Touhou Blue Devil in the Belvedere is a beautiful and meticulously crafted vertical STG, with a production quality that far surpasses the majority of Touhou STGs. Dialogue scenes are depicted using large and detailed character sprites with multiple variants, and its 3D backdrops look especially great on both a technical and artistic level. The music is upbeat and catchy, with some unique sounding instrumentation including some tracks using the accordion, and others invoking sounds from the PC-98 era.

Long term fans will appreciate the numerous nods to older titles, with modern renderings of the fields and farmland from Perfect Cherry Blossom, the dimly lit streets of Subterranean Animism's Ancient City, and references to musical motifs such as Hartmann's Youkai Girl. But despite these references to the original games, Blue Devil in the Belvedere thankfully strikes out on its own with a mostly original cast, story and setting.

The game's unique gameplay mechanic revolves around a rank system that's based on your shot power. The more power you collect, the more dense bullet patterns you'll face. At maximum power you can activate a hyper mode that supercharges your shot and gives you a shield that lets you get hit three times, but also increases the enemy attack patterns. You'll also automatically enter this mode if you get hit whilst you're at maximum power with two bombs in stock, acting as an auto bomb of sorts. It's a pretty forgiving system, which is good because the bullet patterns are in general harder than the average Touhou game.

The stage design is mostly great. I especially love the last two stages, where stage memorisation and timing hypers becomes important, and there's a good mix of enemy type, formation, and bullet patterns. Other stages are a little disappointing, such as the third stage which is mostly tap dodging. All the bosses are great, with some familiar attacks but a lot of really creative ones. There's less slow micrododging dense patterns in this title; be prepared for a lot of faster dodging than you may be used to from other Touhou games. There's only one spellcard in the entire game which I didn't really like in the Extra stage, and that's because it's a bit too gimmicky and is based on dodging bullets you can't see based on memorisation and timing.

The English localisation is also really good. The developer's last game wasn't good in this regard, with a lot of broken English that made reading the dialogue feel pointless with so much lost in translation. I'm really happy that I was able to follow along with the dialogue in this game and appreciate the extra effort that went into this.

Overall it's a really great Touhou game, and the best to come out in years. I like it better than the developer's last game, Elegant Impermanence of Sakura. Its central mechanic allows a lot more flexibility and remains relevant throughout the entirety of the game, its bullets patterns are consistently pretty creative, and it's even more well produced than the last game.

OMORI was the biggest surprise for me in 2020, luring me in with its hand drawn animated promotional video, replete with indie pop backing track and vibrant cartoon visuals. What I didn't expect to find, even after having read the marketing, some reviews and after having purchased the game was one of the best and most creative JRPGs to come out for a very long time.

OMORI's narrative is first and foremost a tale about being in one's own head, about the comfort one derives from withdrawing to that space, the reasons why someone might want to check out from their real world emotions to spend more time there, and the effect that has on life and other people in the real world. It's also about how people manage their emotions, often in ways that may serve some initial purpose but have long since become self-destructive behaviours. It's presented with lots of whimsical humour, fantastical elements, symbolism and some psychological horror elements.

The majority of the game takes place in a dream world of the main character, surrounded happily by his childhood friends as they go on adventures around the world. The dream world is well realised, capturing the surreal and incoherent, fragmented structure of dreams. The remainder of the game takes place in the real world, where the main character struggles to even leave his bedroom, seemingly trapped by various phobias and post traumatic flashbacks; in essence he's become a recluse or hikikomori that's become distanced from the friends that fill his dreams. Across both the dream realm and reality, clues will reveal themselves as to how the main character came to be in this state, and how he might move on from it. Like Alice in Wonderland or Pan's Labyrinth, it's presented as a rollicking adventure across a surreal fantasy, but it's a dark fantasy that's symbolic of the struggles of the psyche. The dichotomy between the game's more fanciful moments and its eldritch horror work together to make each more impactful than either would be alone.

Across both worlds you'll be subject to the game's turn based battles, which have a couple of interesting and unique mechanics. Rather than elemental types, the game has an emotional state system where party members and enemies can enter a happy, angry or sad state, each of which confers various benefits and has advantages and disadvantages over the other states. There's also a resource that builds whenever a party member is hit that can be used during the execution phase of a turn, which lets party members perform certain actions like changing emotional state or doing a combination attack.

There's a lot of thought went into the gameplay elements and how they would tie into the story and themes of the game. In the dream world, you're mostly in control of your emotions, able to use abilities to change them at will and on the fly as the situation demands. In the real world for the main character, those emotions are far more subject to external factors, representing the character's external locus of control and how his retreat from the world provides him some way to mitigate and take back that control.

Visually the game is a real treat. Whilst the overworld art is relatively basic, the battles always look fantastic, with hand sketched animated art that looks like a crayon drawing come to life. There's also many story based cutscenes that share this aesthetic, which are equally excellent. The music is top notch, with a huge number of tracks with a lot of variety. There's more than twenty themes just for battles and they're all bangers.

I also appreciated the game's many references in easter eggs, which included nods to Earthbound, Clannad, Cowboy Bebop, Fullmetal Alchemist, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, and Umineko.

There's some minor blemishes, mostly coming down to parts that feel they would've been better cut from the game. The pacing can drag a little in some sections, such as the real world portion that has so many sidequests but few breadcrumbs to find them, leading to a lot of running around talking to every NPC after every story beat. These sidequests are of varying quality and many don't contribute meaningfully to the gameplay or story. There's also an alternative route to play the game which has some interesting new content but is 90% the same as the normal route, and after playing it I couldn't help but feel that that content could've been included in the one route or excised altogether. It felt less like an alternative route and more like a loosely connected series of deleted scenes cut by an editor. Sometimes less is more, and the game would've been better for following this ethos.

Finally, whilst some late game story beats are impactful and dramatic, they also feel a bit contrived. It wasn't a huge deal for me, but it stands out especially because much of the game's writing up to those points felt relatively authentic.

I loved my time playing OMORI. It's the first JRPG I've played in a very long time with this much creativity on display, with gorgeous art and music and smart writing. I would consider it one of the best JRPGs I've played and I'd strongly recommend it.