Touhou 14 - 東方輝針城 ～ Double Dealing Character (Demo)

[Hatateru]

Has a release date been confirmed?

I think it's on the 12th of August if I'm not mistaken. They say this year the sale of Touhou and Touhou related stuff gets pushed to the third day.

[Kilgamayan]

Helepolis: I'm only commenting on what I've seen. I have yet to see Dark Spark or the other things you mentioned, and there hasn't been nearly the hullabaloo about those things as there has been about Cirno's sprite. I figured I would offer my thoughts (with the given disclaimer) since it seemed like no one else had been able to offer anything similar yet. (I'm also admittedly curious to see wha Sir Amat has to say in response, since he's good at thinking through his opinions.)

EDIT: Also, the complaining-about-lazy-bomb-animations ship sailed a long time ago with MoF.

[Formless God]

I think it's on the 12th of August if I'm not mistaken. They say this year the sale of Touhou and Touhou related stuff gets pushed to the third day.

That's great to hear; it's a lot earlier than I expected.

complaining-about-lazy-bomb-animations
MoF.

it's like people never played the 30 games before MoF or something

[Validon98]

Just wondering, because I've seen Dark Spark already, but how is it lazy? Also, I don't really mind the new spell circle that much. It's unnecessary, sure, but I have no problems with it.

[Helepolis]

I put a bloody screenshot in my article :V

You people! YOU PEOPLE! I shall use this corrupted Gungnir and... AND!

[Validon98]

Chill out, I saw it. So it's just a black version of Master Spark. So? I DON'T CARE. It blows shit up either way. I don't really care what it looks like either way. >.>
EDIT: Also, you might want to put down that Gungnir. No one wants to get hurt by a corrupted weapon, especially not me. ^^;

[Kilgamayan]

Hey, some of us don't like reading summary articles about games we haven't played yet. :<

[AnonymousPondScum]

Dark Spark is sufficiently metal.

ALLITERATOR APPROVES.

[Limian]

Well in all fairness, you people are complaining about ZUN's Cirno sprite while I've seen nobody complaining about Dark Spark or the Red Magic Circle behind the boss during fights. Because that is just being lazy. At least he took the effort of designing or attempting a new Cirno sprite. As a danmakufu scripter I take more note to the overall animation and graphics than just bitching about 1 midboss.

Because Dark Spark is just extremely lazy and the red magic circle looks very off with the X/Y flipping/movement.

Nothing personal to you Kilga, this is just a general thing. If you're going to bitch at ZUN's work, at least do it fair and judge the entire picture. But I guess people just want to see what they want to see. If you ask me, I find the wolf head for 3rd boss pretty dull as well in terms of animation. So yea. Where do we start?

On the subject of sprite/animation. Let us not forget Tewi from Imperishable Night. She has exactly 4 sprite animations. 1 for idle ( not even an animation range ) and 3 for the movement left/right where she leans. ZUN didn't bother updating this in PoFV even.

Just my concern.

You seem to confuse a lack of quality for a lack of effort. Of course Dark Spark and the spell circle didn't take a lot of effort, but they look (as) appealing (as ever). On the other hand he might have put (much) more effort into Cirno's sprite, but many people find the outcome rather subpar. And people definitely have the right to think that without minding the reused elements. Not even saying that I agree (or disagree) with them, but yeah!
She does look better than IN Tewi though who just was dorky and fat and urgh

[AnonymousPondScum]

Cirno was onscreen for less than 30 seconds during my first playthrough.

Her new sprite might be an eyesore but at least it doesn't stick around for long.

[Formless God]

Dark Spark is sufficiently metal.

2EDGY

What's the big deal with it anyway? It looks exactly the same as every spark before it.

[Helepolis]

Dark Spark looks appealing but for it's name it should've done slightly more imo. But again yea this is just taste and opinions. I am sorry but the red magic circle is definitely not appealing at all to me. I'll let the dark spark for myself slip but the red magic circle is just unforgivable. It isn't even the reuse, it is just added X/Y rotation and toned down speed of Z rotation. At least he did colour altering for Dark Spark.  :V

Hey, some of us don't like reading summary articles about games we haven't played yet. :<

Well get to it then, you fabulous cape'd Taoist.

* Helepolis tosses Gungnirs around

[BT]

Cirno has animation for moving horizontally. Doesn't help her when she's spewing bullets in place though.

[wailofthebanshee]

Second boss's floating heads are adorable :3

[Sage Ω (Ultima)]

I love the music in this game. Even the stage 1 boss music despite how much I think rock and anything related to it is garbage. I never thought I would like a touhou rock song besides Lunar Clock ~ Luna Dial. And Stage 3's boss music sounds a-lot like Heian Alien.

All aboard the hype train! Cho! Cho!

[Dead Princess Sakana]

(Danbo link) That's pretty much the mental image I got when I read that line in Marisa's B scenario

Also "Wouldn't she have been stronger if she completely turned into a fish". Marisa knows what's up   :smug:

[Tengukami]

I kept thinking about this game throughout the day, and the first thing I did when I get home was fire it up. I honestly haven't played a Touhou game this addictive since IN.

For those of you concerned that PoC milking is going to get harder in later stages, you're probably right. But a sub-par player like myself was about to end Stage 3 with like 5 or 6 lives, so, I imagine some of you more skilled players could begin Stage 4 with even more than that. Which should help. Bear in mind, though, that it seems that losing 1 life = losing 2 bombs, which I reckon was done to balance things out.

[Serela]

So I'm not the only one who thinks all the bombs do really little damage, right?

Not that that's a bad thing. Dark Spark is also the exception, giving MarisaA an edge with an actual strong bomb.

[wailofthebanshee]

I haven't tried them all yet, but MarisaB's bomb lasts like 10 seconds. It's p ridiculous.

[Tengukami]

Yeah I have no idea what you're talking about, Serela.  Reimu A's bomb lasts an eternity, Sakuya A's bomb does that "cherry border" thing, and you could clean your bathroom in the time it takes Marisa A's bomb to finish.

[Validon98]

Plus ReimuA's bomb is awesome. As well as her shottype. In fact I like all of the corrupted shottypes. I do wonder how the game will balance that out with the uncorrupted shottypes, though...

[Tengukami]

Yeah, Reimu A's bomb is hilarious. It's like she's got a mop and is just WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP. Fed up of housecleaning!

[Yonowaaru]

Am I the only one who immediately thought of Reimu as a grim reaper?

[BT]

Plus ReimuA's bomb is awesome. As well as her shottype. In fact I like all of the corrupted shottypes. I do wonder how the game will balance that out with the uncorrupted shottypes, though...

They're already balanced out. Or, rather, it's not like the corrupted shottypes are better than the others or anything.
I'm actually not feeling enough difference between the shottypes. Maybe it'll come on its own.

[Tengukami]

Ugh this input lag is killing me! I've played with every possible configuration and gotten to the point where the game "feels" like it's playing at the normal speed, and yet the lowest slowdown rate I can get is 9%.

This wouldn't make any difference to me normally - I mean, if the game looks and feels as though it's running 60FPS, that's usually good enough for me - but it just so happens that I have developed a new-found interest in score runs, thanks to this game, and would love to take a shot at the High Score board. But the slowdown rate cap there is a very reasonable 5%. So looks like I'll be sitting that one out until there's either a patch for the input lag, or I find some other solution.

In the meantime, I'm working on ending Stage 3 with as massive a stock of lives and bombs as I can muster. If the first three stages are any indication, I have a feeling that the rest of the game is going to be like the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

[Captain Vulcan]

Wow. After dealing with Kagerou, a bad trauma resurfaced from my arcade rat days of getting owned by DarkStalkers' Jon Talbain/Gallon. Of course, by the time Night Warriors hit the locale arcades, I was getting used to the howls.

I can already see the Kagerou/Gallon fanarts on the horizon.

[Maiden Synnae ミ☆]

By the way... I did some research on the kanjis of the characters, and found out their meanings somewhat (Not sure if it was posted before already, so, I'm sorry if it was)

赤蛮奇 -- Sekibanki

赤 (red/crimson/scarlet)
蛮 (barbarian/savage/brutal)
奇 (bizarre/strange)

So... I suppose her name altogether means something like "Bizarre crimson savage"

-------------------------

今泉 -- Imaizumi
今 = ima (present time/current time) for me the meaning of this seems a little vague
泉 = izumi (fountain)

影狼 -- Kagerou
影 = Kage (Shadow) but can also mean "light from the moon"
狼 = Kanji for wolf/Canis lupus

But I just don't know how to put all of this together on a single meaning.  Maybe "Moonlight Wolf from the fountain of the present" ?

[Tengukami]

"Moonlight wolf of the modern fountain" maybe? Nah, that's too clumsy. I wonder ..

Although it is fun to know what my family name would be in Japanese!

By the by, I'm not seeing any English patch yet (and nope, not using that independent one that involves a .js file ....), which has given me the amusing activity of reading the scenarios on the wiki. As has been said, Corrupted and Normal girls have totally different dialogue, and the effect is pretty funny. Sakuya B is like "Oh my, dear youkai, would you be ever so kind as to not make too much of a racket? Thank you." while Sakuya A's all "AHHH BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!"

[Drake]

lol trying to find meaning in touhou names from their kanji

[Sanger Zonvolt]

The demo just crashes on me as soon as I open it, dunno what I should do.  :wat: