Gri

Congrats. This felt almost nostalgic to read. It's only been 2 year since I started playing Touhou, and when I finally beaten Remillia for the first time, with continues, man I was hyped. Good luck on the rest on your Touhou-journey, you'll need 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. 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.

"Yes, she’s deadly <3" Well, that title narrow it down to about 50% of the cast. I though it was Yamane at first. Better luck next time.

*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).

Wasn't Zun working with a team back then on PC-98? Still, even if we ignore PC-98, early windows game had colored ending (PCB 7 and PoFV 9 comes to mind, even EoSD 6) that looks better than the minimalist ending we have since DDC 14. Even though colors were gone with MoF 10, there were still details in the background. Not all CG looked great, but at least you could tell that Zun tried. Nowadays, it's just one or two character draw with minimal details.

Yeah, reviews for Touhou games are not reliable. I never wrote reviews before, but I had to for Kubinashi Recollection, since many reviews were just "Yeah! Sexybanki" or reviews lying about S-rank being impossible (but to be fair, the very first stage is near-impossible and way too hard compare to the rest of the game) It was the same deal for Luna Night, all of them going "Sakuya's thighs". So, pro tip: read a few good and bad review to get an actual impression of the game.

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?

I don't have any preference, btw. I think it's just that Benben is an easier name to remember than Yatsuhashi.

That's a common meme? First I've heard of it (I mostly play the games, and don't spend much time online except for this place). And here I though you've made a pretty funny joke.

I'd be a bit surprised (I mean, Zun didn't bother making male after all this time, so why would he suddenly start), but in the end it really boils down to the character being interesting, regardless of their gender (we got plenty of uninteresting girls in Touhou. Just because they're girl doesn't make them automatically interesting). From the official material at least, I think it is safe to assume that even if a male character was introduced, it would not change the usual character dynamics (i.e: no romance or anything).

No idea. It is from the Google Web Store, so it should be safe. Look for reviews of actual user of the extension for more info (I still got VideoBlocker installed, even though it is gone from the store, so I haven't used Channel Blocker)

Seems like the one I am using is no longer available on Google Web Store. Here's another that seems to be similar: Channel Blocker. Despise its name, it allow to block single video, videos matching a pattern (good for avoiding spoilers), or whole channel. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/channel-blocker/nfkmalbckemmklibjddenhnofgnfcdfp I can't speak for this new extension, but Youtube had some side-effect with Video Blocker: When watching a video, no videos would be display on the side as suggestion, and comments also stopped loading. Hopefully you want have any of that.

Seriously, I am playing and enjoying those game specifically because of gameplay, but also because the character have non-pervy designs. A lot of anime-style game nowadays have way worse design, where you feel ashamed of playing the game when you just want to play a new RPG/Action-RPG (Still looking for a dungeon crawler that looks good to play, is not grindy and is not mixed with fanservice stuff). I mean, yeah Touhou is a "girl-only" series, but at least I know I can show the games to others without them going "Oh, you're playing THAT kind of game. I am definitely not judging you. To each their own.". Actually, if you'd told me that Touhou was a "girl-only" series before I played the game, then I might have avoided it entirely. Almost every official-content of Touhou is free of that pervert stuff (with a few exceptions in the fighting game and in the manga. There's also no yuri). If you were hunting for that kind of stuff before, then this is your fault. I am not looking for that stuff to keep my perception of the character clean, and the only time I saw perverted stuff was thumbnails videos of youtube (but thanks to VideoBlocker, I can block channel that post this kind of stuff. After a short while, I didn't see any other pervert-thumbnail). Fan-content can easily fall into this, but they are Fan-Content that are more faithful to the official material. Never understood why people made a big deal with that one. Compare to other anime, she barely has any curve in her game portrait (her dress just highlight her curves more than usual. Nothing to get heated about). Cow I guess?

Fav: 11, no contest. Least: 18 (close with 2)

That's very normal. Touhou only has so much official content (fan content mostly re-use official content, often in predictable ways so it's not as interesting) , and after almost 3 years you probably seen it all. Probably because every game/manga are just "incident of the week". Barely anything matter in the plot, so it's hard getting excited about "yet another incident". This is meant to be enjoyed casually, so you probably won't feel very "hyped". Take time to enjoy other series, and come back when you want a more relaxing and simple story. You know how many never even gave the games a chance? Don't force yourself if you don't like the gameplay, or stick to playing on Easy with Continues if you think you got skill issues, then move on from there to Easy 1CC, then Normal (since some game lock you out of the ending if you play on easy). Forget about Hard and Lunatic unless you really enjoy the game. Almost every game can be beaten very, well, easily on easy (10-11-12 are using the "bad" continue system, so use a patch if you don't want to repeat stages a lot). My personal recommendation is 7, since the "Cherry Border" give you a temporary shield you can use to practice dodging without worrying about getting hit. Well, being a "Touhou fan" isn't some kind of holy duty that you "have" to do. Touhou is just a multi-media series that you can enjoy or not. You don't have to like everything about it, and you don't have to always be talking about Touhou 24/7 (doing so makes for a pretty one-note and boring life). Just go with how you fell. You like it and are curious to discover more? Continue on ahead. Feeling like you've seen enough and want to move to the next thing? Go ahead, there's no Touhou police that's going to prevent you from doing so. There's no prestige to gain in enjoying something, only personal fun.

Something I forgot to add: I think if the game would allow you to hold 3 UFO in your inventory, rather than just 2, it would have been much more forgiving. If you collect two red , then mistakenly collect a blue, you would still be able to collect a red to replace the blue you have collected. So rather than wasting 3 UFO, you would just waste 1. And if the player really wanted to collect blues after getting two reds, then the reds would just get replaced by blues as the player collect them. Yeah, I know it sounds like I complained a lot about UFO, but I like both games. It really boils down to me preferring a more simple-yet-hard-but-still-forgiving game, rather than a more-complicated-and-unforgiving-hard-game. It is actually a good thing that some games feels different than the rest. It helps keep things fresh, and more people may find one that they like. If all games would be EoSD#123, the series would have died a long time ago. SA lives system is ok. Like you said, I think it would have been nice if you got more live fragment depending on how good you do. Not getting hit (including Timeout) = 1 fragment, Capture = 2 fragments. But there's still the fact that when you lose a life, you also lose the opportunity get life fragments. This is why I think score-lives are the best: you can choose to make points with POC, Capture or Grazing (or the game specific gimmick in some cases). If the player is bad at doing one thing, they can compensate by being better in other areas. One thing I like of score-lives and SA system is the fact that you can get lives during a boss, so if you go in with just 1 lives, there's still hope you can gather another live and survive the fight (it feels less hopeless). UM brings back a lot of thing, including bad ones like UFO's low power (which was included probably to justify Koishi's card that makes losing power less punishing). But that's a topic for another day.

Oh, THAT game. People keep saying SA is "so hard" and "merciless", but I can easily say this about UFO. SA was a straight-forward hard challenge. The bosses in UFO are even harder than SA, mostly due to faster bullets and some spells that are tricky AND uses fast bullets (or laser). I think the UFO mechanic was ok, but really implemented poorly. It was a good touch that Zun though of stopping the UFO from changing color when you get near, but they keep moving rather fast (and usually into the upper-half of the screen where enemies can easily kill you) and when you are no longer close, the timer of the UFO to change color doesn't reset, so sometime you just get away for a small moment and the UFO already changed to the "wrong" color (Thankfully, WBaWC fixed these issues). Speaking of "wrong" color, picking a UFO of the "wrong" color is extremely punishing. If you got 2 red, then collect a blue by mistake, you just wasted 3 UFO. The one you collected which should have been a red (that's ok), and the two reds you had are forever lost since they will be replaced with whatever UFO you'll collect after that blue one. In other word, you may lose 2/5 of a life or 1 bomb and a 1/5 for picking the wrong UFO. To make matters worse, picking a wrong UFO can screw your routing for a while. Since UFO always spawn at the same place in every stage, you want to maximize the amount of red UFO (or green, depending on how you play), and collecting the wrong one will require you to improvise, which is quiet hard to do on Hard and Lunatic (on Normal, there's some room to collect some UFO that goes in the upper-half of the screen early since there's less bullets). Another thing about that game: power. Yes, power-bombs consumed power, but the amount of power item you got from enemies and clearing bosses spell were enough to keep you in good shape (unless you bomb spam). In UFO, boss spell now drop a ridiculously low amount of power (around 0.15-0.2) compared to every other game before it (0.5-0.75. enough to give you a power level after two spell). This make dying on bosses way more punishing than before, especially if you die twice (lowest power level this time is 1.00, so dropping to 2.00 is still rather weak). And yeah, when you die, you drop a ridiculous 0.07-0.1 power. I believe Zun just didn't bother to change the amount of power item dropped, which create this huge issue where power is very hard to come by. Before, each power item gave you 0.05 (collect 20 for a power level), while in UFO, thank to the UFO mechanic that requires a lot of items, each power item only gives you 0.01 (collect 100 for a power level). Shot-types are more classic this time, which is a bit of a let down after SA (especially the lack of special ability associated to each shot type). Most of them are still good, except that god-awful MarisaB. It is supposed to be a "wide" shot type, which should make stage easy, but the shot is so weak that enemies can still shot a lot of bullet before dying. What's the point of having a wide shot that can't take care of many small enemies and can't do much damage on bosses? And don't get me started on the gimmick of that shot: "Can shot from behind". Yeah, in a game where enemies never spawn on the lower-side of the screen, where the enemies prevent you from going over half of the screen (except some fast macro dodge in stage 5), it is definitely useless. And the "shot" from behind are just 2 pitiful ray of bullet that shots diagonally, compared to the 4 ray you have in the front. Fun fact: this is the only shot type where I had trouble shotting down the UFO mini-boss thank to it's weak power.. Cherry on top: a weak bomb that clear lot of bullets, but doesn't last long and has very misleading IFrames (you are vulnerable before the bomb animation ends) MarisaB took me over 2 week on Hard (and that was after clearing the game with literally every other shot type). This is really a shame, because the game is very good, and could have been one of the best . Except for Stage 2 (and a little Stage 4 boss), each boss are very fun and have their own gimmick to make them stand out. Byakuren is one of the best final boss in the series (along with Yuyuko and Okuu). Like Cosmic mentioned: UFO give you the choice on which resource to collect, and also give you the possibility to actively get more resource by being better. I think on that front though, DDC did a much better job, since there's a limit on how much UFO are dropped in each stage, while in DDC, you can increase the number of resource by doing more POC. (you could argue that there's also a limit of item dropped, but that almost like saying the stage only last 2 minutes therefore you can't collect resource forever). In UFO, after memorizing the most optimal route, there's little you can do to get more lives, and if the number of lives I can get are limited, I'd prefer to have a more straight-forward system like SA or scoring. Scoring to get lives is good since the player can choose how to get those points, but the problem is that there's either a low number of lives you can get (I believe in EoSD you could only get 4), or that the threshold keeps being multiplied by 2, making it almost impossible to get another lives. This makes scoring to get resource pointless after a while. I know there's a mod out there to change how UFO behave. It's not the same as WBaWC, but some ideas from there are transferred. I haven't play it because I want to play vanilla versions first (except the continue patch, but it doesn't invalidate any 1CC am I doing, so it's fine). I'll say this game is fun when playing casually on Normal, but anything higher than that requires either some serious skill, otherwise you'll be bashing your head on that merciless game for a while. (I'll skip talking about story and soundtrack here) WBaWC is quite different. Yes you collect "UFO", but the game is much more forgiving if you collect the "wrong" color. When you do, you still get something, and resource are not related to how many spirit of the same color you can collect, so gaining lives is easier, if not limited.

Yep, 10 continues hurts a bit. My worse run was UFO on Hard with 11-12 continues (in a month and a half, I cleared all shot types, including the awful Marisa B). Here's are a few tips for SA: If you haven't done so already, reduce the difficulty to Easy (pretty sure it gives you the good ending if you 1CC). That difficulty will allow you to have an easier time learning the various boss spells. When increasing the difficulty, some spell can be dodge using the exact same trick, except that there's a bit less space to dodge, or more bullets just to "show-off". For shot-types, use either Reimu-Yukari or Marisa-Nitori. Both are easy to use (only 2 spell you need to watch out with Nitori's slow missile). Reimu can trivialize half of stage 6 with her warp ability (and some rare boss attacks), while Marisa's shield can protect you while you try to dodge the bosses spell, making dodging "stress-free". Marisa also gets an easier stage 4 boss. Keep doing runs until you get to about 2-3 continues. At first, you'll improve fast, then you'll improve slowly until you get 1CC (In my UFO run, I had gone from using 11 continues, to 9, to 6, to 5, to 3, to 2, 1, 1 but only needed 1 extra life, then 0) If you don't have it, install thprac. This is a tool that replace the practice mode of any Touhou game with an actually good practice mode that allow you to practice every stage segments, boss attacks and boss spells with the amount of resources you want (from 1 to 9 lives, from 0 to max power). Once you get to 2-3 continues and you can't seem to beat certain parts of the game, use thprac to practice it. Speaking of practice mode, It is very disappointing that Zun never improved the practice mode in future games after TD. While most boss have simple non-spell attack, almost every stage 5 and stage 6 bosses have non-spells that are just as hard, if not harder, than spells, so practicing these would have been nice (being allowed to only practice spells just doesn't make sense). Try to finish the runs you started, unless you just feel like you can't focused or have a "bad touhou day" (this happens sometime. When this happen, don't take the end result of your run too seriously). To avoid getting sick of the game, try playing 1 game a day. This is just enough to not get rusty, and not too much that you burn yourself out. Don't give up. With each game, you are getting closer to 1CC. Took me about a week (7 games) on normal to get my first 1CC. Other 1CC took me less attempt, as I knew the boss pattern (stage do require adjustment since each shot-types behave pretty differently).

Ah, SA, my favorite along with PCB. The shot-types are definitely a good part of that game. They take some time to getting used to, but they are great once you master them (at full power, Alice and Patchouli can make some stage a walk in the park). While the game is harder than other Touhou, collecting extra lives in this one is extremely easy and consistent. You don't have to do anything specific: just survive boss attacks without getting hit (which is already what you need to do). This make the challenge is this game hard, but straight forward, unlike game like UFO or DDC where you need to both collect resource and avoid getting hit (and these goals sometime conflict with each other. In some case, using a bomb would help you collect resource, but this also means you have one less bomb to survive tough parts) I agree with your bombs review: Yukari+Nitori are great (long duration + screen clear), Aya+Alice good, Suika and Patchouli bad. I'll only add that the worse is Patchouli, since at least Suika returns some bullets to the enemies (even if it is unreliable). My trick for Suika and Patchouli is to use the bomb as close as possible to the boss. That way, they deal good damage (especially Patchouli), but it only work if the attack allow you to get close, or if you want to skip a specific attack and place yourself next to the boss before the bullets spawn. Alice shot is what I like to call a "Double-Focus" shot-type. To shot the "focused" shot, you need to first move around in focus mode, then once in place, release the focus and stop moving. You need to constantly press and release Focus, rather than just holding it. There's not many shots like that. The only other I can think of is Youmu+Yuyuko in IN, and Yuyuko wide-shot dealt decent damage, so not using Youmu more powerfull shot wasn't a problem. Regarding Power-Bomb, I agree that Zun might have overcorrected it in SA. There's no longer a "free" power level like in MoF, and there's some section in SA where enemies are not dropping power items (like after stage 4 intro) making Power harder to get back. I think either keeping the "free" level or keeping a amount of power items similar to MoF would have been ok, but decreasing both just makes using multiple bombs too punishing (using just one is fine). Thankfully, most shot-type options are weak, so losing power isn't a big deal unless you are playing Alice or Patchouli. And with Alice, you can abuse the fact that the game drops a "F" item on your last live. With 8 bombs, there's a good chance you'll have collected an extra live before using up all your bombs.

Yeah. I agree that the first time you reach each stage it feels more "earned" with the MoF continue system, but this only works on the first run (seeing a new stage always feels good). After replaying the game on harder difficulty, it gets old very quickly. I am currently clearing SA with all shot-types on Lunatic, and if I had to grind Stage 5 for every times I used my first continue there, I think I would have given up. Well, that's it for me on that topic.

"Nothing to quantify what you have lost"? Previous game had the status screen at the end of the game. It shows you how much continue you've used and how many lives you lost. For MoF-SA-UFO, you can tell how much continue you have used by looking at your score (the last digit is the number of continue). This is how you can tell how you are improving. "Not to mention that I just find getting booted out of a game once you die enough times to be an inherently annoying mechanic". I did say the limit was a bit weird, but this is to avoid, like you said, player just having infinite lives so they don't care anymore about dying. So choose: Either have infinite lives and work as hard as you can to improve, or have a hard limit that forces you to improve (kicking you out if you are not good enough). I'd prefer infinite continue, but since the current limit is pretty high (5 on hard), it isn't really an issue. Either way, nothing stopping you from taking the game seriously and avoid getting hit after using a continue. This is merely a tool for you to improve, without forcing you to improve NOW. When you have a busy schedule, a 30m Touhou game is easy to squeeze in, and the continue system will ensure that it won't last any longer. On the other hand, the MoF's system will make it so that it could take you 1h30, or more depending on how many reset you need. In the old continue system, I can choose whether I want to "skip" stage 5 and use Practice Mode later if I really struggle on it. For example, I am on Orin's last spell, and die. Do I really want to bother doing the stage all over again when I just made a silly mistake near the end? The answer is no. I know how to avoid that spell, I don't want to be force to grind it, I just want to move on to stage 6 (since I don't have too much time to game and want to keep the game to a short 30m). Yes, beating the game should feel rewarding, but the moment you use a continue (regardless of the continue system) you have already loss (you've still loss and the Bad Ending and the lack of Credits will remind you of it). The Bad Ending should be a punishment, not a reward for having reset 15 times a stage and finally got good enough to be stage 6. The reward is the good ending, where you have beaten the game as intended, regardless of the path you have gone through to improve. This is the same as Practice Mode. Yes, you could bomb-spam the whole stage (since you have 9 lives), but that would be pointless and you would not improve. You could use continues and turn the game into a "baby-easy-mode", but you would not improve. This is your choice to make, and I'll repeat myself, but I'd rather choose than being force into a single option (when in truth who cares about how I reached the Bad Ending for the Xth time). From TD onward, we both get to choose how we want our continue, so that's that. For MoF-SA-UFO, the choice is to use the continue patch or not.

The new continue system is definitely the worse change about the game. If I want to grind a stage over and over again until I am good enough, I'll just use practice mode. With this new continue system, you can get stuck for a good while on stage 5-6, while in previous game you would just use a continue on stage 5, then the rest on 6 and move on. I'd rather just finish my game than force myself to grind a stage on repeat. In SA and UFO, I managed to be far better at stage 6 than stage 5, since I was forced to restart instead of just moving on. Another bad thing with that is that it turns the game into a tedious die-n-retry loop, where you are trying to clear a stage, die to a boss, then retry the whole stage, die to the boss next attack since you don't know how to dodge it and you still need to improve in the rest of the stage, repeat till you get bored or finally beat the stage. Also, in this continue system, it is MUCH harder to unlock practice mode, since the game requires you to be able to beat the stage under 3 lives (or maybe 5 if you carried over some from previous stages). This also makes practice mode almost useless, since if I am able to beat it under 3 lives, why would I need to use practice mode that gives me 9 lives. This is very bad design because the game force you to be good RIGHT NOW, rather than giving you tools to improve, or allowing you to improve at your own pace. In other word, this is a big issue for player new to the game (whether they've beaten other Touhou or not), since it prevents them from enjoying the game first and then improving their run. You can't expect the player to just BE good (especially when there's tricky spell cards involved, like Orin's in SA). we all started somewhere. It took me a year to clear all game with all shot-types on Normal+Hard (and by the way, the continue system just become more annoying as the difficulty goes up, since it involve more resets). For practicing, I prefer to just do full runs of the game until I can clear it, or use Spell Practice/thprac for part that I have trouble with. I prefer having the choice on how I want to practice, rather than the game choosing for me. Yes, having a limit in the old continue system was a bit weird, since the moment you used a continue, you've already lost, so all that's left is practicing the rest of the game and see and how you improved compared to your previous run (first run, you might need 7 continue, then 5, then 2, then 1, then just one life, then congrats you won). In this case, having a limit is a bit meaningless. If the players want to just kill itself and use 80 continues to clear the game, let them. Those that want to improve can still focus and try their best to use less continues. Thankfully, there is a patch to change the continue system of MoF-SA-UFO back to the old one (except there's no limit, since it is hard to mod one into the game), you still get the bad ending, so no cheating (I used that patch for UFO's Hard and MoF-SA Lunatic). And if you feel like it's cheating to use a continue, then you are free to not use them. I never tried to reset a stage from TD-UM, but with that system you get to choose at least. As for Power bombs: I am somewhat glad they have been removed after SA, but they aren't as bad as you say. The basic shot is stronger in MoF and SA (well, more in SA), so having higher power is less important for dealing damage (there's still small difference, but just using 1 bomb won't halve your damage). The main issue with Power bombs is that you lose coverage by having less options, which can be important during stages. Power bombs have the advantage of being rechargeable. When you use a Power Bomb, you can continue the stage and collect power items to get it back. When you use a classic bomb, that's it, you can't get it back, and if that was you're last, then you are doomed to fail at the next "bomb section" of the game (we all have these depending on our skill), no matter how good you do. This means that with Power Bomb, the game discourage the player from using too many bombs in short succession (which is good since bomb should only be used in a pitch). In a boss fight, you need to survive about 2 spells to get the bomb back, so technically having Power bombs gives you more resources than if you were using classic bombs (unless you are playing DDC, where you can grid a ton of them). With classic bombs, you can spam bombs as long as you have them (or recharge by dying), making it feel like you are skipping some stages rather than actually clearing them (in HSiFS, I just bombed most of stage 5, since it is way harder than anything else in the game). The main advantage of classic bombs is that they are a no-brainer, you just use them and hope you won't need too much to clear the game. Simple and straight-forward.

Well, I think the games starting from MoF are using Zunpets pretty well. There are still loud Zunpets at time, but they are not as high-pitched so they don't mess up the track. I actually quiet like Zunpets, the mix of Zunpets + Piano is just enjoyable to listen to. Yup, that's a shame. At less there's still the audio cue to know whether you are hinting the enemy and whether it's close to dying. This is similar to how MoF-SA-UFO dropped Spell Practice, and how all games after IN (excluding PoFV) no longer display your stats at the end of the game. It was a nice way of knowing whether you were improving or not (looking at the bomb used + number of hit + final score) But I am getting ahead of myself. This ain't related to PCB. PCB and SA are both my favorite. Both are straight forward games for survival runs (SA has more complex shot type, but once you learn how to use them, the game is pretty straight. Life fragment are easy to collect and the amount you get per run is consistent, so you just have to focus on dodging rather than grinding resources), and have good OST (at less for me). They also have two of my favorite final boss fight (the other being UFO). As Cosmic said, the Final Boss Final attack is just one of the most epic moment in the whole series.

About the Cherry Border: This is a great mechanic for beginners. Having this shield remove the stress of losing a life if you get hit, so while it's there you can focus on just dodging. For score player, you can choose whether to keep the border and get bonus points, or release it on purpose to generate many cherry items and get another border shortly. You can also use unfocused-shot to charge to border more quickly, I used this often when a boss starts a spell card and I am close to getting a border. So yeah, there is some interaction with that mechanic, and I also like the fact that it make power items still useful once you reached full power, since all power items are converted to cherry items. In previous game, power items becomes similar to point items, except there value change depending on how many you collected, rather than the height at which you collect them. Oh, and yeah the "Enemy" indicator is indeed a blessing. About the soundtrack, while I also really enjoyed it, I don't like how some tracks have very-high pitched Zunpets (to the point it makes my ears bleed). Ran's and Yuyuko's themes come to mind. It isn't the worse game for Zunpets, that price goes to IN with the Stage 6 bosses themes.

Yeah, but it also means that the CPU might be program to not get hit at all until a certain condition has been met (time or sending X attack to the CPU). The CPU were always broken anyway. I think they run on a timer, and will avoid any hit until the timer has been reached (or if their path finding is obstructed by something like Medecine's poison or Aya's fast bullets). This is out it worked in the extra mode of PoFV, but in normal game it seems to also work that way, except that the timer goes back up every time the CPU gets hit. In hard and lunatic, I was never able to win the first round against Eiki, no matter how long I last (my guess is the timer is pretty high) I just tried out VS mode, and like in PoFV, the CPU is much stronger than in Story Mode. I can confirm that killing the boss "Final Story Spell" doesn't do anything, it is merely one of the spell the boss can throw at you (it wouldn't have made sense in VS anyway, since against a human it wouldn't work) I'll take back what I said about graphics being in the "goods" (at first, I was struggling to find good point, so I just put graphics and forgot to remove it). While the UI is fine and the new boss sprite are good, I don't like how all the characters have the same face, almost as if Zun just reuse a template for each character face. But to be fair, that's been an issue since DDC-LoLK (and that's a topic on it's own) I do like Reimu's theme in this game, other themes are ok.