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[neokad]

Touhou VI: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil - or my first journey into a bullet hell game

Touhou is that one pew pew game series with cute anime gals, right?

Source: https://pixiv.kurocore.com/illust/54033795

Just like what I think are many people, that’s pretty much all I knew about the franchise as a whole! And to be honest, for a long long time, I was AFRAID of going any closer to anything Touhou-related! Because of them being bullet hecks, they seemed like the most frustrating and unfun games I could possibly be playing! But then... time passed... Fast forward to somewhere in 2020: I was watching the biyearly Games Done Quick event, and one of the first runs showcased during it was none other than Touhou Luna Nights! But while the speedrun itself was very impressive, the thing that really captivated me was well... everything else! Even though this was only a Metroidvania fangame, IT LOOKED LIKE SO MUCH FUN! The graphics, the special effects, the mechanics... everything just seemed like a dream!  In spite of that, I only picked the game up and played it about a year later, thanks to a Steam sale! And to keep things short, I ADORED it. It was a bit too short, but everything else was spot on, and even better than I thought it would be from what I saw at GDQ! But that’s sadly a review for another time :(  Because I literally fell in love in this game, well... I thought “screw it, I’ve been morbidly curious for years now, let’s actually try a freakin’ Touhou game!” 

And so, after some research I’ve learned that the sixth game - the first one released on Windows PCs! - was the one that served as inspiration for Luna Nights as a whole - its characters, music, stage aesthetics and more! It just seemed natural to settle with this one~

How did it go? What did I think about it? Well, that’s why we’re here: those are my thoughts about Touhou VI: the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.

Now for a pointless history lesson: as I said earlier, Touhou 6 was the very first game published for Windows PCs, all the way back in 2002! The five previous games were actually exclusive to a Japan-only machine, the NEC PC-98, a line that prevailed strongly in Japan before Microsoft conquered the world. As such, it’s really the first game that’s still relatively accessible today, as PC-98 emulation is... not really a stable thing yet -_- So even though this wasn’t quite true, it’s as if I started my journey into Touhou with the original! And once I started playing, I was honestly surprised at one thing once I hit the title screen: this game actually has lots of options to make the experience easier or harder!

I know that being able to change your starting lives, starting bombs, choose your overall difficulty and such isn’t groundbreaking at all, but honestly? I didn’t expect things to be so customisable in a bullet heck game series - a genre that’s known for being merciless to players! I did decide to go on Normal to have the “intended” experience, but things aren’t as daunting as you may think!

This game also allows you to play as not only Reimu, the poster character of the franchise, but also Marisa! Both of these girls also boasts two different weapons each, with their own strengths, weaknesses and bomb attacks! Again, I genuinely did not expect so much breathing room even though looking back... I feel like I should have : P

Once I actually started playing the game itself, there’s yet another thing that surprised me: the difficulty curve... it’s... manageable??

Now granted, I’m a person that plays a *lot* of games, and on top of that, I play lots of action games as well, games that require quick reaction times, good pattern reading and so on so forth. So there’s a chance my judgement on the game’s difficulty might be wrong or biased... but to me? Embodiment of Scarlet Devil actually has a good difficulty curve! The first stage of the game has many enemies that can shoot many bullets, but they’re slow, predictable and relatively easy to avoid because you have lots of space to maneuver around! On that same train of thought, Rumia, the first stage’s boss, certainly doubles down on the number of bullets she can throw at you. But, their patterns are once again pretty slow and predictable, making things much more comfortable at the start of your adventure!

But hold on a minute here, how does this game actually plays? Well, this is where I need to let out a horrifying truth:

Touhou is actually really, REALLY fun.

At first it does seem like a pretty standard shooter: you shoot at things, dodge bullets, collect power ups to boost your weapon’s strength, and make sure you don’t die too much in order to reach the final boss in good shape. However, what I ended up loving about Touhou are its many, many mechanics that spice things up beautifully! The first one I wanna focus on is “Grazing” and it’s actually pretty simple: if you do your best to get close to a bullet or a laser without touching it with your (very small!) hitbox, you graze that bullet! Not only will a satisfying sound effect play out each time you graze something, you will also gain points each time you do this maneuver, making it essential for a high score, and especially, to gain extra lives faster!  Secondly, there’s bombing! I am totally repeating myself here, but while each character has a different kind of bomb to their disposal, they each function in relatively the same way: you get to launch a strong attack against your opponents, get invincibility frames, and on top of that, get rid of any bullets that are currently on the screen! I love bombs in this game because they create a great balance: you can totally use them for offensive purposes, buuuut they also serve as a great defensive clutch if you just find things too difficult at the moment.  Bombs even have two extra layers to them! When you will get hit and lose a life (and believe me, you will) your bombs will get refilled back to three, urging you to not hoard them too much even if you’d prefer to save them for a tougher part. Because if you die, you might just “waste” bombs in a way! However, here’s an advanced kicker: if you manage to hit the bomb button just as you are hit by a projectile (8 frames within death I think!) you not only are able to save yourself from losing a life, you also won’t lose a bomb at all, either! This is a very difficult trick, but a very cool and potentially important one if you plan things out in the heat of battle ^^

Then there’s a mechanic that, to my knowledge, got introduced in EOSD: the POC, as in Point Of Collection! Now, as you destroy the many enemies after Reimu or Marisa, they naturally drop many power ups and point icons, and because there’s many of these you’re bound to miss them. However, this is where the POC comes in: if you are at full weapon power, you will earn the ability to collect every icon on the screen! This makes sense and is actually very smart, because most players - myself included - tend to hug the bottom of the screen as bullets are more scarce and slower here. BUT reaching that POC close to the top of the screen is a great way to incentivise players to risk things in order to get a massive amount of points and gain extra lives way faster! And finally, as soon as you do reach that max power, the game will automatically wipe every single projectile off the screen, so it’s even possible to time when you’ll get your final power boost to make things easier on yourself!

All of those mechanics together make Touhou EOSD a pure joy to play! It’s simple on the surface but has such interesting mechanics and risk-reward elements that can push you out of your comfort zone, but never forces you to! And sure enough, I got addicted~

Even though I did say that the game had a good curve and started off not too difficult, it does not mean that your journey will be easy: even early game bosses such as Cirno and Meiling took me lots of practice to get consistent at, by studying their patterns and testing out which strategies worked the best for survival. And eventually, even Patchouli and Sayaka’s stages will test you out with lots of predictable-yet-deadly bullets to test out your screen reading skills and even reflexes.

Touhou may be more accessible than I thought, but do not be mistaken: on Normal, this game will still challenge you, and I absolutely love it for that <3 

Another thing that helps this game out is - please pretend to be surprised - the music. Touhou has always been known for bringing some very good tunes all around, but besides Luna Nights’s incredible soundtrack, I actually never got to listen to any of them besides Bad Apple and one fanime opening my bestie sent me one year ago. And well... it’s true!

The game uses some very artificial, even out-of-tune instruments for its music, but strangely enough, it REALLY works! It gives the music a very nostalgic, warm feeling that’s hard to describe, but it works so well at making those songs catchy as all heck! It also helps that the compositions themselves are pretty strong and surprisingly complex for its genre, too! I would pick a favourite theme to show off, but the soundtrack’s just really consistent and good all around!

Sadly, I mostly cannot say the same for the game’s presentation. This game is a PC app from 2002 and it sadly somewhat shows. I’ll even bring a special mention to the in-game portraits, which are hilariously HORRIBLE! Thankfully dedicated fans have made a patch to improve the game’s visuals so that they’re more in line with later titles, but at base it’s really not the prettiest gem visually...

...except for the spell cards, the bosses’s strongest attacks, which are genuinely gorgeous multicolored motives that will struck you in awe before you are inevitably destroyed by them, it’s great! My favourite is the one you get from Meiling’s mid stage encounter, pictured above!

Before wrapping up this long, long post, I do wanna add this: the game will unfortunately only give you the good ending only by playing on Normal and above, and only if you beat the game without using any continues. This is called a 1CC, or 1 Credit Clear. Even if I don’t think the bad ending’s actually that unsatisfactory, I did want to get better at the game! So I practiced for many hours a day for a couple of weeks, memorized each boss’s patterns, learned where to graze, when to optimally reach the POC to get as many points as possible... this game pushed me to get better with an incentive, a reward waiting at the end, on top of the satisfaction of simply cheesing what used to be so difficult at some point and... well, I think this is the proof of a well-crafted game right there. After many failed attempts, I finally managed to 1CC this game (pictures below!!) and it was, genuinely, one of the most satisfying moments in my gaming life <3 

So... yeah. I might be a Touhou fan now. Welp.

Touhou VI: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil was such a pleasant surprise for me: I expected a game I’d find somewhat boring at best and frustrating at worst, but I ended up having a very, very good time, and honestly? It’s not as hard as you’d think it is! You can beat a Touhou game, so long as you are interested in practicing and getting better, and I promise it’ll feel rewarding in the best of ways <3

I just wanna say thank you to Luna Nights and Team Ladybug, because without them, I would have never been curious and then surprised by how cool this game is. Thank you <3 

And many thanks to you, the reading, for staying until the end! Thank you for reading!

[kurayamineko]