The return of something more multiplayer.
Touhou Juuouen ~ Unfinished Dream Of All Living GhostTranslation is a video game created by Team Shanghai Alice for Windows computers released on August 13, 2023. It is the nineteenth installment in the Touhou Project series.
Following the opening of the markets, Gensokyo's land has lost all ownership, threatening disorder. Among those vying for ownership are spirits from the Animal Realm, and Gensokyo's beast youkai have also been affected. Reimu, Marisa, and others all seek to either stop the incident or use it for their own purposes.
The gameplay in this game makes a return to the competitive vertical shooter style of both Touhou Yumejikuu ~ Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream and Touhou Kaeidzuka ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View, but with refined mechanics and the addition of Ability Cards, previously introduced in Touhou Kouryuudou ~ Unconnected Marketeers.
A demo was released at Reitaisai 20 on May 7, 2023, with a later update adding online multiplayer, a first for the main series.
Tropes present in the game:
- A.I. Breaker:
- If something spawns on top of the AI, it will become unable to move until the object despawns. This happens most notably with Chiyari, but can also happen with Enoko.
- Chiyari in particular completely breaks the AI with her EX attack, especially when combined with her Special Attack, which makes the flames spawned from her EX even larger. This combination will usually cost the AI at least one life, making Chiyari the only character consistently able to early-kill the later bosses in her story and potentially even able to skip entire phases of her final boss.
- Animal Motifs: As in Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, Reimu and Marisa don animal-based outfits:
- Reimu's outfit has paw prints like in Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, albeit the paw prints are smaller and have three as opposed to four toes.
- Marisa's hat ribbon is tied to resemble animal ears.
- Arc Welding: Narratively the game ties together both the Animal Realm arc of Wily Beast and Weakest Creature and the Ability Cards arc of Unconnected Marketeers, as the land going ownerless thanks to the market has caused the crime families of the Animal Realm to attempt a takeover of Gensokyo.
- Ascended Meme: If Nazrin defeats Seiran in VS Mode, she asks what the deal is with the red on her mochi mallet, which is a reference to people mistaking it for blood as opposed to mochi paste.
- Big Bad Ensemble: You've got the three known Animal Realm leaders (Yachie, Saki, and Toutetsu) all with aims to conquer Gensokyo, Tsukasa running around stirring up conflict for her own ends and various others choosing to involve themselves in the incident. Ultimately subverted as Zanmu manipulates things so they all fail to acquire anything.
- Booby Trap: Biten and Chiyari's vials and Enoko's pendant are rigged to send people to Hell on physical contact.
- Breaking Old Trends: This is the first mainline game in the series where former Stage 1 bosses are playable (Nazrin and Seiran) and where former EX-stage bosses in the Windows Era are playable (Mamizou, Ran, and Saki).
- The Bus Came Back: Nazrin and Seiran make their first storyline appearances following their debut games, Undefined Fantastic Object and Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom respectively.
- Cards of Power: After defeating an opponent, you can obtain either a defense or support-based Ability Card.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The character select screen gives everyone a different colored background depending on their role in the story:
- Blue: Heroines (Reimu, Marisa, Sanae, Ran)
- Green: Kiketsu Family (Yachie and Biten)
- Red: Keiga Family (Saki and Enoko)
- Purple: Gouyoku Alliance (Yuuma and Chiyari)
- Orange: Zanmu
- Gray: Other major characters (Suika, Hisami)
- Pink: Returning side characters (Rin, Nazrin, Mamizou, Seiran, Aunn, Tsukasa)
- Continuity Nod:
- Seiran's dialogue for beating Reimu in VS Mode has her mention the fight Reimu lost against Watatsuki no Yorihime during Silent Sinner in Blue.
- Reimu's victory quote against Yachie in Versus Mode notes that a flying tortoise brings back a "distant memory". She's referring to Genjii, the flying turtle she used as a mount all the way back in the PC-98 Era.note
- Didn't See That Coming: During Aunn's storyline, Yachie gloats about having lured her away from the Hakurei Shrine so her forces can destroy it. Only for Aunn to reveal that, since she left her second body behind at the shrine, she can still defend it remotely, thus foiling Yachie's plan.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Seiran has found herself without a place to belong following her choosing to stay behind on Earth post-Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom. To that end, she wishes to use a jewel obtained from the Lunar Capital to make a paradise on Earth for Moon Rabbits.
- Engrish: Zanmu's theme is called "Kingdam of nothingness". It was fixed in the
Fan Translation. This is a particularly odd example because ZUN had previously spelled that same word correctly in the title of the game Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom. - Formula-Breaking Episode: Like the ninth game before it, this game breaks away from the scrolling shooter tradition the main series firmly committed to since the late PC-98 Era, to instead revisit the versus shmup format first seen in the third game and put yet another new spin on it.
- Gambit Pileup: Once the market causes the land to go ownerless, everyone else is trying to either solve the incident, or exploit it to advance personal goals. The three rival families of the Animal Realm are the main players, each of them intending to take over Gensokyo while trying to prevent each other from doing the same. As it turns out, Zanmu had sent spies to all three families in order to manipulate them into screwing each other over, setting her up to take over both Gensokyo and the Animal Realm in order to Prevent the War. However, Zanmu herself goes on to get Out-Gambitted by Suika, thanks to the latter tipping Reimu off into encountering Zanmu prematurely, which throws a wrench in the whole plan.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The difficulty levels are themed after predatory or aggressive insects and spirits:
- Easy: Ladybird Level
- Normal: Army Ant Level
- Hard: Killer Bee Level
- Lunatic: Chimimōryō
Level
- Instant-Win Condition: In story mode, the opponent will be defeated after you survive a certain number of Boss Attacks. You can still win by depleting their lives, but this is difficult for most characters.
- Leitmotif:
- Played with. There seems to be some sort of priority system with music. Most of the time, a generic early/mid/late game theme will play. Some characters, such as Tsukasa and Ran, will never have their themes play during story mode. Some, like Sanae, will only have it play once. Others seem to have high priority, like Mamizou and the three new beast underlings, with their themes playing regardless of stage. Yuuma's theme in particular is strange, as it over-rides even the final boss theme... but her theme doesn't play when she appears on Stage 4. In Vs mode, a random character in the game's theme will play, making this the only way to hear many character's themes.
- Some characters—like Sanae and Nazrin—forgo their usual themes for stage themes and Ran's theme isn't even associated with her stage, but Yukari's (though Ran does appear as a midboss here). This game also marks the first time stage themes are officially used as themes associated with that character. Particularly notable for Tsukasa, as her theme is just a slight arrange of "The Long-Awaited Oumagatoki"note , meanwhile a character like Tewi was given her own theme back in Phanstasmagoria of Flower View.
- Magic Missile Storm: Seiran seems to have taken a page from Marisa's book, as her shot is a barrage of missiles.
- Mythology Gag: Reimu's victory quote against Yachie in Versus Mode notes that a flying tortoise brings back a "distant memory". She's referring to Genjii, the flying turtle she used as a mount all the way back in the PC-98 Era.note
- No Title: The two themes that play during story dialogue before the fight starts aren't listed in the Music Room for unknown reasons, nor are they named anywhere else in the game.
- Prevent the War: Zanmu's main motivation is preventing a disastrous war between the bosses of the Animal Realm and the oni of Hell over Gensokyo.
- Promoted to Playable: After nearly 20 years of being at best Yukari's summon, Ran becomes her own character in this game.
- Red Herring: In Reimu's scenario she believes that the incident is being primarily driven by spirits from the Animal Realm like in Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, but Marisa feels that it's actually something else entirely.
- The Reveal: After years of the circumstances being left a mystery, this game finally establishes an explanation for the existence of both Hell and Former Hell: after Zanmu became a significant figure within the hierarchy of Hell, she found that the system the onis had developed was aging and inefficient in several ways, leading to her suggesting they move Hell to a new location so they could start over with a more efficient system.
- Self-Deprecation: Metawise, in the music comments for the Staff Roll theme "Do Beasts Have Intelligence?", ZUN states that the "beasts" refers to the development team, which is primarily himself.
- Shout-Out: If Sanae defeats Yuuma, she may comment that the latter resembles a Minidemon from "the national RPG".
- Useless Useful Spell:
- In single-player, sending a Lv 4 boss attack is completely useless, as the enemy bosses will never realistically be defeated by dealing damage to them. A lv 3 will also restore your barrier like a Lv 4 while taking less time to charge and using less meter. And while a Lv 4 does cause a higher amount of progress to the next Boss Attack it can often cause the enemy to simultaneously send an EX and a Boss attack in later stages, making things harder for the player having to deal with both at once. Lv 3 attacks will also usually trigger the next boss' attack regardless, but avoid these overlaps. Even with characters like Chiyari, who can realistically defeat the AI with damage, they achieve this through spamming their Lv 3/EX attacks, not Lv 4/Boss attacks.
- Averted in multiplayer, where the mechanics more closely resemble the previous vs Danmaku games and lv 4 attacks are useful, if risky.
