Author Topic: Touhou Project 16.5 「Secret Sealing Nightmare Diary ~ Violet Detector」  (Read 107548 times)

R. P. Genocraft

  • Craftsman of absolute unpredictability
  • Boundary of productive and lazy
Spoiler:
The biggest flaw with the teleporting IMO isn't just having to double tap, it's having to double tap shift. And since usually your index finger will be on X and middle finger on Z, you have to press shift with either your ring or pinky finger, which are, for most people, the ones with the least coordination. In some scenes like Okina's second where you don't need to shoot, you can press shift with your middle finger, but the gap between index and middle is quite wide, so your fingers start to hurt quicker.

Spoiler:
I liked the music but I haven't played it ingame yet. Some like Lunatic Dreamer probably was busy when heard ingame.

Spoiler:
Nightmare Diary have become an ear worm to me now. I can't stop hearing it.

Fumi

  • Dragon of Seven Colors
  • Disaster in Takamagahara
MUASTG has made a MOD for a better teleport feeling.

https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,21537.0.html

Would love a mod to fix the 100% charge movement, I got kinda used to the teleport already but it is very hard to micrododge while super focused, 100% charge is up and the speed change screws you up.

Would love a mod to fix the 100% charge movement, I got kinda used to the teleport already but it is very hard to micrododge while super focused, 100% charge is up and the speed change screws you up.

let me ask him

Suspicious person

  • Just a humble wanderer
  • How suspicious~
So I got to have a proper go at the game. Took a fair few bits of breaks in between before taking a pause after
Spoiler:
beating Okina and reached nightmare week
at the end of 4 hours and 21 minutes of gameplay. As far as remarks goes, here's what I'd say for
Spoiler:
the 2 first weeks :

On the control side of things, as expected,
Spoiler:
teleporting gave me a lot of trouble initially, and most of my "mistakes" are related to having to try to clutch teleport in some situations : I've double taped the shoot button instead of shift, accidentaly shot a photo towards the direction I intended to teleport to, simply didn't get my teleport off and instead running towards bullets at unfocused speed. My biggest gripe is the fact that light tapping the shift key doesn't always work, and sometimes teleport activates when I have to alternate my speed between focused and unfocused. I have to sitck to vertical and horizontal movement to get the most consistency for my teleports, which severely limits my options.

One other things that really, REALLY, screwed me over about as much times as
Spoiler:
teleport memes
did would be the way charging up behaves : you go straight away from super slow speed to you normal focused speed once you reach your 100 % charge, which can be devastating when it comes to the more tight attacks ; and, and this one really annoyed me, and I have no idea if it's a "thing " for other people as well, but I LITERALLY CANNOT perform diagonal movement when charging up the camera (edit : actually can, but complex finger exercises), and instead have to tip - tap vertical and horizontal movement buttons at superior speed. Does anyone have this issue as well ? Cuz sometimes I wonder whether there is, like, some kind of limit to the number of commands the games register (it's something that happened to me while playing HSiFS as well, at least twice).

Regarding the way the game work as a photogame that incorporate the shooting and the lifebar parts of non-photogames, it works in a rather intersting way : instead of there being some sort of quota of photos to fill up, you only need to keep going until the lifebar runs out : the "scene" is cleared so long as you take at least a single picture, and how you cleared it is of little consequence. There's plenty of ways to go about things : taking defensive photos might save your ass but will instead make the "scene" last longer, while taking a picture of the boss requires you to be not too far away, meaning you'll need to take a risk, in exchange of shaving some of the lifebar and getting a bit more score than if you either just took the pictures of either bullets or boss only. You can charge up you camera for the potential to take a photo, get some score and deal a fair bit of damage BUT lose you ability to shoot, or just shoot normaly until your camera loads up AND risk getting destroyed by whatever dangerous dodges may be. So yeah, giving damage to the camera surprisingly made for a pretty clever game design : as far as gameplay goes, you're allowed some flexibility in how you want to clear you "scenes" up. So i guess that's where the line is drawn in how it distinguish itself from older photogames. Also, regarding scoring (which I honestly am no specialist with) , you can literally complete a scene and leave with no retweets, no likes depending on how lazy you decide to be. Scoring might prove to be ... interesting ... imagine a super-low score challenge for late scenes  :V

Regarding the attacks themselves, personally, I find them pretty fair. There is EXACTLY one instance where you get the hard-to-deal-with RNG
Spoiler:
(for the 2 first weeks), and that is Mai's Tanabata festival
, which seems like it's of the harder variety, and even that is fairly approachable owing to the fact that you can use the camera. The ones that gave me the most troubles are the ones where
Spoiler:
teleport had to be used in rather clutchy moments. I have like 131 retries at Clownpiece's 2nd spell, and all of those owing to the trouble pertaining to teleport that I mentionned earlier.  But yeah, other than that, the rest are pretty fine : there's hardly walling potential (like I said, I've just reached nightmare week), and the spells that involves teleportation as a must-use gimmick can be done relatively simply so long as you're being methodical.

I must say I actually had some fun, which, yes, is a mysterious feeling most alien to this series, going up against some attacks,
Spoiler:
particularly Clownpiece's 4 attack, Sagume in general, Hecatia's NOT first spellcard (86 retries, c'mon), especially the Majora's mask one, a fair few from Okina and, surprisingly, all of Junko's : I thought her 3rd attack was an unfeasable RNG attack until I figured the trick behind it, at which point I felt like I reached 2hu player enlightenment. Puzzle pattern fan here.
Balancing wise, at the very least for the
Spoiler:
first 2 weeks
, I think that this game is on point : there's hardly a super unreasoble spell that you'd require good RNG in order to get a clear : hardly got walled, and for the attacks that trap you into certain death,
Spoiler:
teleport is still available.

The story related scenes are, simply put, fairly easy :
Spoiler:
Doremy's last LoLK spell equivalent attack is nowhere near dense nor tight as it is even in normal mode, just to give you an idea (for the earlier weeks at least, dunno how they play at the end even though I've spoiled myself)

Personally, I consider the
Spoiler:
two first week to be the meat of the game. First week is kinda boring tbh, but second week's got some interesting stuff going on.
Had more fun than I expected. A crying shame that the controls are so lousy, considering all of that ... I think I'll put some sort of review-ish kind of thing for the
Spoiler:
nightmare week too
, from the perspective of a player who move around normal and hard mode difficulty, once when I'm through with it.
« Last Edit: August 12, 2018, 07:50:06 PM by Suspicious person »

CyberAngel

  • Retired
and, and this one really annoyed me, and I have no idea if it's a "thing " for other people as well, but I LITERALLY CANNOT perform diagonal movement when charging up the camera, and instead have to tip - tap vertical and horizontal movement buttons at superior speed. Does anyone have this issue as well ? Cuz sometimes I wonder whether there is, like, some kind of limit to the number of commands the games register (it's something that happened to me while playing HSiFS as well, at least twice).

By the sound of it, it's just your keyboard not liking too many of certain keys pressed at the same time. It's a physical-level limitation that depends on the specific model of keyboard, and there's no way to fix it besides the obvious or using some software to remap some keys to something else and hoping it works better.

ふねん1

  • Scientific editor
  • If you're alive, you can always keep moving.
I'm curious though, wouldn't using those mods to make teleporting easier or let you keep your camera-charging speed make them "tool-assisted" runs? This stuff seems quite a bit more consequential than, say, modding LoLK to start from a particular chapter to practice it. While there are definitely some flaws to VD's controls, they're still far from game-breaking imo and you can find ways to work around them, not to mention that VD has arguably no attacks that approach the hardest ones in StB and DS. I can't necessarily stop people from using any mods, but I'd at least mention that you are indeed using them so others can make their own judgments based on that.

Personally, I consider the
Spoiler:
two first week to be the meat of the game. First week is kinda boring tbh, but second week's got some interesting stuff going on.
Had more fun than I expected. A crying shame that the controls are so lousy, considering all of that ... I think I'll put some sort of review-ish kind of thing for the
Spoiler:
nightmare week too
, from the perspective of a player who move around normal and hard mode difficulty, once when I'm through with it.
I personally felt
Spoiler:
the Nightmare week
was more like the real meat of the game. Even though it has a bit less than half of all the scenes in the game, they're overall hard enough to keep you busy for a while, especially near the end. For a player of your skill level, I think you'll also have fun working your way through all those.
"Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking." - Carl Sagan

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ChronaSE

  • Doremy-rekt
I just can't finish
Spoiler:
Junko's last danmaku ring spell, the teleporting needs to be precise and I always screw up as they get faster, i'm either accidentally holding an arrow key while double tapping focus or shooting. Very uncomfortable  :V
.

MUASTG has made a MOD for a better teleport feeling.

https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,21537.0.html

Oh wow this is just what I needed !
« Last Edit: August 12, 2018, 07:36:45 PM by ChronaSE »

Suspicious person

  • Just a humble wanderer
  • How suspicious~
By the sound of it, it's just your keyboard not liking too many of certain keys pressed at the same time. It's a physical-level limitation that depends on the specific model of keyboard, and there's no way to fix it besides the obvious or using some software to remap some keys to something else and hoping it works better.
Disregard my previous remarks, I actually can, I just have the NASTY habit of holding the shoot button while pressing the focus key and the bomb key together ... So, yeah, it's just my dumb  :X I actually can, but the finger position required to do that is quite complex. It's surprisingly hard to remember to RELEASE the shoot button in the games where you can shoot.

While there are definitely some flaws to VD's controls, they're still far from game-breaking imo and you can find ways to work around them, not to mention that VD has arguably no attacks that approach the hardest ones in StB and DS.

(...)

I personally felt
Spoiler:
the Nightmare week
was more like the real meat of the game. Even though it has a bit less than half of all the scenes in the game, they're overall hard enough to keep you busy for a while, especially near the end. For a player of your skill level, I think you'll also have fun working your way through all those.
Playing through stuff being surprisingly different than just watching, I might probably gain a more favorable impression of
Spoiler:
the Nightmare week
as I go, but for now, I think l should reserve judgement. The thing with the control is matter of getting used to, and I'm not having as much trouble as I did in the start. I'd say the main issue I'm encountering is related to the times where I have to alternate my speed and instead accidentally
Spoiler:
teleporting
in bullets while doing so, or trying to clutch
Spoiler:
teleport
in darker times, which is probably not very wise
Spoiler:
(something I'm experienceing on Remilia-Flandre pair for now)
. I wouldn't say things are so bad that I'd need to rely on the mod yet for now, though.
« Last Edit: August 12, 2018, 07:52:47 PM by Suspicious person »

The first and second weeks were fine and fun. There were some ridiculously hard, possibly cheapshotty spells, but it's an StB type game. I expect that, it's all good, it doesn't detract from the game's value since I can just replay the scenes over and over.

My biggest complaint is how lazy the third week felt. And given that the third week is going to take up most of the gameplay due to its higher difficulty, it winds up feeling like half the game was just a throwaway.

Besides week 3 I think it was a fine game, I really enjoyed the teleport mechanic. There was a nice mix of new patterns and old patterns that had to be dealt with in a new way. Week 3 just really tears the overall quality down for me.

Also, for what it's worth, I think this whole "hate new games because their new" thing is silly. The complaints about DDC being random BS, about LoLK being cheapshotty, and about half of HSiFS's patterns being bland as hell are all still pretty common. It's just that nobody talks as much about it because they aren't as relevent. I feel like it'll be the same with this game.
« Last Edit: August 12, 2018, 09:33:49 PM by TresserT »
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

Tengukami

  • Breaking news. Any season.
  • *
  • I said, with a posed look.
I had a considerably easier time with teleporting by switching from the keyboard to a controller, and using Joy2Key to assign the left trigger to Shift. Your preferred controller button may vary, but that's what worked best for me.

"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."

Drake

  • *
From my very basic experience of making game-like things, properly registering a diagonal "direction" on a 4-way d-pad-like control setup (aka cursor keys) is a bitch without a hack like that. And even in this case people are finding it hard to use, from what I've seen.
Yeah, my mind slipped on diagonals which is pretty clearly the intention. But it's less the five frames that's the issue (bullets go barely anywhere in 5 frames) than it is having to hold the button. When I was testing for the breakdown earlier, button taps (e.g. for focuses) were typically 2~3 frames, sometimes hitting 1 and 4. There isn't any indication that you would have to hold it and the natural movement is definitely just to hit the direction you want; it makes much more sense that once you hit a direction you have 5 frames to input a diagonal but otherwise you teleport in that direction. I implemented this myself in DNH and it just feels way better.

A Colorful Calculating Creative and Cuddly Crafty Callipygous Clever Commander
- original art by Aiけん | ウサホリ -

☆ Kana ☆

  • Vanishing Dream
  • Lost Dream
    • lololololo tungle
Spoiler:
Wrong Wednesday
is kicking my butt soooo hard however I am going to keep trying because I Am Very Stubborn.  :V

I really love this game's OST a lot, I freakin' cheered when I found out
Spoiler:
Darkness Brought in By Swallowstone Naturalis Historia
was in the game~!

Not sure if I'll use the teleport mod just yet, it seems very useful but, again, I am stubborn lmao.
Dream a dream so grand...that it becomes a nightmare.

CyberAngel

  • Retired
Yeah, my mind slipped on diagonals which is pretty clearly the intention. But it's less the five frames that's the issue (bullets go barely anywhere in 5 frames) than it is having to hold the button. When I was testing for the breakdown earlier, button taps (e.g. for focuses) were typically 2~3 frames, sometimes hitting 1 and 4. There isn't any indication that you would have to hold it and the natural movement is definitely just to hit the direction you want; it makes much more sense that once you hit a direction you have 5 frames to input a diagonal but otherwise you teleport in that direction. I implemented this myself in DNH and it just feels way better.

Wait, so you mean you'd have to hold the diagonal for 5 frames as well? If so then wow, that's one sloppy way to implement that. You could activate it and rotate a joystick really fast without ever moving anywhere! :D

(...)

Personally, I consider the
Spoiler:
two first week to be the meat of the game. First week is kinda boring tbh, but second week's got some interesting stuff going on.
Had more fun than I expected. A crying shame that the controls are so lousy, considering all of that ... I think I'll put some sort of review-ish kind of thing for the
Spoiler:
nightmare week too
, from the perspective of a player who move around normal and hard mode difficulty, once when I'm through with it.
I agree with this entire review and it's mostly the same thing I thought.
Spoiler:
The first week is very easy and relaxing to all clear
, even for a sucker like me. It's kind of a shame difficulty doesn't rise slowly with it instead.
No.

Drake

  • *
Wait, so you mean you'd have to hold the diagonal for 5 frames as well? If so then wow, that's one sloppy way to implement that. You could activate it and rotate a joystick really fast without ever moving anywhere! :D
I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to. In VD you can activate teleport and mash directions as much as you want and not move. In my implementation once you input a direction you will teleport in five frames, but if you also hit an adjacent direction you get the diagonal instead.

A Colorful Calculating Creative and Cuddly Crafty Callipygous Clever Commander
- original art by Aiけん | ウサホリ -

CyberAngel

  • Retired
Yeah, I was referring to the way ZUN did it. The way you did it would probably be the way I'd come up with myself as well.

Chill Observer

  • Aimless fanatic
  • haHAA
Something pretty funny that I've noticed only upon reading the wiki/thpatch: the spell card name for
Spoiler:
Eirin/Shinmyoumaru
is mistakenly written to be the same spell card name as
Spoiler:
Yuyuko/Suwako
.

If I had to guess the actual name based on naming convention, it'd be
Spoiler:
永針符「壺中の大きな弾」 (Eternal Needle "Big Bullet in a Pot")
, but until we get a fix, it's gonna remain as
Spoiler:
妖風符「土着蝶ストーム」 (Mystic Wind Sign "Native Butterfly Storm")
. Nice one ZUN. :V

Spoiler:
in before I am completely wrong and the actual spell name is just 大きな壺 "Big Pot"
« Last Edit: August 14, 2018, 08:11:40 AM by Railgun »
Retired Touhou player. Not involved with anything Touhou anymore.

Gregory

  • I draw stuffs
Waiting for the Ultra patch to see more
Spoiler:
Nightmare
and ridiculous scenes

Suwako Moriya

  • Hey you with the pretty face
  • *
  • Welcome to the human race!
Drake was "imagine being angry about doggo" you

It was absolutely you right
The only thing this dimension does well is show its ass. We might as well applaud it! - Albert Burneko

Well, this game happened.

Validon98

  • Deathguard Night Sparrow
  • *
  • Harbingers, yo.
It's like it's a game about a freaking idiot teenager memer on the internet using her horrible situation for efame, who even in the original Japanese is using emoticons and memespeak.

Localization is not a slippery slope, though yeah I can see different people having different opinions on it. In the end it's a combination of "what doesn't detract too much from original meaning" and "what is comprehensible to the audience being translated to." The intent is memespeak. Therefore have memespeak that makes sense to the audience it's for. Doggo fits that bill.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2018, 06:18:22 PM by Validon98 »
Derping at Touhou since June 2012, derping at RPing Touhou since Feburary 2013.

Devil of Decline Partial English Gameplay Patch!
Let's Play Nightmare of Rebellion!

doggo is extremely good and so is reimers, qed

nintendonut888

  • So those that live now, pledge on your fists and souls
  • Leave a sign of your life, no matter how small...
My personal opinion on Reimers isn't so much that it sounds really silly (I am also of the opinion that all this meme slang is perfect for Sumireko, plus I always loved how valley girl Hatate turned out), but that it looks a little unnatural to me to apply English nicknaming conventions to a Japanese name. But it's not my translation, and I understand the translation should appeal to the greater community, so I'll support the translation staff with whatever they choose.
nintendonut888: Hey Baity. I beat the high score for Sanae B hard on the score.dat you sent me. X3
Baity: For a moment, I thought you broke 1.1billion. Upon looking at my score.dat, I can assume that you destroyed the score that is my failed (first!) 1cc attempt on my first day of playing. Congratulations.

[19:42] <Sapz> I think that's the only time I've ever seen a suicide bullet shoot its own suicide bullet

Serela

  • Moon Tiara Magic
  • VIA PIZZA SLINGING
you mean sumireko doesn't call her raymoo and make cow jokes? /disappoint

this is sarcasm

I'm trying to wait for the game to appear on steam, but I wonder when that'll be. @.@
<mauvecow> see this is how evil works in reality, it just wears you down with bureaucracy until you don't care anymore

Suspicious person

  • Just a humble wanderer
  • How suspicious~
So I finally got through
Spoiler:
nightmare week
, beat the game, and got all the achievements, woo. Took 2 additional hours till I beat
Spoiler:
Nightmare Tuesday,
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.
Spoiler:
You will especially feel the smallness of your hitbox in the first phase of the very last spell, which you can do viably by staying in the middle of the talisman bullets.

Regarding the new
Spoiler:
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
Spoiler:
deliberate use of death cancel that I mentionned earlier (achievement 47 is to use death cancel 500 times btw)

Spoiler:
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).

Spoiler:
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.

Spoiler:
Still regarding nightmare week, this time focusing on the pattern that comes out when only one character remains, honestly if you've managed to deal with the combo attacks, you shouldn't experience trouble in there, unless it's against Eirin or Ran maybe. But then again it depends on your skill. Gaps between solo pattern bullets are a bit wide, at the very least if you compare their width to the tightness of the later days pattern in the older photogames : combine that with your small hitbox, and you will quickly notice how easier they are compared to the combo spell. I haven't tried all off the individual patterns of nightmare week, but you can take Miko, Koishi, Okuu and Kaguya as examples.
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.

Spoiler:
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,
Spoiler:
nightmare diary, I'm pretty alright with it. Doremy's got enough hit points NOT to go down pretty fast, and not only her pattern is one of the more interesting solo pattern since wrong week, but its also obviously designed in a way that makes teleport a viable option (one which I took btw). It's pretty okay ; Sumireko attacks are pretty okay as well, although maybe nowhere near dense as you'd expect for the last day of the kind of game Violet Detector seems to be gunning for. The very last attack was pretty quirky for a ZUN designed pattern I must say, quite cute. Trust nobody, not even yourself.

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
Spoiler:
the Eirin's bullets on the Eirin / Tenshi  combination
hides stuff up and can mess with your reading, can result in avoidable silly deaths
-You can still get bodied by
Spoiler:
Mokou
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,
Spoiler:
a fair bit of gaps for the nightmare week solo patterns
. 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
Spoiler:
litteral kind
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
Spoiler:
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 ...

« Last Edit: August 14, 2018, 11:39:31 PM by Suspicious person »

Drake

  • *
Drake was "imagine being angry about doggo" you

It was absolutely you right
It wasn't me but it might as well be. My stance on this thing has been that the people complaining about stuff like this don't know much Japanese and can't contextualize what is and isn't important in a translation, so all they see are the few terms that they don't like for not being Japanese enough. People clamoring for literal translations and keeping in Japan-isms often do this for one reason or another.

That being said, most of this current group are basing their acceptance of the translation on a handful of terms that they're personally put off by, and they see that choice as being made by the translators and not simply as a valid interpretation of Sumireko. In other words this is more about the difference in acceptance of specific internet slang between groups on the internet, than actually about translation. Which is why a lot of the argument on /jp/ quickly devolved into dismissing people by claiming they're part of certain communities or use certain platforms: it's about those out-groups being seen as accepting that slang, and also if you accept the slang you're a part of those out-groups. Pointing out that she doesn't use a "meme" in the tag itself is mostly a rationalization. /jp/ being an anonymous board is actually working against them because the group doesn't seem to be able to form consistent arguments and they won't get anywhere that way.

That being said, I actually slightly prefer doggie over doggo, but I see no reason to be bothered about it at all. I also like Reimu-cchi but understand that if people have trouble with it you should probably try something else. At least if it were manga you could put a note somewhere but that isn't a good long-term strategy.
« Last Edit: August 15, 2018, 12:08:04 AM by Drake »

A Colorful Calculating Creative and Cuddly Crafty Callipygous Clever Commander
- original art by Aiけん | ウサホリ -

N-Forza

  • Information Superhighway Robbery
  • *
  • I said it was a steal, but not for whom
One thing about the "-cchi" ending for names is that it's supposedly an out-of-date way girls would nickname people. So this is either ZUN showing his age or him purposefully writing Sumireko as somewhat out of touch, at least until she got online to share pictures on Instagram.

But while I personally dislike "doggo" just as a word and don't entirely agree with using it in this case, it's nothing to start a witch hunt over.

Chill Observer

  • Aimless fanatic
  • haHAA
-You can still get bodied by
Spoiler:
Mokou
even when she is out of lifebar. I got nothing against a pretty gal running towards me, but not like this
You'll be glad to know the exact same thing happens in ISC where that move is based upon. Gotta move out of the way.
And well, technically every game too. Even after a boss dies, the boss hitbox itself is not removed so you can still die by running directly into the boss.
Retired Touhou player. Not involved with anything Touhou anymore.

ChronaSE

  • Doremy-rekt
Okay I cleaned all the scenes except one which no way i'm doing  :V
Spoiler:
Nightmare week was fun tbh, had difficulties with Flandre+Byakuren until I figured out teleporting inside Flandre's ring after it expands makes the spell a whole lot easier. All spells with Suika were ridiculous but possible with teleporting and luck. Mai's star spam spell however... yeah I give up on that one.

Okay I cleaned all the scenes except one which no way i'm doing  :V
Spoiler:
Nightmare week was fun tbh, had difficulties with Flandre+Byakuren until I figured out teleporting inside Flandre's ring after it expands makes the spell a whole lot easier. All spells with Suika were ridiculous but possible with teleporting and luck. Mai's star spam spell however... yeah I give up on that one.

Spoiler:
That one's tough but doable if you have a smidge of good luck.  I captured it even before I unlocked 'deathbombing' by taking as many pics of Mai as I could when I'm close, and when I'm eventually pushed down, I kept charging photos, using them to clear what's in front of me for breathing room, and shoot her a little.  It takes time (and with deathbombing it must be even easier), but it's super doable.  Don't give up!