Touhou 16 「東方天空璋(とうほうてんくうしょう) ～ Hidden Star in Four Seasons」 announced

[aUsernameIsFineToo]

Watched a few gameplay videos and wow the music's good in this one. I especially like the first stage boss and second stage themes. Art is better than LoLK and the level of shot-type customization's definitely a first for Touhou. I'm definitely looking forward to the full game now.

Also the return of Lily White. You can't have a game about seasons without her. Let's see if ZUN brings back more older characters...

[VividMemory2000]

Apparently, Stage 3 takes place at the Hakurei Shrine, and Komano was just trying to guard it due to her nature as a Komainu...

So maybe Komano will be joining Suika and Shinmyoumaru (and Mima, Kana and Ellen if you count the PC-98 games) as a new permanent resident of the Hakurei Shrine?

Seriously?

that sounds pretty awesome

[Tengukami]

Cirno's bomb seems to be ... crazy long. Like Fantasy Seal long.

[Chill Observer]

There's a way to fix replay desyncing: you must select the shot type option you used in your replay first, then exit to title screen and watch the replay.

[Drake]

Going to mention that fairies are a prominent part of the game because as embodiments of nature they are being messed with hard due to the incident affecting seasons. This is the main rationale behind Cirno, Etarnity, Lily, etc.

[Colticide]

Very happy for those who uploaded gameplay and an ost already. This music I like right off the bat. (Hmm~ that title music!) Checked ZUN's site and no demo yet, but not too worried now I can listen to the songs.

Going to mention that fairies are a prominent part of the game because as embodiments of nature they are being messed with hard due to the incident affecting seasons. This is the main rationale behind Cirno, Etarnity, Lily, etc.

I kinda figured that was the case when I saw lily white, she's never around unless something is up with seasons or fairies.

[Valar]

Using flashbomb draws all items on screen to you, so if there are a lot of season items on screen and you are sitting at max releases already, it would be actually free (or very close to free). I think you can use them freely just to grab items if you have four or five of them.

Season items gained from graze might be actually pretty hard to collect, they spawn so far away from your character. If you are getting crazy graze from somewhere, it might be viable to just flashbomb for both points and collection.

That all said... wtf flashbombs? In my Touhou? It's all Yabusame's fault, I'm sure about that XD

[Flandre5carlet]

Wish I could try it out but away from home right now, sounds fun from what everyone's saying.

[gilde]

i finished translating the manual & character profiles over on the touhou wiki & am going to Flop Into Bed for now & squeal extensively over the music and danmaku tomorrow, probably

also uhhhh according to the manual, power items become point items in all but appearance when you're at max power, wowza

[VividMemory2000]

English patch when

[TresserT]

So........ If you bomb at the end of a nonspell the bomb will carry over into the spellcard. And it'll steal do full damage, or at the very least your shots still do damage. With Cirno's bomb that means you can pretty much clear every spell in the game without dodging, except for the third boss's last spell (since the direction she jumps in appears to be random and you have to place your bomb on one side or the other to do the most damage).

Combine this with Aya's flashbomb that lets you get right up next to the boss during the nonspell..... yeaaaaaah....

[Nebulae--Addict]

now here's a question

what theme is the best so far?? i gotta say etanity's theme is the coolest!!

[Tengukami]

now here's a question

what theme is the best so far?? i gotta say etanity's theme is the coolest!!

Hag's theme is doing it for me.

So........ If you bomb at the end of a nonspell the bomb will carry over into the spellcard. And it'll steal do full damage, or at the very least your shots still do damage. With Cirno's bomb that means you can pretty much clear every spell in the game without dodging, except for the third boss's last spell (since the direction she jumps in appears to be random and you have to place your bomb on one side or the other to do the most damage).

Combine this with Aya's flashbomb that lets you get right up next to the boss during the nonspell..... yeaaaaaah....

I've been hitting Seasons towards the end of every non-spell and spell, refilling that gauge all over again. For that purpose, Winter has been working well, although I like Spring and Summer most overall.

[Karisa]

Score extends (in millions:): 5, 10, 20, 40, 70, 100, 150, 250.

We don't know what else beyond that yet. Highest known score is 175m on lunatic.

There's always testing in Cheat Engine. I don't have the setup to do it myself right now, but score addresses are easy enough to find. It's typically (since PCB) a 32-bit integer that's 1/10 of the displayed score.

By the way I think ZUN underestimated bomb-grazing once again. Try using Aya's bomb to the side of a boss, then overlapping the boss...

[Colticide]

now here's a question

what theme is the best so far?? i gotta say etanity's theme is the coolest!!

Most of them for me actually! But I do like the title and Etarnity's theme!

[Shizzo]

Cirno's bomb seems to be ... crazy long. Like Fantasy Seal long.

Her's and Aya's.  I'm not sure which of them lasts longer but you can definitely take your sweet time before the invulnerability wears off.

[Piranha]

Wow, the new character designs look really good IMO (especially Etanity+Nemuno)

Music:
Stage 1 - Possibly my favorite Stage 1 theme since TD and SA, I like the beep in the background and the ZUNpets, of course.
Etanity - Pretty surprised because it sounds a lot more dramatic and melancholic than you would think of a Stage 1 boss. Awesome track.
Stage 2 - Can't put my finger on it, but it reminds me of another theme (probably from LOLK/DDC). Still, I like it very much.
Nemuno - This doesn't really sound like a stage 2 boss, reminds me more of Seija or the extra bosses, pretty intense.
Stage 3 + Komano - Nice themes, but I like the ones before more this time around
 
For such an (potentially) upbeat story, the themes sound pretty intense this time.
Unrelated to music, i looove how stage 3 feels, colors, enemies, patterns and everything.

So, are we really getting 16 shot types, or just 4 with the same 4 gimmicks to choose from?

what theme is the best so far??

Etanity, closely followed by stage 1 theme, though Nemuno's is pretty good too. Hell, all of the themes are pretty awesome this time.

[Drake]

So........ If you bomb at the end of a nonspell the bomb will carry over into the spellcard. And it'll steal do full damage, or at the very least your shots still do damage. With Cirno's bomb that means you can pretty much clear every spell in the game without dodging, except for the third boss's last spell (since the direction she jumps in appears to be random and you have to place your bomb on one side or the other to do the most damage).

Combine this with Aya's flashbomb that lets you get right up next to the boss during the nonspell..... yeaaaaaah....

This is likely unintentional. If you were around during the release of the UFO demo, the same problem would occur where a bomb from SanaeB used right before the card started would clear basically everything while keeping the Spell Card Bonus. Later ZUN fixed this by making cards invulnerable if there was a bomb active, which is why in recent games you often see people avoiding hitting the boss too much if they have to bomb a noncard. In the game scripts I'm pretty sure it's just one instruction, so he probably just forgot.

[ZM]

With a well-timed flashbomb, you can completely skip Nemuno's final spell. Example.

How silly.

[Drake]

yeah see i bet that would be fixed if he threw in that invul instruction too lol

[Monaco]

now here's a question

what theme is the best so far?? i gotta say etanity's theme is the coolest!!

Personally, my favourite is the stage 1 theme. It's a nice, funky, slightly jazzy song, and very fitting for a stage 1 theme.

[Tsalop]

After playing the trial, I am liking this so far, and I am currently uploading a video of my Cirno run (EASY)...
Anyway, the usage of the 'C' button still makes me wonder what it should do actually.

I wish somebody would draw a picture of Nemuno riding Komano like in those Napoleon pictures...

[Mino ☆]

Wow! I'm really quite liking this game so far. The whole mixing and matching with the shottypes and seasons is really cool! You can like create your own combination which suits you.
The game is more lax than LoLK in terms of difficulty, which is honestly refreshing. This game kinda feels like MoF/SA difficulty.
The flash bombs and scoring system seems interesting.

Also, here's a No Miss No Bomb No Release Lunatic 1cc I did earlier

[GuppyForce]

Wow! I'm really quite liking this game so far. The whole mixing and matching with the shottypes and seasons is really cool! You can like create your own combination which suits you.
The game is more lax than LoLK in terms of difficulty, which is honestly refreshing. This game kinda feels like MoF/SA difficulty.
The flash bombs and scoring system seems interesting.

Also, here's a No Miss No Bomb No Release Lunatic 1cc I did earlier

Wow somebody other than me who doesn't think the game is really easy (though MoF/SA is a strange pair to compare it with). For some reason I've having more difficulty focusing on the bullets than usual. I'm not sure if it's the backgrounds or the season items from the graze or something else entirely. Music isn't really doing it for me with the exception of Etanity's theme which has a great intro/background line. Stage 2 boss theme in particular sounds like a total mess

[Jimmy]

Decided to play all characters on Normal mode right off the bat - the difficulty indeed has been considerably toned down in comparison to LoLK. This game feels actually really refreshing, nothing too hard, but there are few tricky spots to be figured out. The subweapon selection kinda makes this similar to IN's partnering system if you ask me, plus each character having their own unique season items, which I also find pretty neat.

First impressions:
- ZUN's outdone himself on the in-game portraits and music. I really like the facial expressions in this.
- Backgrounds are really well done too, especially the wobbly air in stage 1 and the mountains in stage 2.
- I never thought that a stage 1 boss out of all would now become my favorite character of the demo. She looks really adorable, and her theme has a kinda mysterious undertone.
- Wow goddamn that stage 2 boss and her theme are freaking creepy, but I like it! So she's a mountain hag? Looking forward to know more about her once translations are up.
- Unexpectedly light-hearted theme for a stage 3 boss. She looks kinda strange compared to what we had in Touhou this far, but is adorable nonetheless. Her attacks tend to be quite tricky though, but is still a step down from Doremy difficulty-wise.

Liking everything in this demo so far 

[The Anti-Person]

This game is very cool. I love how it has an original feel yet it also has throwbacks.
The seasonical minibombs remind me of SA and MoF and I find the customizable shottypes amazing.

Zun really likes having customizable stuff nowadays, since AoCF will also have custom pairs for versus. (but I think they're gonna be static for story mode)

Also what's the best shottype in your opinion? I find Reimu Winter the best myself.

[Tsalop]

Yeah, the game indeed feels much easier than few of the previous ones and also I think I have never seen so much variety in the enemies so early in the game...
Anyway I have uploaded my easy Cirno run (made two simple mistakes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqsfEluJNpk&feature=youtu.be

[game2011]

Decided to play all characters on Normal mode right off the bat - the difficulty indeed has been considerably toned down in comparison to LoLK. This game feels actually really refreshing, nothing too hard, but there are few tricky spots to be figured out. The subweapon selection kinda makes this similar to IN's partnering system if you ask me, plus each character having their own unique season items, which I also find pretty neat.

First impressions:
- ZUN's outdone himself on the in-game portraits and music. I really like the facial expressions in this.
- Backgrounds are really well done too, especially the wobbly air in stage 1 and the mountains in stage 2.
- I never thought that a stage 1 boss out of all would now become my favorite character of the demo. She looks really adorable, and her theme has a kinda mysterious undertone.
- Wow goddamn that stage 2 boss and her theme are freaking creepy, but I like it! So she's a mountain hag? Looking forward to know more about her once translations are up.
- Unexpectedly light-hearted theme for a stage 3 boss. She looks kinda strange compared to what we had in Touhou this far, but is adorable nonetheless. Her attacks tend to be quite tricky though, but is still a step down from Doremy difficulty-wise.

Liking everything in this demo so far 

Stage 2 boss adopts any children she comes across for unknown reasons.  Imagine the fan stuff potential!

[Leon゠Helsing]

Stage 2 boss adopts any children she comes across for unknown reasons.  Imagine the fan stuff potential!

"moshi moshi keisatsu desu ka?" :V

[Catmusica]

This game...is great!!!! It has a very different atmosphere than the rest if the series but it gives me like a remastered pc98 feel. Music is great. I ended up clearing with reimu my first run now i really wanna try out aya and cirno for sure. As far as danmaku goes i cant tell if its harder or easier but seems easier to me. 2nd boss was really fun and others were as well but sometimes i felt like the danmaku on the stages were kind of sloppy but still nice. I think instead of normal ill play on hard for this one. Cirno looks like she wants to fight somebody hahaha