Touhou

Loose Rain is an Extra Stage theme, despite Fairy Wars only having three stages each route.

Marshmallow Sumireko. (Zounose)

He's gone full self-parody of his reputation just like in Momizi Roll!

Edited by MajorTom on Aug 31st 2018 at 8:53:42 AM

My goodness , I was a bit apprehensive about checkin' that out, heard the name and bits about the reputation before. But this was pretty great!

You know how squeamish I am about "grimdark" and "edgy" or whatever in Touhou, but even for me, this was fine, very mild on the scale of Touhou Darkness. Lots of Black Humour, yes, and the end, even though played for laughs (but also kinda not? at least seriously addressed through Sumi, which I'll come back to) can't be argued to be completely too dark for regular Touhou Canon. At least it being shown, I mean... It happening offscreen all the time is pretty Canon, even though the sqeamish types like me like to ignore that.

Art was great. Humour was really funny: so many people being four-year-olds in maturity; Team Nyan-Nyan-Nyan; Sumi's nicknames for her friends: Reimers, Rissa and Kassie (those are great! Do they come from the games?) My two favorite things were 1)the sheer number of chars, and how every one got to participate in the humour a lot; and 2)Sumi. Wow, she was great. Both a Straight Man to all the shenanigans, but also just a straight up morally good person, with the ending there (by our worlds's standards, obviously). That took quite a serious turn there, which the author even directly acknowledges in the notes at the end.

Violet Detector will be available on Steam on September 4th. I'm looking forward to it.

I can't believe that Rumia of all people, of all wait around until someone sticks a hand into a shadow ball so she can bite it, would complain about her food being raw

She's gotten too used to eating canned food is the problem

She's got nowhere to go to eat ever since Mystia closed her restaurant to become a rock star

Poor Rumia

Well at least Mystia's rock career is taking off. She doesn't have to practice in her mom's garage anymore

Ye gods, that Zounose doujin is so brutally hilarious. So many characters are there and they're all fun.

One of the main highlights of the doujin is how it shows the Blue and Orange morality of the denizens of Gensokyo as well as Sumireko's reaction to the experiement. Sumireko is portayed as a human of the outside world whose morality vaguely matches our own.

Okay, still haven't quite beaten Violet Detector^note It's not that it's hard, I just have a hard time working up the motivation. The final scene suuuuuuuucks, but here's a review of sorts anyway:

It's not as rough around the edges as STB or as poorly balanced as ISC. Instead it's just kinda disappointing. If you've played (or watched, I guess) the last two mainline games you've already seen at least half of what's here. And most of what's left is also from the other games

The game is basically Zun's take on AoCF, not just in plot, but in having combo cards. It... kinda sucks? There's some neat bits where the different characters' danmaku interacts with each other, but this is kinda rare and you're usually just dealing with two cards stacked on each other. When attempting multiple scenes from one day, one quickly develops a feeling of unwelcome familiarity

It doesn't really have the puzzle shooter vibe of the earlier photo games, between the addition of a shot and all of the older cards

Teleport is mostly useless and needed to be bound to it's own key

Overall, can't really recommend

I just downloaded the Steam version of Violet Detector which just came out about an hour ago, and running the configure application did not create a shortcut for it like it did for the other Touhou games I have. Has anyone else had this problem?

EDIT: Nevermind. I just saw on the Patch Center's Facebook page that "Developer-sempoi is now working on cracking the DRM, but it probably shouldn't take too long. (doomed last words)" It looks like I was just being an impatient (9).

UPDATE: The patcher is now compatible with the Steam version. So far, so good. I've done all of Sunday and Monday. Sunday's two scenes were basically a tutorial, so of course they were easy. Out of Monday's scenes, Seiran's Rabbit Falconer was the only one I had any real trouble with. My troubles with this spellcard had me wondering whether it'd be easier to play with the keyboard or the X-Box One controller. With the keyboard it was easier to take photos but hard to move diagonally, while it was the other way around with the controller. I ultimately settled on the keyboard.

As for the spell itself, I found myself seemingly having to choose between weaving from side to side to dodge the bullets but not dealing much damage, or stay beneath Seiran to deal damage, but put myself in danger to do so. But that was where the camera proved useful for more than just getting a photo to make the clear count. I settled into a pattern of dodging while the camera charged, then photographing away the incoming bullets to create openings to attack. I'm guessing that Rabbit Falconer is this game's Wake-Up Call Spellcard and that this will become standard operating procedure for this game.

Edited by Lightblade on Sep 5th 2018 at 8:14:11 AM

Random aside:there is a certain genre of Maribel and Renko art that I really like.

Looking over the water in a ruined city.
Discovering a beautiful painted landscape.
Is this the train station to Gensokyo?
Ah, this is more familiar.
Familiar and desolate all at once.

That last one is what inspired the picdump. I love the foreboding tone of the sky in it.

Anyway, I return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Random thought:

Did Hollow Song of Birds come out in August Comiket? Or is it still later?

Random related thought:

How awesome would the music get if Wanwan and ZUN did a collaboration? The Internet collectively explodes kind of awesome?

Just popping in here to Remind that Cirno day's coming up soon.

It's this SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! (Or for those of us in the West, Saturday is when we get most of The Strongest Day artwork.)

I just completed Tuesday of Week 1 of Violet Detector Eternity's patterns weren't too difficult, and I got my first pic over 10K points on the second one.

Wednesday apparently only has one scene. That the scene has an entire day to itself doesn't bode well...

Not sure what I'll do on 9/9. Last time I celebrated 9/9, I did so by beating EX Okina as Cirno.

Maybe I'll just make some sorta icy dessert that day, for funsies.

I think I'm getting hooked on Touhou fanfiction. Help.

There is no help. Once you travel the road of Touhou, there is no turning back.

First you're listening to the music, then you're browsing comics on Danbooru, and the next thing you know you're writing fanfiction for a game series you've never played that was originally released in a language you don't know that makes mythological and historical references you don't fully understand.

On the topic of comics, the "Swamp" collection contains some strips already seen in Chamaji's (much recommended) Hakurei-san's Leisurely Walk series, but about eight pages in it becomes a bonus story about Aun learning the way of the guardian from a certain Chinese gatekeeper.

What do you mean, "never played"?

It's Cirno Day on my end, so Happy Cirno Day.

Here, have a Cirnight for Cirno Day

Edited by GiantCaveMushroom on Sep 8th 2018 at 8:01:03 AM

That's awesome to hear, Stamina , that you're still explorin' the franchise even if the game was frustrating. There is indeed so much there.

Gotta say, I don't think I've ever actually read any Touhou Fanfic Fancomics, yes, but not fics. But then again, I'm super duper picky about what I read, so it would be really hard to find anything that I would even give an earnest try.

—

Still two hours to Cirno Day over here! Super cute drawing, @Mushroom!

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(EDIT:) All righty, Merry Cirno Day, everyone! I like this tradition, since every year, I reminisce a bit about the Cirno Days of years past, and I realize how many years it's been already, it's great!

To celebrate, here's three nice◊ Cirno Pics◊ I could find on short notice that I hadn't seen before!

Edited by FellDeedsAwake on Sep 8th 2018 at 12:03:19 PM

I've now finished the first week of Violet Detector I now have the Teleport ability. It took some time to get used to using it, though.

Then, three more dreams appeared for Wednesday, against Narumi. Here's where the challenge level is starting to pick up. Thursday's dreams against Nemuno were tough. I had to think outside the box for that last one, where I had an easier time dodging while unfocused, getting behind her and relying on the camera to deal most of the damage. Those dreams were also where I learned that in this game, running out the clock is a loss instead of a win.

Aunn on Friday had her difficult moments, too. Koma-Inu Slalom Spin was scary looking with those wildly curling lasers, but I also had a hard time with A-Um Flash.

And finally, on Saturday, Doremy wasn't too tough, but there's where the plot thickens. "You poor thing..."

Well, I now have the days of the week in game lined up with real life. Assuming I do one day a day from now on, I'll do the next Sunday on Sunday, Monday on Monday, and so on.

Edited by Lightblade on Sep 8th 2018 at 8:31:40 AM

You should really rush through until you hit the 3rd week. The next few upgrades are very useful