Touhou: New World Review (Gesh86)
Touhou Shinsekai (New World) is the third Touhou Ys-like that Ankake Spa has made. Their titles have always been ambitious for Touhou fangame standards. The previous game Touhou Koukishin (Scarlet Curiosity) was very remarkable when it came out 9 years ago and the pressure to top it must have been quite high. Were they able to do it? Somewhat, but maybe not to the degree I was hoping for...
Let's start with a quick positive: The new music tracks that were added are excellent, as good if not better than the ones that made a return!
Next, New World blows its predecessor out of the water when it comes to narrative, animations, scope, gameplay systems and cutscenes.The biggest problem is sadly that about half of the content feels made up of recycled levels from said Scarlet Curiosity. To a degree, that would be ok: Scarlet Curiosity had a few stages as reference to its own predecessor Youyou Kengeki Musou (Dat3DYoumuGame). It also makes sense that Gensokyo's geography wouldn't change without reason. Unfortunately, New World let itself go in that regard that it's really noticable. Especially bad was the second third of Reimu's campaign, which was the least interesting when it came to story (you're mostly fetching materials for Patchouli). Playing mostly familiar levels within that segment made the game a lot less fun than it should have been. It's a relief that the last third of the game vastly improved in quality with new levels and boss fights, otherwise that thumb on this review may have turned.
I've still had a pretty good time overall, thanks to many saving graces, a motivating core gameplay and some innovations. Reimu and Marisa can parry in the form of the "perfect guard". Yeah, it's 2023 and every game is Sekiro, even a Touhou Ys-like! Parriable attacks are clearly visualized and it's fun and rewarding to exploit them, as enemies and bosses will be at your mercy on a successful parry for several seconds. It's not too cruel on the timing and almost overpowered in its effectiveness.
Reimu and Marisa also have several special attacks, but unfortunately not as many as Sakuya and Remilia did in Scarlet Curiosity. These techniques can be leveled up through their continuous use. As they're generally way more effective than your melee combo, this doesn't become much of a chore and feels decently rewarding. However, I think what would have been better was to have more techniques per character and have the level cap of each skill be lower, maybe 5 instead of 10. Ankake Spa was possibly afraid to add too many skills within that system and then punish players who use their arsenal in a too balanced manner.
New in this installment are also subquests, which I'm a little torn on. Some of them were pretty good, others not so much. The weakest were usually those which made you retread levels from the main missions, almost as long as those and with little variation like maybe a different boss at the end. The best were the rather compact ones like Wriggle's in Reimu's campaign, consisting of only a few simple fights in arenas with a cute and amusing side-story in which Kosuzu slams her face into a bookshelf.
Just in general, New World is best when it keeps its levels not overly long and gives you boss fights, of which there are luckily many. They are fast and exciting to play and look at, yet not especially challenging except near the end of the game. Ankake Spa games have never been too harsh on the difficulty. Higher difficulties would be a treat if they were ever patched in, but right now, there's no adjustment or any to unlock.
Currently, I'm still in the process of finishing Marisa's campaign after having beaten Reimu's. It might be the more fun of the two and I'll update the review again when I know for sure. It's possible that Reimu's route was the unfinished route where the budget ran out, right? We'll see.
To conclude, Touhou New World is a pretty fun and charming hack&slash at its core, that sadly also comes with some frustrations and disappointments for fans of the Touhou Ys-likes. The people who I think will enjoy it most will be those who haven't played Scarlet Curiosity. Then, all of what's here would be new.