start date: 8/21/23
story complete: 8/25/23
written: 8/26/23
touhou 19 time! this game was literally not even released when i started this, so this is really fresh! this post is probably the closest i will ever be to a real games journalist lol.
nina's thoughts on Touhou 19 - Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
the most recent touhou, coming out just a few weeks ago, so this review is hot off the presses! UDoALG (wild abbreviation by the way, this name is so long) is a pretty neat game, being a direct sequel to Wily Beast and Weakest Creature story-wise, and a sequel to Phantasmagoria of Flower View gameplay-wise.
UDoALG is another in the competitive-danmaku type gameplay, similar to PoFV but with a number of evolutions to make the gameplay more balanced and easier to control. i won't go over every little change, since theres quite a lot, but ill point out some interesting changes, mostly in relation to story mode. for starters, Ability Cards are back again from UM, although with a much smaller role. each character has 2 cards themed to them, and whenever you beat an opponent in story mode you're randomly given one of their two cards. the three animal spirits are added, but they work completely differently to WBaWC, now being stronger variants of the generic spirit enemies from PoFV. a change that i think is only in story mode is that a new win condition is added, where if you defeat your opponent's boss summon an amount of times then your opponent loses. this is also pretty much the only wincon in story mode, since the AI has insane dodging skills. i literally only saw them lose a life one (1) time across 19 characters' stories (if you're curious, it was in Chiyari's stage 1).
one really interesting aspect of this game is the storytelling. i usually don't bring up the story in these posts outside of how certain characters relate to it, the story usually is a fairly simple affair that just gives the characters a reason to fight, but UDoALG has a much more complex story, which im kinda mixed on. i'll start with the cool part: the story actually progresses as you play through and unlock various characters in story mode, every set of character unlocks represents a later time period of the story, so you don't get the full story and resolution until you play through it all. this is a super cool idea, and gives good incentive to keep playing different routes and see how it all plays out. its a cool idea that uniquely plays off of the large character roster and unlocking method of these competitive vs games.
unfortunately, in order to make this happen and make every character be relevant, the plot is needlessly convuluted, especially in the first couple campaigns. there are so many factions at play, all with their own motives and double-agents and subterfuge. by the end of the 19 story scenarios you will be absolutely sick of the phrase "this is exactly as i had planned", and yet i still dont fully understand What the "main villain"s plan was. i commend ZUN for trying something new with the narrative, both in doing a direct sequel with most of the same characters as a former game, as well as this way of unfolding the story over time through different character routes, but i can't say it was Good. maybe im just biased since it mostly revolves around the WBaWC cast, and that game already had pretty rough plot and characterization, but i dunno. i will say i liked the story more at the end than i did after doing the first couple routes, but some of that early confusion never really goes away, and characters like Ran and Tsukasa dont really get their stories resolved.
time to talk about the characters! UDoALG is furry city, pretty much every character besides the human incident resolvers is some kind of animal-person, plus a few Onis. for returning characters we have Reimu, Marisa, Sanae, Ran (from PCB), Aunn (HSiFS), Nazrin (UFO), Seiran (LoLK), Rin (SA), Tsukasa (UM), Mamizou (TD), Yachie (WBaWC), Saki (WBaWC), Yuuma (the 3rd Animal Realm leader, coming from a fighting game i think?), and Suika (also a fighting game, and SA). for the new characters, we have 3 new youkai who have each joined one of the animal realm families respectively, plus the 'main villain' Zanmu and her assistant Hisami. since theres only 5 new guys, ill just give them each a quick review.
Son Biten is a monkey youkai, based on Son Wukong, recruited to Yachie's Kiketsu family. she's pretty goofy, and has a really neat musical theme. i dont have much to say about her, besides that she has a cool inspiration, and some of her interactions are pretty funny.
Enoko is a dog-type youkai, loosely based on the idea of Cerberus, who was recruited to Saki's Keiga family. instead of literally having 3 heads, she has bear traps on her wrists that act as analogues to the jaws of two additional heads, which is a really neat interpretation of a cerberus concept, as well as having tons of comedic potential. i love all the jokes people make about her offering up a Totally Normal Handshake, dont worry about it. she apparently lived in the Forest of Magic as a dog before awakening as a youkai, so she joins the crew of Marisa's funny forest friends.
the third new Youkai is Chiyari, who is NOT a chupacabra, despite what everyone says. she's based on a Tenkajin, which is apparently an obscure youkai that sucks blood, obscure enough that i could only find a single source for it online, being a Japanese blog post written by who i assume is a youkai enthusiast. Anyways, nobody in Gensokyo knows what a tenkajin is either, so everyone calls her a chupacabra instead since its another bloodsucking creature who is 'pretty popular right now'. most of her interactions are her being annoyed by being called a chupacabra, and eventually coming to terms with it. poor tenkajin gets no respect. shes very funny, and also apparently completely broken in pvp. great character.
Hisami is a 'guide of Hell', who is also inexplicably based on grapes for some reason (or eggplants, depending on who you ask, but im in grapes camp.) she pretty much just finds people in hell and helps them find their destination, although 'their destination' is up to Hisami's interpretation, and multiple times in the story she leads characters somewhere else. apparently she does her job wrong because she wants Zanmu to notice her, and it doesn't work cause apparently that was part of Zanmu's plan all along, so she doesn't care. Zanmu is too busy playing 4d chess to give her suboordinate some attention, so sad.
speaking of, Zanmu is an Oni, and the 'main villain' of the game. i say that with quotes because, despite being the final boss in most routes, and being the chessmaster supposedly laying out the big plans and manipulating everyone, she also is simultaneously resolving the incident, kinda?? its a bit hard to understand her motivations. well i guess her motivations make sense, but its hard to understand how exactly she plans to get what she wants from this plan. like her plan involves getting beat up by Reimu multiple times? hello?? not a fan, and she doesn't even have a cool design inspiration to make up for it, shes just another oni.
alright, lets wrap this one up. i was surprised to see another VS type game come out, and it seems to deliver a lot more balanced and interesting combat than the first one (granted, story mode plays pretty differently from what i can tell). the story is weird though, and the roster doesn't really have many characters i'm excited to play as compared to PoFV, and the characters i do like are pretty bad. (Sanae in particular is really weak in this format, her homing snakes are a huge disadvantage against bosses since they turn as soon as they see an enemy, meaning they wont hit the boss unless every random spirit or fairy is dead first). complaints aside though, at the base level its still pretty fun, and im glad that this type of gameplay is being given another chance.
i said it in my PoFV review, and ill say it again here: if any of you reading this have UDoALG, and are interested in playing the PvP with me, hit me up! itd be fun to try playing this with another person (although i heard the online is rough so i dunno...)
thank you so much for reading, especially those of you that have stuck with me through each post! this is the end of the mainline series, but there's still a lot out there i havent done. im not sure where this will go from here, especially since my college semester just started so i'll have a lot less free time, but ive had a lot of fun working on this project, and i hope that youve had fun reading it! if i do keep going, i might do the PC-98 quintilogy next, or maybe talk about cool fangames like Luna Nights or Mystia's Izakaya, i dunno. whatever comes next though, i hope to see you again! consider this the end of 'volume 1' of my grimoire. farewell!