Author Topic: Touhou 16 「東方天空璋(とうほうてんくうしょう) ~ Hidden Star in Four Seasons」 announced  (Read 294829 times)


is it just me or does Lily White simply leaves after the midboss fight instead of having the "defeated" explosion?

What is the sound font like? Is it more DDC/LoLK style? Or has he changed it once again?

This is a weird question because none of the games released by ZUN in the past 8 years sound much like each other, but first let me clarify that "Sound font" isn't synonymous with the set of instruments used in a game, it's the name of a very outdated proprietary format that no serious composer has used in like 20 years. The word you're probably looking for is instrumentation.  But yes, HSiFS doesn't quite sound the same as LoLK. Note that instrumentation and/or samples used alone don't definite how music will sound and feel.

BTW most of the info in Spectral Nexus' post is wrong and probably unnecessary...

Jimmy

  • Shameless spender
  • gaining big pounds
Oh, music remixes already!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPEPVt_JIDE
That was fast.
Not only release day fanarts but also release day arranges, and a pretty decent one at that, gj.

Normal 1cc: EoSD, PCB, IN, PoFV, MoF, UFO, TD, DDC, LoLK Legacy, HSiFS, WBaWC
Hard 1cc: IN, DDC, HSiFS
Extra clears: MoF, DDC, HSiFS, WBaWC

Goals: Going Extra Hard!

Did someone make music rip?
Easy: PoDD, FW, LoLK
Normal: SoEW, UFO, HSiFS
Hard: LLS, MS, EoSD, PoFW, MoF, SA, TD, DDC
Lunatic: PCB, IN
Extra: EoSD, PCB, IN, MoF, TD, DDC, HSiFS; Phantasm

Tengukami

  • Breaking news. Any season.
  • *
  • I said, with a posed look.
Overall I'd say the music is reminiscent of DDC, at least in terms of choice of instruments and style of melodies. Which to me anyway is very encouraging. Hoping later stages have more memorable melodies.

"Human history and growth are both linked closely to strife. Without conflict, humanity would have no impetus for growth. When humans are satisfied with their present condition, they may as well give up on life."

WindyKitsune

  • Lumin(ifer)ous Touhouism
Some first impressions about Hidden Star in Four Seasons demo:
After playing games chronologically (almost) I decided it was time to give this demo a shot.

The first impact was obviously the intro: a sort of space trance music with powerful main theme, I really didn't expect something like that from a season-themed Touhou game; maybe it resembles IN intro. I don't know why but I find it quite disturbing (but certainly good).
About the music from the stages, I think is gorgeous! I already like every BGM.
First level BGM is cheerful and a bit fast-paced with a little twist.
Eta(r?)nity Larva's BGM is melanchonic with some dark notes but with feeling of calm in my opinion. Heavy percussions here (looking at Wriggle's BGM).
Second level BGM, here background is fast while the main theme slow and gradually goes climax; result is kinda sadness and happiness mixed.
Nemuno Sakata's BGM begins as badass song, resulting a non-continuous step by step progression: first melody, then second, then repeat.
Third level BGM, calm, peaceful, slow, with a discernable background; really contemplative.
Aunn Komano's BGM: mid-fast pace, sustained, sometimes seems being singed (maybe it really does?).

The higher resolution is good news, kana and that three-dimensionally flying flowers are displayed precisely. Even if sprites are somewhat pixelated I don't care, I really got habit playing games most part of screen and have no problems.

The general aspect during the game seems messy for my eyes at first impact: score items everywhere, fairies, bullets, shooting trailings, death decorations. Oh my God!
I've read that in MoF falling leaves are used as decoration but also as a visual element in the game to make it more difficult. At the moment I have this feeling for HSiFS. It will need some training to overcome it.

Another peculiarity in this game is the usage of Score Items, using them makes necessary to change my hand position in order to bomb with this and bombs mechanism; but it is painful...

I have nothing to say about shooting types and spellcard yet, I would prefer to play more before.


Oh, music remixes already!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPEPVt_JIDE
So fast, less than 24 hours... WOW.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2017, 03:48:53 PM by WindyKitsune »

Colticide

  • Awoo!~
  • *
Overall I'd say the music is reminiscent of DDC, at least in terms of choice of instruments and style of melodies. Which to me anyway is very encouraging. Hoping later stages have more memorable melodies.

I'm hoping for stage 5 to give the best stage theme! DDC's stage 5 was such a tone shift in the beginning being very dark and mysterious! I loved it!
Touhou Fugyouseki ~ Nightmare of Sleeping Girl English Patch
I run a crappy YouTube channel, check it out if you wish~

Tengukami

  • Breaking news. Any season.
  • *
  • I said, with a posed look.
I'm hoping for stage 5 to give the best stage theme! DDC's stage 5 was such a tone shift in the beginning being very dark and mysterious! I loved it!

Yeah I really loved the way Stages 5 and 6 kind of comprised one longer song. I'd be amazing if he did that again for this game.

"Human history and growth are both linked closely to strife. Without conflict, humanity would have no impetus for growth. When humans are satisfied with their present condition, they may as well give up on life."

Lebon14

  • 椛ちゃん、助けてぇぇぇぇぇ!
Clarste argues that Etarnity's name is a typo and, even if it's not fixed in the full game, that her name should be "Eternity Larva" regardless. And I agree. If I had any Japanese skills, I'd try to ask ZUN on twitter.

EDIT

https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Eternity_Larva#Name
Yup, her official profile says "Eternity Larva". So, we can stop with the typos already :P
« Last Edit: May 07, 2017, 04:13:18 PM by Lebon14 »

She's a komainu - those lion-dog statues you can see near shrines.

Okay, thanks ^-^ No wonder she seemed familiar to me

Giratina93

  • The Great Titan of a Lost Realm
  • Behold, the Dark Lord of Distortion sees all
Was I the only one who for a second thought the stage 2 boss was Sakuya undercover or something? The kunai and knives in her nonspells and final spellcard made me rather curious, though I guess that's just coincidence now.

Really liking how this game is shaping up. Definitely not as "WTF IS THIS?!" hard as DDC and LolK's demos, and much more enjoyable and less stressful than those two as well. Eternity Larvae is a fun first stage boss, Lily White's always pleasant to see, and the Komainu defending Reimu's shrine is an interesting touch, though I do wonder why she only shows up now and not earlier...
Why... why must weak humans destroy their world? Why can they not preserve that which they see so dear to them? Why must all life perish before immortality?

Did someone make music rip?
I made a simple bgm file for Touhou Music Room so you can extract the music directly from the trial.
Playing Touhou since 18 March 2012. Playing video games since 19XX.
Normal 1CC: EoSD, PCB, IN, PoFV, MoF, SA, UFO, TD, DDC, HSiFS, CtC.
Extra 1CC: EoSD, PCB+Phantasm, IN, PoFV (K&S), MoF, SA, TD, HSiFS, CtC+Phantasm.
Hard 1CC: EoSD, PCB, IN, MoF, TD, CtC.
Lunatic 1CC: EoSD

Spectral Nexus

  • Idealistic Aspirer and Unacheiver
  • Hella trippy.
This is a weird question because none of the games released by ZUN in the past 8 years sound much like each other, but first let me clarify that "Sound font" isn't synonymous with the set of instruments used in a game, it's the name of a very outdated proprietary format that no serious composer has used in like 20 years. The word you're probably looking for is instrumentation.  But yes, HSiFS doesn't quite sound the same as LoLK. Note that instrumentation and/or samples used alone don't definite how music will sound and feel.

BTW most of the info in Spectral Nexus' post is wrong and probably unnecessary...

I was only trying to help. :\
Care to enlighten me on the truth?
COMPOSING FOR: Magical Moon Story / Mystic Memory Drive (Full Game)
- Old Chateau Story (Stage 3 and Title Themes)
- Ephemeral Unnatural Balance (Stage 2 & Stage 5 Themes)
- Illusionary Visual Twilight (Full Game)
- Hopefully a few of my own future fangames! :-D

I'm going to be the obligatory hater and say...

The music just isn't doing it for me. Maybe I'll enjoy it more over time, though. After playing it nonstop since last night, none of the songs have stuck in my head except for the stage one theme. All the songs feel a lot like DDC stage 4 in the sense that "these aren't bad but aren't worthy of further comment".

The patterns feel like a step down from LoLK too. This might just be because it's a demo, though. The stage 1 boss's attacks feel kiiiiiind of bland, but that's standard for a stage 1 boss. The stage 3 boss feels like something you'd see in a beginner danmakufu script, but it's still fun to dodge so I guess it's alright. The stage 2 boss is the one with the most uninspired stuff. The nons look like something out of a gore game- it's 100% streaming and racking up score, nothing to actually dodge. The spells feel pretty meh too... the second spell is flashy but just amounts to a mini/random "poison nail raze", and the final spell isn't special in any way. It'd fit on any boss, it's incredibly generic.

I feel like most of ZUN's effort this time went into the player and score systems.

THAT SAID that's kind of a good thing. The player system is FANTASTIC. I haven't had so much fun playing with shottypes in any game, not even BPoHC. And they seem MUCH more balanced than the previous games- every sub shot has its strengths and weaknesses, one isn't definitively better than another.

I'm very excited for the full game, as stage 3 already felt better than stages 1 or 2. And with the system already taken care of, a lot more focus will be placed on the patterns and music.
My name is Tres. It sounds like "Tray". Tressert is "Tray-zurt"; like Tres dessert.
I've cleared every touhou game on Lunatic, and beaten every extra except SoEW.
NMNB: MoF Hard, SA Extra, UFO Extra

I made a simple bgm file for Touhou Music Room so you can extract the music directly from the trial.
Thank you very much. How you did it?
Easy: PoDD, FW, LoLK
Normal: SoEW, UFO, HSiFS
Hard: LLS, MS, EoSD, PoFW, MoF, SA, TD, DDC
Lunatic: PCB, IN
Extra: EoSD, PCB, IN, MoF, TD, DDC, HSiFS; Phantasm

I have to agree -- not really a fan of the TH16 music so far. Although I find I am liking the Stage 2 music a little bit more each time I hear it. And the boss 2 music is very atmospheric; just not something I would seek out and listen to outside the game.

HistoryoftheMoon

I'm going to be the obligatory hater and say...

The music just isn't doing it for me. Maybe I'll enjoy it more over time, though. After playing it nonstop since last night, none of the songs have stuck in my head except for the stage one theme. All the songs feel a lot like DDC stage 4 in the sense that "these aren't bad but aren't worthy of further comment".

The patterns feel like a step down from LoLK too. This might just be because it's a demo, though. The stage 1 boss's attacks feel kiiiiiind of bland, but that's standard for a stage 1 boss. The stage 3 boss feels like something you'd see in a beginner danmakufu script, but it's still fun to dodge so I guess it's alright. The stage 2 boss is the one with the most uninspired stuff. The nons look like something out of a gore game- it's 100% streaming and racking up score, nothing to actually dodge. The spells feel pretty meh too... the second spell is flashy but just amounts to a mini/random "poison nail raze", and the final spell isn't special in any way. It'd fit on any boss, it's incredibly generic.

I feel like most of ZUN's effort this time went into the player and score systems.

THAT SAID that's kind of a good thing. The player system is FANTASTIC. I haven't had so much fun playing with shottypes in any game, not even BPoHC. And they seem MUCH more balanced than the previous games- every sub shot has its strengths and weaknesses, one isn't definitively better than another.

I'm very excited for the full game, as stage 3 already felt better than stages 1 or 2. And with the system already taken care of, a lot more focus will be placed on the patterns and music.

I had very similar thoughts, but kinda pushed them back and said "it'll grow on me." Stage 1 is pretty impressive in all areas, but Stage 2 and Stage 3 were kind of a let down. However, there are two hopes I'm holding out on- first, someone said that Reimu's stage 3 dialogue hints at a battle against another player character. Second, in the Prologue it's stated that it's snowing in the Forest of Magic. Considering that the first three stages were based around summer, fall, and spring, respectively, it's a reasonable guess to think that Stage 4 will be based around winter. So, my best-case scenario guess is that there are multiple bosses in the Forest of Magic for Stage 4, and by that, I mean four bosses. Reimu fights Aya and vice-versa, and Marisa fights Cirno (they have opposing seasons.) This means 4 bosses... once again, that's my best-case scenario. Perhaps Marisa and Aya fights Cirno while Cirno and Reimu fight Aya, or something like that. Having Reimu and Marisa be the Stage 4A and 4B bosses again would be pretty lame. Or maybe it'll be Daiyousei. Who knows.

Chill Observer

  • Aimless fanatic
  • haHAA
I feel like most of ZUN's effort this time went into the player and score systems.
Even the scoring system this time got broken into pieces. It's amazing just how dumb this system is, honestly.
Retired Touhou player. Not involved with anything Touhou anymore.

Serela

  • Moon Tiara Magic
  • VIA PIZZA SLINGING
Shot type system is super cool. 'nuff said.

Summer options seem to be the easy method for survival as the cost is low; with good bullet density you can get a good chunk of a release back, too. Spring gets quite a bit back too once you hit lv3+ and has helpful clearing ability more similar to bombing (wheras Summer only saves you for a second), but it can be hard to get a significant amount back at lv2, and lv1 is weaker than a pop of Summer, so it'll run down quickly if you want to use it in succession and makes you spend bombs instead. Of course, that's reasonable, but it brings me to the next season.

Fall. It can be extremely effective, especially on high difficulties; it gets really easy to get 1~2 releases back from just spamming lv1~2 on basically any significant mass of bullets by ramming yourself through it at superspeed, so you can just spam it OVER AND OVER FOREVER. However, the cost is that you have to be careful not to murder yourself ramming into bullets after the duration runs out, and you still can't touch a boss or you'll die. It's a lot safer at high power, along with enough duration to keep your release count high if the bullet spawn is steady enough... but if you get used to the duration of lv1~2 they can sweep quite a bit already. Fall seems to be the high risk high reward option; you can cheese through high difficulty areas with next to no actual dodging... if you're good enough to not accidentally kill yourself doing it anyway.

I guess Spring is the much safer, but notably less spammable version of Fall, whilst Summer is ideal if you just need to throw up a shield occasionally. Summer probably works the best on easy/normal mode, where you can't get as much back with Spring/Fall anyway so you just want the lower cost, nor is the game crazy to where you need to try to abuse tons of flashbombs.

That leaves Winter... the duration is high, so in some cases you can probably get good power back, but overall it's the worst for successive use. Instead you can do a lot of damage if you drop it ontop of a boss, along with the laser's contribution to shot damage overall, and it's release effect of damage up. Not sure how I feel about this one yet? I should watch a replay of someone using Winter competently, I think.
<mauvecow> see this is how evil works in reality, it just wears you down with bureaucracy until you don't care anymore

ChronaSE

  • Doremy-rekt
I'm so happy about the shot-types, they are fun. Specially Marisa's, I've always hated her missiles, glad that she's back at her prime.

Stage 4 obviously will be winter-themed, im hoping for Letty as mid-boss.

I greatly enjoyed the music, characters and the pretty background stages. Not sure how to feel about the 'flashbomb' thingie, it seems game-breaking.

Is it just me or Cirno is using a lot more "dase" in her dialogs in the demo?

I wonder if that rate the shot types thread should be revived at some point. Probably a bit after the dust has settled, but I'm interested in what people think on that topic.
My name is Tres. It sounds like "Tray". Tressert is "Tray-zurt"; like Tres dessert.
I've cleared every touhou game on Lunatic, and beaten every extra except SoEW.
NMNB: MoF Hard, SA Extra, UFO Extra

Thank you very much. How you did it?
No problem. Made the bgm file using some Touhou extraction tools and wiki translation copy-pasting.

The flexibility of the shot types is fantastic. There's a combination for every playstyle.
I'll probably be using Marisa Autumn once the full game comes out. It's nice to see Marisa with powerful focused lasers again.

edit: lol thcrap's already gotten started on the translation patch. What a time to be alive.
« Last Edit: May 07, 2017, 06:17:00 PM by shockdude »
Playing Touhou since 18 March 2012. Playing video games since 19XX.
Normal 1CC: EoSD, PCB, IN, PoFV, MoF, SA, UFO, TD, DDC, HSiFS, CtC.
Extra 1CC: EoSD, PCB+Phantasm, IN, PoFV (K&S), MoF, SA, TD, HSiFS, CtC+Phantasm.
Hard 1CC: EoSD, PCB, IN, MoF, TD, CtC.
Lunatic 1CC: EoSD

Tengukami

  • Breaking news. Any season.
  • *
  • I said, with a posed look.
Thr shot types are arguably the best part. Combine that with chaining refilling the season gauge and it gets more fun. Bomb fragments are frequent, and I think the score extends are challenging but fair. I think it's the right balance of simplicity and choice.

"Human history and growth are both linked closely to strife. Without conflict, humanity would have no impetus for growth. When humans are satisfied with their present condition, they may as well give up on life."

ChronaSE

  • Doremy-rekt
Saw a japanese niconico gameplay where the flashbomb feature gets pretty much abused in every spell and non-spell. Hopefully Zun puts a limit to its use in the full version.

Serela

  • Moon Tiara Magic
  • VIA PIZZA SLINGING
It's probably going to see more balancing between demo and release; but it'll also still likely remain very powerful. See:MarisaB in DDC, SanaeB's bomb in UFO. They got nerfed, for sure. but MarisaB still got really silly in DDC lunatic/extra. They just weren't able to abuse spellcards to an absurd degree.
<mauvecow> see this is how evil works in reality, it just wears you down with bureaucracy until you don't care anymore

Jimmy

  • Shameless spender
  • gaining big pounds
Mods:

Now where the demo is out, shouldn't the title of the thread be changed?
Normal 1cc: EoSD, PCB, IN, PoFV, MoF, UFO, TD, DDC, LoLK Legacy, HSiFS, WBaWC
Hard 1cc: IN, DDC, HSiFS
Extra clears: MoF, DDC, HSiFS, WBaWC

Goals: Going Extra Hard!

Was glad to see that lily white was in the game
The music is neat with Etarnity and Menuno's themes being my key favorites

Also ZUN having people hit a certain score amount to earn a whole life is pretty relaxing and encouraging in a way

especially the number of bombs you can get

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYKQE9D5Op8

^^ My playthrough

Anyone knows if the spellcard names are translated somewhere?  I'm looking forward to seeing what they're called!