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Intermission: collecting opinions on LostWord for the final review

CountVonNumenor

CountVonNumenor

Onshi
As some of you may already know, I have announced the fact I am planning to write an extensive review of this game in the following days. However, I would also like to get as many opinions from you as we can, in order to create a larger image on the game itself. The review itself may not end up too professional, or just go into a tirade every now and then, but I still feel like I want to do this, and just help with some sort of retrospective guide now, after 1 year of having this game on the global market. 

Feel free to write as much as you wish, and long rants are absolutely welcome. If curious, I already have a sort of plan for the text, but which tends to always gathe more and more stuff. But this is a general plan you could use for structuring the opinion:

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Thank you for your collaboration. 

 
Cool that you decided to do this! I can't comment much on Hifuu, the tower or EX stages. However, I'll try to prepare as much as I can for the others. Expect a few rants too!

 
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Touhou Lost Word Rant And Stuff:

Intro: Touhou Lost Word, where do I even start? First off, it’s officially licensed by Team Shanghi Alice (Zun) So, that’s a start. It was globalized in May 11, 2021 compared to it its Japan counterpart which was released a year ago. It has brought a lot of new fans to the series well, a lot…. But still it’s quite a game really.

Story: What is a game without a story (Opps, still there’re a ton of good games without a story) Anyways, the thing about finding a lost word is intriguing. But the plot didn’t get me like what are they writing in the prologue and the first chapter? They shoved you boring monologues especially at the beginning but got better later on: Megapig9001 already made a video about the prologue including events and some story chapters. MegaPig Touhou lost word reviews - YouTube

Final Verdict: Half the time the writers doesn’t know that they are bringing to the table, but it balances out each other later like Yin and Ying.

Dialogue: Things are packed with references here so, that’s a good thing and there’re those popular ones like “Hey Mister” from the Halloween Event and more that I don’t remember. And the home screen ones are also quite interesting if I must say. The Tower is explaining things such as barrier and jazz that SHOULD be EXPLAINED in the god damm FIRST CHAPTER! Since we got magicians gathering, so giving the little foreshadowing would’ve been really good. And what even is the Daily Arena? Just Gals hanging out with literally everyone and demolishing our hero which have the power to call them and will swipe the floor.

Final Verdict: Well, atleast the later parts got better and the substories are surprising to read thorough since I can see creativity.

Characters: Not really bad and I like it a lot as they keep most of the cast to their original ones but some doesn’t make it… (That one-time Akyuu turned to Yandere, at the Hina Cheering Saga and other that I forgot.) One complain I have is there weren’t any translation in the character bio one well, that has been fixed.

Gameplay: Lots of fun at first but became rather stale as times went on. Although, I like some of the spell cards that they created their self; I like Toyohime’s Water Dragon Lost World, and there’s not much to say here other than the enemy hits hard when they used their respective spell cards maybe even better than us. What? Oh, the animations really bring a weight behind the gameplay.

Double Final Verdict: I really love the idle animations ones and that HINA SPIN. So, a lot points for Lost Word.

Gacha System: Things really went 0 to 100. But this thing here is handled really well but no.. I mean maybe the Rng didn’t favor me but I got to say, It’s more generous than it looks.

Verdict: I might need some help from fellow player’ view about it.

Final Everything: This game really hold me down for almost a year but that’s infact, impressive. It might not be the ideal Touhou game and many fans will dislike it but that doesn’t stop you from enjoying it; To be honest, I enjoy every moment of doing things in this game. Be it Scouting for errands that doesn’t give you anything, sucking hard at multiple health bar bosses, mildly surprised at some of the art done for, strategizing how to beat the Scarlet Devil Tower with all of my Touhous, (Sad no Yuugi but Meiling and Hina is there), Sparking a lot only to realize other lucky bastard got alt ones in just 50 rolls or just in a daily roll (Looking at you reddevil) and many more! It’s really something.

Final note: CountVonNumenor, I hope this would be enough and pardon everyone, many things happened well, good thing I might say but I’m back lads!

 
Sorry for the wait Count, but with the recent announcements, I thought now would be a good time.

Story:

I was genuinely interested where lostword was going in the earlier parts of the story. I'm glad they didn't just recap the main games and it's nice to see more characters have focus. l also like that some variations actually have a justifiable reason to exist like Scarlet Marisa and MSM Youmu. There's more to talk about with the variations, so I'll save that for later. However, the story continues to drag out, especially with chapter 3 which had 4 acts including the finale. I'll admit that I was really happy to see all the characters, but it could've been much shorter. It doesn't help that we have to sit through a lot of boring dialogue between.

Events:

The events are one of my favourite aspects of the game. They're short, sweet and the less popular characters have more screentime here. We also get to see the cute costumes too. I've liked most of them so far, but my favourite ones were Hina's Cheering Saga and Seiga's Social Club!

MC:

I dont have much to say about her, since she's mainly reflecting the player. Most of the dialogue options available for us are either the MC answering their own question or getting a reaction from a character. An example would be if I prefer hot drinks or cold drinks. Clownpiece would be happy if I picked hot, but Cirno would be happy if I picked cold. There were some cute moments though, like being carried by Sakuya and having a crush on her. 

Dojo and School:

They might be basic, but at least it's still useful in some way. Though, I'm not a fan of games encouraging players to wait hours for characters to get stronger. It's funny how the characters go to school only to level up by eating. Wish that was our reality.

Arena:

I think the arena is a great challenge mode. The rewards might not be worth much on the higher difficulties, but it's nice to see new characters there every day. The weekly arena gives more variety as well.

Prayers and Variations:

There's a lot to talk about, but here we go. I'll give credit to the global version for including more characters on each banner compared to the jp one. The best banners to me are the elemental and step up prayers. Both have a mix of regular and festival characters with much better chances. It's nice that the step up starts with 60 god crystals. However, the ufes, relic and epic characters don't have this at all. Instead, they start at 600 and have higher exchange points required. I don't like how the points are only limited to the banners they were collected on. I also don't like the chances of getting characters using seal crystals compared to god ones. Some people could use up to 1000 seal crystals and still not have them. The epic variations can't be sparked with points either, which is unfair. To make everything worse, they introduced paper disks for relics and epic dolls. It makes levelling up those character harder and having more types is just complicated.

I'll talk more about variations now. As I mentioned before, I'm fine with the ones that appear in the story, since they are mostly justified. I just don't like how blue Reimu is considered an epic compared to Marisa and Youmu. The ones I'm looking forward to the most are the classic versions. Can't wait to see how my favourites and everyone else look! In my opinion, the worst of these variations are the recent MV characters. They don't have many reasons for existing other than the developers trying to make more money. Having epic characters was one thing, but including the relics now seems pointless.

Global Updates:

I've ranted about some of this before, but I'm going to do it again. It's great that global has nearly caught up to jp now and we're seeing stuff arrive quicker like fantasy rebirths. However, it's unfair that they decided to prioritise the ufes, relic and epics over the ones we still don't have. They should be aware of the characters we are actually waiting for, yet they hardly mention anything to the community. The constant re-runs of the ufes banners just shows how they feel about the others. If I'm being honest, I'm tempted to take a break as soon as I have the last of my favourites.

Sorry again about the wait, but I hope this helps out in some way!

 
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Wow, it has been over a month and ha;f, and I still have not started writing this. Such a shame. Sorry for wasting you time trying to write huge reviews for that game. I really should start y review, but I see no way of starting it too soon as I always end up adding more and more I want to talk about, and eventually expand the goal more than I initially planned for. Plus, my mind and opinion about the game seems to have dramatically changed in the past month, therefore what I would have written back then does not fit anymore with what I would write nowadays. 

 
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Don't worry Count, take as much time as you need. There's a lot that has changed recently with lostword, so it's completely fine if you want to leave it for now. My opinion hasn't changed much, but I'll continue to stay updated on the game until then.

 
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personally I really like it (I might be addicted actually so that may be a point against), the event stories range from bad to meh but I find the actual main story to be pretty entertaining. I used to like the Tower quite a lot but once I had several full teams at level 100 (including some super festival and fantasy rebirth characters) I found that it quickly became boring since I can now just brute force through each release of new levels (when played right a team of Reimu, Yukari and Sanae seemingly just can't die but once they're out of spell cards that becomes a slog so I just let myself lose at that point). I find the element/character EX stages to be stupidly hard but I suppose they're made for much more serious/meta players than me.

 

 
I guess if Count is holding out on writing it for a few more time, I'll give my honest opinions on it. Just that maybe I had gave in on LostWord giving me a rollercoaster ride. Haha.

Story: I suppose... they're well made. Very and I'm saying this with a bit of lightly lookbacks on it. I like it. In a sense that I could compare it to Sherlock or Elementary but minus the murder and more magic. Quite enjoyed it to be fair. It gave a sense of "weelap pads, we panic for a moment, gather ourselves back and go ask a buncha people for clues. And then beat them up."

It spiralled down into the drain in the latter parts, for me though. Don't get me wrong, I still take the Hakugyokurou storyline with a bit of enthusiasm but... that was it really. Then it was all "one cup of Loch Ness monster shenanigans and espresso depresso please." Overall, enjoyable to a sense of absurdity.

Hifuu is... one I slightly enjoyed mostly because... fresh take and the "everyone loves reboots" knack. I can give it both the ire weird-out look and the benefit of a doubt because it gave me confunded feelings of "why are you there and why am I here" type. 

Events are enjoyable packs of fun for me personally. Honestly, they're well made and have elements of refreshness in them. I played through Hina's Cheering Saga laughably in joy as I walk through my head a readalong. And it takes some new turns that could well be some okay stuff if it was to be crafted more. All in all, well made.

Gacha system: here we go again. Take Sebastian Vettel's 2010-2013 F1 dominance period, Lewis Hamilton's 2014-2020 F1 dominance period, and put them into a jambloni blender, and you get the gacha system. Don't get me wrong, I like them. I even considered this to be the nifty most generous gacha currency system I could experience. But the schedule... my god the schedule. They f'd up so much dishing out SFes and UFes (recent times) one by one like they're common dishes in a roadside Phở store and now RelicFes? Gimme a break... Where's our other gen chars? Where's Wriggle and Raiko? I could never defend this system even if I wanted to and try, because, generosity but they ruined it by giving us the best/worst amalgamation of gacha, at least by this game's standards.

Tower/Arenas: to be honest, haven't touched them much. But a side level in which you could bake a bit of time in and... draw in some game time away from the main campaigns is good, imho.

Characters: at least... they're not deviateable. True to heart and personality of them I would say, and maybe so too is us, the protagonist. Maybe her character side is okay... but I could wished it would be a bit more crafted upon. I get that she's confused of all this, but her (us) hopping into the Cadillac not 10 chapters later really says something about this just... meh.

The other SFes/UFes variants that have poked their face into the stories is interesting. They give an alternate insight into how "you might be this person now, and the next, the other". Faceted truth and philosophy they're looking into, and, hey, it's welcomed, in a sense.

And... that about covers what I want to say about this game. It's all "chopsticks and forking a rook out of Queen's protection" kind of talk, but then again, I'm quite honest in what I talk and do...

Hope this can help you out in someway, Count. Maybe with the others insight + your own experience, you'll get something out and in.

 
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