This video was a really good time to make - this is an excellent dungeon crawler that stands up to the Atlus classics. It's not often that games like this come out anymore so definitely take advantage of playing it if you're interested. Hope you enjoy this one, this was my first look at most things Touhou-related so it might be funny to see it from my point of view. Check the description for a list of music used, a link to the store page, and special credits.
Fun fact about Touhou, the series was originally created to help ZUN promote his music! Now, because Zun didn't care about limiting the creativity of his fans, it's a Genre all of it's own!
Hi, Me again, The thing about Reimu being Lazy, It's basically the entirety of canon, being conceptually linked to the concept of floating, she's the kinds of person who simply "Floats" through life only getting involved in incidents, which as the stories of each game, and even then she rarely wants to do it, she's also perpetually short on cash, because she's too lazy to go into town and get donations, and most townsfolk avoid the shrine due to the incidents Reimu resolves attracting certain powerful Yokai to stick around the shrine because Reimu is entertaining.
The Story between Koishi and Satori is kinda Tragic. Both of them as the same kind of Yokai, which can read minds, but Koishi constantly felt overwhelmed by hearing everyone's thoughts, so she sewed her third eye shut to stop hearing everyone's thoughts, which turned her into a being with no real complex thoughts, as well as making it so that so long as you aren't looking at her, you don't realize that she even exists, and because of that, Satori can't find her sister, and her sister doesn't even remember that she has one. Pretty sad all things considered.
The moment he said that my first thought was "You got it, Marshal!" 😂 It's not universal, but finding a character that doesn't have an asshole-ish moment is something worth being mentioned 😁
yeah, i don't get the hype at all. Most of them are jerks or just annoying, imo i mean, who would want to go near Utsuho or that bird-like thing from Touhou 8's stage 2 xd
@@LavaCreeperPeople In fairness Mystia's grilled lamprey is actually delicious apparently! A bit of a con artist but at least you are getting some good eats at the end of the day.
So a fun fact, the post-game dungeon is so difficult because it is based on the first few Touhou games made for the PC-98 home computer which were made before ZUN really came up with Gensokyo as a consistent setting where conflicts are decided with nonlethal danmaku duels. Meaning Makai is essentially a lawless world where everyone is still out to actually kill you.
Well, wouldn't say everyone. Louise is just minding her business while Reimu assaults her. It's definitely less regulated, though, given that during Shinki fight the place just catches fire (and Reimu seems to seal away Orange in LLS rather than just beating her up and then continuing; though in contrast with Mystic Square, some characters actually show up again after their fight which means they didn't die). Also there are some funny scenes in Mystic Square's Extra endings. if I remember right Mima has her turn Alice into her maid or something, while Marisa restrains Alice and just peruses the Grimoire
I personally love that. Almost every touhou fan game kinda goes slow introducing stuff to newcomers but ADiA is like "BOOM, 1st stop is the Underworld. First big boss is Okuu, go!"
Best part is that most of the characters don't know about nuclear fusion either so in Touhou 17.5 Reimu "realizes" it actually runs on petroleum and threatens to *blow it up*
@@Superscope64definitely was like, ohhh~ "who's this gun toting tenguu?" and "oh a bratty child puppet thingy?" It's been a blast so far. But I do get stuck constantly since i'm really new to this type of gameplay- but the story and characters are just so charming~
38:43 giving Parsee a phone makes more sense if you know Touhou lore. See, Parsee is specifically some sort of Jealousy Spirit, and she basically feeds off of both her own and other people’s jealousy. What is social media if not an all-you-can-eat buffet of jealousy served up for free?
1:02:50 more Touhou lore, basically. Mokou and Kaguya are both immortals who’ve been feuding for a thousand or so years. Mokou’s usually the instigator, because she resents Kaguya for the events that led to her obtaining immortality.
There is other things like why Rin went straight to attack Sumireko (she is in charge of feeding corpses to the fires of hell) or why Ooku (a bird who fused with a yatagarasu, an emisary of the sun) sort of forgot what she was doing after the fight (she is officially diagnosed with being an idiot/birdrained), or why is in character for Reimu to not want to investigate initially (she tends to go at her own pace 99% of the time and be sort of lazy overall, not because it was beneath her to investigate), or that it isn't that the Komeiji sisters hate each other, if anything is the contrary.
Man, for a first proper experience with Touhou, you were handed an incredible combo platter. You got a piece of just about every hotspot in Gensokyo both big and small and got a glimpse of basically every character in the series. As a longtime fan, watching this video gave me great joy seeing you encounter some of the deep cut lore references. Also that Nakajima jumpscare was probably intentional because Touhou fangames wear their inspirations on their sleeve.
A very interesting note is that the whole reason why Yukari Yakumo is nice to Sumireko (or at least a lot nicer than to almost any other character) in the first place is based on a combination of fan theories. I'm going to give a tl;dr of the two fan theories in question: - Sumireko shares her last name "Usami" with another character, Renko Usami, who appears in the stories accompanying the official Touhou music CDs. Renko lives in the future however and the theory here is that Renko is a descendent of Sumireko (Sumireko might be like her grandma or something) - Renko's best friend (maybe even closer than friend) is Maribel Hearn, and Maribel throughout her adventures with Renko awakens magical abilities that seem to be almost exactly the same as Yukari's. Her character design is also almost exactly the same as Yukari's, and when ZUN (the creator of Touhou) was asked if there is a connection between the two, he simply referenced that "there was this guy who once moved to japan and then changed his last name from Hearn to Yakumo *wink wink*") All of these hints combined create the fan theory that Maribel most likely is Yukari; the exact logistics are debatable; maybe Maribel will use her power to travel back in time (she can already do that) and then becomes Yukari or something. If you combine both of these theories, it seems that the Yukari in this game did Sumireko a favor, because she reminded her of her (girl)friend Renko, and because she is an ancestor to Renko, wanted to do something nice for her. She does curiously afaik not refer to Sumireko as "Sumireko" but as "Miss Usami" and even states in one textbox that she "wont let harm befall a Usami"
It makes me happy beyond belief that Kisume was brought along the entire game, as a character that made as many offical appearences in the series that you can count on a single hand (including manga/ novel appearences.) I feel like I'm witnessing the fresh start of someone's touhou journey, and Kisume's that character that's a favorite of theirs from sentimental value. Bucketbastard, tf2 joke, tsurube-otoshi love.
Her art for _Who's Who of Humans & Youkai in Gensokyo_ (an official compendium of characters with artwork sourced from other, better, artists) is really cool. She looks cute, and then you see the bones... and her slit pupils... Yeah, the Underworld's resident _youkai_ are pretty messed up. They're down there for a reason.
As a fan of both Touhou and SMT, it's surprising to see this game being as good as it is. Some of Sumireko's dialogues genuinely feels like words she would say in canon, such as "sus amogus" and "skill issue" My favourite line of hers was "It's Touhouver for you! And your Artificial Dream in Arcadia!" Absolutely nailed the perfect moment to explain the game title. It gives me chills similar to when Nakajima shows up at the start of the game
Notice how when Sumireko entered the Animal Realm, she was in a city, had to make her way down a tower, and faced a horned adversary at the bottom? The Cosmic Curse is indeed real, and what better place for Marsh to endure this ordeal again than Hell with a capital H itself?
The weirdest thing is that despite the myth of the Minotaur being ever so interesting and popular, and despite the fact we have a greek Goddess of hell and a Lampad, we don't have a Minotaur touhou waifu...
Definitely one of the best Touhou fan games ever made. Even better that it takes the SMT formula and turns it into one of the most polished I've seen while retaining the cool retro feel of the early games. I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I think my favorite part is how I kept a Parsee from level 4 all the way to the end just by sacrificing things to her and she continued to be viable. So I was happy to see you ended up having a similar journey with Kisume. For Touhou fans? This game is a treat. For SMT fans? I'm sure it is the same. For fans of both like myself? It's a feast. Thanks for covering in such depth!
OTOH, I was merciless in sacrificing my sleepers to fuse new ones, and abused the skill-transfer system to give 'em whatever powers I wanted. It's cool that it accommodates both styles.
about the TORIFUNE, it is a location from the touhou side series known as the Hifuu Club, which are a bunch of stories that come with CDs that zun releases sometimes starring Renko Usami, a descendant of Sumireko, and Maribel Hearn, a girl with an odd resemblance to Yukari and the ability to see Gaps. the TORIFUNE is an abandoned satellite that was meant to be a sort of zoo with an ecosystem of plants and animals in space, but an unknown computer bug made the people running the place lose control, leaving it to rest between the earth and the moon. All life on the satellite was presumed dead, but it turns out that the place had become overgrown with plantlife, and the animals had become horrific chimera. Renko and Maribel found their way onto the satellite through a gap, where they were soon attacked by a chimera. Maribel was the only one harmed, and soon contracted a strange disease that got her sent off to a mental ward for a time.
@@NecromancyForKids which is more funny since ZUN explicitly said that westerners are allowed to pirate his games, up until recently when he finally have a channel to publish his games in Steam. He practicaly gave most of us the games for free, and yet there's _still_ so many fans who don't play the games, and only in for the music scene.
"Big shots like her don't have time for small-fry shit like this" no reimu just hates doing Anything also its very funny that Marsh did not clock Rinnosuke as a male and just called him a "shopkeeper"
1:31:32 Coincidentally, the mountain > moon > hell sequence actually loosely mirros the order of the mainline games. Yokai Mountain is the setting of TH10, the Lunarian invasion happens in TH15 (side note, Sumireko was introduced directly before this, in TH14.5, the incident of which was partially caused by the Lunarians), and the Hell conflict is primarily based on the events of TH17 and 17.5.
So the Animal Realm starts out with a descent down a skyscraper before a boss fight with Yuuma. ...Going down a tower and fighting a horned demon at the end. Hi, Minotaur.
"If gensokyo has a terrorist watch list im probably on it now" Me as a touhou fan tealizing sumireiko has already canonically tried to suicide bomb genso
@@Beepers559 yes, it was basically her final plan in urban legend in limbo to bring all of gensokyo to the outside world by effectively using her life to bring down the hakurei barrier
@@Beepers559 That's after the 'haunted house' tour Kasen and the other Gensokyo residents subjected her to, and that's in response to her spreading Occult Balls all over Gensokyo repeatedly.
It's absolutely staggering how well this game respects and references touhou lore, i'm glad this was your first major exposure to the series. Also, Yukari's HP being 8000 has lore significance
Wait, what? What does Yukari have to do with the number 8? It isn't because she's the Phantasm boss in _Perfect Cherry Blossom,_ right? Because that's not lore, that's just a funny reference.
@@iblitz95 They are probably thinking of Kourin's commentary in CoLA Ch26, to be taken with a grain of salt by all means what with the whole thing being borderline stream of consciousness writing.
A tiny thing that's insignificant in the long run is how swift the authour of this game was with getting the Touhou 19 characters in the sleeper roster. For reference, Touhou 19 was released August of 2023 and this game was released 3 months later. The characters introduced in 19 were Biten, Enoko, Chiyari, Hisami and Zanmu. The luckiest break the authour had is that these characters exist in places established prior to that game so they were able to fit them in as sleepers with only needing to worry about stats, moves and weaknesses/resists. I could probably see a sequel work with them involved if the developers want to revisit the concept again where someone like Zanmu is either the protagonist or an alignment related character, especially as they're the current "big shot" of Hell in Touhou.
Adding to the point about Zanmu, and, spoilers for _Touhou 19_, I guess: You know how the Underworld was _formerly_ Hell? Zanmu was the one responsible for the move to the new location. It was her decision. Pretty big lore reveal, actually. Also, her subordinate (emphasis on sub) Hisami is veryveryvery gay for her.
I hope you know i cant do my weekly prep/cooking without your videos in the background. Idk how to describe it, its just like having a buddy bust down the door at 5 am high on coffeee and no sleep to discuss this video game he found in a dumpster. You eagerly listen to every word and silently wonder. "What the fuck is going on."
-sees title -watches like 1 minute -buys game -100% completion -had amazing time -comes back to watch video Thanks Marsh. Also to make it extra funny - this is technically my first SMT game. (if you count it as one i guess)
21:55 - The crazy thing about this here is that the person you're talking to isn't Marisa, but a Sleeper controlled by Yukari. The whole tutorial dungeon you're in was made by Yukari. Sneaky curve ball was from Rinnosuke the shopkeeper saying that Marisa hasn't returned any books to her. Because Marisa is a Kleptomaniac, you wouldn't pick up on this because well... she's really good at stealing things but it reality Rinnosuke never got his book stolen in the first place. 53:07 - Fun thing here. The choice of ingredient actually gives buffs or debuffs to Remilia. Pick your poison! 1:00:30 - Funny thing is. If you do pay the 20,000 yen to Kaguya, she lies to Eirin about her buying the mask off of her and you fight Eirin and Reisen regardless. You do avoid both the bunny guards and keep the original shortcut to get out of the Bamboo forest however. 1:12:31 - This actually is kind of a big deal for Sumirenko. In touhou your 'dream self' can be a very different person than the real you, and considering how Sumirenko's power works it has backfired on to the point that her dream self has tried to kill her in the official games....twice! It also links back to the fight with her 'dream self' on the monolith as touhou fans who know her story would be all like 'Oh gods, AGAIN? Sumirenko plz.' and why ending B kinda makes sense. 1:42:42 - People in Gensokyo live in two different states. Either they are beating the shit out of each other with lasers or they getting drunk at a party where everybody is invited. No middle ground.
A few interesting Megaten nods in this game worth mentioning: The main boss theme samples a bit from the start of Utsuho's boss theme. Utsuho's boss theme actually has a part sampled from the intro to Explorer from Megami Tensei II. Keiki is based on the Haniyasu twins, gods who were born from Izanami's corpse after she died giving birth to Kagutsuchi. This means Keiki is Nakajima's daughter. Certified Megami Tensei moment. Postgame...hoo boy. The entire sequence is based on Mystic Square, which is basically an entire game homaging Megaten, with particular focus on SMT2. You mentioned how Touhou Alice was based on Megaten Alice? Mystic Square was her debut, and she even had the title Witch of DEATH there. Also, Mai being an ice user with blue hair and a white dress and Yuki being a fire user in a traditional magician outfit? That just screams Hee Ho, and Jack Bros was already out years before Mystic Square. There are a few more things that more directly tie into SMT2 with Mystic Square, but I won't get into them so you can experience them yourself. One of the nods will hopefully give you PTSD when you notice it in SMT2. Solid game though. Unironically one of the realest Sheen Magoomi Tensay games in recent memory. Between that and the translation of the SMT1 RPG Maker remake which was also an absolute banger, late 2023 was a great time to be a classic Megaten fan. ADiA is only ten bucks to purchase. It's worth a lot more than that. Unless first person dungeon crawlers are something you just can't stomach to play at all, buy this game.
I also played this game with no knowledge of Touhou (besides "Gee, the fan-favorites sure get a lot of spicy fan art~"), so that "Tank"(?!) definitely got a "WOAH!" out of me x) ... didn't help I got there before the previous two areas. The tank, being like 15 levels ahead of me, lived up to its name! It was a great tank (the MMO term), once I got one for myself. The devs must have intended that x)
Oh my lord... this is the most unexpected but welcome thing that could happen to me. Marsh - the man behind most obscure MegaTen shit to exist, takes a whole experience with an obscure fan-made Touhou J-RPG game in style of SMT. Did I also mention I'm a fan of Touhou Project? I have a few mainline games behind me so I guess I can say I know a bit about the series made by one drunk guy back in late 90s on NEC-9801 that all started with an arcanoid-type game featuring a shrine maiden with purple hair. Yeah, in 1st game (Highly Responsive to Prayers a.k.a. Reiiden ~ 靈異伝) kicked a Ying-Yang Ball known as Hakurei Orb. Marsh is also known for his commentary regarding kicking balls in CBT terms. Fuck, this was bound to happen wasn't it?
Not sure if you ran into this in your research, but one of the very few things ZUN has asked of fans is not to upload game ending cutscenes to the internet, so the fact that you also left it out in this video is perfect.
1:28:52 - Fun fact, Saki used to be Miko’s war horse before she became a Hell mafioso. At one point, both Reimu and Mamizou offered to reacquaint them for her.
I find it really funny reacting to your first experience to many of the things in Touhou without that much context. Like the situation with the Scarlet Devil Mansion having a whole Dungeon and the detail that Marisa has literally made the jail useless as she always steals- I mean, “borrows” books from the library all the time. Also, context for the TORIFUNE. The reason why the “boss” is a Chimera is because the space station TORIFUNE is a location on the CD of the Hifuu Club of Maribel Hearn and Usami Renko, an abandoned space station that has a literal Chimera.
Touhou is such a widespread franchise that I thought it was a genre and not a single franchise. So I learned something before the 1-minute mark. Thanks Marsh!
Given how explicit a tribute to classic SMT this is I can't believe I had not immediately noticed that "Artificial Dream in Arcadia" is a very explicit reference to SMT2!
When the character at the beginning mentioned that smartphones seem more like magic than technology, to your typical magic fantasy, medieval/Renaissance setting, doesn't it just seem that we're a non-magical race that learned to create golems that are magical, and use a source of mana that we call electricity? Cause think about it, usually mana is some magical bs inherent to the universe that's all around you that you absorb into your body, and electricity is some particle that's not just microscopic, like the stuff that makes you sick, but inconceivably tiny, and they are one of the three core components of EVERYTHING. It's harder to extract than mana, so we have to centralize its extraction, and our golems use it in its pure form, sometimes. There's this special device that we've made, it's a thin blackish sheet, and if you set it up near your golem, and run some electricity conduits, all of a sudden, the golem can gather its own electricity? It really would be a trip to try to explain this to someone. I suppose that why there's that line, "the only difference between magic and technology is our understanding of it." Pre-post edit: I swear I've heard that line thrown around, but the *proper* quote is: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke. Which I have heard, but I thought my phrasing better suited my thoughts.
I was blessed to witness you discovering this game on Twitter. I'm glad this ended up being a pleasant experience for you. Also, 1:49:25 made me to buy the game. I was so unprepared to see a yukkuri that my hand acted on its own.
mad respect for bringing kisume all the way to the postgame final boss, i did the same thing with parsee and it felt so gratifying to be able to do that and also win, more games should let you pick whatever you want to roll with since by the end of the day everything is just numbers with an image attached to it
Dude marsh thank you so much for covering this gem, its such an amazing fan game that while selling 6x what the dev thought itd sell, still doesnt feel like its being loved enough. I really hope you enjoyed this game just as much as I did. Literally my fave rpg of tall time.
The ending a, b, c is a reference to mainline touhou where there's a true ending 'a' which you get by not continuing, and a gag bad ending 'b' which essentially tells you to do it better, you can only access the Extra stage by getting ending 'a', or if you use the secret cheat command.
59:19 For anyone that's interested in playing, you can get party-wide healing Hi-Medi as early as the first floor of of the tower by Hijacking Gengestu. There might even be earlier methods, though it's not really necessary up to that point. There's also other gimmick methods if you're feeling silly, like how I made Sumireko absorb Fire, had everyone in the party either absorb or negate Fire, and then used Utsuho's "Red Sun Over Paradise" as a replacement party heal while dealing damage. Good times ensued.
Ever since this game's demo came out and how godly the Touhou painted SMT mechanics played out. I just knew a certain SMT RUclipsr will get in there deep. Absolute masterpiece funny SMT man.
How appropriate for the post-game dungeon to have all the characters in it from the oldest and earliest games in the franchise! The reason why Pandemonium has such strange enemies is because they're from the very first Touhou game- which wasn't even a bullet hell shooter but a _Breakout clone._ Sort of. It's hard to explain. Anyway, this game's an instant buy for me. Thanks for bringing this to my attention! I really wish I'd known about this sooner now!
Glad to see you covering this game and from someone who follows the touhou lore from time to time, yeah most of the characters are basically like "Ah shit here we go again" whenever shit happens
Great stuff as always Marsh! Thank you for putting this on my radar! Also, Linda Cube Again finally got a fan translation. Would love to see you cover it some day.
Ended up pausing watching this video and 100% this game. Play time was about 32 hours. All Steam achievements. I beat the final boss without Social Distortion, but it required all level 99 characters and a highly tuned party along with tons of buff/debuff clearing items. I actually got to Shinki at about 28 hours, but had to do like four hours of party building and grinding to take her on. I probably died to Shinki like 20 times or more before buckling down and getting to work. My party was in the 80’s when I first got there I bought this game on your recommendation and would seriously recommend it to others. If you’re into this kind of game it’s a great experience. Well, aside from some of the teleporter mazes and the two all dark dungeon levels ^^;. Cheers, Marsh. Looking forward to the next video
The one thing I’m really surprised about is that Hakugyokurou didn’t show up as an optional dungeon, even after Sumireko gained the ability to fly. Pretty much every other important area(and several not-so-important locations) show up, and Youmu+Yuyuko make no appearance in the game afaik. That’s reasonably surprising, considering every other Touhou game location is represented(Former Hell, SDM, Myouren Temple, Senkai, Moriya Shrine, Eintei, Shining Needle Castle, The Lunar Capital, The Animal Realm, Nameless Hill, and Genbu Ravine/The Casino all correlate to various Touhou games).
Youmu and Yuyuko sleepers spawn in the Prismriver Mansion, basically the ghost zone. That Hakugyokuro would have been another ghost zone (and an arguably larger one) is probably the reason why it was skipped so unceremoniously
Even if it would’ve been redundant, I kinda wish we still had both the mansion and hakugyokuro. Heck we didn’t even get shrine tank/flower tank even though Rika’s there ALONG with evil eye sigma.
Oh, and fun fact about Rika, the girl with the wrench that appears in this game (I think she’s actually seen in video too), she developed two other tanks besides E. Eye Sigma; the shrine tank and the flower tank that appears in TH2, making them the first ever bosses to appear in a touhou shooter, shingyoku being the first ever touhou boss
Im a minute in and have personally decided that we should call the term for realising something has been secretly touhou all along the "bad apple effect"
I wish I could watch more of this video, but I just learned about this game so I'm going to have to go play it myself. Thanks for the headsup! I'll come back and watch this later once I finish.
Love that bucket bastard stuck around to the end. I played this game when it first released and absolutely loved it, it nails the style of the SMT SNES era so well. I am a Touhou fan, so it was really interesting to see someone who doesn't have much knowledge of the series talk about it.
... Grabbed a seat for the SMT inspired Tōhó crawler; Stayed for "The Bucket Bastard's Legacy." That sure did butter my popcorn, M8. Cheers. [ *Raises Mug Root Beer* ] >)X^D
Watched the whole video and the conclusion i've reached is, This is a game where every woman hates your guts and is eager to put you in the forever box. And by the end? You can't help but love it. All jokes aside, As you mentioned, It really seems like ADiA is a love letter to both Touhou and Early SMT and it manages to not only capture what makes them great, but even improve and what was there. Despite all the floor gimmicks, which has kept me from older SMTs, You've convinced me to give this a go. Great work on the video! (And great work to Potemkill for the game itself!)
Every video from you is a like a huge celebration. Years with your contenet and its still like listening to a best frined who talks to you about some of his obscure favourite games!
AAAAAAAH YES, FINALLY HERE. I was waiting for this since the "close to the 20th of november update". As someone who became interested in Megaten thanks to you, and as a 2hu fan who played most of the vertical shooter games plus some fangames, this is a blessing. I can't wait to hear your takes on this rollercoaster of a niche universe. Thanks for making it this long Marsh, ZUN would definetly invite a beer to you.
Once I heard the enthusiasm in your voice I knew this had to be something great. Barely got ten minutes in and grabbed my Steam Deck to pick this up. Even though I might not have a ton of time for it definitely don't want it to fade from memory before I experience it.
I'm really loving this video and how accurate it is, even with it being your first full experience with Touhou. My playthrough was wildly different, as I also picked a partner to stay with me for the whole game, except instead of Kisume I went with Satori. Her unique ability to steal MP from enemies and feed it to the team is utterly broken; it pretty much allowed me to run through every dungeon in the game without needing rest stops. With MP becoming a renewable resource, healing spells were all we needed to keep healthy and hardly ever spend items.
Every time I see Marsh uploading something outside SMT I get this weird feeling of dread that if I don't watch it now, it's gonna disappear tomorrow. I don't know if that ever happened or am I finally going insane, but I don't want to risk it, even though it's a middle of the night right now.
Fun fact about Torifune- It's actually based on the story in ZUN's music CD, "Ruins of Torifune ~ Trojan Green Asteroid" Basically, it was a satellite that acted as a modern Noah's Arc. Japan lost control of the satellite, and it turned into an overgrown jungle with the animals mutating into Chimeras.
Thanks for the info! Here I was thinking it was a reference to game 3 where visitors from another dimension visited in their Probability Space Hypervessel to prove and study the existence of magic. I was kinda sad thinking "aww in this game their ship got destroyed and god knows what happened to them," while at the same time being confused over the presence of a chimera. I was like, "was that in one of the characters endings?"
36:05 on nothing like that. Satori loves her sister a lot but since her sister does not have the ability to have conscious thought, she just wanders off (hence the hell maze)
Koishi has been described as having a demeanor similar to an outdoorsy house cat; she's a vagabond, coming and going as she wills, (or doesn't, as it were)
I've been waiting for this video! Picked up the game on a release day, beat it at the start of january. I have no experience with classic SMT games, but I've been into Touhou for 15 years now, enjoying both original games and a lot of fan made stuff. And this game, man. This was such a fun time and it was made with such love and passion too with all those little nods to many print works and even stories of music CDs, not just events of the original games! Seeing TORIFUNE was such a cool surprise! And, as you said, that this game is about making good memories, I definitely had a bunch of fun moments. I was trying to explore all maps before proceeding to the boss of a dungeon, but couple of times I forgot that THIS ONE UNEXPLORED SPOT IS ACTUALLY A BOSS ROOM THAT GAME WARNED ME ABOUT BEFOREHAND. Battle with Momoyo was insane because my main party had almost no MP left and I had very VERY few Tea and Coffee items. I was praying that my caster would kill the boss before I run out of them… Simultaneously forgetting that in this very dungeon I picked up a reusable item that restores 10 MP. Fun! Speaking of forgetting items. I totally forgot that Memory Ball exists and got reminded about it when I was already in Ruins of Vina. And here I thought how other people manage their MP when items that restore it are so uncommon and hard to come by. And now when I think about it, I guess that's the reason why almost every boss fight was sorta a cakewalk for me since I was probably overleveled for them, maybe? Even still, boss of ending B and true boss of ending A gave me a bit of a trouble and made me think how I shold tackle them. I also want to mention that I absolutely adore invisible floors of Dreamer's Monolith and Pandemonium. I had to draw maps for them on paper and I just love when games make me do this. It's sorta a lost art, I think, and I wish more games would dare to ask their players to do something like this. Oh, and yeah, that floor with pitfals in Pandemonium - I had to use a Map item on second floor just to see all the pitfals because I was too lazy to search for them on my own, I drew a map of both floors on paper sheets, put them on top on each other just to see where I should jump to find a way futher. As for the ultimate boss, I sorta spoiled myself on that strat with Seija's special ability and decided that I won't be using it. At first I tried to use two casters that would use most of the elemental spells + one supporter + Sumireko as phys damage dealer. That didn't really worked that well for me, so I had to brainstorm this boss fight and had a brilliant idea that I don't really need EVERY spell, because I can use just ONE spell since I have an ability that guarantees a critical hit plus let's me bypass elemental resistance. I went with Agisol + Agni Amp on my casters and I was pretty happy with that setup for damage. That would also leave plenty of slots for any additional support ablities if I need them. All I had to do now is think of the way to deal with Paradise Lost. I thought about bringing Dai-Para/Atma on all my characters, but that wasn't working all that well, since my characters were pretty slow and those buffs/debuffs weren't making things easier. Also, I had to do something about my MP since it was draining pretty fast and by the middle of a fight it was almost everyone was almost empty. I thought that I saw ability that would double the effect of usable items (I had A LOT of Energy Drinks after exploring Pandemonium), but I was wrong. Resourceful - that's the name of the ability - actually made usage of items much faster and then it hit me. After a quick test I got a positive results - even with Paradise Lost's buffs/debuffs, all items I use with Sumireko would place her first on a turn order. And so I bought a lot of Hideluo Stones and Dai-Para/Atma stones. This might sound like a very dumb and roundabout way to achieve worse results when I could just use Seija's ability, but at that point it was either my way or highway. My final party was Sumireko, Sariel, Mima and Shinki. Sumireko still was a potential physical damage dealer, but for the most part she was focused on supporting others. With Paradise Lost being an ever-present threat, I thought I would rather focus on fewer buffs/debuffs myself instead of wasting MP on them, so I had only single target ATK debuff on Sumireko, party-wide Def and Evade buffs on Mima (mainly casting DEF, she also had Overbuff). Sariel, Mima and Shinki also had Debilitating Aura. Sariel was main attacker here with Shinki being second, casting magic whenever she was available. I also gave her that Resourceful ability so she would help clean Paradise Lost effects in one turn together with Sumireko. Oh, but when boss had, like, 5k HP left, that passive ability of her's would kick in that would make her act quicker. Sumireko was still getting her first turn when using an item, but Shinki wasn't so lucky, so I had to proceed with even greater caution at that point in battle. Also, since I couldn't really rely on hitting enemy's weakness, I gave Helping Hand to both Sumireko and Mima, so they could boost damage of Sariel and Shinki just a little bit more if they had free turns. And all of my characters had party-wide strong healing spell, except for Sariel, she had a solo target one, but I never used this one because, as it turned out, I had a lot of First Aid Kits. Aaaand after all this, after several really close calls, I managed to beat the boss. I still had plenty of flexible skill slots on all of the characters and would come up with something probably even more stupid if my strat didn't work, but it worked. I'm very sorry for all this rambling, it's just I had so much fun with this game and really wanted to share at least some of my experience. Thank you for this video, Marsh. Amazing job, it's always a treat when I see your new uploads. Wish you all the best and can't wait for whatever is next!
Great video on one of my favorite fangames, but there are a couples of things that probably didn't carry across that well for a non-Touho fan: - You actually meet more than one "Kappa", those engineer girls in blue uniforms like Nitori; she is the only named on the series, but there is a whole bunch of them living underwater in the Genbu Ravine. - Reisen is actually Kaguya's underling / pet, and she is Eirin's apprentice. She doesn't actually know anything about medicine, she just sells it around town as her job. - Kaguya and Mokou have a rivalry that has lasted over 1,200 years due to some ancient bitch fighting about their families. Due to them being unaging immortals, they are used to using otherwise lethal force against each other and blowing themselves up during their duels. - Sweet Doremy isn't really an elf, but a "Baku", a benevolent youkai of the dreams that is closer to a chimeric tapir with oxen tail, bear body, and lion / elephant features. Doremy just kinda looks like a sheep tho, for eepy reasons. - The TORIFUNE Satellite was an ark project that was meant to preserve all of the Outside World's (our Earth) animals and plants in space while earth was being terraformed, but due to some malfunctions and contaminations it crashed down back to earth, morphing the inhabitant animals (not youkai, which is why you don't fight an anime girl) into mutated chimeric amalgamations of themselves. It is always great seeing new people getting into Touhou through the community, and watching their reaction of staple characters / lore.
@iguessthisismyworkaccountl8437 It comes from the CD Drama bundled in the Music Album of "Ruins of Torifune ~ Trojan Green Asteroid". The CD Dramas usually focus on the Hifuu Club, a duo of collage students from the Outside World talking about fantasy and sci-fi from the Outside World perspective of humans.
@@GNiko324 I'm pretty sure that, in canon, TORIFUNE is still in space, but has gone dark and is unreachable. The only reason the Secret Sealing Club could visit it was because of the Shinto Shrine, which is probably why that's where you fight the Chimera in _Artificial Dream in Arcadia._
I said it before in someone else’s comment, but I wish we had a stage set in TORIFUNE, doesn’t even need to have youkai in it since there’s a lot of potential for what could be up there (given how the life apparently mutated so quickly, aggressive plants or giant insects wouldn’t be too surprising)
If you run into a yukkuri battle try to use special commands (yeah you need a near full SP bar for those) in order to lower its stats and use a bunch of different elemental magic, that usually does the trick. Also, fun fact, not only a yukkuri encounter is quite rare in this game, but there's also a rare item drop associated with them. Good luck!
Was that mechanic changed with updates? I played the game this week and all they took was the Analysis Command (only a quarter of your SP gauge) to find out what they're weak to and use just that.
@@VonFirflirch Gonna be honest, I've never used an analysis command on yukkuris in fear of them immediately running away, so I just debuffed them and spammed everything I had, which worked pretty much every time... well, for the few rare occasions I had a yukkuri encounter at least, as they're incredibly rare to come by. I do hope their rate has been buffed in recent versions though.
@@CerealKiller At least as of 1.2.5, you can use any Command and still pick your party's actions afterwards. Your way sounds terrifying to me ;) I only saw 3 of them in my 45-ish-hour 100% playthrough, one of them 5 minutes before the super boss. Never got that drop they apparently have, though. I actually ran from the first one myself! I hadn't saved in a while, and the Analysis showed it was weak to the one element my active party didn't have... To me, those Yukkuri things feel like Touhou's take on the old Trollface, so I was scared it would nuke me... or perhaps it was out of spite "You can't escape from me if I do it first~" x) From then on, I made sure to always have a Sleeper with one spell of every type out at all times, just in case! x)
@@VonFirflirch I haven't played the recent updates, but from what I can see it should now be easier to find a Yukkuri and get their associated item. I believe potemki also added a new grimoire that increases their encounter rate, but it has a funky side effect. I have some 80+ hours so far and I've only managed to see 4 yukkuris, maybe 5? I don't recall, but their encounter rate is way too small imo.
Marsh, you have no idea how much I wanted this video. I was going to make my own version of this video parodying your style and over the top reaction to events, saying as much in a review on steam I posted. Even recorded a huge chuck of footage, and did some early script writing too. But at the same time I'm glad you made it instead. I don't have the voice to dead speak into a mic in dead silence to get good commentary done. And to be fair, actively stealing someone's creative thing is no cool, even if it's an homage. And, well the main guy doing it will never compare to imitators, and I think the script was borderline becoming more of a generic walkthrough going through the motions at times. Anyway, I'll be sure to watch the whole thing with excitement up to the point where I'm at in the game and continue it later once I finish it myself!
I loved this fangame and was curious to see a non-touhou fan play it, I think it does a great work of introducing the world to people that doesn't know it, and also being an amazing SMT game, really cool video! Also if you're interested in the lore, here are some things: Gensokyo isn't a fantasy pararell world, but rather a real place that is separated from the rest of the world via a reality bending barrier. Youkai do exist in the normal world, but their power is tied to humans and how much they believe and fear them, since they were less believed in on modern times, a group of youkai sages decided to create Gensokyo, where they have a human village that actually fears them, so they are at full power there, Reimu is part of the Hakurei clan, who also helped in creating the barrier, so she makes sure that Youkai can live there, but also keep them from making real problems to the humans. Also Youkai have to use their powers from time to time, and like to argue and battle a lot, so they ended up with a "spellcard" system, where they can battle each other with harmless spells, and the victor then can do what it wants, so that is why everyone fights constantly (If someone actually breaks the spellcard rules, they would be hunted down by the other youkai) Sumireko is a psychic outside human, and she caused a great deal of mayhem to Gensokyo since she found out about it and wanted to enter, even almost sacrificed herself to break the barrier entirely, funnily enough that is like THE most dangerous incident that has happened in the franchise, and it was due to a high school girl lmao. But she was stopped by Reimu, then her powers manifested some kind of doppleganger on Gensokyo, and every time she goes to sleep she can visit. But since now when she dreams she goes into that doppleganger, then her dream self (everyone has one and lives in the dream world) is free to act on her own and also caused some other problems. Yukari wanting Sumireko to have one last adventure is because of a fan theory. To start, there are some side stories that follow a descendant of Sumireko and a girl that is suspiciously really similar to Yukari, with even really similar if not the same powers. It is never linked to the main story, but the theory is that she goes back in time to create Gensokyo as Yukari, so in this game she wants Sumireko to have a normal life, but not outright ban her from gensokyo, so she gives her a big adventure to satisfy her and not spend so much time there
If you figure out that the Marisa that was with you was a sleeper you get another dialogue option while talking to Yukari. I beat ending C and came back to finish the video. My final team was Yuugi, Sumireko(MaxVitMaxMagMidIntMidLuk), Cirno, and Byakuren all at lvl99. I also used a bunch of endgame sleepers as backup in case they fell. The final true boss was so good, I wish there was more challenge like that in the games. Also that final dungeon was the first one I had to draw out a map for, it was so painful. Honestly 10/10 game, perfect gameplay, amazing art and music, interesting story, I think it made me a touhou fan
It's so trollish that most of the endgame sleepers are weak to Pierce, which the last two bosses both spam x) I'm lucky the fast ones I kept nulled that!
I subscribed to you in anticipation of this exact video. I can't wait to watch it! I'm a touhou fan, not a MegaTen fan. But I think this game has made me one.
It’s funny, I discovered this game because of your tweet about it a while back and honestly it’s probably become one of my favorite games. I’ve wanted a game to help me move into the classic megaten games more comfortably and it has, I’ve started a soul hackers file because of this game. Not only that it made me really want to get into the Touhou games because of the drip fed lore about the series this game was giving me. Overall this game was a great experience for me and made the time I had Covid in early December somewhat enjoyable.
Some Touhou lore facts: ☯Touhou takes place in a setting where belief is power manifested into reality, so when the modern world started, many monsters/Yōkai died out from lack of people believing they even existed. SO, in order to preserve themselves, in Gensokyo the Yōkai "attack" humans to keep the old faith/traditions alive and preserve their existence. "Yōkai Attacks," or Danmaku Battles (or RPG Battles in this case?) are the "acts of traditions" that help to preserve the old faith and beliefs which allow the inhabitants to up keep their existence. As they are a necessity of every day life, it is normal to start blasting over anything. ☯Koishi is a character that wonders to anywhere and everywhere her whims take her, so randomly running into her in a random maze, is not as random as one may think. ☯Kaguya is THE Kaguya from The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Depending on how you feel about her actions there, you could say maybe she had this 1:02:37 coming? Regardless, she is notoriously bored from being immortal in every sense of the word, and you messing with her is probably actually a highlight of her day.
@@Atou_Mahogany huh, for a while I thought she was kind of like that (though given how my memory at the best of times is like Swiss cheese I might’ve forgotten something)
I very recently got around to beating the game in its entirety. Your video helped quite a bit reigniting the will to chip at the postgame and fight HER; I am curious to see where you'll go next
"huge fucking orb covering across the map........." has sudden flashbacks to F.O.E'S of eterian odyssey oh bloody hell it does an foe in this SMT LIKE dear lord! anyone whos played eteiran oddsey knows the avoid those fuckers like the plauge alteast on first visit.
1:25:55 - This is kind of true, in TH17 the animal spirits you're allying with point out how terrible the place looks and how it used to be so full of nature 1:31:43 - Fitting, as ZUN has described the Watatsuki sisters (the ones you fight in this section) to be far beyond anything else in Gensokyo, except for Hecatia, who is the strongest character we know of so far. 2:12:18 - I don't know if you've noticed, but Shinki has a bunch of similarities to SMT Lucifer, both in design (her sprite being the same pose) as well as being both the strongest summonable ally and enemy in the game (which also applies to SMT Lucifer in a lot of games). Even her battle background is very similar as the Makai Realm in SMT2, this isn't sometimes deliberately made by the creator of this game as a reference to SMT, but rather something that is intentional and is present in TH5, where she comes from. I'm sure you've been told already, but a bunch of PC-98 touhou games are inspired by SMT, and even TH17 as well with the whole deal of the chaotic animal spirits against keiki's more lawful forces.
Touhou is so fucking cool. Always get hyped when certain characters show up even if its just a random encounter. I am very happy that you like Kisume so much. Also love the mention of Layla in the western mansion. Thanks for showing that dialogue. As always a crazy good video. Thank you.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
This video was a really good time to make - this is an excellent dungeon crawler that stands up to the Atlus classics. It's not often that games like this come out anymore so definitely take advantage of playing it if you're interested. Hope you enjoy this one, this was my first look at most things Touhou-related so it might be funny to see it from my point of view. Check the description for a list of music used, a link to the store page, and special credits.
This game seems fun, glad you covering it.
Fun fact about Touhou, the series was originally created to help ZUN promote his music!
Now, because Zun didn't care about limiting the creativity of his fans, it's a Genre all of it's own!
I've just recently been studying up Touhou, and then you make this video. That's one hell of a coincidence.
Hi, Me again, The thing about Reimu being Lazy, It's basically the entirety of canon, being conceptually linked to the concept of floating, she's the kinds of person who simply "Floats" through life only getting involved in incidents, which as the stories of each game, and even then she rarely wants to do it, she's also perpetually short on cash, because she's too lazy to go into town and get donations, and most townsfolk avoid the shrine due to the incidents Reimu resolves attracting certain powerful Yokai to stick around the shrine because Reimu is entertaining.
The Story between Koishi and Satori is kinda Tragic.
Both of them as the same kind of Yokai, which can read minds, but Koishi constantly felt overwhelmed by hearing everyone's thoughts, so she sewed her third eye shut to stop hearing everyone's thoughts, which turned her into a being with no real complex thoughts, as well as making it so that so long as you aren't looking at her, you don't realize that she even exists, and because of that, Satori can't find her sister, and her sister doesn't even remember that she has one. Pretty sad all things considered.
Every day Marsh tries to distance himself from the memory of Nakajima
wait until you see it haha
there's no escape
every day Marsh *tries* to get further away from Nakajima. And fails.
Dunno about the distance to YHVH
But Gensokyo is the land of the forgotten, so trying to forget something in the human world only increases your chances of finding it in Gensokyo
Marsh will one day wake up in micon tower, and need to get to the bottom to defeat the Minotaur
The fixation on making Kisume the ultimate life form is the funniest shit.
"This make me think every Touhou character is a huge asshole". Show's over, Marsh already understands all of Touhou.
Exceptions include Shinmyoumaru and Wakasagihime, they have done nothing wrong
@@Hadaron don't forget aunn. Best doggo guard
@@Hadaron and Koishi, she just wants to play.
@@Hadaron
Can’t forget about the precious Rumia
She just wants to bite butts and play 😊
The moment he said that my first thought was "You got it, Marshal!" 😂
It's not universal, but finding a character that doesn't have an asshole-ish moment is something worth being mentioned 😁
"is every touhou character a huge asshole"
KINDA ,YEAH
Even including the main characters lmao
Gensokyo residents will fucking end the world because of a misunderstanding between friends. that's how extra these people can be.
yeah, i don't get the hype at all. Most of them are jerks or just annoying, imo
i mean, who would want to go near Utsuho or that bird-like thing from Touhou 8's stage 2 xd
@@LavaCreeperPeople As I mentioned in another topic here, read official mangas.
@@LavaCreeperPeople In fairness Mystia's grilled lamprey is actually delicious apparently! A bit of a con artist but at least you are getting some good eats at the end of the day.
Legitimately started losing my mind when Nakajima somehow found his way into the video, there really is no escape.
As if the creator of this game specifically gave him a cameo just to mess with Marsh.
Nakajima Hijack lol
Considering that he originally summoned demons via computer hacking, this sould honestly have surprised none of us XD
Wait i watched the entire video and dont remember seeing him, is there a timestamp? This seems golden.
22:12
So a fun fact, the post-game dungeon is so difficult because it is based on the first few Touhou games made for the PC-98 home computer which were made before ZUN really came up with Gensokyo as a consistent setting where conflicts are decided with nonlethal danmaku duels. Meaning Makai is essentially a lawless world where everyone is still out to actually kill you.
Well, wouldn't say everyone. Louise is just minding her business while Reimu assaults her. It's definitely less regulated, though, given that during Shinki fight the place just catches fire (and Reimu seems to seal away Orange in LLS rather than just beating her up and then continuing; though in contrast with Mystic Square, some characters actually show up again after their fight which means they didn't die). Also there are some funny scenes in Mystic Square's Extra endings.
if I remember right Mima has her turn Alice into her maid or something, while Marisa restrains Alice and just peruses the Grimoire
Also not to mention that in touhou 5, Shinki literally burns down her entire realm trying to kill the player!
Oh, hey, Chef Excellence!
_An Excellent Profile Picture_
Then Yuuka Killed Them All, ah, delightful sunflower genocider
Ah yes
true to SMT experience lmao
Marsh finding out about Kisume is great because that's like 80% of all 2hus; wildly popular with fans but totally irrelevant to anything.
Seeing someone react to stuff like "The nuclear reactor in the underworld" with zero context to why or how is actually pretty funny.
I personally love that. Almost every touhou fan game kinda goes slow introducing stuff to newcomers but ADiA is like "BOOM, 1st stop is the Underworld. First big boss is Okuu, go!"
Best part is that most of the characters don't know about nuclear fusion either so in Touhou 17.5 Reimu "realizes" it actually runs on petroleum and threatens to *blow it up*
The double whammy of Nitori also having a "smartphone" which turns out to just be a whole-ass brick phone also sent my sides to the moon.
@@Superscope64definitely was like, ohhh~ "who's this gun toting tenguu?" and "oh a bratty child puppet thingy?"
It's been a blast so far. But I do get stuck constantly since i'm really new to this type of gameplay- but the story and characters are just so charming~
The one from 11 and 12.3? yeah, lol
"TOUHOU HIJACK LOL", an ancient meme as a game mechanic. Nice touch.
Oh my GOD, is _that_ why it's called "hijacking" in the game??? That's so stupid, I love it.
Marsh continuing the holy tradition of picking the most random ass unimportant character and get unreasonably attached to them
38:43 giving Parsee a phone makes more sense if you know Touhou lore. See, Parsee is specifically some sort of Jealousy Spirit, and she basically feeds off of both her own and other people’s jealousy. What is social media if not an all-you-can-eat buffet of jealousy served up for free?
1:02:50 more Touhou lore, basically. Mokou and Kaguya are both immortals who’ve been feuding for a thousand or so years. Mokou’s usually the instigator, because she resents Kaguya for the events that led to her obtaining immortality.
There is other things like why Rin went straight to attack Sumireko (she is in charge of feeding corpses to the fires of hell) or why Ooku (a bird who fused with a yatagarasu, an emisary of the sun) sort of forgot what she was doing after the fight (she is officially diagnosed with being an idiot/birdrained), or why is in character for Reimu to not want to investigate initially (she tends to go at her own pace 99% of the time and be sort of lazy overall, not because it was beneath her to investigate), or that it isn't that the Komeiji sisters hate each other, if anything is the contrary.
Giving Parsee twitter and reddit might turn her into nikocado dawg spare her 🙏💀
All of Gensokyo will tremble in fear when Parsee gets her hands on 4chan.
Let her roam twitter and Reddit for a day she might be more powerful than Yukari and Okina
Man, for a first proper experience with Touhou, you were handed an incredible combo platter. You got a piece of just about every hotspot in Gensokyo both big and small and got a glimpse of basically every character in the series. As a longtime fan, watching this video gave me great joy seeing you encounter some of the deep cut lore references.
Also that Nakajima jumpscare was probably intentional because Touhou fangames wear their inspirations on their sleeve.
A very interesting note is that the whole reason why Yukari Yakumo is nice to Sumireko (or at least a lot nicer than to almost any other character) in the first place is based on a combination of fan theories. I'm going to give a tl;dr of the two fan theories in question:
- Sumireko shares her last name "Usami" with another character, Renko Usami, who appears in the stories accompanying the official Touhou music CDs. Renko lives in the future however and the theory here is that Renko is a descendent of Sumireko (Sumireko might be like her grandma or something)
- Renko's best friend (maybe even closer than friend) is Maribel Hearn, and Maribel throughout her adventures with Renko awakens magical abilities that seem to be almost exactly the same as Yukari's. Her character design is also almost exactly the same as Yukari's, and when ZUN (the creator of Touhou) was asked if there is a connection between the two, he simply referenced that "there was this guy who once moved to japan and then changed his last name from Hearn to Yakumo *wink wink*") All of these hints combined create the fan theory that Maribel most likely is Yukari; the exact logistics are debatable; maybe Maribel will use her power to travel back in time (she can already do that) and then becomes Yukari or something.
If you combine both of these theories, it seems that the Yukari in this game did Sumireko a favor, because she reminded her of her (girl)friend Renko, and because she is an ancestor to Renko, wanted to do something nice for her. She does curiously afaik not refer to Sumireko as "Sumireko" but as "Miss Usami" and even states in one textbox that she "wont let harm befall a Usami"
It makes me happy beyond belief that Kisume was brought along the entire game, as a character that made as many offical appearences in the series that you can count on a single hand (including manga/ novel appearences.)
I feel like I'm witnessing the fresh start of someone's touhou journey, and Kisume's that character that's a favorite of theirs from sentimental value. Bucketbastard, tf2 joke, tsurube-otoshi love.
Her art for _Who's Who of Humans & Youkai in Gensokyo_ (an official compendium of characters with artwork sourced from other, better, artists) is really cool. She looks cute, and then you see the bones... and her slit pupils...
Yeah, the Underworld's resident _youkai_ are pretty messed up. They're down there for a reason.
As a fan of both Touhou and SMT, it's surprising to see this game being as good as it is. Some of Sumireko's dialogues genuinely feels like words she would say in canon, such as "sus amogus" and "skill issue"
My favourite line of hers was "It's Touhouver for you! And your Artificial Dream in Arcadia!"
Absolutely nailed the perfect moment to explain the game title. It gives me chills similar to when Nakajima shows up at the start of the game
Considering her using hashtags in Violet Detector I'm not surprised if that happen
My favourite moment from this game is when Sumireko says "IT'S TOUHOUING TIME" and touhous everyone
Notice how when Sumireko entered the Animal Realm, she was in a city, had to make her way down a tower, and faced a horned adversary at the bottom?
The Cosmic Curse is indeed real, and what better place for Marsh to endure this ordeal again than Hell with a capital H itself?
The weirdest thing is that despite the myth of the Minotaur being ever so interesting and popular, and despite the fact we have a greek Goddess of hell and a Lampad, we don't have a Minotaur touhou waifu...
@@Superscope64 Well, at least we have Urumi, who is suitably bovine. (she's an ushi-oni, though)
Bucket bastard is peak.
Hearing Marsh talk about Touhou was way funnier than I thought it'd be. 💀
Love how Marsh tried to judge Kisume's importance from fanart numbers and got bamboozled. Ah, to be so young and innocent...
I was hoping to the end she would become god-like like the Pixie in SMT Nocturne
@@magicalcapi9148Oh, like super buff during 5yh kalpa, count me in
Definitely one of the best Touhou fan games ever made. Even better that it takes the SMT formula and turns it into one of the most polished I've seen while retaining the cool retro feel of the early games. I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I think my favorite part is how I kept a Parsee from level 4 all the way to the end just by sacrificing things to her and she continued to be viable. So I was happy to see you ended up having a similar journey with Kisume. For Touhou fans? This game is a treat. For SMT fans? I'm sure it is the same. For fans of both like myself? It's a feast. Thanks for covering in such depth!
OTOH, I was merciless in sacrificing my sleepers to fuse new ones, and abused the skill-transfer system to give 'em whatever powers I wanted. It's cool that it accommodates both styles.
maybe i might play it after i play all the touhou games in order
currently on 12
DONT BURN LILY WHITE
@@BuruKyu Does she turn into Lily Black or something?
@@Xenomorthian Charcoal black
about the TORIFUNE, it is a location from the touhou side series known as the Hifuu Club, which are a bunch of stories that come with CDs that zun releases sometimes starring Renko Usami, a descendant of Sumireko, and Maribel Hearn, a girl with an odd resemblance to Yukari and the ability to see Gaps. the TORIFUNE is an abandoned satellite that was meant to be a sort of zoo with an ecosystem of plants and animals in space, but an unknown computer bug made the people running the place lose control, leaving it to rest between the earth and the moon. All life on the satellite was presumed dead, but it turns out that the place had become overgrown with plantlife, and the animals had become horrific chimera. Renko and Maribel found their way onto the satellite through a gap, where they were soon attacked by a chimera. Maribel was the only one harmed, and soon contracted a strange disease that got her sent off to a mental ward for a time.
i may have gotten something wrong since it's been a while since i've actually read the story
@@Multi006 Nope, that's pretty much it.
Y’know, I hope we eventually see TORIFUNE in an official game one day
I respect the touhou community for being so dedicated to the funny anime girl circle dodging games and make a bunch of crazy stuffs related to it
And respect to Zun as well for allowing such a community to exist.
@@PregnantAdamSandlerTouhou is one of the only series where you can make fanworks and sell them.
The irony is that 80% of them don't play the games
@@NecromancyForKids which is more funny since ZUN explicitly said that westerners are allowed to pirate his games, up until recently when he finally have a channel to publish his games in Steam.
He practicaly gave most of us the games for free, and yet there's _still_ so many fans who don't play the games, and only in for the music scene.
@@NecromancyForKidsMake that 90%, mfers barely listen to Bad Apple and that's it lol
"Big shots like her don't have time for small-fry shit like this" no reimu just hates doing Anything
also its very funny that Marsh did not clock Rinnosuke as a male and just called him a "shopkeeper"
"Shopkeeper" is my favorite gender
1:31:32 Coincidentally, the mountain > moon > hell sequence actually loosely mirros the order of the mainline games. Yokai Mountain is the setting of TH10, the Lunarian invasion happens in TH15 (side note, Sumireko was introduced directly before this, in TH14.5, the incident of which was partially caused by the Lunarians), and the Hell conflict is primarily based on the events of TH17 and 17.5.
So the Animal Realm starts out with a descent down a skyscraper before a boss fight with Yuuma.
...Going down a tower and fighting a horned demon at the end.
Hi, Minotaur.
"If gensokyo has a terrorist watch list im probably on it now"
Me as a touhou fan tealizing sumireiko has already canonically tried to suicide bomb genso
Wait she did?
@@Beepers559 yes, it was basically her final plan in urban legend in limbo to bring all of gensokyo to the outside world by effectively using her life to bring down the hakurei barrier
@@daltonharmon1018 goodness gracious I didn’t think sumireko was that much of a nutcase.
@@Beepers559 bro she is off her rocker i stg
@@Beepers559 That's after the 'haunted house' tour Kasen and the other Gensokyo residents subjected her to, and that's in response to her spreading Occult Balls all over Gensokyo repeatedly.
Makai's a pretty fitting last dungeon considering ZUN was a big SMT fan and it inspired a lot of elements in Touhou 5 specifically
It's absolutely staggering how well this game respects and references touhou lore, i'm glad this was your first major exposure to the series.
Also, Yukari's HP being 8000 has lore significance
Wait, what? What does Yukari have to do with the number 8? It isn't because she's the Phantasm boss in _Perfect Cherry Blossom,_ right? Because that's not lore, that's just a funny reference.
@@iblitz95 They are probably thinking of Kourin's commentary in CoLA Ch26, to be taken with a grain of salt by all means what with the whole thing being borderline stream of consciousness writing.
A tiny thing that's insignificant in the long run is how swift the authour of this game was with getting the Touhou 19 characters in the sleeper roster.
For reference, Touhou 19 was released August of 2023 and this game was released 3 months later. The characters introduced in 19 were Biten, Enoko, Chiyari, Hisami and Zanmu. The luckiest break the authour had is that these characters exist in places established prior to that game so they were able to fit them in as sleepers with only needing to worry about stats, moves and weaknesses/resists.
I could probably see a sequel work with them involved if the developers want to revisit the concept again where someone like Zanmu is either the protagonist or an alignment related character, especially as they're the current "big shot" of Hell in Touhou.
Adding to the point about Zanmu, and, spoilers for _Touhou 19_, I guess:
You know how the Underworld was _formerly_ Hell?
Zanmu was the one responsible for the move to the new location. It was her decision. Pretty big lore reveal, actually.
Also, her subordinate (emphasis on sub) Hisami is veryveryvery gay for her.
As resident Koishi fan, the sisters get along great but that dumbass Koishi probably just sits behind the hell maze because it was amusing at the time
Imagine walking into a room and seeing a girl get shanked in the thighs repeatedly while a gremlin in a bucket throws ice cubes everywhere
I hope you know i cant do my weekly prep/cooking without your videos in the background. Idk how to describe it, its just like having a buddy bust down the door at 5 am high on coffeee and no sleep to discuss this video game he found in a dumpster. You eagerly listen to every word and silently wonder.
"What the fuck is going on."
love that lmao
-sees title
-watches like 1 minute
-buys game
-100% completion
-had amazing time
-comes back to watch video
Thanks Marsh.
Also to make it extra funny - this is technically my first SMT game. (if you count it as one i guess)
21:55 - The crazy thing about this here is that the person you're talking to isn't Marisa, but a Sleeper controlled by Yukari. The whole tutorial dungeon you're in was made by Yukari. Sneaky curve ball was from Rinnosuke the shopkeeper saying that Marisa hasn't returned any books to her. Because Marisa is a Kleptomaniac, you wouldn't pick up on this because well... she's really good at stealing things but it reality Rinnosuke never got his book stolen in the first place.
53:07 - Fun thing here. The choice of ingredient actually gives buffs or debuffs to Remilia. Pick your poison!
1:00:30 - Funny thing is. If you do pay the 20,000 yen to Kaguya, she lies to Eirin about her buying the mask off of her and you fight Eirin and Reisen regardless. You do avoid both the bunny guards and keep the original shortcut to get out of the Bamboo forest however.
1:12:31 - This actually is kind of a big deal for Sumirenko. In touhou your 'dream self' can be a very different person than the real you, and considering how Sumirenko's power works it has backfired on to the point that her dream self has tried to kill her in the official games....twice! It also links back to the fight with her 'dream self' on the monolith as touhou fans who know her story would be all like 'Oh gods, AGAIN? Sumirenko plz.' and why ending B kinda makes sense.
1:42:42 - People in Gensokyo live in two different states. Either they are beating the shit out of each other with lasers or they getting drunk at a party where everybody is invited. No middle ground.
Ok but reimu does get to meet some people to take a drink from time to time, even if they arent invited most of the time
fuck dude you spoiled me
Swapping between beating the crap out of each other, and throwing a party for everyone is some serious Mario/Mario Kart vibes lol
It's tradition for new fans of touhou to pick a favorite character or "2hu" to stick by, and marsh I believe yours might be Kisume
A few interesting Megaten nods in this game worth mentioning:
The main boss theme samples a bit from the start of Utsuho's boss theme. Utsuho's boss theme actually has a part sampled from the intro to Explorer from Megami Tensei II.
Keiki is based on the Haniyasu twins, gods who were born from Izanami's corpse after she died giving birth to Kagutsuchi. This means Keiki is Nakajima's daughter. Certified Megami Tensei moment.
Postgame...hoo boy. The entire sequence is based on Mystic Square, which is basically an entire game homaging Megaten, with particular focus on SMT2. You mentioned how Touhou Alice was based on Megaten Alice? Mystic Square was her debut, and she even had the title Witch of DEATH there. Also, Mai being an ice user with blue hair and a white dress and Yuki being a fire user in a traditional magician outfit? That just screams Hee Ho, and Jack Bros was already out years before Mystic Square.
There are a few more things that more directly tie into SMT2 with Mystic Square, but I won't get into them so you can experience them yourself. One of the nods will hopefully give you PTSD when you notice it in SMT2.
Solid game though. Unironically one of the realest Sheen Magoomi Tensay games in recent memory. Between that and the translation of the SMT1 RPG Maker remake which was also an absolute banger, late 2023 was a great time to be a classic Megaten fan. ADiA is only ten bucks to purchase. It's worth a lot more than that. Unless first person dungeon crawlers are something you just can't stomach to play at all, buy this game.
On that note, Touhou Mystic Square is literally SMT backwards.
Certified Tokyo Mirage Sessions Moment
Something something twice
something something two nickels
@@finalsurvivor1 It gets even better when your realize that one of the characters in each has a theme called "Reincarnation"
This is not a YT video....this is a National Geographic documentary(back when they had quality), 2 hrs 18 minutes of pure quality, thanks marsh
19:43 Even in your Touhou fangame, FOE!
*Labyrinth of Touhou intensifies*
It is a bit disappointing that they don't move during battles, though. That's the "fun" part.
It's doubly funny knowing that IOSYS, who made that song, also does Touhou stuff.
Eirin! Eirin! F.O.E.!
Was trying to do the fist pump (or what ever it's called) emoji. But it looked bad and I'm lazy.
Edit: Had to fix the name.
I have a tendency to drop stuff and play a game on the smallest reminder, and yeah, really want to pick an Etrian Odyssey game back up after this.
Marsh making a Touhou video is like a drunken fever dream.
Booze is a cornerstone of the _Touhou Project,_ so "drunken" is... apt
1:46:45 "The fuck is the stoy of this thing?"
...How do we tell him it's a tank made by the girl on the right?
I also played this game with no knowledge of Touhou (besides "Gee, the fan-favorites sure get a lot of spicy fan art~"), so that "Tank"(?!) definitely got a "WOAH!" out of me x)
... didn't help I got there before the previous two areas. The tank, being like 15 levels ahead of me, lived up to its name!
It was a great tank (the MMO term), once I got one for myself. The devs must have intended that x)
Oh my lord...
this is the most unexpected but welcome thing that could happen to me.
Marsh - the man behind most obscure MegaTen shit to exist, takes a whole experience with an obscure fan-made Touhou J-RPG game in style of SMT.
Did I also mention I'm a fan of Touhou Project?
I have a few mainline games behind me so I guess I can say I know a bit about the series made by one drunk guy back in late 90s on NEC-9801 that all started with an arcanoid-type game featuring a shrine maiden with purple hair.
Yeah, in 1st game (Highly Responsive to Prayers a.k.a. Reiiden ~ 靈異伝) kicked a Ying-Yang Ball known as Hakurei Orb.
Marsh is also known for his commentary regarding kicking balls in CBT terms.
Fuck, this was bound to happen wasn't it?
Not sure if you ran into this in your research, but one of the very few things ZUN has asked of fans is not to upload game ending cutscenes to the internet, so the fact that you also left it out in this video is perfect.
1:28:52 - Fun fact, Saki used to be Miko’s war horse before she became a Hell mafioso. At one point, both Reimu and Mamizou offered to reacquaint them for her.
I find it really funny reacting to your first experience to many of the things in Touhou without that much context. Like the situation with the Scarlet Devil Mansion having a whole Dungeon and the detail that Marisa has literally made the jail useless as she always steals- I mean, “borrows” books from the library all the time.
Also, context for the TORIFUNE. The reason why the “boss” is a Chimera is because the space station TORIFUNE is a location on the CD of the Hifuu Club of Maribel Hearn and Usami Renko, an abandoned space station that has a literal Chimera.
Marsh learns about 2hus : The Episode.
Welcome to Gensokyo Marsh, or as it was known back in the day; H311.
Two hours of Marsh
Im ready
Also ready🐔🍻
2 hours of Marsh, here we go!
My body is ready.
Touhou is such a widespread franchise that I thought it was a genre and not a single franchise.
So I learned something before the 1-minute mark. Thanks Marsh!
You know it's a good day when Marsh decides to upload
Given how explicit a tribute to classic SMT this is I can't believe I had not immediately noticed that "Artificial Dream in Arcadia" is a very explicit reference to SMT2!
When the character at the beginning mentioned that smartphones seem more like magic than technology, to your typical magic fantasy, medieval/Renaissance setting, doesn't it just seem that we're a non-magical race that learned to create golems that are magical, and use a source of mana that we call electricity? Cause think about it, usually mana is some magical bs inherent to the universe that's all around you that you absorb into your body, and electricity is some particle that's not just microscopic, like the stuff that makes you sick, but inconceivably tiny, and they are one of the three core components of EVERYTHING. It's harder to extract than mana, so we have to centralize its extraction, and our golems use it in its pure form, sometimes. There's this special device that we've made, it's a thin blackish sheet, and if you set it up near your golem, and run some electricity conduits, all of a sudden, the golem can gather its own electricity?
It really would be a trip to try to explain this to someone. I suppose that why there's that line, "the only difference between magic and technology is our understanding of it."
Pre-post edit: I swear I've heard that line thrown around, but the *proper* quote is: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke. Which I have heard, but I thought my phrasing better suited my thoughts.
I was blessed to witness you discovering this game on Twitter. I'm glad this ended up being a pleasant experience for you.
Also, 1:49:25 made me to buy the game. I was so unprepared to see a yukkuri that my hand acted on its own.
I'm amazed on marsh's luck of getting a yukkuri this late in the game, when I got an encounter with in 3 hours.
Better keep that hand in check...
mad respect for bringing kisume all the way to the postgame final boss, i did the same thing with parsee and it felt so gratifying to be able to do that and also win, more games should let you pick whatever you want to roll with since by the end of the day everything is just numbers with an image attached to it
Dude marsh thank you so much for covering this gem, its such an amazing fan game that while selling 6x what the dev thought itd sell, still doesnt feel like its being loved enough. I really hope you enjoyed this game just as much as I did. Literally my fave rpg of tall time.
The ending a, b, c is a reference to mainline touhou where there's a true ending 'a' which you get by not continuing, and a gag bad ending 'b' which essentially tells you to do it better, you can only access the Extra stage by getting ending 'a', or if you use the secret cheat command.
59:19 For anyone that's interested in playing, you can get party-wide healing Hi-Medi as early as the first floor of of the tower by Hijacking Gengestu. There might even be earlier methods, though it's not really necessary up to that point.
There's also other gimmick methods if you're feeling silly, like how I made Sumireko absorb Fire, had everyone in the party either absorb or negate Fire, and then used Utsuho's "Red Sun Over Paradise" as a replacement party heal while dealing damage. Good times ensued.
Ever since this game's demo came out and how godly the Touhou painted SMT mechanics played out. I just knew a certain SMT RUclipsr will get in there deep. Absolute masterpiece funny SMT man.
How appropriate for the post-game dungeon to have all the characters in it from the oldest and earliest games in the franchise! The reason why Pandemonium has such strange enemies is because they're from the very first Touhou game- which wasn't even a bullet hell shooter but a _Breakout clone._ Sort of. It's hard to explain.
Anyway, this game's an instant buy for me. Thanks for bringing this to my attention! I really wish I'd known about this sooner now!
Glad to see you covering this game and from someone who follows the touhou lore from time to time, yeah most of the characters are basically like "Ah shit here we go again" whenever shit happens
Great stuff as always Marsh! Thank you for putting this on my radar!
Also, Linda Cube Again finally got a fan translation. Would love to see you cover it some day.
thanks! i will be covering linda cube very excited to play it
@@MarshSMT Looking forward to it! I really enjoy how you write and structure these long videos.
36:01
No, Koishi just does that kind of thing. She sealed her third eye and is ruled and operates entirely by her subconscious
So much punk/new wave music references. News of the world is a Jam song, Social Distorition is a Socal Band, etc.
Always love sitting down to spend an hour or two watching one of these with friende. And I certainly wasnt disappointed.
All Hail the Bucket Bastard!
48:58 even in touhou fangames, F.O.E!
This game is a gold mine, seriously. Touhou, SMT and even Etrian Odyssey on the mix? This is my dream game!
Ended up pausing watching this video and 100% this game. Play time was about 32 hours. All Steam achievements. I beat the final boss without Social Distortion, but it required all level 99 characters and a highly tuned party along with tons of buff/debuff clearing items. I actually got to Shinki at about 28 hours, but had to do like four hours of party building and grinding to take her on. I probably died to Shinki like 20 times or more before buckling down and getting to work. My party was in the 80’s when I first got there
I bought this game on your recommendation and would seriously recommend it to others. If you’re into this kind of game it’s a great experience. Well, aside from some of the teleporter mazes and the two all dark dungeon levels ^^;.
Cheers, Marsh. Looking forward to the next video
The one thing I’m really surprised about is that Hakugyokurou didn’t show up as an optional dungeon, even after Sumireko gained the ability to fly. Pretty much every other important area(and several not-so-important locations) show up, and Youmu+Yuyuko make no appearance in the game afaik. That’s reasonably surprising, considering every other Touhou game location is represented(Former Hell, SDM, Myouren Temple, Senkai, Moriya Shrine, Eintei, Shining Needle Castle, The Lunar Capital, The Animal Realm, Nameless Hill, and Genbu Ravine/The Casino all correlate to various Touhou games).
Youmu and Yuyuko sleepers spawn in the Prismriver Mansion, basically the ghost zone. That Hakugyokuro would have been another ghost zone (and an arguably larger one) is probably the reason why it was skipped so unceremoniously
We didn't get Bhava-agra either, sooo...
@@kizunechao279 What do you think the mountain where you fight Tenshi is?
@@noahandrulis9077 ...fair enough.
Hakugyokuro is still jarring, though.
Even if it would’ve been redundant, I kinda wish we still had both the mansion and hakugyokuro. Heck we didn’t even get shrine tank/flower tank even though Rika’s there ALONG with evil eye sigma.
Oh, and fun fact about Rika, the girl with the wrench that appears in this game (I think she’s actually seen in video too), she developed two other tanks besides E. Eye Sigma; the shrine tank and the flower tank that appears in TH2, making them the first ever bosses to appear in a touhou shooter, shingyoku being the first ever touhou boss
Bowing out at the introduction. I will return to the video after I play the game, you sold it really well.
I kept thinking "An SMT like without any pitfalls?" and nearly 2 hours in, we get there.
Im a minute in and have personally decided that we should call the term for realising something has been secretly touhou all along the "bad apple effect"
2:05:30 she makes it sound like she was just gonna instantly kill you. I'm glad she meant that literally and not metaphorically
I wish I could watch more of this video, but I just learned about this game so I'm going to have to go play it myself.
Thanks for the headsup! I'll come back and watch this later once I finish.
The reveal in your newest video that Artifical Dream in Arcadia is a reference to Shin Megami Tensei II blew me away
Love that bucket bastard stuck around to the end. I played this game when it first released and absolutely loved it, it nails the style of the SMT SNES era so well. I am a Touhou fan, so it was really interesting to see someone who doesn't have much knowledge of the series talk about it.
... Grabbed a seat for the SMT inspired Tōhó crawler; Stayed for "The Bucket Bastard's Legacy." That sure did butter my popcorn, M8. Cheers. [ *Raises Mug Root Beer* ] >)X^D
Watched the whole video and the conclusion i've reached is, This is a game where every woman hates your guts and is eager to put you in the forever box. And by the end? You can't help but love it.
All jokes aside, As you mentioned, It really seems like ADiA is a love letter to both Touhou and Early SMT and it manages to not only capture what makes them great, but even improve and what was there. Despite all the floor gimmicks, which has kept me from older SMTs, You've convinced me to give this a go. Great work on the video! (And great work to Potemkill for the game itself!)
Every video from you is a like a huge celebration.
Years with your contenet and its still like listening to a best frined who talks to you about some of his obscure favourite games!
its cool to hear that you've been following the channel for that long, glad these continue to be enjoyable
AAAAAAAH YES, FINALLY HERE. I was waiting for this since the "close to the 20th of november update". As someone who became interested in Megaten thanks to you, and as a 2hu fan who played most of the vertical shooter games plus some fangames, this is a blessing. I can't wait to hear your takes on this rollercoaster of a niche universe. Thanks for making it this long Marsh, ZUN would definetly invite a beer to you.
You absolutely *sold* at "Negotiation is Bullet Hell now."
Seeing your tweets of Bucket-Chan inspired me to finish ADiA
The Evil Eye Sigma is actually a tank made by Rika.
Once I heard the enthusiasm in your voice I knew this had to be something great. Barely got ten minutes in and grabbed my Steam Deck to pick this up. Even though I might not have a ton of time for it definitely don't want it to fade from memory before I experience it.
I'm really loving this video and how accurate it is, even with it being your first full experience with Touhou. My playthrough was wildly different, as I also picked a partner to stay with me for the whole game, except instead of Kisume I went with Satori. Her unique ability to steal MP from enemies and feed it to the team is utterly broken; it pretty much allowed me to run through every dungeon in the game without needing rest stops. With MP becoming a renewable resource, healing spells were all we needed to keep healthy and hardly ever spend items.
Every time I see Marsh uploading something outside SMT I get this weird feeling of dread that if I don't watch it now, it's gonna disappear tomorrow.
I don't know if that ever happened or am I finally going insane, but I don't want to risk it, even though it's a middle of the night right now.
Fun fact about Torifune-
It's actually based on the story in ZUN's music CD, "Ruins of Torifune ~ Trojan Green Asteroid"
Basically, it was a satellite that acted as a modern Noah's Arc. Japan lost control of the satellite, and it turned into an overgrown jungle with the animals mutating into Chimeras.
Thanks for the info! Here I was thinking it was a reference to game 3 where visitors from another dimension visited in their Probability Space Hypervessel to prove and study the existence of magic. I was kinda sad thinking "aww in this game their ship got destroyed and god knows what happened to them," while at the same time being confused over the presence of a chimera. I was like, "was that in one of the characters endings?"
36:05 on nothing like that. Satori loves her sister a lot but since her sister does not have the ability to have conscious thought, she just wanders off (hence the hell maze)
Koishi has been described as having a demeanor similar to an outdoorsy house cat; she's a vagabond, coming and going as she wills, (or doesn't, as it were)
Kisume: (*exists*)
Me: THIS is a bucket.
Marsh: Dear God.......
Touhou: There's more. (*presents single line of lore*)
Marsh: No!
I've been waiting for this video!
Picked up the game on a release day, beat it at the start of january. I have no experience with classic SMT games, but I've been into Touhou for 15 years now, enjoying both original games and a lot of fan made stuff. And this game, man. This was such a fun time and it was made with such love and passion too with all those little nods to many print works and even stories of music CDs, not just events of the original games! Seeing TORIFUNE was such a cool surprise!
And, as you said, that this game is about making good memories, I definitely had a bunch of fun moments. I was trying to explore all maps before proceeding to the boss of a dungeon, but couple of times I forgot that THIS ONE UNEXPLORED SPOT IS ACTUALLY A BOSS ROOM THAT GAME WARNED ME ABOUT BEFOREHAND. Battle with Momoyo was insane because my main party had almost no MP left and I had very VERY few Tea and Coffee items. I was praying that my caster would kill the boss before I run out of them… Simultaneously forgetting that in this very dungeon I picked up a reusable item that restores 10 MP. Fun!
Speaking of forgetting items. I totally forgot that Memory Ball exists and got reminded about it when I was already in Ruins of Vina. And here I thought how other people manage their MP when items that restore it are so uncommon and hard to come by. And now when I think about it, I guess that's the reason why almost every boss fight was sorta a cakewalk for me since I was probably overleveled for them, maybe? Even still, boss of ending B and true boss of ending A gave me a bit of a trouble and made me think how I shold tackle them.
I also want to mention that I absolutely adore invisible floors of Dreamer's Monolith and Pandemonium. I had to draw maps for them on paper and I just love when games make me do this. It's sorta a lost art, I think, and I wish more games would dare to ask their players to do something like this. Oh, and yeah, that floor with pitfals in Pandemonium - I had to use a Map item on second floor just to see all the pitfals because I was too lazy to search for them on my own, I drew a map of both floors on paper sheets, put them on top on each other just to see where I should jump to find a way futher.
As for the ultimate boss, I sorta spoiled myself on that strat with Seija's special ability and decided that I won't be using it.
At first I tried to use two casters that would use most of the elemental spells + one supporter + Sumireko as phys damage dealer. That didn't really worked that well for me, so I had to brainstorm this boss fight and had a brilliant idea that I don't really need EVERY spell, because I can use just ONE spell since I have an ability that guarantees a critical hit plus let's me bypass elemental resistance. I went with Agisol + Agni Amp on my casters and I was pretty happy with that setup for damage. That would also leave plenty of slots for any additional support ablities if I need them. All I had to do now is think of the way to deal with Paradise Lost. I thought about bringing Dai-Para/Atma on all my characters, but that wasn't working all that well, since my characters were pretty slow and those buffs/debuffs weren't making things easier. Also, I had to do something about my MP since it was draining pretty fast and by the middle of a fight it was almost everyone was almost empty. I thought that I saw ability that would double the effect of usable items (I had A LOT of Energy Drinks after exploring Pandemonium), but I was wrong. Resourceful - that's the name of the ability - actually made usage of items much faster and then it hit me. After a quick test I got a positive results - even with Paradise Lost's buffs/debuffs, all items I use with Sumireko would place her first on a turn order. And so I bought a lot of Hideluo Stones and Dai-Para/Atma stones. This might sound like a very dumb and roundabout way to achieve worse results when I could just use Seija's ability, but at that point it was either my way or highway.
My final party was Sumireko, Sariel, Mima and Shinki. Sumireko still was a potential physical damage dealer, but for the most part she was focused on supporting others. With Paradise Lost being an ever-present threat, I thought I would rather focus on fewer buffs/debuffs myself instead of wasting MP on them, so I had only single target ATK debuff on Sumireko, party-wide Def and Evade buffs on Mima (mainly casting DEF, she also had Overbuff). Sariel, Mima and Shinki also had Debilitating Aura.
Sariel was main attacker here with Shinki being second, casting magic whenever she was available. I also gave her that Resourceful ability so she would help clean Paradise Lost effects in one turn together with Sumireko. Oh, but when boss had, like, 5k HP left, that passive ability of her's would kick in that would make her act quicker. Sumireko was still getting her first turn when using an item, but Shinki wasn't so lucky, so I had to proceed with even greater caution at that point in battle.
Also, since I couldn't really rely on hitting enemy's weakness, I gave Helping Hand to both Sumireko and Mima, so they could boost damage of Sariel and Shinki just a little bit more if they had free turns. And all of my characters had party-wide strong healing spell, except for Sariel, she had a solo target one, but I never used this one because, as it turned out, I had a lot of First Aid Kits.
Aaaand after all this, after several really close calls, I managed to beat the boss. I still had plenty of flexible skill slots on all of the characters and would come up with something probably even more stupid if my strat didn't work, but it worked.
I'm very sorry for all this rambling, it's just I had so much fun with this game and really wanted to share at least some of my experience.
Thank you for this video, Marsh. Amazing job, it's always a treat when I see your new uploads. Wish you all the best and can't wait for whatever is next!
Great video on one of my favorite fangames, but there are a couples of things that probably didn't carry across that well for a non-Touho fan:
- You actually meet more than one "Kappa", those engineer girls in blue uniforms like Nitori; she is the only named on the series, but there is a whole bunch of them living underwater in the Genbu Ravine.
- Reisen is actually Kaguya's underling / pet, and she is Eirin's apprentice. She doesn't actually know anything about medicine, she just sells it around town as her job.
- Kaguya and Mokou have a rivalry that has lasted over 1,200 years due to some ancient bitch fighting about their families. Due to them being unaging immortals, they are used to using otherwise lethal force against each other and blowing themselves up during their duels.
- Sweet Doremy isn't really an elf, but a "Baku", a benevolent youkai of the dreams that is closer to a chimeric tapir with oxen tail, bear body, and lion / elephant features. Doremy just kinda looks like a sheep tho, for eepy reasons.
- The TORIFUNE Satellite was an ark project that was meant to preserve all of the Outside World's (our Earth) animals and plants in space while earth was being terraformed, but due to some malfunctions and contaminations it crashed down back to earth, morphing the inhabitant animals (not youkai, which is why you don't fight an anime girl) into mutated chimeric amalgamations of themselves.
It is always great seeing new people getting into Touhou through the community, and watching their reaction of staple characters / lore.
is the ark from the pc 98 games?
@iguessthisismyworkaccountl8437 It comes from the CD Drama bundled in the Music Album of "Ruins of Torifune ~ Trojan Green Asteroid".
The CD Dramas usually focus on the Hifuu Club, a duo of collage students from the Outside World talking about fantasy and sci-fi from the Outside World perspective of humans.
@@GNiko324 I'm pretty sure that, in canon, TORIFUNE is still in space, but has gone dark and is unreachable. The only reason the Secret Sealing Club could visit it was because of the Shinto Shrine, which is probably why that's where you fight the Chimera in _Artificial Dream in Arcadia._
I said it before in someone else’s comment, but I wish we had a stage set in TORIFUNE, doesn’t even need to have youkai in it since there’s a lot of potential for what could be up there (given how the life apparently mutated so quickly, aggressive plants or giant insects wouldn’t be too surprising)
If you run into a yukkuri battle try to use special commands (yeah you need a near full SP bar for those) in order to lower its stats and use a bunch of different elemental magic, that usually does the trick. Also, fun fact, not only a yukkuri encounter is quite rare in this game, but there's also a rare item drop associated with them. Good luck!
That item is stupidly broken
Was that mechanic changed with updates? I played the game this week and all they took was the Analysis Command (only a quarter of your SP gauge) to find out what they're weak to and use just that.
@@VonFirflirch Gonna be honest, I've never used an analysis command on yukkuris in fear of them immediately running away, so I just debuffed them and spammed everything I had, which worked pretty much every time... well, for the few rare occasions I had a yukkuri encounter at least, as they're incredibly rare to come by. I do hope their rate has been buffed in recent versions though.
@@CerealKiller
At least as of 1.2.5, you can use any Command and still pick your party's actions afterwards. Your way sounds terrifying to me ;)
I only saw 3 of them in my 45-ish-hour 100% playthrough, one of them 5 minutes before the super boss. Never got that drop they apparently have, though.
I actually ran from the first one myself! I hadn't saved in a while, and the Analysis showed it was weak to the one element my active party didn't have... To me, those Yukkuri things feel like Touhou's take on the old Trollface, so I was scared it would nuke me... or perhaps it was out of spite "You can't escape from me if I do it first~" x)
From then on, I made sure to always have a Sleeper with one spell of every type out at all times, just in case! x)
@@VonFirflirch I haven't played the recent updates, but from what I can see it should now be easier to find a Yukkuri and get their associated item. I believe potemki also added a new grimoire that increases their encounter rate, but it has a funky side effect.
I have some 80+ hours so far and I've only managed to see 4 yukkuris, maybe 5? I don't recall, but their encounter rate is way too small imo.
Marsh out here being one of the few people that would get me to watch a 2+ hour Touhou video. Time to get some snacks for this movie length event.
Marsh, you have no idea how much I wanted this video. I was going to make my own version of this video parodying your style and over the top reaction to events, saying as much in a review on steam I posted. Even recorded a huge chuck of footage, and did some early script writing too.
But at the same time I'm glad you made it instead. I don't have the voice to dead speak into a mic in dead silence to get good commentary done. And to be fair, actively stealing someone's creative thing is no cool, even if it's an homage. And, well the main guy doing it will never compare to imitators, and I think the script was borderline becoming more of a generic walkthrough going through the motions at times.
Anyway, I'll be sure to watch the whole thing with excitement up to the point where I'm at in the game and continue it later once I finish it myself!
Even in your SMTohou game, F.O.E!
It's funny, because IOSYS (the guys responsible for that specific meme) is best known for their Touhou stuff.
I loved this fangame and was curious to see a non-touhou fan play it, I think it does a great work of introducing the world to people that doesn't know it, and also being an amazing SMT game, really cool video!
Also if you're interested in the lore, here are some things:
Gensokyo isn't a fantasy pararell world, but rather a real place that is separated from the rest of the world via a reality bending barrier. Youkai do exist in the normal world, but their power is tied to humans and how much they believe and fear them, since they were less believed in on modern times, a group of youkai sages decided to create Gensokyo, where they have a human village that actually fears them, so they are at full power there, Reimu is part of the Hakurei clan, who also helped in creating the barrier, so she makes sure that Youkai can live there, but also keep them from making real problems to the humans. Also Youkai have to use their powers from time to time, and like to argue and battle a lot, so they ended up with a "spellcard" system, where they can battle each other with harmless spells, and the victor then can do what it wants, so that is why everyone fights constantly (If someone actually breaks the spellcard rules, they would be hunted down by the other youkai)
Sumireko is a psychic outside human, and she caused a great deal of mayhem to Gensokyo since she found out about it and wanted to enter, even almost sacrificed herself to break the barrier entirely, funnily enough that is like THE most dangerous incident that has happened in the franchise, and it was due to a high school girl lmao. But she was stopped by Reimu, then her powers manifested some kind of doppleganger on Gensokyo, and every time she goes to sleep she can visit. But since now when she dreams she goes into that doppleganger, then her dream self (everyone has one and lives in the dream world) is free to act on her own and also caused some other problems.
Yukari wanting Sumireko to have one last adventure is because of a fan theory. To start, there are some side stories that follow a descendant of Sumireko and a girl that is suspiciously really similar to Yukari, with even really similar if not the same powers. It is never linked to the main story, but the theory is that she goes back in time to create Gensokyo as Yukari, so in this game she wants Sumireko to have a normal life, but not outright ban her from gensokyo, so she gives her a big adventure to satisfy her and not spend so much time there
If you figure out that the Marisa that was with you was a sleeper you get another dialogue option while talking to Yukari. I beat ending C and came back to finish the video. My final team was Yuugi, Sumireko(MaxVitMaxMagMidIntMidLuk), Cirno, and Byakuren all at lvl99. I also used a bunch of endgame sleepers as backup in case they fell. The final true boss was so good, I wish there was more challenge like that in the games. Also that final dungeon was the first one I had to draw out a map for, it was so painful. Honestly 10/10 game, perfect gameplay, amazing art and music, interesting story, I think it made me a touhou fan
It's so trollish that most of the endgame sleepers are weak to Pierce, which the last two bosses both spam x)
I'm lucky the fast ones I kept nulled that!
I subscribed to you in anticipation of this exact video. I can't wait to watch it! I'm a touhou fan, not a MegaTen fan. But I think this game has made me one.
It’s funny, I discovered this game because of your tweet about it a while back and honestly it’s probably become one of my favorite games. I’ve wanted a game to help me move into the classic megaten games more comfortably and it has, I’ve started a soul hackers file because of this game. Not only that it made me really want to get into the Touhou games because of the drip fed lore about the series this game was giving me. Overall this game was a great experience for me and made the time I had Covid in early December somewhat enjoyable.
Some Touhou lore facts:
☯Touhou takes place in a setting where belief is power manifested into reality, so when the modern world started, many monsters/Yōkai died out from lack of people believing they even existed. SO, in order to preserve themselves, in Gensokyo the Yōkai "attack" humans to keep the old faith/traditions alive and preserve their existence. "Yōkai Attacks," or Danmaku Battles (or RPG Battles in this case?) are the "acts of traditions" that help to preserve the old faith and beliefs which allow the inhabitants to up keep their existence. As they are a necessity of every day life, it is normal to start blasting over anything.
☯Koishi is a character that wonders to anywhere and everywhere her whims take her, so randomly running into her in a random maze, is not as random as one may think.
☯Kaguya is THE Kaguya from The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Depending on how you feel about her actions there, you could say maybe she had this 1:02:37 coming? Regardless, she is notoriously bored from being immortal in every sense of the word, and you messing with her is probably actually a highlight of her day.
Nice
Isn’t koishi also the literal personification of the “no thoughts, head empty” meme?
@@Beepers559 no
@@Atou_Mahogany huh, for a while I thought she was kind of like that (though given how my memory at the best of times is like Swiss cheese I might’ve forgotten something)
I very recently got around to beating the game in its entirety. Your video helped quite a bit reigniting the will to chip at the postgame and fight HER; I am curious to see where you'll go next
"huge fucking orb covering across the map........." has sudden flashbacks to F.O.E'S of eterian odyssey oh bloody hell it does an foe in this SMT LIKE dear lord! anyone whos played eteiran oddsey knows the avoid those fuckers like the plauge alteast on first visit.
1:25:55 - This is kind of true, in TH17 the animal spirits you're allying with point out how terrible the place looks and how it used to be so full of nature
1:31:43 - Fitting, as ZUN has described the Watatsuki sisters (the ones you fight in this section) to be far beyond anything else in Gensokyo, except for Hecatia, who is the strongest character we know of so far.
2:12:18 - I don't know if you've noticed, but Shinki has a bunch of similarities to SMT Lucifer, both in design (her sprite being the same pose) as well as being both the strongest summonable ally and enemy in the game (which also applies to SMT Lucifer in a lot of games). Even her battle background is very similar as the Makai Realm in SMT2, this isn't sometimes deliberately made by the creator of this game as a reference to SMT, but rather something that is intentional and is present in TH5, where she comes from.
I'm sure you've been told already, but a bunch of PC-98 touhou games are inspired by SMT, and even TH17 as well with the whole deal of the chaotic animal spirits against keiki's more lawful forces.
Touhou is so fucking cool. Always get hyped when certain characters show up even if its just a random encounter.
I am very happy that you like Kisume so much.
Also love the mention of Layla in the western mansion. Thanks for showing that dialogue.
As always a crazy good video. Thank you.