What do you want to never happen in Touhou?

[Firestorm29]

The point she wasn't born with superior power already and that her abilities are something that I think is implied she worked for is something I rather admire. The entire point someone known simply as an Ordinary Magician is keeping ground against youkai and other types of supernatural beings (albeit because of the spellcard rules you could say) is a concept I rather enjoy. I guess it comes from my pro-humanism beliefs and just seeing her become a youkai because her humanity is what limits her capabilities in magic just seems... I'unno, disappointing. I guess I'm just against how it seems like youkai are made out to be this group that is all around better than humanity in every way.
...

be
Well, I suppose this is the same as someone who really loves robotics to the point of starting to replace their own body with mechanical parts. Once you reach a certain point, you're more machine than human. I suppose the same is of magicians canonly(is this even a word?), they use so much magic to maintain their bodies that they simply being more like Youkai. So, I suppose it could be possible to have massive magical power without being a youkai, but that seems to be not the usual.

[Imosa]

A male character. Kidding I have no issue with this. I guess I'm not enough of a fan to appreciate an all female cast.

A story plot involving another group going all 'WISE FWOM YOUR GWAVE'. UFO and TD did that plenty enough, methinks!

This. However, I would really prefer a game that introduces no new character.

[Esper]

No Ten Desires situation. I hated it. As much as I'm getting a taste for the game again, I don't want a game with an easy Easy and Normal Mode, a Difficult for All the Wrong Reasons Extra Stage (Harder Extra Stage with lower potential resources), and an obscenely hard Lunatic mode that makes the graphing for y=x^3x look flatter than paper in terms of difficulty curve.

No more characters made to reference media (Sakuya is the only exception because Dio Brando is the best character from JJBA ever).

No more "OH I'M A BOSS' SHUT-IN OF A YOUNGER SIBLING THAT'S EXPONENTIALLY MORE POWERFUL THAN THEM" Extra Stages. I liked EoSD Extra and SA Extra but if I see one more of those situations, I'm going to stand on top of my house and scream "Junya Oota is running out of ideas".

No more bullets made specifically to blend in with the background and kill your resources without you noticing that they're there (I.E. MS Stage 2's random rocks out of nowhere that are the same color as the stars racing by in the background).

A character getting killed off, especially a staple character in the series like Reimu or Marisa.

A character brought back only to appease the fans.

Story of Eastern Wonderland gameplay.

Characters having intimate (Not necessarily sexual) relationships, like the MariAri or MariPatchy pairs that the fans have been egging on. Need I mention the EllYuuka pair from Touhou Mother?

I'm sick of games that highly involve dead things as a primary. In SA you went down to hell, in UFO you went to Makai, which has dead spirits, not to mention an undead Buddhist black mage, and TD has you spending the entire game in the netherworld region, going from Yuyuko Saigyouji (FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU) to Myouren Temple (KYOUKOOOOOOOOOO) to a graveyard with spirits and zombies, a Hermit whose main attacks are based on the last stage's boss which was a zombie, to a burial palace with an awoken spirit that was resting for 1500 years, which had a ghost midboss hahahahahahaha this is so original, to an undead prince who can hear multiple voices, blah blah blah, Shoutoku reference, blah blah blah.

Christianity and/or Judaism brought into Touhou. I liked the wide variety of characters due to a highly varying set of religions with lots of ideas to be made. Jehovah-inspired will simply be a dumb idea to be honest because they only have the idea of one supreme god, which to be honest is a boring idea to put in a game.

Forced tutorial gameplay.

Having to play through the game with every character to unlock the spells for practice for everybody.

Gameplay totals (Stages 1-6), in means of "I'm not timing out a thing", to be more than 40 minutes.

[Zengeku]

obscenely hard Lunatic mode

You disappoint me kid.  :V Quit playing that game and focus your efforts on what truly matters. When you are done, you will know the truth because right now, you are blind to it. 

[Tengukami]

No more "OH I'M A BOSS' SHUT-IN OF A YOUNGER SIBLING THAT'S EXPONENTIALLY MORE POWERFUL THAN THEM" Extra Stages. I liked EoSD Extra and SA Extra but if I see one more of those situations, I'm going to stand on top of my house and scream "Junya Oota is running out of ideas".

In all his games, this happened twice - once ten years ago - and if this happened again, ZUN would be "out of ideas"?

[iK]

A little off the topic, but I would appreciate a low stage boss returning as the Extra boss like Rika and Alice did. I feel like it gives the character more of a depth than a random unrelated Extra boss showing up.

So I guess I'd not want to see many more irrelevant EX bosses.

[Gpop]

In all his games, this happened twice - once ten years ago - and if this happened again, ZUN would be "out of ideas"?

And I doubt Koishi is even considered a "shut-in". More like an outsider that not many know exists in general, but she never stays in one spot :V

[Desu_Cake]

Christianity and/or Judaism brought into Touhou.

Christianity has been in Touhou since it first began. :V

[Iryan]

Christianity and/or Judaism brought into Touhou. I liked the wide variety of characters due to a highly varying set of religions with lots of ideas to be made. Jehovah-inspired will simply be a dumb idea to be honest because they only have the idea of one supreme god, which to be honest is a boring idea to put in a game.

This is totally going to be one of the last two bosses in the next touhou game.

(and the ex-boss will be Sariel)

[チソウ タイゼン]

A little off the topic, but I would appreciate a low stage boss returning as the Extra boss like Rika and Alice did. I feel like it gives the character more of a depth than a random unrelated Extra boss showing up.

So I guess I'd not want to see many more irrelevant EX bosses.

I actually wanted more irrelevant bosses >_>;

[BT]

Christianity and/or Judaism brought into Touhou. I liked the wide variety of characters due to a highly varying set of religions with lots of ideas to be made. Jehovah-inspired will simply be a dumb idea to be honest because they only have the idea of one supreme god, which to be honest is a boring idea to put in a game.

Uhh? I don't recall Islam being introduced already.

[DeltaSierra4]

Uhh? I don't recall Islam being introduced already.

Nor has there been Hinduism.

No more "OH I'M A BOSS' SHUT-IN OF A YOUNGER SIBLING THAT'S EXPONENTIALLY MORE POWERFUL THAN THEM" Extra Stages. I liked EoSD Extra and SA Extra but if I see one more of those situations, I'm going to stand on top of my house and scream "Junya Oota is running out of ideas".

See Tengukami's response

Christianity and/or Judaism brought into Touhou. I liked the wide variety of characters due to a highly varying set of religions with lots of ideas to be made. Jehovah-inspired will simply be a dumb idea to be honest because they only have the idea of one supreme god, which to be honest is a boring idea to put in a game.

Lol Sariel. Anyways, if Christianity is ever introduced into Touhou, I doubt it will blend in well with all the other religions...

Forced tutorial gameplay.

Having to play through the game with every character to unlock the spells for practice for everybody.

I'll second these.

[Gpop]

Christianity and/or Judaism brought into Touhou. I liked the wide variety of characters due to a highly varying set of religions with lots of ideas to be made. Jehovah-inspired will simply be a dumb idea to be honest because they only have the idea of one supreme god, which to be honest is a boring idea to put in a game.

If that were to happen it'd p.much end up with characters like this

[Wisp]

Was lurking around in other forums I go to and I read something about ZUN wanting to drop Reimu and making Sanae the new main character. Almost certain that this isn't true, but yeah, I don't want this to happen.

[Tengukami]

Was lurking around in other forums I go to and I read something about ZUN wanting to drop Reimu and making Sanae the new main character. Almost certain that this isn't true, but yeah, I don't want this to happen.

Yes, and McDonalds is going to replace Ronald with Grimace as their mascot.

[Stuffman]

Somebody other than ZUN doing the art. Even Fairy Wars feels wrong :[

[Imosa]

I'm pretty tired of the current format in general.

6 + 1 stages is getting boring. I mean HRtP had an actual decision. Nonlinear gameplay is often over-hyped in my opinion but just a little adds a really good feeling of control.

[Drake]

Well, it is kind of a shmup. The main way you would get around "non-linearity" is just developing more stages or making permutations. And even then, it just sort of reduces to one path anyways. GFW splits it into groups of three slightly balanced ones, but you end up with a short game, and many of the paths are just ignored (it doesn't help that the game was underwhelming). I get what you mean, but what exactly do you hope to gain from stage control in a shmup, and how would you suggest formatting the game?

[Tengukami]

Imperishable Night had that fork in Stage 5, too. That did make things interesting, and more forks at different stages would be pretty cool. But I'm not exactly sure how a "non-linear" shmup would work. 6 + 1 stages is pretty much the standard. Complaining about it is a lot like "man, shooting at enemies at the end of every stage is soooo predictable".

[Imosa]

I don't think it's a very good criticism of the game. I just see the same thing having been done for 12 games and wonder if there isn't something else. How would you make touhou game non-linear? Not sure, It would have to be figured out. In any case, wishing against 6+1 stage game is probably futile so it isn't something I NEVER want to see happen. It's just a thought.

[Zil]

I think you'll just end up choosing the "best" route every time while the others get kind of overlooked. Of course, ZUN kind of has a long standing tradition of making the stage 4 boss different depending on which character you use, and GFW (a fairly recent game) has a bunch of paths to choose from, so I'm not sure what more you could ask for unless you really mean you just want 5 stages instead of 6 or something like that.

e: Then there's DS and StB which aren't very linear at all.

[Jaimers]

6 + 1 stages is getting boring. I mean HRtP had an actual decision. Nonlinear gameplay is often over-hyped in my opinion but just a little adds a really good feeling of control

So what you're saying is that you would want Touhou to go the Darius route?



I'm actually kind of curious about a Touhou game that has 7 different final bosses.  :V
Or I guess you could have something like Deathsmiles where you can choose what order and difficulty you play the first 6 stages in.

[Tengukami]

So what you're saying is that you would want Touhou to go the Darius route?

His complaint seems to be that a) there are 6 + 1 stages, and b) the game path is "linear". Having other choices I guess doesn't change the linear nature, but I personally think it makes it more interesting.

Then there's DS and StB which aren't very linear at all.

That's very true. Or they're less linear anyway.

The more I think about it, the less the criticism makes sense. Even RPGs like Fallout 3 do have an end point you arrive at, but in the area of shmups, pretty much every single one of them is going to be "linear". Again, it's like complaining about having to kill stage bosses. It's ... sorta how it works?

[チソウ タイゼン]

I'm actually kind of curious about a Touhou game that has 7 different final bosses.  :V

I think it would be something similar to CtC because who would come up with 28 original characters for a 7 stage game :I

I would like to see it, even if people would only play one route. Shakes things up, right?
(Or what if the stages were tests in different fields like streaming, misdirection, straight-out dodging, memorization, etc etc etc)

[Zil]

The more I think about it, the less the criticism makes sense.

You're right. Even giving a choice between stages doesn't change the "linearity" of the game. Pretty much every game out there, regardless of genre, is linear in some way just because there's a goal that you play towards. The only exceptions I could think of would be "sandbox" games, or something like Sim-City.

(On top of that I think saying "the same thing has been done for twelve games" is ignoring the considerable amount of experimenting and innovation that ZUN already does. Again, if you look at the "decimal" games there's a good deal of deviation from typical shmup gameplay there. Asking for nonlinearity in particular is kind of ambiguous, especially when you say you don't know how it should be done yourself.)

[Tengukami]

Which isn't to say ZUN doesn't repeat himself. Take his game plots for example. I think he could stand to shake things up a bit more there. He gives his characters so much backstory and detail, it'd be great if the whole reason why our girls go out to solve incidents branched out a little beyond "youkai are acting up again, Reimu goes to investigate". On the other hand, I like Touhou for the story, so people who like it most of all for the gameplay probably won't give a toss about this.

[Fetch()tirade]

You're right. Even giving a choice between stages doesn't change the "linearity" of the game. Pretty much every game out there, regardless of genre, is linear in some way just because there's a goal that you play towards. The only exceptions I could think of would be "sandbox" games, or something like Sim-City.

The true ending for any and all Sim City maps is for the city to be obliterated by a torrent of (un)natural disasters. It is only a matter of if the player is willing to take it there.


There has to be some degree of linearity to a game in order for it to have a sensible plot. If a game tried to implement a nonlinear storyline, either:
{A} choices result in different results every time, which would be silly and frustrating if trying to set off a particular event (i.e. A -> B, C, or D; how does one trigger C without relying on luck or multiple playthroughs?)
{B} choices don't really have any effect, and the event sequence is generated randomly (in which case, there isn't a real point to having choices at all)

The only ways I can currently see a nonlinear game are ones that have little to no story element at all. Sandbox games are a great example.

Then there's DS and StB which aren't very linear at all.

DS and StB don't really have plots, they're literally just about tengus taking pictures :V

tl;dr
Linearity is just another word for having a logical sequence of events. It's kinda hard to create a game that is both nonlinear and has a reasonable plot sequence.

[Unassuming Squid]

Makai, which has dead spirits

Actually it doesn't. Makai is the demon world. It's not any sort of afterlife, it's just where a lot of demons live. And not the Hell kind of demons, either.

Also all that and no mention of Perfect Cherry Blossom and its four-and-a-half dead people and the Netherworld, or Bhava-Agra as the closest thing Gensokyo has to Heaven, or Highly Responsive to Prayers where you can run around in Jigoku/the-Hell-that's-actually-being-used for a while? For shame.

...on the subject of the topic at hand, I'd honestly just be depressed if characters actually perma-died in the story. However the hell that would happen, considering combat is non-lethal. I dunno.

[fondue]

Was lurking around in other forums I go to and I read something about ZUN wanting to drop Reimu and making Sanae the new main character. Almost certain that this isn't true, but yeah, I don't want this to happen.

Someone kill me now

[Netwarrior]

Well... I'm really not a Canon purist, so anything that happens to the Touhou series, it's story or characters is absolutely fine for me.

Excepting one thing: The games getting easier and easier because of the series' fame! When I play a game, I expect nothing less than a challenge that will take me at least a full month to best.

But it seems that, in Touhou's case, this already happened. God, Ten Desires is a cakewalk: the very first run I gave when the full version came out was an 1cc clear, and took me just around 40 tries until I beat Mamizou. If Touhou 14 is easier than TD, then I'll be forced to abandon the canon series and play only Danmakufu scripts...