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Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ～ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
the old guy:
Yachie's theme tells you that she's overwhelming and a threat and the fact that this thread is literally just mainly one person making terrible arguments for why the game is "bad" is ONCE AGAIN proof that EVERY single Touhou game gets flamed on release until a few months after the release of the game where everyone just accepts it as another Touhou game.
Complaining about the Beast World "being pointless" is one of the dumbest things that you could say, EVERY single Touhou game in the Windows series has ended up having elements that were used later and there is NO REASON why anyone should think that none of this will ever come up again. And worldbuilding is worldbuilding, despite "not being set in hell", this gives us MULTIPLE characters who flesh out Hell as a place, AND there is enough mystery behind what's going on in the Beast World that ZUN can easily revisit it, Hell is the living place of a goddess who is stronger than every character in the series, and I'm sure that a game set entirely in there would involved Reimu and the others getting beating to near death.
Saying that there's no way that the Beast World can interact with the people of Gensokyo? Really? Yuyuko lives in the Netherworld and yet she shows up very often. Sagume's made TWO appearances since LOLK. Clownpiece has an entire manga! Keiki could easily decide to hide in Gensokyo after getting beat the shit out by the Yakuza asshole spirits. There. That's one way her story can continue after this. Also, most of the early Stage characters can probably easily visit Gensokyo if the heroines visited their places by just flying.
You've contributed nothing to this forum but complaining about things that nearly everyone disagrees on, CyberAngel, it's time to leave. There's criticism, and then there's whining, and what you're doing is the later thing. Either you need to find things that actually are worthy of bringing to the table rather than "Waaaaah the story isn't what i expected", or you need to leave.
CyberAngel:
--- Quote from: nintendonut888 on September 14, 2019, 10:03:21 PM ---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.
--- End quote ---
One, don't forget that Reimu's never the only character that can set out to solve the incident in the games. Two, her intuition's extent tends to be kinda overrated. Only four main-style games have the "wander aimlessly until you bump into a hint" setup - PCB, IN, DDC and HSiFS. In all other games the characters have a good idea of where they're going from the start. Even when their final destination changes, there's always been a solid motivation presented to follow through with it.
Also, I keep seeing people retroactively explaining why the story took such route, but that's doing things backwards. If you want to understand what's my hangup with this point, try to look at it from an author's POV. ZUN probably already had the idea of where he wanted the story to end up and he could give Yachie whatever ability was needed to send heroines that way. He could make her a master deciever or negotiator. You know, "an offer you can't refuse" style, or however normal people think Yakuza works. But nope, just a straight-up magic ability that could probably solve the whole conflict on its own when you think about it.
nintendonut888:
I think you may be misunderstanding Yachie's ability a bit. It's not a "snap finger, people listen to you unconditionally" sort of thing, at least not the way I see it. Touhou has always had a lot of abilities that can manipulate a certain emotion or feeling, such as Parsee's ability to induce jealousy or Jo'on's ability to make people want to spend money. At their core though, these are all only suggestions imprinted upon a person; how they react is still up them, and can be resisted with a strong enough will. When you look at it that way, Yachie's ability is basically imprinting the feeling of trust onto her target, making them feel like what she says is the truth. But while the heroines always eventually yield to her, in several of the scenarios they end up doing so reluctantly, in a "ugh I don't like this but I guess I should listen to her" sort of way.
While it's extrapolating, I think Yachie's ability is the type that's chiefly effective when the target doesn't know what she can do. Think about it: She's only one of four ruling heads of the animal realm. If her ability were really all-powerful, she'd be the ruler of the animal realm without lifting a finger. I expect you just have to know how to deal with her to avoid being swayed.
TresserT:
Tbh did Yachie even use her ability? In all the dialogue I read, it was always "oh we're going to Hell to fight these beasts", Yachie shows up, "this is not the hell you're looking for", "wait really", "yes", "oh okay let's go to animal realm then."
We never had any reason to fight Yachie in the first place and in context she was testing us to make sure we were strong enough rather than actually fighting. She didn't force us to leave Hell with magic, she pointed us in the right direction and since the animal spirit believed her the protagonists were like "oh okay" too.
I do kind of take issue with such an unnecessary bait and switch, as well as the players basically being backseat characters without any initiative, but I don't really get how this is any more "poof you do this cause MAGIC" than any other game.
Suspicious person:
--- Quote from: CyberAngel on September 14, 2019, 11:04:31 PM ---In all other games the characters have a good idea of where they're going from the start. Even when their final destination changes, there's always been a solid motivation presented to follow through with it.
--- End quote ---
That "solid motivation" is literally resolving the incident in all of the games ... and I don't see how following directions in order to solve an incident translates into the heroines losing the initiative when it comes to incident resolution.
Serving as unwitting tools for other folks and solving their problem is of no consequence here since it has always been about the incident and nothing else from the heroines perspective. The heroines not putting 100% of their trust in their animal partner in the prologue should make obvious what they think about being used, so long as the incident, which is their PRIME focus, gets dealt with.