Well, I really an not feeling in the finest of moods (basically a combination of fear, dread, panic and lack of self confidence) right now due to an upcoming exam retake, so I might be missing for a while, or at least reflect my problems into the way I will address the current news roundup. Anyway, with 1 day delay, emergency news roundup:
News and updates
This week, we have had a Dev Letter revealing the latest, shiniest stuff going to come to Global. Oh boy... -
"I can't with this shit, I just don't have the words anymore man, like this is unprecedented levels of plain stupid beyond what I can comprehend, both for Global and JP, like someone explain to me how this could possibly be healthy for the game?" (u/Kdog8273)
Anyway, overall information about the update can be found in here:
Closing thoughts (new category)
I would have written a long text here, but again, I think there are a few comments that, if put together, perfectly transmit the way I am feeling about this game right now:
And there's the reason I started to slow down with/almost drop LostWord. The fucking EFes being dropped into the game every few months or so that have abysmal drop rates and the useless Fantasy Rebirths that should be ashamed to even be called such things.
Between some Story Cards being locked behind paywalls (i.e. practically needing EFes due to the elements they have for the Elemental EX which you might as well be paying for) and the drop rates for any of the Story Cards on Hard/Lunatic, I stopped caring about Touhou LostWord and just kinda forgo about booting up the app whenever errands are finished. Doesn't help that there's still the endless black screens that show up from time-to-time be it trying to boot up the game itself or heading into the school in some capacity.
I haven't even touched the Scarlet Devil Tower since that one update that lowered a few stats for the early floors and even then I didn't touch it after beating a few floors when it first released. The game is just that boring. It was fun at first but with the flip-flopping between updating the story and the constant events happening it stopped being fun and start looking like a wasted promise.
Even the concepts in the game are wasted and stop being cute and start to feel creepy. The Fantasy Rebirths were cute at first, but once it was confirmed that the MC is basically a child thanks to several events scattered throughout the main story, SDT and even the weekly/monthly events (minus Hifuu which seems to take place in an alternate universe) it started to feel weird trying to gather tons of Mirrors just for a literal wedding costume, being booted back to level 1 for the character being rebirthed and some useless stat boosts.
Like they look cute, don't get me wrong. And some characters probably would enjoy wearing such outfits. But canonically most of the characters that have Rebirth costumes could care less about getting married with a human. (Especially a child.) Most of them are youkai after all, they would probably be focused more on trying to either guide us to safety or trying to scare/eat/kill us. (Even youkai have morals and standards, may not be much depending on the youkai but it's there.) The only benefit some characters would have is Reimu getting tons of money or Marisa getting a free chance to steal more depending on the character rebirthed.
Mokou's confuses the everliving daylights out of me. Rather than making it a suit (something that would have pants, something she would be familiar with fighting in), they made it a dress like everyone else. The only ones that don't wear wedding outfits are:
- Reimu (not even sure what the outfit is based off of). [CVN's note: it is a a traditional Japanese wedding dress called shiromuku]
- Reisen (a clichéd military outfit).
- Kasen (don't recognize the outfit design).
- Nitori (a white version of her normal outfit with more advanced machinery and no backpack in the art itself).
- Youmu (a kimono... yay?).
- Patchouli (an actual mage outfit complete with staff).
- Alice (something that looks like it came from the PC98 era or even Alice in Wonderland itself, fitting given the character).
- Meiling (a more fancy version of her usual outfit without her iconic hat).
- Sakuya (looks like she's going out for a night on the town if Gensokyo had one).
- Ran (not sure what the outfit is based off of).
- Chen (a shrine/shrine maiden outfit).
- And Kaguya (a strange futuristic princess-like outfit).
Most of the other outfits are either literal wedding dresses or what might as well be the flower girl/ring bearer. They could've done something spectacular with the Rebirth outfits, but instead they just went the lazy route and just made them mostly wedding outfits with the characters listed being the only ones to go against the norm and have outfits that don't typically fit a wedding and look more like something that would be an event costume of some kind. (Which eventually became the case as depending on the event some Rebirth Costumes can be used to gain more Event Points.) Also looking at Kasen's rebirth outfit has me laughing, the dragon and tiger look extremely durpy while the eagle looks either pissed or scared shitless for what might be coming at it.
But regardless, there's a myriad of reasons why Touhou LostWord is starting to dwindle in popularity. One of them is definitely the repetitive gameplay.
It's just unbalanced. You're stuck with a limited selection of resources while the enemy gets an unlimited selection of resources. You permanently lose a Spell Card or Last Word meanwhile the enemy can use as many Spell Cards or Last Words as they please which can and will result in your defeat if you don't plan properly or don't have the resources necessary to beat them.
The meta also doesn't help matters. Like I said before, a lot of popular/useful Story Cards are either locked behind events or Lunatic battles in the Story mode. Witch of Scarlet Dreams for example, is only obtainable through the final battle of chapter 2 and has a notoriously low drop rate like all 5
Story Cards. You have to do so many battles just to get a single one of those Story Cards. Also not helping it's case is the fact you need to spend thousands of God Crystals to increase the Story Card inventory to a reasonable amount before having to do it all over again thanks to the max prayers usually giving ten Story Cards at a time which can pile up really quick. So if you want the best Story Cards you need to spill an endless see of blood just to get the best cards and have a shitton of money to increase your Story Card inventory.
This whole situation could've been avoided had they not made the default drop rate of God Crystals abysmal for errands. Because unlike Seal Crystals which have multiple ways of being obtained, God Crystals can only be obtained through either Errands or the occasional Everyone Wins Champaign without paying for them.
Speaking of God Crystals and going back to talking about costumes, I really dislike the fact you have to pay with God Crystals instead of with something like Coins or Event Points depending on the costume. These aren't alternate characters for fuck's sake, they're quite literally just alternate outfits. If you really insist on making us pay God Crystals for more fancy PNGs to look at than at least make them cheap. Not like to voice changes depending on the costume anyway. (Greedy pieces of shit.)
Why is GL so insistent in pumping out the next big character? JP’s at fault making these unsparkable EFes characters and GL’s at fault in trying to keep up. They really need to just slow down for their own good. Ugh, at least there’s a step-up (though I kinda liked the free summons before ngl). Also, skipping both Raiko and Sumireko yet again and not releasing Tojiko or her costume alongside the other event costumes is sorta criminal. But, at least we got more General pool units so eh. The JP team. They don't care if Global's release schedule is cohesive, has meaningful continuity, or is fair, providing it's meeting profit targets. JP is the "main" version, and they will switch Global servers off like a light if it stops making enough money.
It's enough to question how anyone would invest money into gacha games, given how abruptly they can just shut them down due to the devs' own greed and poor decision making. LW has been spiralling in that direction for a while and is rapidly getting worse. I've spent a bit of money on the game (only on cheap packs/Nitori's delivery mind you) [not me, CVN, but the original person who posted the comment] but as it stands I'm not confident enough in the game's health to invest in it right now; and if enough people share that concern EoS becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
