start date: 8/14/23
normal 1cc: 8/14/23
written: 8/14/23
i think at this point i have crossed the event horizon and am a Certified Touhou Gamer™, cause the last few games have offered very low resistance to me schmooving on through. i literally downloaded this game earlier today and i've already 1cc'd it lol
nina's thoughts on Touhou 14 - Double-Dealing Character
another one down already! at this rate i might be able to play the newest touhou game before an english patch comes out lmao. DDC was one i was looking forward to, since i had been endeared to the grassroots youkai network through a lot of cute fan content. DDC was a fairly straightforward entry, which at this rate just seems to be the touhou cycle where it gets super weird and then chills out every 4 games lol.
life pieces and bomb pieces are back again, and once again their acquisition method has changed. now both types of piece are given out by the same method, boss fight phases drop a piece, and whenever you go to the top of the screen to collect items the game gives you a piece if you collected a good amount in one go. usually it gives you bomb pieces, but every 5th one procs a life piece instead, and you only need 3 life pieces for a 1up. besides that, no gameplay gimmicks in this one!
for the playable characters we got 3 options: Reimu and Marisa of course, and the surprising return of Sakuya as player 3! each has 2 moveset options, based on either using or not using a tool of theirs that is going haywire. interestingly, the unfocused shot doesn't change between the 2 sets, only the focus shot and bomb. Reimu has homing as a base, needles when focusing without the tool, and with her tool her focus shot is a giant spinning gohei that slowly homes in and does continuous aoe damage. Marisa has illusion lasers, magic missiles without the tool, and her corrupted tool is her mini-hakkero acting as a flamethrower . Sakuya has wide-angle knife throwing, a more vertical beam without the tool, and her corrupted tool is a series of posessed knives that stick into enemies and explode after a few seconds.
i tried out each moveset once, and they were all pretty fun, except Sakuya without her tool. after i tried each one once, i gave Sakuya's corrupted tool a second try, and got my 1cc right there. the homing from the possessed knives, the wide spread on the basic shot, and especially her bomb all made for a great moveset. Sakuya's bomb works similar to Nitori's from SA where you gain a shield for a few seconds and get a partial refund if you're not hit, but even better because the initial activation also gives you i-frames allowing it to perform double-duty in bullet-dense spellcards.
for the new characters, i mean i already said it earlier, but the grassroots youkai network is pretty cool, and really just all the characters in this game are neat.
Sekibanki is my favourite, something about her design just really works for me i dunno. the colour scheme, the cape, her tall collar hiding the fact that her head isn't connected, she's just cool. plus she's besties with Kogasa in other media, who im surprised didn't show up in this game considering how well she fits the theme.
Wakasagihime is also pretty cool, im surprised it took this long for any sort of aquatic youkai to show up, and mermaids are a great fit for the games theme of youkai trying to regain their scare factor. i like how for once a new stage1 boss character actually has connections to the main plot of the game, and isnt just someone Reimu and crew bumped into along the way, heck shes the reason Sakuya showed up in this story at all.
its tough to pick a third cause theres plenty of good options, but i think i have to go with Seija. her power suite of flipping things is simple but it has a lot of cool applications, i love how her 'lair' is a big inverted castle floating in the sky (sick symphony of the night reference?). her boss fight is probably one of the craziest in the series, her actual bullet patterns arent particularly rough, but she uses her flipping powers to break the 4th wall and flip the game screen horizontally, vertically, and a full 180 spin, which is super cool even if it fries my brain with the inverted controls.
speaking of fight gimmicks, Shinmyoumaru also does a similar wild gameplay thing in her fight where she briefly turns your sprite HUGE and disables your weapon, making you dodge danmaku with an absolutely massive hitbox until it wears off, which is also really fun and bizarre.
Double-Dealing Character was pretty fun! the lack of a new big mechanic was surprising, but the base gameplay was still great without it, with the incentive to stack up uncollected items for a big collection run being enough of a mixup to keep it interesting. the boss fights were all pretty fun, and most of them had neat unique mechanics like Sekibanki's head satellites, and the aforementioned tricks with Seija and Shinmyoumaru. the characters are also really neat, and imo much more memorable than the ones from TD. if theres one complaint i have to give DDC, its WHERE DID SANAE GO? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER? IS SAKUYA RESPONSIBLE??? IF SHE IS IM GONNA-
[it was at this point that the author was suddenly struck down by a silver knife that appeared in her room seemingly out of nowhere]