And yeah. I didn't touch on that subject, but the art feels especially lazy on this one. Spritework aside, Suika's portrait is probably the worse offender, and so are the ending CGs, which were never ZUN's forte, but have definitely taken a dip even when comparing to the other digital era artworks.
The ending CGs were good in the past, back in 1998 (25 years ago)... In Mystic Square, the ending has different fully colored drawings with a good art style despite the limitations of the PC98 hardware. Look at this:
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Now that the veins of hype are dry on my end, here's my opinion/review of Touhou 19.
TLDR: The "Unfinished" in the title describes the game perfectly.
Good Things:
1) The game has good mechanics.
Charging attacks is intuitive and easy to pull off, getting the meter bar full is a simple collect the orbs, the spared hit is a good mechanic to make the game less punishing, although it's exploitable if you are good enough. Once a competitive metagame develops, we will know for sure how well done the combat system is.
2) Artistic department is beautiful.
I really like the new designs and ZUN is improving his music, he used a lot of new instruments to him, the mixing is great, and the melodies still feel fresh even if he still composes with the same kind of tricks.
3) The story and writing is great.
We still don't know the full details, but from what I've read, it depicts Gensokyo in the brink of a war, and it has a lot of interesting dialogue. For example, Son Biten being gaslighted into believing she's Son Goku's reincarnation, Hisami's possibly masochist tendencies and Chiyari being a hikikomori. She also managed to get me uncomfortable due to how creepy I find her.
And that's all. Yeah i didn't like this game.
I don't like a ZUN game since Touhou 11, it's incredible how massive his screw-up was in this one. I may dislike Touhou 11, but the game is finished and decently polished, not the case here.
Bad Things:
1) The CPU is unbeatable.
Especially when you take into account the "Human vs CPU" mode. As the CPU in this game is practically invincible, it's not like in PoFV where the CPU gets hits in normal. In about 2 hours of gameplay, the best I did was getting the CPU to drop 2 death bombs, meanwhile I was playing Orin VS Zanmu.
2) Lack of features.
There's no replay and score system and ZUN can't justify it because he loves to reutilize assets, how hard is it to adapt the 18 game catalog's code to this game or hire someone?
3) Online is unplayable.
I couldn't even join a match. The character selection screen dropped frames like crazy, and it had like 30 seconds of input lag. I won't be so critical here because I suppose that writing online multiplayer is very challenging. But why did ZUN not hire someone to make a reliable system?
4) Inconsistent art styles.
It was a good idea to introduce new character sprites and boss sprites, but the job was badly done as returning characters like Sanae have their sprites from Touhou 12 meanwhile others are showing off new sprites. But not everyone got a fair deal, Ran's player/back sprite is vomit inducing.
If ZUN at least allowed to remake all the player sprites, it would have consistent aesthetics.
And he didn't fix the character selection screen to always be a hexagon, instead you get the ugly circle until you select someone.
5) Poor game balance.
Half the cast encourages masochism, for example, I only managed to do decent damage with Orin thanks to the cards you get in story mode. Meanwhile, Reimu literally has infinite bombs with a good bullet slowdown aura. What the hell?
6) Atrocious pricing.
I can't believe the game costs $15 with all the fundamental problems tainting the experience. For example, Terraria gives you tenfold the content for just $10 and Mystia Izakaya, a complete game without mayor problems (I didn't try it), is only $6.
I can't even feel bad for pirating Touhou 19, it's simply not worth the $15. Before at least you got a finished experience with good polish and hours of entertainment.
7) ZUN's pride
I believe we are entering a dark period of Touhou if ZUN doesn't drop the pride. Touhou is a FRICKING SOCIAL PHENOMENON in Japan, I'm sure he can hire more people to improve mainline Touhou even more. And not a gigantic amount of people that could bankrupt ZUN, he only needs a few beta testers, someone capable of providing a good online experience and a team of translators.
8) Development problems.
If you pay close attention to how the story mode works, you will notice that once you reach a certain amount of time in a fight you automatically win, why is that? ZUN realized the CPU was unfair, but instead of fixing it, he made a quick lazy patch to allow players completing the story mode.
Why did ZUN make that choice instead of fixing the problem? I don't know what happened, but Touhou 19 seemed to be stuck in development hell, as it's unusual that he didn't try to fix it by just reutilizing PoFV's CPU (I know he has the code, he kept the sprites after all).
9) Poor roster
I know the roster makes sense for the story, but it's very strange that ZUN didn't include more characters. Combined with past games and the card mechanics of 18, he can easily introduce at least like 15 characters. And if it ruins the story, make them extra unlockable characters that aren't involved in the story. It would fit the style of progressively unlocking characters, like how it's done in Smash Bros.
It also has some nonsensical character choices like Seiran or Orin, they don't add anything to the story. Something else that's weird is not having Kasen, Clownpiece, Keiki, Chen or Hecatia involved in the story as they are directly affected by the plot of the game. (yes, Chen technically appears in Ran's attacks, but why don't make her more independent?)
Conclusion:
I'm honestly impressed that, at the time of writing, ZUN is getting away unscathed after such a bad game. Steam's reviews are very positive and I can't comprehend how.
Most of the critics I gave are due to a surprising lack of testing, polish and passion in developing this game, not me disliking core parts of the game entirely based on taste (like how I can dislike puzzle games because they don't entertain me).
I want to like this game, as the things it does right are amazing, but it has fundamental issues that are only justified if the game was in early alpha.
I really hope ZUN patches most of the game's issues (something unlikely to happen) and if that's not the case, at least that Touhou 20 or 19.X is a polished experience with good gameplay and new people on board.
Maybe it's time for ZUN to either expand Team Shanghai Alice or hand over Touhou to new developers, it's unacceptable to have this experience in 2023 and a complete lack of improvements in a lot of areas.
I just can't get over the fact that games made 25+ years ago on the very limited PC98 platform have comparable quality. Not even counting early Windows era games, my god. ZUN please do something.
