Touhou: New World Review (Mofuji)
Note, I have completed Reimu's portion of the game. If the Marisa mode provides anything worth noting in the review, I will edit accordingly.
This game is a step up in nearly every way from the prior game, Scarlet Curiosity. The art is much nicer, the graphics are a massive leap in most areas and the maps are even better. You now have the ability to run, which speeds up exploration and what little backtracking there is. While you have fewer skills, they can now level, Ys 7 style, to a maximum of 10, making them stronger, giving better range, etc.
Skills now have their own cool down, rather than a universal pool of energy to draw from. Since skills feel like they're stronger in this game, especially Reimu's, which several of them home in, I can see that this was an attempt at balancing, to remove the ability to just spam the strongest skills. At the same time, given how you can enhance your skill regen rate to make it, at most, a few seconds, it's kind of moot. Perhaps in a challenge run...
What is better, though, is the platforming. While still not amazing, jumping feels much better, and the real topper is that there's fewer chances to just fall off if you overshoot things. Plus, you now seem to not lose any money if you do fall into a pit and have to respawn, so a massive frustration has been lifted. Especially because there's now even more stuff to spend your hard won currency on.
... I say this, and then I got to near end game, where the platforming really becomes terrible. But it's still actually better than anything Scarlet Curiosity threw at you, since none of it is over money sucking pits.
The mechanics from the previous game when it comes to equipment is back in full force. Randomly generated stats for every item you find, can buy from Nitori (at least in Reimu's story, she's the shop keep) and the gacha machine (because of course). But new to this is the ability to reforge gear via Kogasa. Every item has a range where the stats can fall (some equipment simply cannot give certain stats)... but again, it's also random. You cannot pick and choose what stats are altered, meaning that you could get an excellent piece of kit, have Kogasa work it and it turns out to be way worse. You can pay more to keep rerolling stats, but like the gacha machine, it's pure RNG gambling.
New to this game, however, is the ability to guard. While not super vital for much of the game, it's still pretty good; if you can pull off a perfect guard, you get a countdown where time slows globally, save for yourself and your skill timers, to go full ham on every enemy around you. The downside is, of course, only certain attacks can be guarded, depicted with a blue glow. The length of your guard can be changed via equipment stats, so it's just another thing that gets piled onto the RNG of gear.
Guarding does, however, become vital with one certain boss near the end, and in the post game challenges.
You can also, now, just heal if you want in battle. It has its own cool down, and it completely removes any and all healing you could find in stages or as enemy drops.
The game has side quests, little things here and there that you can do to get currency, random items and, most importantly, stones that can be used in Nitori's shop to strengthen your stats. You can also just buy more heals, maxing out at 4. This helps a bit to remove some of the reliance on item RNG, and makes the game far easier if you so desire.
However, I really do recommend you get all 4 heals as soon as you can, or at least by end game. Unless you're some kind of grazing god, you're not surviving with just the default 1.
The game reuses a lot of assets from the prior game, so be ready to hear the same tracks, find yourself in many of the same areas and, of course, fight most of the same bosses. While there is new stuff here and there, it's more sparse than it could be. Most enemy patterns are different, however, especially the bosses. But so many of them love to spam this one tornado attack...
If you're a fan of ARPGs, this is pretty good. If you're a fan of 2hu, this is obvious. If you enjoyed the prior game, then you'll feel mostly at home here.