Touhou 11 - Subterranean Animism

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start date: 7/23/23
normal 1cc: 8/5/23
written: 8/11/23

grab yourself a drink and some popcorn for this one, this is by far my longest post yet and youre gonna want to be prepared :P

nina's thoughts on Touhou 11 - Subterranean Animism

Subterranian Animism is probably one of my favourites in the series so far, it has a ton of really cool aspects both in gameplay and story. the majority of the big changes to gameplay come in the playable characters themselves, but theres a few system changes too. faith comes back from MoF but now it only goes down if you die, resetting to the initial value, which may sound broken with how many points you'd get, but lives are different now. lives now are gained by collecting 5 'life pieces', little pink stars that drop from mid-bosses, boss fights, and the occasional strong fairy whenever you beat one of their phases without dying or timing out. life gains are much more consistent now, but the fact you only get life pieces if you dont get hit is a bit strange, as it means a player having trouble will get even less lives to help while a good player has tons of lives that they dont need since they dont get hit. bombs are handled the same way as MoF, sacrificing a weapon option (which you now only get 4 of instead of 5), but unique bomb effects are back depending on your moveset.

speaking of those movesets, SA again only has Reimu and Marisa with 3 movesets each, but with a twist! instead of being simple weapons, each of the movesets represents a youkai from a previous game teaming up with Reimu/Marisa, reminiscent of Imperishable Night. each combo has unique weapon mechanics not seen before, a bonus skill, and unique dialogue through the story, making for a lot of variety based on your choice. all 6 are really cool and i wanna talk about them all, so prepare for a big wall of text here :P

• Reimu + Yukari: Reimu's first combo is with her old partner from IN, the gap youkai Yukari. This moveset is somewhat reminiscent of Reimu's typical needle attacks, but with some unique elements. Yukari's needle-shooting options are constantly orbiting Reimu, and if the option would go off the left or right edge of the screen, it instead wraps around and keeps shooting on the other side. the special skill of this combo allows Reimu to do the same, if you double-tap a direction into the side of the screen you will zoop in and come out on the other side! its a really funny move, and probably has some insane use cases, but i never could make good use of it myself. their bomb is pretty nuts, having Reimu slip into another dimension where shes completely unaffected by bullets for a few seconds, and then fully clearing the screen when she reappears in reality.
• Reimu + Suika: Reimu's next partner is the drunk oni Suika who debuted in one of the fighting games iirc. Suika's weapon acts as this games homing option, although the actual homing aspect is pretty weak. interestingly though, her bullets are also piercing in addition, which makes her great at punching through crowds of enemies. her special technique is that if you let go of every button on the controller it magnetizes every item on screen to you no matter where you are, which is a pretty huge QoL buff and is really helpful for grabbing life pieces without putting yourself in danger. her bomb creates a circle of protection on your position like the MoF ones, but any enemy bullet that enters is turned against the enemy instead of simply being negated, which can deal some nasty damage. i played Suika's combo the least, but it actually ended up being my 1cc somehow lmao.
• Reimu + Aya: Reimu's third partner is the high-speed newpaper tengu Aya! this was my favourite of Reimu's partners. her weapon is reminiscent of Sakuya's B set from PCB, where the direction of Aya's shots is tied to the direction Reimu is moving in, with focusing locking the angle in place. unlike that set though, Aya shoots both in front of and behind Reimu, and can spin full 360 degrees, which gives her great versatility and surprising utility against certain bosses. Aya's special ability is also really fun, if you let go of the shoot button Aya lets you absolutely schmoove around the screen. this combos really well with her bomb, which surrounds Reimu with a circle of destruction that stays locked to her as she moves and negates any bullets that enter. popping a bomb and then rocketing all around the screen deleting enemies is insanely fun, and if used at the right times can even give you a full power refund through the enemies you defeat with it!
• Marisa + Alice: like Reimu, Marisa's first partner is her IN companion Alice. Alice's weapon is fairly simple, a collection of lasers that either shoot in a inward angle or an outward fan depending on if you're focused or not. the interesting part comes from Alice's special ability, which is that you can stack weapon options up to 8 instead of just 4. at full power, if you hit an enemy with all the beams at once it can deal nutty damage, although at the risk of moving unfocused. plus, 8 options means 8 potential bomb uses before you need to refill! it sounds great, but as a compensation Alice's bomb is pretty bad. one of her dolls shoots a thin line forward from Marisa's position for a second, dealing damage and destroying any bullets that touch it. the damage isnt bad, but the screen clearing is abysmal. at least you get the universal i-frames for a bit after activating.
• Marisa + Patchouli: more magicians! Marisa's second partner is the library witch of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. her weapon is a very technical one, and inherently tied to her special ability. instead of one weapon, Patchouli has 5 different shot variants that fire at different angles, that you toggle through by pressing the shot and focus buttons simultanously. there's a lot of potential in Patchouli's moveset, and much like Aya her ability to fire in almost any direction is surprisingly useful against some bosses. unfortunately, her bomb is pretty basic, being pretty much exactly a MoF bomb but slightly larger and dealing good damage if something gets hit by it. the bigger problem though is that pressing the button combo to switch firing modes gets tiring on the hand once you're deep into a run. very ironic that Patchouli of all people has the most physically exhausting special move :P
• Marisa + Nitori: Marisa's last partner is the kappa nerd from MoF, the outlier of the group as shes not a magic user. probably the most basic moveset of the game, Nitori's attack is shooting high-power missiles that slowly fly up the screen. her special ability ties into her bomb: when you use your bomb initially, a shield appears around Marisa. the shield lasts for a few seconds, and if you're hit at any point then the shield breaks and fully clears the screen. if the shield fully wears off though, instead you get a 50% refund on the power you used to activate the bomb in the first place. returning the resources for a bomb that you didn't need is a neat concept, but the fact that her bomb deals no damage at all is a hard sell, and ideally you aren't using a bomb unless you really need to anyways, making her a pretty weak choice if you already know what youre doing.

if it wasn't clear by all that, the movesets in SA are really cool both flavor-wise and in their actual mechanics, and its hard to pick a favourite. i love all the different character interactions that take place in the dialogue across different runs, and theres one more bonus thing related to your moveset choice that ill get to later. its about time to talk about the new characters!

wow that was a lot! i had a surprising amount to say about Subterranean Animism, which i guess makes sense as this one took me the longest time to finish of them so far. it took me almost 2 weeks of attempts to finally clear SA, compared to most previous usually taking a week at most. there's a lot of stuff to like in SA, and as i mentioned way back at the start im tempted to call it my favourite entry in the series at the moment. the characters, the mechanics, the music, its all really good and they come together to make a real home run after the slight disappointments of MoF. now if only Wriggle came back as one of the youkai partners, then it would be the perfect game :P

to those of you who read all the way here, thanks so much for reading! i dont plan on making future posts quite this long again, but i cant make any promises. the fact that you care enough about a random girl's touhou ramblings to still be reading now is greatly appreciated, and i hope you have a great day! :>

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