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Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ～ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Suspicious person:
--- Quote from: CyberAngel on September 14, 2019, 01:57:35 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".
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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.
--- Quote from: CyberAngel on September 14, 2019, 10:15:03 AM ---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.
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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.
CyberAngel:
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?
Suspicious person:
--- Quote from: CyberAngel 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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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.
TresserT:
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).
nintendonut888:
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.