Touhou 19 thoughts

[Reitisen]

Having played through the game and the rest of the Touhou series, I completely agree with a lot of the stuff said here.

It honestly feels like an imitation of POFV, but like a DLC with only added characters, minor mechanical additions, and some removals. There was nothing major in the SHMUP PVP from TH9.

I honestly wished that TH19 added something new that TH9 didn't have, but the only things added were the things listed above by other users.

Aside from net play mode being borked, I really wish that ZUN added something like actual spell cards that you initiate to attack opponents instead of using the boss system from TH9. Something like SWR/Hisouten in which you customize your decks and launch different attacks towards your opponent aside from relying on your attacker to flood the screen and hope your opponent gets cornered. Something more complex than onslaught mechanics.

Single-player gameplay is not so fun after fighting the same drivel of bullets and getting the powerup cards, which don't really change anything aside from giving you minor boosts/changes and or damage. It feels like the bullet battles are more geared towards playing against a human opponent than an AI, as the bosses themselves don't play by the same rules as you do and punish you for launching attacks.

I would rate TH19 to be the same, if not worse, than the fighting games. It relies on people to keep it going, as once you have beaten the AI, you really don't have anything else to beat aside from other humans who play on the same ruleset and can create dynamic fights. Without multiplayer, it's really just a one-off game that can't stand on its own legs, aside from the mainline SHMUP and some of the fighting games, which challenge you in actual difficulty/score rather than impossible fights that the AI can just zip through and crap on your screen.  :SaguDown:

 

[BlueMoon]

Alright, I think this is for me, the worst entry into mainline Touhou games for now. Mainly because I had hopes of it being rather fine, which I guess is the last thing you want to have these days if you are interested in Touhou.

I would point out the reasons why I hate it, but Pepi has posted such a great summary (except the part where he said that Th11 is bad >  ) that I don't think I need to, but I'll still throw in my two cents about a rather peculiar thingy.

The main reason why I was interested in it, was because of the multiplayer, now I knew what to expect from ZUN when it comes to netcode, but this is a mess that no man could ever prepare for. Multiplayer (from what I understand, at least) runs on Dedicated Servers! And that's absolutely horrible for something like indie games! The servers are in Japan, when connecting to Online VS, it sends requests to some servers ran by I think a Taiwanese web game developer, I guess ZUN contacted them to run servers for it. We might as well render official netplay as nonexistent for now. Probably forever too, unless someone makes a utility for servers to make the game actually playable for us gaijins. It also uses ports from 40000 to 59999. If anyone else has a theory/figured out how multiplayer for this game works, please post it, I am genuinely curious.

At least we got Kaguya cosplaying as an Eggplant.

 

[Flame Sniper]

I would point out the reasons why I hate it, but Pepi has posted such a great summary (except the part where he said that Th11 is bad >  ) that I don't think I need to, but I'll still throw in my two cents about a rather peculiar thingy.

That's why I said that I dislike TH11 not due to it being badly done, but for personal preference xD

Eggplant supremacy is real.

View attachment 3477

 

[Renault FT-17]

From where I am from, it is 19.49$ instead of the usual 17.49$. I am guessing it's because they didn't put regional pricing. It's only +2$ for me, but it might be more for other if that's the case.

In my country, it's like 60% more expensive than the older games :/ (UM at R$28,99 vs UDoALG at R$ 46,99)

I was thinking of buying it mostly because of how much I love the series, but the price and the fact that the netcode barely works made me change my mind. Guess I'll just sit and hope Imperishable Night ever comes out (and for the older price).

 

[Gri]

In my country, it's like 60% more expensive than the older games :/ (UM at R$28,99 vs UDoALG at R$ 46,99)

*Sigh* exactly was I was afraid of. What do Japanese devs have against regional pricing? Do they really think everyone want to mess with the system and buy the game on lower currency? 

Yet another reason why piracy will never go away (that and not having the most popular games available).

 

[The_Trader]

Quick question: do you mean the US price is still 15$ like the other games?

From where I am from, it is 19.49$ instead of the usual 17.49$. I am guessing it's because they didn't put regional pricing. It's only +2$ for me, but it might be more for other if that's the case.

I have been avoiding reading too much about touhou 19, but from what little I have saw, I really don't like the new artstyle (that Suika portrait looks awful). I know Zun's focus isn't drawing, but when you compare with MoF-SA-UFO, something definitely went wrong. It's as if Zun was using templates to draw character rather than drawing from scratch, so they all end up looking the same (it started a bit with 14, and it's gotten worse and worse). I mean, yeah, the player portrait from SA also looks too similar, but that was an exception.

Oh yeah, no replay. Wasn't there a PoFV tournament that used replay to show each match?

My price shows only $6.99.......................... The pricing a mess lol

 

[CountVonNumenor]

Just as I have taken a look at the Steam page of the game for Romania. Here the price is 14.76 Euro (or 16.16 USD). It's about 2 Euro more expensive than any other of the previous games available. 

 

[Marukos]

I feel like this game demanded more effort to be done than recent previous titles, besides that, there's the server expenses, thus explaining the higher price. Unfortunately, the game is haunted by bad design choices and ZUN overall don't knowing what he's doing. He was so focused and providing a diverse gameplay and creating a competitive game that he forgot to put effort in making the game actually work.

Story mode is dumb, as others have stated here, the split-screen is pointless if it's not an actual 1v1 battle, you just defeat the bosses IN YOUR SCREEN and you're good to go.

Vs Mode is fine, is by far the one I'm playing the most, the CPU is pretty fun to play against, but it lacks very basic features like the option to choose the scenario and an Arcade Mode since story mode is a fake 1v1.

I could say that the netplay makes the buy worth it if it at least worked, I couldn't play a single online match by now, most of the time it just fails, and when it doesn't fail, the FPS is always between 10 - 15, maybe there's not many people in my region that play the game, but damn, I don't think ZUN should ever touch a netcode again, at least not until he actually put the time to learn how to do it, he clearly didn't have a single clue of what he was doing. The worst part of it all is that there's no option for self-hosting, I'm hoping that ZUN or even the community will add this in a patch eventually, if there's never self-hosting I'm sure online will be unplayable very soon, since I don't think ZUN will keep paying the servers for more than a few years.

Having said it all, yes, the game is bad, it's unfinished and broken, probably the worst mainline until now, BUT I will say that, besides all that, I'm still having fun, enough to already have put a few dozens of hours in it.

But now, taking gameplay aside, I liked almost everything else in the game, the new characters, music, and I could be wrong, but I feel like ZUN is finally trying to create an ongoing plot for the series, instead of various separate stories for each game, not only the game makes references to past incidents, but also a lot of the endings are kinda of cliffhangers. If ZUN is really trying to write a bigger plot that will last for games to come, I'm totally for it.

 

[Flame Sniper]

Does anybody here know how to set up a private room for online play?
I don't see any option to select a specific room to join

EDIT:
I figured it out, first both players need to set the same room name (let's say "SonBitenDrip69"), then you click on "join room" and done!

 

[YuyuPhantasmagoria]

I haven't played touhou 19 but one thing I have to say is that (MINOR SPOILER ALERT) I absolutely adore Hisami's character design.

 

[Gri]

If ZUN is really trying to write a bigger plot that will last for games to come, I'm totally for it.

This sort-of already happen with MoF-SA-UFO-TD-HM.

While the plot of these games is mostly self-contained, they are references that connect the stories together.
 

He was so focused and providing a diverse gameplay and creating a competitive game that he forgot to put effort in making the game actually work

Pretty sure Zun doesn't care about competitive gameplay. Otherwise, character would be more balanced (and online would actually work a little). I just played the demo not the full game, but even with just 5 characters some were definitely OP compare to other.

 

[Marukos]

Pretty sure Zun doesn't care about competitive gameplay. Otherwise, character would be more balanced (and online would actually work a little). I just played the demo not the full game, but even with just 5 characters some were definitely OP compare to other.

Yeah, competitive was not the right word, I meant that this game was made with online being the main aspect of it in mind, which would be the case if the online worked...

This sort-of already happen with MoF-SA-UFO-TD-HM.

I know, but this time feels different, it really felt like the start of a bigger plot, but again, I could be complete wrong and it will simply finish in a future Touhou 19.5.

 

[Kurzov]

I have not really caught up with the game news and what is going on. Could you please explain what happened? Outside the fact the game came out and what the character roster looks like, I have absolutely no idea of anything else. I have not played the game either, and probably won't do it given that bullet hell is not really my cup of tea when it comes to video games. So I'm listening, why is this "the worst game launch in Touhou history"? 

Some thouhgts of mine

 

[Kurzov]

This sort-of already happen with MoF-SA-UFO-TD-HM.

While the plot of these games is mostly self-contained, they are references that connect the stories together.

More or less

 

[Space Banana]

Touhou 19 had so much potential to be one of the greatest games, but it got too rushed.

It's a very fun game and has many characters to play with and I'm enjoying it. It's sad because if only the game wasn't rushed it would have been amazing, because there are many positive things to talk about the game, but the negative aspects turn me off completely from considering buying it.

• The OST's original tracks are very cool and I like them, but the rest is just rearrangements of old themes and most barely differ from the originals.
  
• The pixel art is very cool, and the portraits are too.
  
• The new character's designs range from really cool to meh. I like Hisami and Son Biten more than the rest.
  
• Input delay is really good as always
  
• Finally my controller's analog triggers work. So many games don't support these analog triggers
  
• I can't talk about the story yet, because you progress through it as you play with each character, instead of each character being an isolated variant of the story.
  

Then we have the strong downsides of the game:

• No score at all
  
• No replays (wtf!!!!!)
  
• No extra stage
  
• Online is fucked
  
• Some character portraits are worse than others, and generally all have the same energy to them, which doesn't help distinguishing character personalities
  
• Unbalanced portions of the game depending on the context (for example fighting certain enemies in lunatic)
  
• Some playable characters are very weak
  
• Main game is the shortest ever, with every run lasting around 15 minutes
  
• Versus mode takes forever for the enemy to get hit, feels very unfair
  
• In story mode, the enemy doesn't get hit, you just have to clear the spellcards. This is fine, but it's weird considering it's supposed to be a versus game. Also in the same mode, the enemy live indication doesn't lower when you clear a spellcard and doesn't represent the amount of spellcards you need to clear either, so you don't know how many are left to clear unless you know from memory
  
• This is the first Touhou game to crash on Linux when you alt-tab (if it's in fullscreen mode). I'm not sure if this happens on native Windows as well
  
• The card mechanic is not necessary and doesn't need to be in this game. You won't care about the cards and you can't even pick the ones you want. It just feels forced
  

I assume the price increase to 14€ or whatever is due to zun hiring a pixel artist, but the game in its current state should not be this expensive. I hope zun patches it and improves it a little bit at least

 

[Flame Sniper]

• This is the first Touhou game to crash on Linux when you alt-tab (if it's in fullscreen mode). I'm not sure if this happens on native Windows as well
  

I also ran Touhou 19 on Linux. I didn't have any issues, aside being unable to connect to my friend for some reason? Note, I'm running it under the Bottles app with their custom wine version (soda 7.0.9).

 

[Space Banana]

I also ran Touhou 19 on Linux. I didn't have any issues, aside being unable to connect to my friend for some reason? Note, I'm running it under the Bottles app with their custom wine version (soda 7.0.9).

I used Lutris's builds of wine and proton-ge and both had this issue

Not so sure about vanilla proton because i didnt buy the game on steam

I didn't try bottles or vanilla wine

 

[Flame Sniper]

I used Lutris's builds of wine and proton-ge and both had this issue

Not so sure about vanilla proton because i didnt buy the game on steam

I didn't try bottles or vanilla wine

It could also be a specific problem to your hardware. I'm running a ryzen 5 3500U with integrated vega 8 graphics.

 

[Space Banana]

It could also be a specific problem to your hardware. I'm running a ryzen 5 3500U with integrated vega 8 graphics.

This happens only with th19 on fullscreen very specifically, and I don't have old or quirky obscure hardware/drivers, so it surely is something that is different in the engine that doesn't go along well with wine

 

[Guest]

Touhou 19 is one of my favorite mainline entries and my only complaint is the net code, but the community will produce a rollback mod eventually, so I’m not worried.

Zanmu has one of the best final boss themes in the series and I absolutely adore it’s cast of characters <3 really really happy with this entry tbh.