Touhou 17.5: Sunken Fossil World - Yuuma Story 

In today's episode of Touhou: using a spoon to assault someone in a wheelchair

Wow! Yuuma’s story is really greatly done. Intermissions are longer and have more interactions. And Okina fight is really cool and fits her abilities from HSIFS.

2:20 So much that it became her default pose in 19.

Secret God Matara this time, huh? This really is an extra stage. "Who's to blame for all the people going to the Hell of Blood Pools?" Joon and Shion? It's Joon and Shion, isn't it? OF FUCKING COURSE IT IS. I get the feeling that Sunken Fossil World was a victim of circumstance. I think that they had planned for a more ambitious game, and then the pandemic happened and fouled things up. It feels like a game that WANTED to be more than "fighting game with a different coat of paint" but things didn't work out that way. Around the time it came out I'd even been hearing rumors that Twilight Frontier was folding after this game. Granted, I can't find anything about that now, so it might be nothing, but it also might have been an indication that there was trouble during the development cycle, either caused by or exacerbated by the pandemic. The end result: game doesn't live up to the vision they had for it, but they don't have the energy to try to do more with it, so they release what they're able to get together.

Sorry for a multi comment this time around but I felt it was important to address the lack of content issue, because unfortunately from a meta sense.... We already know. This game had dev hell beyond anything seen from Tasofro this time. It's unknown whether it was *just* COVID or more, but it seems like stuff was taking a long time to produce. On top of that, it seems they didn't want to replicate the same issues they've had with ULiL and AoCF where launch is completely busted even if it gets patched later down the line. It was a bit of a mess and I don't envy their position. Yeah the game is a bit short as a result, but at least it's well put together

I like how special Okina's fight is, it's definitely the most cinematic fight in the game, even with Flan's final battle

OF COURSE IT'S THE YORIGAMI SISTERS IT'S ALWAYS THE YORIGAMIS

Better late than never, huh? Good to have you back :)

23:21 Back to the usual "Okuu attacks and the fight starts immediately" routine, I see.

And so, the incident ends… it was really fun watching a playthrough of this game properly this time! Feels a lot more fun with your perspective. 1:32 ENTER THE GOAT

28:52 Considering that her gang has the Eagle Spirit...

Aside from Back of Sinners spell, the Okina boss fight is so good. It took me several attempts to learn it but unlike some other character/spell combos it fell really fufilling to do. By far a highlight of the game for me, especially with the stellar remix of her themes. One thing I got used to doing was stacking water then popping it on the turn to Oil/Blood to really burn through some of the spells where possible. The i-frames on her air kick dash also helped get me out of a lot of jams. I don't quite agree on "that's it?" vibe (I had a pretty fair amount of play time) but I do agree it felt like there should have been, or there were plans to have, platforming segments. Those tutorials will throw a few scenarios at you that will just never come up in the actual game and everyone plays SO differently from each other that there is little time to do much with them unless you get stuck on a boss.

36:24 I think it's the first time you've reached that part of the theme.

16:29 Dyatlov would be proud

The goat 🐐

53:53 Considering Reimu's current track record, I can only see three ways this can end: Possible Ending 1: Reimu fails miserably and this gets the attention of someone else who *ACTUALLY* stops the Yorigami Sisters. Could be either Yukari, Kasen, Tenshi or Flandre. Possible Ending 2: Reimu makes the problem WORSE (either because she screwed up so badly that it gets more attention from potential wha-I mean customers or because the Yorigami Sisters were able to convince her that she'd get rich real quick if she helped in their scheme) and Okina just sends her tactical nuke to solve the problem. Possible Ending 3: Reimu fails to put a dent in that scheme (or she doesn't do anything about it) and it only stops when it stops being profitable and the Yorigami Sisters just move on to another scheme. Either way, I don't see Reimu solving this. After all, recent games seem to imply that Reimu's losing her touch and the "Crimson Slasher" may be a thing of the past.

47:56 Wait a minute, isn't that like the Yellow Devil?

45:54 Yugi:The hot-spring's waterline is down. What do you think?

27:54 Nowadays, it's hard to tell, with her recent track-record...

Damn, you showed the up air charge, but not the down air charge. Nothing special, it's just that Yuuma spins her spork before doing it. Love the Yuumacopter. Also her absorb is really sad. Long range, but the fact that the water has to physically make it to her mouth ruins it. That said, I'm surprised you never mentioned her ability and how it's literally just Kirby. Inhaling? Check. Making someone's power their own? Check. Affecting your personality- ok, maybe not that far. Okina's fight becomes actually quite hard on Hard mode. I actually like to stall on her first nonspell to absorb up to 600% water, since the boost actually gets longer the more hundreds you go, so I can do her second spell a lot faster. (hello Yellow Devil) That said, it's her 4th spell that's really bad. After a lot of damage, she takes a lot less time to move after spawning her doors, so you may not get a chance to hit her shield when it's red (which also stays red for a lot less time than on Normal), and everything mixes together so you may end up snowballing into a death there. That said, I absolutely love the No More Going Through Doors and Secret God Matara remixes. The background is insane too, feels very Kirby or EarthBound-like. Greedy Trial is interesting. (And for all my comparisons of this game's focus on pattern recognition making me enjoy the bosses like I do Kirby bosses, that sure is a cheeky comment from Bee there, took the words out of my mouth, really...) While there are still the HP and shield changes on each difficulty, there is also a difference after each fight. On Easy you get one full orb of health back when a fight ends, on Normal only a half, and on Hard you get nothing, so Hard is very stingy with healing, with the only ones being the sake dish which gives you +1 max health. Fun fact, the Greedy Trial is bugged. (or was? idk if they fixed this in 1.15) Normally the challenge level, which is supposed to also affect boss HP and stuff, goes up when you collect an item. However it also increases after defeating a boss. This is where things get... complicated. The Steam version never got an update to have the English translation, unlike the Switch version. However on the Switch, playing in Japanese has the item + boss increases, but playing in English only increases the level by picking up items. (It's been a while since I've known about this so I might have some details wrong) Unless it was fixed already in 1.15 (for reference, the Switch version released as 1.14), there's no real way of knowing which one is the intended behavior and which one is bugged. But that said, Steam users are stuck with the harder version. Despite my liking of Boss Rush modes, I have not attempted to clear this mode on Hard, it's just too brutal to go 17 bosses without any healing. And don't give me looks, I've beaten Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe's True Arena without healing, abilities or guarding, and that's 21 rounds. Those are a lot easier. Everything said, I still agree with the final thoughts. (Except for the absorbing, I never thought it was that bad to fill up the gauge.) I found this game fun, but it really left me wanting more. Something that can also be said about the next game, personally... (I'll get to more of that when we get there)

Now on to Yuuma! My favorite character to play overall, though not exactly the greatest in general damage or mobility. She *can* hit crazy high DPS in certain situations, but those situations are pretty rare normally, and even rarer when trying to do a speedrun. One thing to note about Yuuma, which the tutorial does kinda point out, but the wording is a bit weird, is the when you power up, you can get extra attacks to link together *for the rest of the battle*. You can link together any 2 big attacks (full neutral melee combo IIRC counts as 2 total, spork dash is kinda inconsistent whether it's 1 or 0, anything else is always 1 each) without powering up at all, 3 after powering up once, 4 after powering up 3 times, and 5 after powering up 6 times. There are two fights where her power up is definitely good for a speedrun, and one where it might be useful but it's hard to tell. Extra note I think I forgot to mention: Yuuma cannot string attacks together at all if she's out of stamina. (Note a lot of the following is obsolete, as I found out halfway through writing this comment. Oof. Still neat to look back on what used to be the case.) General damage for Yuuma is usually either aerial down attack -> uppercut if the opponent is near the ground, or aerial neutral attack -> aerial uppercut -> jump cancel/absorb cancel (jump cancel is faster and lets you graze, while absorb cancel doesn't use stamina) if they're too far from the ground for the landing hitbox of the aerial down attack to connect. On a broken opponent, usually melee combo 123, 123, 1234 will give you the best damage. Marisa's pretty simple. The big thing is actually getting to her quickly in the first phase: A very well timed spork dash uppercut can reach, while doing an immediate uppercut -> jump cancel -> down attack spork dash is a bit more reliable. Other than that, kinda just beat her up real good. About her spell card, you can not only delay the aerial uppercut, but you can follow it up with an aerial neutral attack that launches Yuuma forward a bit. You can then jump cancel that and get another neutral attack on her to squeeze out a bit more damage you get each time she flies past. You can also land from the first uppercut if you did it low enough and get an uppercut -> neutral attack, which does 2 more damage than 2 neutral attacks. Getting to Yamame is once again an issue, and for her it's not possible to reach with just a spork dash. An uppercut -> jump cancel -> down attack spork dash still makes it, though. After that, just kinda beat her up until she goes down. For her first card, you can actually smack her with an uppercut as she rises right at the start if you're quick and close enough. Doesn't help much, but it's a bit of damage you won't have to do later. Like with Marisa, you can cancel your aerial uppercut into an aerial neutral attack, this time to hit Yamame as she goes back across the screen the other way. The most important part of speedrunning this fight, though, is to make sure you're in the corner when she aims to come down on you. Spork dash does a bunch of damage pretty quickly, and doesn't use up one of your attack links when used out of an aerial down attack that starts an input combo, so getting her to come down right by the wall means you can aerial down attack -> spork dash -> uppercut, with all hits of spork dash connecting. Still not really feasible to one-cycle the card, but you get pretty close by fitting two of those in while she's down. Her last card you can again smack her once as she rises at the start, then just do the basic damage stuff until she goes down. With the standard down -> up looping, she goes down in one cycle, but only just. Because Yuugi jumps right at you at the start, you can just prep a grounded down attack -> uppercut right away, though walking forward a bit first is good for... some reason I don't quite recall. I think you needed to be a bit further forward for later attacks to connect? Been a bit since I've done this fight, apologies. If she jumps again after recovering, the way Yuugi moves in her non-spell is pretty perfect for making it as short as possible. You can basically just keep swinging and she'll go down in no time. If she doesn't, it gets a bit more complicated, but not too awful much IIRC. Does take longer, though, so most speedruns don't showcase that possibility. Her first card takes a while, but if you're tight on your timing, she can't actually send up many water pillars to get in your way. You have to break her pretty quick when she's vulnerable to cancel them out, though. Her final card can be a bit annoying if she decides to jump all the way away, but aside from that, mostly just another 'keep hitting her 'til she goes down' one here. I found out at this point of writing that someone has obsoleted most Yuuma IL runs recently. Oof. So, quick version: General: Ignore stamina, jump cancel all your attacks, taking damage when you run out of stamina isn't slow enough to matter, it seems. Marisa: you can aerial down attack -> up attack to break her during her spell card, getting way more damage. Follow up with an aerial neutral attack -> uppercut. Yamame: on the first card, do down attacks before she passes by you the first time, allowing the multihit uppercuts to connect as she comes back around. All changes on Yuugi come from the general change mentioned above. And now on to new Kanako. This was the fight I thought powering up might be helpful, but the new record is so much faster that's almost certainly not the case anymore. There's a bit more worrying about stamina here, but most of the improvement appears to be just knowing where Kanako will go, and using aerial down attack -> uppercut to follow her, with some spork dashes when helpful. That was always kind of the strat for no power up, but the new record is so optimized in it as to make powering up definitely not worthwhile. The most impressive thing is timing attacks for Kanako's last spell such that none of the onabashira actually hit you. Very impressive, and is probably the biggest improvement point over earlier records. Utsuho can actually be pretty tough for Yuuma. Finally, someone who struggles a bit against the sun! Precise positioning and timing is needed to avoid getting smacked whenever you try to attack her, and Yuuma's absorb is actually kinda garbage, making getting water to graze her sun bullets pretty tough. Utsuho still has no health, but you've gotta be a lot more careful than normal to brute force your way through her this time. There's actually a bug in this fight (or at least there was in 1.12, not useful for speedruns so IDK if anyone has confirmed it still existing or not) on hard mode. The walls on hard mode actually damage you instead of just knocking you back. If you die to these walls while offscreen, you won't actually die. In addition, any ungrazeable attack will no longer hit you. Grazeable attacks will still be able to kill you, though. Bringing it up with Yuuma because she's by far the easiest character to do this with. Reimu and the Yorigami sisters can do it as well, but it's significantly more precise with them. There's a video showing this off called "Zombie Touhous Bug," if you wanna take a look for yourself. New Reimu is a lot of chasing her down and timing attacks to get the most effective spork dashes. It's cool, and I'm interested to try it myself, but it's a lot of 'execute the same couple attacks really well over and over,' so not that interesting to talk about. The most interesting thing about Flan is that Laevateinn ends up generating a lot of water, making this the first fight where a power-up is used. Aside from that, this fight is like the previous. A lot of well-executed aerial down attacks -> uppercuts with spork dashes thrown in when feasible. (This was apparently so long it needs to be 2 comments, oof)

3:08 Oh hey, I think that's a new sprite. It's funny how comically shocked she looks.

Omg, I just realized that, among the door in the Scarlet Devil Mansion, there's one or two that's just a set of revolving doors, like those in western saloons. It just looks silly when there are actual, regular doors hanging around.

30:14 Ah yes, the Marty McFly solution. A trick as old as time.

Not the sort of Touhou game I would play normally, but it's certainly been a fun series to watch, years after I originally saw the demo. Also, Yuuma is the GOAT, with Joon & Shion definitely being the runners-up this time around. (#^_^#)

22:58 Maybe she took a back door? Okina might've left one for her, I guess.

Funny enough, Cuphead wasn't originally planned to have those platforming levels. They first planned it to be this this game, just the bosses. They only added the platforming levels after support and funding grew and their scope increased.

Huh... being first means I'm locked into 360p...? Wonder if it's a YT or something on my end...

I don't think it's really fair to compare the content in this game to the fighting games. It's like comparing most mainline Touhou games to PoFV and UDoALG. Yeah there is technically more content but you are really just fighting the same bosses over and over again in stories that are only there for people who don't play multiplayer. Don't get me wrong I 100% understand where you are coming from.The game is definitely really short and I was extremely disappointed finding out Kogasa and Yamame (and others) weren't also playable. But I just don't think the comparison is good when they are essentially two different types of games with different goals. Also this game unfortunately went through development hell (partially also because one of the devs spent a lot of time sick), so I wouldn't be surprised if more stuff (like more characters) got cut just to finally release the game. Iirc Touhou 18 released before this game.😅 I swear people were saying this game was a platformer when it was first revealed... honestly I would have loved to see normal levels inbetween bosses, there is a lot of potential with unique character kits like these. Especially since Greeedy Trial feels almost redundant in a pure bossrush game😅 (yeah you get to fight bosses your character doesn't normally fight, but still).

Yuuma's route is really just her trying to file a complaint to her manager about unwanted tourism (which turned out to be caused by her formerly self-proclaimed Oil Baron rivals)... and beat her up for being the scapegoat of the incident she caused. Anyway, see ya in Touhou 19, goat gal. For now, Marisa gets the spotlight next game.

And thus yumma reclaims her title as strongest character on this game by beating okina too

I really hope it will get a sequel someday, but we're in 2024 now so I'm not exactly holding my breath... It's a format with many possibilities so I'd love to see stages, or even a platform fighter... can you imagine a Smash clone with online multiplayer and a Subspace Emissary-like story mode?

21:05 *And* you weren't drinking enough water. Not a very healthy way of life, I'd say.

35:50 Yet she fought Okuu anyway.

is it just me or does yuuma just... doesn't lose water? i'm not through the entire video but i'm not noticing any leaking even using a spell card doesn't lower the % number on the gauge

How strong is okina lore wise? For someone like yukari i dont think shes ever been portrayed as stronger than people like flan yuugi or kanako, i alwayse imagined they were all around the same level. Is okina stronger than yukari or are they the same?

And it's over I did not like Yuuma's movility It doesn't seem that bad, but face Okina on the hardest difficulty and you'll see just how awful it is Next up is 100BM! Ngl, I'm not a big fan of that game A harsh statement, but it feels like BPoHC, but more bland