It fun! Wow! I did a big review over on Steam though if people want to see what my thoughts are in a review setting (it’s also below the OST download). I know I could put that here but I don’t want to work out how to do spoiler text on my site B)
I’m mostly just posting this so I can link the BGM extractions I did (MP3 | OGG)!
So yeah, my thoughts: Game fun! Wow!
Genuine summary: The game has it’s flaws but for a Vs Danmaku game (The 3rd official one) it is genuinely enjoyable and dare I say it “fun”. Though if you really, really, really like Phantasmagoria of Flower View, then give the demo a shot ‘cus you don’t like the demo you might not enjoy the full game
There’s spoilers hidden away here, even on returning chars, so people can be surprised if they’re trying to be spoiler free (somehow, after 48 hours)
I’ll start out with the flaws:
- No replay system – A biggie admittedly, but does mean if anyone has a cool match you will have to actually ensure you’re recording before playing. ZUN might patch that later but I doubt he will, you never know as stranger things have happened, but I kind of anticipate either everyone manually records as they play or somehow a fanpatch
- No scoring – It’s a shmup, part of the community is literally seeing what high scores you can achieve compared to other players
- Some characters aren’t really suited to Story Mode – It’s probably not surprising that with so many (19) playable characters that some are designed for Vs mode than the Story mode, which means some characters skills can feel redundant as that it carry the same weight in a “knock/time out X number of boss summons on your screen” setting
- Story mode in general can be a little unbalanced – Because it’s a similar system to PoFV it means that fairies, phantoms, and extra adds from the opponent are on your screen. That just sounds typical, yes, however in Story Mode bosses use more than one spell that has two variants like they would in Vs, and some of those patterns become so near undodgable that you have to just tank the hit (more on that later). Particularly Zanmu‘s final spell card which combined with her EX attacks just becomes undodgable walls sometimes
- No extra lives in story mode – Meaning if you lose a life on Stage 1, that’s 4 lives for Stage 2 and so on
- Ability Cards in story mode are effectively useless – Some characters who have weaker shot types in exchange for utility, which is fine for Vs mode, but in Story mode you’re kind of hoping to get a good run with the Ability Cards bosses give, which are random. Each boss has two ability cards, you get given one on a 50/50 shot, which means you could have a card that doesn’t work for that character
- Kind of a neutral point on that, cards feel like they’re in purely purely to tie in to UM: “Following the opening of the markets, Gensokyo’s land has lost all ownership” is the story point, so Chimata’s ability. Could’ve been skipped
- The majority of story mode you do not hear character’s unique themes – The music’s great (see down the review)! But It’s rare you don’t hear at least the same four themes (our of a possible six) in a story run. Get used to hearing Reimu’s, Marisa’s, and Suika‘s themes as stage themes, then final boss’ theme
- One character did not get a theme – Tsukasa doesn’t get a theme, unlike Tewi in PoFV despite them both being midbosses previously with no theme
- Nitpick points others may care about: No EX Mode like in PoFV (which I didn’t really liked) and no 2P alt palettes for mirror matches
- I’ve heard the netcode is bad, but not had chance to try that yet. I kind of expect fan patches to appear over time to resolve that
Now that’s a chunk of bad! But I recommended this AND say it’s fun? Well it’s all personal but here’s some points I feel kind of outweigh the negatives:
- It is fun! – Despite earlier negatives I absolutely had a blast with it, and didn’t feel frustrated by it.
- Story mode Boss KOs is a better system – Just flat out is a better system than PoFV’s system of it being purely Vs while you grow frustrated as Eiki for the Nth time phases through bullets via the AI frame perfect dodging. Plus you can time ’em out if that’s your thing. I did manage to life-out a boss with Hisami, wouldn’t rely on that though…
- We have auto-fire without overly compromising on controls – PoFV had a problem with how firing/charging was handled and no matter how you set it up in game, it always felt different to the rest of the series. In UDoALG the only alteration is charging your magic is now on the old Bomb button, and Bomb has been moved over (Defaults: Z=Fire, X=Charge, C=Bomb). I know you could probably set up scripts or tools for this in PoFV, but I’m referring to the basic experience here. And PoFV’s basic experience was destroying the Fire key
- Unsurprisingly, the music is good – Obviously there’s a chunk of returning themes for characters (E.g. Nazrin has At the Harbour of Spring etc.) but they’ve all been updated to fit in with the general music theme ZUN’s gone for with UDoALG, even if it is a theme from UM, even if he incorrectly titled Sanae’s theme as “Faith for the Transient People” despite it being “The Primal Scene of Japan the Girl Saw”. The new themes are excellent, and a couple of them have instruments I don’t think ZUN has used before? I think “Tiny Shangri-La” and “The Deviants’ Unobstructed Light ~ Kingdom of Nothingness.” are my fav tracks in UDoALG. Though one of them is a final boss theme so that’s not a surprise
- There’s a lot of playable characters and they do all feel unique from one-another – Generally every character has their own unique style that doesn’t really overlap with one-another. This isn’t to say that they are unique in the entire series (Suika’s shot-type for example is reminiscent of Youmu’s options from Ten Desires for example) but you don’t feel like you’re playing variations of the same character
- Stories are shorter, but also you’ve got a lot of game still as every character has a story – And yes, all of them, even the new characters, without being tied to a system like PoFV’s EX mode. Or just cameos at the end of Lyrica’s story…
- I’m sure some would complain but You don’t need to 1cc the game to see the character’s ending – To be fair, this is true of PoFV as well, but beating them even with continues counts to unlocking the achievements which you can then select to re-view (as opposed to review, that’s this!) the ending. (Keep that in mind once the fantastic community works to get the game translated on wikis and via Touhou Patch Center[www.thpatch.net] etc., and thank them tbh! It’s easy to overlook the great work they do)
- I personally think the barrier system is good for this style of game – Not for all shmups, but certainly a vs game like this as the barrier system ZUN added, that lets you take a hit with the opportunity to recharge it, is honestly an improvement over PoFV’s hectic style. It also puts a little focus on maybe holding off firing EX/Boss attacks in a tight spot until you’re out of, or if you’ve just taken a hit you can cast the EX/Boss attack to reform the barrier. In Vs. the default life amount is 2, probably to reflect this. Though as I mentioned about Story Mode ZUN absolutely probably came to rely on players just tanking hits through heavy barrages
- Ability Cards in Vs mode are more interesting – While only limited to what characters are in game, you have the choice of what card to pair with your character instead of the game unceremoniously giving you the ability card. Or you can leave the card at random, or turn the option off entirely. It adds a little variance in Vs mode, plus would make mirror matches more interesting