Touhou 15 「東方紺珠伝 ～ Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom」 Patch 1.00b released

[Helepolis]

Spoilers are allowed, but don't post ending screens please. If you want to discuss endings, use spoiler tags.

News: ZUN has released a fixing patch for LoLK, version 1.00b. This patch fixes a number of critical issues. You can download the patch from the official site.


. . .
. . .
Come. . . in. . . rth. . .
This. . . is Helep. . . ove. . .
. . .
Ca. . .ou . . .ea. . me?
*click* [ connection lost ]

Well, so much for the Kappa technology. Apparently it doesn't work here. Oh well, we'll do it the old fashion way!

Touhou 15 「東方紺珠伝　～ Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom」

I cannot believe ZUN managed to finish this game on time. For a while many people thought he would be unable to finish it on time, due to glitches / bugs and also his tweet(?) regarding it. Even though he would've delayed it until Winter Komiket, nobody would've mind. So the summer Komiket release is a huge gift from our Touhou Priest!

I'll spare you the boring repeat of what we already know from the trial but just to quick review: Touhou 15 takes place with some interesting story line. Especially the conversations between Seiran, Ringo and Doremey causes huge speculations. And majority of those speculations actually became true! I wish I could spoil it already here but nope! Not allowed! Maybe once we start accepting spoilers, I'll update this section.

Let us take a look again at our heroines, who are out there to fire danmaku, graze danmaku and hold spell card battles to find that 'Mad Man' who is causing this trouble.


Game Modes
As explained in the trial, Touhou 15 comes with two game modes.

Legacy Mode
This mode is your traditional and classic Touhou story mode. You will start with a set of lives and spell cards on your journey, trying to solve this incident. ZUN has been in the past changing the continue system by either making you restart the stage or continue where you left off. For LoLK, you will continue where you left off and gaining full power. Of course, you will lose the ability to unlock Extra if you're playing Normal mode or up.

Point Device Mode
This mode is perhaps the most interesting one to note. Both in lore and actual mechanics, the game offers you a different approach. Even though it is visible in Legacy Mode too, you will notice the stage has been divided into various sections, called chapters. These chapters have no real purpose in Legacy Mode, but here in Point Device mode they will become your checkpoints or 'saving points. You will also quickly notice that you don't have any lives at all. however, pichuun and you'll be send back to those check points. And during boss battles, back to the start of the spell card or attack.

How I personally see it, based on people's input and story: Legacy Mode is the Gensoukyo way of battling and Point Device Mode is the Lunarian way of battling where any failure will result in death. But don't worry, nobody is dying. It seems based on Lore, Eirin has produced a special elixer which lets our heroines experience the future. And it seems this future can be dangerous for them.
Still not sure exactly about this, orz


The good girls
We're presenting them once more because hey, they are our heroines, right? Especially this useless bunny who is only good for her sex appeal. Anyway. . .

Reisen sure looks cocky as ever. Her ingame dialogue pretty much reflects this attitude. Also, I still cannot decide whether Sanae is licking with her tongue, giving that creepy youkai hunter vibe or that is a part of her mouth. Except I am still kind of sad what happened to Marisa. ZUN always portrayed her as the flashy and energetic appearance type. Somehow she lost all of that with this strange "ordinary" pose. Well, she is according to Forbidden Scrollery an Extreme Ordinary Magician. BUT ISN'T THIS A BIT TOO EXTREME!?

Each girl has a main rapid bullet going straight forward and are supported by familiars emitting extra shots. So I've divided those specifically into non-focus and focus.

- - - Player Character - - -	non-Focus	Focus shot	Spell Card
Hakurei Reimu	Homing Amulets	Straight Needles	Fantasy Seal
Kirisame Marisa	Laser	Magic Missile	Master Spark
Kochiya Sanae	Froggy Bombs	Homing Snakes	Froggy Nuke
Reisen Udongein Inaba	Scatter Suppository	Large Suppository	3-Layer Shield

The spell card that probably matters the most to explain is Reisen's. Once activated, you will gain a 3-Layered shield protecting you from Pichuun. In terms of damage, you don't get any extra output. While Reimu, Marisa and Sanae shred the enemies with their powerful Spell Cards. Reisen seems to stick with her loyal bunny-gun.


The bad girls
Ha ha ha! No spoilers yet! But expect this section be filled within 48 hours when spoilers are more accepted. For now, MG MG MG!!
We've already seen Seiran, Ringo and Doremy but what about our other enemy girls? Well, here they are. From left to right and top to bottom: Kishin Sagume, Clownpiece, Junko and Hecatia Lapislazuli



Remember what I said about the smirk / cocky faces all the girls show in this game? What's with that!!!


Trial vs Full release
It usually goes without a saying that trial versions of games heavily change/adapt once they reach their full form (Final form(ry)). To avoid too much going into technical details but to still keep you all informed:

• Life pieces - In the trial version, ZUN had commanded you to collect five life-pieces for EXTEND!! In the full version, he seems to have changed this to just three.
• More bombs da ze! - The bosses, like Ringo will reward you with a full bomb pickup. MG MG MG!!
• Spell Device - Remains unchanged for most of the time. Each chapter will be a saving point and you will always start out with no lives. A death will deduct your power by 0.01.

Further more, ZUN has tweaked and changed few visual effects which were distorting your play experience. So far none seen, but the glitches occurring in the trial version are all eliminated making this game a glitch free game. Unfortunately there is one graphical mistake/bug I noticed. The final non-spell(?) of the final boss shows suddenly 2 stars as spell card stock. This makes you think there are still 4 attacks or so left. But once you break her attack, it will jump to 0 stars. Not sure how important this is to fix anyway.


Music, sounds, looks and feel
The music section remains for me iffy to discuss. I am not going to discuss or give out my personal opinion about them. But all I can note is that LoLK gave me IN vibe regarding tune and theme. ZUN has carefully chosen the style/theme he wants to output and managed to succeed. Stage 4 for some reason remains iconic, having that same bit of melody just like in pretty much all Touhou games.

Looks and feel seems somewhat better than the trial version. Not sure why but in the trial I felt bit overwhelmed by the looks. Maybe it was due to the glitches or other issues? If I do have one complaint to make is that Stage 4 felt a bit dull. We've seen it from the screenshots. It looked like a nice 3D stage, but when you're flying through it it felt a bit weird. But then you're rewarding with Stage 5 and 6 which are definitely the highlights of the game.

The journey you're making past Doremy is well rewarded with interesting designs for the girls. Speaking of Doremey, what's with the smirk all the girls have in this game!? I guess it is their lunar attitude?

Some final screens for your viewing pleasure.

Pew pew pew, lasers. And this seems to be the Lunar Sea which was mentioned in various works. The last one is obviously Quick Man's stage.

I'll be honest to say that during the screenshot snapping, I got destroyed hard on Easy mode. I guess I haven't acquired the skills of a true Tengu yet to get away unharmed with the paparazzi. If you'll excuse me now, I have a flight to catch to make that Journey.

Helepolis
*MG MG MG*


Credit for specific details goes to all the people who have already explained/posted in the old thread or IRC. Thank you for your efforts and input.

[saisengen]

Did someone extract the OST?

[CyberAngel]

A funny tidbit:

Spoiler:

Clownpiece has the shortest midboss battle - no spellcards, no nonspells, just three phrases and she's gone!

[ChronaSE]

Spoiler:

I noticed Junko's wall of ring danmaku spell has a pattern and it's not just plain random, it's pretty similar to Orin's spell on SA last stage where you had to press right and left keys, this time you have to do it extremely fast.

Having confidence helps also (?)

[Tiamat]

I see your point. As for me, I get the feeling that Zun is taking more and more risks by creating different characters that he used to do.

But I don't know . . . I feel less and less interested in new touhou games. I don't want to play the "It was better before" but I'm not so thrilled as I used to be when I played previous games. And even now, when playing these games(like IN or MoF for exemple), I feel happy to play it. Since TD I don't get this thing, or more accurately this "touhou thing". I don't think that I'm uninterested in touhou anymore since there's so many things I love. It's the new games . . . I'm not happy as I was. I think that's just me though, so I won't say the games are bad or something like that.

For some reason, the fact that more and more Touhou characters are named gods and distaff historical figures still feels a bit odd with me here and there, but I do appreciate that for the ones that the ones that aren't just figures of Asian myth are clearly being differentiated in their style (not that I know if ZUN purposefully singled them out for that but I imagine he probably did)

Maybe one of the reason why new Touhou games are less interesting is because it's... well, an old series perhaps?  I mean, you can only do so many shoot them ups before the new-ness starts to wear off a little.  Heck, the normal enemies are still the same as always (fairies) and so are the danmaku types. Only thing that really changes from game to game are the patterns, music, and boss characters (which, obviously, are good enough for Touhou to still be a popular and amazing series, but still not good enough to make it feel like a brand new childhood christmas for each new game).

[kevin1127]

Sorry, but I feel I'm still new to this forum (even thought I've been here a while)
How do I mark my text with code to make it invisible?

[Marron]

Maybe one of the reason why new Touhou games are less interesting is because it's... well, an old series perhaps?  I mean, you can only do so many shoot them ups before the new-ness starts to wear off a little.  Heck, the normal enemies are still the same as always (fairies) and so are the danmaku types. Only thing that really changes from game to game are the patterns, music, and boss characters (which, obviously, are good enough for Touhou to still be a popular and amazing series, but still not good enough to make it feel like a brand new childhood christmas for each new game).

Yes . . . but as for me, I find that touhou have lost something. Something I could fin unti UFO came. I can be happy to play touhou games, from 2 to 11(even if I prefer 98 era but that's another story), I find what I search. What Zun did was interesting for me at that time. It's like, you know, when you play IN, there's a great athmosphere ! You're so in the game when you're playing, it's incredible. The ost is god tier and the character are not too serious about things and themselves. I think many people feel what I described when playing IN.
The game that also do that a lot for me is MoF. And I could still feel that with SA.
But since UFO, I don't feel this anymore.

[Helepolis]

Sorry, but I feel I'm still new to this forum (even thought I've been here a while)
How do I mark my text with code to make it invisible?

Put it between

Code: [Select]

[spoiler] [/spoiler] tags .

[teefa85]

Spoiler:

The new character designs may be a bit wonky, especially Clownpiece and Hecatia, but I just keep getting silly ideas for one panel comic gags!  Probably because of said wonkiness...I do want to explain why a Hell Goddess is dressed like she just walked out of Hot Topic!

[Clarste]

Newer games have always been deemed worse than the older ones. But, importantly, it's almost always relative to which games were out when the speaker got interested in Touhou. New games have simply never been fully embraced by the fandom, for as long as I've been paying attention. I'm sure you could find people out there who think that MoF was the beginning of the decline, or SA, or TD, or DDC. It's nothing new, and while I'm sure actual quality does vary somewhat from game to game, most likely you're just not finding it fresh anymore.

[Plubio]

To be honest, I'm enjoying the game so far. Good music, I like the new character's designs and the danmaku as well. And oh god the story.

Spoiler:

Kinda disappointed with Junko's patterns, I'm not sure if it was because ZUN needed to rush the game or it's just on purpose (she appears again in the Extra stage and her spells aren't any better as well) ? I'm starting to think it is because of the second reason but it was kinda dull? I don't know but I found her enjoyable anyway. I love her story.

Oh, btw, this is the first game without a stage 5 midboss battle.

@sibgamer: yep, it's up somewhere.

[pokemon123]

well after SA i'd say it was declining to me (UFO being one of the worst shmups i've ever played IMO) but LOLK brought it back up.

Can anyone upload a score file if you have cleared hard please?

[Maiden Synnae ミ☆]

So, I played through the whole game and certainly had plenty of fun with it. Got a basic Easy 1cc on my first try. Will attempt the other modes later.

If there's anything interesting that I can add, is that

Spoiler:

Clownpiece is most likely based on a Lampad. They are nymphs/fairies of the Underworld, carry torches around and are the companions of Hecate. The one who served as base for Hecatia.

[Phantasmal]

Just fixing my post up...
I updated my mini-description on the left...

Oh and Reisen is OP, made Legacy mode feel easy, even on Normal.
I'm not at the point of Hard/Lunatic yet.

[Maiden Synnae ミ☆]

...better to escape while you can.

[kevin1127]

Put it between

Code: [Select]

[spoiler] [/spoiler] tags .

Thank you so much for helping.

Spoiler:

Kinda disappointed with Junko's patterns, I'm not sure if it was because ZUN needed to rush the game or it's just on purpose (she appears again in the Extra stage and her spells aren't any better as well) ? I'm starting to think it is because of the second reason but it was kinda dull? I don't know but I found her enjoyable anyway. I love her story.

Spoiler:

I think it's the second reason. Her ability is to control purification, which, in my own interpretation, also means to simplify things.
In music room ZUN said he didn't add too much to her theme and wanted us to enjoy danmaku "simply and purely".
So her pattern is dull is pretty much on purpose.
I think ZUN succeeded in making a pure danmaku pattern, Junko's pattern imo suits her very well.
But the downfall is that it really is kind of boring, the fight is still good, though, especially with her theme.

[Uruwi]

I played Normal Legacy, and

Spoiler:

it appears that the endings are based on whether you played Pointdevice or Legacy, rather than whether you continued or not (I continued 5 times). Can anyone confirm whether this is true?

[Darkness1]

Spoiler:

It really does seem like Junko's patterns simplicity is on purpose, since if it was simply rushed, the extra stage would probably look worse too. Still looks kind of lazy though, a shame but as a character I like her anyways. And as someone else pointed out before, I do find her spellcard background beautiful. Interesting to note is that her portrait movement style is unique to her, at least as far as I know. Probably done to show off her full cutin better, but I still like the look of her ascending upwards. That, and her theme is one of my favorites from the game.

I actually thought her nonspell was a Gengetsu throwback at first, with the fast circle of bullets, but apparently she's just simplistic in nature. Overall I like the character designs, but I would have preferred if Hecatia's appearance would have been more like Junko, because even as a major goddess of Hell, it's hard to take her seriously looking like that.

[Validon98]

So, having played this and made a minor opinion before, I do feel like this one is somewhat of a wonky one, but I did enjoy it (haven't played the Extra yet, so I can't say anything about that, but that's something else).
People mentioned before about their opinion on when "Touhou started declining", and to be honest I disagree with the opinion entirely, if only because I don't feel like Touhou can decline as long as ZUN is working on the series. I still believe he does what he does the way he does it without too much regard to what people think, and I know as a result the games end up clashing with what people like or do not like. Hell, I still don't like UFO from a gameplay perspective, but I don't feel like that marked any sort of downshift in quality for the rest of the series as a whole. It's evolved in style over the years, and as people have also said, it's really hard for a series within a very limited genre like bullet hells to get much fresher. Personally, I feel a lot of people in the fandom have some sort of aversion to everything new now, and it's a bit depressing to see because the negativity gets rather vocal, whether here or on other sites (4chan in particular).
With that said, I still have some mixed feelings on the game. I enjoyed it, I still think the stage 5 boss was fun despite being hellishly difficult, the stage 6 boss is somewhat disappointing after the various gimmicks seen with

Spoiler:

Clownpiece

, but as people have explained,

Spoiler:

it does feel like the simplicity was done purposefully, especially since Junko's ability to purify fits best with simplicity.

Maybe it could have been done better, I don't know, but I still enjoyed it nonetheless.

[kevin1127]

I played Normal Legacy, and

Spoiler:

it appears that the endings are based on whether you played Pointdevice or Legacy, rather than whether you continued or not (I continued 5 times). Can anyone confirm whether this is true?

Spoiler:

Based on Omake.txt, ZUN said there are two endings for each characters.
"Complete the game with miss" or "complete the game without miss". Both of them are good end.
Pointdevice mode counts as no miss, so this also means an ending for legacy mode and another for pointdevice
unless you can get no miss in legacy

EDIT: I don't know whether I should put the text invisible or not, since ZUN said this is not a spoiler, but I still did so anyway

[ChronaSE]

Spoiler:

Come to think of it, are the lunarians, specially Junko okay with danmaku battling? maybe it's stated on the dialogues, i'll wait and find out~

I also feel as though Touhou was slowly declining since TD, maybe because of kankolle influence, but it seems people no longer care about new games/characters , usually a new character pre-TD had a lot of fanart in less than a week, then Doremy for example barely has any and it's been a while since the demo, kinda sad really but it's expected, Touhou lived too long.

Any idea how the japanese fanbase is reacting to this?

[TTBD]

Anybody got info on Spellcard translations?

Spoiler:

I was thinking of making a Junko boss battle or something.

[Marron]

As for myself, I want to be precise about something: like I said, I don't find anymore what I like in the other games BUT I didn't said that the new touhou are bad. Touhou have evolved into something I don't feel. For me, Zun have a different way to make games now, and I don't like but that doesn't mean it's bad, and in fact, it can interest people who didn't care about touhou until today.(or until UFO for exemple) Some can like things from newer games that they didn't find in previous games.

It's like 98 era versus windows era. Touhou is evolving, that's all.


ChronaSE: Yeah, I was suprised to see that Seija didn't have so much fanart when DDC came out.

[Maple]

My complain would be the danmaku. Not that it's too hard (exactly what where you expecting?). But that it isn't too much touhou-ish. I see an overabundance of red/blue/purple bullets, a lot of aimed shots (for streaming), and some minor walls here and there. It's too "rough", "unrefined". Danmaku in touhou often sacrifices speed/density to put emphasis in beauty. The danmaku, through still deadly, lacks elegance.

Re:full game.
This morning i had a showerthough: people in the Moon Capital wouldn't, under any circumstances,

Spoiler:

allow fairies, for they too fragile, die easily, and thus they'd bring tonnes of impurity to the Capital. I was proven right in stage 4

.

When hearing the theme of

Spoiler:

stage 5 boss

, it came to my mind some tune from Golden Sun (from the GBA). Probably a boss battle theme, maybe I'll search for it later. It has a "sickly", "crazy" feel.

About the EX stage boss, i

Spoiler:

expect loads of crossover jokes with the Steven Universe fandom

.

[Plubio]

Spoiler:

I think it's the second reason. Her ability is to control purification, which, in my own interpretation, also means to simplify things.
In music room ZUN said he didn't add too much to her theme and wanted us to enjoy danmaku "simply and purely".
So her pattern is dull is pretty much on purpose.
I think ZUN succeeded in making a pure danmaku pattern, Junko's pattern imo suits her very well.
But the downfall is that it really is kind of boring, the fight is still good, though, especially with her theme.

Spoiler:

Exactly. I just played her stage again and noticed the reasons behind this. What's more, Junko's danmaku require a lot of micrododging, so maybe that's another reason as well.

[Komeiji11]

I actually really enjoyed

Spoiler:

Junko's battle, except for that gross closing ring one. Maybe it's because I played Reimu and she's practically built to handle those sort of things.

[WHMZakeri]

I actually really liked the Stage six boss patterns, even without the lore justification everybody else is excusing it with.

Spoiler:

It was actually really unique to give her such hard to dodge patterns without using techniques to cloud up the screen and confuse your eyesight/abuse information overload.

I enjoyed it a lot compared to the Stage 4 and 5 bosses who were pretty much the exact opposite of that.

Spoiler:

Clownpiece would have earned the name Hell Fairy if she wasn't already called one. I could have sworn I was playing on Normal mode when those lasers ... aaaugh! On another note, I think Junko's simple attacks were highlighted by the huge amounts of bullet spam that make up pretty much the entire rest of the game. Every character had some super specialized gimmick so Junko's attacks were actually refreshing in their simplicity.

Basically I think there's more genius on the designs than people are giving Zun credit for. I really don't feel the loss of touch/loss of atmosphere in these games at all (But then again that might just be my personal bias since I feel like all Shmups where the bosses and characters are piloted ships are automatically devoid of personality.)

[shockdude]

Stage 6 boss's nonspells were kinda meh but at least they were thematically coherent.
That spellcard that looked like

Spoiler:

red energy explosions

was pretty awesome though.

[nintendonut888]

After a solid 200 retries, I have managed a normal mode no-bomb pointdevice clear. I was a little worried about the game based on the impressions others have given, but after playing through it for myself I was really blown away by how fun this was. With a few exceptions, I thought everything was really fun and fair, and I had a good feeling cracking each spell card's pattern.

Spoiler:

Regarding Junko, I agree with the perception that her danmaku's simplicity feels like a reflection of her personality. Without knowing anything about her, her relatively simple robes and the general aesthetic of her danmaku gave me the impression that she cares more about defeating you than impressing you. In a way, her combat style felt really "alien" compared to the more lively patterns of everyone else in the series. I was really impressed by her fight overall, regardless of whether this was the intention or not.

I look forward to playing this game more in the future, and seeing how everything changes on lunatic.

[gilde]

Here's a quick translation of all the new Spell Cards for anyone who's interested: http://pastebin.com/dRq5gLZ8