Maidens of the Kaleidoscope

~Bunbunmaru News~ => Front Page Headlines => Topic started by: Drake on April 17, 2019, 05:27:22 AM

Title: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on April 17, 2019, 05:27:22 AM
https://kourindou.exblog.jp/28205045/

Hello! Accompanied by a boy that won't stop following me around (4 y.o.) and a girl fiercely in her "no" phase (2 y.o.), I've been whirling around busy writing "The Grimoire of Usami Secret Sealing Club Otherworld Shooting Record"; releasing April 27th (advertisement).

Without even the time to go flower viewing the cherry blossoms have fallen, and without even feeling like spring the Heisei era is coming to an end.
It's in these little spare moments that I've stitched together a game.

(https://i.imgur.com/WoCfE2u.png)

Touhou Project 17th
  東方鬼形獣 (Touhou Kikeijuu)
    ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.

It's a story where animal spirits from Hell are scheming to take over the surface world by force, and you join forces with friendly animal spirits that have come to warn you in order to stop them before it starts.
The ones going towards Hell are Reimu, Marisa, and Youmu.
It's going to be a shooting game that's darker than usual, filled with animal themes, and just a tiny bit aggressive.

(https://i.imgur.com/cge1yFX.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/0Gksn5k.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/PzLywAb.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/Jgy8qzH.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/MhgefOF.png)

It's crunch time, so the screenshots are extremely likely to change.

Full release should be the summer. Unless something happens, the trial will be released on May 5 of the first Reitaisai in Reiwa. I'll see you there.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: aUsernameIsFineToo on April 17, 2019, 05:41:34 AM
I'm already digging that art. Looks a lot like the style he used in 16 and I'm all for it. 2019 really just keeps giving, now to play the waiting game!
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: the old guy on April 17, 2019, 05:44:43 AM
No Orin? Booooooo.

Youmu is cool. But Orin better be in a cameo at the very least!
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: ☆ Kana ☆ on April 17, 2019, 05:50:48 AM
OH GOD OH FUCK  :o

The art looks so GOOD, loving that title screen Reimu especially!

I wonder what the special mechanics will be this time around (aside from the "goast" subshots that is)  :3

too bad there's no cat goast rip me

Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: andykhang on April 17, 2019, 05:55:57 AM
Touhou + friendly animal spirit == Oh god those poor animal girl. Hope they don?t get Pachuned too early...
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Plubio on April 17, 2019, 06:15:05 AM
Oh no the toehoes became furry.
I'm in.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: gilde on April 17, 2019, 06:15:54 AM
Lmao oh my god this is definitely a twist from what I was expecting
Quote
Wolf Ghost
-Mega-powerful concentrated shot
-Wolf Mode time increased
-Personality becomes barbaric

Otter Ghost
-Mega-powerful bombs, default bomb count +1
-Otter Mode time increased
-Personality becomes opportunistic

Eagle Ghost
-Mega-powerful spread shot
-Eagle Mode time increased
-Personality becomes arrogant
Gameplay system evidently involves collecting animal items to fill that 5-icon meter in the corner. Simple enough, though it looks like the icons can also be filled with power and point items? 'Kay.

Judging by the diamond pattern on the lasers in gameplay screen 3, the player there is probably Marisa? Temporarily armed with huge Illusion Lasers thanks to Eagle Mode, I imagine

Normal Mode is titled "Shiba Inu Level" i love it
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on April 17, 2019, 06:28:13 AM
As for my own thoughts, I really really like the stylization of the game title. It looks so good.

The stage shown looks to be somewhere around Muenzuka, from my guess. You might be heading towards Higan to end up in Hell as a kind of unexpected entrance.

The beast selection is labeled "choose the animal spirit that possesses you", using the same "possession" term as AoCF.

Literally hypers in my Touhou

goast

also canonical reasons why these three characters are the ones playable:
- youmu: is half phantom
- reimu: has been to hell before no biggie
- marisa:
is fucking dead
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: PyuDi on April 17, 2019, 06:39:37 AM
So now waiting for the release of "WBaWC"
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: andykhang on April 17, 2019, 06:52:42 AM
Oh no the toehoes became furry.
I'm in.

Oh god, Touhou literally have Fursona now. The furry art will be thriving.

Also, barbaric is definitely Reimu, opportunistic is definitely Marisa, and you could kinda said that Youmu can be abit over her head I guess?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: SerB18 on April 17, 2019, 07:06:21 AM
Yes! Ive waited so long for Youmu to return! Anyone who doubted me can suck it!

Seriously, Zun has really stepped up his style this time I like it!
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: gilde on April 17, 2019, 07:07:46 AM
"wily beast and weakest creature"...... hmMmMmM what if the players' spirit critters are lying and they're actually the ones plotting to beat up the other critters and take over hell?? makes u think

Also the JP title and logo might totally be a spoof of Parasyte (寄生獣 / kiseijuu) I just realized lol
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: PK on April 17, 2019, 08:27:42 AM
Oh boy. Animal-themed! In Hell! With Youmu! Wooo!

Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Raikaria on April 17, 2019, 08:50:48 AM
So; it seems we're on some sort of 'Hell Saga' after Hecatia in 15 and now we're going to Hell. Following 10-13.5 all being connected directly and effectively a result of the Moriya Shrine's actions. Unsure how 16 fits in however. Although DDC is clearly some sort of filler plot-wise now.

Actually a little bit surprised there's no Sanae given the animal theme and her Frog-Snake shots from UFO. Would have been a good time to re-use those.

Also in before the obligatory Mima speculation because she debuted in HRTP's Hell Route.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: sweetlittlepoison on April 17, 2019, 09:18:26 AM
im very excited!!! personally i love youmu so i am happy to see her here!
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Fluury on April 17, 2019, 09:40:46 AM
This game is looking fine! From the description, I'm getting extreme LoLk vibes. Hoping for some jamming tracks and a Steam release.

Let's hope that ZUN's learned from VD though and doesn't make the special activation on something stupid, though.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on April 17, 2019, 09:59:36 AM
Literally hypers in my Touhou

inb4 TouhouPachi DaiOuJou memes

Subshots do feel inspired by it though - Wolf is Shotia, Eagle is Leinyan, Otter is... anti-Exy. Nine combinations is cool, but balancing the game for them all gonna be a bitch (and ZUN probably won't spend enough time on it, as usual).

Actually a little bit surprised there's no Sanae given the animal theme and her Frog-Snake shots from UFO. Would have been a good time to re-use those.

She only used those because they represent her goddesses. Dealing with generic animal spirits doesn't really fit her. Reimu is more open about her methods so she fits anywhere, Youmu is there likely because they're spirits (same reasoning as 10D, pretty much), and Marisa is, well, Marisa.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kilgamayan on April 17, 2019, 10:36:12 AM
GOAST

GOAST

GOAST
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kingault on April 17, 2019, 11:10:37 AM
Otter goasts AND Youmu? This is shaping up to be pretty good already.

(Also hi I'm still alive)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: PapilLionesskort on April 17, 2019, 11:18:00 AM
Took 'em long enough! Maybe in five years his children can help out with the process.


Jokes aside, I'm looking forward to May 5th. <3
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on April 17, 2019, 11:36:01 AM
Is youmu's phantom half a fire-breathing dragon???
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on April 17, 2019, 11:44:57 AM
New game, yay ~ <3

Sooooo ... can you say that ... what we're getting this time is a ... bullet hell ?!!! *WINK WINK WINK WINK WINK*
You'd figure that someone who knows unusual words like phantasmagoria, trilithon and tokamak would know how to spell ghost but apparently not. Not that I'm complaining tho, what with there being an etanity since the release of the last integer game, so, hey.

From what I can gather from the screeshots, getting at the very least 3 animal "goasts" of the same type enable you to use some sort of power up shot. Maybe it's one of these things where the more you have of one certain type of thing, the longer the effect for the bonus that type of thing grant is gonna be longer or something around these lines ? At any rate, it seems to me that the shot power up this time might potentially be reminiscent of the fangame Riverbed Soul Saver's hyper mode.

What I'm a bit curious of are the things on the bottom left of the screenshots that look like a paw shaped power item (pawer item ? *WINK WI-) for one, and a paw shaped point item (pawint item ?) for the other. Like, do activating whatever gimmick this game's got while you got 3 pawer items's is gonna get you lives or something else and would an activation with 3 pawint item earns you some kind of score related bonus during activation ? And what happens to the excess items you have (the ones different from the 3 similar items) during activation ? Do they get tossed in the garbage can if they're animal items or do they give some kind of bonus (As in, bomb shards / items for otter "goasts", life shards / items for pawer items, PIV items for pawint items) ? And if so, what happens to the Wolf and Eagle items (since they're supposed to give a bonus to the Mega focused shots or Mega unfocused shots duration respectively)

And more questions ...

Anyway, regarding gameplay mechanics, what I'm the most curious of is the way [animal name] mode thingy is gonna work : does it make you invulnerable or not ? And do you have control over when to stop it ? Cuz depending on how these questions are answered, this game may either be one of the more balanced ones in terms of mechanics or very, VERY brokexploitable. Like, very. Also, speaking of shots power ups, I wonder if it's possible we're gonna get a repeat of HSiFS demo's Winter release bazillions damage or something much more modest.

Also I'm pretty glad Youmu's back. I was a pretty big fan of her charged attacks from TD, which served me really well in its extra stage, so I hope she'll still have it.



Anyway, uncertain gameplay speculation aside, if there is something that I would "want" or "not want" regarding how things are gonna work for this game, then I hope that if a character from a previous game is to make an appearance, then I'd hope it would be as a midboss rather than a stage boss, that way it won't take a spot nor conversation away from new characters.

And while Hell stuff has been more relevant in the manga, I hope the story and the in-universe conversations going to explain things that were already brought in the mangas but for the game, like, the story should manage to stand up by itself and not need to be complemented by OUTSIDE, extraneous work in order to make sense as a story. Dunno if I'm clear.



Also, the animal parts of the japanese title on the title screen seems a bit suspicious to me. Like, what if they're hinting a wee bit towards the identity of the big bad this time ? Someone from Hell with those animal motifs ... or not.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on April 17, 2019, 11:58:07 AM
Is youmu's phantom half a fire-breathing dragon???

Good catch. I'd say it's likely that the selected beast goast spirit will somehow influence the character sprite, since according to glide's translation it'll influence their personality as well.

But given how prominently the "dragon" shape is shown on the title and main menu, the final boss will probably NOT be a dragon. I mean, when did ZUN ever spoil the plot of his games that much in advance?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Crescendo on April 17, 2019, 12:00:09 PM

The ones going towards Hell...

...darker than usual, filled with animal themes, and just a tiny bit aggressive.
*SA flashbacks*


Holy cow. Everything looks really nice, especially that logo (mmm yes). I'm curious who will be responsible for the incident this time...

The animal system gives me UFO vibes, but with shots? That sounds cool.

Also, hi Youmu. I don't use you but it's great to see you again.

I've just noticed spell practice hallelujah
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: aListers on April 17, 2019, 12:04:58 PM
Wow, the art is really cute this time around. I'm really hyped for this new release. The last 2 Touhou games have been the most fun for since MOF and I'm hoping that this one will keep the streak running. Having seen Youmu in a dream recently makes me especially hyped to see her back too. I even think that the title artwork is really cool this tine around.

I won't be able to judge a game properly until the trial though so I'm looking forward to that. The soundtracks have been on point recently so I'm once again hoping for the best on this one.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Lebon14 on April 17, 2019, 12:29:53 PM
Was it just me that read "Wily" as "Wild" then thought "Cool title" the reread it correctly as "Wily" then went "wtf this title"?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Hope ♦ Metal on April 17, 2019, 12:37:02 PM
ZUN's art just keeps getting better every year. Also I did misread the title too.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: MrNoobomnenie on April 17, 2019, 12:44:54 PM
Maybe "goast" is actually a fusion of "ghost" and "beast"?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Bias Bus on April 17, 2019, 01:08:42 PM
Beasts from Hell, huh? Looks like we're going back to the underground. Sounds like some beasts took up Okuu's mantle and wants to pick up where she was gonna start off at in SA.

Either way, I'm lookin forward to seeing what new characters we encounter along the way.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on April 17, 2019, 01:09:50 PM
Maybe "goast" is actually a fusion of "ghost" and "beast"?
Now I feel so stupid for thinking it was a typo...
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on April 17, 2019, 01:20:43 PM
Intentional or not, it's still stupid. It makes me think of "goats" rather than "beasts" or even "ghosts". So yeah, you're aided by a wolf goat, otter goat and eagle goat, deal with it.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Fulisha of Light on April 17, 2019, 01:39:26 PM
Intentional or not, it's still stupid. It makes me think of "goats" rather than "beasts" or even "ghosts". So yeah, you're aided by a wolf goat, otter goat and eagle goat, deal with it.
*crazy theory* What if that's a hint to another part of the plot or a boss?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suwako Moriya on April 17, 2019, 01:55:50 PM
Occam's Razor says it's a typo.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: thehelmetguy1 on April 17, 2019, 02:14:19 PM
G O A S T
O
A
S
T

Anyways, we are finally getting Touhou 17! Can't wait for it to come out!
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: 862ian on April 17, 2019, 02:35:34 PM
Perhaps one of the bosses is a Amikiri if how the title looks is anything to go by. (not likely to be a final stage or a ex stage boss or really anything beyond a 3rd stage boss imho, that is if the title is anything to go by.) But i feel like there is a decent chance one of the bosses could be a Amikiri? i dunno. :wat:

Also self-mandatory Mima will be in Touhou 17.

Real talk though, i have a feeling we will see potentially a mole yokai, a earthworm yokai, and or a bat yokai perhaps among other cave/subterranean dwellers? On the other hand i do feel like the first couple of stages will be a reference to SA with like either Okuu or Rin showing up and giving some direction or some of the other bosses helping in the directional sense. (Satori comes to mind personally)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CF7 on April 17, 2019, 02:37:02 PM
I want this.
Also looking at main menu. Spell Practice is there. Hooray.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: ふねん1 on April 17, 2019, 03:41:23 PM
Yaaay Youmu's back! Hopefully her shot isn't as awkward to control as in TD - she may have something more "normal" to fit with the new hypers, which btw I'm stoked over if they're really more like DOJ's hypers than TD's. And with this game, Youmu has now been playable in as many of the shooters as Sakuya, can you believe that? :V

I'm also behind the idea that "goast" is a typo. Would be typical of him, really.

And the way the title is set up, maybe we'll have another dual final boss, or barring that, dual antagonists in separate stages? May 5 can't come soon enough.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Helepolis on April 17, 2019, 04:51:41 PM
I know what I need to line up for at Reitaisai this year.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Shizzo on April 17, 2019, 04:58:50 PM
Goast is probably another typo, but sometimes we have these Faily moments.  It's not like he's an Evel person for that or anything.

Jokes aside, I'm so excited!!  Cinco de Mayo can't come any sooner!!  I'm particularly excited that he mentioned it'll be a 'darker' game.  I know that ZUN's wording with that is a bit funny (he said that HSiFS Stage 5 was supposed to be scary or something), but still, all of those big toothy maws + hell + reddish themes makes it sound pretty unique.  I'm looking forward to what he'll come up with this time!
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kanade on April 17, 2019, 06:32:04 PM
Bugger me, I haven't been up to date with the official manga but I'm guessing that 17's setting/plot will be based on manga setting or something?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on April 17, 2019, 06:38:27 PM
Bugger me, I haven't been up to date with the official manga but I'm guessing that 17's setting/plot will be based on manga setting or something?

It's still unclear, but highly likely. There's been signs of something big coming from hell since Visionary Fairies in Shrine started back in 2016, and a lot of big stuff related to it has been the main feature of the last three or so chapters of both that and Wild and Horned Hermit. However, none of it has yet come to a firm conclusion, so if you want to catch up on things, now's the time.

As for the new game, I'm greatly excited to see a game like this. We haven't seen hell since the very first Touhou game, and I imagine we'll see a lot more than we did back then. Hoping ZUN knocks this one out of the park.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Despatche on April 17, 2019, 07:02:39 PM
WILY
BEAST
AND
WEAKEST
CREATURE

is a pretty satisfying phrase to say out loud.

That logo is insane.

Somewhat bummed about just Youmu again. Should have been an animal character instead, or even a showing of some Chireiden characters. This would have been the perfect opportunity to make a playable Satori.

That aside, CROSS BEAST REIMU, time to BEAST OUT
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: teefa85 on April 17, 2019, 07:27:32 PM
I must say, Youmu looks pretty adorable!  Glad to see her back...she's up there on my favorite characters list.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on April 17, 2019, 08:09:24 PM
Bugger me, I haven't been up to date with the official manga but I'm guessing that 17's setting/plot will be based on manga setting or something?

It does seem that this is what the written works have been hinting at, and VFiS might actually lead into this game. But WaHH (the new chapter is out today, btw) looks like it'll resolve itself before long. If not and Kasen is somehow in this game, well, that'll feel too lame and predictable, honestly. Her current plotline drags on for way too long as it is, thankyouverymuch.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Aeteas on April 17, 2019, 08:52:25 PM
These screenshots give more information than the HSiFS ones, so I guess it's time to speculate wildly about gameplay mechanics. It's kind of pointless since ZUN will probably change a lot of things, and most of it will be clear after the game releases. But it's fun, so whatever.

Well, for starters, it seems like getting 5 animal items triggers a hyper. Getting mostly red wolf items triggers the wolf mode, and for Reimu, it seems like it's based on the focused shot. And the screenshot with the eagle mode seems like it's based on the Marisa's unfocused laser shot. My guess is that all characters have three unique hyper modes, so presumably Reimu's eagle mode shot would be based on homing amulets, and Marisa's wolf mode shot would be based on magic missiles. Then the otter mode would revolve around the bomb, but I'm not sure how that would work. It could just have an attack that's based on the bomb, or it could be something like a shield that gives you a free bomb when you get hit. I'm not sure what ZUN would come up with.

It also seems like you can use power items and point items as substitutes for animal items. Presumably, power items substitute for wolf items, and point items substitute for eagle items, since that makes the most sense colorwise. I'm guessing the basic idea is like DDC where you have to autocollect a lot of items at once. Then you can use them to charge your hyper, and whether it's counts as red items or blue items depends on the exact counts of the items you collect. I also noticed that in the first gameplay screenshot, there's actually a lot of items. There usually aren't any enemies that drop that many items in the early game, so I'm guessing that killing enemies with one of these hypers will increase the number of items that get dropped. If I'm correct so far, that means there might be some hyper recharge shenanigans where you kill lots of enemies as your hyper runs out and then autocollect the items to get to your next hyper faster. HSiFS was more of a bullet cancelling game, and LoLK was more of grazing game, so it would make sense for this game to be more an item collection based game or something else.

It also seems like the point item value in this game isn't tied to just grazing, so hypers probably also increase the PIV somehow. Different modes probably have different effects, but I can't predict anything at this point. I wonder how the rest of the scoring system fits around this. Reimu's, Marisa's, and Youmu's bombs aren't made to bombgraze with, and I don't think think they're that good for cancelling bullets either, so maybe bombs in scoreruns are mostly for autocollecting and killing enemies. That would also mean that scoring during bosses would probably involve manual grazing, spell card bonuses, and/or routing hypers at particular moments. Spell card bonuses were pretty low in the last two games, so it wouldn't surprise me if ZUN made them higher in this game, especially if boss milking is less prominent. Having said all that, I personally think ZUN would come up with something different for boss scoring. I just don't know what it would be.

It seems life pieces are back. From the screenshots, it doesn't look there's any mechanics in the stages that gives life pieces unless ZUN just didn't use them. There is one bomb piece, but that's probably dropped by the midboss. If ZUN doesn't change the life piece situation, there might not be many lives in this game. ZUN changing things seems like the most likely case to me, though.

I wonder how much of this I got right.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Failure McFailFace on April 18, 2019, 01:59:49 AM
i have resurrected my forum account from the dead to post this message

WOO NEW GAME

and goast

and wow that logo is square

and reimu's gohei just keeps getting longer with each game
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Leon゠Helsing on April 18, 2019, 03:10:36 AM
and reimu's gohei just keeps getting longer with each game
I think it's basically a staff now :V
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Raikaria on April 18, 2019, 05:17:31 AM
WARNING: The below speculation contains major spoilers for WaHH. Do not read if you do not wish to be spoilt.

So; recent events in WaHH reveal that Kasen is basically evil all along, and is an Oni that resides in Hell. One of her abilities is control/empathy with animals, as previously shown.

At more or less the exact same time; Touhou 17 is revealed, where animals from Hell are coming to basically invade Gensokyo.

Bit of a co-incidence; don't you think?

I'd say the odds are extremely high that Kasen is either the Stage 6 or EX boss of this game. Especially as ZUN has wanted to use her as an EX boss before but decided against it.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Serela on April 18, 2019, 05:24:21 AM
WARNING: The below speculation contains major spoilers for WaHH. Do not read if you do not wish to be spoilt.

So; recent events in WaHH reveal that Kasen is basically evil all along, and is an Oni that resides in Hell. One of her abilities is control/empathy with animals, as previously shown.

At more or less the exact same time; Touhou 17 is revealed, where animals from Hell are coming to basically invade Gensokyo.

Bit of a co-incidence; don't you think?

I'd say the odds are extremely high that Kasen is either the Stage 6 or EX boss of this game. Especially as ZUN has wanted to use her as an EX boss before but decided against it.
The chances of a major game boss NOT being a new character is extremely low, even if she hasn't had a bullet hell appearance before.
Also, that plot will probably be wrapped up mostly in-manga. Still, she might end up making a midboss appearance for one of those, the correlation definitely is there. (And since she hasn't had a bullet hell appearance, stage 4~5 isn't entirely out of the question, albeit unlikely)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Raikaria on April 18, 2019, 06:39:43 AM
The chances of a major game boss NOT being a new character is extremely low, even if she hasn't had a bullet hell appearance before.
Also, that plot will probably be wrapped up mostly in-manga. Still, she might end up making a midboss appearance for one of those, the correlation definitely is there. (And since she hasn't had a bullet hell appearance, stage 4~5 isn't entirely out of the question, albeit unlikely)
Prior to Touhou 16; we'd have said the chance of the Extra Stage boss literally being the Stage 6 boss was low as well.

Nothing is out of the question.

Also I raise you the various Marisa/Reimu fights; Yuyuko in TD and Aya in MoF. It's not unheard of, and actually seems to occur every few games. None of them have been beyond Stage 4 however. [Especially since in a standard Touhou game Marisa is seemingly forbidden from being anything except an effective Stage 4 boss. She even manages this in GFW since there's only 3 stages so the Extra is Stage 4...]
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Quukii on April 18, 2019, 11:33:34 AM
I think it would be very disappointing for the Ex or Stage 6 boss to be a known character.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on April 18, 2019, 12:19:40 PM
There seems to be something written under the life/bomb gauges, it looks like it's in katakana but It's pretty blurry. Anyone?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: PyuDi on April 18, 2019, 12:39:18 PM
There seems to be something written under the life/bomb gauges, it looks like it's in katakana but It's pretty blurry. Anyone?

That seems like "かけら", meaning "pieces".
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Piranha on April 18, 2019, 04:13:33 PM
OMG it's time again! Can't believe how excited I am. Has it really been 2 years since TH16?!

Looks really good for now, can't wait to hear the new tracks and see the new characters, as usual. :derp:
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: TresserT on April 18, 2019, 04:39:51 PM
Prior to Touhou 16; we'd have said the chance of the Extra Stage boss literally being the Stage 6 boss was low as well.

Nothing is out of the question.

Also I raise you the various Marisa/Reimu fights; Yuyuko in TD and Aya in MoF. It's not unheard of, and actually seems to occur every few games. None of them have been beyond Stage 4 however. [Especially since in a standard Touhou game Marisa is seemingly forbidden from being anything except an effective Stage 4 boss. She even manages this in GFW since there's only 3 stages so the Extra is Stage 4...]
The chances of Kasen showing up somewhere in game is reasonable enough, but the chances of her being the final or extra boss are very low.

Also, I'm preeeeetty sure the thing about wanting to make her a boss in TD was referring to extra MIDboss, not the full on boss.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Serela on April 18, 2019, 05:08:06 PM
Prior to Touhou 16; we'd have said the chance of the Extra Stage boss literally being the Stage 6 boss was low as well.
I mean, calling Junko the ex boss is quite a bit of a stretch... she only makes a couple cameo appearances. :P

Yuyuko as a stage 1 boss was pretty hilarious tho'.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CF7 on April 18, 2019, 06:18:14 PM
I think he means Okina.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Raikaria on April 18, 2019, 08:32:27 PM
I mean, calling Junko the ex boss is quite a bit of a stretch... she only makes a couple cameo appearances. :P

Yuyuko as a stage 1 boss was pretty hilarious tho'.

16 Serela. That's Okina.

Although yeah you could probobly count Junko as well somewhat.

Hell; if you want to count side games, Reimu; Byakuren and Miko are the final bosses of Hopeless Masqurade, and Marisa is the EX boss of GFW.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Serela on April 18, 2019, 10:05:26 PM
confirmed I can't count
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Despatche on April 18, 2019, 10:52:36 PM
Prior to Touhou 16; we'd have said the chance of the Extra Stage boss literally being the Stage 6 boss was low as well.

Nothing is out of the question.
Having the final boss reappear as the extra boss makes a certain amount of sense. Having the stage 5, final, or extra boss be a character from another game really doesn't. The whole point of those slots is to introduce new characters: a mastermind, a second-in-command, and (usually) someone who is related to the mastermind or to the incident. From Koumakyou to Tenkuushou, this has not changed. Even the fighting games and Kaeiduka (which really should be a .X game) always introduce a new character or two as the final boss. The other sidegames typically don't, because they're not supposed to. This is a very clear pattern that one can rely on.

Aside from Matara, the closest thing to an exception for any of this is Mamizou, who has little to do with either the rest of the Shinreibyou cast nor with the incident (directly, anyway), and instead has to do with the cast of the previous game. A borderline exception is Raiko, who isn't close with either Seija or Shinmyoumaru, and appears only as a result of the incident in her game. Of course, these are both new characters. Matara is also still a new character, even if she appears in her game two separate times.

Not only that, but we're going into uncharted territory. New Hell has rarely been spoken of in the series before this new game and the new Ibarakasen chapters; Hecatia was the first time in ages that the topic came up in such a big way (which is probably why she showed up in the latest VFiS chapter). Even before now, Hecatia mostly talked about the history of "Hell" in general, rather than anything along the lines of a recent incident like this new game. Why would a character we already know appear here? Never mind that the strong animal youkai we know are characters like Utsuho, Nue, Mamizou, and Ran, all of which would prefer to stay out of New Hell if they can help it. I doubt ZUN wants to write some weird corruption story. Goodness, could you imagine some ridiculous corruption story for Keine or something? Disgusting. People looking for strange fanfic material can start right there.

TL;DR: No, you're not getting Mima. Sorry. Not without a substantial redesign that makes her into a new character, like what happened with Alice and Yuka (and Byakuren, who might as well be a redesign for Shinki).
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: PK on April 18, 2019, 11:42:22 PM
I hope we get at least some preexisting character as midboss.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drayen on April 19, 2019, 03:49:16 AM
Maybe I'm getting old, but shot types are getting flashier and flashier. It's getting distracting when all you want to look at are enemy bullets. Anyways, more touhou is always good :D
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on April 19, 2019, 04:19:14 AM
It's only the first one that's the regular shot; the others are hypers.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: game2011 on April 19, 2019, 04:14:13 PM
Prior to Touhou 16; we'd have said the chance of the Extra Stage boss literally being the Stage 6 boss was low as well.

Nothing is out of the question.

Also I raise you the various Marisa/Reimu fights; Yuyuko in TD and Aya in MoF. It's not unheard of, and actually seems to occur every few games. None of them have been beyond Stage 4 however. [Especially since in a standard Touhou game Marisa is seemingly forbidden from being anything except an effective Stage 4 boss. She even manages this in GFW since there's only 3 stages so the Extra is Stage 4...]
ZUN takes pride in introducing new characters, and bringing back an old character for an EX stage is unlikely of him.  Okina is still considered a new character, even if she appeared in two stages.  Using an old character as an early stage boss is more likely.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Popcioslav on April 19, 2019, 04:44:05 PM
Haven't posted here about this, but I'm actually extremely hyped this time.
And while I'm usually being a logical realist and I should say that there are no chances of any previous boss returning... well...

Stage 1 seems to either be Moenzuka or some other river, we know game takes place in Hell and there are no teasers in any of the images for a boss. Someone who would welcome guests to hell and is on river would match Charon and since ZUN is using more greek mythology lately ... I really hope he's teasing either Komachi or Eiki reference/boss cameo in first stage? Of course nothing I've said so far makes sense, in HSiFS ZUN also didn't showcase Eternity in any of the teasers until the CD pic, ZUN really hasn't used more greek mythology other than for Hecatia maybe and really it can just be a really cool new OC and I'd still be happy.

I think ZUN's and pretty much every solo creator's whole deal is that they can really do whatever they want, so it will be hard to predict whatever truly anything returning is out of question or relevant. If he wants to bring Yuuka in PoVF, he can. If he wants to bring Cirno, but he forgot he gave Marisa the winter stage in HSiFS, than he can just give Cirno a tan and bam she's representing summer now. Now we have a dream world with a replica of every character. Now we have cameras that capture bullets. I really wouldn't even be surprised if by Touhou 18 ZUN will run out of cool powers, so he'll just introduce Stands.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: VividMemory2000 on April 20, 2019, 12:38:42 AM
Blah blah MUH PATTERNS

Kasen is definitely going to be a full on boss. Mark my words!

And to this VERY day i still wish for mima to come back!
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: not ZUNs wife on April 21, 2019, 08:51:44 AM
very excited for this game, seems like there's a vision here that's been a long time brewing
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: 862ian on April 26, 2019, 02:32:01 PM
Honestly i have a feeling any PC98 characters zun wants to bring over he will for the 25th anniversary (or do something for said characters in general) Since half a century is a major milestone for a series, especially one that is a indie series. But for bosses the first stage boss will likely be a SA character (Okuu or Orin come to mind both dealing with spirits) Just to give a direction for the player to head in.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Honoakari on April 28, 2019, 01:46:11 PM
The kanji title can be translated as "Demon-shaped beast", or else "Oni-shaped beast". I assume this is a hint regarding the Stage 6 boss, or maybe the EX boss, or maybe some other important character...

Since the kanji for "Oni" is there in the title, Kasen could make an appearance in this game.

It would be interesting if we could see some PC-98 characters return, though that's probably not going to happen (who would return anyway? Mima? Kikuri? Konngara?)...

It seems to me there are a lot of people who do not understand the difference between "Old Hell" and "New Hell". Touhou 11 takes place in "Old Hell". Touhou 17 will take place in "New Hell" (also commonly known as: "Hell"). Since the setting is different, there's no reason for the Touhou 11 characters to appear in this game.

It would be nice if one day ZUN could return to the style of the older PC games (especially 06-08... those were the best). Ever since Touhou 13 it feels like ZUN has been lowering the bar in terms of characters, music, danmaku... Fortunately, so far the new game looks promising.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on April 28, 2019, 05:15:41 PM
One week to go, woo.

Traditionally in Touhou games, you generally enter / reach the big bad's turf at or after stage 4. I personally expect whatever place we're starting from to be somewhere close to the entrance of a proper Hell, and stage 2 and 3 are gonna be pretty much kiddy stuff compared to the proper Hell-like Hell or the fancy building owned by the big bad located in there that these stages are leading us towards.

Anyway, dunno if this is something that we're gonna see in the earlier stages, but generally, for some reason, for a fair number of Hell related stuff, ZUN has associated wind (ie : lullaby of deserted Hell's beginning, wind blowing over Mt Ooe, Winds of Agartha, ...). Dunno why ZUN does that, but I wouldn't really be surprised if ZUN uses wind related motifs for this game.

There have been various mentions of types of Hells and things found in them, so, wild speculation here, but among the possible contenders for stages, we might possibly get a stage that's got the blood needle grass (if that was the name, damn I really need to reread FS), or some kind of barren place where wind blows heavily, or possibly the Hell of blood pools that Murasa was in, or none of those or whatever. And darkness. Potentially lots of darkness.
Or eventually the paradise like place that Hecatia intends to set up in a Hell, brought up in VFiS's chapter 14, which is specifically designed to make the disembodied spirits jelly and regretfull of their lack of corporeal body.

It seems to me there are a lot of people who do not understand the difference between "Old Hell" and "New Hell". Touhou 11 takes place in "Old Hell". Touhou 17 will take place in "New Hell" (also commonly known as: "Hell"). Since the setting is different, there's no reason for the Touhou 11 characters to appear in this game.

There are plenty of Hells, but aside from how chaotic they are, their most defining feature is how they're instrumental in torturing and punishing the souls of the damned in Touhou. Old Hell is still a "hell " in the sense where it is a location that reunites the physical criterias that makes a hell a hell (extra super large, lack of lifeforce, not living creature friendly, dark, ...), but is not a hell in the more "administrative" sense where hells serves to punish badies cuz Old Hell got decommissioned.

The connections between the various kinds of hells is incertain though, but it is quite possible for the various hells to be located in one outrageously HUGE place and are physically connected, but travel is impractical due to the sheer size of the place ; just as it's possible that each and every single hell each exist in planes that are separate from each other ; or some are physically connected while others are in other planes. Clarification is currently needed.

It would be nice if one day ZUN could return to the style of the older PC games (especially 06-08... those were the best). Ever since Touhou 13 it feels like ZUN has been lowering the bar in terms of characters, music, danmaku...
Ehhh, that is LARGELY debatable. Going from the more unique composition styles of stuff like Clownpiece's, Raiko's, and some other songs to the more intense and generally agreed upon to be climatic final boss themes such Shinmyoumaru's or Junko's on the music side ; or considering characters such as Okina, Kokoro, Sagume, Sumireko and others, who clearly have much consideration towards the inspiration into making them AND what they add to the series ; and as for danmaku ... eh, there are ok and not-so-ok ones (it's a bit complex for me to possibly rant about in a few sentences). Anyway, there are plenty of considerations that need to be put in regards to the new material, and as a lore guy, and I'm sure various other people will echo my sentiments, Touhou has never been as interesting as it currently is. So, I personally do not see much things that lend credence to how the bar gets lowered in recent works. It does not make much sense that ZUN's ability as a creator go down while his experience as a creator piles up. While I'd agree that most of the older games are pretty polished compared to the newer releases, I doubt the new releases are as crappy as how the harshest critics say they are, having played them as well.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Honoakari on April 28, 2019, 06:55:18 PM
Quote
Touhou has never been as interesting as it currently is.

IDK man... Maybe this is how newer fans feel about it. Because they perceive Touhou, as it currently is, as a whole.

In my case I became a Touhou fan 10 years ago... To me the Touhou of back then was the whole. Since then, ZUN has been expanding the Touhou-verse in ways which sadly have not necessarily been in tune with what I consider to be the 'feel' of the original Touhou. Or in tune with what my hopes/expectations were for Touhou's future back then.

Because of this my interest has been dwindling bit by bit every year. The reason why I'm still around is because of the occasional good character and the occasional good song (it's all subjective so I don't think there is much to debate here). Sadly no new release seems to satisfy me anymore. The worst were Touhou 14 and 16 where I disliked almost all of the new characters... The music in general has been okay, but it doesn't feel as good compared to the previous 'era', apart from a few songs. Same with the danmaku.

Funnily, I found some of the recent fangames to be more enjoyable than some of the recent Touhou games (in terms of music and gameplay, characters not so much).

I think there is this pressure in the community... that in order to be a Touhou fan, you have to like everything about it. In my opinion Touhou has become so large, to the point where it's just impossible to like everything...

Anyway let's not have such a depressing discussion (here)... To be honest, I am happy that ZUN keeps making games every year. More is better than less. I will explore this new game with positive expectations, like I always do...
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: TresserT on April 28, 2019, 10:47:49 PM
I feel, as time has gone on, ZUN's focus has shifted away from the patterns that touhou is famous for and more towards interesting mechanics that are intended to keep the series fresh. Patterns nowadays tend to be more about how to best present a challenge with the mechanics. It kind of started in DDC and you can see it in LoLK, but HSiFS was the most blatant about it. Nemuno, the dancers, and Okina in particular have incredibly bland patterns that only become interesting because of the ways they force you to use the release mechanic.

I think this kind of thing is nice and it does help keep the series fresh, but I do wish he'd go back to the classic pattern focus he had in the earlier games, at least for a bit. Doesn't seem like 17 will be that kind of game though.

Still, I'm excited for the new characters and music. I don't think the story telling or music has gotten worse at all compared to older games (though the same experimentality thing applies to the music, he always mixes in a couple "classic" tracks to keep things balanced).
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on April 28, 2019, 11:19:09 PM
I feel, as time has gone on, ZUN's focus has shifted away from the patterns that touhou is famous for and more towards interesting mechanics that are intended to keep the series fresh. Patterns nowadays tend to be more about how to best present a challenge with the mechanics. It kind of started in DDC and you can see it in LoLK, but HSiFS was the most blatant about it. Nemuno, the dancers, and Okina in particular have incredibly bland patterns that only become interesting because of the ways they force you to use the release mechanic.

As someone who has never used the release mechanic, I'm not sure I can agree. Personally I think HSiFS has some of the mechanically most interesting danmaku since UFO, and Okina in particular is one of the flashiest bosses in the series. While it's true it's been a long while since we've had a pattern that really sets the mind ablaze like Scarlet Gensokyo or Virtue of Wind God, I think in terms of dodging the danmaku is just as interesting and engaging as it's always been.

As for the music, I've given this a lot of thought recently. While it's undeniable ZUN's style has changed since the "golden age," I've come to question how much this suggests ZUN is losing his touch. When you think about it, what people most associate as "the best the series has to offer" in terms of sound is basically just PCB and IN. EoSD has a pretty different sound from those games, and even by PoFV the music was beginning to shift towards the style used in MoF. But personally, while I do miss the unique feel of those songs, I think the music in the newer games is largely just as good as it's ever been - just in different ways. But I think that kind of change is what shows the series is still alive. Just as the PC-98 games had a dreamy, childlike feel, and the early Windows games had that fantastical sound, I feel the music has continued to change and evolve. And while others may have their own opinion, I'm excited to continue following that change.

As for the characters, that is of course down to personal taste and not really the kind of thing one can debate. But personally HSiFS has my favorite cast ensemble since Suberranean Animism. I for one still am waiting for Narumi's chance to take off in the fandom.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: AGS on April 29, 2019, 11:31:35 PM
Pretty interesting this new Touhou game. I'm looking forward to it, specially the shottypes and the story in general.
Wouldn't be bad if there was a Lizard Goast too...maybe that's for the Extra?

Quote
Accompanied by a boy that won't stop following me around (4 y.o.) and a girl fiercely in her "no" phase (2 y.o.),
*chuckle*
Maybe "goast" is actually a fusion of "ghost" and "beast"?
Considering the usage of the word "wily", that's likely.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on April 30, 2019, 02:33:50 AM
IDK man... Maybe this is how newer fans feel about it. Because they perceive Touhou, as it currently is, as a whole.

In my case I became a Touhou fan 10 years ago... To me the Touhou of back then was the whole.
Oh please lmao, don't argue "I don't really like the new stuff because it isn't like the familiar old stuff" and then try to spin that as though people are saying """real""" touhou fans must like everything; it's attitudes like these that instead showcase the unwillingness to flow with the series and accept anything that isn't what you started with. You see microcosms of this any time a new game comes out and babies yell about how X was the last good work.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kafuu on April 30, 2019, 04:50:31 AM
Have been a fan of Touhou since MoF. ZUN never disappointed me
I like how he's connecting stories to each other in latest works
He even puts so much little details in his arts
Every time he releases a new music it becomes my instant favourite
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Jimmy on April 30, 2019, 04:08:53 PM
I share the same sentiment, except I have gotten into Touhou quite late (around HM).
I especially admire that, despite how much he has already created, he is still able to come up with new fresh designs and concepts, and he is a sole creator, doing every part of the games himself, hell, he even writes up the story for the official mangas. That, and I am generally very open minded to new concepts and ideas. It usually takes some time for me to fully embrace his new releases, and I think that goes for a lot of people here. There isn't really anything in Touhou so far that I can say I genuinely dislike, I just like some characters and themes more and some less.

I'm quite excited about this new game. Looking at the title and the HUD, it does bode something dark to come, at least to me, darker than what we have seen in the main games so far. Though, with how ZUN used the word "dark" in his past few games, I could be mistaken. Though, the landscape looks kind of unsettling for an early stage, wondering what the story will entail. Also, as per every new release, I look forward to messing around with the game's mechanics, and of course the characters and themes.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on April 30, 2019, 04:46:20 PM
Oh please lmao, don't argue "I don't really like the new stuff because it isn't like the familiar old stuff" and then try to spin that as though people are saying """real""" touhou fans must like everything; it's attitudes like these that instead showcase the unwillingness to flow with the series and accept anything that isn't what you started with. You see microcosms of this any time a new game comes out and babies yell about how X was the last good work.

Amazing how some people can criticize a point of view and then prove it in the same paragraph.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: The ⑨th Zentillion on April 30, 2019, 07:14:06 PM
Speaking of the babies Drake mentioned...
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on April 30, 2019, 07:41:43 PM
Well, I do see the other side's point of view. For many people, the cast ensemble of EoSD-PoFV is Touhou, and to this day a lot of fanworks still focus on those groups. I can see how it would be hard to keep accepting new groups after all these years, especially if one or two games didn't have characters that really spoke to you. But then, what is Touhou if not discovering the parts of characters that you like? Even though I've been in the fandom since 2007, I still sometimes gain a new appreciation for characters I didn't think all that much of for years. I guess what the "try to be accepting of everything" group, as they're being labeled, want is to avoid falling into the trap of being afraid of the series growing bigger. If you go into the works with an open mind, you're much more likely to find things you like than if you're skeptical of whether or not you can accept them.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on April 30, 2019, 08:08:55 PM
Speaking of the babies Drake mentioned...

Let me open your eyes on something. ZUN's games aren't perfect. They have a lot of good points, true. But each and every one of them has flaws in its gameplay. He likes experimenting with it, and those experiments usually lack sufficient polish. It's more noticeable in some games than other but it's there. The question is: can you overlook those flaws to enjoy the good stuff? If you do then great. But not everyone is like that, and neither they should be. Everyone has their own tastes and standards. So hey, maybe you guys should stop generalizing everyone like they're not even giving new stuff a chance? Especially when they say they did and enjoyed at least some part of it.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: The ⑨th Zentillion on April 30, 2019, 08:31:27 PM
Let me open your eyes on something. ZUN's games aren't perfect. They have a lot of good points, true. But each and every one of them has flaws in its gameplay. He likes experimenting with it, and those experiments usually lack sufficient polish. It's more noticeable in some games than other but it's there. The question is: can you overlook those flaws to enjoy the good stuff? If you do then great. But not everyone is like that, and neither they should be. Everyone has their own tastes and standards. So hey, maybe you guys should stop generalizing everyone like they're not even giving new stuff a chance? Especially when they say they did and enjoyed at least some part of it.

Well, no shit, Sherlock. Whether things are still good or not or have gotten better or worse are entirely subjective on something where lives are not on the stakes pile at all. But there's a difference between being mature about it or, well the opposite.

EDIT:  As an afterthought of posting this it does make this little squabble look pretty silly. Everyone needs to lighten up here, myself included.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: the old guy on April 30, 2019, 08:41:23 PM
No U!

CyberAngel, the more you post, the more convinced I am your actually 12.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Lebon14 on April 30, 2019, 09:15:35 PM
Oh, hey, this discussion again.

*tries typing something funny*
*lack of ideas*

WAHEY! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmkmrtnOMkA)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kilgamayan on April 30, 2019, 09:54:05 PM
This is the part where the bickering stops and discussion of the upcoming game resumes.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Nimono on April 30, 2019, 10:17:38 PM
Oh, hey, this discussion again.

*tries typing something funny*
*lack of ideas*

WAHEY! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmkmrtnOMkA)
Good, I was not disappointed by the contents of the link :D


I side with the hypothesis that your spirit allies may actually be the real enemies here- changing the characters' personalities to essentially antisocial does not sound like positive forces that want to help the world. Like how holding the possessed tool in DDC made your character more bloodthirsty in dialogue, and it was presented as a Very Bad Thing(tm). Though, I suppose it COULD just be an unintended side-effect that neither party wished for.

For chars... That area in the screenshots definitely looks like the locale of the finale for PoFV, so either Komachi or Eiki will absolutely appear. I'm guessing it'll be like TD- in this case, Stage 1 they'll need to go to Eiki to either get permission to enter Hell, or Hell's on the other side of it, and Eiki's being a blockade until they prove their power. Past that, probably all-new characters. I can't see SA chars appearing, since they're part of Old Hell.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on April 30, 2019, 10:24:02 PM
For chars... That area in the screenshots definitely looks like the locale of the finale for PoFV, so either Komachi or Eiki will absolutely appear. I'm guessing it'll be like TD- in this case, Stage 1 they'll need to go to Eiki to either get permission to enter Hell, or Hell's on the other side of it, and Eiki's being a blockade until they prove their power. Past that, probably all-new characters. I can't see SA chars appearing, since they're part of Old Hell.

Do note though that Shiki is actually relatively low on the rung of hell's hierarchy and pretty busy with her own work. In VFiS it was implied she hasn't even met Hecatia, and has only heard about her from others. To be honest, there's so little we know about hell - just that it's ruled by the kishin (and even then mostly in name only), is incomprehensibly big, and contains some of the most dangerous entities in any realm. Just about anyone could show up.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: gilde on May 01, 2019, 04:17:23 AM
I'm hopelessly torn between wanting to see more Ministry of Right and Wrong material and wanting to see completely bonkers new parts of Hell that haven't been mentioned at all yet.
(Although given ZUN's general modus operandi, the Ministry option would probably still involve a bunch of bonkers new stuff that hasn't been mentioned at all yet anyway :V)

The Stage 1 background screams Mount Osore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Osore) / Sai-no-Kawara (https://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/sai-no-kawara.html) imo, particularly the pinwheels
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: andykhang on May 01, 2019, 12:03:48 PM
Do note though that Shiki is actually relatively low on the rung of hell's hierarchy and pretty busy with her own work. In VFiS it was implied she hasn't even met Hecatia, and has only heard about her from others. To be honest, there's so little we know about hell - just that it's ruled by the kishin (and even then mostly in name only), is incomprehensibly big, and contains some of the most dangerous entities in any realm. Just about anyone could show up.

We also know that hell followed what is essentially super-meritocracy, in which the ultra most powerful get to have their way around, and the weak is basically cattle and breeding stock (there would probably be literal slave cow-girl, if ZUN was brave enough)...Come to think of it, wouldn't "Wily Beast and Weakest Creature" applied to the Hell Beast invading as well, and they're essentially foreign refugees running away from the nature disaster that's probably the final boss?

Edited: Like, it's probably likely to be true that Okina and Hecatia was having a silent, under-the-table cooperation (that Hecatia probably have no idea that she have, considering Okina's nature), considering the latest development of the "Fossilize Fairy Incident", in which Okina's incident triggered the event of the fairy running on sleep mode, in which Hecatia immediately come before the protag and offer to bring the fairy back into hell, while Okina lead the remaining one into her back world, essentially clearing Gensokyo out of fairy, in preperation for what coming next that's th17. Considering how Hecatia seriously think that Gensokyo is a nice resort realm, and the fact that not only Okina's incident came just after th15, and that her action directly lead to the fairy fossilization event in which Hecatia finally decided to reveal herself (and also the fact that Okina's symbol as the goddess of the disadvantage), it's likely.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: hyorinryu on May 02, 2019, 03:37:03 AM
Do note though that Shiki is actually relatively low on the rung of hell's hierarchy and pretty busy with her own work. In VFiS it was implied she hasn't even met Hecatia, and has only heard about her from others. To be honest, there's so little we know about hell - just that it's ruled by the kishin (and even then mostly in name only), is incomprehensibly big, and contains some of the most dangerous entities in any realm. Just about anyone could show up.

Shiki's PC-98 right? Have any other PC-98 people shown up in the mangas?


Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Failure McFailFace on May 02, 2019, 03:55:15 AM
Shiki's PC-98 right? Have any other PC-98 people shown up in the mangas?

They mean Shiki, as in Eiki Shiki from PoFV, not Shinki. AFAIK, not a single PC-98 character (that's not Reimu, Marisa, Alice, and Yuuka probably) hasn't showed up in any manga.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: game2011 on May 02, 2019, 07:35:42 AM
Demo coming out Sunday.  Think we can expect cover art and new character on it tomorrow?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kafuu on May 02, 2019, 02:34:32 PM
Demo coming out Sunday.  Think we can expect cover art and new character on it tomorrow?
The demo still hasn't gone gold master. Also CD jacket reveal is always one day before the release.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: VividMemory2000 on May 03, 2019, 12:57:19 PM
Shiki's PC-98 right? Have any other PC-98 people shown up in the mangas?

lol no

but genji did get a tiny reference in Strange and Bright Nature Deity

Something something pond in the back of the shrine something something moss growing on turtle's backs
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Lebon14 on May 04, 2019, 03:57:26 AM
(https://pds.exblog.jp/pds/1/201905/04/42/e0088742_12320293.jpg)

Demo disc!
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: AGS on May 04, 2019, 03:57:53 AM
Fuck, I was just gonna post it. lol
On the topic, have the original tweet: https://twitter.com/korindo/status/1124517959215357953
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Failure McFailFace on May 04, 2019, 04:03:05 AM
Confirmed: Stage 1/2/3 boss is a sheep.  :]

Maybe? Hair looks the part.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on May 04, 2019, 04:17:33 AM
Sitting on the stack of stones, nice. This would again link into the Sai no Kawara guess. Judging by where they are and her ears, it seems to be clear that this character is a kind of Jizou.


Nothing really worth mentioning in the blog post itself, but note that he's probably doing all the burning in his own house this time, judging by the toys and stuff.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: gilde on May 04, 2019, 04:19:47 AM
Omg omg omg
I'd been thinking like "oh i bet the S1 boss is either a ghost kid or a stone-kicking oni kid cos sai-no-kawara... but probably not jizo-bosatsu cause narumi already exists" NOPE!! SURPRISE, NARUMI GETS A NEW FRIEND
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: AGS on May 04, 2019, 04:23:33 AM
Sitting on the stack of stones, nice. This would again link into the Sai no Kawara guess. Judging by where they are and her ears, it seems to be clear that this character is a kind of Jizou.

Nothing really worth mentioning in the blog post itself, but note that he's probably doing all the burning in his own house this time, judging by the toys and stuff.

Must be easier for him this way.
About character backstory, someone mentioned Datsue-ba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datsue-ba
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on May 04, 2019, 04:33:24 AM
Omg omg omg
I'd been thinking like "oh i bet the S1 boss is either a ghost kid or a stone-kicking oni kid cos sai-no-kawara... but probably not jizo-bosatsu cause narumi already exists" NOPE!! SURPRISE, NARUMI GETS A NEW FRIEND
I thought it could've been Datsueba too but then I saw the ears
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: game2011 on May 04, 2019, 04:49:16 AM
Datsueba forces people to strip.

Hmmm...

Imagine the fan works...
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: AGS on May 04, 2019, 04:56:11 AM
I thought it could've been Datsueba too but then I saw the ears
Apparently the person who mentioned it didn't necessarily mean her, but rather someone based on the tale.
Datsueba forces people to strip.

Hmmm...

Imagine the fan works...
Oh no.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on May 04, 2019, 05:20:15 AM
Oh yeah, the other thing is that ZUN actually played with that idea already in SWR, where Komachi tells a child spirit mindlessly stacking stones that doing so won't do anything and knocks it over, explaining that doing so is breeding worldly attachment and preventing their passing on. So there Komachi is taking all the roles and ZUN converts it from being a malicious thing to a neutral thing.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: VividMemory2000 on May 04, 2019, 06:01:18 AM
Datsueba forces people to strip.

Hmmm...

Imagine the fan works...

Article also mentions

- those with no clothing have their skin stripped
- Those who steal have their fingers broken
- the sinner's head is tied to their feet

 :ohdear:
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Crescendo on May 04, 2019, 03:41:13 PM
- Those who steal have their fingers broken

Oh man.

Marisa better watch her back.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: AGS on May 05, 2019, 12:20:43 AM
Oh man.

Marisa better watch her back.
She'd probably have a hard time in this game, if the stage 1 boss was (or the stage 2 one happens to be) Datsueba.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Lebon14 on May 05, 2019, 12:57:01 AM
Oh boy. The spoilers will come very very soon here. It's the 5th in Japan!
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: WestTxTapper on May 05, 2019, 12:58:46 AM
Retaisai opening in thirty minutes.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: KaiserKnuckle on May 05, 2019, 02:29:07 AM
CH ICK EN

A N DD COW
[/b]
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Fulisha of Light on May 05, 2019, 02:45:39 AM
Boss spoilers
Rock girl is named Ebisu Eika, 2nd boss(?) is a rooster, and 3rd(?) is a cow(?) whose name I can't quite see.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kilgamayan on May 05, 2019, 02:54:34 AM
>
cow girl
[/color]

time for titty
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: KaiserKnuckle on May 05, 2019, 02:55:32 AM
戎 瓔花 Eika/Youka Ebisu, possibly like the god of fishermen??

牛崎 潤美 Urumi Ushizaki

庭渡 久侘歌 Kutaka Niwatari, kagewaka theorized on twitter that she's a reference to the 鶏地獄 (torijigoku, 'rooster hell') from the Hell Scroll
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Lebon14 on May 05, 2019, 03:24:55 AM
Demo sold out:
https://twitter.com/korindo/status/1124877126161784832

Apparently had a record crowd / sales from what I gathered.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: andykhang on May 05, 2019, 03:31:17 AM
I'm just jokingly said that ZUN would put a cow girl if he was brave enough...I guess he is then.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: KaiserKnuckle on May 05, 2019, 03:34:52 AM
URUMI HAS A BABY?? ? ? ? ?? SHE'S LITERALLY CRADLING IT IN HER SPRITE AEJGUOSDIFSAFKO
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: andykhang on May 05, 2019, 03:37:34 AM
URUMI HAS A BABY?? ? ? ? ?? SHE'S LITERALLY CRADLING IT IN HER SPRITE AEJGUOSDIFSAFKO
More like a stone baby though. Probably referencing something in her tale
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Shizzo on May 05, 2019, 04:39:07 AM
  Apparently  there are Jellyfish, Cow and Chick Goasts in the demo too; someone on twitter got one from beating the stage 1 midboss, but I'm not sure what causes them to drop or what they do.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Aeteas on May 05, 2019, 05:02:53 AM
  Apparently  there are Jellyfish, Cow and Chick Goasts in the demo too; someone on twitter got one from beating the stage 1 midboss, but I'm not sure what causes them to drop or what they do.

You can get the jellyfish one by beating the stage 1 midboss without killing any of the spirits she summon. Presumably, there's secret conditions for the others too, but I don't know what they are.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: jhun on May 05, 2019, 05:20:45 AM
The game is really enjoying. I'm glad they fixed the TD shot types
especially Marisa's torpedo and Youmu's roukanken slash they are so brokenly fun
. The music is quite ominous as ZUN said it is indeed a dark game. Can't wait to play the full game.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on May 05, 2019, 05:29:31 AM
Fun game so far!
The different hypers are pretty entertaining, though I'm glad you can choose when to activate them and the mechanic isn't necessary for gaining extra lives. Lunatic looks like it's going to be a pretty healthy challenge this time around; first attempt game overed on Urumi, even though I'd already done a run on normal and hard.

Also holy wow Youmu flies completely off the deep end with her dialogue, from what little I can read. On arrogant mode she made a giant troll face and said to Urumi "cows sure are dumb, huh." I guess it's not surprising she'd be susceptible to this kind of influence, given her personality. On the other hand, Reimu doesn't seem affected near as much. I wonder if she has a natural resistance to that kind of personality influence, since she was the only DDC protagonist to not change much when using her possessed item.

EDIT: Also, the music is quite nice. It took me a couple listens to get into some of them, but I think this is another winner from ZUN. Stage 3 boss theme might be my favorite of the demo.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: andykhang on May 05, 2019, 05:34:11 AM
Fun game so far!
The different hypers are pretty entertaining, though I'm glad you can choose when to activate them and the mechanic isn't necessary for gaining extra lives. Lunatic looks like it's going to be a pretty healthy challenge this time around; first attempt game overed on Urumi, even though I'd already done a run on normal and hard.

Also holy wow Youmu flies completely off the deep end with her dialogue, from what little I can read. On arrogant mode she made a giant troll face and said to Urumi "cows sure are dumb, huh." I guess it's not surprising she'd be susceptible to this kind of influence, given her personality. On the other hand, Reimu doesn't seem affected near as much. I wonder if she has a natural resistance to that kind of personality influence, since she was the only DDC protagonist to not change much when using her possessed item.
It's more like it's practically part of her job to get possessed by myriad of god and spirit, so it's natural that she grew resisted to it.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on May 05, 2019, 07:03:16 AM
By Jove, that stage 2 boss is like the most ecchi thing ZUN's ever drawn  :blush:
Won't she catch a cold in those clothes ?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Jimmy on May 05, 2019, 07:04:11 AM
Spoilers abound

The profiles of the new characters have been translated. (https://clarste.tumblr.com/post/184659730436/im-sure-this-is-super-late-by-now-but-here-are)

I see now what ZUN means by "darker". The bosses definitely don't seem to be what we initially interpreted them as, though the guessing about Youka being related to the child spirits was pretty close.

I really dig this game so far, stage design is a good up from HSiFS' first three stages IMO, and like all the music so far, favorites currently being the first stage and boss themes and third stage theme.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on May 05, 2019, 07:24:14 AM
There are so many animal and hell jokes in this game it's actually insane

gdi Clarste I was just typing up the profiles

I think the last bit of Kutaka's profile is more along the lines of "isn't there anything that could be done", not "would do anything", which would probably be 何でもする or 出来る限り or something.

Youka is a departed child after all, but looks like she's given the image of a Mizuko Jizo to fit the myth, maybe

I swear I've heard the myth of a youkai giving humans something really heavy that knocks them into a river before but can't place it

Also think I should mention the bosses have animals in their names, Niwatari (niwatori; chicken), Ushi (cow), possibly Ebi (shrimp; euphemism?)

There's probably an extra name pun in Niwatari as watari is about crossing, and that's part of her job
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on May 05, 2019, 08:26:21 AM
Got a
Jellyfish animal
once for some reason
Anyone know what it does ?

Game seems to have some
secrets
compared to the other ones, so it might prove to be a bit more interesting to explore
Got some trophies for just clearing the demo. Quite unusual.

Also is it just me or Youmu is pretty weak ? Her charged shot at full power needed 5 times using in order to floor a certain sunflower fairy, and I timed out the 2nd boss's final spell with it. Might probably need a wee bit of a buff or something. Anyway, hypers are satisfying to use, music is pretty interesting with the eerie and ominous atmosphere they bring, ressources do not seem to be HSiFS-kind-of-abusable, and the game doesn't tell you to play in a certain way in order to not get punished. All in all, I like what I see
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Jimmy on May 05, 2019, 09:05:31 AM
Got a
Jellyfish animal
once for some reason
Anyone know what it does ?
Can't say for sure, I have received one as well but it doesn't seem to have an effect in terms of gameplay, even though it stacks together with the other spirits collected. The midbosses of stages 2 and 3 also drop a special spirit each if certain conditions are fulfilled upon their defeat.

My guess is that these special spirits will play a bigger role in the later game, like a gimmick that is not within the first three stages.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on May 05, 2019, 09:47:32 AM
Wow, the bomb that you use when picking up Otter goast in the select screen are VERY good : Reimu uses her bombs like THREE TIMES, Master Spark  becomes ... stronger ? Dunno, but longer as well, and Youmu's spell card hacks things up really, REALLY fast for a longer period of time.

Also Marisa + Eagle goast = PIERCING LASERS. It's probably been over a decade since she's had those or something.

I'd say if there is anything that can probably be somewhat exploitable in this game then that'd probably be the bullet cancel that hyper triggers when you get hit.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on May 05, 2019, 10:02:47 AM
The midbosses drop a special spirit if you fulfill a condition, yeah.
Youka - Jellyfish: Don't destroy any of the spirits
Urumi - Cow: Only shoot up close to her the whole time (i.e. above the yellow shots)
Kutaka - Chicken: Beat her while in Otter hyper

Each one gives you five extra animals when you finish the hyper rather than two.
Seems you get 1) a life piece + 4 animals, 2) a life and bomb piece + 3 animals, and 3) life/bomb/bomb/power/point.


Also Donut linked me this, which is the myth I was referring to with Urumi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubume
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Raikaria on May 05, 2019, 10:18:03 AM
I find it rather interesting that Stage 2 is 'Cross the Styx' instead of 'Higan'. The fact it's specifically the Styx is a potential Hecatia tie-in; given both are Greek.

Either that or Touhou Hell is just flat-out the Greek Hell.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on May 05, 2019, 10:26:18 AM
I think that's just ZUN doing his thing of thematically connecting various mythologies together. River Styx and the Sanzu River are almost exactly the same thing, right down to ferrymen.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on May 05, 2019, 10:51:19 AM
Okay, wow. Can't judge the story, but music and gameplay are a letdown. And I came in with zero expectations.

First off, 16's weak instrument set has already overstayed its welcome with VD. ZUN doesn't even do anything interesting here with it. Sure, basic melodies are alright. But I've also noticed outright cacophonic segments. Stage 2 boss theme is an especially big standout. Never thought I'd say I straight up hate a piece of Touhou music, but now I can point at that dumpster fire of a theme.

Gameplay looks... okay. Just watched videos, but the gimmick wih tokens feel like UFO 2.0, in a good way - expanded and more easy to manage. The boss patterns though just reuse gimmicks we've seen before, and not even in any interesting ways. Reusing
Shinmyoumaru's growing bullets
in particular is just a crime.

And before you even think of responding with "but it's just a demo" or "you just hate new game because it's new" - I've been here for releases of 14, 15 and 16. They were interesting enough in both gameplay and music, and I could see that even from the demo. Besides, isn't it the demo's purpose, to pique people's interest for the full game? This one just fails to do so for me. I have huge doubts I'll want to even try the full version now. That's a first with a main Touhou game for me, and that's just not a good sign for things to come.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Jimmy on May 05, 2019, 11:19:49 AM
-snip-

I will admit, this demo certainly has defied some expectations here and there. I'm still interested to see what will come next, as the premise sounds interesting, and the mechanics are, while complex, well thought-out and not ridden with bugs, at least as far as I have seen.

I've been here since DDC's full release as well, and frankly this hasn't gotten any more uninteresting or worse for me, even if 15's and 16's demos were as well as the full games are my favorites. ZUN's been changing his styles quite a lot recently, and I actually really like the fact that he is willing to attempt new stuff, and I don't think that it actually comes across as bad. The stage 2 boss' theme does sound unusual, but I think, given the nature of the character, is quite fitting. Not exactly the style I'm really fond of, but it's interesting.

To each their own I guess, but to brand the game as "bad" right off the bat seems a bit too rash.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: PapilLionesskort on May 05, 2019, 11:28:44 AM
Personally really enjoying this soundtrack.  :]
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on May 05, 2019, 11:36:32 AM
I find it rather interesting that Stage 2 is 'Cross the Styx' instead of 'Higan'. The fact it's specifically the Styx is a potential Hecatia tie-in; given both are Greek.

Either that or Touhou Hell is just flat-out the Greek Hell.
Nah, it's the sanzu. It says so in the "location" part of the stage title.

By the way,
Urumi sells plesiosaurs.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Maths ~Angelic Version~ on May 05, 2019, 11:52:00 AM
To be honest, I'm not a big fan of this one. The danmaku was all right, but forgettable. My least favourite parts were
the boring streaming stage portions and the unnecessary recycling of Shinmyoumaru's growing bullets
. The soundtrack didn't really impress me either, but maybe it'll grow on me if it gets some nice arrangements.

As for the gimmick, I really dislike that ZUN brought back the most annoying thing about the UFOs - bouncing around on the screen and often changing colours (it's nice that the game gives you a choice, but they love to change at inconvenient times) - and now made them appear during boss battles too. I know the animal spirits slow down when you're close to them to let you time the activation of the hyper, but it just throws me off in most other situations. On the bright side, I actually found the hypers satisfying to use, unlike TD's dull trance. And the spirits are not necessary for survival, so you can at least ignore them even if they're still distracting. Overall, they're better than the UFOs, but I still think "collectibles that bounce around and change colours/types" was an annoying gimmick that didn't deserve a second chance.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on May 05, 2019, 12:45:48 PM
-snip-

Hmmm, while I get where the UFO comparison comes from, I honestly don't see things to be anywhere as aggravating as they can be in UFO. I mean, in for starters, UFO are not only VERY important to get in order to have your ressources, but they also DISAPPEAR, leaving the screen after bei?ng there for a set amount of time : your time is limited, and so long as you want to get your ressources, you WILL have to be aggressive. The fact that you also need to collect 3 UFOs of the same type and make NO MISTAKES in the collection else the whole thing'll reset make things a bit problematic too.

But the way collectibles behave in WBaWC are a bit different : for starters, the collectibles STAY THERE indefinitely, and only disappear at the end of the level ... at which point you should have more than the needed time to leisurely pick them up, be it during a conversation or during the cooldowns before new patterns start. The main reason why anyone would rush through a clump of bullet and die can simply be attributed to being far too greedy or super aggressive than necessary in getting ressources.

I'd say the beauty of the ressource system for this game is the fact that not only most of the collectibles (specifically the animal ones) are not things that you absolutely must get in order to survive the game, but also the fact that unlike the activation of your hyper, which requires a minimum of 3 beasts of the same type, you only need ONE SINGLE type of item THEN collect literally just anyting until you get 5 collectibles in order to get your stuff : as far as ressource goes, you are simply not exposed to the same pressure as in UFO, where a single screw up means you missing out on some ressources. And even if instead of ressources you are thinking about your hypers, you don't need to get them in an orderly manner either : just get 3 beasts and you're set. Besides, if you miscount and screw up on getting your shot type boost, getting a hyper still gets you a bullet cancel in case you run into a bullet so there is really nothing to lose whatsoever here.

Point in case, the only similarity with UFO is the collectibles that bounce around. But the way they behave in WBaWC is such that the way things work is substantially different from UFO.

Quote
Shinmyoumaru's stuff
Hmm, this is probably something that may vary depending on how people view the reuse of stuff, but I personally don't see why this would be a particular problem. Now, personally, I'm one of the type of people who consider what a game is purely for its content, no consideration for extraneous stuff whatsoever, but I will admit however that for these types of games getting a PATTERN that requires a certain EXECUTION that is similar to an OLDER PATTERN that requires SIMILAR EXECUTION in order to properly clear would be pretty redundant.

Regarding
Cow Girl's growing bullets
, while I get that they are similar to Shinmyoumaru's, the way they're used in are completely different ...
Cow Girl
's patterns involve on one hand one spellcard that essentially punish bottom huggers, while on the other hand is a streaming pattern. And Shinmyoumaru ? For Shinmyoumaru, you literally get the growing bullets ONCE in DDC, and in that spellcard, you pretty much have to move A LOT, from left to right, while manoeuvering in a way that avoids you to get trapped by the aimed hearts. These are very different way of implementing the growing bullets.

My point is, it's not just about the growing bullets, it's about the patterns in general, like, should all other forms of curvy lasers be viewed in light of Shou's ? Or should all the explosions be considered in light of Shizuha's photogame large explosion ? That does not seem appropriate to me.  I would understand the criticisms of Violet Detector, which involve patterns that were already dealt with in previous works (albeit reworked in some cases), but c'mon, this is literally about a bullet-type ... Heck, I'd say that one could possibly argue that WASTING THE IDEA of Shinmyoumaru's growing bullets on LITERALLY ONE SINGLE SPELLCARD is probably what wouldn't be very nice.

... /rant.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kafuu on May 05, 2019, 01:21:43 PM
This is the actual peak of Touhou. I don't get why you people hate it.

The boss music transition between non-spellcard and spellcard are soooo well done
Title screen theme fits perfectly on this game
Stage 1 music sounds childish and melancholic at same time. yeah perfectly fits for Sai no Kawara
Eika's theme is like oh god instant eargasm
Stage 2 music has some nice waltz segments
I bet people will say Urumi's theme is the weakest one from demo. It's actually the opposite, more you listen to it the more you will love it.
Stage 3 music melody gets stuck in your head right? RIGHT?
Kutaka's theme is pure chaos, has some insane build-up and usual melodic segments. Stage 3 boss fight was never this insane.

Gameplay mechanic is still buggy and difficulty isn't that EXTREMELY hard. Danmaku gimmicks aren't new but still challenging without using new mechanics.
About story. Unpredictable story as always.
All new characters have cute design and interesting background story. If you hate on them, quit being touhou fan.
Also ZUN MADE THESE CUTE ANIMAL SPIRITES
(https://i.imgur.com/sv1bzfl.png)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: ZoomyTsugumi on May 05, 2019, 01:43:16 PM
Urumi's theme is so damn good, her design entirely is fantastic. Easily jumped into a top 3 fav 2hu slot already.

Overall a really good demo, OST is exciting, visuals are amazing, character design is possibly the best we've seen in a small while. Danmaku is fun to dodge, and the mechanics are really cool to use. Love the player shot diveristy a lot.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on May 05, 2019, 01:52:33 PM
To each their own I guess, but to brand the game as "bad" right off the bat seems a bit too rash.

Don't worry, not trying to paint it as one, and I will take a look at the full game when it comes out anyway. It's just that, personally, it feels kinda bland to me so far, and I tried to sort out the reasons why. If someone disagrees and the game is good enough in their eyes then more power to them.

For Shinmyoumaru, you literally get the growing bullets ONCE in DDC

I'd throw in enlarged knives. Plus the gimmick is her main contribution for VD Nightmare spellcards.

But I understand your reasoning. Plus, looking up translations, it... somewhat makes sense for this boss after all, I guess? But still, this gimmick is kinda important for Shinmyoumaru since it's an embodiment of her (or rather, mallet's) powers, which are kinda a big deal for her character (pun not intended). Having someone else show similar powers, even in danmaku, kinda cheapens hers. It's like in a fighting anime when someone new shows up and has powers previously thought to be unique to an existing character. It kinda hurts for anyone who cared about the old one.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: ZoomyTsugumi on May 05, 2019, 02:00:27 PM
Idk, I think expecting something as simple as a gimmick of "bullets changing size" to be only for one character ever is optimistic at best but mostly just unrealistic. It's something that ability wise can definitely be done from different ways, and it's a much different situation having this bullet behaviour be recreated elsewhere than stealing bullets that are very clearly only for one character (like Murasa's Anchors or Ichirin's Unzan stuff). It can be important for both characters though and I don't think it cheapen's Sukuna's attacks either, it had its time, it had its impact, it will still be remembered, even that is clearly evidenced by how it was yours and many other people's first point of reference when seeing it in this game.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: game2011 on May 05, 2019, 02:29:33 PM
I just realized that fighting Eika means you got away with beating up a dead baby.

Haha.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Maths ~Angelic Version~ on May 05, 2019, 02:44:57 PM
-snip about spirits and UFOs-

Good points. The fact that the spirits are colour-coded bouncy collectibles like the UFOs gave me a terrible first impression, but after getting over that, I'd say they're satisfying at best and slightly annoying at worst. The "slightly annoying" part is when there are many spirits I can't collect yet bouncing around on the screen, and then I have to hope they have the right colours when I reach a cooldown (but at least I still get a bullet cancel out of it if they don't). I just hope the final game won't have too many parts that rely on getting the right hyper at the right time...
It seems like there's a mild case of this in stage 3. You get a newborn chick spirit if you defeat the stage 3 midboss while using the otter hyper... I'm not sure what it does, though.

I'm still not sure if I think spirits have a place in boss battles. Having them bouncing around when the screen is full of bullets is kind of annoying, and using hypers to capture spell cards feels like cheating. (Yes, I know some HSiFS releases had this problem too.)

-snip about Shinmyoumaru-

I hadn't thought of it that way, but now that you mention it, I do agree that Shinmyoumaru's growing bullets weren't used to their full potential in DDC/VD and appreciate that WBaWC used them in a new way. With that said, I still think it was strange to take a final boss's gimmick and just give it to a stage 2 boss. I also don't agree with the comparison to Shou because curvy lasers weren't even unique to her in her debut game (though I'd be fine with it if Shou were the only Touhou character ever to use them  :V).


Still... I think you've helped me see the game in a more positive light. Thank you.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: チソウ タイゼン on May 05, 2019, 03:02:38 PM
Honestly, I think this has the potential to be mechanically the best Touhou game of the Windows era. It's like, the gameplay revolves around inciting a TD hyper that operates like PCB boundaries using UFO tokens (with bonus effects if you stack enough of the same color) and the danmaku itself feels largely a step up from HSFS. PCB and UFO are two of my favorite games in the series; this game was made for meeeee

My only thing is lmao, the music feels weaker than previously to me, but I'm certain stages 4~ will pick up. I'm really worried in the meantime that scoring meta's going to revolve around picking otter goast and sitting in the bosses' face for the infinite PIV. I did this against the stage 3 boss at one point and got like 18 million points for my trouble, which brings up bad TD-related feelings for me. Mixed feelings on conditional spirits, also. Nice idea, but ehhhh....?

edit: (https://puu.sh/DobAI/c7e73bd3a4.png)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: OverlordChirei on May 05, 2019, 03:22:08 PM
As someone who isn't a main shmup player and hasn't played since UFO because of how god awful the system is, this feels like it takes that and does it all right. It just took ZUN 10 years, getting married, and having kids. 10/10 demo

Wow, the bomb that you use when picking up Otter goast in the select screen are VERY good : Reimu uses her bombs like THREE TIMES, Master Spark  becomes ... stronger ?

I didn't notice what was different at first, but try using the powered up Master Spark on a boss. It has the most subtle change, but it's the most visceral one.

The energy being emitted from the beam is now so strong that you can literally see all the enemies being burned away by it
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: niektory on May 05, 2019, 04:10:40 PM
Arghh, this game triggers my UFO PTSD (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU1TeFgeHlE). The UFO-chasing was one mechanic I hoped would not make a comeback. Even if it's a little more lenient this time around.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Wrathful_Scythe on May 05, 2019, 04:17:19 PM
Ah, another Touhou game. How ones own ability suffers over time. HSiFS taught me some bad habits and now that the season release isn't a thing anymore, I play a lot more daring. Esepecially when I'm trying to get more points and spirits. Many deaths that could have been negated by a more careful approach. My impression is a good one. I like the new characters, especially
Urumi's
design stands out. The music isn't really notable for me at the moment but HSiFS was the same for me until the songs grew on to me over time.

Regarding the story
So, with more chunks of the story now out in the open, how big are the chances that those cute little spirit fellas are gonna betray our heroines. My Japanese is not that great but from what I've gathered, the story in the manual questions the loyalty of those spirits and Kutaka also gives our girls the advice that it might not be the best course of action to trust those spirits possessing them. Might be another case in which the story is only really concluded after the extra stage, after we get betrayed on stage 6.

Then again, I might have completely misunderstood that part.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on May 05, 2019, 04:37:32 PM
I can see how this can lead into situation similar to HSiFS final, but honestly, same twist twice in a row would be really lame. Hope ZUN goes somewhere else with the story.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: TresserT on May 05, 2019, 04:45:41 PM
I'm pleasently surprised that, despite the hyper gimmick, this is not a cheesable game. It's probably the least cheesable game since SA- it neither floods you with resources nor gives you a gimmick to trivialize sections.

The patterns also reflect this. LoLK had really cheap patterns since you got point device, and HSiFS had really simple patterns to let you make better use of releases. This is the first game in a while where all the patterns feel nice to play in their own right rather than being extentions of the game's mechanic.

I've been asking for a more traditional touhou game for a while and I this seems like it's going to be it. Very pleased.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on May 05, 2019, 05:06:03 PM
My Japanese reading ability is still underdeveloped, but what interests me the most in the story so far are the ways the spirits alter the heroine's personalities. Touhou has been pretty consistent in that spirits and related abilities can only influence what's already there in one's heart, so
seeing Otter Reimu act meek and almost timid is very surprising, as a longtime Reimu fan - especially since she seems to have the other two spirits fairly under control. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I wonder if it's because the emotions the otter ghost amplifies are a side of Reimu she's not used to feeling, and so she is more susceptible to it.
It's an interesting experience reading this if nothing else.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Piranha on May 05, 2019, 06:39:48 PM
Character designs are sooo good this time. Did not expect to see
oppai
on a character drawn by ZUN, that's for sure.  ;)

Gimmick seems simple, interesting and surprisingly balanced, compared to other games.

Music didn't seem all too interesting at first, but is certainly growing on me, especially the stage themes. Probably gonna need a while to warm up for
Urumi's
theme...

Otter Marisa though, never thought I would see Marisa that timid and hesitant. And dat smug Eagle Youmu
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kanade on May 05, 2019, 07:18:04 PM
The first impression is pretty 'meh' for me.

I found the music and the character designs a bit bland.

I don't mind UFO-like gimmicks though, the difficulty seems to be tad easier than HSiFS. It seems like ZUN is trying to cater to new followers or something.

Overall, it didn't leave any 'big' impression for me. I'd have to wait for the full release to see how the story/gameplay/characters plays out but, in my humble opinion, this feels like another forgettable installment next to HSiFS.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: NorwegianboyEE on May 05, 2019, 10:07:58 PM
I agree a bit more with the "chilly reception" crowd here, in that the trial didn't really impress me that much.
Music: I've always been a bigger fan of harsh tunes and a clear melody, which is the opposite of what this game music seems to be about so far. Almost every single stage and boss theme has a floaty synth vibe which just isn't my style. The one exception is the title screen music which sounds good. This is a bit of a letdown as i was listening heavily to the touhou 16 stage 2 theme when i played the demo of that game.
Gameplay: The danmaku patterns so far aren't too interesting, this of course might be a case of Zun leaving the "best for last", so i'll refrain from criticizing it too much until i play the rest of the game. But it makes for a bit bland demo, which is obviously something that should be avoided when you want to create hype for your new game. ;)
The gimmick of animals gave me some really bad Touhou 12 flashbacks initially, but after some playing around i realize it's actually surprisingly well implemented compared to that game. It was fun playing around with the different "results" without feeling like you'd get punished for messing up your resource management. One of the best parts of the game surprisingly.
Graphics: Characters look great, interesting art and backstories. The problem is the background art, it looks really bland and dull, all i see in each stage is a mess of dull and drab colors blending together without forming anything coherent, except for maybe that part with rocks on the water which i recall, but that's not too exciting either.
Story: The story seems like it will be interesting, but i can't understand too much with my limited Japanese. The personality variation of each character depending on chosen spirit animals is a highlight. Does anyone have a link to dialogue translations of each character route yet?
Conclusion: This game has it's ups and downs. I'm a bit dissapointed with music and danmaku patterns. But stoked for the story and potential for gameplay improvement. So yes i will play the full game, and i look forward to it. But i still can't shake the feeling that the trial has many dull boring parts. It's just missing a little bit on the "WOW" factor, which is a bit of a letdown.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: game2011 on May 05, 2019, 11:39:23 PM
Character designs are sooo good this time. Did not expect to see
oppai
on a character drawn by ZUN, that's for sure.  ;)


Why do people forget that Nemuno exists?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: TresserT on May 05, 2019, 11:54:52 PM
I find it interesting how many people seem to dislike this game's patterns. I feel like compared to HSiFS this was a huge step up.

The system also feels very refined compared to any of the "gimmick" games before it imo.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: zeroxtime62 on May 06, 2019, 01:10:34 AM
I find it interesting how many people seem to dislike this game's patterns. I feel like compared to HSiFS this was a huge step up.

The system also feels very refined compared to any of the "gimmick" games before it imo.

I agree. ZUN has so far done a great job balancing the gimmick and the gameplay without making it too awkward to use and keeping it from being too easy to exploit for massive life/bomb gain.

I've also noticed not only on here but on other places for discussion, people have been saying that 17 is much easier than 16 and I'm just not seeing it at all. Unless it's much different on Easy/Normal, on Hard I find the bosses to have some of the more difficult patterns compared to many of the other Stage 1/2/3 bosses, especially 16 which the only thing I can think of is Aunn and her slightly obnoxious non spells.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on May 06, 2019, 01:52:00 AM
That's kind of surprising to me too. Everyone was very skeptical of the HSiFS demo since the first three stages were unusually easy, even on the higher difficulties. Usually it's the opposite, too, where people say ZUN's gone off the deep end with difficulty. :V Or was that put to rest with LoLK?

Now that the Reimu scenarios are up on the wiki,
maybe she's less in control of the Eagle spirit than I thought. ;; But her Otter dialogue really is perturbing, acting in ways we haven't seen since PC-98. On top of that, while Kukata warns Reimu not to trust the spirit possessing her on all three scenarios, the wording she uses in the Otter scenario is different, specifically saying that "her heart has already been taken over" by the spirit, and to be careful. It makes me wonder what other scenarios have her give that line. Just as a guess, I'm wondering if each heroine has one spirit that they're particularly vulnerable to, and if that becomes relevant later in the full game (though I doubt it'd affect anything other than the ending).
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Serela on May 06, 2019, 02:09:35 AM
HSiFS is mainly just crazy easy with autumn. Onstream I was like "lmao let's go die on lunatic but we'll use autumn and actually try" and uh I won on the first try, so... and Summer is really effective on lower difficulties too.

On top of that, while Kukata warns Reimu not to trust the spirit possessing her on all three scenarios, the wording she uses in the Otter scenario is different, specifically saying that "her heart has already been taken over" by the spirit, and to be careful.
She says the same thing to Marisa iirc since I just did that route. Eagle Reimu is kind of a jerk, still, but Wolf Reimu is surprisingly mild in most of the dialogue.

I think the biggest thing I'm wondering from the demo is if wolf/eagle shot power can really compare to the sheer strength of otter's bomb+bomb stock+bullet clearing hyper. With my current rudimentary understanding of scoring, it seems like Otter is far and away the best scorer too? Maybe the others compete better on low difficulties, though, and I'm not entirely sure how it works anyway. Grazing seems useless though...

On the downside, it seems like scoring in this game is gonna be crazy boring if there's not an adjustment. Only PIV gains are from shooting in hyper and using hyper to cancel bullets (mostly just otter)? Aiming to end spells with a lot of bullets onscreen for minor cancel bonus... is this EoSD? Even TD at least had optimizing desire spirit spawns/collecting as many as you could during hyper, even if it was overall kinda eh.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: AGS on May 06, 2019, 02:31:08 AM
On top of that, while Kukata warns Reimu not to trust the spirit possessing her on all three scenarios, the wording she uses in the Otter scenario is different, specifically saying that "her heart has already been taken over" by the spirit, and to be careful.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Now we know what gilde said was right and predictable.
"wily beast and weakest creature"...... hmMmMmM what if the players' spirit critters are lying and they're actually the ones plotting to beat up the other critters and take over hell?? makes u think
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: ZoomyTsugumi on May 06, 2019, 02:45:25 AM
I think the biggest thing I'm wondering from the demo is if wolf/eagle shot power can really compare to the sheer strength of otter's bomb+bomb stock+bullet clearing hyper. With my current rudimentary understanding of scoring, it seems like Otter is far and away the best scorer too? Maybe the others compete better on low difficulties, though, and I'm not entirely sure how it works anyway. Grazing seems useless though...

On the downside, it seems like scoring in this game is gonna be crazy boring if there's not an adjustment. Only PIV gains are from shooting in hyper and using hyper to cancel bullets (mostly just otter)? Aiming to end spells with a lot of bullets onscreen for minor cancel bonus... is this EoSD? Even TD at least had optimizing desire spirit spawns/collecting as many as you could during hyper, even if it was overall kinda eh.
This is where I'm at now wrt how this game will end up. Scoring is fun for the meantime but as things get optimised it's going to get kind of boring since there won't be too much difference in the routes between characters for any given difficulty. The only exception being Otter goast shots, since they have a natural advantage of 2 Otter tokens on death which can be routed in for more Otter shenanningans. But I feel like there needs to be some buffing of Wolf/Eagle's scoring potential so that viability for all 3 is relatively even and routing may even come down to which goast you choose to play with at the character select screen. Wolf/Eagle buffs may also make scoring in stages feel a lot better overall, since most of the scoring potential is coming from bosses.

Sadly a use for graze seems like a pipe dream now since it's not like ZUN to make such drastic changes in the system :(
Also I miss scoring games with multipliers, maybe ZUN can bring in hyper bonuses or something similar to DDC's bonus multipliers.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: andykhang on May 06, 2019, 03:02:35 AM
Rather than the spirit outright betray you, I personally think that they would lose control instead and gone berserk when meeting someone, that or they incite you to beat up someone for them. Kinda in theme for them then
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CrestedPeak9 on May 06, 2019, 03:09:43 AM
On the downside, it seems like scoring in this game is gonna be crazy boring if there's not an adjustment. Only PIV gains are from shooting in hyper and using hyper to cancel bullets (mostly just otter)? Aiming to end spells with a lot of bullets onscreen for minor cancel bonus... is this EoSD? Even TD at least had optimizing desire spirit spawns/collecting as many as you could during hyper, even if it was overall kinda eh.

There's still route management since you want to save as many animal spirit tokens for boss fights as possible; the scoring feels more like dodging tokens than dodging bullets tbh
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: the old guy on May 06, 2019, 03:19:10 AM
Once again, people are shitting on the game based on the demo. Literally. Ever. Single. Other. Game. Has. Gone. Through the same damn thing. Just look at the Shrinemaiden archives for proof.

EOSD is literally exactly the same quality music wise but everyone praises it because it's the first game. The music in it is a mess and bland and disconnected with the characters and themes yet people act like the music has gone downhill for some stupid reason.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: gilde on May 06, 2019, 03:20:10 AM
Quote
Scoring talk
For what it's worth, ZUN does mention in the readme.txt that there's a high likelihood of tweaks to both difficulty and scoring balance in the full version. (Idk if he says that in every demo's .readme anyway? but at any rate)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Serela on May 06, 2019, 03:48:34 AM
A likelihood of tweaks being mentioned in the demo is usual, but the scoring feels so intensely unpolished that I believe it pretty well this time. It's not like we haven't seen tweaks like that in the last few games; LoLK's life system changed from score to graze rewards iirc and DDC revamped MarisaB's bomb item generation. Sometimes there's just not enough time for the systems to be properly thought out pre-demo.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: ふねん1 on May 06, 2019, 04:17:50 AM
I'm getting worn out practicing for a full perfect 1cc lol, so high time I said my piece while I take a break.

The UFO-like collection system still triggers my PTSD from that game to some extent, and the tokens feel just as intrusive as before, especially with how friggin' many there are now. The good news is it's not that hard in practice to avoid picking up 3 of the same beast token if you really don't want to use the actual hyper shots; "neutral hypers only" seems like the most logical "third condition" for survival runs of this game. Having said that, I personally find the hypers themselves to be much more enjoyable to play with compared to, say, releases from HSiFS. The Wolf hypers mesh better with my playstyle, but erasing bullets and firing insanely wide shots are also very satisfying.

On the topic of shots, the Wolf versions feel like the best for "standard" survival play, giving you strong focused shots for the bosses. The Otter shots are still fantastic if you're using bombs, however - who doesn't want to fire off THREE Fantasy Seals at once? :V The downside is that after playing with a Wolf shot, it's sometimes hard for me to transfer over to another sub-shot since it's bound to feel weaker overall. Youmu is a particularly big victim of this, as her slashes seem like they have even less range and power than in TD unless you pick Wolf. As a side note, I wonder if I'm the only one who's really sad that Youmu is using her TD shot again. This is purely a subjective thing btw, I'm not calling it a "flaw" of the game by any means. It's just that I always found her TD shot to be too unwieldy for my tastes, and the fact that it keeps me from enjoying playing as my favorite Touhou character is tortuous. :(

I don't get all this hate towards the game's patterns. I think they're just fine, and hell, the overall difficulty curve is actually sensible, as in each stage is clearly harder than the last, at least on Lunatic (with the possible exception of Stage 2's stage portion being harder than Stage 3's imo). The number of attacks that are more trick- or strategy-based kind of reminds me of SA a little bit, and even then it's not like knowing the "trick" always makes them trivial, which is nice to see. And that talk about ZUN "reusing" Shinmyoumaru's attack style is indeed nonsense - others already mentioned how said patterns play totally differently, something I've been trying to stress as far back as VD.

I'm also digging most of this game's music. The title and Stage 2 boss themes I'm not too crazy about tbh, but the others are all good, even though nothing really stuck out to me right away like, say, HSiFS Stage 1's theme did. WBaWC's Stage 3 theme has really grown on me though - I've been listening to it all night lol. Also the Stage 3 boss's theme has the best name ever: "Seraphic Chicken". :V I don't really know enough about the characters to say much about them yet, plus I'm waiting for the dialogue translations.

As for miscellany, I really enjoy the unique beast tokens you get from midbosses - it's exactly like gameplay secrets you find in other arcade shooting games, which is a very nice touch. On the flip side, I don't like how you lose 1 full power on death again, and the boss marker on the bottom of the screen might as well be completely invisible and thus completely useless. I riff on UFO all the time for its various negative-QoL changes, and if I'm going to be fair, WBaWC should get the same amount of flak for its own.

So in summary I'd call this demo similar to VD in that it's good but not great. The second half of the game awaits us still, and then we'll see just how well that gets pulled off.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on May 06, 2019, 05:27:22 AM
She says the same thing to Marisa iirc since I just did that route. Eagle Reimu is kind of a jerk, still, but Wolf Reimu is surprisingly mild in most of the dialogue.

Interesting. I just finished running through all the scenarios to compare, and you're right, she says the same thing to Otter Reimu and Otter Marisa. It doesn't seem she says exactly that in any of Youmu's dialogues, but maybe she said something to the same effect and I just didn't notice it with my limited Japanese. Then again,
Youmu seems to be much more markedly affected by the spirits than Reimu or Marisa to begin with. Ironically the only one she isn't acting weird with is Otter Youmu, which makes sense since it's closer to her regular personality.

Maybe I'm just fixating on this aspect of the game, but along with finding the possessions interesting for showing us unusual sides of the heroines, I can't help but feel this may be an important part of how the story unfolds. Whether it's something like determining a stage 4 boss we fight or something completely unexpected, I'm definitely looking forward to the full version to see how it all turns out.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kafuu on May 06, 2019, 05:47:34 AM
We're finally getting CAVE touhou
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Aeteas on May 06, 2019, 07:07:13 AM
My main opinion so far is that the game is weird.

In HSiFS and LoLK, I feel like every stage has its own style, and that style manifests in the patterns, the music, and the art. I don?t really get that feeling as much from this game so far. Usually, the later stages are a bit more dramatic, so maybe they won?t have this issue. The other thing is that this game isn?t straightforward. That?s not a good or bad thing per say. All the spirit tokens flying around make the game kind of chaotic. Every spell card seems to have some weird concept, which seems to fit with the mysterious vibe of the game.

I do think the music is nice. It?s kind of strange and mysterious. I don?t think the pieces are very catchy in terms of melody though. Maybe I haven?t listened to them enough.

As for patterns, the stage enemies aren?t that difficult if you focus on dodging, but they?re designed so that it?s difficult to fly around the screen collecting stuff, which fits with the mechanics. I think there?s too many sections that are just small fairies or spirits firing aimed bullets or aimed spreads. Boss patterns seem cool, but honestly, I?m not sure I can comment on how fun they are to dodge. I keep trying to score, so I don?t know what half the nonspells look like. And for spell cards, it feels like I?m devoting half of my attention to keeping track of the items flying around, so I?m not focused on dodging.

The scoring is very weird. For the demo, it seems like the otter hyper is the best, and if you ever need any extra firepower, then you can just use a bomb. It would be a bit more interesting if, for example, the eagle hyper doubled point items, and the wolf hyper doubled the spirit tokens that enemies dropped. On the other hand, it?s kind of hard to execute and optimize routes. It?s difficult to autocollect items in stages. The animal spirits are kind of random. The routing is quite flexible, and there?s all sorts of tiny optimization that are possible.

I dunno. The game is fine, I guess. I think I liked HSiFS more though. I?m curious what the later stages will be like.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Wrathful_Scythe on May 06, 2019, 08:09:35 AM
Is it somewhere mentioned as to why our heroines get themselves possessed in the first place? Taking the spirits warning serious and checking out hell is reasonable but letting oneself be possessed by a spirit of hell seems like a bad plan. Having your personality changed is a pretty big thing. Marisa even gets pissed off after Kutakas little remark about her superiority over an eagle spirit, which makes clear that the influence is pretty strong. I like it from a gameplay perspective but the decision itself is questionable.

With the english translation now in place, I'm pretty sure that the possession will have negative reprocussions.
Oh boy, I can't wait forthe final release.

Also, the Yama in question seems to be Eiki? At first I thought it was just some yama but at least Marisa proclaims that she has beaten the "yama" before. I like Eiki but I hate PoFV. Would be nice to see her again.

On another note: Reimu's hitbox seems to be the same size as the others again this time around. I tested how close I could graze certain projectiles and couldn't find any difference between the characters. Glad to see Reimu sticking to her increased calorie intake since HSiFS.  :V
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: PapilLionesskort on May 06, 2019, 09:49:20 AM
Presumably, these animal spirits told the heroines about the alleged plans to overtake the surface world that the OTHER spirits were making, and is lending aid for the purpose of stopping the revolutionaries.
As such, they're in prime position to manipulate the girls.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: andykhang on May 06, 2019, 01:42:31 PM
Then again, other force in Hell directly invading Gensokyo is a real thing, real enough that Hecatia have to personally be a deterrant, and Okina have to show up and cooperate. Either the enemies is ridiculously strong, ridiculously witty...or ridiculously stupid and/or desperate, and that they lay neatly on the palm of these two.

Edit: Also..."Wily Beast and Weakest Creature". Possibly pointed toward the Extra Boss being the leader of the animal spirit, who came out after the heroine came back to settle the score with the animal spirit and defend them (and get her ass kicked)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on May 06, 2019, 02:32:41 PM
After thinking on it, I actually wonder if this is the hell invasion that's being built up in other works. Something about the way the game's played out so far suggests this isn't an incident many hell denizens were aware was going to happen, let alone something that Hecatia set up countermeasures to years in advance. If it were, I have a feeling she'd have involved herself directly. I wonder if this may be the plot of one small faction, and is just one part of a larger problem.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: avrit on May 06, 2019, 11:35:50 PM
Ah, in Marisa + Eagle, Kutaka said
"I believe I am far more distinguished than an eagle spirit merely possessing a human."

Does this imply you're
not really playing as Marisa, Reimu, or Youmu; but as Eagle, Wolf, or Otter spirits? or am I just a dum dum??
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: PapilLionesskort on May 07, 2019, 10:37:43 AM
Ah, in Marisa + Eagle, Kutaka said
"I believe I am far more distinguished than an eagle spirit merely possessing a human."

Does this imply you're
not really playing as Marisa, Reimu, or Youmu; but as Eagle, Wolf, or Otter spirits? or am I just a dum dum??
The impression I get is that it's a gradual assimilation.  They're becoming more and more like the spirits possessing them.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: not ZUNs wife on May 07, 2019, 02:58:53 PM
first impressions:  ;) :o :3

character designs are great!!

the bullet patterns are a bit passive this time? i didn't have much problems with them. i zoned out during the stages, but the bosses have nicely themed patterns - if a little simplistic.

music reminds me of Old Adam in that it's quite jagged - packed with strange rapid chord progressions. it certainly gives off a hellish vibe. more bright/whistling synths seems to be the next step for ZUN's style. oh, and the title screen theme is just bonkers!

lovin' the main mechanic, reminds me of UFO which is one of my favourites. the reason i like this kinda gimmick is that it adds a nice layer of tactics over your dodging micromanagement. it even makes the characters come to life a bit more, like they're constantly deciding their next counterattack.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Serela on May 07, 2019, 03:48:48 PM
Huh, just looked through the manual and found out Roar/Hyper mode ticks down slower if you stop shooting. That's not only good to know for when there's no enemies onscreen/between boss attacks, but during stages there's a lot of cases where you can let the enemies build up for a second or two and then take them all out at once, especially in Eagle roar.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: andykhang on May 07, 2019, 05:41:26 PM


"Reimu: "Guess I've got no choice but to go through here to reach Hell, huh...?"

The beast spirit that was supposed to be accompanying her didn't respond.

Reimu: "Mind saying something? Anything?"

After the beast spirit possessed Reimu, it hadn't spoken another word."

-Prologue

...Suspicious, highly suspicious. Either they're busy assimilating with her, or that the spirit itself can't speak in the first place, and it's instead the voice of someone behind it, and that it's actually more of a power (dubbed it Spirit power) that is used to possess people.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Wrathful_Scythe on May 07, 2019, 06:20:27 PM
Well, Youmus dialogue with Kutaka makes it clear.

"The spirits of Hell will try to crawl into
your heart wherever there's an opening.

If you overestimate your power / you're anxious / you're conceited, there's sure to be
a spirit that'll take advantage of that weakness.

Although it seems that one such spirit
is already present inside you... "

Didn't expect our girls to be this naive but well, stupidity on behalf of plot convenience is a common thing. Then again, maybe they already have a hunch and are just feigning this naivety, trying to catch the perpetrator off guard when the spirits actually show theire true intentions. Or the spirits really are what they say they are, traitors of hell and on our side.

Anyway, I would be really disappointed if this comes around and bites our heroines in the ass later on. This kind of blatant stupidity just doesn't fit.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on May 07, 2019, 06:41:29 PM
This kind of blatant stupidity just doesn't fit.
Except for Youmu...
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Wrathful_Scythe on May 07, 2019, 07:03:27 PM
psssh
:D
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: avrit on May 07, 2019, 07:33:17 PM
Well, Youmus dialogue with Kutaka makes it clear.

"The spirits of Hell will try to crawl into
your heart wherever there's an opening.

If you overestimate your power / you're anxious / you're conceited, there's sure to be
a spirit that'll take advantage of that weakness.

Although it seems that one such spirit
is already present inside you... "

Didn't expect our girls to be this naive but well, stupidity on behalf of plot convenience is a common thing. Then again, maybe they already have a hunch and are just feigning this naivety, trying to catch the perpetrator off guard when the spirits actually show theire true intentions. Or the spirits really are what they say they are, traitors of hell and on our side.

Anyway, I would be really disappointed if this comes around and bites our heroines in the ass later on. This kind of blatant stupidity just doesn't fit.

TBH I always saw marisa and reimu being the type of friends who share one braincell, with marisa probably having three more...  :V

Youmu however? She doesn't even have a brain. An absolute fool.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: not ZUNs wife on May 07, 2019, 08:06:21 PM
i am compelled to sing along with the midboss sync part in stage 1 theme
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Wrathful_Scythe on May 07, 2019, 08:24:00 PM
TBH I always saw marisa and reimu being the type of friends who share one braincell, with marisa probably having three more...  :V

Youmu however? She doesn't even have a brain. An absolute fool.

If only Kasen where there to put some sense into them.... oh wait. :wat:
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: avrit on May 07, 2019, 10:38:27 PM
If only Kasen where there to put some sense into them.... oh wait. :wat:

Kasen in the latest WaHH chapters is like.... "GO CRAZY AAAAAAAAAAAAAA GO STUPID AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" so now Marisa and Reimu are gonna have to deal with not having someone to bug and fuss and meddle when they do something stupid. What will they do with themselves?! :ohdear:

Either way, I hope to see Kasenny somewhere in WBaWC, she must, she gotta...
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: AGS on May 08, 2019, 12:22:28 AM
Is it still necessary to spoiler out game content like that? It's been more than about time to play the game, no?
If it's for the people who still couldn't play yet, I wonder what's the time limit.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: avrit on May 08, 2019, 12:35:30 AM
Is it still necessary to spoiler out game content like that? It's been more than about time to play the game, no?
If it's for the people who still couldn't play yet, I wonder what's the time limit.

Sorry!! I don't know when the time limit is to stop using the spoiler thingy, so I'm doing an educated guess and putting them in anyway.  :)

Though my spoilers were a bit  unnecessary sometimes, everyone knows Marisa, Reimu, and Youmu are not the sharpest tools in the shed! :P

Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: AGS on May 08, 2019, 12:47:44 AM
That's fine. :)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on May 08, 2019, 04:38:15 AM
Quote
Didn't expect our girls to be this naive but well, stupidity on behalf of plot convenience is a common thing. Then again, maybe they already have a hunch and are just feigning this naivety, trying to catch the perpetrator off guard when the spirits actually show theire true intentions. Or the spirits really are what they say they are, traitors of hell and on our side.

The omake texts seem to go into this. Although they're not translated yet, google translate helps give the gist of it. Basically,
Reimu suspected something was up with the spirits but decided to accept their help anyway, both because it would give her a powerup and because she decided if it came down to it she could neutralize the spirit. Marisa on the other hand decided it would be cool to use a hell spirit to push her power further. And Youmu...doesn't seem to suspect anything. So in essence, while they may be getting in over their heads, at least Reimu and Marisa were aware of the danger going in.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Wrathful_Scythe on May 08, 2019, 07:37:32 AM
The omake texts seem to go into this. Although they're not translated yet, google translate helps give the gist of it. Basically,
Reimu suspected something was up with the spirits but decided to accept their help anyway, both because it would give her a powerup and because she decided if it came down to it she could neutralize the spirit. Marisa on the other hand decided it would be cool to use a hell spirit to push her power further. And Youmu...doesn't seem to suspect anything. So in essence, while they may be getting in over their heads, at least Reimu and Marisa were aware of the danger going in.

Darn it. My lazy ass didn't want to change the locale again so I skipped the omake. Thanks for the info.
Let's see how it all turns out in the end. I don't know why I'm so riled up about this but it's really nagging me.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Lebon14 on May 08, 2019, 05:33:15 PM
Darn it. My lazy ass didn't want to change the locale again so I skipped the omake. Thanks for the info.

Here's a fun trick for you. Open the omake in an advance text editor such as Notepad++. Then, change the character set to Japanese "SHIFT-JIS". Doing so will change all garbage characters into nice Japanese.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: AGS on May 08, 2019, 11:10:24 PM
Yeah, I was gonna say that.
By the way, I also wanted to say something about the spirits. Something about someone mentioning Kutaka said the heroines are becoming more and more like them? I don't exactly remember.
At least it's good that Reimu and Marisa seem aware then, I wonder if they will actually manage to catch them if they end up being suspicious enough.
Oh, Myon's tail also has a fire-spitting dragon on its end. Pretty cool detail fitting with the other two characters' pawprints and cat figure.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: avrit on May 09, 2019, 02:21:20 AM
TBH I feel that the otter spirit might be the "trickster" of the bunch? I REALLY don't trust it's soft-spoken and cowardly personality, it might be lying about how it acts?

I remember that in one of the early translations, it was "opportunistic" and not "wishy-washy" so it really makes me think...
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: AGS on May 09, 2019, 02:39:32 AM
Hmm, maybe. That makes sense, though I still find the way the heroines act like that cute.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Wrathful_Scythe on May 09, 2019, 04:56:31 AM
TBH I feel that the otter spirit might be the "trickster" of the bunch? I REALLY don't trust it's soft-spoken and cowardly personality, it might be lying about how it acts?

I remember that in one of the early translations, it was "opportunistic" and not "wishy-washy" so it really makes me think...

The exact wording is 日和見 , hiyorimi. Most dictionaries spit out "opportunism" or the notion of "wait and see how things turn out" i.e. opportunism. I don't know where wishy-washy comes from but I'm in no place to question it.

Here's a fun trick for you. Open the omake in an advance text editor such as Notepad++. Then, change the character set to Japanese "SHIFT-JIS". Doing so will change all garbage characters into nice Japanese.

Thats good to know. I actually had it open in Notepad++ but didn't messed around with the settings after I saw that garbled mess.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on May 10, 2019, 12:49:46 AM
I think the intent behind the phrase 日和見 is "one who waits to see how something turns out and doesn't act until it's clear where everything stands." While it can be a result of opportunism, I think in this case wishy-washy is a good translation choice. One can see how a passive and non-committal attitude would translate into the timid mannerisms we see in the otter routes.

EDIT: While I was a little skeptical myself at first, neither of the other two descriptive words are as straightforward as saying they become "barbaric" or "haughty" either. The word used to describe the wolf's personality change seems to mean "gruff and prone to violence," and the eagle's as "taking an oppressive attitude towards others." Given the actual effects seem to be a little different for all three of them, I'm guessing we can just take these as ZUNisms and judge the spirit's effects by the dialogues.

Also wow when did I become one of those people who lectures others on Japanese. I'm sorry if this is too much.

On a completely different note, something cool I noticed in the demo: This is the first Touhou game where the characters have more than one expression for their defeat portraits. Even after being defeated, the bosses still emote like normal instead of being frozen in one portrait. It's always neat to see new touches like that.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Wrathful_Scythe on May 10, 2019, 06:59:46 AM
Hey, I'll take any information I can get in regards of acquiring a new language. Especially if its a vague one like Japanese, so don't worry.

I was also kinda impressed that the roaring mode/hyper mode doesn't deplete while being in a dialogue and is also carried into the next stage. Certainly, those are small things but when I realised, I was kinda impressed that there was some thought put into it.
On the topic of defeated protraits, now that we have visible wounds: Urumis scatch on her left shoulder looks pretty deep. Edgy indeed.  :V
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on May 10, 2019, 07:41:30 AM
On a completely different note, something cool I noticed in the demo: This is the first Touhou game where the characters have more than one expression for their defeat portraits. Even after being defeated, the bosses still emote like normal instead of being frozen in one portrait. It's always neat to see new touches like that.

IIRC that was possible even before since faces render separately on top of bodies (heads included) since 13.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kafuu on May 10, 2019, 02:10:03 PM
Seems like WBaWC demo is coming to steam this month
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: N-Forza on May 10, 2019, 03:53:48 PM
You can thank Toby Fox for that, who asked ZUN for it directly.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: AGS on May 10, 2019, 07:22:41 PM
Did he? Well either way, I don't think demos would be going to Steam.
Upon further research, it just looks like a false rumor coming from shitposting. (Is this ULiL?)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on May 11, 2019, 01:34:25 AM
Uh, according to what further research lol? This was announced during Touhou Station.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFEbWqs_Hh4&t=2h36m

The demo coming to Steam fairly soon is interesting, considering back when ZUN would upload the demos publicly to his website it would only be shortly before the final release anyways, and it isn't like you buy the demo in stores either. This is the first main game (i.e. has a demo) that ZUN's released since first working with Steam so it would be a nice trend to start.

Also to clarify, it's planned for sometime in May, and will be free. Ruw says they would like to also have it available elsewhere but their usual hosts are unreliable so they need to figure that out. Whether there will be any changes (like as 0.01b) is up in the air.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: AGS on May 11, 2019, 01:49:54 AM
My apology, I was going to edit it after I saw it was true but forgot to.
I only saw it on 4chan with no source cited so I assumed it was shitposting.
It was also a bit weird to hear that because I thought the demo would be paid since it's on Steam, so that makes sense.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: GenericArrangements on May 11, 2019, 04:49:25 AM
It was also a bit weird to hear that because I thought the demo would be paid since it's on Steam, so that makes sense.
I assume the reason the demos usually cost a bit of money is to cover the costs of all those CDs (and all the time taken to burn the game into each one, with the disc art). Hosting it on Steam costs less or something.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: H4xolotl on May 11, 2019, 05:08:23 AM
From; https://www.reddit.com/r/touhou/comments/bmyq9c/th17_demo_will_be_formally_released_on_steam/


According to Team Shanghai Alice's legal representative Fumio Oyamada on today's [Touhou Station stream](https://youtu.be/QFEbWqs_Hh4?t=6396), th17 web demo will be formally released on Steam mid-May, thanks to Toby Fox.

&#x200B;

Oyamada said,

>今回鬼形獣に関しては、実はアンダーテールの作者であるToby Foxさんから、ZUNさんに連絡がありまして、体験版の発表をしたら、「僕も体験版やりたいです」ってZUNさんに直接連絡があったということで、ZUNさんが出します事を決めたらしんです。

about th17, Undertale's creator Toby Fox personally contacted ZUN after the demo was released. He told ZUN that he also wanted to play the demo, and ZUN just decided to make it happen.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: avrit on May 11, 2019, 07:01:16 AM
Also wow when did I become one of those people who lectures others on Japanese. I'm sorry if this is too much.

I'm all ears to hear more about any language as well, gotta get my knowledge juice, after all! ;)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: ~Shin Kuroi~ on May 11, 2019, 04:00:17 PM
i love the game so far, but is anyone else having an issue where if you go to a different menu, say, the pause menu, or if you lose all your lives and go to the record replay screen, it slows down tremendously, and it either crashes or the FPS goes to very low levels (like 0.2)? this is the first time i've had this issue. i hope it isn't a PC issue or something not fixable...  :ohdear:
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on May 16, 2019, 09:59:07 AM
Okay, wow, can't believe it took me this long to realize, but there might be a very witty reason for Youmu's inclusion. Remember IN Ghost Team's story? Between animal tokens and the bosses we've seen so far, I'd be very surprised if this won't serve as a setup for a callback to that in her ending(s).
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Piranha on May 19, 2019, 09:16:51 AM
Just had a thought about the costume changes:

So far we didn't meet anyone related to the dog(?) footprints(Reimu), cat print(Marisa) or dragon/snake myon(Youmu). So what if in the stage 4/stage 5 fight everyone faces a different character relating to that?  Like with the Prismriver/Tsukumo sisters. I don't really think it will happen, since the last time we got so many new characters at once was PCB, but it's still a fun thought.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: TresserT on May 19, 2019, 05:03:47 PM
Personally, given how they hint at the animals betraying you, I'm more expecting the stage 4 bosses to be wolf/otter/eagle. Or at least someone in the game having a spell that varies based on your type a la Okina.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: fsvgm777 on May 19, 2019, 07:35:01 PM
The Steam page (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079160/__Wily_Beast_and_Weakest_Creatu) for the game is up, with the trial available for download.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: game2011 on May 30, 2019, 03:05:43 AM
When's the full version coming out?  I checked the Wiki, and there doesn't seem to be a Comiket down the line, though there are some other events I don't know about.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on May 30, 2019, 03:33:12 AM
Summer comiket is an annual event and usually starts around August 10, with new Touhous usually coming out on the 12th or 13th.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on May 30, 2019, 04:00:24 AM
To be specific, C96 is August 9 to 12, and the Touhou circle genre is currently slated for day 4.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CapTengu on July 22, 2019, 05:06:06 PM
The game's cover has been found on Melonbooks.
(https://i.redd.it/ijtj9dn9lvb31.jpg) 
I'm guessing these are probably the bosses from stage 5/6/Extra.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on July 22, 2019, 06:37:48 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/FFYwkeX.png)
Did a quick and rough outlining, the one on the right is partially obscured by the title. The one on the left seems to have large animal ears, but other than that I can't tell much from it.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on July 22, 2019, 06:49:32 PM
Huh, that could really be a dragon behind them...
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on July 23, 2019, 07:48:21 PM
Hmm ! Using my top of the line, polished-over-the-years ability to analyse newhu silhouettes, here are my impression of the silhouettes :

-Lefthu seems to have sidetail kind of hairstyle going on and seems to be wearing some beret like kind of hat on the normal part of her hair as some kind of fashion statement ;
-Righthu's got antennae / antlers that seems to me like they are similar to the mythical Kirin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qilin)'s ones and she also seems to have some sort of ... flaming ... hockey bat-like thing ? Some suspicious looking flamey thing at any rate ;
-The thing laying on the bottom could probably be the scary part of a scythe and is connected to the straight thing between midhu and righthu. If such is the case, it's even possible for it to be connected to the flaming hockey bat thingy and the scythe's pole actually curves like Komachi's ... although the jagged part at its very end leaves me uncertain as to whether it is indeed a scythe that belongs to either midhu or rightu, or whether it's a furry or a spiky animal part of somehu (I don't think it belongs to lefthu cuz it stretches TOO far right and would obviously leave the screen)
-Midhu is one I am uncertain off

Also the ominous beast from title screen and the japanese title do not seem to me to be reflected in these silhouettes. Curious.

Anyway
Just my impressions
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on July 30, 2019, 05:31:15 AM
Game's gone gold, (https://twitter.com/korindo/status/1156047708806737925) master copy sent to the printer. Nikenme Radio also later tonight, so potentially more stuff from that.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: gilde on August 04, 2019, 02:59:24 AM
Couple miscellaneous comments from ZUN during Nikenme:
-The game balancing is on the easier side this time, partly due to extra lives being easier to obtain in the full version. Easy Mode is probably the lowest difficulty in the entire series thus far. "Lunatic is still Hell, of course. :V"
-There's 9 total endings, one for each of the player/beast combinations. ZUN said "even after you read all the endings, it probably still won't make sense" (lol) and "then the Extra Stage will jerk you around but you'll feel satisfied like 'ohhh okay, I see' afterward". (Sounds reminiscent of his comments on HSiFS's story if I'm remembering correctly, imo)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Jimmy on August 04, 2019, 07:31:28 PM
Difficulty and plot/ending stuff

Hmm... that seems interesting, especially since HSiFS was basically a big step down from LoLK in terms of difficulty, which sort of deviates from the perceived Easier-Harder-Easier-Harder pattern so far. Sounds like there will be a large difficulty gap somewhere.

Last time I recall a ZUN game having had this many separate endings was probably in IN, with one for each solo player - about 8 - if my memory isn't fooling me. His remark on it makes me think that the mastermind will not appear in the main scenario, but in the Extra stage, provided he doesn't pull another HSiFS with the final and Ex-bosses (I sincerely hope not, even though the take in HSiFS was decently executed IMO).

Either way, looking forward to what the full version entails. Comiket's next weekend if I'm not mistaken?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Fumi on August 04, 2019, 08:27:33 PM

Last time I recall a ZUN game having had this many separate endings was probably in IN, with one for each solo player - about 8 - if my memory isn't fooling me.

Ten Desires and Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom had 8 endings too, TD had 4 normal endings and 4 secret ones (Obtained by having 8 bombs when you reach Stage 6) and LoLK had 4 legacy endings (died at least once in Legacy mode) or 4 perfect endings (either by clearing Pointdevice mode or clearing Legacy without getting hit)

Also IN had only 8 endings, one per team, if you went solo Reimu, you'd get Reimu/Yukari ending but the other 4 would appear depending if you went Eirin or Kaguya's route.

Still this is the most endings we have gotten so far not counting PoFV and the fighters.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: PK on August 10, 2019, 05:42:07 AM
Cut
I suppose he didn't say anything about all official manga being done?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: KaiserKnuckle on August 10, 2019, 03:10:33 PM
Here's a bizarre little update; ZUN has just put out a patch... for the FULL game (https://kourindou.exblog.jp/amp/28512725/).

Apparently the slight problems that needed fixing in v1.00a (according to the blog: a glitch with the ending of the 4th boss' first spellcard, and some achievments not being unlocked) did bear immediate fixing before the official release, which is justifiable, given that A) the master copy has ready gone out for duplication, and B) it would be bad to deal with glitches right off the bat with the final released version.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on August 10, 2019, 03:43:12 PM
Here's a bizarre little update; ZUN has just put out a patch... for the FULL game (https://kourindou.exblog.jp/amp/28512725/).

Apparently the slight problems that needed fixing in v1.00a (according to the blog: a glitch with the ending of the 4th boss' first spellcard, and some achievments not being unlocked) did bear immediate fixing before the official release, which is justifiable, given that A) the master copy has ready gone out for duplication, and B) it would be bad to deal with glitches right off the bat with the final released version.

If I read it right, the game would specifically crash if you bombed during the wrong part of the stage 4 boss' first spell card. This implies to me that there's going to be a fun gimmick in play that ZUN didn't fully work out the kinks for before sending out the master disk. I wonder what it could be. Two days feels like such a long time to wait.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Gpop on August 10, 2019, 04:30:45 PM
If I read it right, the game would specifically crash if you bombed during the wrong part of the stage 4 boss' first spell card. This implies to me that there's going to be a fun gimmick in play that ZUN didn't fully work out the kinks for before sending out the master disk. I wonder what it could be. Two days feels like such a long time to wait.
It only says if you defeat the stage 4 boss's 1st spell card with a bomb, it'll cause an app error crash, so I guess it's nothing too special.

It also fixes a certain achievement that doesn't unlock even if you achieved it.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on August 10, 2019, 05:40:38 PM
Is that different from a normal crash? Just from the sounds of it it seems reminiscent of how Mamizou's survival card crashed in early version of Ten Desires when it ended while a bomb was active, presumably due to some weird interaction with the clones.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Lebon14 on August 12, 2019, 01:43:36 AM
It's D-Day, guys. Looking forward to the new characters.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: KaiserKnuckle on August 12, 2019, 01:45:30 AM
back of the case screenshots (SPOILERS) (https://twitter.com/ann_momitsu/status/1160723175275024384?s=19)

those left-side screenshots in particular...,
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: WestTxTapper on August 12, 2019, 01:46:37 AM
It's D-Day, guys. Looking forward to the new characters.
Waiting for the new characters and the new music here.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on August 12, 2019, 02:06:06 AM
back of the case screenshots (SPOILERS) (https://twitter.com/ann_momitsu/status/1160723175275024384?s=19)

those left-side screenshots in particular...,

With the help of a dictionary I think I can roughly translate that text:

"Survival of the fittest is nothing to be scared of. You, humans of the surface world, entrust your body to your instincts of strife!

I probably got that last part a little wrong, but it sounds like it's coming from the main villain.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: KaiserKnuckle on August 12, 2019, 02:28:27 AM
Here There Be Dragons


her name doesn't quite roll off the tongue though...
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Lebon14 on August 12, 2019, 02:34:45 AM
^
Name: Kiccho Yachie (or "Kitcho Yachie" if we follow Hepburn)
Pic: https://twitter.com/moiwool/status/1160739192906891265 (spoiler)

EDIT 1

Stage 5, Joutougu Mayumi
Pic: https://twitter.com/moiwool/status/1160743113259794432 (spoiler)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: KaiserKnuckle on August 12, 2019, 02:53:58 AM
SUKUNE REAL


E!!!!!! WHAT IS THIS TECHNO SHIT IN STAGE 6?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?


S6 KEIKI HANIYASUSHIN (https://twitter.com/yukumiti24/status/1160749351167090688?s=19)

Oh!
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Lebon14 on August 12, 2019, 03:15:04 AM
SUKUNE REAL


E!!!!!! WHAT IS THIS TECHNO SHIT IN STAGE 6?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?


S6 KEIKI HANIYASUSHIN (https://twitter.com/yukumiti24/status/1160749351167090688?s=19)

Reimu's eyes are strangely very red...
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on August 12, 2019, 03:20:58 AM
Do you think
She's fallen completely under the influence of the hell spirit? I predicted all the way back in the demo that the heroines may end up becoming completely possessed and end up doing someone's bidding, whether it be the final boss or the extra boss. Judging from the stage 6 boss' reaction to seeing her though, I'm guessing the latter is the case.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: KaiserKnuckle on August 12, 2019, 03:21:13 AM
Reimu's eyes are strangely very red...

Roaring Mode is reaching new heights!!

I'm curious how Eagle and Otter routes will be affected with this in mind!


Create!





ARMLESS YEE HAW
EX BOSS SAKI KUROKOMA (https://twitter.com/ShinkoNetCavy/status/1160756519819853825)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Fulisha of Light on August 12, 2019, 03:56:06 AM
So what species are each of the bosses exactly?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Lebon14 on August 12, 2019, 04:06:50 AM
So what species are each of the bosses exactly?

I read that Mayumi (stage 5) is an "haniwa"

I'll have to getting used to these new names.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on August 12, 2019, 04:12:51 AM
It looks like the extra midboss is Kutaka. I knew she could do it. /o/
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Drake on August 12, 2019, 04:27:38 AM
It looks like the extra boss is Kutaka. I knew she could do it. /o/
she's the midboss

boss is a pegasus and her name has two horse kanji in it
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: andykhang on August 12, 2019, 05:02:18 AM

also she?s apparently Miko?s mount
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Lebon14 on August 12, 2019, 05:13:55 AM
also she?s apparently Miko?s mount

I think it's *implied* though.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on August 12, 2019, 05:36:42 AM
One big gameplay thing I've picked up on from the videos I'm seeing:
ZUN reverted the power loss from dying to 0.50 power, instead of the full 1.00 power you lost in the demo. That's a relief.

Also the music in this game is so good. The final boss theme in particular is a real stunner.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Helepolis on August 12, 2019, 07:43:09 AM
Love you people for immediately using the spoiler tags for marking the spoilers. Awesome!

As you might have noticed dear citizens of Shrinemaiden, Toho 17 is officially released today. As you also have noticed people are using spoiler tags. Please use them to avoid unfun situations. We will keep this no-spoiler mode up for several days. Thank you in advance.

Cheers.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on August 12, 2019, 08:38:22 AM
One last thing to note before bed, since this is something some might not realize since it's buried in the omake file:
You can view any endings you've unlocked by going to the achievements page and hitting shoot while highlighting the achievement that says you cleared with such and such shot type. It seems ZUN intends for this to be a standard feature from now on, too. That'll be a great relief for those who want to study endings/not have to clear every time they want to see them.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on August 12, 2019, 08:40:26 AM
Could only listen to other people's streams so far, but hoo boy. Haven't heard something this ear-grating in a long time. The themes range from generic trash to absolute cacophony. And when some actual melodies try to surface they're just drowned out by the monotone grind of the rest of that dissonant intrument set.
And then there are out-of-place remixes.
I'd compare all this to a fangame OST but that would be an insult to what fangame music can do.

And before someone responds with "haters just hate new stuff because it's new" AGAIN - I had no such beef with music of any main releases that I've witnessed. I do see all the effort that went into it but ZUN's direction led it straight into uncanny valley this time. If he was experimenting with composition or something then that experiment utterly failed. Also, this is purely about music, I can't really judge anything else yet. Actually, the patterns look pretty fun and creative, definitely a step up from the more generic stuff in 16. But music... just no. You can only like it if you have never heard anything better, and if you're a Touhou fan then you definitely have.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: 7TC7 on August 12, 2019, 12:01:40 PM
You can only like it if you have never heard anything better, and if you're a Touhou fan then you definitely have.

That's the only thing I'm gonna disagree with, because the rest is just opinion.

The music in this game is definitely going in a different direction from the usual (at least in some cases, not even all) and personally, I can see why someone would dislike it. However, I really like everything that happens music wise in the second half of the game. The beginning of Stage 4 especially gave me a similar power surge/feeling of fear to my first time hearing Clownpiece theme kick on.
And in regards to the musical influences taken, I loved them all the way through.

Further, I really enjoy the background artwork this time around, not to mention the characters designs. Quite a handful of weird species that I look forward to getting to know more about.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kirin no Sora on August 12, 2019, 01:23:18 PM
Figure that I say something since I heard that the stage 4 boss, Kitcho Yachie, might be a kirin. Can anyone confirm this?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: 7TC7 on August 12, 2019, 01:26:27 PM
Figure that I say something since I heard that the stage 4 boss, Kitcho Yachie, might be a kirin. Can anyone confirm this?

She is a Jidiao, which is a Dragon Turtle.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kirin no Sora on August 12, 2019, 01:32:36 PM
She is a Jidiao, which is a Dragon Turtle.

Oh, I see. Then a Kirin has still yet to appear, then. (Rin Satsuki is safe for now...)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: 7TC7 on August 12, 2019, 01:45:16 PM
Random observation, but ZUN sure made a confusing decision when he made the cover art this time, by
putting three characters on it for no reason, without any way of picking them apart. It's Yachie, Keiki and Saki, right? Or is Mayumi also in there somewhere?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on August 12, 2019, 02:21:22 PM
That's the only thing I'm gonna disagree with, because the rest is just opinion.

Fair enough.

Had a chance to look at the game a bit more (geez, there are already Lunatic clears out there, you people) and I do have to say I still can't shake off the feeling that most of boss patterns remind me of stuff we've already seen before. But I wouldn't say that's a bad thing since they vary things quite a bit in interesting ways.
And I find the twist with the final patterns pretty great. It's like a complete opposite of HSiFS.

Other than that, really looking forward to story translation. Also, the Extra boss is
a Big Black Cock. Live with it.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on August 12, 2019, 02:27:38 PM
Other than that, really looking forward to story translation. Also, the Extra boss is
a Big Black Cock. Live with it.
Even better than that, she's
a big black horse cock
.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on August 12, 2019, 03:00:59 PM
With how the extra boss turned out to be, I believe I am legally entitled to a fanart depicting
Napoleon crossing the Alps, featuring Miko riding Saki
, thank you very much

Haven't got a proper chance to have a go or at the game, but I like what I've seen on various videos so far  :)

Also, the Extra boss is
a Big Black Cock. Live with it.
Actually is
a pegasus. Still rideable tho  :V

music sucks ass, yo
To be fair, an orderly or a melodic track would not necessarily manage to capture the chaotic atmosphere of Hell. ZUN always made sure the track captured the feel of the locations you're at, shows how HIS interpretation about what the atmosphere of such or such place would be, and express it in his track, and WBaWC is no exception. The eerie, creepy and lonely tracks you hear in the early game (along with stage 5), while stage 4 and extra (the ones I assume you're criticizing) got how ZUN conceives a proper Hell vibe.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: saisengen on August 12, 2019, 04:02:53 PM
Has anyone already extracted music from the game?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: not ZUNs wife on August 12, 2019, 04:18:31 PM
it's a legit Touhou right here. with TH16 i felt that ZUN was holding back on the boss themes, and in no way do i get that impression in this game anymore.

a very memorable, very 'Touhou' sort of moment is
discovering a city in the depths of hell, then when the music picks up, seeing the whole vista in front of you
. And
how the final boss fight happens when flying around the city with its recognizable landmarks
. That sort of audiovisual choreography is the key to what makes Touhou games appealing and unique, imo.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Golbez on August 12, 2019, 06:29:28 PM
The Steam version releases in exactly one month. Will play it then.

Gotta resist the urge to uncover spoiler tags.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: MrNoobomnenie on August 12, 2019, 08:05:08 PM
You can only like it if you have never heard anything better, and if you're a Touhou fan then you definitely have.
Hey, look, it's CyberAngel being toxic again! I'm currently listening the music and I like it. And I'm also a long running Touhou fan. So go back to 4chan Mr "I hate everything new because I'm very edgy!"
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Helepolis on August 12, 2019, 08:08:58 PM
Yo, let us refrain from getting personal with these type of aggressive posts. If you disagree with someone else's opinion that is fine. If you have counter arguments provide them.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: MrNoobomnenie on August 12, 2019, 08:15:12 PM
someone else's opinion
When someone says "If you like it, you're an idiot" it's not an opinion - it's an insult.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: 7TC7 on August 12, 2019, 08:28:56 PM
When someone says "If you like it, you're an idiot" it's not an opinion - it's an insult.

But he never did that, though? He over generalized, and that has been pointed out. It's not unthinkable to dislike the music in this or any other touhou game. People have differing tastes.

---

On another topic, the art of
Saki
confuses me on multiple levels and even looking at her sprites during battle doesn't give me a clear answer.
First of all, does she only have one arm? Is there anything in her profile or dialogue hinting towards that? And second, does she have a long ponytail hairstyle that goes down her back and swishes out the (on the artwork) left side? I know the hair on the right side must be her actual tail, but the way the hair is angled around her neck and behind her back, it seems to go all the way down to that part on the left?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: MrNoobomnenie on August 12, 2019, 08:42:47 PM
It's not unthinkable to dislike the music in this or any other touhou game. People have differing tastes.
I'm not against other people's tastes, I'm against the insulting ways to provide them. There's a BIG differense between "I personaly don't like the music in the new game and think, that previous ZUN's tracks were much better" and "The music in the new game fucking sucks! The ones, who like it, have shitty musical taste!" The first one is an opinion and the second one is either an insult or a direct trolling.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Mikuru on August 12, 2019, 10:14:18 PM
My first impression of the new music was not very positive, but listening to it in the music room without having my attention constantly distracted by bullet swarms, I find myself liking it a lot. Beast Metropolis is really outstanding. The final boss's theme is the only one I felt was a let-down -- it doesn't have anything like the epic quality we got from Shinmyoumaru or Okina, for example.

Does anyone have a translation for the hints for achievements 37 through 40?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Royalty of House Scarlet on August 12, 2019, 10:28:34 PM
You and I experienced exact opposite perceptions of the OST. Touhou 16's OST was exceedingly disappointing for me personally, with the only tolerable song being the menu theme, so I expected similar results with 17, which, to a degree, happened, with a few songs appealing to me. The one that was most unique and appealed to my sensibilities being the final boss theme, due to the dramatic opening and the extremely catchy melody that appears in the second half. It fully rivals Junko's theme in terms of fulfillment I've had with it.

Interesting, Sukuna and Okina's both are my two least favorite Windows Era boss themes due to lack of intensity.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: ZoomyTsugumi on August 13, 2019, 01:11:00 AM
Does anyone have a translation for the hints for achievements 37 through 40?
Secret tokens for the rest of the midbosses are obtained by:
Stage 4: Grazing 10 bullets right before killing the midboss (4 on Easy)
Stage 5: Having at least 4 animal tokens flying around when you kill the midboss
Stage 6:  Killing the midboss just after breaking a hyper (either via getting hit or manually cancelling is fine)
Extra stage: Capture the 3rd midboss spell without going above the midboss.

Timing for the ones that involve doing something just before killing the midboss seems to be very strict just fyi, I'd estimate it's less than half a second, so it's very trial and error.

Also the OST is totally banging in this game so I'm happy with it.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: shockdude on August 13, 2019, 04:17:29 AM
WBaWC is fun. Nice dense patterns, even on Normal.
I'm on the side that actually likes the music, it's fun to hear ZUN experiment with different instruments.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on August 13, 2019, 03:29:30 PM
So, from my shallow understanding of the plot, we're essentially working to crush the peasant uprising and halt that filthy industrial revolution, all for the benefit of organised crime gangs, who pocketed and manipulated us into it. Cool. 10/10, would work against the interest of humanity again

Also the zootopia fairies over there at stage 5 seems to have animal ears and horns. Neato little detail for our fairy friends
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: MrNoobomnenie on August 13, 2019, 04:54:52 PM
we're essentially working to crush the peasant uprising and halt that filthy industrial revolution, all for the benefit of organised crime gangs, who pocketed and manipulated us into it. Cool. 10/10, would work against the interest of humanity again
It's even worse. They were not peasants, but slaves and livestock. Human spirits have summoned a god, who protected them from ruthless animal spirits and have built basically a utopian society (ZUN can call at "dystopia", but the world, where humans don't need to do anything and don't need to fear anything, called "utopia" no matter what). And then comes our protaganists, who completely destroyed all of this in favor of yakuza gangs. Another proof, that there's no justice in Touhou world. #KeikiDidNothingWrong

Oh, and Clarste is defending this actions. Like there already were not enought evidence, that he is not a good person.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on August 13, 2019, 05:11:57 PM
I'm still waiting on everything to be translated, but from my understanding, the conflict is more grey than that. While Keiki did wrest control from the animal spirits, she's not really much of a savior. In practice, she and her army of statues just took over power for themselves, and the human spirits have no real agency under her rule, little different from how things were before. The animal spirit accompanying the heroines is even enraged that Keiki destroyed the garden of nature and beauty they crafted as a safe zone for the human spirits, instead turning it into a massive tomb for her to live alone in. The descriptions even say that if left unchecked, Keiki will likely end up completely destroying the animal realm and leave it uninhabitable to anyone.

So in essence, while it's true all the heroines are doing is restoring the status quo and protecting Gensokyo, it's not like they're helping the villains. The animal spirits want to protect their home and way of life, and Keiki, while likely seeing herself as a good person, is likely just securing her own base of power at the expense of those who prayed to her for salvation. In the end, the only obvious truth is that the human spirits of the animal realm are the ones losing in the end.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on August 13, 2019, 05:14:59 PM
Oh, and Clarste is defending this actions. Like there already were not enought evidence, that he is not a good person.
Reminder that he literally said and I quote "Yachie sounds way more evil than Keiki though, overall." Meaning, in his eyes Keiki's actions aren't perfect, and we know she isn't, what with the whole destroying of nature and whatnot. Now find a single post where he defends the beasts' actions and I'll agree with you. But, no proof = didn't happen.

Edit:
Right, he said "Also, I never said both sides were gray, I said both sides were bad."
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: MrNoobomnenie on August 13, 2019, 05:56:29 PM
Now find a single post where he defends the beasts' actions and I'll agree with you.
There were one of his post (which is pretty easy to find), where in response of "We did a bad thing, we turned humans back into slaves!" he straight up saying "They were not humans, they were humans spirits, so they deserved it". Is this not enought?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on August 13, 2019, 06:15:15 PM
There were one of his post (which is pretty easy to find), where in response of "We did a bad thing, we turned humans back into slaves!" he straight up saying "They were not humans, they were humans spirits, so they deserved it". Is this not enought?
Once again, that's not what he said. He said that IF the land of beasts is supposed to be the animal realm in buddhist cosmology, AKA one of the realms where people with bad karma of their previous lives(meaning they were sinners) are reincarnated as punishment, then they probably deserve it. The distinction between humans and human spirits that Clarste made wasn't aimed at justifying their suffering, it was to show that there IS a distinction. He also never denied that turning people back into slaves is bad, he just said that the protagonists aren't sure about what they did, so, regardless of whether they did a bad thing or not, they didn't mean to.

Again, as I quoted in my last post: "Also, I never said both sides were gray, I said both sides were bad." He literally confirms he believes they're evil, QED.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Marron on August 13, 2019, 07:17:25 PM
Hello everyone. Hope you're enjoying this game. As for me, aside from the beast system(ufo ptsd), I really like the game. Zun really did nice work with the spellcards of the boss, I think they are interesting and reflect well the characters who uses them. I also have to say that I really love the ost, it's probably my favorite from that regard with PoDD, MS, PCB and MoF. Also, I find the theme of the final boss really sad and beautiful at the same time, last time I felt that much intensity was from Byakuren. I used to say that the theme of Yuyuko was the most intense for me emotionally for final boss(yeah because Vanishing Dream of Kana is really my favorite) but...well with this game, things have changed.
And I absolutely LOVE the whole cast of this game !

Anyway, I came here with the hope that some of you may answers some questions I have:

1. So, I get that this whole thing is kinda grey and that the "gangsta"(I say that for fun) sent animal spirits in Gensokyo seeking the help of our girls. We know which are the boss of those spirit, except for the eagle goast, right ?
2. I don't think I understand the part with Keiki. Was she summoned by the humans spirits to help them fight the animal spirits ? If that is the case then, does Keiki love humans or are they "tools" for her ? I mean, did she take the lead and decided to gather power for herself instead of helping humans ?
3. I've noticed that wether or not you take the wolf spirit, the girls will always "turn red" starting from boss 5 when they talk. Does that mean that the wolf spirit's always the one taking possession of the charaters whatever spirit you choose ? Or was this just Zun that didn't want to draw blue/green aura and eys for the characters ?
4. Saki is the boss of the wolf goast. Then why does the character can use the wolf spirit against Saki ? Does the animal spirits wants the character for a new master or... ?

Anyway, I've cleared the game in hard with Reimu Eagle and Kasen appeared at the hakurei shrine talking with Reimu. Cleared the game with Youmu wolf and Shiki Eiki talked with Youmu. I don't understand japanese so I don't know what they said, but, y'know, just sharing with you all.

In any case, I hope you're enjoying and for those who still didn't play it, I wish you all to have fun !
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on August 13, 2019, 07:30:35 PM
3. I've noticed that wether or not you take the wolf spirit, the girls will always "turn red" starting from boss 5 when they talk. Does that mean that the wolf spirit's always the one taking possession of the charaters whatever spirit you choose ? Or was this just Zun that didn't want to draw blue/green aura and eys for the characters ?
I'd imagine it was done mostly aesthetically, red in this case doesn't really imply wolf, I think.

As for the other questions, I think most routes are already translated on thpatch.net, and the character profiles are all translated in the wiki, they'll definitely answer them. This is very text-heavy game.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Marron on August 13, 2019, 07:56:51 PM
Ah, nice ! I wouldn't think it would be so fast for the translation ! Thank you very much ! It doesn't bother me at all to read.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Helepolis on August 14, 2019, 05:44:05 AM
I've seen the character designs on the wiki and I am digging the designs. 5th boss look trouble.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: ChronaSE on August 14, 2019, 03:33:36 PM
I dig the OST, I heard parts of PC98 with a mix of ZUN's latest music albums.
Danmaku is getting creative again, it definitely was more fun than HSiFS at least, but the presentation with the graphics was a nice surprise.
Story is pretty heavy from what I've seen,
What happened to the human spirit afterwards? do they end up being the beast slaves again?

Now if only someone could make a patch to reduce your Hyper shot visibility  :ohdear:
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Marron on August 14, 2019, 04:12:35 PM
I dig the OST, I heard parts of PC98 with a mix of ZUN's latest music albums.
Danmaku is getting creative again, it definitely was more fun than HSiFS at least, but the presentation with the graphics was a nice surprise.
Story is pretty heavy from what I've seen,
What happened to the human spirit afterwards? do they end up being the beast slaves again?

Now if only someone could make a patch to reduce your Hyper shot visibility  :ohdear:

Ok, so:
I just finished the game with Reimu wolf and, apparently we still don't know what they become but Keiki is now in Gensokyo and asks Reimu about human going in Gensokyo. Reimu tells Keiki that they should go to the netherworld, but they won't because the netherworld is already full of ghosts. So....I don't really know, the ending just evoked the possibility of spirits having a place in Gensokyo. Apparently they have to do something like work for exemple, if not, they will be too excited or something like that.

And yes, there is a patch. With thcrap, there is a "visuals"(that's the name of the patch) patch that makes the hyper mode shoots more transparent. I used it because it's clearly too bright, that and all those spirits that can sometimes be distracting, I've lost way more than one life that way because of distraction.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: ふねん1 on August 15, 2019, 07:56:27 AM
Review time wooooo.

I may have found the demo to be just all right, but holy crap the second half of the game is surprisingly solid. As expected, hypers are still completely OP, especially Otter hypers despite their nerfs, but I'm loving almost everything else about the game. The characters have cool designs, the music is absolutely banging, the stage backgrounds are stunning, and the danmaku, dear god the danmaku. I haven't seen a Touhou game with such consistently fun and interesting patterns in a long time. Just like with Stages 1-3 in the demo, there's a higher-than-average amount of strategy behind a bunch of attacks, yet knowing those strategies rarely, if ever, makes them trivial. Things like random boss movements actually help the quality of the attacks for once - a pattern might have a general approach to it, but where the boss moves can change how you execute it exactly, preventing you from completely committing a route to muscle memory or something. These are the kinds of attacks I crave: ones that make you strategize beforehand and adapt on the fly. And hell, even the visual designs of the danmaku are impressive, consistent with each character's theme yet varied in how their concepts are presented - the final boss is a particularly good example of this. Massive props to ZUN for making so many hits in the second half of the game. Me taking as long as I am trying to perfect Stages 5, 6, and Extra may be a blessing in disguise since it means I get to enjoy these great levels for longer. :V

I think the only other negative critique I have about this game is the story. I've already heard (and been a part of) plenty of discussion about it:
from what I understand, Keiki made a bunch of clay idols to protect the human spirits in the Animal Realm from the various beast spirits, and the idols proved pretty much invincible against them. I've seen it suggested that one reason this was actually a problem, instead of something the heroines would and should support as fellow humans, is that it upsets the natural order of the underworld, related to the different karmic levels of Buddhism and such. However, whatever the circumstances and implications of this incident are, those aren't really what I have an issue with. What bugs me the most is that this whole thing feels so disconnected from the playable characters. What are we even trying to do, and more importantly, why should we care about what happens in the underworld? There's a mention or two about Keiki's assault driving the beast spirits to the surface, so I guess it's technically better than nothing, but it hardly feels satisfactory. The story as revealed in the second half of the game also feels a bit contradictory to the prologue, where it's mentioned the beast spirits are trying to "take over Gensokyo by force", yet that rather serious implication doesn't receive the weight it probably deserves in the full game in favor of the whole Keiki plot. It's like ZUN had a bunch of bigger-than-usual ideas but ended up not being able to mesh them together that well. It's telling how the three heroines repeatedly complain in both the main scenarios and their endings how they have no idea what's going on with the incident or whose side they're supposed to be on, and even ZUN himself in the afterword says we may not be able to understand the story even after reading all the scenarios. Meanwhile I'm sitting here like "if you know it's overly complicated then you can also do a better job explaining it" lol.

Okay, minor rant out of the way, a couple other things about the game. I greatly appreciate that ZUN went back on how much power you lose on death, returning to the 0.50 standard we've had since DDC. The new unique tokens continue the trend of needing special conditions to appear, and that plus achievements seemingly becoming standard in the main-series games makes me excited for what other gameplay ideas ZUN has in store in future titles. And maybe I'm missing something here, but it doesn't feel like life pieces are any more common than before, which was supposedly something ZUN mentioned as being a thing for the full release. The addition of three more stages was always going to add some more in general, but the actual number of lives and bombs you can get strikes a much better balance than in other recent games. Then again, you have tons and tons of hypers to use alongside them, so yeah.

Overall, WBaWC is a very pleasant surprise, with the solid second half of the game noticeably boosting it up in my eyes. The story issues and OP hyper system prevent this game from really challenging the top spots of my "favorite Touhou games" list, but I bet it can at least crack the top 5. I'm confident I'll continue to enjoy challenging myself with this game as well.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on August 15, 2019, 12:35:37 PM
What bugs me the most is that this whole thing feels so disconnected from the playable characters. What are we even trying to do, and more importantly, why should we care about what happens in the underworld?
I feel like that's the whole point, Reimu and co. thinking they're just solving an incident as usual but getting caught up in a conflict they don't understand. The protagonists are being manipulated from the start, and only in the extra stage do they actually do something independently.
There's a mention or two about Keiki's assault driving the beast spirits to the surface, so I guess it's technically better than nothing, but it hardly feels satisfactory. The story as revealed in the second half of the game also feels a bit contradictory to the prologue, where it's mentioned the beast spirits are trying to "take over Gensokyo by force", yet that rather serious implication doesn't receive the weight it probably deserves in the full game in favor of the whole Keiki plot.
The plan was never to actually take over Gensokyo, but to manipulate a human to defeat Keiki. Only in the extra stage Saki wants to take over the human world. Again, it's about a political conflict from an entirely different world(which isn't even close to Gensokyo at all, so they had to pass through hell), so it makes sense it's not connected to Gensokyo.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Jimmy on August 15, 2019, 05:24:37 PM
There is something that has been itching me.

In Stage 4, after being defeated, Yachie refers to their enemy, most probably Keiki, as "demon-shaped". Meanwhile, Keiki wears a suspiciously shaped headdress - notice the two pointy spots on the sides. I don't imagine that hair would protrude that much and in such a shape. Though her profile and the animal spirits state her as a goddess, I've grown curious as to whether she's hiding something under it like Kasen under her buns.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: 7TC7 on August 15, 2019, 08:23:28 PM
Hey everyone, just a heads-up. Trying to click on achievements for bad ends won't let you view those bad ends but will instead bring you to weird and magical places in the game instead.
For example, achievement 11 will bring you to the extra boss, with the wrong name and no health, meaning she dies immediately letting you read the after battle dialogue.

Speaking of enemies dying instantly. So do all of the ex-midboss' spells in spell practice, if you don't give her a second to fetch the right health-bar.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on August 16, 2019, 06:55:11 PM
Heya, so I got to take the game out for a spin and boy do I have a LOT to say about this game.

I actually managed to 1cc it on my first ever run with Youmu Wolf, before pulling another first time 1cc with Marisa Wolf as well as well. I've nearly managed to do so as well for the extra stage where I ended up in the final spell with 2 or 3 millimeters of healthbar remaing cuz brainfarts. So yeah, I'm kinda inclined to agree that this game is one of the easier entry of this series. I do play on Hard difficulty, but still this is a first for me. I gotta say, if you're going for a casual run, meaning one where you use bombs, hypers, and even die, you will quickly notice that the strategy where you collect the appropriate goasts while bombing is very, VERY strong strategy
and potentially scummy like those foul playing dirtbags over there at the Kiketsu family but I digress
.

Proper use of the Beast can be compared to a stronger PCB border, and the fact that
the last 2 spells of Keiki fills the field with non-changing beast tokens make the last phase of her battle very, VERY trivial, provided you're not experiencing a sudden influx of stupidity or trying to be a little bit too brave without the appropriate skill. I think that design choice for these particular spells is ... interesting ? But for one, its something that put the final spells in a level that make them accessible to a casual player with an averege skill level while at the same time still being a spell that can be an actual challenge for survivalist kind of players who decide not to use the Hypers here .
Game is VERY cheesable, and I'm only speaking from a casual perspective here

Anyway, outside of these, game's got a lot of static patterns and the life-or-death-deciding RNG consists for the most part of movement RNG for the main game, and seems to me to be the 1st and 7th spellcards for the extra stage boss. It's more bearable and more reasonable compared a LOT of the recent entries for the main games, and arguably even some of the not so recent ones. And not only are the patterns not heavily dependent on RNG, but they're also colorful and pretty watchable (as in, not  too much purple, none of those old looking bubble bullets, ...). I found it pretty nice and even engaging.
The final boss's nonspell, in particular, rally gave me the impression that I'm playing against more interesting versions of Junko's nonspells : you need to do VERY simple dodging, but the clutter of bullets that comes look pretty and got an undeniable amount of thought into designing them (ZUN could've literally brought back the old looking bubble bullets or any bullet of decently large size but guess what, he goes for this instead)
The game might take the not-so beloved parts of UFO and TD and make something very solid of off them, but personally, with how the aesthetic of the game and the design of the patterns are, I honestly got more of a PCB vibemoreso than UFO or TD (the part where you try to not die during  your Hyper to not only maximize the rewards it give you (shot boost and probably PIV for score runners but also additional beasts))

And speaking of aesthetics ... boy, HOO BOY does this game blow its predecessors out of the water :
it's got far more stage background transitions than you would probably consider as necessary : stage 5 starts off dark, than you get to view the city, then you still get to view the city but up from above, with that delicious looking veil of mist, AND THEN you find yourself faced to that keyhole shaped garden. AND LEVEL 6 ! It's got something I've hardly ever considered for Touhou : that futuristic look. It honestly give a better vibe of a place with advanced tech than the Moon ... AND the Moon is the place with the best technology ... (disregarding their aesthetic choices but I digress) You get into this sci-fi futuristic looking place, then this, uh, glowy escalator-like road (?) thingy becomes obvious, then everything gets red and move in the other direction as you fight the boss, then you still get to see that BUT from a little bit ABOVE as the fight progress, THEN you get out of that place and in  front of the Garden but with a DIFFERENT VIEW compared to what you get in the stage 5 boss battle ... ZUN put far more work than usual in this game. Also I quite liked the general look of Hell. I personally expected there to be some kind of super windy Hell, and boy, do I find that cool. My game doesn't even lag when I bomb that stage with Marisa, which is an issue I got in HSiFS stage 4 when I Master spark my way out of trouble.

Now as for the music, I like it a lot too for this game. Since DDC, we had those ZUNtars riffs and, to be honest, those hardly ever managed to impress me whenever they're used as some random riffs that get thrown at you very very fast, and it is also no exception this game. Likewise for some high pitched tracks. For me, HSiFS had the best use for ZUNtars, particularly Aunn's theme, where it the previous instrument transitions smoothly into it in such a refined, elegant manner. But a soundtrack is not comprised of a single instrument, and personally, I generally liked how they work for this game. I was quite neutral for stage 4 ost's opening part (which sounded like a certain part of Cootaka's theme but with riff variety of ZUNtars, but I quite liked that fun bassline and how the feel of the song in general was. Tbh the main reason why I'm ok with this particular track is because it struck me as something that could fit NToJ tracks. Anyway, my favorites songs for this game are definitely in the later stage plus extra, specifically, stage 6 boss, extra boss, stage 5 and 6 and stage 5 boss, along with the coo-l little bonus of Cootaka's theme.

And as for the characters, I like how the cast turned out this time. The way I see it, there's 2 main things to consider in Touhou games characters : How workable are they by 1/themselves and 2/in relation with certain other characters. Say HSiFS for example : while I do not believe they're bad, they unfortunately work well at being what they're supposed to be : folks that you don't get to interact with and don't attract a lot of attention : they're isolated among themselves for there to be "families" of characters, and the only faction's got two characters whose main schitck is being with together (not an individuality friendly kind of thing, this is), while the most distinctive character is pure enigma with a very vague source material. Touhou 17's cast however does put a number of factions :
the matriarch of Beast factions with different ideologies who are on a not-so-friendly term with each other (along with some factions with bosses we don't even encounter), and Keiki's faction, which involves Mayumi.
And even the early game's 3  girls's got thing going on for them and stuff that makes possible associations that can be made with other characters : Eika's got that stone stacking thing for her but also the fact that she was, uh, kinda cancelled before her time (which got her some associations with mommahus or ... Seiga ; Urumi who freaking runs a DINOSAUR SELLING FISHERY BY THE RIVER OF THE DEAD AND SHE'S SMUGGLES PEOPLE INTO THE AFTERLIFE AS A SIDE HUSTLE, and finally Cootaka, who aside from being one of the surprisingly popular avian type, got a MASCOT on her head, and is also on the Hell administration side.

Regarding character designs, my favorite definitely go to
Mayumi.
She's so damn round and huggable. Easily one of ZUN's better art imo. I'm not so sold on that light blue thing on
Saki
tbh, but neither am I for Utsuho and Hecatia's look, and I've seen a NUMBER of fanarts that made them look pretty dang good with their designs, like, good enough to make me like their original design by ZUN. I hope that's also gonna be the case for
Saki
.

Story
seems to be pretty similar to LoLK, except you get a big baddy who's already reached her goals to begin with and the plan that was made to counteract said baddy is a little bit more of a gamble (if compared to the fight against Junko, where the ultramarine orb guarantees your victory). For LoLK, Sagume's plan already was fairly solid cuz she already got something set up in Gensokyo plus the fact that Eirin was also there to understand and potentially cooperate, but for the spirit beasts, this is too big of a leap of faith imo. But eh, I guess they'll need their flesh and blood humans from somewhere, and if that if they just chose to settle in a little corner of Hell instead of this, it would've been a bit boring and uncharacteristic of the savages that they are or something.

Also, this is the first game in a LONG (and I mean LONG) while that didn't get released concurrently with a fighter game nor a manga in the running (VFiS doesn't count cuz its final chapter was already in the works), so it is quite the lonely release ... they're obviously getting in Strange Cow one of these days, but I'd like them be a bit more illustrated in a more visual manner than in an interview or a novel.

And finally, on various stuff :
-Pressing R for retry doesn't work (for me)
-Hyper shots, specifically all of Reimu's and Eagle Marisa, have some serious visibility issues : white bullets or clear bullets that lack a dark outline can get hidden very easily by the bullets you're sending during these hypers
-You can practice a particular spellcard of a particular difficulty with ANY characters, which  is cool (dunno if that's how it was as well for the previous games)
-
Bombing during Saki's survival spell makes her vulnerable to shots
-Achievements !

All in all, I'm very satisfied with this release, and I hope that this kind of attention is gonna be brought to future Touhou games down the line. I'm no score runner nor a survivalist, so important points pertaining to those particular playstyles would obviously elude me, and I'm interested in the point of view of people who are into these  :)
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: ChronaSE on August 17, 2019, 10:30:47 PM
A question that has been bugging me for a while, are the buildings in stage 5 Keiki's doing?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Helepolis on August 18, 2019, 08:25:21 AM
As it has been a week already I think we can lift the generic spoiler mode for Touhou 17.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Marron on August 18, 2019, 11:13:10 AM
Oh ? Okay, then I'll answer without spoiler tags.

Well ChronaSE, I can't really answer your question...because I've yet to see all the ending of the game. Last time I played was Marisa Eagle and it wasn't translated yet.(Oh, it's not a blame at all, just explaining why I can't fully answer this question)

BUT, the title song of the 5th stage is "beast metropolis". Maybe it doesn't mean anything but you probably can conclude that it wasn't ONLY Keiki who did all the work. Yet, when you reach 6th stage, the animal spirits are offended about what the primate garden has become, stating that it was once a beautiful display of nature.(well, I say it with my words because I don't remember the expression exactly, but you see the point).
So......maybe that remark only concerns the garden, and the animals built those buildings. Nevertheless, it's not excluded that Keiki did take part of the lookout of the city, maybe modernizing the city that already existed. After all, she's a god who can create idols so she probably has some skills in creating modern things like building.

PS: I'm actually not english. I tend to do some mistakes in english because i'm not perfect in this language, not placing words in the right order, for exemple, but I hope you can understand what I'm saying.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on August 18, 2019, 12:26:52 PM
A question that has been bugging me for a while, are the buildings in stage 5 Keiki's doing?
Yup.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on August 18, 2019, 03:49:40 PM
I'm pretty sure the intention is that those are meant to be skyscrapers, given stage 5 is called a "metropolis," and Youmu remarks on what a huge city it is. I think the only structure Keiki's responsible for is the giant kofun at the end of the stage.

Speaking of Keiki, I'm still not sure quite how to read her. Having read the dialogues and endings, I don't sense she's necessarily a bad person or is lying about her intentions to help the human spirits, but her dialogue and the way she carries herself doesn't really give off the impression of someone acting out of genuine love for humans, either. The way she threatens to kill the heroines to make new idols out of them, stalls for time to prepare her techniques even on routes when the heroines are willing to hear her out, and how she specifically points to "intruding on her territory" as her reason for attacking all raise a bunch of red flags, in my opinion. Given how the series is with unusual moralities, she might be acting to help the human spirits, but with a very different idea of what that means compared to, say, Byakuren.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on August 18, 2019, 06:11:55 PM
I'm pretty sure the intention is that those are meant to be skyscrapers, given stage 5 is called a "metropolis," and Youmu remarks on what a huge city it is. I think the only structure Keiki's responsible for is the giant kofun at the end of the stage.
Maybe? I dunno, the animal spirits seem to very much hate technology, and that, along with the Haniwas(IE: robots), is very much Keiki's thing. Could be wrong tho.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Nimono on August 19, 2019, 10:06:16 PM
Speaking of Keiki, I'm still not sure quite how to read her. Having read the dialogues and endings, I don't sense she's necessarily a bad person or is lying about her intentions to help the human spirits, but her dialogue and the way she carries herself doesn't really give off the impression of someone acting out of genuine love for humans, either. The way she threatens to kill the heroines to make new idols out of them, stalls for time to prepare her techniques even on routes when the heroines are willing to hear her out, and how she specifically points to "intruding on her territory" as her reason for attacking all raise a bunch of red flags, in my opinion. Given how the series is with unusual moralities, she might be acting to help the human spirits, but with a very different idea of what that means compared to, say, Byakuren.

From what I've read of all the dialogues and omakes that are translated, I think both sides are telling the truth. Keiki was summoned to protect the human spirits, she made the haniwa soldiers to assist in that, BUT she's also trying to take over the animal realm, and one of the omakes outright states the human spirits are in the exact same position as before- they traded one dictator for another. Instead of the animal spirits dominating them, it's now the haniwa doing so.

So the situation is basically Evil vs. Evil, like LoLK.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Marron on August 22, 2019, 08:37:44 AM
At this point...I think it would be nice if there could be a chapter in a book or something like that, where a human spirit would talk to the heroines or some other charcaters for that matter, explaining their point of view about all that's happened and how they felt about everything on the subject.
Because, for now, we have everything about both sides who ruled the animal realm, but not the side of the story coming from a citizen of the animal realm that has experienced it all.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on August 22, 2019, 10:00:57 AM
The infodump in one of the profiles answers that. They feel just as oppressed.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Lebon14 on September 06, 2019, 10:01:44 PM
Don't forget: WBaWC releases on Steam on September 9.
Handy Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1079160/__Wily_Beast_and_Weakest_Creature/
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on September 09, 2019, 09:35:53 AM
Okay, finally had a chance to have some hands-on experience with the game. And sorry but there's no other way to say it - it is complete and utter trash.

First off, the story. The flimsy nature of the conflict and the usual characters' involvement in it has been mentioned before and that impacts the story too much. A lot of stuff about it is left unexplained and unexplored. That's nothing unusual to the games, frankly, but in this case there's barely any connection to Gensokyo or existing characters at all, and as a result very few ways this story can have any further influence on things. The same could be said about stories of LoLK and HSiFS except they WERE strongly connected to existing lore. This one is only loosely connected to an outsider character that hinted at events that were used as a background distraction for the main point of the story.

Stage 4 serves as a perfect example of how little care was put into making a coherent story this time. Again, the game structure where you fool around for 3 stages and then get pointed in the right direction is nothing new. And stage 4 boss is pretty much another Sagume, as far as using-characters-as-story-devices goes. Except this time ZUN literally didn't even try giving the players any motivation to follow the story. It's just that the stage 4 boss has a power to "persuade" you to help her. While Sagume could actually convince characters to follow along with her plan without the need to explicitly invoke her stated power, here they are herded the way game needs them to go because """"MAGIC"""".

Worst of all, the endings don't even add anything to the story anymore. They talk about surrounding circumstances and that's it. Not a single hint of the main conflict budging either way. Not a single stroke added to the bigger worldbuilding picture. Not even a single lesson to be learned from the events. Yes, you might be surprised, but older Touhou games used to have pretty interesting lessons in their endings. What's most disappointing is that this game COULD have that. I've seen people explore different interpretations of the story and what could be said with it. Except ZUN isn't even presenting any actual points behind the sides of the main conflict. Some events just happen in some other world and that's it. The story presentation feels very mechanical and soulless. Good groundwork for an actual story to be built upon but that's it. It's like he had an idea to make something different (and very non-Touhou-feeling) but that idea wasn't even fleshed out enough.

As for the other aspects, the soundtrack still feels horrible even after some time. It's generically boring at best and actively gets in the way of playing the game with any degree of enjoyment at its worst.

The gameplay itself is a huge mixed bag as well. There's barely any invincibility after hypers even though effects would make you expect otherwise. Hyper-powered shots and their effects cover the bullets. The patterns, while having some gems here and there, still have a lot of issues when they're not being carbon copies of the old stuff.

I guess I'm repeating a bunch of old complaints here but the point is that they didn't go away even after giving a full game a chance. So you know what, I say give this one a pass. If you're interested in gameplay just stick to UFO, you're not missing much. Unless you actually want to keep getting such bland uninspired experiences in future games, of course.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on September 09, 2019, 07:22:22 PM
Eh, gotta say, there's a lot I disagree with in Cyber's take, especially on the UFO gameplay comparison, in part for reasons I've brought much, much earlier (https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,23363.msg1425163.html#msg1425163)

Anyway, when it comes to the story, while I get the thing with the Beast World, a distant realm which essentially should have no interaction with Gensokyo, being relevant, it should be noted that it's Hell's neighbour of sorts ... and Hell has a pretty substantial place in Touhou, if the characters, the death-related lore, and the possibility for stuff that happens there to spill into Gensokyo (SA's plot, UFO's cast, some stuff from WaHH) are considered. AND, CURRENTLY, Hell is going through some kind of political trouble : if current Hell is a free-for-all and might makes right there (AFiEU), there's shouldn't be a reason why complete foreigners with some ambition and the strenghth to back it up can't partake in whatever is going on there. Anyway, my point here is that it's quite possible that the introduction of the Beast World, its denizens and even the political situation there,  aside from being ZUN's usual curveball, may also be a be a setup of sorts for another future work that will not only properly tackle whatever is going on in Hell, but also put a conclusion (?) to it.

I mean, say LoLK and its Dream World for example : the Dream World itself, as a PLACE, hasn't had any serious interaction with Gensokyo and its residents ... but it got to serve, much much later, a more substantial role in TH 15.5 and 16.5. The beast World might seem to lack peculiar quirks for now, but it is quite possible that it (or its residents) could play some kind of role in a future Hell-involving work. Like, just as the Dream World and Doremy got to have their limelight in TH 15.5 and 16.5, the Beast World and its denizens may play some kind of role towards Hell (a place with a certain relevance in Touhou) in a subsequent work. Future is incertain, so I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the Beast World as a bad move regarding Touhou's worldbuilding as a whole ... In consideration of the expansive nature of this series' worldbuilding.

also

(...) Worst of all, the endings don't even add anything to the story anymore. They talk about surrounding circumstances and that's it. Not a single hint of the main conflict budging either way. Not a single stroke added to the bigger worldbuilding picture (...)
Eagle Reimu's ending kinda disagrees with this ...
aside from that, Keiki popping up in Gensokyo plus Boss Kurokoma intending to visit Gensokyo contribute to make it evident that the interactions with the Beast World are VERY possible.
Consistent with the thing where all the previously encountered characters in the series can pop up in Gensokyo for whatever reason, like, say, in GoU's danmaku firework festival ...

And I also don't see the difference between the thing with Boss Kicchou and lady Sagume, considering the fact that the turns of events that lead the heroines to the Moon were literally due to ... Sagume using her power.



But anyway
-it is complete and utter trash.
-It's generically boring at best and actively gets in the way of playing the game with any degree of enjoyment at its worst.
-The gameplay itself is a huge mixed bag as well.
-(...) just stick to UFO, you're not missing much. Unless you actually want to keep getting such bland uninspired experiences in future games, of course.

I have no problem with people criticizing and even hating on the new game, but I completely disagree when you conflate the obvious [personnal dislike] with [matter-of-fact suckiness] ... especially when the general reception of the various stuff you claim to be factually sucky is quite positive ...
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Nusp on September 10, 2019, 02:20:18 AM
I have no problem with people criticizing and even hating on the new game, but I completely disagree when you conflate the obvious [personnal dislike] with [matter-of-fact suckiness] ... especially when the general reception of the various stuff you claim to be factually sucky is quite positive ...
I think it can be taken for granted that it was all an opinion, not a declaration of fact, regardless of how it's written. I know that it can be hard to read someone's intent on the internet but I also find silly the notion that you'd need to clarify "this is just my opinion" on everything you write. It seems like arguing over semantics.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on September 10, 2019, 09:32:43 AM
I have no problem with people criticizing and even hating on the new game, but I completely disagree when you conflate the obvious [personnal dislike] with [matter-of-fact suckiness] ... especially when the general reception of the various stuff you claim to be factually sucky is quite positive ...

I apologize if my post comes across that way, but yes, that's all just my opinion. I'm not claiming that those who think otherwise are wrong or anything. Those are the problems I personally have with this game but I'd be interested to see detailed arguments that would support otherwise. They won't change my opinion but I'd love to understand why other people would think differently.

That said, I do realize there might be a possibility for this to be a setup for something in the future, but it all feels way too sketchy for that. Hell's events still remain mostly in the background (I don't think it will be explored even in the upcoming fairy manga chapter), Animal Realm has been skimmed over in a way that reminds me oh how Makai was handled, and cowboy girl might as well become another Flandre. The main characters were used in the conflict even though they have no stakes in it and were mostly left in the dark even at the end. In previous games you could tell that something else was coming but I'm not getting such vibes here.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: TresserT on September 10, 2019, 04:59:40 PM
Yeah, I agree that this game didn't flesh out its world or its connection to Gensokyo whatsoever. However, the events that happened were "important" enough to get a full game devoted to them. DDC had its events fleshed out in the manga and a later game, LoLK had three entire games devoted to its worldbuilding (plus VD and AoCF fleshing out the dream world and its workings), and Okina and her role has been elaborated upon prettt heavilt in the manga.

To me this game does feel like it's barely grazing the surface, but I 100% expect things to get fleshed out in the manga or later games.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: MrNoobomnenie on September 14, 2019, 12:55:39 AM
As I've already said, the statment "There's no good music in WBaWC" is rediculous. "Beast Metropolis" is beautiful and "Idolatrize World" is very powerful. Actually, a lot of Touhou themes need to be relestened several times before you start understanding how good they are.

Gameplay... I personally don't care about it that much - I'm a lore-nerd.

And now the story. It's very strange to hear the statements like "The game gives nothing to a Touhou world". At first, it's expands the universe lore, which is already good. At second, the game is very new - it's too early to say, that it's plot is "pointless". For an example SWR was a very pointless game before AoCF and it's Tenshi's comeback in terms of story. What does this game tell us? That Heaven and celestials exist? We've already knew that from Memento. Did Iku and Tenshi did at least something between SWR and AoCF (almost 10 years!)? No, they did nothing! Actually, you can still delete Iku from the Touhou universe and absolutely nothing will change with exception of only SWR.
If you prefer shmups, what about SA? The only not pointless character is Koishi, and she has nothing to do with the plot. You can literally replace the entire game with just one manga chapter, where Kanako awakes the underground geysers and Koishi appears. Satori can easily be just a backstory character like Youki Konpaku. All other SA characters can just not exist entirely - nothing will change. Palace of the Earth Spirits is not even close to something like SDM, Hakugyokurou, Eientei, Moriya Shrine, Myoren Temple and Divine Spirit Mausoleum. Actually, the entire place of the Former Hell has so little influence to the Touhou universe, that it could just be listed in Memento or Symposium instead of appearing in the game. And SA came out 11 years ago! But no one is complaining about it's complete irrelevance to the story (for some reason). So the similar complains about the game that came out a month ago have no sense what so ever.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: R. P. Genocraft on September 14, 2019, 01:41:11 AM
Honestly, I feel like the whole point is that the protagonist was dragged into a completely external conflict they didn't understand. It makes sense that it doesn't have much repercussion. Honestly, it's the same as LoLK. And you know how influential Doremy was to AoCF's plot, so just wait until ZUN puts one of the new characters in a fighting game.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on September 14, 2019, 10:15:03 AM
SWR is interesting PRECISELY because it expands on topics touched upon in PMiSS. For SA, your partners all know about Old Hell, plus that's where Suika's oni buddies hang out. LoLK... come on, lunarians have already been a huge deal before. But let's expand this to other main games. UFO reintroduces Makai, the holy grail of "PC-98 IS CANON" crowd. 10D is an explicit direct result of the previous game, plus fans instantly picked up the idea of a "religion war" coming after that. DDC was set up as a Gensokyo-wide revolution. HSiFS introduces another one of Youkai Sages. Really, questioning the importance of any of the previous games is just plain ignorant, even if it's just for the sake of argument.

WBaWC, on the other hand, TEASES you with current Hell's events but ignores them completely and shoves a story with no hint of previous relevance in your face. Even the heroines are just like "I have no idea what's going on but let's go along with it". I mean, that was kinda true several times in the past as well, but at least the PLAYERS usually came out with a good idea of what was going on. 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. Again, not denying that something else might be built upon this stuff later. Doremi and Hecatia's role expasions were a pleasant surprise, not gonna lie. But this game just doesn't catch my interest, so I'll end up caring less if something like that does happen.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: MrNoobomnenie on September 14, 2019, 12:04:43 PM
LoLK... come on, lunarians have already been a huge deal before.
But Dream World wasn't. This was a completely new made up concept, that had never been mentioned anywhere before. Just like the Beast Realm. No, not even like that - Dream World had a very secondary role in the plot. And we all know, how this ended up...
Makai, the holy grail of "PC-98 IS CANON" crowd.
Do this people know, that Makai is not a Touhou-original concept, and came out straight from Buddhism? Basically, they are just saying something like "PC-98 and Windows both have Hell - PC-98 IS CANON!"
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on September 14, 2019, 01:57:35 PM
But Dream World wasn't. This was a completely new made up concept, that had never been mentioned anywhere before. Just like the Beast Realm. No, not even like that - Dream World had a very secondary role in the plot. And we all know, how this ended up...

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".
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: TresserT on September 14, 2019, 03:29:05 PM
Tbh, I think a lot of the salt comes from the fact that this was the first time the bait and switch was an outright lie. IN was a similar case where it was an external conflict that Gensokyo didn't need to get involved in, but it still had ripples that affected Gensokyo. Reimu didn't go out looking for Lunarians- Reimu saw that the moon was gone and went looking for the source. She still had her own initiative- the fact that the conflict wound up being something else doesn't change Reimu's goal.

In this game it feels less like we're going out to solve an incident that's bothering us and more like we're being dragged around and used like tools. Even in LoLK, we started with one goal and just changed that goal partway through once we learned about the conflict. This time around, we never get to understand what's going on and are just doing what the animal mob tells us. There is no "incident affecting Gensokyo that we go out to investigate"- the incident is that all these animals came looking for us. Reimu has no initiative this time, she really is just a tool. And that doesn't feel good to me.

As for music, trying to claim that people who don't like this game's soundtrack are ridiculous is ??? How can anyone claim that their taste in music is better or worse? Personally I find the game's soundtrack to be a bit empty, particularly the boss themes. Idolatrize World is the worst offender.

One thing I like about touhou music is that you can usually tell what kind of character a theme belongs to. Byakuren has a powerful, emotional theme that's got hints of sadness but has an underlying feeling of hope. Kokoro has a theme so over the top in its melancholy you can't help but feel it's a bit melodramatic- but that's the point, Kokoro doesn't understand her subtle emotions, she's only capable of showing her feelings with over the top caricatures.

It doesn't help that Keiki is a character who isn't fleshed out much, but her theme just seems like a bunch of unrelated parts mashed together. I feel like you could take her theme and apply it to any generic rpg boss and it'd be fine. Can't tell at all what kind of character this is supposed to represent. I had the same issue with Junko's theme initially, but Junko could kind of get the excuse of her theme being a pure action theme with nothing behind it. I don't think Keiki's theme has any reason to be so generic.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on September 14, 2019, 03:43:59 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".
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.

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.
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.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: 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?
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on September 14, 2019, 05:32:56 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?
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.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: TresserT on September 14, 2019, 06:18:28 PM
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).
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: 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.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: the old guy on September 14, 2019, 10:43:42 PM
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.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on September 14, 2019, 11:04:31 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.

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.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on September 14, 2019, 11:32:54 PM
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.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: TresserT on September 14, 2019, 11:47:09 PM
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.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on September 15, 2019, 02:38:21 AM
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.
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.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Validon98 on September 15, 2019, 03:50:39 AM
I don't want to get too involved with this argument, I just want to point out that uh, did Yachie even use her power? I think it's moreso that the animal spirit possessing the protagonist is following orders and is guiding you along. It's why everyone says stuff like "I shouldn't know this but it sounds familiar" when Yachie is explaining things. If playing with Otter, the spirit outright takes over a stage earlier than normal to directly apologize and grovel.

So yeah, while her ability is a bit silly I don't think it even got used, it was moreso being possessed by the spirit that made them go along with her orders.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on September 15, 2019, 04:05:15 AM
It's pretty heavily implied Yachie is using her power on the heroines. Reimu in particular remarks in her Wolf and Otter scenarios that "even though she's clearly lying, I have this strange feeling she's telling the truth," and after beating her says almost distressingly "it feels like I never had any questions for you to begin with." While it's hard to say one way or the other, I don't think they actually directly influence the heroine's actions until stage 5. I'd even go so far as to say the general outline of the beast spirits' basic goal was to direct the heroines into Yachie in particular, who'd then convince them to fight Keiki using her power to minimize the chance of them refusing.

Regardless, I personally like the odd feeling of the plot setup. It really does feel like the heroines lose control over the plot and just are kind of led by the nose to a fight they didn't really understand. I think ZUN wanted to emphasize this time letting the player discover through the endings what the motivations and character of each side were after the fact, rather than you learning the story on a first playthrough. Given it's one of the most grey conflicts of the series, it was interesting to try and puzzle out the unique politics at play. I do hope we get to see more of the animal realm in the future - and since it's looking a lot like there may be a whole arc devoted to the goings-on of hell, that's not out of the question at all.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: TresserT on September 15, 2019, 05:05:32 AM
The protagonist yelling out Yacchie's name and then questioning "wait how do I know her" implies that the animal spirits are already influencing their actions as early as stage 4 imo. Reimu's wolf and eagle routes are a bit vague, but her Otter route and Marisa/Youmu's routes make it clear that they know who she is, it's not just that they're chill with her. Yacchie's ability is just reducing the will to fight, it shouldn't be able to impart knowledge of what being leader of the Kiketsu family means.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: nintendonut888 on September 15, 2019, 07:04:42 AM
Mmm, that's true, I forgot about that. In that case, it's probably a two-pronged assault; the spirits give what push they're able to due to possessing the heroines, while Yachie uses her power to more directly influence them. Given Saki refers to them having made an alliance with Yachie specifically, I still get the impression it was agreed she would be the liaison for the selected human for that exact reason.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on September 15, 2019, 09:39:05 AM
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."

The problem is that this isn't really the case. There's always an "wait, why should I trust you" "because my name is Yachie" "oh okay" exchange. As others pointed out, this might as well be the animal spirits influencing the heroines, but the fact still remains that the story has this unnecessary questionable hurdle. Again, why not make her ability being a master negotiator? That exchange might as well not be there or become something like "look, just do it and the spirits will stop coming" that way.

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.

Look, this is the prime example of what I called "retroactive explanation". Using in-universe reasons to explain the story and then using the story to justify the in-universe stuff. What I'm suggesting is looking outside the box and thinking why ZUN wrote things that way in the first place. Which I'm saying were unnecessarily convoluted and could have been done better.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on September 15, 2019, 11:04:41 AM
Look, this is the prime example of what I called "retroactive explanation". Using in-universe reasons to explain the story and then using the story to justify the in-universe stuff. What I'm suggesting is looking outside the box and thinking why ZUN wrote things that way in the first place. Which I'm saying were unnecessarily convoluted and could have been done better.
The thing is that in-universe stuff is what constitutes the setting inside of which this particular story is told. If the story was told without any background of any kind to be based on, I don't see how that would be any more solid, so I don't think that this particular kind of storytelling is necessarily bad. When it comes to the reading of Touhou games stories, there is the prologue, the story in the manual, the dialogues, and the omake text. I'd agree on the "retroactive explanation" thing IF the various endings had explained everything that lead to the incident, which they do not quite do.
The closest thing there are Keiki's feelings on the matter and Kicchou's rationnale, both of which could be infered from the omake

For this game in particular, I'd even argue that the setting involving something completely new actually make things easier to understand than stuff like LoLK, which requires you to know Touhou lore about the Moon, their standing in regards to the earth, Fairies and their nature, as well as what happened in ULiL : no need to have knowledge of ALL of the previous stuff, including the troubles in Hell cuz the omake mention it anyway.

And speaking of the omake, specifically Kicchou's profile, it essentially contain ALL of the backstory, all of the events that lead to the Beast invastion, as well as the standing of all factions in regard to each other : the alliance between the Beast organisation is in there too, as well as Kicchou's role. The various goons clearly know her by name but not necessarily by look, and its the animal partner's knowledge of her identity plus her ability, information that are well available in the omake, and the knowledge of the plan that they're taking part in that smoothes things over. Furthermore the otter spirit dialogues shows that something is going on.

The heroines probably didn't read the omake so they had no idea what was going on, and honestly, its the player / reader's job to understand the story. I mean, all the pieces necessary to understand it are available.

Something can probably be said about the information being spread to a manual and a small document that is not in-game, like when to read the omake, but checking all the relevant text that comes with the games has always been the correct way to read Touhou plots since ever.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on September 15, 2019, 11:41:06 AM
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that approach, the story does use its tools in a solid way without any plot holes. But I'm saying it's not the only way to look at it, and from a meta level it does show signs of narrative deteriorating. If you can ignore it then fine, have your fun. But in my case this one makes me question if I even want to know where the official story is heading anymore. As a big lore fan myself, this isn't a good feeling to have, but the issues stand out too much for me to close my eyes on them.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Suspicious person on September 15, 2019, 11:52:59 AM
It's literally just a small dialogue exchange tho
The thing you're complaining about I mean

Just like how WaHH's ending distinguished itself from FS's ending, the current debatable laziness does not necessarily guarantee future suckiness for all there is to come, writing wise.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: the old guy on September 17, 2019, 12:21:24 PM
The fact that there are people who REFUSE to accept that Yachie used her power is proof that people are just looking for reasons to despise the story.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on September 17, 2019, 01:39:41 PM
...Kid, who are you even trying to argue with now? Providing criticism, personal opinions and alternate interpretations don't make the story any less valid. Is your own reading of it so fragile and shaky that you feel the need to protect it from anything that would cast a shadow of doubt upon it?

Seriously, you're just embarassing yourself at this point. If you have any personal hangups then sort them out in a more personal manner. Either way, grow up and learn to just let go already.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: Kilgamayan on September 18, 2019, 10:23:52 PM
Everyone play nicely, now.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: CyberAngel on October 03, 2019, 10:02:01 AM
Took me until now to realize that Yachie is pretty much Bowsette. ZUN's "inspiration" habits are as strong as ever, I see.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: The ⑨th Zentillion on October 03, 2019, 01:05:35 PM
Uhhhh...  :wat:
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: 7TC7 on October 04, 2019, 06:36:35 AM
Took me until now to realize that Yachie is pretty much Bowsette. ZUN's "inspiration" habits are as strong as ever, I see.

Well, it took me until this comment to realize Bowser might be based on a Jidiao. Which finally makes his design seem a lot less weird in concept.
Title: Re: Touhou Project 17 「東方鬼形獣 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.」
Post by: NorwegianboyEE on October 04, 2019, 11:53:58 AM
This game isn't even close to being my favourite in the series, but it's still not as bad as the one dude trashing it seems to suggest. A weaker entry in my opinion, but i certainly had fun with my initial playthrough. The characters were interesting, the music was ok, the patterns weren't all that, but the gameplay gimmick made them interesting. Story was fascinating. I'd say it's a game closer to the mediocreness of Touhou 14 but a worthy entry nonetheless.