Recent reviews by Mofuji

Even after eight years and owning it on three different platforms, this still holds up as an amazing re-imagining of a classic game. The music is spot on, the controls are great, the additions are majority positive and, even at its worst, it's still leagues better than the rest of the franchise as a whole, and the Zero sub-series especially.

Outside of seeing where it all started, or nostalgia, there's not a single reason to play the original game (be it the Blaster Master localization or the Metafight original) over this.

Haw haw, now that Sega has delisted this, that means I have it while you can't! I'm so cool because of this fact!

... No, not really. Screw Sega for this nonsense.

Ah yes, Cat Face, my favorite chapter of Space Marines.

I'll preface this by saying that you get 5 new models per dollar. That's an actually great deal. From what I've seen, they're all actually pretty good, design wise...

... when I can see them, anyway. Being launch day and all, there will of course be issues, which I've been running head first into constantly. Thankfully, I haven't gotten any kind of save issues, but I've been getting everything else. The most major issues is the game just deciding to crash when trying to load models, crashing when trying to go back to the main menu, or crashing when trying to start a new model from a finished model. Other times the game will just hang at 94.70% until I force the game to close. The most minor issue is that randomly when loading models, the mats simply will not load, leaving the model and such just existing in a void.

I expect this to eventually be sorted out, of course, but for right now, be wary. And also, for Mechwaifus, be sure to look up human skin tones. You'll thank me later.

EDIT: The issues have been fixed, so no more crashing and hanging. I can, indeed, fully recommend this for those who want more kits. I've gotten about 4 more hours out of these 15 kits, so you really cannot go wrong here.

Ya like Hydlide? No? Then Fairune 1 isn't for you.

More to come as I beat the games.

The bosses seriously need a rebalancing. I have a feeling the stages are so short simply because you will be constantly getting game overs on some of these abominations. People who compare this to the Rockman franchise are insulting an actually good series.

Beck is the worst part of this game, though. Fitting, since MN9 was such a horrid pile of garbage. Even with a massive discount, and knowing that this is just a promotional game, it's not worth it.

Ultra jank and the kind of ugly that was best left in the 90s. Holding lock on while strafing is not an option, it is a hard requirement for the enemies to not suddenly just beat you into the ground while you're facing in a whole other direction. And even if you do, sometimes they will just clobber you, especially the multiple seed spewing flowers.

The game seems wildly inconsistent when it comes to health refills, in some areas they're so plentiful that you question why they're all over the place, and in some other spots where there's a pile of enemies, they're nowhere to be found, making for a frustrating experience. I suppose this may be seen as encouraging... or rather, forcing you to switch between characters, but it's still bad design. Especially since every hit takes away attack power, meaning one bad encounter will make every other encounter after it that much worse.

Saves do not actually save your position in a level, only any donation boxes you may have collected up to the save being made. If you reload, you will be back at the starting point of a given level section. I suppose this is why there's no load option in the menu when playing the game (you have to go back to the title to load).

I'm not super far into the game... I think, and so far my opinion is pretty negative. This may change with time, but for right now, I really can't recomment this.

There's no reason to explore, you don't get anything from it. There's no reason to kill enemies, outside of the rooms that require it and to ensure that they cannot kill you on your backtrack. Yuto doesn't get any stronger, it just comes down to use summons and hope to find potions that refill your... whatever bar to do more summons.

Yuto cannot cancel attack animations, so if you want to dodge while the sword is still moving, too bad. The game doesn't tell you, either, that if you attack after a dodge, you can do an instant kill attack.

But the real kicker are the boss fights, which are BEYOND boring and tedious. Move crosshair to thing you want to shoot, push attack button to shoot, rinse and repeat until the boss gets close, hold block button, go back to the shooting, have them get close, block, mash attack button to do an attack that does little damage, keep repeating a dozen of so times. Summons work in boss battles, but they don't do a whole lot of damage, so you're still just stuck doing the same thing so often that your hands and thumbs get tired.

This seriously isn't fun. The demo had all the charm and enjoyment you can find in the game, and that's just the first area. It's the high water mark, and it all just goes downhill from there.

Oh, and the plot is generic anime slop that tries, vaguely, to be clever, but it just comes off as lame. Seriously, the main character is generic I'M FIRED UP protag, the first chick is his CHILDHOOD FRIEND who obviously has a thing for him, the next guy is a friend they both know... come on.

So terrible that I refunded.

Hey, you like the mobile game Touhou: LostWord? Yes? Then good news, you'll be at home with this DLC near the end with a plot twist. No? Then, um... good luck, I guess?

Mima has returned. Yes, that's right, Mima is back. But nobody remembers her. Now why is that? Well, play to find out. And if that's not enough to entice you, there's nearly a dozen playable characters for you to play as, if you can find and unlock them.

Returning characters Sakuya, Remilia and Flandre from Scarlet Curiosity play sort of the same, but have new tricks and skills up their frills. Reimu and Marisa play just the same as they did in the base game, so if you want to return to something familiar, there you go. Sumireko finally makes her debut here, and while she's not the most powerful, she's just as good as the main two. You like Youmu or Reisen? Well, you can play as them. Koishi fan? Good news!

... Also there's a yukkuri Reimu for some reason...

Sadly, there's no 2p miko here; Sanae gets screwed again. The same with Yuyuko, Yukari, Wriggle, Patchu, Utsuho, Satori, Suika and of course Alice. I can only hope for another DLC to give us access to these characters. Maybe with mama Shinki as the boss?

Each character has her own set of skills and spell cards, though they have a much smaller selection than the main three. Spell card levels transfer between characters, as does your character level and equipment, but skill levels do not. So, if you want 10s in everything... well, lots of grinding.

Each of the new characters (so no Reimu and Marisa quest, and also no yukkuri Reimu quest for some reason) also has her character specific quest. Sometimes they're there to unlock another character, sometimes they're used to upgrade spell card level, sometimes they're just there to be cute and give the character a bit of time to shine. Even outside of these, you can play as any unlocked character at will, though they will not have their own special dialogue, the game just assumes you're playing as Sumireko.

Or Reimu or Marisa, because after you beat the game once, be it the DLC or the base, you have access to the character swap in any mode once you reach the map. So you can, indeed, start up a new game as Reimu, get to the map, swap to Flan and play the whole game through as her. However, it seems that in Reimu and Marisa mode, skills do not level.

Several characters seem to have their own special strengths or abilities, beyond what Reimu, Marisa and Sumireko have. Example being Flandre, who is capable of slowing her descent after a jump, granting her long jumps, and she also seems to jump higher, being able to get to spots easier... or just negate some mazes. Another example would be Youmu, who has a much higher base movement speed.

There's also two new things to do in this DLC... and they frankly suck. The first is playing catch the character, who runs away in a specific pattern and you have to be in contact with them long enough for a meter to fill to be considered caught. This is terrible in turbo mode, and not a whole lot better if you turn that off. Thankfully there's nothing actually forcing you to do this, so you can skip it. The second is time trials, where you run and jump along a course, trying to beat a specific time. It's not nearly as bad as catch and turbo mode doesn't make it terrible, but it's still not very fun. But it's also optional.

Well, unless you want to be able to max out your stats, because they give strengthening stones. So uh... yeah.

There are several new stages, or at least layouts, and you don't return to a large number of older stages/layouts from the base game. There are also now items in the stages to collect in the form of coins and floating boxes. The coins give you currency, while the boxes give you XP. While they're not in very large amounts, they do add up over time. It also seems that they're used in many cases to help direct you to "the right path" as it were, though of course optional paths and little corners can still reward you with some.

Enemy variety is still the same, and outside of Mima, there aren't any new bosses.

There's no reason to cover the basics outside of the new content, it's all the same. Use stones from quests to power up, Sumireko shares most of her armor and accessories with Reimu and Marisa, Kogasa blacksmithing, etc.

So yeah, if you want more of this game, get the DLC. It adds a lot of new content and character stuff, plus it has Mima. Mima makes everything better.

So, I've played both modes. The biggest difference, outside of the obvious skill set, is the plot. You're not doing the exact same plot beats as both Marisa and Reimu, which is a good thing. They fight bosses in different orders (and certain bosses are just missing), for different reasons and have several different side quests that they can do. I would strongly suggest you play them both, but please do turn on turbo mode, because it makes the game faster and more fun.

Who to play first? Honestly, it doesn't matter. Some say Reimu is easier, but honestly, I found Marisa to be stronger for most of the game, only kinda falling behind Reimu in end game where she can take a bit longer to bring down certain bosses. The main difference is, Marisa has no homing attacks, so you have to be slightly better at timing and aiming. But if you're only going to play one... do it as Marisa. She's just more fun.

This game is a step up in nearly every way from the prior game, Scarlet Curiosity. The art is much nicer, the graphics are a massive leap in most areas and the maps are even better. You now have the ability to run, which speeds up exploration and what little backtracking there is. While you have fewer skills, they can now level, Ys 7 style, to a maximum of 10, making them stronger, giving better range, etc.

Skills now have their own cool down, rather than a universal pool of energy to draw from. Since skills feel like they're stronger in this game, especially Reimu's, which several of them home in, I can see that this was an attempt at balancing, to remove the ability to just spam the strongest skills. At the same time, given how you can enhance your skill regen rate to make it, at most, a few seconds, it's kind of moot. Perhaps in a challenge run...

What is better, though, is the platforming. While still not amazing, jumping feels much better, and the real topper is that there's fewer chances to just fall off if you overshoot things. Plus, you now seem to not lose any money if you do fall into a pit and have to respawn, so a massive frustration has been lifted. Especially because there's now even more stuff to spend your hard won currency on.

... I say this, and then I got to near end game, where the platforming really becomes terrible. But it's still actually better than anything Scarlet Curiosity threw at you, since none of it is over money sucking pits.

The mechanics from the previous game when it comes to equipment is back in full force. Randomly generated stats for every item you find, can buy from Nitori and the gacha machine (because of course). But new to this is the ability to reforge gear via Kogasa. Every item has a range where the stats can fall (some equipment simply cannot give certain stats)... but again, it's also random. You cannot pick and choose what stats are altered, meaning that you could get an excellent piece of kit, have Kogasa work it and it turns out to be way worse. You can pay more to keep rerolling stats, but like the gacha machine, it's pure RNG gambling.

I believe the main purpose of Kogasa is to find a piece of gear that has great ranges (so basically end game stuff) and just pay her to reroll it, in essence just giving yourself constant rerolls, rather than pray to the RNG to get another of that item to play the stat RNG game. But it's still lacking in a lot of aspects, and is honestly still terrible.

Oh, and like the prior game, both characters share largely the same armor and accessories, only the weapons are really different. Such a let down.

New to this game, however, is the ability to guard. While not super vital for much of the game, it's still pretty good; if you can pull off a perfect guard, you get a countdown where time slows globally, save for yourself and your skill timers, to go full ham on every enemy around you. The downside is, of course, only certain attacks can be guarded, depicted with a blue glow. The length of your guard can be changed via equipment stats, so it's just another thing that gets piled onto the RNG of gear. However, you do not get the slowdown if you manage to guard a spellcard, despite it having the blue glow. And even then, you'll only get a reduction in damage, not a total negate.

Guarding does, however, become vital with one certain boss near the end, and in the post game challenges. You'll know 'em when you get to 'em. And curse them.

You can also, now, just heal if you want in battle. It has its own cool down, and it completely removes any and all healing you could find in stages or as enemy drops. You can have a maximum of 4, and they recharge one after the other, not all at once. It's not ideal, but it makes surviving some battles possible, unless you are a 1cc grazing god.

The game has side quests, little things here and there that you can do to get currency, random items and, most importantly, stones that can be used in Nitori's shop to strengthen your stats. The cost increases with each level, of course, but you can increase everything, from how much HP you have to how long your perfect guard lasts, even increasing your base item drop rate. By the end of the game, and with every side quest done, you will have them all maxed out... but that doesn't do much, since the game is over at that point. You should wisely pick and choose, rather than just go down the list.

The game reuses a lot of assets from the prior game, so be ready to hear the same tracks, find yourself in many of the same areas and, of course, fight most of the same bosses. While there is new stuff here and there, it's more sparse than it could be. Most enemy patterns are different, however, especially the bosses. But so many of them love to spam this one tornado attack...

If you're a fan of ARPGs, this is pretty good. If you're a fan of 2hu, this is obvious. If you enjoyed the prior game, then you'll feel mostly at home here.