Recently I've been playing Touhou 10.5 - Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. It is like the only non-cult game out of a series that's known for being a cult game series. The characters are actually drawn by someone who is not on a drunken stupor, so most of the girls look decent and some don't even look horribly underage (like Yukari). The game is actually reasonably beatable by anybody who at least have some fighting game skills. I think you even get more than one continues to use. Although in theory you can play this versus other player, the game doesn't seem to even pretend it's a competitive 2 player game. Most replays of the game looks like 2 Shin Akumas fighting each other (jump forward airball, jump backward airball) with the girl having the better fireballs usually the winner, unless you're fighting someone with a much better moveset at point blank range.
Now before going into the game, I assume if you're into fighting game you've seen this video of Street Fighter 3 where the guy parried a super arts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7cW2nMf1gk
Of course that guy is probably like one of the best guys at playing Street Fighter so you sure can't pull off what he can. Well, SWR's story mode seems to be able to make anybody into some kind of parrying guru. It's like some kind of mix between magical girls, dragonball, and the ability to make really cool parry like effects. This is a clip of the gameplay on the hardest difficulty. You can skip to about the 7th minute where you actually have some of the more interesting patterns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJwXIlyXuWM
In this game, dash, air dash, and flying automatically parries any projectile attack (but not physical), and this is pretty mandatory because you can usually only block 5 fireballs before you get guard crushed and you get thrown about 50 fireballs at a time. In the single player mode, the guys you fight have many, many lifebars and they're immune to knockdown/frame shock effects though they also cannot block, and they get super attacks that you can never use if you were playing the character. It's not uncommon to see stuff that hit for 80 times and cheap traps that can hit you after you die and get up (you're only fighting one continous round against the enemy in the story mode).
So the game becomes one where you're just parrying fireballs left and right while trying to sneak in a counterattack. And I think this is the prettiest 1 player mode I've seen in a fighting game. It only works because there is no way the enemies you fight can possibly be balanced if they were actually playable. It's not even really a fighting game. It's more like a creative use of dash and air dash to counter the boss's insane fireballs, and the replays of the game make you look like some kind of living god of fighting games even on easy. The game conveniently offers a replay feature so that you can look at how you parried those 100 fireballs (or not). The game's heavy use of flying and fireballs should remind anybody of Dragonball. In fact it's pretty hard to imagine Marisa Kirisame, the girl with the witch hat in the video, isn't some kind of obvious parody of Goku.
The main story is actually surprising good too, as each player's path basically covers one segment of the story. You start with only the weakest (by their power level in the Touhou universe, not playability) character and as you beat the game, you get access to the more powerful characters and it's a rather funny story that started out as a typical 'some wannabe god is threatening to destroy the world' and, perhaps similar to the story of Touhou 10, the said wannabe god found out she was messing with the wrong planet in a place where they got the magic equivalent of black hole devices and quantum disrupters.
Like rest of the Touhou series, the guy who makes this game seems to have no intention to actually sell this game. I'm pretty sure you can't buy it except from ninjas that only show up in comic cons in Japan, so you'll have to pirate it somewhere.
Now before going into the game, I assume if you're into fighting game you've seen this video of Street Fighter 3 where the guy parried a super arts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7cW2nMf1gk
Of course that guy is probably like one of the best guys at playing Street Fighter so you sure can't pull off what he can. Well, SWR's story mode seems to be able to make anybody into some kind of parrying guru. It's like some kind of mix between magical girls, dragonball, and the ability to make really cool parry like effects. This is a clip of the gameplay on the hardest difficulty. You can skip to about the 7th minute where you actually have some of the more interesting patterns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJwXIlyXuWM
In this game, dash, air dash, and flying automatically parries any projectile attack (but not physical), and this is pretty mandatory because you can usually only block 5 fireballs before you get guard crushed and you get thrown about 50 fireballs at a time. In the single player mode, the guys you fight have many, many lifebars and they're immune to knockdown/frame shock effects though they also cannot block, and they get super attacks that you can never use if you were playing the character. It's not uncommon to see stuff that hit for 80 times and cheap traps that can hit you after you die and get up (you're only fighting one continous round against the enemy in the story mode).
So the game becomes one where you're just parrying fireballs left and right while trying to sneak in a counterattack. And I think this is the prettiest 1 player mode I've seen in a fighting game. It only works because there is no way the enemies you fight can possibly be balanced if they were actually playable. It's not even really a fighting game. It's more like a creative use of dash and air dash to counter the boss's insane fireballs, and the replays of the game make you look like some kind of living god of fighting games even on easy. The game conveniently offers a replay feature so that you can look at how you parried those 100 fireballs (or not). The game's heavy use of flying and fireballs should remind anybody of Dragonball. In fact it's pretty hard to imagine Marisa Kirisame, the girl with the witch hat in the video, isn't some kind of obvious parody of Goku.
The main story is actually surprising good too, as each player's path basically covers one segment of the story. You start with only the weakest (by their power level in the Touhou universe, not playability) character and as you beat the game, you get access to the more powerful characters and it's a rather funny story that started out as a typical 'some wannabe god is threatening to destroy the world' and, perhaps similar to the story of Touhou 10, the said wannabe god found out she was messing with the wrong planet in a place where they got the magic equivalent of black hole devices and quantum disrupters.
Like rest of the Touhou series, the guy who makes this game seems to have no intention to actually sell this game. I'm pretty sure you can't buy it except from ninjas that only show up in comic cons in Japan, so you'll have to pirate it somewhere.
