This video was a really good time to make - this is an excellent dungeon crawler that stands up to the Atlus classics. It's not often that games like this come out anymore so definitely take advantage of playing it if you're interested. Hope you enjoy this one, this was my first look at most things Touhou-related so it might be funny to see it from my point of view. Check the description for a list of music used, a link to the store page, and special credits.
Fun fact about Touhou, the series was originally created to help ZUN promote his music! Now, because Zun didn't care about limiting the creativity of his fans, it's a Genre all of it's own!
Hi, Me again, The thing about Reimu being Lazy, It's basically the entirety of canon, being conceptually linked to the concept of floating, she's the kinds of person who simply "Floats" through life only getting involved in incidents, which as the stories of each game, and even then she rarely wants to do it, she's also perpetually short on cash, because she's too lazy to go into town and get donations, and most townsfolk avoid the shrine due to the incidents Reimu resolves attracting certain powerful Yokai to stick around the shrine because Reimu is entertaining.
The Story between Koishi and Satori is kinda Tragic. Both of them as the same kind of Yokai, which can read minds, but Koishi constantly felt overwhelmed by hearing everyone's thoughts, so she sewed her third eye shut to stop hearing everyone's thoughts, which turned her into a being with no real complex thoughts, as well as making it so that so long as you aren't looking at her, you don't realize that she even exists, and because of that, Satori can't find her sister, and her sister doesn't even remember that she has one. Pretty sad all things considered.
The moment he said that my first thought was "You got it, Marshal!" 😂 It's not universal, but finding a character that doesn't have an asshole-ish moment is something worth being mentioned 😁
yeah, i don't get the hype at all. Most of them are jerks or just annoying, imo i mean, who would want to go near Utsuho or that bird-like thing from Touhou 8's stage 2 xd
@@LavaCreeperPeople In fairness Mystia's grilled lamprey is actually delicious apparently! A bit of a con artist but at least you are getting some good eats at the end of the day.
So a fun fact, the post-game dungeon is so difficult because it is based on the first few Touhou games made for the PC-98 home computer which were made before ZUN really came up with Gensokyo as a consistent setting where conflicts are decided with nonlethal danmaku duels. Meaning Makai is essentially a lawless world where everyone is still out to actually kill you.
Well, wouldn't say everyone. Louise is just minding her business while Reimu assaults her. It's definitely less regulated, though, given that during Shinki fight the place just catches fire (and Reimu seems to seal away Orange in LLS rather than just beating her up and then continuing; though in contrast with Mystic Square, some characters actually show up again after their fight which means they didn't die). Also there are some funny scenes in Mystic Square's Extra endings. if I remember right Mima has her turn Alice into her maid or something, while Marisa restrains Alice and just peruses the Grimoire
I personally love that. Almost every touhou fan game kinda goes slow introducing stuff to newcomers but ADiA is like "BOOM, 1st stop is the Underworld. First big boss is Okuu, go!"
Best part is that most of the characters don't know about nuclear fusion either so in Touhou 17.5 Reimu "realizes" it actually runs on petroleum and threatens to *blow it up*
@@Superscope64definitely was like, ohhh~ "who's this gun toting tenguu?" and "oh a bratty child puppet thingy?" It's been a blast so far. But I do get stuck constantly since i'm really new to this type of gameplay- but the story and characters are just so charming~
38:43 giving Parsee a phone makes more sense if you know Touhou lore. See, Parsee is specifically some sort of Jealousy Spirit, and she basically feeds off of both her own and other people’s jealousy. What is social media if not an all-you-can-eat buffet of jealousy served up for free?
1:02:50 more Touhou lore, basically. Mokou and Kaguya are both immortals who’ve been feuding for a thousand or so years. Mokou’s usually the instigator, because she resents Kaguya for the events that led to her obtaining immortality.
There is other things like why Rin went straight to attack Sumireko (she is in charge of feeding corpses to the fires of hell) or why Ooku (a bird who fused with a yatagarasu, an emisary of the sun) sort of forgot what she was doing after the fight (she is officially diagnosed with being an idiot/birdrained), or why is in character for Reimu to not want to investigate initially (she tends to go at her own pace 99% of the time and be sort of lazy overall, not because it was beneath her to investigate), or that it isn't that the Komeiji sisters hate each other, if anything is the contrary.
@@NecromancyForKids which is more funny since ZUN explicitly said that westerners are allowed to pirate his games, up until recently when he finally have a channel to publish his games in Steam. He practicaly gave most of us the games for free, and yet there's _still_ so many fans who don't play the games, and only in for the music scene.
Man, for a first proper experience with Touhou, you were handed an incredible combo platter. You got a piece of just about every hotspot in Gensokyo both big and small and got a glimpse of basically every character in the series. As a longtime fan, watching this video gave me great joy seeing you encounter some of the deep cut lore references. Also that Nakajima jumpscare was probably intentional because Touhou fangames wear their inspirations on their sleeve.
As a fan of both Touhou and SMT, it's surprising to see this game being as good as it is. Some of Sumireko's dialogues genuinely feels like words she would say in canon, such as "sus amogus" and "skill issue" My favourite line of hers was "It's Touhouver for you! And your Artificial Dream in Arcadia!" Absolutely nailed the perfect moment to explain the game title. It gives me chills similar to when Nakajima shows up at the start of the game
Notice how when Sumireko entered the Animal Realm, she was in a city, had to make her way down a tower, and faced a horned adversary at the bottom? The Cosmic Curse is indeed real, and what better place for Marsh to endure this ordeal again than Hell with a capital H itself?
The weirdest thing is that despite the myth of the Minotaur being ever so interesting and popular, and despite the fact we have a greek Goddess of hell and a Lampad, we don't have a Minotaur touhou waifu...
Definitely one of the best Touhou fan games ever made. Even better that it takes the SMT formula and turns it into one of the most polished I've seen while retaining the cool retro feel of the early games. I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I think my favorite part is how I kept a Parsee from level 4 all the way to the end just by sacrificing things to her and she continued to be viable. So I was happy to see you ended up having a similar journey with Kisume. For Touhou fans? This game is a treat. For SMT fans? I'm sure it is the same. For fans of both like myself? It's a feast. Thanks for covering in such depth!
OTOH, I was merciless in sacrificing my sleepers to fuse new ones, and abused the skill-transfer system to give 'em whatever powers I wanted. It's cool that it accommodates both styles.
A very interesting note is that the whole reason why Yukari Yakumo is nice to Sumireko (or at least a lot nicer than to almost any other character) in the first place is based on a combination of fan theories. I'm going to give a tl;dr of the two fan theories in question: - Sumireko shares her last name "Usami" with another character, Renko Usami, who appears in the stories accompanying the official Touhou music CDs. Renko lives in the future however and the theory here is that Renko is a descendent of Sumireko (Sumireko might be like her grandma or something) - Renko's best friend (maybe even closer than friend) is Maribel Hearn, and Maribel throughout her adventures with Renko awakens magical abilities that seem to be almost exactly the same as Yukari's. Her character design is also almost exactly the same as Yukari's, and when ZUN (the creator of Touhou) was asked if there is a connection between the two, he simply referenced that "there was this guy who once moved to japan and then changed his last name from Hearn to Yakumo *wink wink*") All of these hints combined create the fan theory that Maribel most likely is Yukari; the exact logistics are debatable; maybe Maribel will use her power to travel back in time (she can already do that) and then becomes Yukari or something. If you combine both of these theories, it seems that the Yukari in this game did Sumireko a favor, because she reminded her of her (girl)friend Renko, and because she is an ancestor to Renko, wanted to do something nice for her. She does curiously afaik not refer to Sumireko as "Sumireko" but as "Miss Usami" and even states in one textbox that she "wont let harm befall a Usami"
It makes me happy beyond belief that Kisume was brought along the entire game, as a character that made as many offical appearences in the series that you can count on a single hand (including manga/ novel appearences.) I feel like I'm witnessing the fresh start of someone's touhou journey, and Kisume's that character that's a favorite of theirs from sentimental value. Bucketbastard, tf2 joke, tsurube-otoshi love.
Her art for _Who's Who of Humans & Youkai in Gensokyo_ (an official compendium of characters with artwork sourced from other, better, artists) is really cool. She looks cute, and then you see the bones... and her slit pupils... Yeah, the Underworld's resident _youkai_ are pretty messed up. They're down there for a reason.
So the Animal Realm starts out with a descent down a skyscraper before a boss fight with Yuuma. ...Going down a tower and fighting a horned demon at the end. Hi, Minotaur.
"If gensokyo has a terrorist watch list im probably on it now" Me as a touhou fan tealizing sumireiko has already canonically tried to suicide bomb genso
@@Beepers559 yes, it was basically her final plan in urban legend in limbo to bring all of gensokyo to the outside world by effectively using her life to bring down the hakurei barrier
A tiny thing that's insignificant in the long run is hiw swift the authour of this game was with getting the Touhou 19 characters in the sleeper roster. For reference, Touhou 19 was released August of 2023 and this game was released 3 months later. The characters introduced in 19 were Biten, Enoko, Chiyari, Hisami and Zanmu. The luckiest break the authour had is that these characters exist in places established prior to that game so they were able to fit them in as sleepers with only needing to worry about stats, moves and weaknesses/resists. I could probably see a sequel work with them involved if the developers want to revisit the concept again where someone like Zanmu is either the protagonist or an alignment related character, especially as they're the current "big shot" of Hell in Touhou.
Adding to the point about Zanmu, and, spoilers for _Touhou 19_, I guess: You know how the Underworld was _formerly_ Hell? Zanmu was the one responsible for the move to the new location. It was her decision. Pretty big lore reveal, actually. Also, her subordinate (emphasis on sub) Hisami is veryveryvery gay for her.
about the TORIFUNE, it is a location from the touhou side series known as the Hifuu Club, which are a bunch of stories that come with CDs that zun releases sometimes starring Renko Usami, a descendant of Sumireko, and Maribel Hearn, a girl with an odd resemblance to Yukari and the ability to see Gaps. the TORIFUNE is an abandoned satellite that was meant to be a sort of zoo with an ecosystem of plants and animals in space, but an unknown computer bug made the people running the place lose control, leaving it to rest between the earth and the moon. All life on the satellite was presumed dead, but it turns out that the place had become overgrown with plantlife, and the animals had become horrific chimera. Renko and Maribel found their way onto the satellite through a gap, where they were soon attacked by a chimera. Maribel was the only one harmed, and soon contracted a strange disease that got her sent off to a mental ward for a time.
Yes, Touhou characters are all belligerent assholes. ZUN is on record as saying the only characters we see in the games are the kind of people that get into fights with random strangers, since, well, the game's about fighting random strangers. Fanon Touhou annoyingly tends to be cute girls doing cute things when canon Touhou is more a bunch of belligerent alcoholics making political power plays and causing trouble. Editing to add more random Touhou trivia: --Koishi is Satori's younger sister, and their relationship is... strained. Koishi basically runs on pure id/subconscious so she tends to wander off and get into trouble, as opposed to the ego/superego of Satori, who is calm and collected. --Hieda no Akyuu is so nice because, guess what, she's from the manga/books and not the games, where everyone's a huge jackass. Same for Kosuzu, the bookkeeper. --There are a decent number of unnamed male side characters in the manga, but the only named human guy is Rinnosuke. Why is Touhou entirely women? Because it'd be weird to change it this far in, according to ZUN. --Embodiment of Scarlet Devil was the first Windows Touhou game, meaning its characters are all very iconic. Cirno, Remilia, Patchouli... they're all fan favorites. If EoSD is the Pokemon Gen 1 of Touhou, then Flandre is its Charizard. People frickin' LOVE Flandre. But here's the thing: she basically never shows up in canon. It's only in the past few years that we've gotten more Flandre lore. As much as fans love her, ZUN has zero interest in doing fanservice, so in canon she's basically just one more irrelevant side character (albeit a very powerful, very scary one). --Remilia acting like a petulant child is 100% in character. She's a bit of an edgelord but she's a child at heart (forever, since she's a vampire). --Kaguya and Mokou have a 1000-year vendetta. Well, Mokou has sworn eternal vengeance on Kaguya, and Kaguya doesn't know who the hell this immortal phoenix chick is but enjoys having someone to play bullet hell with. Their relationship is great. Mokou is the best character in Touhou, don't @ me. --The mouse girl is Nazrin. She uses those dowsing rod things to find treasure, so I guess her giving you stuff kinda makes sense? --Moriya shrine has two gods: Kanako and Suwako, who represent heaven and earth respectively. Sanae is their shrine maiden, and treats them basically like parents. Kanako's the reason there's a nuclear reactor in Hell, by the way -- she views faith as a business and always has some kind of scheme to get people to appreciate her grandeur. --In Wily Beast and Weakest Creature, the game that introduced the Animal Realm and characters like Saki, Yachie, and Keiki, Keikie (protector of the human spirits) is actually the final boss. That's not to say that Reimu (or the other main characters) sided with Yachie. No, they just took the "what if we beat the shit out of EVERYONE?" approach... which is pretty common in Touhou. --Moon rabbits being slave soldiers for the Lunarians is, shockingly, canon. Everyone hates the Lunarians. --Seija's ability is related to overturning or reversing things, hence the castle being upside-down and the swapping buffs. Everyone hates her because she's a pure contrarian, and there's actually an entire game (Impossible Spell Card) where you play as her trying to avoid the all-out manhunt after she causes the incident in the prior game. --The weird enemies in TORIFUNE are from the PC-98 games. They're... weird, and basically non-canon at this point. TORIFUNE itself is from the enigmatic, much-discussed stories that come alongside the music collections ZUN made. That's a whole rabbit hole of its own. The chimera is kinda-sorta part of that but... the music collection stuff is complicated, OK? --Yukkuris are a meme thing. I cannot and will not explain further. --Dream Sumireko is canon. The game Violet Detector has you play as Sumireko and gets into the exact mechanics of how she visits Gensokyo. --Yukari is arguably the most powerful, most cunning, and most dangerous character in Touhou, and she tends to use those powers to do things like steal booze or mess with fairies. That being said, she is deadly serious about maintaining Gensokyo, so this game's depiction of her is dead-on. --All the postgame stuff is PC-98 references, so it's way less well-known and mostly not canon anymore. Shinki was the final boss of the final PC-98 game. --Final note: finding some random character and making them your favorite not because they're hot or badass but because they're a little gremlin up to no good is the quintessential Touhou experience. God bless Kisume, the bastard in a bucket.
21:55 - The crazy thing about this here is that the person you're talking to isn't Marisa, but a Sleeper controlled by Yukari. The whole tutorial dungeon you're in was made by Yukari. Sneaky curve ball was from Rinnosuke the shopkeeper saying that Marisa hasn't returned any books to her. Because Marisa is a Kleptomaniac, you wouldn't pick up on this because well... she's really good at stealing things but it reality Rinnosuke never got his book stolen in the first place. 53:07 - Fun thing here. The choice of ingredient actually gives buffs or debuffs to Remilia. Pick your poison! 1:00:30 - Funny thing is. If you do pay the 20,000 yen to Kaguya, she lies to Eirin about her buying the mask off of her and you fight Eirin and Reisen regardless. You do avoid both the bunny guards and keep the original shortcut to get out of the Bamboo forest however. 1:12:31 - This actually is kind of a big deal for Sumirenko. In touhou your 'dream self' can be a very different person than the real you, and considering how Sumirenko's power works it has backfired on to the point that her dream self has tried to kill her in the official games....twice! It also links back to the fight with her 'dream self' on the monolith as touhou fans who know her story would be all like 'Oh gods, AGAIN? Sumirenko plz.' and why ending B kinda makes sense. 1:42:42 - People in Gensokyo live in two different states. Either they are beating the shit out of each other with lasers or they getting drunk at a party where everybody is invited. No middle ground.
It's absolutely staggering how well this game respects and references touhou lore, i'm glad this was your first major exposure to the series. Also, Yukari's HP being 8000 has lore significance
Wait, what? What does Yukari have to do with the number 8? It isn't because she's the Phantasm boss in _Perfect Cherry Blossom,_ right? Because that's not lore, that's just a funny reference.
@@iblitz95 They are probably thinking of Kourin's commentary in CoLA Ch26, to be taken with a grain of salt by all means what with the whole thing being borderline stream of consciousness writing.
1:31:32 Coincidentally, the mountain > moon > hell sequence actually loosely mirros the order of the mainline games. Yokai Mountain is the setting of TH10, the Lunarian invasion happens in TH15 (side note, Sumireko was introduced directly before this, in TH14.5, the incident of which was partially caused by the Lunarians), and the Hell conflict is primarily based on the events of TH17 and 17.5.
A few interesting Megaten nods in this game worth mentioning: The main boss theme samples a bit from the start of Utsuho's boss theme. Utsuho's boss theme actually has a part sampled from the intro to Explorer from Megami Tensei II. Keiki is based on the Haniyasu twins, gods who were born from Izanami's corpse after she died giving birth to Kagutsuchi. This means Keiki is Nakajima's daughter. Certified Megami Tensei moment. Postgame...hoo boy. The entire sequence is based on Mystic Square, which is basically an entire game homaging Megaten, with particular focus on SMT2. You mentioned how Touhou Alice was based on Megaten Alice? Mystic Square was her debut, and she even had the title Witch of DEATH there. Also, Mai being an ice user with blue hair and a white dress and Yuki being a fire user in a traditional magician outfit? That just screams Hee Ho, and Jack Bros was already out years before Mystic Square. There are a few more things that more directly tie into SMT2 with Mystic Square, but I won't get into them so you can experience them yourself. One of the nods will hopefully give you PTSD when you notice it in SMT2. Solid game though. Unironically one of the realest Sheen Magoomi Tensay games in recent memory. Between that and the translation of the SMT1 RPG Maker remake which was also an absolute banger, late 2023 was a great time to be a classic Megaten fan. ADiA is only ten bucks to purchase. It's worth a lot more than that. Unless first person dungeon crawlers are something you just can't stomach to play at all, buy this game.
"Big shots like her don't have time for small-fry shit like this" no reimu just hates doing Anything also its very funny that Marsh did not clock Rinnosuke as a male and just called him a "shopkeeper"
Oh my lord... this is the most unexpected but welcome thing that could happen to me. Marsh - the man behind most obscure MegaTen shit to exist, takes a whole experience with an obscure fan-made Touhou J-RPG game in style of SMT. Did I also mention I'm a fan of Touhou Project? I have a few mainline games behind me so I guess I can say I know a bit about the series made by one drunk guy back in late 90s on NEC-9801 that all started with an arcanoid-type game featuring a shrine maiden with purple hair. Yeah, in 1st game (Highly Responsive to Prayers a.k.a. Reiiden ~ 靈異伝) kicked a Ying-Yang Ball known as Hakurei Orb. Marsh is also known for his commentary regarding kicking balls in CBT terms. Fuck, this was bound to happen wasn't it?
I also played this game with no knowledge of Touhou (besides "Gee, the fan-favorites sure get a lot of spicy fan art~"), so that "Tank"(?!) definitely got a "WOAH!" out of me x) ... didn't help I got there before the previous two areas. The tank, being like 15 levels ahead of me, lived up to its name! It was a great tank (the MMO term), once I got one for myself. The devs must have intended that x)
I find it really funny reacting to your first experience to many of the things in Touhou without that much context. Like the situation with the Scarlet Devil Mansion having a whole Dungeon and the detail that Marisa has literally made the jail useless as she always steals- I mean, “borrows” books from the library all the time. Also, context for the TORIFUNE. The reason why the “boss” is a Chimera is because the space station TORIFUNE is a location on the CD of the Hifuu Club of Maribel Hearn and Usami Renko, an abandoned space station that has a literal Chimera.
Not sure if you ran into this in your research, but one of the very few things ZUN has asked of fans is not to upload game ending cutscenes to the internet, so the fact that you also left it out in this video is perfect.
I hope you know i cant do my weekly prep/cooking without your videos in the background. Idk how to describe it, its just like having a buddy bust down the door at 5 am high on coffeee and no sleep to discuss this video game he found in a dumpster. You eagerly listen to every word and silently wonder. "What the fuck is going on."
Some Touhou lore facts: ☯Touhou takes place in a setting where belief is power manifested into reality, so when the modern world started, many monsters/Yōkai died out from lack of people believing they even existed. SO, in order to preserve themselves, in Gensokyo the Yōkai "attack" humans to keep the old faith/traditions alive and preserve their existence. "Yōkai Attacks," or Danmaku Battles (or RPG Battles in this case?) are the "acts of traditions" that help to preserve the old faith and beliefs which allow the inhabitants to up keep their existence. As they are a necessity of every day life, it is normal to start blasting over anything. ☯Koishi is a character that wonders to anywhere and everywhere her whims take her, so randomly running into her in a random maze, is not as random as one may think. ☯Kaguya is THE Kaguya from The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Depending on how you feel about her actions there, you could say maybe she had this 1:02:37 coming? Regardless, she is notoriously bored from being immortal in every sense of the word, and you messing with her is probably actually a highlight of her day.
@@Atou_Mahogany huh, for a while I thought she was kind of like that (though given how my memory at the best of times is like Swiss cheese I might’ve forgotten something)
Oh, and fun fact about Rika, the girl with the wrench that appears in this game (I think she’s actually seen in video too), she developed two other tanks besides E. Eye Sigma; the shrine tank and the flower tank that appears in TH2, making them the first ever bosses to appear in a touhou shooter, shingyoku being the first ever touhou boss
I was blessed to witness you discovering this game on Twitter. I'm glad this ended up being a pleasant experience for you. Also, 1:49:25 made me to buy the game. I was so unprepared to see a yukkuri that my hand acted on its own.
mad respect for bringing kisume all the way to the postgame final boss, i did the same thing with parsee and it felt so gratifying to be able to do that and also win, more games should let you pick whatever you want to roll with since by the end of the day everything is just numbers with an image attached to it
Ended up pausing watching this video and 100% this game. Play time was about 32 hours. All Steam achievements. I beat the final boss without Social Distortion, but it required all level 99 characters and a highly tuned party along with tons of buff/debuff clearing items. I actually got to Shinki at about 28 hours, but had to do like four hours of party building and grinding to take her on. I probably died to Shinki like 20 times or more before buckling down and getting to work. My party was in the 80’s when I first got there I bought this game on your recommendation and would seriously recommend it to others. If you’re into this kind of game it’s a great experience. Well, aside from some of the teleporter mazes and the two all dark dungeon levels ^^;. Cheers, Marsh. Looking forward to the next video
Ever since this game's demo came out and how godly the Touhou painted SMT mechanics played out. I just knew a certain SMT RU-vidr will get in there deep. Absolute masterpiece funny SMT man.
Dude marsh thank you so much for covering this gem, its such an amazing fan game that while selling 6x what the dev thought itd sell, still doesnt feel like its being loved enough. I really hope you enjoyed this game just as much as I did. Literally my fave rpg of tall time.
When the character at the beginning mentioned that smartphones seem more like magic than technology, to your typical magic fantasy, medieval/Renaissance setting, doesn't it just seem that we're a non-magical race that learned to create golems that are magical, and use a source of mana that we call electricity? Cause think about it, usually mana is some magical bs inherent to the universe that's all around you that you absorb into your body, and electricity is some particle that's not just microscopic, like the stuff that makes you sick, but inconceivably tiny, and they are one of the three core components of EVERYTHING. It's harder to extract than mana, so we have to centralize its extraction, and our golems use it in its pure form, sometimes. There's this special device that we've made, it's a thin blackish sheet, and if you set it up near your golem, and run some electricity conduits, all of a sudden, the golem can gather its own electricity? It really would be a trip to try to explain this to someone. I suppose that why there's that line, "the only difference between magic and technology is our understanding of it." Pre-post edit: I swear I've heard that line thrown around, but the *proper* quote is: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke. Which I have heard, but I thought my phrasing better suited my thoughts.
To add context to the side quest at 1:02:04, Mokou and Kaguya have a fairly intense rivalry between them, where they mostly try to beat the shit out of each other (the extra stage in touhou 8 is just Kaguya ordering a hit on Mokou, with whoever you play as being told to carry out the hit.) Both of them are also immortal, and eventually the rivalry cooled down a bit (this “cooled down” rivalry still has them fighting each other, they are just a little friendlier, but not by much)
36:05 on nothing like that. Satori loves her sister a lot but since her sister does not have the ability to have conscious thought, she just wanders off (hence the hell maze)
Koishi has been described as having a demeanor similar to an outdoorsy house cat; she's a vagabond, coming and going as she wills, (or doesn't, as it were)
Given how explicit a tribute to classic SMT this is I can't believe I had not immediately noticed that "Artificial Dream in Arcadia" is a very explicit reference to SMT2!
... Grabbed a seat for the SMT inspired Tōhó crawler; Stayed for "The Bucket Bastard's Legacy." That sure did butter my popcorn, M8. Cheers. [ *Raises Mug Root Beer* ] >)X^D
The one thing I’m really surprised about is that Hakugyokurou didn’t show up as an optional dungeon, even after Sumireko gained the ability to fly. Pretty much every other important area(and several not-so-important locations) show up, and Youmu+Yuyuko make no appearance in the game afaik. That’s reasonably surprising, considering every other Touhou game location is represented(Former Hell, SDM, Myouren Temple, Senkai, Moriya Shrine, Eintei, Shining Needle Castle, The Lunar Capital, The Animal Realm, Nameless Hill, and Genbu Ravine/The Casino all correlate to various Touhou games).
Youmu and Yuyuko sleepers spawn in the Prismriver Mansion, basically the ghost zone. That Hakugyokuro would have been another ghost zone (and an arguably larger one) is probably the reason why it was skipped so unceremoniously
Even if it would’ve been redundant, I kinda wish we still had both the mansion and hakugyokuro. Heck we didn’t even get shrine tank/flower tank even though Rika’s there ALONG with evil eye sigma.
If you run into a yukkuri battle try to use special commands (yeah you need a near full SP bar for those) in order to lower its stats and use a bunch of different elemental magic, that usually does the trick. Also, fun fact, not only a yukkuri encounter is quite rare in this game, but there's also a rare item drop associated with them. Good luck!
Was that mechanic changed with updates? I played the game this week and all they took was the Analysis Command (only a quarter of your SP gauge) to find out what they're weak to and use just that.
@@VonFirflirch Gonna be honest, I've never used an analysis command on yukkuris in fear of them immediately running away, so I just debuffed them and spammed everything I had, which worked pretty much every time... well, for the few rare occasions I had a yukkuri encounter at least, as they're incredibly rare to come by. I do hope their rate has been buffed in recent versions though.
@@CerealKiller At least as of 1.2.5, you can use any Command and still pick your party's actions afterwards. Your way sounds terrifying to me ;) I only saw 3 of them in my 45-ish-hour 100% playthrough, one of them 5 minutes before the super boss. Never got that drop they apparently have, though. I actually ran from the first one myself! I hadn't saved in a while, and the Analysis showed it was weak to the one element my active party didn't have... To me, those Yukkuri things feel like Touhou's take on the old Trollface, so I was scared it would nuke me... or perhaps it was out of spite "You can't escape from me if I do it first~" x) From then on, I made sure to always have a Sleeper with one spell of every type out at all times, just in case! x)
@@VonFirflirch I haven't played the recent updates, but from what I can see it should now be easier to find a Yukkuri and get their associated item. I believe potemki also added a new grimoire that increases their encounter rate, but it has a funky side effect. I have some 80+ hours so far and I've only managed to see 4 yukkuris, maybe 5? I don't recall, but their encounter rate is way too small imo.
Great video on one of my favorite fangames, but there are a couples of things that probably didn't carry across that well for a non-Touho fan: - You actually meet more than one "Kappa", those engineer girls in blue uniforms like Nitori; she is the only named on the series, but there is a whole bunch of them living underwater in the Genbu Ravine. - Reisen is actually Kaguya's underling / pet, and she is Eirin's apprentice. She doesn't actually know anything about medicine, she just sells it around town as her job. - Kaguya and Mokou have a rivalry that has lasted over 1,200 years due to some ancient bitch fighting about their families. Due to them being unaging immortals, they are used to using otherwise lethal force against each other and blowing themselves up during their duels. - Sweet Doremy isn't really an elf, but a "Baku", a benevolent youkai of the dreams that is closer to a chimeric tapir with oxen tail, bear body, and lion / elephant features. Doremy just kinda looks like a sheep tho, for eepy reasons. - The TORIFUNE Satellite was an ark project that was meant to preserve all of the Outside World's (our Earth) animals and plants in space while earth was being terraformed, but due to some malfunctions and contaminations it crashed down back to earth, morphing the inhabitant animals (not youkai, which is why you don't fight an anime girl) into mutated chimeric amalgamations of themselves. It is always great seeing new people getting into Touhou through the community, and watching their reaction of staple characters / lore.
@iguessthisismyworkaccountl8437 It comes from the CD Drama bundled in the Music Album of "Ruins of Torifune ~ Trojan Green Asteroid". The CD Dramas usually focus on the Hifuu Club, a duo of collage students from the Outside World talking about fantasy and sci-fi from the Outside World perspective of humans.
@@GNiko324 I'm pretty sure that, in canon, TORIFUNE is still in space, but has gone dark and is unreachable. The only reason the Secret Sealing Club could visit it was because of the Shinto Shrine, which is probably why that's where you fight the Chimera in _Artificial Dream in Arcadia._
I said it before in someone else’s comment, but I wish we had a stage set in TORIFUNE, doesn’t even need to have youkai in it since there’s a lot of potential for what could be up there (given how the life apparently mutated so quickly, aggressive plants or giant insects wouldn’t be too surprising)
Seeing bucket girl become your favorite touhou off the bat and you taking her throughout the game was extremely entertaining to me hahaha. You should play Touhou 11 where she is from though that game is one of the hardest in the entire franchise and I find Touhou 7 PCB to be a good starting point.
1:28:52 - Fun fact, Saki used to be Miko’s war horse before she became a Hell mafioso. At one point, both Reimu and Mamizou offered to reacquaint them for her.
Every time I see Marsh uploading something outside SMT I get this weird feeling of dread that if I don't watch it now, it's gonna disappear tomorrow. I don't know if that ever happened or am I finally going insane, but I don't want to risk it, even though it's a middle of the night right now.
The ending a, b, c is a reference to mainline touhou where there's a true ending 'a' which you get by not continuing, and a gag bad ending 'b' which essentially tells you to do it better, you can only access the Extra stage by getting ending 'a', or if you use the secret cheat command.
Btw fun fact, almost all the special moves are named after rock/metal references (as if you probably already known) But an even cooler fact is that 40% of these references are all songs named after Death, which their catalogue is consistently solid and they basically started off Death Metal (with other bands) Bloodsucking Universe and Moon's Domination however are based off of Guilty Gear with Nagoriyukis move and Ravens theme in Xrd specifically, I believe the only instance where there is a reference to a song that isn't a rock/metal song is Money Trees I just wanted to drop that fun nugget of knowledge, I really enjoy the rock and metal genre to notice alot of these things
originally Bloodsucking Universe is Slayer's move, and obviously the name itself references the Queen song of the same name. didn't make that connection about raven's theme though, so thanks for that neat tidbit
@@the8anarchist yeah I felt like it was Slayers move but I forgot, I did had to look that one up even though I know a lot about Guilty Gear (just some stuff slips past me, I'm more knowledgeable about stuff up to XX given Xrd and beyond is when I kinda stopped focusing on the lore weirdly enough, yeah GG lore is a lot)
How appropriate for the post-game dungeon to have all the characters in it from the oldest and earliest games in the franchise! The reason why Pandemonium has such strange enemies is because they're from the very first Touhou game- which wasn't even a bullet hell shooter but a _Breakout clone._ Sort of. It's hard to explain. Anyway, this game's an instant buy for me. Thanks for bringing this to my attention! I really wish I'd known about this sooner now!
59:19 For anyone that's interested in playing, you can get party-wide healing Hi-Medi as early as the first floor of of the tower by Hijacking Gengestu. There might even be earlier methods, though it's not really necessary up to that point. There's also other gimmick methods if you're feeling silly, like how I made Sumireko absorb Fire, had everyone in the party either absorb or negate Fire, and then used Utsuho's "Red Sun Over Paradise" as a replacement party heal while dealing damage. Good times ensued.
I like Touhou, I like SMT, I was hoping one day you or someone would talk about the SMT influences in PC-98 Touhou and Seihou. You know what, I'll take this instead. 2 hours too, damn... probably gonna watch it across a whole week.
Glad to see you covering this game and from someone who follows the touhou lore from time to time, yeah most of the characters are basically like "Ah shit here we go again" whenever shit happens
Fun fact about Torifune- It's actually based on the story in ZUN's music CD, "Ruins of Torifune ~ Trojan Green Asteroid" Basically, it was a satellite that acted as a modern Noah's Arc. Japan lost control of the satellite, and it turned into an overgrown jungle with the animals mutating into Chimeras.
Thanks for the info! Here I was thinking it was a reference to game 3 where visitors from another dimension visited in their Probability Space Hypervessel to prove and study the existence of magic. I was kinda sad thinking "aww in this game their ship got destroyed and god knows what happened to them," while at the same time being confused over the presence of a chimera. I was like, "was that in one of the characters endings?"
Just posting about some interesting things from the video, feel free to ask about anything in the replies and i'll answer what i can. 23:59 "if Gensokyo has a terrorism watchlist we're probably on it now" Fun fact: Sumireko's introduction to the series literally included her attempting a suicide bombing to break the barrier separating Gensokyo from the outside world, after which she was placed in protective custody by Reimu, meaning she already WAS on the terrorism watchlist, and for a perfectly good reason! 32:20 "this game's already based on SMT" not even just this game, but Touhou as a series, at least early on, takes key visual and audio inspiration from SMT, from the background of one of the final bosses in the LITERAL FIRST GAME being the SMT spell circle logo, to the final boss themes of the third AND eleventh game being HEAVILY inspired by Explorer from MT 2, its very clear that Touhou's DNA includes Megami Tensei 38:37 the only real hint you would have, is that Parsee is a hashihime, which basically means she's the embodiment of a spiteful and jealous person, which is why giving her access to social media instantly gets her addicted. Theres a bunch of weird moments that make more sense when, but dont really require, you know the source material 1:12:30 Doremy is actually a Baku, which is a weird tapir creature that eats dreams and nightmares, you probably know the pokemon drowzee which is based off the same thing. 1:45:30 "tenshi, a heavenly being from the stars" more accurately, she's a brat who was kicked out of Heaven for causing problems. As in, she was literally born in heaven, up in the clouds, making her similar to a saint or angel but then kicked onto earth for being shithead. Though with the connections between heaven, the gods, the moon, and things with multiple names, you might actually be right that she's a lunarian from the moon. its complicated. 1:49:30 yukkuri are a fanwork specific thing and are the equivalent to a metal slime in this game. Theres a few different ones you can encounter and the best tip for beating them is to have a NON-ELEMENTAL attack, like patchouli has, or the laser rifle, and just hit them with it. I dont know if they all have one, but the weakest one can actually drop a hat that gives you +99 luck which sounds incredible but doesn't throw balance too out of whack, even if you get it near the start 2:12:20 Shinki is basically the touhou equivalent of Lucifer, as she's the creator and ruler of makai, which is basically hell, or more specifically, one of the many hells. Also of note, I beat her WITHOUT using social distortion by equipping sumireko with the item that ignores resistances and just charging and using physical moves while the entire rest of my team did support. I'm glad you loved this game, and if you want to be a psychopath with another touhou dungeon crawler, (which there's a lot of touhou fangames, and being for sick freaks is a common theme) there's always Labyrinth of Touhou, which is closer to etrian odyssey than megami tensei, but has a postgame that feels like Sisyphus rolling the boulder uphill over his own nuts in my opinion.
Small correction, Tenshi was born on Earth but ascended to Heaven along with the rest of her family when her parents earned ascension. Because she got there through nepotism instead of strict training, her personality doesn't actually fit very well into Heaven and caused her to grow up to be a troublemaker.
@@Dukstless idk i think a place where demons live counts pretty close to hell, sure its not a place people are sent after being judged, so its not a literal hell, but its basically hell.
I very recently got around to beating the game in its entirety. Your video helped quite a bit reigniting the will to chip at the postgame and fight HER; I am curious to see where you'll go next
I'm really loving this video and how accurate it is, even with it being your first full experience with Touhou. My playthrough was wildly different, as I also picked a partner to stay with me for the whole game, except instead of Kisume I went with Satori. Her unique ability to steal MP from enemies and feed it to the team is utterly broken; it pretty much allowed me to run through every dungeon in the game without needing rest stops. With MP becoming a renewable resource, healing spells were all we needed to keep healthy and hardly ever spend items.
Touhou fandom is the best fandom! these people can create a Touhou game based on any franchise, from Pokémon and Mega Man to SMT. In general, it's a brilliant idea! Touhou has a huge bunch of different interesting characters, it's strange that no one has created a game like this before.
Well made video, my utmost respect, but I gotta shake my grandma cane and tell you that while Arcadia might be a reference to SMT to some extent, Wizardry called and wants its credit too. That bit about not knowing it was a reference the entire time? Man to this day isekai are still referencing wizardry and sometimes without even knowing it.
AAAAAAAH YES, FINALLY HERE. I was waiting for this since the "close to the 20th of november update". As someone who became interested in Megaten thanks to you, and as a 2hu fan who played most of the vertical shooter games plus some fangames, this is a blessing. I can't wait to hear your takes on this rollercoaster of a niche universe. Thanks for making it this long Marsh, ZUN would definetly invite a beer to you.
Touhou is such a widespread franchise that I thought it was a genre and not a single franchise. So I learned something before the 1-minute mark. Thanks Marsh!
1:25:55 - This is kind of true, in TH17 the animal spirits you're allying with point out how terrible the place looks and how it used to be so full of nature 1:31:43 - Fitting, as ZUN has described the Watatsuki sisters (the ones you fight in this section) to be far beyond anything else in Gensokyo, except for Hecatia, who is the strongest character we know of so far. 2:12:18 - I don't know if you've noticed, but Shinki has a bunch of similarities to SMT Lucifer, both in design (her sprite being the same pose) as well as being both the strongest summonable ally and enemy in the game (which also applies to SMT Lucifer in a lot of games). Even her battle background is very similar as the Makai Realm in SMT2, this isn't sometimes deliberately made by the creator of this game as a reference to SMT, but rather something that is intentional and is present in TH5, where she comes from. I'm sure you've been told already, but a bunch of PC-98 touhou games are inspired by SMT, and even TH17 as well with the whole deal of the chaotic animal spirits against keiki's more lawful forces.
If you figure out that the Marisa that was with you was a sleeper you get another dialogue option while talking to Yukari. I beat ending C and came back to finish the video. My final team was Yuugi, Sumireko(MaxVitMaxMagMidIntMidLuk), Cirno, and Byakuren all at lvl99. I also used a bunch of endgame sleepers as backup in case they fell. The final true boss was so good, I wish there was more challenge like that in the games. Also that final dungeon was the first one I had to draw out a map for, it was so painful. Honestly 10/10 game, perfect gameplay, amazing art and music, interesting story, I think it made me a touhou fan
It's so trollish that most of the endgame sleepers are weak to Pierce, which the last two bosses both spam x) I'm lucky the fast ones I kept nulled that!
Great stuff as always Marsh! Thank you for putting this on my radar! Also, Linda Cube Again finally got a fan translation. Would love to see you cover it some day.
@TrombeX2 the game rewards you/ buffs her for you, marsh went through the effort to make the bucket stronger, with zero motivation other than bragging rights
@@TheTestoyer I mean, let's be fair. We've all decided to make an uberpixie of our own outside of Nocturne at least once or twice haven't we? I know I did it on 4.
Marsh, you have no idea how much I wanted this video. I was going to make my own version of this video parodying your style and over the top reaction to events, saying as much in a review on steam I posted. Even recorded a huge chuck of footage, and did some early script writing too. But at the same time I'm glad you made it instead. I don't have the voice to dead speak into a mic in dead silence to get good commentary done. And to be fair, actively stealing someone's creative thing is no cool, even if it's an homage. And, well the main guy doing it will never compare to imitators, and I think the script was borderline becoming more of a generic walkthrough going through the motions at times. Anyway, I'll be sure to watch the whole thing with excitement up to the point where I'm at in the game and continue it later once I finish it myself!
"huge fucking orb covering across the map........." has sudden flashbacks to F.O.E'S of eterian odyssey oh bloody hell it does an foe in this SMT LIKE dear lord! anyone whos played eteiran oddsey knows the avoid those fuckers like the plauge alteast on first visit.
