So I finally got through
, beat the game, and got all the achievements, woo. Took 2 additional hours till I beat
at which point I took a break before dealing with the rest. Total playtime is 11 hours 16 minutes, and it took me an additional 20 minutes to get the last achievement. My thoughts on a few things :
Hitbox is quite forgiving in this game, as expected of a photogame hitbox, and there are hardly any bulletsof ambiguous size that gets you because of a few invisible pixels that happens to stretch your way.
Regarding the new
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gimmick that you get for nightmare week, death cancel, I'd say it's a case of a gimmick done right : it's not something that can be abused like the Jizou statue in ISC, and it's activation is like some kind of "passive" thing, where you don't have to do something outlandish and unrelated to what you'll have to do in the game : you'll still need your 100 % charge, and this ability can be used once you reach that charge. You don't get much invincibility frames however, and death cancel can be useless when you get bodied by bosses or hit by unerasable bullets : death cancel is only as good as the position you were in. At any rate, death cancel still got a little something that makes a bit interesting compared to regular defensive photos : in the old photogames for example, you need to take pictures that include the boss, and if you take pictures that don't fit that criteria, "defensive photos", they fail and you instead get 50% of your camera charge refunded : for this game, ANY picture will count toward your end score, and you will NOT be refunded anything for taking a defensive picture : death cancel, however, gives you back 33 % camera charge after it triggers, and also, it gives you some sort of failed-photo equivalent : you DON'T get a picture that'll be stuck on the side of the screens, but you will STILL get hashtags, likes and favorites.
I can see this being used in future score runs strategies. This game, however, doesn't seem to have visual cues that tells you when to get the nice shots, unlike the older photogames.
Regarding replayability in general, I don't really think there's much, aside from the potential score runs that there may be. You can pretty much get most or all of the nicknames / achievements this game can offer by just playing (and completing) it normally : when I finished the game, I got ALL but the 47th achievement, and even that I eventually got by accident, rougly 20 minutes later, while trying to test some scoring strategies related to the
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Now then, regarding nightmare week, from a personnal standpoint, depending on the patterns, things can prove to be a bit repetitive : personally, when I play, I try to figure out strategies and deal with patterns in the way I imagined : for the characters involved inside a peculiar day, strategies that are valid against them seems to generally work whenever they come back. Say Shiki Eiki for example : she throws 3 things that spawn bullets when they come in contact with other bullets : the way I dealt with it was to hog the top-right corner, dodge, charge up, take pictures, rinse and repeat until I get her down : It work with Shiki Eiki / Yuyuko and Shiki Eiki / Suwako ; another example would be Ran : she moves around but WILL get to CERTAIN places from where she'll try to bodyslam you : it's matter of trying to find where you want to be when Ran is at located at certain places. Whenever she's around, I'd generall start up around the bottom-left corner and try to misdirect her whenever she prepares for that tackle when she's in the right side of the screen : it was hardly about taking into consideration the way to deal with whoever she got paired with for me, but rather how to implement my Ran approach. I might move a bit differently depending on who she's with, particularly Okuu, who adds a few more misdirection. Most of the times, I find that it's not really about coming up with a COMBINATION SPECIFIC strategy, but instead of a strategy to deal with attacks that involve a particular character. There are a few exception, but they seems to me like pretty few and far between, notably the ones with Tenshi, Raiko and Mokou ones (just for me anyway).
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As far as nightmare week goes, I honestly find the two first combination of every nightmare weekday to be the most interesting ones of the day. The rest are nothing much once you figure out how to deal with a certain someone's attack, and add that to the way you'd deal with a certain other someone's attack. Personally, the ones I've kinda struggled with tended to be the ones on the earlier day, and the combinations that involve a character whose pattern I'm struggling a bit with when paired with others. To illustrate, I've got 190 tries (but for the wrong reasons) for Remilia / Flandre but I didn't exceed 20 tries for the rest of their day, less than 10times for Nightmare monday in general, 56 for Tenshi / Eirin and 109 for Tenshi / Kaguya a minimum of 50 tries for all the Ran combos, 42 tries for Nue / Mamizou combo but nowhere as much for the rest of their day, 134 tries for Suika / Mokou and 89 for Suika / Hecatia but NOWHERE as much for the rest of their day, 110 retries on Marisa / Reimu but for the wrong reasons (I like experimenting), and, once again, nowhere as much for the rest of their day. So, as far as I'm concerned, difficulty seems a bit over the place. There were some I had fun with, which were pretty much the Tenshi combos, the Raiko combos, the Junko combos and the Okina combos, as well as specific combinations such as Kanako / Eiki, Shinmyoumaru / Kaguya, and Yukari / Sumireko. I felt like it was not really a matter of "gee, I wonder how things are gonna play next" and more of a "aww, it's gonna come with that one, isn'it" kinda sensation when it came to the less engaging attacks. So yeah, as far as nightmare week goes, I think the 2 first attacks of each day are the more interesting ones, aside from the occasional combination that seem to give birth to a new thing.
Their difficulty, or their lack thereof, is a bit weird considering it's this late in the game. How you'd appreciate that depends on whether you like things easier or harder. I'm quite neutral on this one issue personally.
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STILL regarding nightmare week, cuz there's A LOT to say, as far as spell design goes, I'd still say that things are relatively fair. A bit of a walling potential in Nightmare thursday, particularly against Mamizou / Nue or Mamizou / Iku, but then again you have your teleport, small hitbox, and death cancel. I used my teleports generously as I played, but I can totally see people who don't use it regularly / properly getting trounced by Mamizou or Suika combos. Some of the game's pattern are obviously balanced around teleportation, so I wouldn't fault ZUN for the patterns that turns out to be harder if you don't use teleport. I mean, like, you don't have to use teleport for the more "regular", wall-free spells, but teleport really gives more option. Regular restreaming ? Kindah eh. TELEPORT restreaming ?! Galaxy brain plays. Nuff said. While there is a lack of scaling when it comes to difficulty, there is, however, a certain adaptation for some patterns when it comes to them being put together with some other patterns, most obvious in Nightmare friday : among what I've noticed, a lesser bullet density for Hecatia when she is with Suika, a bit more time before Mokou tackles you when she is with Hecatia, and more faster tempo for Junko's apex of creativity pattern when paired with Mokou. There are a few cases of patterns interacting, but they are too few and far between, them generally being the Shinmyoumaru ones, Shiki Eiki's, and the one with Raiko / Iku. There is a fair bit of balancing to conciliate patterns, so I wouldn't necessarily call nightmare week lazy. Compared to the wrong weekdays patterns, I'd say nightmare weekdays are a bit less interesting and less engaging, aesthetics wise.
I'd assume that's what most people criticize it for.
So yeah, it has been a pretty interesting experience, but probably not something that you'd put in the hall of fame of Touhou patterns.
And, finally, regarding the very last day,
On the quality-of-life AKA minor nitpicks side of things, excluding the controls that's been discussed to great lengths, a few things :
-Pressing R for retry is busted and instead give some kind of graphic bug
-Visual effects on
hides stuff up and can mess with your reading, can result in avoidable silly deaths
-You can still get bodied by
even when she is out of lifebar. I got nothing against a pretty gal running towards me, but not like this
-Kinda wish there was a way to sift through the days faster
Overall, I'm pretty alright with the game. Gimmicks are balanced in the sense where they're not abusable, but teleport is implemented in a "but why" kind of way ; difficulty is a bit whacky : no real scaling for the vast majority of the attacks,
. I'd probably say it's one of the easier, if not the easiest, of the decimal Touhou shooters. A ZUN experiment that works, but with design decisions that can be questionable. If I had to give it a grade, I'd give it a B, as in "Bretty all right, but could do better".
Regarding the story, while I'm pretty sure most people should've heard about it by this point, there was no kind of ending story sequence, which surprised me a bit considering how much dialogue this have compared to its predecessors and how seemingly important this is for the girl with probably the most
of identity crisis. I'd assume we'll get a proper conclusion in the next CoLA or something, cuz this is obviously something that's gonna matter for Sumireko. Anyway, if this kinda tie the knot for a character specific thing from AoCF, I'm hoping a resolution is brought to for best girl with peach hat. Dream world seems to be more relevant than how it was at first. It's a bit late now, but I think Eirin's butterfly dream pill or the people who take it,
like SPECIFICALLY Alice, should be something pretty interesting to explore eventually, due to obvious reason.
I personally have a little theory regarding why ZUN decided to
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design nightmare week this way : if you look at the characters featured in there, including Satori, it should be crystal clear that the intention was to cram up ALL of the "boss figures" from previous shooter titles ; also there being 3 different combinations for each and everyone them : making individual patterns was certainly possible, but giving each and every single one of them a relatively substantial number of spell (like, say, 2 or 3), designing said individual patterns, and, wild hypothesis here, possibly even having to add a 4th week to have some of the girls in (like instead of 4 girls per day, there are only two, the other move to the next week, dunno if its clear), ZUN's workload would've effectively quadrupled. Maybe combination spells was his way of efficiently conciliating his intention of getting previous shooter title bosses and substantial number of spell / appearances.
And wow, did I write all of that ...