Cog's Game Reviews: Reviewing games no one knows or cares about.
Wait, don't leave, it gets better.
Touhou Hisoutensoku is a PC game that has very, very quickly climbed the ranks to becoming one of my favourite games of this year. This game is a lot of things - most of all, it's incredibly strange. Anyone who isn't already familiar with it is probably more than a little thrown off by the giant electric catfish boss fight shown above (I admit, that's why I put it there), so I probably have some explaining to do.
First, a little about the Touhou series. It's a one-man Japanese indie game series of bullet hell shooters (Youtube is full of the videos, if anyone is curious, but they don't belong here) with three fighting game spinoffs, of which this is the latest. Well, technically - it's actually an expansion to the second game, Touhou Hisouten, which happens to work fine on its own (albeit with far less content).
Story-wise, well, there isn't much, as is the case with most of the series. The setting is a sort of refugee camp dimension for all things supernatural. Combat is frequent and nonlethal, modified Japanese mythological elements are everywhere, and almost every character is at least a little crazy. Oh, and powerful enough to make the Dragonball cast look a little tame, on occasion.
The series is fairly light-hearted, all in all, to the point of aggressively ignoring any potential for Bad Things Happening (the queen of the netherworld stole spring, you say? No repercussions, I'm sure). This may be a bad point from which to dive into the series in some respects, since it works best when you already know the characters. Still, that's not a big issue. And for what it's worth, the banter is fairly funny.
Know the series already? Right. On to the rest.
First of all, I hate to say it, but here's one of my three major gripes with the game: Music. Now, it's good, but I'm spoiled by the rest of the series having absolutely phenomenal soundtracks. This just seems a little lackluster by comparison, especially since I'm not too fond of the jazz remix treatment many old themes get. Still, by the standards of most games, it's hardly bad. Just prepare for disappointment (unless I'm the exception here) if you expect it to be on par with the shooters.
Graphics are really a matter of taste. The quality itself is serviceable, so it comes down to whether or not you like the anime-esque art style. Personally, I dislike it, and also think the first of the fighting games had a few superior portraits, but I'm fairly sure that's just me. I will say, however, that the moves do look incredibly flashy, and in a good way at that.
For instance, this isn't even a super move.
And then, of course, there's the gameplay. I've been lobbing far too much criticism at this game for it to sound like one of my favourites, so it's high time I explain why I sank so many hours into it (and still do).
For a start, the game has 20 characters, which should be enough for anyone (except people like me, who want certain characters from the series added). These aren't near-copies like one might find in other games, either. Yes, Brawl, I'm talking about you. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to even find a normal/vanilla/Mario character in the game. I know I haven't, though a few come close. They're all rather quirky, really, doubly so since each character comes with any amount of variation.
What ever you do, don't go in expecting a standard fighting game. You will be sorely disappointed. For a start, with the exception of about one character (and even then, only partially), everyone has a huge bunch of ranged attacks. Melee compensates for this by often hitting harder/comboing more easily, and being harder to avoid. The screen will often be full of projectiles.
Like so.
Want to avoid it? Of course you do, and it's never been easier. Dashing (or flying, which is the same in many ways) allows you to pass through and destroy most projectiles, while holding the back key (or button, on a gamepad) will block attacks. This, surprisingly enough, does not lead to stalemates, though I do think the game could use more unblockable moves.
All ranged attacks, as well as blocking and flying, use up spirit. You have five spirit orbs, which recharge quickly when not used. Overuse will stun you briefly and reduce your max orbs by one until you recover. All in all, it mostly prevents relentless block/projectile spam.
Moves are simple enough: While combos are tricky, attacks never get more complicated than three simple button presses (and often, two will do), which remain roughly the same across all characters. This means time is devoted to figuring out how each character works, rather than fruitless attempts to make a certain attack go off. Coincidentally, this also neatly eliminates my problem with Tekken, Soul Calibur and other fiendishly complicated fighting games.
And then there's the card system. You heard that right, a card-based system in a fighting game. Better than it sounds, like a lot of the game. Whenever you deal damage, take damage or fire off a ranged attack, the gauge of one of your five card slots charges up. When it fills up, you draw a card at random from a deck of 20.
First, you have system cards. These are shared between all characters, often overlooked (including by me), and provide minor beneficial effects. Support, in other words. Skill cards are very interesting, if a bit hard to get used to. Moves are organised in slots. For instance, you might have a down-back-projectile attack, which occupies a slot. That button/key combination will have three possible attacks for it, one of which is the default. Use a skill card, and it will change the move for that slot to the one in the card, allowing you to change your moveset in battle. If you already had that move in the slot, it instead gets upgraded.
Lastly, you have spell cards. These are your super moves, thankfully easily activated at the press of a button (though landing the attack is a good deal harder). A spell card eats up between one and five cards, depending on its power. They have a variety of effects (a rare few are buffs, even) but mostly blow stuff up.
Pictured: Six ways to ruin someone's day in style. With magic.
As you can see, spellcards don't mess around, for the most part. If someone gets hit with that, it's going to hurt more than is entirely reasonable - they exist, as you can probably guess, to turn the tide of a fight. Or, as is so often the case, to be the indirect cause of your death as you desperately attempt to win with an impressive finish rather than a few practical, normal attacks. Still, who needs practicality when you can throw the sun at someone?
The card system will keep you replaying for even longer, possibly even in single player. The amount of customisation is staggering, and if you feel like it, you can completely change a character whenever you see fit. For instance, I made a melee-based deck for one of the characters, an asthmatic, anemic and generally frail librarian. Please don't inflict this on yourself.
And then, I suppose, there are the cons. First of all, weather, my second problem with the game. It changes randomly, and affects the battle. Diamond Dust makes you take extra damage when you fall down, typhoon disables blocking and knockdown (and is my nemesis), mountain vapor scrambles your cards and makes them invisible, and so forth. It gets annoying, and sadly, cannot be disabled. The good news is that you'll learn to live with it fairly soon, though I doubt my loathing for typhoon/mountain vapor can ever be cured.
Then there's netplay. Want to get a controller (or in a pinch, different parts of the keyboard) and play locally? Great. Netplay exists too, but is IP-based, and... well, it lags horrendously depending on distance between the two players. More than any other game I have ever seen - one country apart, and suddenly everyone is Neo.
For those living outside of Japan, there's also the ever-present Touhou problem: It's not sold outside of the country. You can import it, however, and an English patch (as well as a save file with every character unlocked/unlimited amounts of every card) does exist, should you own the game.
In the end, if you can get it, this is a fantastic game. The way I see it, if you can get past the weirdness/anime-ness (not to suggest that they're the same) of the game, you will have a fantastic fighting game to keep you entertained for months at the very least. If you happen to like the potential issues, even better! Really, the only reason I can think of for avoiding this game, aside from the whole importing issue, is if you want a traditional fighter like Tekken or Street Fighter, as this is easily one of the most unusual fighting games out there.
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There, hopefully that wasn't too painful to read. Apologies in advance - it's my first review, so it's probably fairly awful.
Next up: Treasure of the Rudras, probably.
