Touhou 13.5 東方心綺楼 Hopeless Masquerade - I'm hopelessly in love

[DX7.EP]

Also finding it somehow fitting that Koishi continues to crash the game.

Such an OP character due to her Destroy move Astral Finish Koishi Hell-esque special ability, TasoFro nerf her ASAP! :V

Watched stream overnight, and find the impression...okay. Visuals and music are great for the most part, characters are a mixed bag (some are very fitting, others such as Koi not so much), variety in moves pretty good, and final boss...a little puzzling at the moment. There's quite a bit more room to expand on this engine and game plot, but for what it is it holds up.

[Quwanti]

Hopefully the music will be extracted as soon as possible, as well is image rips.

Trying to find those few characters nowhere seen (Meiling, Flandre, Alice, Kisume, Yamame, Kasen and Akyuu).

[AnonymousPondScum]

On its own merits I would say it's okay but it's a rather awkward return to form and for that matter conclusion to an actual honest-to-gosh plot arc after so long without any new games.

[Tengukami]

On its own merits I would say it's okay but it's a rather awkward return to form and for that matter conclusion to an actual honest-to-gosh plot arc after so long without any new games.

Really? Because that's the part that I think's most fitting of all. Reps from all the faiths just saying "OK enough of this pretty danmaku stuff - time to throw down!". Unless you mean the lack of Moriya or something.

[AnonymousPondScum]

Really? Because that's the part that I think's most fitting of all. Reps from all the faiths just saying "OK enough of this pretty danmaku stuff - time to throw down!". Unless you mean the lack of Moriya or something.

The crux of the plot turned out to be a new party causing the village's despair, rather than any actual despair on the village's part, basically making the entire holy war arc and especially this concluding episode something of a red herring. And I think Okuu and the Moriyas would have made for fitting candidates.

Basically I'm saying that there's a lot of opportunities Taso missed here, and the reasons they were missed are kind of strange.

[Tengukami]

The crux of the plot turned out to be a new party causing the village's despair, rather than any actual despair on the village's part, basically making the entire holy war arc and especially this concluding episode something of a red herring.

I'm not sure how this is a red herring. If you think about it, an outside party stirring shit between different factions would make more sense in a land where disparate types of people have always been able to (albeit grudgingly) tolerate each other, the danmaku fights notwithstanding. It also makes the matter a lot easier to resolve than somehow everyone joining hands and making everyone in the village feel better. I mean, I see what you're saying from a narrative POV, sure, but I'm not sure how that narrative would translate into a game. In other words, it seems like a fitting game ending to a game arc. The absence of Moriyas aside.

[AnonymousPondScum]

I'm not sure how this is a red herring. If you think about it, an outside party stirring shit between different factions would make more sense in a land where disparate types of people have always been able to (albeit grudgingly) tolerate each other, the danmaku fights notwithstanding. It also makes the matter a lot easier to resolve than somehow everyone joining hands and making everyone in the village feel better. I mean, I see what you're saying from a narrative POV, sure, but I'm not sure how that narrative would translate into a game. In other words, it seems like a fitting game ending to a game arc. The absence of Moriyas aside.

If it was a straight slugmatch between all of the religions with nothing else to it I figure each faction/character would have a different ending, each with different degrees of overlap with the other endings---IIRC one of the prior Taso games had very different endings for each character, all assumed to have varying degrees of canonicity, mainly because there wasn't much overlap.

I imagine something like that wouldn't really work in a title where there's some sort of ostensible win condition instead of a bunch of characters running around and slapping the shit out of each other, admittedly.

That much said, something about the final result seems more than a bit haphazard---the jigsaw pieces are there, and they fit, but they fit awkwardly.

[Kilgamayan]

Even with being distracted by AnimeBoston this weekend an cosplaying a character with earmuffs, I still wasn't able to avoid hearing plenty of complaining about this game from people that aren't going to buy it. Fascinating stuff.

[The ⑨th Zentillion]

You know, I've been thinking on it, and from what I can recall,  the Moriyas don't really need that much need human faith because they found enough of it from the youkai on the mountain. Perhaps they didn't participate because they didn't feel it was necessary to get in on the faith from the villagers since things have worked well with them so far? Of course, it's a rather weak argument, and considering the kappa are supposed to be contributors to the Moriyans' faith pool and Nitori seems to have gone "atheist" (which isn't actually the proper term considering gods being real is common knowledge if not an absolute unlike with us outside worlders)... Oh well, the "we don't need human faith" angle is plausible, just weakish.

Kilga: That's because they're hypocites just oozing with fandumb goop.

[fondue]

e: Wrong thread (I think)

[AnonymousPondScum]

You know, I've been thinking on it, and from what I can recall,  the Moriyas don't really need that much need human faith because they found enough of it from the youkai on the mountain. Perhaps they didn't participate because they didn't feel it was necessary to get in on the faith from the villagers since things have worked well with them so far? Of course, it's a rather weak argument, and considering the kappa are supposed to be contributors to the Moriyans' faith pool and Nitori seems to have gone "atheist" (which isn't actually the proper term considering gods being real is common knowledge if not an absolute unlike with us outside worlders)... Oh well, the "we don't need human faith" angle is plausible, just weakish.

Weirdly, that makes more sense than the Moriyas sitting it out purely so they could finish off the winner between the Taoists and the Buddhists.

Though why bother bringing electricity and whatnot to the humans, then?

[The ⑨th Zentillion]

Though why bother bringing electricity and whatnot to the humans, then?

That's the biggest hole in the theory, yep.

[Clarste]

So... has anyone been able to unlock

Spoiler:

Kokoro

? I've beaten story mode with everyone, including oddly enough the person in question, but she's still not unlocked for practice/vs/etc. Also I can't edit her decks, nor do I even have any decks for her, which made story mode interesting to say the least. I tried beating

Spoiler:

Mamizou's

route again just in case it didn't trigger the right flag for some reason, but that didn't work. So... is this a common bug or am I doing something wrong?

[qMyon]

Egh, I'm fairly certain they'll do an expansion on this later. Just a gut feeling, can't really explain my reasoning for now.

[Tengukami]

That's the biggest hole in the theory, yep.

They're newcomers. It was a gesture of goodwill. Basic diplomacy, mah boy.

[AnonymousPondScum]

Egh, I'm fairly certain they'll do an expansion on this later. Just a gut feeling, can't really explain my reasoning for now.

Same reason day one DLC exists for bigger-time games, I think. :V

[Sage Ω (Ultima)]

Hopefully the music will be extracted as soon as possible, as well is image rips.

Trying to find those few characters nowhere seen (Meiling, Flandre, Alice, Kisume, Yamame, Kasen and Akyuu).

Someone on Youtube is uploading them and providing download links. Though the links are actually recordings from the game itself I personally edited them for my on viewing to cut the title music out.

[Formless God]

Do I need to beat the game on a specific difficulty to unlock the last two characters? Also, are there Story Modes for characters other than Reimu and Marisa? Found the answer to this.

[ToyoRai]

Just to give people more of the music:
Fake Character theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuTczFrQwRo

Mamizou's theme:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QClZeBcinY

Final Boss theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLKzVQkvPHk

Ending Theme(?)(Note, has picture of the final boss): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujy34q6g-6o

EDIT: This is why putting multiple links can be troublesome. Added the proper link for the final boss.

[Shizzo]

Do I need to beat the game on a specific difficulty to unlock the last two characters? Also, are there Story Modes for characters other than Reimu and Marisa? Found the answer to this.

I'm curious about that as well.  Could you please tell us the answer you found?

And by the way, anybody else still having trouble with the game crashing before the final boss battle?  Even after the 1.01 patch. 

[Formless God]

According to 4chen, you unlock more by clearing Story with all the available characters (clearing with Reimu and Marisa unlocks the next "pair", and so on). I haven't tested this, though.
My game didn't crash before the final boss. I'm using 1.01.

Btw, the link to the final boss theme above is wrong.

Code: [Select]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLKzVQkvPHk1:13 sounds Kingdom Hearts-ish. The song overall sounds like something out of a ZUN music CD. Has a pretty healthy variation to its melodies, but doesn't have much "peaks". I'll probably open up to it after a while, though.

[Clarste]

I'm curious about that as well.  Could you please tell us the answer you found?

And by the way, anybody else still having trouble with the game crashing before the final boss battle?  Even after the 1.01 patch.

I beat it on Easy with everyone and got Mamizou.

Spoiler:

Kokoro

is still locked though. Cuc tells me she's not even playable yet and they'll unlock her with a patch sometime. Which is... odd. Maybe I should have read the manual.

[fondue]

I beat it on Easy with everyone and got Mamizou.

Spoiler:

Kokoro

is still locked though. Cuc tells me she's not even playable yet and they'll unlock her with a patch sometime. Which is... odd. Maybe I should have read the manual.

Whenever I get to Kokoro the game crashes. Any idea why?
(Also I used Reimu and used 1-2 continues)

[Omega]

Whenever I get to Kokoro the game crashes. Any idea why?
(Also I used Reimu and used 1-2 continues)

Apparently,you have to run the game on  japanese locale.

[aListers]

I'm curious about that as well.  Could you please tell us the answer you found?

And by the way, anybody else still having trouble with the game crashing before the final boss battle?  Even after the 1.01 patch.

I fixed it by switching my system locale to japanese. I'm not sure if that's recommended though.

[Helepolis]

I've created a new paragraph in the opening post reporting some of the known issues/bugs/problems for easy lookup. If more needs to be added, let me know here in the thread.

[PJ]

I cannot seem to figure out whether it is true 3D

It is full 3D. I ripped the Human Village from the demo, along with the Hakurei Shrine. I don't see why anybody would think it's just sprites.  :V
Am I wrong for preferring

Spoiler:

Futatsuiwa from Gensokyo

to

Spoiler:

Futatsuiwa from Sado

?

[HyperGumba]

Now that I have the Day 0 patch installed and machine set to locale, I was finally able to complete Reimu's story.

Too bad Koishi's specials still crash the game

[Serela]

Messing around with Koishi in vs. Com mode, holy crap she is odd to play. Your moves decide when to cast themselves; anything that isn't regular melee.

If you queue up the right sets of moves, then after you land a melee hit they'll start comboing themselves together! I was like "OH GOD KOISHI IS PLAYING THE GAME FOR ME AAAAA" it's fun and also really strange.

[Gray21oh]

While I'm here I might give my two cents on the game.
The graphics are just eye melting, I think one can call Touhou in general a "rainbow city" series but I think this is just a love letter to that statement with stages and combos looking oh-so pretty.

While the roster is a tad disappointing (would've loved to Moriya trio to be in along with select others) I think it makes up in the variety of how the characters play as there is 4 different alignments that people will probably explore. Not to mention I find this deck system MILES better than the SWR/Soku deck system in which you get the movies right off the bat instead of building up a card gauge while on the field.

I love the arrangements of the themes here, the first three theme arrangements we heard from the past demo's are still pretty good and the other characters themes sound fantastic also (gotta love them acoustics in Futo's theme).

Spoiler:

Kokoro's theme sounds like something from Mario & Luigi.

Over-all I'd rank HM as one of my favourites of the Touhou fighters and maybe just one of the best games to come out for 2013. While I would consider IaMP to be the better Touhou fighter because of how more so traditional it is, I think this is a pretty great entree that probably should be worth your time and money for what it does.

Although right now the game needs some patches because Koishi quite literally breaks the game.