start date: 8/16/23
normal 1cc: 8/16/23
written: 8/16/23
i cant think of a clever intro for this one, so lets just get right into it.
nina's thoughts on Touhou 16 - Hidden Star in Four Seasons
HSiFS is a solid entry with a good mix of brand new ideas and old mechanics. in some ways it almost feels like a remake of PCB in terms of the themeing and how the main mechanic works. compared to that game though, HSiFS executes its ideas in a much better way (imo).
the big new thing in this game is the dual-season system. each character has 1 main season thats fixed for that character, and each character shares the same 4 subweapon options, each also based on a season, being smaller counterparts of the main season of the same type. your main season is powered up using P as usual, but the sub-season has its own power meter that's filled by collecting season points, going up to a total of 6 options. season points come from shooting enemies and grazing bullets mostly, similar to cherry items in PCB. as long as you have at least 1 option of sub-season, you can execute a 'release' which sacrifices all (or just 1 in summer) options to create a circle of bullet-safety that acts differently depending on the season. any bullets that are destroyed by the release are converted into green-point items that increase the value of point items.
speaking of points, this game does away with life pieces, going back to the classic method of dealing out 1ups at certain point thresholds, and as drops from certain midbosses. pieces aren't gone entirely though, as bomb pieces do return, acting almost exactly as life pieces did in SA: one drops anytime you clear a boss phase without screwing up, and 5 of them give you a new bomb. you can also get whole bombs from certain midbosses or enemies.
you definitely need all those bombs and season releases cause this game is tough. not LoLK levels, thankfully, but it felt a lot more challenging than the UFO-TD-DDC trilogy. granted, thats not saying much since i still did clear the game within the day, but it took me a pretty solid chunk of runs, about 4 each per character, and i tried out a lot of different character-season combos to find what worked best for me.
without further ado, lets get into the actual characters!
HSiFS has 4 playable characters, one for each season of course. we have Reimu representing Spring, with homing cherry-blossom bullets. the spring sub-season also comes with some homing shots, and the season release flashes a circle on your character that instantly clears a lot of bullets and then disappears. theres Marisa representing Winter, with a frosty beam array. the winter sub-season comes with another beam, and the season release places a small lingering circle for a few seconds and boosts your dps while active. we got Aya, appearing as playable for the first time in a main game, representing Autumn. shes got a wide fan spread, and vertical piercing while focused. the autumn sub-season has the same, although with less spread and no piercing, and the release acts like a miniature version of Aya's bomb in SA, attaching a small circle of protection to your character and boosting your speed for a few seconds. lastly is a brand-new character to the touhou series: Cirno with a Tan! i mean its just Cirno, but the game specifies her as Tanned Cirno as if shes an ultra rare gacha variant or something lol. Cirno represents Summer, ironically, having an ultra-wide angle ice blast. the summer sub-season has randomly firing ice bullets, and the release places a very small, short-lived protection circle on your character at the cost of only 1 option instead of your entire stock. of all the choices, i liked all of them pretty well, but the autumn sub-season was my most favourite for how fun the season release was to use. i got my 1cc using Reimu with Autumn sub, after just barely failing to do the same on Marisa w/ Autumn.
for the new characters, of course the top of the class has gotta be
Eternity Larva! she's an insect fairy based on the swallowtail butterfly, having large butterfly wings and the signature Y-shape 'horn' found on swallowtail caterpillars. she is absolutely adorable and it is a CRIME that ONCE AGAIN the bug-type character has been relegated to a stage 1 boss position. at least, unlike Wriggle and Yamame, Eternity actually does have relevance to HSiFS's plot, since the actual incident with the seasonal chaos is caused by the fairies of Gensokyo going wild. her and Cirno seem to be buds, so i like to think Eternity becomes a member of Cirno's squad and her and Wriggle become BBFFs (Best Bug Friends Forever <3)
Aunn Komano is another really great character, shes a Komainu statue that helps protect shrines (namely Hakurei Shrine) but typically does so unnoticed. due to the events of this games plot though, Aunn is up and about, causing great confusion to Reimu who had no idea that she was ever there before, and when Aunn starts talking to her as you would an old friend, Reimu assumes that shes trying to pull some kind of scheme and beats her up anyways lol. in the other paths her interactions arent quite as funny, but shes still great. i like how for some reason her outfit is like something youd see on vacation, with what looks like a Hawaiian shirt (apparently the JP version called a Kariyushi shirt?) and wide shorts . her outfit almost looks more geared toward summer than anyone, although she's the 'springtime' boss.
my third pick of the new characters in HSiFS is gonna be Narumi, who like Aunn is also an old statue come to life, being a Jizou statue that came to life from the energies of the Forest of Magic she resides in. also like Aunn she mostly keeps to herself, only being brought into the limelight because of the big plot, although her conversation with Marisa does show that the two have met before, and that according to Marisa shes a "shut-in introvert". she apparently has the power to control life energy, and is implied in Cirno's route to have attempted to use that power to delete Cirno, but it didn't work because she was also being powered by seasonal magic at the time. lucky for her, Cirno is too stupid to realize that she just confessed to attempted murder so she gets away with it lol.
HSiFS is overall a really fun entry, and i liked both the return to form for mechanics like score-based life, as well as the weird new stuff in the seasonal releases and shared sub-weapons. plus, you gotta love seeing more classic characters show up as playable, and Aya and Cirno are both great picks, even if they already show up pretty often in other ways. I dont know if i would call this one my favourite entry, but its certainly pretty up there in the rankings! im glad that LoLK was just a weird one-off in terms of quality. tune in tomorrow where i will probably have beaten touhou 17, unless something goes wrong :P
and remember, #justice4bugyoukai!