Author Topic: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」  (Read 181102 times)

R. P. Genocraft

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #300 on: September 14, 2019, 01:41:11 AM »
Honestly, I feel like the whole point is that the protagonist was dragged into a completely external conflict they didn't understand. It makes sense that it doesn't have much repercussion. Honestly, it's the same as LoLK. And you know how influential Doremy was to AoCF's plot, so just wait until ZUN puts one of the new characters in a fighting game.

CyberAngel

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #301 on: September 14, 2019, 10:15:03 AM »
SWR is interesting PRECISELY because it expands on topics touched upon in PMiSS. For SA, your partners all know about Old Hell, plus that's where Suika's oni buddies hang out. LoLK... come on, lunarians have already been a huge deal before. But let's expand this to other main games. UFO reintroduces Makai, the holy grail of "PC-98 IS CANON" crowd. 10D is an explicit direct result of the previous game, plus fans instantly picked up the idea of a "religion war" coming after that. DDC was set up as a Gensokyo-wide revolution. HSiFS introduces another one of Youkai Sages. Really, questioning the importance of any of the previous games is just plain ignorant, even if it's just for the sake of argument.

WBaWC, on the other hand, TEASES you with current Hell's events but ignores them completely and shoves a story with no hint of previous relevance in your face. Even the heroines are just like "I have no idea what's going on but let's go along with it". I mean, that was kinda true several times in the past as well, but at least the PLAYERS usually came out with a good idea of what was going on. This time ZUN's excuse is literally just "plot-enforcing magic because ANIMAL YAKUZA LOL". This is just plain lazy and could have been done better, even for his usual storytelling style. Again, not denying that something else might be built upon this stuff later. Doremi and Hecatia's role expasions were a pleasant surprise, not gonna lie. But this game just doesn't catch my interest, so I'll end up caring less if something like that does happen.

Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #302 on: September 14, 2019, 12:04:43 PM »
LoLK... come on, lunarians have already been a huge deal before.
But Dream World wasn't. This was a completely new made up concept, that had never been mentioned anywhere before. Just like the Beast Realm. No, not even like that - Dream World had a very secondary role in the plot. And we all know, how this ended up...
Makai, the holy grail of "PC-98 IS CANON" crowd.
Do this people know, that Makai is not a Touhou-original concept, and came out straight from Buddhism? Basically, they are just saying something like "PC-98 and Windows both have Hell - PC-98 IS CANON!"

CyberAngel

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #303 on: September 14, 2019, 01:57:35 PM »
But Dream World wasn't. This was a completely new made up concept, that had never been mentioned anywhere before. Just like the Beast Realm. No, not even like that - Dream World had a very secondary role in the plot. And we all know, how this ended up...

Do I really have to point out inherent difference in expectations between a stepping stone midgame stage and the endgame goal location? Because when the latter literally comes out of nowhere the only impression it leaves is "why the hell am I supposed to care about this, again".

Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #304 on: September 14, 2019, 03:29:05 PM »
Tbh, I think a lot of the salt comes from the fact that this was the first time the bait and switch was an outright lie. IN was a similar case where it was an external conflict that Gensokyo didn't need to get involved in, but it still had ripples that affected Gensokyo. Reimu didn't go out looking for Lunarians- Reimu saw that the moon was gone and went looking for the source. She still had her own initiative- the fact that the conflict wound up being something else doesn't change Reimu's goal.

In this game it feels less like we're going out to solve an incident that's bothering us and more like we're being dragged around and used like tools. Even in LoLK, we started with one goal and just changed that goal partway through once we learned about the conflict. This time around, we never get to understand what's going on and are just doing what the animal mob tells us. There is no "incident affecting Gensokyo that we go out to investigate"- the incident is that all these animals came looking for us. Reimu has no initiative this time, she really is just a tool. And that doesn't feel good to me.

As for music, trying to claim that people who don't like this game's soundtrack are ridiculous is ??? How can anyone claim that their taste in music is better or worse? Personally I find the game's soundtrack to be a bit empty, particularly the boss themes. Idolatrize World is the worst offender.

One thing I like about touhou music is that you can usually tell what kind of character a theme belongs to. Byakuren has a powerful, emotional theme that's got hints of sadness but has an underlying feeling of hope. Kokoro has a theme so over the top in its melancholy you can't help but feel it's a bit melodramatic- but that's the point, Kokoro doesn't understand her subtle emotions, she's only capable of showing her feelings with over the top caricatures.

It doesn't help that Keiki is a character who isn't fleshed out much, but her theme just seems like a bunch of unrelated parts mashed together. I feel like you could take her theme and apply it to any generic rpg boss and it'd be fine. Can't tell at all what kind of character this is supposed to represent. I had the same issue with Junko's theme initially, but Junko could kind of get the excuse of her theme being a pure action theme with nothing behind it. I don't think Keiki's theme has any reason to be so generic.
« Last Edit: September 14, 2019, 03:39:31 PM by TresserT »
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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #305 on: September 14, 2019, 03:43:59 PM »
Do I really have to point out inherent difference in expectations between a stepping stone midgame stage and the endgame goal location? Because when the latter literally comes out of nowhere the only impression it leaves is "why the hell am I supposed to care about this, again".
Hmm, regarding this, I believe it should be reminded that LITERALLY every single integer game (and a few decimal ones) ALWAYS introduce a COMPLETELY new place at the later stages : while some of those are indeed still located in Gensokyo, a sizable number happens in another world / realm entirely : the Netherworld, Bhava Agra, all of the Underworld, Makai, the Outside World, the Dream World, and the Land of Backdoors. Point is, not only is the introduction of a completely new place nothing outlandish in this series, but also very business as usual and to be expected.

There are other unrelated worlds that we already know by name (Land of illusions, the world of the Oni, ...) and even an implication that there are many more unrelated Otherworlds out there, but these are never built upon nor explored because in regards to Gensokyo and what happens there, these places are simply irrelevant. The Beast World, on the other hand, IS relevant because its denizens had a plot that IMPLICATED Gensokyo, and that honestly doesn't seem different from all that had happened previously (like, say 7 or 15)

And I'd say that the emphasis on Hell this time was essentially a red herring of sorts, and a curveball that was NOT actually thrown from this game but from the MANGA. The plot has always been about the beast invasion and how to solve it, and all the Hell talk from the heroines stems from their misunderstanding of the situation, what's with the beast been seen coming from Hell and all. Personally I think it would have been a very horrible decision in storytelling if ZUN wanted to base the story upon small discussions from LATER chapters of TWO different mangas.

This time ZUN's excuse is literally just "plot-enforcing magic because ANIMAL YAKUZA LOL". This is just plain lazy and could have been done better, even for his usual storytelling style.
I mean, even if he didn't have boss Kicchou convince the heroines via ability, the heroines WOULD still have to head out to the Animal World at some point when they finally see that the villains aren't in Hell : they'd have to be sent to the right direction at one point. Having it be enforced via ability serves not only as a small introduction to boss Kicchou's power, but also to not go with something that goes around the lines of, say, "I wondered through the supremely humongous sized Hell and guess what, I found the baddies in another realm~", OR a much longer and redundant conversation that boils down to Kicchou trying to convince the heroines that the "culprits" are not in Hell, just as she said before the fight.

As for the reception of the game and its OST in general, I believe we can infer to ratings on Steam for the game itself (although I'm not sure about the memey ones ?!), and the likes / dislikes ratio plus comments on Youtube when it comes to the music.
« Last Edit: September 14, 2019, 03:53:51 PM by Suspicious person »

CyberAngel

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #306 on: September 14, 2019, 04:32:23 PM »
You know what else bothers me about all this? Just how many "stuff like this has happened before" points one can actually make about this game. Quite a telling thing about just how run-of-the-mill the series is becoming. True, it's not like all previous games have been absolutely unique, but at least they've been cashing in on existing story hooks to make one interested about how things will resolve. This time even the game itself doesn't seem to be interested in any kind of resolution. Between that, lazy writing (only Reimu's prologue is shown, stage 4 boss would be more fleshed out by making a deal intead of LOLMAGIC-ing the characters along the plot) and overall second-rate feel of the game (seriously, the amount of copy-pasted patterns isn't even funny, and that instrument set has barely changed since the last time) leaves me with nothing but a single question. Why the hell am I supposed to care about this, again, if it look like even ZUN himself doesn't anymore?

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #307 on: September 14, 2019, 05:32:56 PM »
You know what else bothers me about all this? Just how many "stuff like this has happened before" points one can actually make about this game. Quite a telling thing about just how run-of-the-mill the series is becoming. True, it's not like all previous games have been absolutely unique, but at least they've been cashing in on existing story hooks to make one interested about how things will resolve. This time even the game itself doesn't seem to be interested in any kind of resolution. Between that, lazy writing (only Reimu's prologue is shown, stage 4 boss would be more fleshed out by making a deal intead of LOLMAGIC-ing the characters along the plot) and overall second-rate feel of the game (seriously, the amount of copy-pasted patterns isn't even funny, and that instrument set has barely changed since the last time) leaves me with nothing but a single question. Why the hell am I supposed to care about this, again, if it look like even ZUN himself doesn't anymore?
About how interested you should be, honestly it's up to you. But since you've been following the series for years, I kinda doubt you're gonna leave for one game that you don't like, so ...

Anyway, at the risk of being seen as a nitpicky, super-protective-fan-who-must-lunge-at-his-hero-ZUN's-rescue, I also disagree (kinda obnoxious i know) on the thing about patterns. I do not know what you mean with patterns being reused here, so I'd like to see what precisely you mean with that. BUT in the case you mean Kicchou's nons, which sorta look like Yukari's Border of wave and particle, then no, cuz bowap is not only completely static, but it also forces you to switch between micrododging and macrododging (when the wall comes), add to that the existence of a certain safespot for Bowap and the fact that the user (Satori or Yukari) doesn't move. Kicchou's nons got movement RNG. AND, in ALL difficulties aside from Lunatic, (which honestly is the only difficulty where it remotely ressembles Bowap), not only are there some kind of large "corridors" where you dodge the bullets, but the color of the waves is not the same everytime.

There really is a limited number of ways patterns can be made, along with the way you approach them : static patterns ? You memo and potentially safespot them. Aimed, streaming pattern ? You stream them. Hybrid-like pattern that combine the two previous ones ? You route it and figure out when to restream. Aimed patterns that involves either clumps or large bullets ? you misdirect them. Patterns with bullets that "unfolds" towards the bottom ? You move up. Puzzle or gimmick patterns ? You figure them out. Lane crossing patterns that guarantee your death if you don't take the risk of moving ? You alternate your speed and dash through the gaps. And so on and so on.  As for RNG patterns ... that is a whooooole  'nother can of worms. Or just git gud

Anyway, patterns can confortably be classified, and there are very established ways of dealing with specific kinds of patterns. It is not a matter of creativity or lack thereof here imo, just a limit of sorts that cannot be overcome by the genre. With a series of SHMUPs that's run for well above a decade, it Is no surprise that it has explored most of the possible combinations of bullets and then bring some back in later games. Similar patterns would play similarly, but that does not necessarily translates into patterns being copy pasted.

Anyway, pattern wise, this game's got a LOT of statics ones : it is very learnable game : practice pays out, and you don't need to cross your finger quite as often as some of the heavily RNG dependent part of, say, Kagerou, Doremy, and Behind Festival to cite a VERY few examples.

And aside from the gameplay aspects of patterns, if we talk about the looks, I honestly don't see where it falls behind when compared to its predecessors : say Kutaka's nons for exemple : they are THEMED after chickens : white, red and yellow. Kicchou's nons are like I said previously, plus they alternate colors toward ones that are the same color as her clothes. Keiki's got that additional efforts into putting stars and stuff of different colors instead of just bringing back the old looking bubble bullets.

Also I lied and wanna come back to the gameplay aspect : Eika's final spellcard can be dodged in 2 different ways (down the bottom where you worry about the bullet that are left from the trail of the ones she shoot, or close to her where you don't but instead need to dodge between them at a closer range), ALL of Urumi's stuff aside from her final spell are better dealt at a closer range and they do not punish you when you do so (quite the opposite in fact), most of Mayumi's nons can be dodged in 2 different ways too (from the front or in the moving safespot), while Keiki's got that one non where you that you can tackle through MLG circular streaming.

There is a number of patterns that can be dealt with without bottom hugging and therefore allows different playstyles. All in all, I honestly don't see what's bad about this game's patterns.



Game indeed separates itself from its predecessors in the sense where the Beast invasion was not previously teased, but I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt due to the possibility of the stuff introduced being of use towards the unsolved Hell issue.
« Last Edit: September 14, 2019, 05:56:15 PM by Suspicious person »

Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #308 on: September 14, 2019, 06:18:28 PM »
Personally the gameplay is my favorite part of the game, I think gameplaywise this is the best one we've had in a while. HSiFS, LoLK, and DDC were all GFW-type games in disguise- normal people don't win by clearing patterns, they win by cheesing everything with releases/bomb spam. And the patterns there had increased difficulty/rng to match that playstyle.

This is the first game in a long while where you actually have to dodge stuff. You would think the hypers make cheesing easier, and in some ways it does, but you don't get any resources from hyper spamming nor do hypers protect you much (otter does, but then the pattern takes twice as long so it defeats the purpose). The patterns having a lot of static portions also helps with that.

I do see the whole thing about reused patterns though. Eika's nons are just the most basic of spirals with nothing unique about them, all four of Kutaka's nons are the same thing with no meaningful variation, and at lower difficulties Yacchie's nons don't have much variation either (even on Lunatic only the last one is really that different). Extra stage is also disappointingly similar to stage 4. Compare to, say, HSiFS where nons were always similar in concept but usually had lots of variations on the premise (stage 6 Okina and Nemuno being an exception).
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nintendonut888

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #309 on: September 14, 2019, 10:03:21 PM »
I'm going to stay away from the bulk of this argument (other than to say this is probably my favorite overall main series entry since MoF), but in my opinion I don't see anything wrong with the story being moved forward by Yachie's ability when you consider that literally every game since the very beginning has been predicated on Reimu's near supernatural intuition. While it's not a formal ability per se, Reimu's default method of solving an incident is to start flying in whatever direction she feels looks good and letting her intuition inevitably guide her to the ones responsible. If there's some personal hangup with Yachie's ability in particular being responsible, then that's fine, but to me at least I see it as a perfectly legitimate way for the heroines to be sent off to the place they were likely going to end up one way or the other anyway. If anything, Yachie likely only used her ability to make convincing them easier, since there was plenty of reason to get some advice rather than wandering hell's famously vast wasteland.
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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #310 on: September 14, 2019, 10:43:42 PM »
Yachie's theme tells you that she's overwhelming and a threat and the fact that this thread is literally just mainly one person making terrible arguments for why the game is "bad" is ONCE AGAIN proof that EVERY single Touhou game gets flamed on release until a few months after the release of the game where everyone just accepts it as another Touhou game.

Complaining about the Beast World "being pointless" is one of the dumbest things that you could say, EVERY single Touhou game in the Windows series has ended up having elements that were used later and there is NO REASON why anyone should think that none of this will ever come up again. And worldbuilding is worldbuilding, despite "not being set in hell", this gives us MULTIPLE characters who flesh out Hell as a place, AND there is enough mystery behind what's going on in the Beast World that ZUN can easily revisit it, Hell is the living place of a goddess who is stronger than every character in the series, and I'm sure that a game set entirely in there would involved Reimu and the others getting beating to near death.

Saying that there's no way that the Beast World can interact with the people of Gensokyo? Really? Yuyuko lives in the Netherworld and yet she shows up very often. Sagume's made TWO appearances since LOLK. Clownpiece has an entire manga! Keiki could easily decide to hide in Gensokyo after getting beat the shit out by the Yakuza asshole spirits. There. That's one way her story can continue after this. Also, most of the early Stage characters can probably easily visit Gensokyo if the heroines visited their places by just flying.

You've contributed nothing to this forum but complaining about things that nearly everyone disagrees on, CyberAngel, it's time to leave. There's criticism, and then there's whining, and what you're doing is the later thing. Either you need to find things that actually are worthy of bringing to the table rather than "Waaaaah the story isn't what i expected", or you need to leave.
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CyberAngel

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #311 on: September 14, 2019, 11:04:31 PM »
I'm going to stay away from the bulk of this argument (other than to say this is probably my favorite overall main series entry since MoF), but in my opinion I don't see anything wrong with the story being moved forward by Yachie's ability when you consider that literally every game since the very beginning has been predicated on Reimu's near supernatural intuition. While it's not a formal ability per se, Reimu's default method of solving an incident is to start flying in whatever direction she feels looks good and letting her intuition inevitably guide her to the ones responsible. If there's some personal hangup with Yachie's ability in particular being responsible, then that's fine, but to me at least I see it as a perfectly legitimate way for the heroines to be sent off to the place they were likely going to end up one way or the other anyway. If anything, Yachie likely only used her ability to make convincing them easier, since there was plenty of reason to get some advice rather than wandering hell's famously vast wasteland.

One, don't forget that Reimu's never the only character that can set out to solve the incident in the games. Two, her intuition's extent tends to be kinda overrated. Only four main-style games have the "wander aimlessly until you bump into a hint" setup - PCB, IN, DDC and HSiFS. In all other games the characters have a good idea of where they're going from the start. Even when their final destination changes, there's always been a solid motivation presented to follow through with it.

Also, I keep seeing people retroactively explaining why the story took such route, but that's doing things backwards. If you want to understand what's my hangup with this point, try to look at it from an author's POV. ZUN probably already had the idea of where he wanted the story to end up and he could give Yachie whatever ability was needed to send heroines that way. He could make her a master deciever or negotiator. You know, "an offer you can't refuse" style, or however normal people think Yakuza works. But nope, just a straight-up magic ability that could probably solve the whole conflict on its own when you think about it.

nintendonut888

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #312 on: September 14, 2019, 11:32:54 PM »
I think you may be misunderstanding Yachie's ability a bit. It's not a "snap finger, people listen to you unconditionally" sort of thing, at least not the way I see it. Touhou has always had a lot of abilities that can manipulate a certain emotion or feeling, such as Parsee's ability to induce jealousy or Jo'on's ability to make people want to spend money. At their core though, these are all only suggestions imprinted upon a person; how they react is still up them, and can be resisted with a strong enough will. When you look at it that way, Yachie's ability is basically imprinting the feeling of trust onto her target, making them feel like what she says is the truth. But while the heroines always eventually yield to her, in several of the scenarios they end up doing so reluctantly, in a "ugh I don't like this but I guess I should listen to her" sort of way.

While it's extrapolating, I think Yachie's ability is the type that's chiefly effective when the target doesn't know what she can do. Think about it: She's only one of four ruling heads of the animal realm. If her ability were really all-powerful, she'd be the ruler of the animal realm without lifting a finger. I expect you just have to know how to deal with her to avoid being swayed.
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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #313 on: September 14, 2019, 11:47:09 PM »
Tbh did Yachie even use her ability? In all the dialogue I read, it was always "oh we're going to Hell to fight these beasts", Yachie shows up, "this is not the hell you're looking for", "wait really", "yes", "oh okay let's go to animal realm then."

We never had any reason to fight Yachie in the first place and in context she was testing us to make sure we were strong enough rather than actually fighting. She didn't force us to leave Hell with magic, she pointed us in the right direction and since the animal spirit believed her the protagonists were like "oh okay" too.

I do kind of take issue with such an unnecessary bait and switch, as well as the players basically being backseat characters without any initiative, but I don't really get how this is any more "poof you do this cause MAGIC" than any other game.
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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #314 on: September 15, 2019, 02:38:21 AM »
In all other games the characters have a good idea of where they're going from the start. Even when their final destination changes, there's always been a solid motivation presented to follow through with it.
That "solid motivation" is literally resolving the incident in all of the games ... and I don't see how following directions in order to solve an incident translates into the heroines losing the initiative when it comes to incident resolution.

Serving as unwitting tools for other folks and solving their problem is of no consequence here since it has always been about the incident and nothing else from the heroines perspective. The heroines not putting 100% of their trust in their animal partner in the prologue should make obvious what they think about being used, so long as the incident, which is their PRIME focus, gets dealt with.

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #315 on: September 15, 2019, 03:50:39 AM »
I don't want to get too involved with this argument, I just want to point out that uh, did Yachie even use her power? I think it's moreso that the animal spirit possessing the protagonist is following orders and is guiding you along. It's why everyone says stuff like "I shouldn't know this but it sounds familiar" when Yachie is explaining things. If playing with Otter, the spirit outright takes over a stage earlier than normal to directly apologize and grovel.

So yeah, while her ability is a bit silly I don't think it even got used, it was moreso being possessed by the spirit that made them go along with her orders.
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nintendonut888

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #316 on: September 15, 2019, 04:05:15 AM »
It's pretty heavily implied Yachie is using her power on the heroines. Reimu in particular remarks in her Wolf and Otter scenarios that "even though she's clearly lying, I have this strange feeling she's telling the truth," and after beating her says almost distressingly "it feels like I never had any questions for you to begin with." While it's hard to say one way or the other, I don't think they actually directly influence the heroine's actions until stage 5. I'd even go so far as to say the general outline of the beast spirits' basic goal was to direct the heroines into Yachie in particular, who'd then convince them to fight Keiki using her power to minimize the chance of them refusing.

Regardless, I personally like the odd feeling of the plot setup. It really does feel like the heroines lose control over the plot and just are kind of led by the nose to a fight they didn't really understand. I think ZUN wanted to emphasize this time letting the player discover through the endings what the motivations and character of each side were after the fact, rather than you learning the story on a first playthrough. Given it's one of the most grey conflicts of the series, it was interesting to try and puzzle out the unique politics at play. I do hope we get to see more of the animal realm in the future - and since it's looking a lot like there may be a whole arc devoted to the goings-on of hell, that's not out of the question at all.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2019, 04:11:39 AM by nintendonut888 »
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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #317 on: September 15, 2019, 05:05:32 AM »
The protagonist yelling out Yacchie's name and then questioning "wait how do I know her" implies that the animal spirits are already influencing their actions as early as stage 4 imo. Reimu's wolf and eagle routes are a bit vague, but her Otter route and Marisa/Youmu's routes make it clear that they know who she is, it's not just that they're chill with her. Yacchie's ability is just reducing the will to fight, it shouldn't be able to impart knowledge of what being leader of the Kiketsu family means.
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nintendonut888

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #318 on: September 15, 2019, 07:04:42 AM »
Mmm, that's true, I forgot about that. In that case, it's probably a two-pronged assault; the spirits give what push they're able to due to possessing the heroines, while Yachie uses her power to more directly influence them. Given Saki refers to them having made an alliance with Yachie specifically, I still get the impression it was agreed she would be the liaison for the selected human for that exact reason.
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CyberAngel

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #319 on: September 15, 2019, 09:39:05 AM »
Tbh did Yachie even use her ability? In all the dialogue I read, it was always "oh we're going to Hell to fight these beasts", Yachie shows up, "this is not the hell you're looking for", "wait really", "yes", "oh okay let's go to animal realm then."

The problem is that this isn't really the case. There's always an "wait, why should I trust you" "because my name is Yachie" "oh okay" exchange. As others pointed out, this might as well be the animal spirits influencing the heroines, but the fact still remains that the story has this unnecessary questionable hurdle. Again, why not make her ability being a master negotiator? That exchange might as well not be there or become something like "look, just do it and the spirits will stop coming" that way.

Serving as unwitting tools for other folks and solving their problem is of no consequence here since it has always been about the incident and nothing else from the heroines perspective. The heroines not putting 100% of their trust in their animal partner in the prologue should make obvious what they think about being used, so long as the incident, which is their PRIME focus, gets dealt with.

Look, this is the prime example of what I called "retroactive explanation". Using in-universe reasons to explain the story and then using the story to justify the in-universe stuff. What I'm suggesting is looking outside the box and thinking why ZUN wrote things that way in the first place. Which I'm saying were unnecessarily convoluted and could have been done better.

Suspicious person

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #320 on: September 15, 2019, 11:04:41 AM »
Look, this is the prime example of what I called "retroactive explanation". Using in-universe reasons to explain the story and then using the story to justify the in-universe stuff. What I'm suggesting is looking outside the box and thinking why ZUN wrote things that way in the first place. Which I'm saying were unnecessarily convoluted and could have been done better.
The thing is that in-universe stuff is what constitutes the setting inside of which this particular story is told. If the story was told without any background of any kind to be based on, I don't see how that would be any more solid, so I don't think that this particular kind of storytelling is necessarily bad. When it comes to the reading of Touhou games stories, there is the prologue, the story in the manual, the dialogues, and the omake text. I'd agree on the "retroactive explanation" thing IF the various endings had explained everything that lead to the incident, which they do not quite do.
Spoiler:
The closest thing there are Keiki's feelings on the matter and Kicchou's rationnale, both of which could be infered from the omake

For this game in particular, I'd even argue that the setting involving something completely new actually make things easier to understand than stuff like LoLK, which requires you to know Touhou lore about the Moon, their standing in regards to the earth, Fairies and their nature, as well as what happened in ULiL : no need to have knowledge of ALL of the previous stuff, including the troubles in Hell cuz the omake mention it anyway.

And speaking of the omake, specifically Kicchou's profile, it essentially contain ALL of the backstory, all of the events that lead to the Beast invastion, as well as the standing of all factions in regard to each other : the alliance between the Beast organisation is in there too, as well as Kicchou's role. The various goons clearly know her by name but not necessarily by look, and its the animal partner's knowledge of her identity plus her ability, information that are well available in the omake, and the knowledge of the plan that they're taking part in that smoothes things over. Furthermore the otter spirit dialogues shows that something is going on.

The heroines probably didn't read the omake so they had no idea what was going on, and honestly, its the player / reader's job to understand the story. I mean, all the pieces necessary to understand it are available.

Something can probably be said about the information being spread to a manual and a small document that is not in-game, like when to read the omake, but checking all the relevant text that comes with the games has always been the correct way to read Touhou plots since ever.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2019, 11:29:36 AM by Suspicious person »

CyberAngel

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #321 on: September 15, 2019, 11:41:06 AM »
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that approach, the story does use its tools in a solid way without any plot holes. But I'm saying it's not the only way to look at it, and from a meta level it does show signs of narrative deteriorating. If you can ignore it then fine, have your fun. But in my case this one makes me question if I even want to know where the official story is heading anymore. As a big lore fan myself, this isn't a good feeling to have, but the issues stand out too much for me to close my eyes on them.

Suspicious person

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #322 on: September 15, 2019, 11:52:59 AM »
It's literally just a small dialogue exchange tho
The thing you're complaining about I mean

Just like how WaHH's ending distinguished itself from FS's ending, the current debatable laziness does not necessarily guarantee future suckiness for all there is to come, writing wise.

Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #323 on: September 17, 2019, 12:21:24 PM »
The fact that there are people who REFUSE to accept that Yachie used her power is proof that people are just looking for reasons to despise the story.
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CyberAngel

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #324 on: September 17, 2019, 01:39:41 PM »
...Kid, who are you even trying to argue with now? Providing criticism, personal opinions and alternate interpretations don't make the story any less valid. Is your own reading of it so fragile and shaky that you feel the need to protect it from anything that would cast a shadow of doubt upon it?

Seriously, you're just embarassing yourself at this point. If you have any personal hangups then sort them out in a more personal manner. Either way, grow up and learn to just let go already.

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Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
« Reply #325 on: September 18, 2019, 10:23:52 PM »
Everyone play nicely, now.
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CyberAngel

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Took me until now to realize that Yachie is pretty much Bowsette. ZUN's "inspiration" habits are as strong as ever, I see.

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Took me until now to realize that Yachie is pretty much Bowsette. ZUN's "inspiration" habits are as strong as ever, I see.

Well, it took me until this comment to realize Bowser might be based on a Jidiao. Which finally makes his design seem a lot less weird in concept.
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This game isn't even close to being my favourite in the series, but it's still not as bad as the one dude trashing it seems to suggest. A weaker entry in my opinion, but i certainly had fun with my initial playthrough. The characters were interesting, the music was ok, the patterns weren't all that, but the gameplay gimmick made them interesting. Story was fascinating. I'd say it's a game closer to the mediocreness of Touhou 14 but a worthy entry nonetheless.