Language…
18 users online: Alex No, DanMario24YT, gemstonezVA, GiraffeKiller, Gorry, Green, GRIMMKIN, Heitor Porfirio, JudithPrietht, Metal-Yoshi94, Ray Hamilton, Rykon-V73, Seamus Sinclair, ShoopDaWhoop, Sniwott, Spedinja, WhenUnique, xhsdf - Guests: 269 - Bots: 619
Users: 64,795 (2,371 active)
Latest user: mathew

Touhou Kouryuudou ~ Unconnected Marketeers

OBLIGATORY 1500th POSTCOUNT MILESTONE THREAD.

After a whole month of not posting stuff here in this site, I can make a thread about a new game—a new Touhou Project game, that is!
Quote
Hello, it's ZUN. As the cold abates, it is the best time of the year to hole up at home.

Today's news is about a new Touhou work.



Touhou Project 18
東方虹龍洞 〜 Unconnected Marketeers

The plot:
"Mysterious cards are circulating on the streets. These cards seem to contain the secrets of many humans and youkai. Why, who, how... without the slightest idea, a shrine maiden begins her investigation."

With this setting, it became a rainbow-colored shooter with a refreshingly popping style.


The appearing characters will be Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, Sakuya Izayoi, and Sanae Kochiya. This group of four humans faces an incident where they will gradually gain the abilities of various other characters. Please enjoy the atmosphere that will connect these systems, story, and danmaku.

The screenies:




NOTE: The visuals are still subject to change.

Equipping your favorite abilities and purchasing new ones along the way is challenging to integrate into a shooting game, but it turned out to play comfortably. I think it turned out like a typical Touhou game.
Right now, great reviews are being written.

There will be an announcement conference at the Hakurei Shrine Reiteisai on March 21st. Please come by if you're interested.
*The demo version contains some ability cards from the full version.

The full release is planned for May.
See you!

And while you're at it, the demo for THP18 is available now on Steam, so keep an eye out for future updates for this game!
The Hacking of PuyoPuyo. Come join the fun, friends. 『いけいけ団長、頑張れ頑張れ団長!』
Help us raise funds for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. #ДопомагаємоРазом / #HelpTogether
“Even if you personally are so dissatisfied with life that you want the world to end, surely the cruel reality is that it will continue on, unchanging. All the better for someone perfectly content, like me.”
Aya Shameimaru, Touhou Suzunaan ~ Forbidden Scrollery
I've played the demo recently, and I can say the card mechanic is interesting. I really like how Marisa plays with Byakuren's scroll, it feels like the good old touhou 6 master spark that could instantly delete any boss spellcard.
I think this games is on hard side. I can't even NN normal.
Full game has released.
Steam
Thanks for some kind words, monkey03297.

Now that the full game is out, please put all the spoilers under collapsible text in this thread (use the "Collapse" command) whether it's spoilers for the whole game, or a specific stage in the game. (For example, [collapse=Extra Stage Spoilers]).


Also, if you want to talk about the spoilers in this game in the Discord server, please use the #leaks-and-spoilers channel instead.
The Hacking of PuyoPuyo. Come join the fun, friends. 『いけいけ団長、頑張れ頑張れ団長!』
Help us raise funds for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. #ДопомагаємоРазом / #HelpTogether
“Even if you personally are so dissatisfied with life that you want the world to end, surely the cruel reality is that it will continue on, unchanging. All the better for someone perfectly content, like me.”
Aya Shameimaru, Touhou Suzunaan ~ Forbidden Scrollery
Big news
SOC has Lunatic No miss No bomb No card.
Youtube
The survival behemoth SOC
Welp! It's been a week since the release of Unconnected Marketeers, and now the embargo for this game has been lifted. That means, you can now talk about this game to your heart's content without using spoiler tags or heading off to #leaks-and-spoilers ever again!

Now, I demand to ask you a question: What's your favorite new Touhou character?
The Hacking of PuyoPuyo. Come join the fun, friends. 『いけいけ団長、頑張れ頑張れ団長!』
Help us raise funds for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. #ДопомагаємоРазом / #HelpTogether
“Even if you personally are so dissatisfied with life that you want the world to end, surely the cruel reality is that it will continue on, unchanging. All the better for someone perfectly content, like me.”
Aya Shameimaru, Touhou Suzunaan ~ Forbidden Scrollery
I've been playing the full game and I still enjoy the card system, it gives a lot of replayability but at the same time I think it makes the game more random than it should be, like if you get a good card on stage 1, the whole game suddenly becomes easier.

Right now, I'm using Saki and Megumu's cards as starters, as this combination boosts your power by a lot. I don't have the third slot yet, but when I unlock it, I'll probably use it for the hell bribe.
User: Hinalyte / ID: 1553 ~ loading kotori.css
The game's actually difficult, even more than the previous game, which I managed to 1CC Normal and Extra within around a day. The second half of the game has a sudden difficulty spike, and the Extra stage contains enemies shooting behind you, which is troublesome because you only have limited options to deal with them.

The cards are a fun mechanic, it's like a step-up from Touhou 16's "mix-and-match sub-options" gimmick since now you have even more choices. I'm pretty much maining Saki's card, which feels like how your shots should normally damage anything, yet every enemy in this game have like infinite HP, especially on the second half of the game, and also Eirin's card, which allows you to negate deaths at the cost of 2 bombs, which trivially makes the game infinitely easier as it allows you to ignore accidental deaths.

I already unlocked the 3rd card slot for normal mode. Haven't really found a use for it, so I'm just bouncing around different cards to experiment with. One of my 1CC runs I used Yachie's card and I ended up at 1 billion score without even doing anything.
I may be rusty but holy shit this game is pretty hard lol. The first midboss nonspell gave me that impression and it seems to be correct looking at the subsequent stages. So far I only made it to stage 3 and it definitely looks harder than most stages 3 in the franchise. It gives me a th16 stage 4 vibe in fact.
Seems like ZUN didn't waste any time to bring in the real shit for this, what with boss 2 doing some Satono-tier shit right away lol
I somehow doubt this'll be a game I'll 1cc (I've only done a handful from the franchise), but I'm happy about having a new game to ram my head against sometimes.

Also I only had a glimpse of what the cards system is, but it looks interesting. Hopefully I'll memorize them eventually because come on, who reads during Touhou runs LOL
It's easily the best thing I've done
So why the empty numb?
Update: I ended up clearing this game pretty quickly (with Reimu, as always). Despite my first impression, I do think this is actually one of the most accessible games in the franchise, mostly due to the cards system. The potion essentially gives you thrice as many lives, which (along with finding Mokou's card in the middle of my run) I totally took advantage of :P
Even putting the cards aside, I don't think the stages and bosses are all that difficult - I found them to be extremely learnable despite being scary at first (shoutouts to thinking Takane was impossible and usually perfecting her lately). Except Tsukasa she's terrible lol. Chimata's 2 final spells are pretty bad too

The cards are probably my favorite gimmick in a Touhou game so far. It makes the game really varied and gives it a lot of replayability as has been said. I'm currently trying to grab a Sanae clear, and I may do some extra attempts in the future.
It's easily the best thing I've done
So why the empty numb?
Unconnected Marketeers is alright. It's a decent all-around expansion on existing lore combined with decent new mechanics.

Oh my ~ I seem to exist on a different timescale than the rest of you. Thought it was just yesterday that I last replied on this site. It's been 7 years.

The perils of immortality ~