Leaderboard

1.C-CLAYS - Rest in Dark Night oh this one is on my my playlist, had contemplated whether to submit it in the tourney or not who knows submitted this, it might even be me... i forgot... im so tired of Master Spark, pls more Oriental Dark Flight. regarding the rearrangements, this is an unique one, i haven't heard this style in other re-arrangements. I still don't understand how to differentiate R&B genre. maybe it the feels, it does feel a bit melancholic yet energetic. overall very enjoyable. 8/10 would listen fully and repeat few times 2. Virus Key - 氷精たちの踊り what should the title translation be? Dance of the Ice Faires? It's still winter it counts. Waltz are usually very nice, very elegant. though i don't feel significant storytelling, just a smol litel fairy going around her days. 10/10, would repeat unknowingly for few hours i think classical is either hit or miss for people. 3.O-Life Japan - Dawn Sky of the Myouren Temple ah yes the generic flute for Morning Mood, but hey it works! this one has more story to tell than the waltz before, you can tell when everyone just woken up, then they started their activities and continue brimming with life. yeah wont defeat the waltz, elegance is simply too beautiful. 9/10 would listen and repeat oh btw i got new headphone! everything is much clearer now the hi hats changed from "sh" to "tsk" the kicks change from "db" to "dmm" and more i can make out from vocal lyrics my whole life i've been blind or deaf!

Besides the obvious "I would not have given green light to that game to begin with"... The game has been up for almost three years (counting the original server), and there seems to be no sign it will die soon. Which is a paradox, given the fate of the previous Touhou mobile games (Cannonball and DanKagu). However, for as long as LostWord has been up, especially after getting a global server, there have been numerous complains about the nature of this mobile game and the way it has been run. And there are some who just deny the entire existence of this game/don;t want to recognize it as part of the Touhou community as a whole. Even one of my original threads at the Shrine was one in which I was criticizing LW and the shortcomings of its systems. Only for afterwards to turn the thread into the news roundup, which lasted until January 2023. I am sorry for not having updated the news ever since, I just feel like I lost the whole drive to do that. Everything is quite stale, and outside the release of the next arc in the Beach Episode Chapter 4, there has been nothing significant going on, or worth mentioning. Therefore, the need for a fresh approach, one that can actually turn into something constructive. Here are some of my opinions on shortcomings. To be fair, I do not really have a solution for them, as much as I would like to think of one - especially when it comes to making the game profitable: the very nature of LostWord being a gacha game; we all know too well how predatory gacha tactics are the story, somewhat coherent until the first half of Chapter 3, is going off the rails in the second half of that chapter and stays so ever since in terms of coherence being a gacha game, the story can be extended indefinitely, just so you could milk the series for more money and add new OCs based on the original 2hus the very premise of the game (having a self-insert isekai protagonist who gains the trust and affection of the 2hus) and the OC (funny how the OC is a woman - not complaining about that) is way too close to other games of the kind, best examples in my mind being Azur Lane and Kantai Collection the characters are also quite shallow, relying a lot of fanon personalities and canon stuff being randomly thrown around just to look smart in a trivia section speaking of which, I have not fully checked it yet, but LW seems to be quite close to being just a clone of Azur Lane, just that with a Touhou skin and slightly less horny Fantasy Rebirth (marriage under another name) seems to also be inspired from games like AL; it is not the first Touhou fangame that introduced the concept (as far as I am aware, it existed even in older, more appreciated games like Fantasy Maiden Wars with the "wife" mechanic), but it becomes a little bit questionable at points - overall not my cup of tea, but some costumes do look cute the game system, even if having an interesting premise on the use of elements, eventually ends up in one of the two - either you just "Auto-Play"/"Auto-Replay" because of boy, THE GRIND NEVER ENDS, or ends up in the creation of new, stronger units for stupidly hard challenges and on the same line, since we have a gacha, you always need to push out new content; and that is not not an easy task, given this game is an adaptation of an already established series, you can pull just that many characters from ZUN's collection until you run out of them; also not to speak about power-creep... the game...just became boring; after almost 2 years of daily checking it out, I am not longer feeling too much excitement; it's more like a chore than anything else And probably one of the worst parts, despite being mostly a repeat of the first point, is that this is a gacha game. However, there are other problems. If it was not a gacha game, how would you have ensured the survival of the game? It eats a lot of money to be maintained, and you need a constant flow of cash to keep it going. From the stats I have seen, the situation is not really that hot, at least in terms of global server. This is the revenue situation of the game. Even with all the gacha tactics and that, it seems to be mostly in the red through last year on Global (or at least the JP players are more willing to invest money). If this game was not a gacha, I am afraid it would not have gone past the first year, and would have never come outside Japan. It is also scary to think that if a game is not a gacha, the "mobile game" industry will not provide too much revenue on that project. Some of the stats I have seen recently show that mobile games earn more income than PC and console COMBINED. And that some gacha games can earn in the tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a single year. Therefore, I am not sure how could this game be better executed. And this is where YOU guys come in. And for that, I am launching the following question: what do you think are the greatest shortcomings of Touhou LostWord, and how would you you have created/developed this game if you were in charge of the development team?

I am very aware of Fusu's work, and surprisingly I don't mind this sort of art. It's absolutely not for me, but I don't take joy in demeaning other's tastes or what they do in their private time. Honestly, when it comes to fanart, I really don't care as much as say a fangame, because so many people will draw and be paid to draw these characters in literally any situation since it's their line of work, and it's a fruitless battle trying to change or even care about it imo. Fusu is just one of many Touhou artists that make this sort of content, but suddenly, just because one person started spamming r/Touhou with their art, they are now the poster boy that deserves to be "called out" for "misinterpreting our beloved characters". The only problem I have with Fusu's art is the samey-ness of it all, there's an over-reliance of the same foward-facing shot and there's little variation of it. "Ah yes, how do we deal with such a person? By making a parody of their art talking down to anyone who could remotely enjoy such a heinous thing, because they deserve to be treated that way for not being what we have deemed to be 'normal'." Many Western fans see themselves as the arbiters of what's "right" and "wrong" and pretend what they believe is objective and indisputable. It's often why I prefer not to interact with anyone about these topics, because their mind is already made up, discussion is impossible, and I'll likely be put on display for the amusement of an echo chamber. I don't direct this ire towards you, Count. It just sort of strikes a nerve seeing people obsess over nothing remotely constructive and pretend they are making a change for the "better".

I've been taking a break from lostword since the start of this year. I was just disappointed in the direction the game was taking and I began to lose interest in the main story after Chapter 3. I can't blame you for not being motivated to update the other thread after all this either. It's a shame cause that was one of the first threads I talked in at Moriya Shrine and now it's associated with something that I dislike. I agree with everything that you mentioned here as well. The most insulting idea for me was to include different variations of characters with the Relic and Epics. A lot of them are just lazy designs, which could've been costumes instead. I don't mind seeing any of the classic variations though. That being said, there's no reason for 7 different Marisas to exist in the game. Japan thrives on gacha games unfortunately and they're a huge part of the gaming industry over there. Games like FGO continue to make ridiculous amounts, even though it's been years since it first released. There's always more gachas being made every year and some become very popular in a short amount of time. I'm just glad people like us are more aware of how terrible these games can really be. I think it's possible for lostword to generate a decent amount of revenue without being on mobile though. In an ideal world where I'm in charge of the development of lostword, these are the changes I would make immediately: Allow every character to be unlocked by completing challenges instead of only using crystals Allow every costume to be unlocked by completing challenges instead of only using god crystals Increase the drop rate of items by a large amount, so people don't have to rely on auto-play farming Occasionally make adjustments for every character, so there's no need to make different variations of them Take out items that are required to rank up higher such as paper dolls/disk and allow players to reach max level naturally Prioritise community feedback before deciding what content to include Provide better login and challenge bonuses

It's more when characters sort of get "defanged", or potential negative aspects get ignored, like Aya and Momiji being really good friends when they hate each other. I am biased more towards nicer and cuter things over making things grimdark, but both either ramp a trait up to the extreme, or just make stuff up. The Barrier system sort of reminds me of Shin Megami Tensei with hitting weaknesses giving you an advantage beyond just damage. I actually love the idea of having to choose between status ailments or breaking Barriers for more damage. You could stack the turn economy SMT has going on with the in-depth Barrier system and get a really tense, strategic RPG.

I was supposed to answer this about a couple weeks ago. Hooo boy... This is something I have noticed as well. ZUN seems to be alright when it comes to writing the plot for a game. However, when the scale gets greater and in a series spanning for many years, problems start occurring. Just like you pointed out, the Human Village is a very goo example of that. I would have also talked about the lack of a unified vision in the depiction of the characters due to a great variety of artists employed to draw the 2hus, each with their own unique style, but I think I have already mentioned that in the opening post of this thread. Also yeah, Seiran and Ringo seem to be like a sore thumb in that whole "youkai come to the Village undercover" thing. And now that you mentioned Perfect Memento, ZUN WHERE IS THE THIRD VOLUME OF THE GENSOKYO CHRONICLE? WE HAVEN'T HAD A NEW ONE SINCE SYMPOSIUM OF POST-MYSTICISM, 10 YEARS AGO! As far as I am aware, CDS/FDS is an extreme mess of a manga series. From the Mokou vs Mizuchi fight chapter, all I can remember is the fact Reddit went all over the fact that we basically got the first, on-screen canon depiction of a 2hu basically topless (as Mokou's shirt burnt off, and there is nothing to be spotted underneath it - also she looks to be flat). As for the fans creating much better explanations than the author himself, I really have no words. By now, does ZUN still really care about the series? I am glad he is still making games (therefore it means he still has some interest in Touhou), and I just hope things can only get better from where we are now for as long as it will last. I am not really an expert when it comes to the field of music, but there is just one thing I can say. A lot of songs are rather forgettable to be honest, or just do not stick to my mind. To me, Touhou 16's OST is mostly a blur to me (but to be fair, that game as a whole is mostly a blur for me). At the very best, all I can add here is my list of impressions when it comes to as many songs I could remember from the series. And even there, a lot of the contributions come mostly from fan-made arrangements that I associate with that song, rather than the original theme. I have written this all the way back in June last year, when the Top 10 Original Touhou Tracks thread was going. I have written quite a bit on the topic in the past, so I will not repeat myself. Instead, I will just redirect talk towards the following threads: Yeah, it looks like I talked about it quite extensively last year... You actually caught my attention at the Suwawako part. His content is... alright at least. Probably one of the more enjoyable channels to watch that rose last year (even if my favorite still is GensouChronicle). As for his videos, I am still surprised I made a cameo in the Touhou Drama video. Or better said one of my comments from the DMCA era in regards to the Twitter vs Touhou Wiki event. Of course he had to read my comment on the voice of a stereotypical, greasy basement-dweling neckbeard out of everything... The paragraph Suwawako featured was the following one: Oh, how naive I was back then... Same. I feel like the gacha tag has been what made that game get such a bad wrap. How would you have done the game so that you could still have it reach a high audience, lack the predatory tactics of gacha, yet still be a commercial success? I feel like that is a very hard task, to which I really do not have a god answer. I am aware of the "Grimsokyo" interpretation, but what exactly do you define as moeblob? Or what sor of fan works/fanart would you count into that category? I am not very sure what to add here, especially since you have pointed it out much better than I could, and also in a much sorter way.