roundup is only coming out now.
News and updates
Just like Isaac pointed out, JP Dev Letter has announced a great variety of content. At the same time, just a couple days prior, we also had a Dev Letter for Global. Therefore, I will go through Global first, then get into what JP has to offer to the players:
1) If I am to use the summaries done by r/touhou_lostword, probably the easiest way would be to split everything into character and event releases. Anyway, in terms of characters, White Koishi makes her way into Global as an EPIC FES, while Little Satori will be Ultra FES.
2) Kagerou and Wakasagihime are also making their global debut, which only brings us closer to having the full roster of L1 Gensokyo characters. And they are not alone, as they also come with costumes. I still wonder what will the evet be if they ended up swapping clothes between the Grassroots Youkai...
3) The already released Halloween costumes for Remilia and Yoshika will soon be accompanied by that for Eirin, Tojiko and Hatate, part of this year's Halloween event:
(is it just me, or Tojiko's pose has always looked like in the "I guess you are like little pogchamp" meme? And I mean ever since ZUN came up with her art from Ten Desires)
4) Now moving to the events, Global will have a bunch of stuff in the following weeks. First off, the head of the banner this time around is Gensokyo of the Dead. Makes sense, given Halloween is less than a week from us. Apparently, the event will also reward you if you grind enough resources into it. Or at least if you are lucky enough to win the lottery...
5) Scarlet Devil Tower is receiving new content. Maybe this time we can get closer to how much JP does. My question is however - is any of this newly released content translated? Given all the promises we are going to get translations, it looks as if the team doing it works at the pace of a wheeled hamster having to supply electricity for entire building. And let's not talk about the story cards which still need translation from over half a year ago already...
6) More characters are being moved to the General pool. Does this mean there is an even greater chance for the Festival category of friends to disappear? I was talking about this possible switch in categories for at least a few months already, yet it seems to be slowly happening, at least in the case of L1 Gensokyo characters. FES would disappear or only be used for the retro units, UFES would become the new FES, Epic FES would become as common as the former UFES units, and Relic... well, it's Relic, it does whatever the hell it wants.
7) Time for Touhou LW to feel proud about participating at the Autumn Reitaisai back during the weekend (hey, at least I think we got like 15 SCs out of that ordeal):
8) Finally, we can sip grinding for the Mirrors and just get the results. If only we could get the same for story cards too. The multi-skip should have also been the way of doing regular farming, not waste hours in auto battles. Like the way you do the errands, but instead it farms resources and cards. So no more having your phone locked for hours in auto-play battles.
9) I guess Touhou LW is getting a manga of its own. Well, if we can't get an anime like Genshin does, at least that. However, I see the creators are not too subtle when it comes to the message even if we are to talk just about these 4 panels:
10) This Ultra FES thing is coming back. I think we had it at least once more in the past.
11) Everybody Wins (yay). Some GCs ae always good, and a chance for Fumo is a chance for a Fumo. Oh wait, these are the big ones. Well, at least the Seal and God Crystals will be a good addition...
12) There is also some news regarding the EFES unit. If we are to judge from this, apparently we are back to getting 100 free prayers, after we though that feature was removed for good:
13) And after praising the devs for something slightly not so bad, here comes the bad part, Another EX stage, quite likely tailored for a new EPIC/ULTRA unit to make it easier. The reward id this story card I am not too sure how good it is, The only thing I know is that this is the first time I am familiar with the artist, Suzuka Kyouka - or the way I know her better, the creator of the "Touhou Drip Month" (each day of March 2021 had a Touhou girl dressed in some cool street clothes I could only describe as "drip" at the time):
14) Just for a login bonus, Global 1.5 Anniversary is providing 36 SCs to collect through 5 days:
With that, we are closing the Global section, and now are moving the focus to the JP area:
1) Just one day after Danmaku Kagura officially died,
the following announced dropped on r/touhou_lostword: the announced new game mode, “Reimu’s Great Exorcism”, will be a rhythm mini-game. The reactions to this announcement have been varied. While some consider it to be a new way to keep people playing and are hyped about it, others see it as a spit on the grave of DanKagu, especially given the moment it was announced and some of the visuals/interface elements:
2) Just as Isaac pointed out, there is a new batch of costumes announced for LW Japan, which will come at some point in the future. From the looks of it, they are all cooking-related. I really like the Eiki one, even if it took me a bit to realize it is her dressed like that (I guess the red clothes - red hair combination made me first think of Yuuka, given that Eiki is more quickly associated with her blue and black (or back and whit if you want to take it in accordance to the theme)
3) The Prismriver sisters are finally getting their Fantasy Rebirth outfits. They look quite cute, I will not lie.
4) Time for JP to deal with another Relic unit. This time, it is a Mokou, from a music video I am not sure if it was already released or not (I am really not keeping track of all the official Touhou LW music videos)
5) Yet another Mokou alt. Now we can no longer make jokes about Shion being "Blue Mokou", because HOLY MOTHER OF SEAL CUBES there is an actual Blue Mokou. The Paripi Koumei style (are we now starting to milk other IPs... I mean inspire from other IPs in terms of what
glorified skins unit alts to make?) Tewi is actually interesting though (I am still not for EFES units, but I like the outfit itself). Anyway. More units we barely have story for because there hasn't been new main story in what feels like months! Coming November 7th.
6) HOLY MOTHER OF SEAL CUBES x2, they are actually here. Well, they were inevitable, but still. Why in the world are we getting these? They could have very well be skins, but the game decided ever since Summer Yukari to make them separate units, and of an actual different tier of rarity with not chance for pity. Anyway, Summer Reimu and Marisa, everyone:
Community discussion and memes
Mostly memes this week. There are a couple that really caught my attention:
Instead of just the image, I have inserted the whole thread. Why? Because the titles perfectly tied into the images themselves.
Closing thoughts
We failed, DanKagu is no more. I am sorry to end this up on a sad note. Not too much to say today otherwise.