start date: 7/10/23
normal 1cc: 7/12/23
written: 8/7/23
its that time again! my touhou posting continues. this is the most important one though, so you definitely wanna read this one. trust me :P
nina's thoughts on Touhou 8 - Imperishable Night
Imperishable Night is the best game ever made it has Wriggle Nightbug in it and she's the coolest touhou so this game is the bestest of all of them 100% perfect game!!!
jk. kinda.
Imperishable Night takes a big step forward in a lot of places, expanding on what worked well in PCB and making changes to what didn't, with a handful of really cool features unique to this game.
for starters, the playable character roster has exploded from three characters to EIGHT characters, split into four teams of two each with a human and a youkai. unfortunately none of the teams have any alternate movesets so theres technically only 4 choices, but the characters in each pair have different enough shots that you basically have 8 different weapon types to utilize. Reimu returns partnered with Yukari, Marisa is joined by Alice, Sakuya is back again with her mistress Remilia, and Youmu and Yuyuko join in as a duo of newbies. i tried out all four pairs and cleared stage 6A with each (although i admit to using continues for most of those runs) but MariAli was my fav so i went with them to get the true clear with a 1cc-6B. i love how theres a technique for Marisa and Alice where you can make use of Alice's laser taking a half second to disappear and instantly reappearing on swap, swapping with a good rhythm to keep full uptime on Alice's laser while also shooting out bullets as Marisa to get really high damage output. not only is it a fun maneuver to pull off, but it has an amazing name given by the fandom: the MALICE BEAM!
on the topic of swapping, what you do when playing as either human or youkai affects certain mechanics in IN, most notably the Time system. when you first start a run off IN the time starts at 11pm and if you reach 5am your run ends. using a continue takes a half hour, and clearing a stage typically takes an hour off of your total, but you can make a stage only take half an hour instead if you collect enough time points. the main source of time points comes from the human/youkai meter. when you do things as your human or youkai partner the meter moves in their respective direction; when its maxed on humanity you gain time points through shooting enemies, and when its maxed on youkai-ness you gain time points for grazing bullets. a couple other mechanics also work based on your human/youkai status, like enemy summons that dont damage youkai but also can't be hurt by their bullets. the time system is a bit tough to understand, but its theoretically optional since if you 1cc you won't really run out of time anyways, and it allows for wiggle room later in runs if you managed to clear earlier stages within the half-hour, and the game doesn't punish you with a bad end for continuing like others do.
for new characaters, all i have to say is
WRIGGLE NIGHTBUG!! LETS GO BABY!! WRIGGLE SWEEP!!!! Wriggle is probably my fav character in touhou just in general, let alone from this game. is she just a first stage boss with very little to do? yes. does she basically never show up again outside this game? also yes. do i care? no! Wriggle is an adorable firefly lady and the self-titled queen of insects, she can talk to and command bugs to do her bidding, and she frequently hangs out with other characters i like such as Rumia and Cirno and the next character i talk about from this game. this is absolutely a biased take because i love bugs but i dont care, Wriggle is the best. (plus shes totally trans-coded, definitely not me projecting :P) Nightbug aside, the other characters in IN are pretty solid too!
Mystia is great, although that one is also probably a bit biased because her izakaya fangame is incredibly good and does a great job endearing you to her. gotta respect the grind of a bird youkai opening a fried food stand but selling eels instead of the expected chicken cause she doesn't wanna feed birds to people. also the fact that she scams people by afflicting them with night-blindness without their knowledge and then selling her fried eels as a cure is so funny.
Mokou is an all around solid character, i love the concept of this immortal phoenix lady who hates the immortal moon princess so much, and neither one can die so they just beat the shit out of each other all the time (and maybe kiss? classic enemies to lovers) and her design is really sick, the detail of having a bunch of fire-warding charms plastered all over so she doesn't light her outfit on fire is hilarious lol.
does Imperishable Night have flaws? yeah for sure. needing to unlock stage 6b is kinda lame, and stuff like the last spells are weird mechanics that don't really do anything. however, WRIGGLE NIGHTBUG IS IN THE GAME LETS GO BABY WRIGGLE NIGHTBUG BEST TOUHOU EVER WOOOOOOOOOOO-
