Why is it Touhou and Hard go hand in hand?

[Argol228]

I like Touhou but I have to stick with the fighting games because of the difficulty of the rest. even Megamari and Super Marisa world kick my ass. I can play games like Contra, Megaman, castlevania, all ninja gaidens and I can kick the ass of any SNK boss yet Touhou games just seem to be harder. This is of course excluding the main shoot-em-ups. I avoid the main ones because the only shooters I like are stuff like R-type.

So why is it Touhou games are always made to be extremely hard?

[Iryan]

Short answer:

Zun makes the games the way he himself likes them, and he likes games to be challenging.  :derp:

[Hello Purvis]

Another version: Overheads and side scrollers are very different beasts. Especially when the overhead is one hit = death.

I do wonder: How's your Gradius?

[Argol228]

But I am talking about Fanmade games. I mean when making a megaman clone it is expected to make it somewhat difficult but Megamari seems to be harder then expected just because it is Touhou, same with Super Marisa world.

As for Diamonds I had completely forgotten about gradius. I haven't played that in years.

[Bananamatic]

As far at Touhou games go, they are super easy compared to most arcade or console shmups. Really, really easy.

It's just that the people which don't play it consider them as SUPER DIFFICULT GAEMS and every touhou fangame has to be SUPER HARDCORE HARD.

And Gradius kicks my ass :V

[orinrin]

Touhou games have slower bullets.  Most people think Touhou games are harder in comparison because they have more bullets I guess.  I'd like those people to play Ikaruga and tell me which one is harder.   :V


On another note:

As for Diamonds I had completely forgotten about gradius. I haven't played that in years.

He called you Diamonds.   :derp:

[Bananamatic]

I'd like those people to play Ikaruga and tell me which one is harder.   :V

Ikaruga is more Pacman than Touhou. :V
Try any Raiden game. Or Darius Gaiden. Kicks my ass way too hard.

Yeah, touhou screenshots look intimidating...and that's it :V

[Tengukami]

And B-dog shows up right on time to say Touhou is easy. Keep in mind this is the same guy who thinks literally every spellcard in UFO is bullshit. He's just fond of contradicting people, even if it means contradicting himself.

The fact is, 'hard' and 'easy' are subjective concepts based on your experience, your skills, and your game preference. Don't let game elitists tell you otherwise.

[Bananamatic]

And B-dog shows up right on time to say Touhou is easy. Keep in mind this is the same guy who thinks literally every spellcard in UFO is bullshit. He's just fond of contradicting people, even if it means contradicting himself.

The fact is, 'hard' and 'easy' are subjective concepts based on your experience, your skills, and your game preference. Don't let game elitists tell you otherwise.

I said the difficulty is just overrated. Really, really overrated. I've seen people saying "I don't play touhou because it looks too hard"

It's bullshit to judge difficulty from pictures. Shmup, fps or RPG.

i'd just start some drama again but trolling is banned now so  :V

[Solais]

Yeah, like games thought to be super easy, like WoW for an instance is hard for me, while Touhou is easier to me; proven that my own personality is like that I don't really like things bound to a multitude of rules, but instead of things with little to no rules and no fake difficulty. Aka, as Ammy said, Difficulty is subjective.

[Iryan]

That may be one of the reasons. Touhou (and shmups in general) rely on different skills then, say, an RTS. The former on quick reactions, the ability to perceive patterns, yadda yadda. The latter on multitasking, memorizing a lot of information and using this info to make the right decisions in a short amount of time.
Obviously you will find that harder which you are worse at.

That said, the majority of WoW is relatively easy. The only difficult things are arena and top-tier rading, which, like RTS, boils down to memorizing information, multitasking and reaction time. It always surprised me how people could have a driver's licence, yet suck so hard at soomething that requires similar skills but on a much lower level.  :/

i'd just start some drama again but trolling is banned now so  :V

...  :V


On topic:
Touhou is, by comparison to the majority of the mainstream gaming industry, a series of difficult games. When fans make games based on touhou, they are not unlikely to make these games difficult as well, either because they feel it needs to be difficult to count as touhou, or because they are into Touhou because they like difficult games in the first place.

On that note, I don't find MegaMare to be that much harder than regular old MegaMan games.

[trancehime]

The difficulty of any game, regardless of whether it is Touhou or not, is entirely subjective depending on the player. The Touhou games, fan-game or not, MAY or MAY NOT have been made to be difficult. That is of your own perspective, and I don't know enough about the current Touhou games to make a fair judgment. Bullet speed and bullet density are two important factors in determining difficulty in the shmup genre. Touhou generally doesn't employ patterns with mostly fast bullets, though such spellcards DO exist in some number. But the bullet density that comes with making elaborate patterns may look daunting to new players or even long-time players encountering a new game (though this doesn't usually hold true).

Fighting games and its ilk are something I find extremely difficult, though I can finish some RPGs that many people find subjectively hard really easily and be clueless as to why people find it hard.

[Sapz]

I like Touhou but I have to stick with the fighting games because of the difficulty of the rest. even Megamari and Super Marisa world kick my ass. I can play games like Contra, Megaman, castlevania, all ninja gaidens and I can kick the ass of any SNK boss yet Touhou games just seem to be harder. This is of course excluding the main shoot-em-ups. I avoid the main ones because the only shooters I like are stuff like R-type.

So why is it Touhou games are always made to be extremely hard?

It's more a case of the genre itself being difficult rather than Touhou being particularly challenging. One-hit deaths and hundreds of opportunities to die over the course of the half-hour game means it's not really going to be easy for a new player unless the game starts vomiting up tens of lives for you (something with which Touhou is relatively generous; all provide at least nine lives, with things like UFO possibly providing upwards of fourteen or so - most shooters tend to stick around 3-6 lives). :V They're designed so that they take time to clear; the replay value is in the practice it takes to excel, build up the correct skills, and 1cc the games rather than a single game that will take 10-20 hours while remaining easy enough for you to cruise through without any major problems.

Having said that, I've got to agree with Trance; much of Touhou is designed to be intimidating to look at while being relatively simple to actually dodge (see things like Xu Fu's Dimension, Mokou's fourth card). Granted, they're usually still tough, but the bark is definitely worse than the bite.

[Bananamatic]

Either way, it's a good thing they went that way in Labyrinth :V

And yeah Sapz, it's people which never played shmups getting introduced into a new genre they aren't exactly aware of and calling Touhou way too hard.

Let your parents play any game you have and I can guarrantee they'll suck at it unless they are into that genre.

Today's gamers are spoiled by lifebars and crouching to auto heal from bullets(mw2lol)

[trancehime]

Today's gamers are spoiled by lifebars and crouching to auto heal from bullets(mw2lol)

I don't think it's a case of people being spoiled by life bars as much as it is new players to the genre not knowing about how shmups work.

[Bananamatic]

I don't think it's a case of people being spoiled by life bars as much as it is new players to the genre not knowing about how shmups work.

Well, Guwange has a lifebar :V

[Esoterica]

How far have you actually gotten in Megamari?  After you beat one or two bosses and have completely ridiculous attacks from them, the rest of the game pretty much becomes "walk forward and shoot, kill a boss in four hits, repeat".

[Danielu Yoshikoto]

Most people think Touhou games are harder in comparison because they have more bullets I guess.

I think Wikipadia totally makes them think that with showing this
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/PCByukari.jpg(I know it?s 641x481, but it?s just 1 pixel more in width and height, please helepolis)
as an "example".

This is known as the hardest pattern in the game... infact this is from Phantasm.
Seriously... this just scares the people away.

[matsuri]I can look past the fact that it's 641x481, but hotlinking is not permitted. Please host the image yourself with imageshack or photobucket or something.[/matsuri]

[cultr1]

Here's my theory:
The game is designed to be daunting to newcomers and n00bs (such as myself). They see all the bullets and freak out and end up dying a bunch.
It's not hard per se, just different.
Newcomers die a lot, say it's hard, then give up. A sad story, but it's true.

[Bananamatic]

95% of the bullets go in totally irrelevent directions lol

yeah, people think the hitboxes are the sprites and pass it as bullshit

[trancehime]

Well, Guwange has a lifebar :V

Guwange is also really old (at least older than the more well-known CAVE shmups) and is a CAVE shmup more on the obscure side.

It is an exception :V Furthermore I don't see much love for it :S

[shadowbringer]

It's more a case of the genre itself being difficult rather than Touhou being particularly challenging. One-hit deaths and hundreds of opportunities to die over the course of the half-hour game means it's not really going to be easy for a new player unless the game starts vomiting up tens of lives for you (something with which Touhou is relatively generous; all provide at least nine lives, with things like UFO possibly providing upwards of fourteen or so - most shooters tend to stick around 3-6 lives). :V They're designed so that they take time to clear; the replay value is in the practice it takes to excel, build up the correct skills, and 1cc the games rather than a single game that will take 10-20 hours while remaining easy enough for you to cruise through without any major problems.

Having said that, I've got to agree with Trance; much of Touhou is designed to be intimidating to look at while being relatively simple to actually dodge (see things like Xu Fu's Dimension, Mokou's fourth card). Granted, they're usually still tough, but the bark is definitely worse than the bite.

meanwhile, people who're already into shmups dislike *most* shmups with health bars because that may be an indication that the game wasn't well-designed enough to allow players to dodge all of the attacks in that game (people will often call these games euroshmups, as a derogatory term), and even though a health bar can be seen as a resource, it may allow unintelligent play from novice players, who may prefer to just plow through certain attacks instead of caring to dodge them. (games such as Guwange, Area 88 and Lord of Thunder count as exceptions, though. Personally, I liked S?ldner-X, as a friend of mine has stated "the health bar isn't the end of the world there" as a reason why he liked the game)

Dying often in shmups was what led me to believe that it was ok to credit-feed, until I got clues ( Touhou good endings :p ) that the game (and most shmups) was made to allow 1ccs (and often, 1lcs. Can't remember any shmups which don't, though.), and reference about how this can be done. Now, I'm able to enjoy the genre much more than before, because I learned to enjoy the gameplay (and scoreplay is an aspect which further help differentiate a shmup from another, and allow people to enjoy a different gameplay)


About fan-games, I think that at least most of them also try to reproduce the "retro" difficulty, while others try to make the genre more challenging (easy example: Super Marisa World; the source series aren't meant to be difficult). Others are just meant to be enjoyable (example: PatchCon).

[Solais]

95% of the bullets go in totally irrelevent directions Ha ha, old chap!

Yeah, that's the first thing I always say to new players I introduce Touhou to. It looks intimidating in pictures and videos, but in reality, we only dodge a small amount of bullets.

[Bananamatic]

Guwange is also really old (at least older than the more well-known CAVE shmups) and is a CAVE shmup more on the obscure side.

It is an exception :V Furthermore I don't see much love for it :S

Well, Guwange has this system which makes you die on the 3rd hit or so, but there is no invincibility, so run into a bullet wall and you are instantly dead.
I don't really like it either...I probably like even Touhou more. :V
Still, it's Guwang.

[Sen]

It's not so much that Touhou's exceedingly difficult as it is the genre.

Another thing that makes Touhou "easier" than other shmups is the massive amounts of resources you get throughout the games, especially in UFO. Some of the stuff on Lunatic difficulty is just as (or sometimes even harder) than "hardcore" shmups, but offset by the dozens of bombs and 10+ lives per game.

[Drake]

If people aren't immediately turned on by a picture of BoLaD then I would put into question why they might be playing bullet hells in the first place.

[shadowbringer]

If people aren't immediately turned on by a picture of BoLaD then I would put into question why they might be playing bullet hells in the first place.

I got interested by Dracil's video of an IN Extra playthrough, and partly by this video :p

dunno how much I was affected by this, though..

[Matsuri]

Yeah, BoLaD was one of the reasons I got into Touhou in the first place! I thought it looked so pretty, and I wanted to see if I could get that far.

After a long time of practicing, I did. :3

dunno how much I was affected by this, though..

#
roial99
10 minutes ago
meh flandre from touhou 6 the embodiment of scarlet devil is wayyyyy harder

:derp:

[Sophilia]

MMr is hard if you play it using only Alice, without any weapons, and without energy tanks.  Seriously, fuck the boss rush under those conditions.  Otherwise, the general advice for any Rockman-esque game applies - don't go rushing in like some kind of berserker, take the time to clear what's in front of you, and use all the resources and especially weapons you are given.  If you're used to just bustering through stages and saving weapons for the boss, I suggest you take a look at how overpowered the weapons in this game are and reevaluate that strategy.
If the problem is that you can't *get* any weapons, I suggest killing Sakuya first.  She's the second easiest to buster kill, and she gives a much better pair of weapons than Cirno does.  One of them is possibly the most broken weapon in the game.  I'd argue a certain Yuyuko weapon over it, but I'm quite biased.

As for the main series, I'll be the first to admit I'm not that great at it.  I can 1cc normals and clear some extras, but not consistently.  However, I don't rage at the ZOMG HARD...I'm too busy yelling at myself for things like overdodging tiny bullets and running into a huge one for a Death With Bombs In Stock.  It's a challenge, but nowhere near an unfair one.  I probably have about 49 times more deaths due to dumb screw-ups than I do to the actual difficulty of the games.  "Hey, I know this pattern, I just have to go between the waves! *dead* That's not between, that's a knife!  :V" sort of things.  I should probably play the main games more often, that way I could stop being Derpy McPichunalot.

[Bananamatic]

If people aren't immediately turned on by a picture of BoLaD then I would put into question why they might be playing bullet hells in the first place.

I'd be turned on by it if the fun part only didn't last 10 seconds :V