Touhou Project 12.5 ~ ダブルスポイラー (Double Spoiler) announced, girls are preparing.

[Barrakketh]

I don't know if the greater half of Japanese Touhou players know shrinemaiden, but there are tons of foreigner reaction videos on nicovideo (mostly consisting of youtube feedback).

Generally speaking Youtube is possibly one of the worst places ever for feedback/reactions to almost anything unless it's universally awesome, like that Mythbusters where they used a rocket to slam a thick plate of metal into a car at nearly the speed of sound.  Most of it consists of pointless statements that mean the same thing, a staggering amount of cognitive dissonance (especially on politcal videos), plus grammar and spelling that almost makes me want to cry when I think about the fact that it was probably written by an American (sometimes I wonder how a foreigner with a loose grasp of the language can derive the correct meaning from them).

Buried within all that there might be some comments that are genuinely worth something, but usually it's like trawling through the cesspool that is 4chan's /b/.

It's not that I dislike the characters or story or anything. It just takes the back burner in comparison to the games themselves.

Personally, the music (and subsequent arrangements) is #1 followed by the game itself.  Music got me interested in Touhou, the music is still my main involvement with Touhou even when I'm in a position to actually play the games.  That's not to say that I don't spend a couple of hours with it every other day or so (unless I've been on a TF2 binge in which case I play TF2 for disgusting amounts of time and ignore other things), but I've never really ever felt like being the kind of player that obsessively practices stages and spends hours upon hours playing the game every day, or plays on Hard or Lunatic.  I've still never cleared an extra stage :ohdear:

But hell, IIRC ZUN made Touhou as a way to have people hear his compositions, so maybe the fact that I find the music to be the main attraction isn't such a bad thing after all :V

[dustyjo]

[Azinth]

I personally find Touhou games much more enjoyable than Cave shooters, since the latter are much more about muscle memory (yes, much more than Touhou in my opinion) and twitch reflexes due to absurdly fast-paced danmaku, while Touhou feels more laid back and a bit more "strategic" in its patterns. However, I can see how people who are gods at Dodonpachi and the like can feel that Touhou is substandard in this respect--not that I share those impressions, though, since I believe the game stands with a style of its own in the danmaku genre.

Strategy/memorization and reflexes are both equally important in any shmup, especially if you want to play high-level.  For instance, it would be completely impossible to perfect stage 5 on sightread; there's just no way you'd be able to get past it without knowing how to approach it.  On the other hand, there's no way someone could perfect Lunatic UFO stage 5 without having some amazing dodging skills.


Anyway, all this arguing over 12.5 amuses me greatly, since I am quite neutral towards StB in general and wasn't even expecting TH13 this year anyway.  I'll probably just treat 12.5 as something to fuck around with once in a while for fun, just like with the first StB

[Kuma]

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Aya takes pictures of people

[WanderingKnight]

Strategy/memorization and reflexes are both equally important in any shmup, especially if you want to play high-level.  For instance, it would be completely impossible to perfect stage 5 on sightread; there's just no way you'd be able to get past it without knowing how to approach it.  On the other hand, there's no way someone could perfect Lunatic UFO stage 5 without having some amazing dodging skills.

I'm not saying you don't need skill, but when you see any Cave shmup you can see that it's way more fast paced than any Touhou game. This calls for more muscle memory (note that I didn't say memorization exactly for that same reason: you need memorization in Touhou--just not twitch-perfect memory) than any of the Touhou games I've played. Granted, I'm still not a Lunatic-level player, but I've cleared an Extra or two and it's not hard to realize.

Touhou's style is largely forcing you into making mistakes and end up walling yourself--Cave-like shmups have another approach, which is in general lines to throw a bunch of shit at you at lightspeed. I'm not saying which style is better (as I said before, I prefer Touhou's approach), but just pointing out the reason why some hardcore arcade shmup Japanese players might be put off by the danmaku aspect of the series.

[Naut]

Quickly, let's continue arguing over a game nobody here has played!!!!

Yeah!!!!

[Azinth]

This calls for more muscle memory (note that I didn't say memorization exactly for that same reason: you need memorization in Touhou--just not twitch-perfect memory) than any of the Touhou games I've played.

I'm not sure what the difference between 'memorization' and 'muscle memory' is that you're hinting at.  It's just a matter of learning a strategy to beating a pattern and using that same strategy every time, which both Cave and Touhou games have a crapton of.

[Shizzo]

Well, I gotta say that -some- StB scenes -are- either hella hard, or luck-based

I'm trying to cap everything so far in StB, all I need now is Old Rain, BoWaP, that 5-colored turtles crappy card and Bar of the 10 kings..

The point is; I can say that for sure, many of my captures happened because of luck. 

See Bar of the 10 Kings; 7th part (The white bullet spread).

The bullets are spread randomly, you can either get an open area or a wall in your face.

The whole spellcard itself is easy to go, until the 6th and 7th part; but THAT's where people don't like; you spend so much time just getting to the spell card part that you always die on that you get easily bored!

Well, that was just a side comment I made, but I do admit I'm hoping for DS to have lesser stressing spellcards... D:

[Kilgamayan]

I guess it will never change that playing comes before buying, if buying comes at all for most of you here. （´・ω・）

I am proud to say I own copies of everything except for IaMP, and that I also own copies of Super Marisa Land, Super Marisa World, MegaMari and PatchCon, and have connections working on getting me Koumajou Densetsu Scarlet Symphony.

I know the stigma that Westerners have in regard to this sort of thing, but there are some of us that buy what we can.

EDIT: Since this is a such a high-profile topic, I think it's about time Edible and I unswitched.

[Aisha]

I own almost everything ZUN has released as well, except for the PC98 games and the Sangetsusei and Bougetsushou series. Even though I prefer the shmup aspect of Touhou the most, I enjoy ZUN's body of work, so I'm just happy that we're getting at least something this year.

[ebarrett]

This topic is so intellectually disingenuous it's painful to read.

Pretty much this. Fortunately, ZUN doesn't give a shit and just does what the fuck he wants, and guess what, he's a better game developer than his fans.

See Bar of the 10 Kings; 7th part (The white bullet spread).

The bullets are spread randomly, you can either get an open area or a wall in your face.

There is not a single random element in 10 Kings, Turtle Spam or BoWaP, and Old Rain is "basic" streaming and weaving. You're just doing it wrong.


And people trying to compare StB to the shmups are stupid. Just saying.

[JoonK]

I'm actually pretty excited about this game, I didn't expect any of this heated discussion about it.

We get to see new patterns with all of the newer characters. I thought the reaction here would be better to more Nue/Byakuren/Satori patterns. Its going to be much more mentally taxing for ZUN to create new and original stages/characters/story, so this is an effective break to think about the next game more. I wouldn't be surprised to see more THxx.5s now, for as long as Team Shanghai Alice is one person. Hopefully it will create both hype for TH13 and create an overall better product for the fans.

Also, StB was one of the best danmaku "training" games", right? The challenging difficulty often makes many players better (if only it could work on my computer D:). So I think its an ingenius move by ZUN.

Like stated before, it gets rid of all disingenuous fans and offer some type of reward for those who love Touhou for what it is, a danmaku game.


REVELATION. ABOVE PARAGRAPH IS THE DOUBLE SPOILER

[N-Forza]

have connections working on getting me Koumajou Densetsu Scarlet Symphony.

You make it sound like such a big deal.

I'm really not sure that the whole "doujin vs. commercial" criteria really hold up in this case. I've still seen Melty Blood called "ero-game garbage" by Japanese fighting game fans, even after it was released in arcades. Also, people like Nasu and Ryuwhatever07 have gone on to make commercial releases in other formats of their games. ZUN hasn't gone commercial certainly not for lack of fans or anything like that, but because he prefers to keep the official story, music, and games themselves his very own, outside of collaborative efforts like the fighting games or the comics where he probably maintains complete creative control, because it's what he likes and that's something he doesn't want to compromise on. Granted, having a team of people work on a Touhou shmup would easily make it look something like a modern Cave game, but at what cost?

And for what it's worth, I find 10.5/12.3 to be much more interesting than Melty Blood. Maybe not as solid, but a whole lot more fun to play.

[Suikama]

MashyMelty Blood hurts your fingers after like half an hour DX

[Barrakketh]

MashyMelty Blood hurts your fingers after like half an hour DX

At first I read that as "after like half an hour of IIDX"

[Suikama]

At first I read that as "after like half an hour of IIDX"

Oh great now I see it like that too  :ohdear:

[nintendonut888]

Just putting my own two cents, I originally came for the shmup, stayed for the patterns and music. I've become entranced by every aspect of Touhou, even going beyond the impossible and thinking the story is something profound that more works of fiction need to follow. Even if I don't play quite as much as I used to, I still enjoy the series and welcome anything ZUN has to offer

Spoiler:

unless it's another Phantasmagoria game >_>

.

[Helepolis]

I was being silly with my last post, Kilga/Edible. I am not an elitist that knows every corner of the canon. That is just impossible anyway (dark tewi). Obviously silly because Lucarius already posted statistics from a Touhou survey and the numbers speak for themselves. Music being the highest reason to like Touhou doesn't surprise me at all. Because the BGM from IN 4b (stage and boss) captured my heart immediately the first time.

We patiently have to wait and see what kind of stuff Double Spoiler has to offer us.

You know, it would be funny if someone made a Dnh game where you play as ZUN and your goal is to free the girls from the evil hands of commercialisation (raiding an office building and reaching some fat ugly boss with sunglasses and a sigar). Wait, never mind that. 

[Thata no Guykoro]

You're just doing it wrong.

No bombs, lunatic only, final destination?

[ebarrett]

No bombs, lunatic only, final destination?

Nah, StB is perfectly clearable by a normal mode player, even a not-that-good normal mode player with enough dedication. As a bonus, it'll improve your repertoire - I've said it a million times, I didn't know streaming until crashing and burning vs. Straw Doll Kamikaze.

But people need to stop thinking StB is "luck based" and get working on, y'know, figuring out how the cards work. I could come here and spell out how to capture the four cards he mentioned, but that would beat the point, so I'm not doing it unless explicitly asked to.


(late edit, heart attack-inducing grammar detected)

[Sapz]

I'm not saying you don't need skill, but when you see any Cave shmup you can see that it's way more fast paced than any Touhou game. This calls for more muscle memory (note that I didn't say memorization exactly for that same reason: you need memorization in Touhou--just not twitch-perfect memory) than any of the Touhou games I've played. Granted, I'm still not a Lunatic-level player, but I've cleared an Extra or two and it's not hard to realize.

Touhou's style is largely forcing you into making mistakes and end up walling yourself--Cave-like shmups have another approach, which is in general lines to throw a bunch of shit at you at lightspeed. I'm not saying which style is better (as I said before, I prefer Touhou's approach), but just pointing out the reason why some hardcore arcade shmup Japanese players might be put off by the danmaku aspect of the series.

As someone who plays Touhou at Lunatic as well as a lot of Cave games, I can safely say that I've never experienced a Touhou game forcing me to make a mistake and wall myself close to as much as, say, DoDonPachi. They're two very different types of shmups, and as such have different appeal; Touhou's is in the intricate patterns and the tense feeling you get from pathfinding your way through a huge maze of bullets, whereas Cave games are more focused on constantly moving across the screen, manipulating the way the enemies fire at you in order to survive, with a very high emphasis on destruction as well as dodging (and of course the very high difficulty level). DANGUN FEVERON aside, there are very few cases where Cave games are simply throwing a bunch of high speed bullets at you.

The problem arises when fans of one type of shmup play the other type and expect it to play the exact same way; Cave fans will often get turned off by the slowness and lack of dynamics in Touhou's gameplay (and the lack of randomness; given, there are spell cards which can be memorized down to the individual bullets), while Touhou fans will play a Cave game expecting to see ZUN's complex and intricate patterns to sit tight and dodge through rather than being forced to move around a lot, blowing things up (and also possibly getting turned off by the difficulty, again). I've seen both happen pretty often. :V

[Solais]

As far as I remember, Touhou wiki actually differentiated two types of Shmups: Bullet Hell and Manic Shooter.

But anyway, my story is this: I always loved shmups since I was a child, however, I found the actually loleasy Tyrian to be my favorite, because it's not only a shmup, but a shmup with an atmosphere, a shmup with great music, with a story and a whole world. Since then I've played some shmups, but I never loved them as much as I love Touhou. Touhou is my game. It's my perfect dream game. It is perfectly fair, it has great music, great characters, story, world setting everything. If Touhou wouldn't exist, I'll be the one who would make it, because... I feel like it's a game made for me, and people like me.

Rather, I'm surprised I see this comment. Is there absolutely no one else here that has any connection to Japan whatsoever?

As far as I know, we have connection to Japan, but not to the Japanese Touhoudom in general.

[Lucarius]

Generally speaking Youtube is possibly one of the worst places ever for feedback/reactions to almost anything unless it's universally awesome, like that Mythbusters where they used a rocket to slam a thick plate of metal into a car at nearly the speed of sound.  Most of it consists of pointless statements that mean the same thing, a staggering amount of cognitive dissonance (especially on politcal videos), plus grammar and spelling that almost makes me want to cry when I think about the fact that it was probably written by an American (sometimes I wonder how a foreigner with a loose grasp of the language can derive the correct meaning from them).

Buried within all that there might be some comments that are genuinely worth something, but usually it's like trawling through the cesspool that is 4chan's /b/.

I don't watch youtube, perhaps because this reason gave me a terrible impression of it.

However, apparently, youtube on the Japanese side is more often used by people who are 20 years or older in age, while nicovideo is treated like the dumpster for mid-high schoolers, which surprised me very much indeed. I mean, just comparing comments between American youtube and Japanese nicovideo shows a rather large difference between the quality of commentators. As far as I've seen on the foreigner reaction videos on nicovideo, Japanese people don't bother to pick up any of what would be considered unnecessary junk from any country.

I guess comparing Japanese nicovideo to Japanese youtube, the quality of comments are better on youtube, just from looking at a few videos right now. This leaves me with the impression that only Americans have this problem on youtube.

Like you said, unless it's universally awesome, it's a terrible place for feedback. In other words, if it's just awesome within the American realm, it's a terrible place for feedback. Japanese people don't really need feedback on American things, just on Japanese things that become universally awesome to the point where there naturally would be foreign feedback.

From ones that come quickly to mind, there have been videos on vocaloids in general, touhou in general, Bad Apple PV, the CNN incident, and the Korea cyberattacking 2ch incident. I'm sure there'll be one on the PS3 calendar bug soon enough. Note also that America is simply a nation within these foreigner reaction videos. American feedback doesn't really come out more than the other countries that do.

[Solais]

And MotK is also not an universally American forum. For an example, I'm from Hungary, Europe. Touhou is completely unknown here.

[DgBarca]

And MotK is also not an universally American forum. For an example, I'm from Hungary, Europe. Touhou is completely unknown here.

There is a few fans in France too (hi5) ! But I was on a french forum and was kicked from the chat because I was speaking too much about touhou...lol ?

[Lucarius]

And MotK is also not an universally American forum. For an example, I'm from Hungary, Europe. Touhou is completely unknown here.

There is a few fans in France too (hi5) ! But I was on a french forum and was kicked from the chat because I was speaking too much about touhou...lol ?

Capital. Only helps me serve my purpose for other Japanese people better. I'm not really centered in on Americans more-so than I am on English-speaking people.

However, I do get the impression that most Japanese people consider most English comments on the internet to originate from America by default. They don't even have England or Australia in mind, let alone nationalities with other national languages.


追記：うはｗ、ちょっと長居しすぎた。

[Bananamatic]

and the lack of randomness; given, there are spell cards which can be memorized down to the individual bullets

this

I find it irritating how some attacks seem unfairly hard and the only decent solution is "sit on the second E of the enemy marker to completely avoid everything"

[Danielu Yoshikoto]

Oh gosh... already an StB .5 Dodge all the shit bullets on the screen with only one freaking hit type of game?

The pattern look O.k. but man... I thought we would finally be able to play as "space ships shooting each other" finally again.

[Edible]

EDIT: Since this is a such a high-profile topic, I think it's about time Edible and I unswitched.

bah

[Gpop]

I'm pretty sure the japanese thinks of us Canadians as an extension of USA with more snow and a bigger backyard.