buskerdog
Onshi
Ok, so let me first preface this with saying that the title of this topic is meant as a joke. I just want to have a serious conversation about what people thought of the quality of Gouyoku Ibun.
Now, with that being said...
Yeah. I have a lot of problems with Gouyoku Ibun.
Warning: Massive text wall ahead. I spent a lot of time writing this, and have done my best to edit it down to make it more readable and concise. This was originally a more freeform conversation type text, but I have decided to organise by section instead. Also, spoilers for some playable characters. Just saying.
But anyway, what were your experiences with Touhou 17.5? I’ve spent way too long writing about something I don’t like… hopefully it will be worth it and I get some interesting responses.
Now, with that being said...
Yeah. I have a lot of problems with Gouyoku Ibun.
Warning: Massive text wall ahead. I spent a lot of time writing this, and have done my best to edit it down to make it more readable and concise. This was originally a more freeform conversation type text, but I have decided to organise by section instead. Also, spoilers for some playable characters. Just saying.
Introduction
To begin: it is no secret that Touhou 17.5: Gouyoku Ibun went through a development hell. The game got delayed... a lot. This is its own can of worms to dissect, but for now I'm not writing about that. All I want to analyse is simply the end product of what Gouyoku Ibun is, and how it falls short of my expectations.
Despite my difficulties with the game, I did play through all of it. However looking back on the whole thing, I'd say this is the first Touhou game I've played where I can truly say I was disappointed with it. It just falls short in terms of quality in so many places, and that's especially disappointing when Tasofro's fighting games have generally offered some of my favourite experiences in Touhou and are held in high regard by me.
Visuals
So... let's start getting into the specifics. I'll begin with the art. The artstyle is very bold and different to what has been seen in Tasofro games before, and I'd say that the artistic direction was pretty damn good. Where it falls short is animation quality. The Tasofro fighting games have incredibly well animated characters, each with dozens of moves that all look just as smooth as each other, and with time things only got better, by the time Hopeless Masquerade came out and Tasofro redid all the sprites from scratch, things practically looked professional quality. Gouyoku Ibun, in contrast, has less characters than those games, each with fewer attacks/animation states than those games, and with a lower pixel count than those games, and somehow not only are the animations blatantly less detailed, but there are also cases of cutting corners - what I'm referring to in this case is the sonic-esque "ball/spinning state" that every character has. I wouldn't take issue with this animation if it were used well stylistically, but playing the game it becomes painfully obvious that it's used a "one size fits all" solution to anything that they either don't want to animate, don't know how to animate, or find too difficult to animate – you will see this constantly. Character idle animations are also barebones and painfully stiff compared to the previous fighting games.
Gameplay
Movement in this game is very awkward. This is likely due to an effort to give every character their own unique method of movement. Unfortunately, no one character has movement that feels especially intuitive to control - not at all helpful in a game that incorporates bullet hell elements. It feels like every character had their movement intentionally restricted so that it would be different to how another character moves. Now, I'm not bashing on the movement simply because it's not "normal". There is nothing wrong with having movement in your game that is constrained or goes against the expectations of your game's genre. In fact, there is a saying in game design: "limitations breed creativity". However, if you are going to do that, then you need to design your entire gameplay experience around your unique movement. Gouyoku Ibun does not do this – yes, you can get used to the weird movement, but even if you do, it’s still all too easy in this game to attempt avoiding one thing only to go careering into some other bullet.
The way you actually deal with bullets in this game involves no such words as "strategy", "skill", or "personal growth" – in most cases, the most effective strategies can be summarised as “spam” or "cheese". Dodging in this game pretty much entirely comes down to maintaining a continual graze state by chaining a dash into an attack, and then another attack, etc. since in Gouyoku Ibun, your attacks provide full graze frames as well as your dash, making you invulnerable to bullets. And the thing is, you have to do it this way, because not only is your dash alone probably too difficult to manoeuvre in order to get around bullets, but in later stages there tend to be bullets literally everywhere anyway, so you have no choice but to continually chain these two kinds of action together, making yourself invulnerable. This apparent design decision becomes a disaster once ungrazable attacks are thrown into the mix. When both kinds of attack are present, staying in control is very difficult, since you have to spam attacks and dashes to not get hit by the shower of regular bullets, but this can easily cause you to end up in contact with an ungrazable attack. And on top of all this, you also have to actually hit your enemy when their weak spot appears. Positioning yourself in the right place at the right time, both in terms of offence and defence, feels practically impossible in Goyouku Ibun. Sometimes, you are fortunate and have a character with a massive, spammable attack that is easy to hit. In other cases, you will be less fortunate. The bosses in the previous fighting games were very fun to fight and had difficult, but learnable patterns to overcome, but in Goyouku Ibun, you have no choice but to spam in order to maintain graze, and find whatever the most effective, repetitive way to throw out hitboxes is.
Oh, and by the way sometimes ungrazable attacks aren't even telegraphed. Usually a special symbol appears warning you of an attack that can't be grazed, but sometimes... nope, you just get hit by something that's ungrazable for no clear reason.
The flawed design truly culminates in the true final boss, especially with her last spell card. I used to have several paragraphs written about this, but since it turned more into a rant that just reiterates the points I already made, I cut it. But the TLDR is basically: the last attack is extremely long, has lots of ungrazable attacks where the hitbox doesn’t even seem to line up with the graphic, and ultimately, avoiding damage for the whole thing multiple times in a row is difficult enough to be considered impossible, which makes it more effective to beat the attack by finding a way to bombard her with as much damage in as short a time as possible, rather than actually waiting for the weak points.
The reason I still bring up this section I cut about the last boss is because it makes me very sad, comparing to other Tasofro final bosses, which have been incredible. In particular I think about Tenshi's last spellcard from SWR. It really kicked my butt the first time, but with good positioning and timing, I slowly learned that avoiding it and counterattacking was entirely doable and not even that difficult once you got the hang of the strategy. But honestly, all other finales in Tasofro games have been fantastic.
Story
The story was... OK, I guess. However it did not feel nearly as impactful as the stories of the previous fighting games, which have had some really cool plots. The worse presentation/gameplay experience is not helping at all in this regard, since I did think that the reveal of the true final boss was actually really cool... before I had to play it, that is.
There is something else I need to bring up, and that is the characters. The casts for the Tasofro fighting games have typically served an actually quite important function: to take characters that were introduced in the past few games, and continue to establish their personality and stories. Sure, occasionally they bring back older characters as well, like Mokou and Reisen in AoCF, which is also good, but shining more light on recently introduced characters has been a great strength of the Tasofro games in my opinion.
The cast for Gouyoku Ibun is… weird. It only features 2 characters that come from 16 and 17, and neither of them are playable, which defeats much of the purpose of having them in. I absolutely loved seeing Kutaka show up, but we don’t get to spend enough time with her for it to really mean anything. There is one playable character that I did thoroughly enjoyed seeing in the game though – or more accurately, a pair of characters. Jo’on and Shion are returning characters from the previous Tasofro Game, 15.5: Antinomy of Common Flowers, and not only are their self-centered personalities incredibly entertaining in the game’s setting, but having them included is great because it shows us what they’re up to and what their ambitions are, now that their scheme from the game they originated from has been foiled. The rest of the cast is OK, but I didn’t feel like I was learning anything new about them; it’s really lacking those newer characters. And then I need to talk about Flandre… why is she in this game? She effectively gets employed as artillery to be used against the final boss, because no one else can destroy her (for some reason) but honestly, it more feels like Flandre was included as a fanservice thing, since she’s a fan favourite character who has never reappeared since her origin game. Sounds like it should be a big deal, but given the overall quality of the game, it really fails at that, and now they’re not going to get a second chance. Mechanically, Flandre is intentionally overpowered. This is because she has to fight more bosses than every other character. I don’t have a problem with this design choice, but it does feel to me like they’re trying to push the whole “LOOK! IT’S FLAN! REMEMBER HER?” thing wayyyy too hard.
End
The overall impression I get from Gouyoku Ibun is that I feel like I’m playing a fangame. And honestly that’s pretty brutal when you consider that there are many Touhou fan games out there which don’t feel like fan games when you play them. The overall quality of Touhou 17.5 just doesn’t cut it compared to any of Tasofro’s past work.
To begin: it is no secret that Touhou 17.5: Gouyoku Ibun went through a development hell. The game got delayed... a lot. This is its own can of worms to dissect, but for now I'm not writing about that. All I want to analyse is simply the end product of what Gouyoku Ibun is, and how it falls short of my expectations.
Despite my difficulties with the game, I did play through all of it. However looking back on the whole thing, I'd say this is the first Touhou game I've played where I can truly say I was disappointed with it. It just falls short in terms of quality in so many places, and that's especially disappointing when Tasofro's fighting games have generally offered some of my favourite experiences in Touhou and are held in high regard by me.
Visuals
So... let's start getting into the specifics. I'll begin with the art. The artstyle is very bold and different to what has been seen in Tasofro games before, and I'd say that the artistic direction was pretty damn good. Where it falls short is animation quality. The Tasofro fighting games have incredibly well animated characters, each with dozens of moves that all look just as smooth as each other, and with time things only got better, by the time Hopeless Masquerade came out and Tasofro redid all the sprites from scratch, things practically looked professional quality. Gouyoku Ibun, in contrast, has less characters than those games, each with fewer attacks/animation states than those games, and with a lower pixel count than those games, and somehow not only are the animations blatantly less detailed, but there are also cases of cutting corners - what I'm referring to in this case is the sonic-esque "ball/spinning state" that every character has. I wouldn't take issue with this animation if it were used well stylistically, but playing the game it becomes painfully obvious that it's used a "one size fits all" solution to anything that they either don't want to animate, don't know how to animate, or find too difficult to animate – you will see this constantly. Character idle animations are also barebones and painfully stiff compared to the previous fighting games.
Gameplay
Movement in this game is very awkward. This is likely due to an effort to give every character their own unique method of movement. Unfortunately, no one character has movement that feels especially intuitive to control - not at all helpful in a game that incorporates bullet hell elements. It feels like every character had their movement intentionally restricted so that it would be different to how another character moves. Now, I'm not bashing on the movement simply because it's not "normal". There is nothing wrong with having movement in your game that is constrained or goes against the expectations of your game's genre. In fact, there is a saying in game design: "limitations breed creativity". However, if you are going to do that, then you need to design your entire gameplay experience around your unique movement. Gouyoku Ibun does not do this – yes, you can get used to the weird movement, but even if you do, it’s still all too easy in this game to attempt avoiding one thing only to go careering into some other bullet.
The way you actually deal with bullets in this game involves no such words as "strategy", "skill", or "personal growth" – in most cases, the most effective strategies can be summarised as “spam” or "cheese". Dodging in this game pretty much entirely comes down to maintaining a continual graze state by chaining a dash into an attack, and then another attack, etc. since in Gouyoku Ibun, your attacks provide full graze frames as well as your dash, making you invulnerable to bullets. And the thing is, you have to do it this way, because not only is your dash alone probably too difficult to manoeuvre in order to get around bullets, but in later stages there tend to be bullets literally everywhere anyway, so you have no choice but to continually chain these two kinds of action together, making yourself invulnerable. This apparent design decision becomes a disaster once ungrazable attacks are thrown into the mix. When both kinds of attack are present, staying in control is very difficult, since you have to spam attacks and dashes to not get hit by the shower of regular bullets, but this can easily cause you to end up in contact with an ungrazable attack. And on top of all this, you also have to actually hit your enemy when their weak spot appears. Positioning yourself in the right place at the right time, both in terms of offence and defence, feels practically impossible in Goyouku Ibun. Sometimes, you are fortunate and have a character with a massive, spammable attack that is easy to hit. In other cases, you will be less fortunate. The bosses in the previous fighting games were very fun to fight and had difficult, but learnable patterns to overcome, but in Goyouku Ibun, you have no choice but to spam in order to maintain graze, and find whatever the most effective, repetitive way to throw out hitboxes is.
Oh, and by the way sometimes ungrazable attacks aren't even telegraphed. Usually a special symbol appears warning you of an attack that can't be grazed, but sometimes... nope, you just get hit by something that's ungrazable for no clear reason.
The flawed design truly culminates in the true final boss, especially with her last spell card. I used to have several paragraphs written about this, but since it turned more into a rant that just reiterates the points I already made, I cut it. But the TLDR is basically: the last attack is extremely long, has lots of ungrazable attacks where the hitbox doesn’t even seem to line up with the graphic, and ultimately, avoiding damage for the whole thing multiple times in a row is difficult enough to be considered impossible, which makes it more effective to beat the attack by finding a way to bombard her with as much damage in as short a time as possible, rather than actually waiting for the weak points.
The reason I still bring up this section I cut about the last boss is because it makes me very sad, comparing to other Tasofro final bosses, which have been incredible. In particular I think about Tenshi's last spellcard from SWR. It really kicked my butt the first time, but with good positioning and timing, I slowly learned that avoiding it and counterattacking was entirely doable and not even that difficult once you got the hang of the strategy. But honestly, all other finales in Tasofro games have been fantastic.
Story
The story was... OK, I guess. However it did not feel nearly as impactful as the stories of the previous fighting games, which have had some really cool plots. The worse presentation/gameplay experience is not helping at all in this regard, since I did think that the reveal of the true final boss was actually really cool... before I had to play it, that is.
There is something else I need to bring up, and that is the characters. The casts for the Tasofro fighting games have typically served an actually quite important function: to take characters that were introduced in the past few games, and continue to establish their personality and stories. Sure, occasionally they bring back older characters as well, like Mokou and Reisen in AoCF, which is also good, but shining more light on recently introduced characters has been a great strength of the Tasofro games in my opinion.
The cast for Gouyoku Ibun is… weird. It only features 2 characters that come from 16 and 17, and neither of them are playable, which defeats much of the purpose of having them in. I absolutely loved seeing Kutaka show up, but we don’t get to spend enough time with her for it to really mean anything. There is one playable character that I did thoroughly enjoyed seeing in the game though – or more accurately, a pair of characters. Jo’on and Shion are returning characters from the previous Tasofro Game, 15.5: Antinomy of Common Flowers, and not only are their self-centered personalities incredibly entertaining in the game’s setting, but having them included is great because it shows us what they’re up to and what their ambitions are, now that their scheme from the game they originated from has been foiled. The rest of the cast is OK, but I didn’t feel like I was learning anything new about them; it’s really lacking those newer characters. And then I need to talk about Flandre… why is she in this game? She effectively gets employed as artillery to be used against the final boss, because no one else can destroy her (for some reason) but honestly, it more feels like Flandre was included as a fanservice thing, since she’s a fan favourite character who has never reappeared since her origin game. Sounds like it should be a big deal, but given the overall quality of the game, it really fails at that, and now they’re not going to get a second chance. Mechanically, Flandre is intentionally overpowered. This is because she has to fight more bosses than every other character. I don’t have a problem with this design choice, but it does feel to me like they’re trying to push the whole “LOOK! IT’S FLAN! REMEMBER HER?” thing wayyyy too hard.
End
The overall impression I get from Gouyoku Ibun is that I feel like I’m playing a fangame. And honestly that’s pretty brutal when you consider that there are many Touhou fan games out there which don’t feel like fan games when you play them. The overall quality of Touhou 17.5 just doesn’t cut it compared to any of Tasofro’s past work.
