Sunday
Aug152010
Touhou 12.8 : Fairy Wars impressions
Sunday, August 15, 2010 at 04:59PM
Touhou 12.8 : Fairy Wars First impressions
This weekend marks the 78th Comic Market festival japan, during which thousands of otaku converge on the Tokyo Big Sight centre and buy scads upon scads of doujin (amateur-made) goods.
Among these is my most anticipated item - a new Touhou game starring the fan-favorite ice fairy Cirno as the protagonist. As far as I can understand from the first translations, Cirno has had her house destroyed and goes off to beat up those she considers responsible, the three Mischievous Fairies.
For a quick catch-up for the uninitiated, Touhou games are a series of vertical scrolling shooters modelled on the “Bullet Hell” model, famed for their good music, challenging gameplay, and obscenely large cast of quirky female characters.
The game is not considered a “Main line” touhou game, and so have a number of interesting gameplay tweaks to provide a different experience, most notable of which being Cirno’s ability to freeze bullets. By charging up an attack, Cirno can create an ice shield around herself that can freeze bullets it touches, turning them to ice. Any bullet touching this ice will also freeze, and so if you are clever about it you can freeze all bullets on screen, or at the very least prevent you from experiencing an embarrassing death. After a short while the ice shatters, removing the bullets and hopefully giving you some breathing room.
A noticeable difference from other touhou games is that there are only three stages to the game, however the non-boss sections of the game have been greatly beefed up, making reaching a boss a real achievement in itself. Unless you play on easy mode like a baby. The re-playability for the game comes in providing three “routes” for the main game, changing the order that you fight the three different bosses depending on which route you take. Then there is the Extra Stage and its final boss, which from watching streams looks to be great fun if keyboard breakingly crazy.
But nevermind all that - is the game fun? I say yes. The obscene density of bullets the game throws at you at times can feel inhuman and frightening, but that fright quickly turns to joy as you execute a well timed freeze and watch the entire screen cover in ice. The game constantly rewards you for playing well, giving you stronger bullets, bombs and lives as you get the hang of the freezing mechanic. The fewer bosses in the game means that each of them has a lot more character to their attacks, especially as you can fight each of them at different times, thus adjusting their difficulty. Personally, while the moon-themed boss, “Luna Child” is a complete cake walk when you fight her first she becomes a demon if you play a route where she is the final boss. The fact that the stages themselves are challenging instead of feeling like filler is also very welcome.
There are also numerous small tweaks to the game’s presentation and mechanics as well which don't sound very big but are nice changes. Boss life bars are now a circular ring around the boss in question, making it easier to see when a break in the bullet deluge is coming. Lives are no longer discrete, but run on a percentage system called “Courage”. Every time Cirno eats a bullet she loses 100% courage - if you don't have 100% to lose then you get a visit from your good friend the “You are dead Continue Yes/No” screen. Bombs and bullet power are earned through normal gameplay, particularly the successful freezing of large areas on the screen.
Will this be the first Touhou game that I manage to complete on Normal? Probably not. Am I have oodles and oodles of fun playing it nonetheless? Yep.
Bonus Video:
TH12.8 Touhou Great Fairy War First attempt
Okay, this is my first attempt at Great Fairy War. I suck at it.
-------------------------------------
Elliot Page is a British writer and podcaster who serves the queen and eats his biscuits like a good little red coat. Elliot has a couple articles in the upcoming Insert-Disc gaming magazine, including an overview of the Touhou series.
This weekend marks the 78th Comic Market festival japan, during which thousands of otaku converge on the Tokyo Big Sight centre and buy scads upon scads of doujin (amateur-made) goods.
Among these is my most anticipated item - a new Touhou game starring the fan-favorite ice fairy Cirno as the protagonist. As far as I can understand from the first translations, Cirno has had her house destroyed and goes off to beat up those she considers responsible, the three Mischievous Fairies.
For a quick catch-up for the uninitiated, Touhou games are a series of vertical scrolling shooters modelled on the “Bullet Hell” model, famed for their good music, challenging gameplay, and obscenely large cast of quirky female characters.
The game is not considered a “Main line” touhou game, and so have a number of interesting gameplay tweaks to provide a different experience, most notable of which being Cirno’s ability to freeze bullets. By charging up an attack, Cirno can create an ice shield around herself that can freeze bullets it touches, turning them to ice. Any bullet touching this ice will also freeze, and so if you are clever about it you can freeze all bullets on screen, or at the very least prevent you from experiencing an embarrassing death. After a short while the ice shatters, removing the bullets and hopefully giving you some breathing room.
A noticeable difference from other touhou games is that there are only three stages to the game, however the non-boss sections of the game have been greatly beefed up, making reaching a boss a real achievement in itself. Unless you play on easy mode like a baby. The re-playability for the game comes in providing three “routes” for the main game, changing the order that you fight the three different bosses depending on which route you take. Then there is the Extra Stage and its final boss, which from watching streams looks to be great fun if keyboard breakingly crazy.
But nevermind all that - is the game fun? I say yes. The obscene density of bullets the game throws at you at times can feel inhuman and frightening, but that fright quickly turns to joy as you execute a well timed freeze and watch the entire screen cover in ice. The game constantly rewards you for playing well, giving you stronger bullets, bombs and lives as you get the hang of the freezing mechanic. The fewer bosses in the game means that each of them has a lot more character to their attacks, especially as you can fight each of them at different times, thus adjusting their difficulty. Personally, while the moon-themed boss, “Luna Child” is a complete cake walk when you fight her first she becomes a demon if you play a route where she is the final boss. The fact that the stages themselves are challenging instead of feeling like filler is also very welcome.
There are also numerous small tweaks to the game’s presentation and mechanics as well which don't sound very big but are nice changes. Boss life bars are now a circular ring around the boss in question, making it easier to see when a break in the bullet deluge is coming. Lives are no longer discrete, but run on a percentage system called “Courage”. Every time Cirno eats a bullet she loses 100% courage - if you don't have 100% to lose then you get a visit from your good friend the “You are dead Continue Yes/No” screen. Bombs and bullet power are earned through normal gameplay, particularly the successful freezing of large areas on the screen.
Will this be the first Touhou game that I manage to complete on Normal? Probably not. Am I have oodles and oodles of fun playing it nonetheless? Yep.
Bonus Video:
TH12.8 Touhou Great Fairy War First attempt
Okay, this is my first attempt at Great Fairy War. I suck at it.
-------------------------------------
Elliot Page is a British writer and podcaster who serves the queen and eats his biscuits like a good little red coat. Elliot has a couple articles in the upcoming Insert-Disc gaming magazine, including an overview of the Touhou series.
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