Touhou Shinpiroku: Urban Legend in Limbo.
released on May 10, 2015
The 5th fighting game in the Touhou Project and 14.5th game overall.
Also in series
Reviews View More
booooooooo
played this for sumireko and while the gameplay proper sucks i acruallt liked the story mode, dragged bc of forced fights but by the end i enjoyed it, sumireko and mokou are the coolest
I did NOT expect this one to be so good!!!
Being fighting game number 4 in the franchise, the little improvements here are expected. It's finally more melee focused like some kind of normal video game. Just like how the first style of fighting game kinda sucked and then they fixed it, the second style was not super great in Hopeless Masquerade and then they made it good here. The opponents in story mode now have attacks where they produce purple "occult balls" that you have to make contact with in order to break their defenses. This adds some really fun new wrinkles since you can't just dodge. The presentation, which was already great last time, is even cooler here with a lot of snazzy effects to sell the whole "shitty paranormal tabloid" aesthetic. This includes all the characters being introduced with titles like "Horror! Magician of the School!" and "Invade! The Youkai Tanuki From Outer Space!" It's such such a freakin delight.
So on one hand, the story in this one is uncommonly straightforward, to the point where I think I can actually explain it. On the other hand, it has direct connections to:
1) The spinoff manga Wild and Horned Hermit
2) The story from the liner notes in the official Touhou music albums (yes this is a thing)
It also directly presages the next main game in the series, Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom. So there's a lot of just... lore here if you're into that shit like a sicko (I'm sicko).
Ok so the story: There's this normal Japanese high school student named Sumireko Usami. Well she has psychic powers but that's basically normal, I watch anime so I know this. She comes up with a convoluted plan that I admit is all just kinda technobabble where she grabs a bunch of artifacts from religious sites and is able to send them into Gensokyo, which she knows about and knows it's where creatures of myth live. She makes everyone believe that collecting seven balls with grant you a wish, but it actually just teleports you to her so that she can be like "damn a tengu this is poggers" with the eventual goal of finding a way into Gensokyo proper. Just because she wants to hang out with cool monsters.
Everyone fights each other for the balls for a while until the smarter characters get annoyed and come up with a plan to trap Sumireko inside and have everyone beat the shit out of her non-fatally so that she stops, while also ejecting all the balls.
The game uses the word "balls" a lot and yes it's funny to me I'm a child fuck you
Anyway this plan goes wrong both because someone slipped her an additional occult ball that causes the next game, AND because everyone underestimates how much Sumireko loves drama. She tries to suicide bomb the barrier between the regular world and Gensokyo, but a solid beatdown prevents that and everything is fine. For as much of a comedy as most of the game is, this is maybe the first time we've seen the credible threat of someone actually dying.
I can't really pull any deep meaning from this one, it's just a fun story with these characters, but the interaction between the old myths that people no longer believe and the newer myths which they still do, is just a really great basis for character interactions. Everyone in the cast is assigned their own modern urban legend by the balls, which they're trying to act out despite not having a very clear understanding of the modern world. A lot of them are specifically Japanese so Western players like me will miss some of the details without a lot of pop-culture knowledge, but you'll recognize the Loch Ness Monster and such. But what's really great about the story is that there's way less repetition between them, and as far as I can tell they're all 'canon.' Aside from a couple of one-off goofs, they tend to advance the overall plot or at least give you an additional perspective on the events of other storylines. For the first time, the stories actually build on each other to reach a climax and conclusion! Wow!
I am incredibly stoked for getting to 15.5 now and getting a whole other fighting game that builds on this. It's pretty much everything I want from the Touhou fighters. Also I don't have any good place to put this but Sumireko has a special where she shoots you with a gun
Being fighting game number 4 in the franchise, the little improvements here are expected. It's finally more melee focused like some kind of normal video game. Just like how the first style of fighting game kinda sucked and then they fixed it, the second style was not super great in Hopeless Masquerade and then they made it good here. The opponents in story mode now have attacks where they produce purple "occult balls" that you have to make contact with in order to break their defenses. This adds some really fun new wrinkles since you can't just dodge. The presentation, which was already great last time, is even cooler here with a lot of snazzy effects to sell the whole "shitty paranormal tabloid" aesthetic. This includes all the characters being introduced with titles like "Horror! Magician of the School!" and "Invade! The Youkai Tanuki From Outer Space!" It's such such a freakin delight.
So on one hand, the story in this one is uncommonly straightforward, to the point where I think I can actually explain it. On the other hand, it has direct connections to:
1) The spinoff manga Wild and Horned Hermit
2) The story from the liner notes in the official Touhou music albums (yes this is a thing)
It also directly presages the next main game in the series, Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom. So there's a lot of just... lore here if you're into that shit like a sicko (I'm sicko).
Ok so the story: There's this normal Japanese high school student named Sumireko Usami. Well she has psychic powers but that's basically normal, I watch anime so I know this. She comes up with a convoluted plan that I admit is all just kinda technobabble where she grabs a bunch of artifacts from religious sites and is able to send them into Gensokyo, which she knows about and knows it's where creatures of myth live. She makes everyone believe that collecting seven balls with grant you a wish, but it actually just teleports you to her so that she can be like "damn a tengu this is poggers" with the eventual goal of finding a way into Gensokyo proper. Just because she wants to hang out with cool monsters.
Everyone fights each other for the balls for a while until the smarter characters get annoyed and come up with a plan to trap Sumireko inside and have everyone beat the shit out of her non-fatally so that she stops, while also ejecting all the balls.
The game uses the word "balls" a lot and yes it's funny to me I'm a child fuck you
Anyway this plan goes wrong both because someone slipped her an additional occult ball that causes the next game, AND because everyone underestimates how much Sumireko loves drama. She tries to suicide bomb the barrier between the regular world and Gensokyo, but a solid beatdown prevents that and everything is fine. For as much of a comedy as most of the game is, this is maybe the first time we've seen the credible threat of someone actually dying.
I can't really pull any deep meaning from this one, it's just a fun story with these characters, but the interaction between the old myths that people no longer believe and the newer myths which they still do, is just a really great basis for character interactions. Everyone in the cast is assigned their own modern urban legend by the balls, which they're trying to act out despite not having a very clear understanding of the modern world. A lot of them are specifically Japanese so Western players like me will miss some of the details without a lot of pop-culture knowledge, but you'll recognize the Loch Ness Monster and such. But what's really great about the story is that there's way less repetition between them, and as far as I can tell they're all 'canon.' Aside from a couple of one-off goofs, they tend to advance the overall plot or at least give you an additional perspective on the events of other storylines. For the first time, the stories actually build on each other to reach a climax and conclusion! Wow!
I am incredibly stoked for getting to 15.5 now and getting a whole other fighting game that builds on this. It's pretty much everything I want from the Touhou fighters. Also I don't have any good place to put this but Sumireko has a special where she shoots you with a gun
Touhou fighting game rating: 5/10
Das 5. Prügelspiel und in meinen Augen zugleich das Beste. Von der Handlung her geht es um den Urban Legenden Vorfall, der in den Mangas „Forbidden Scrollery“ und „Wild and Horned Hermit“ ebenfalls behandelt wird.
Es baut auf HM auf, verbessert die Spielbarkeit aber deutlich. Einziger Kritikpunkt, den ich hätte, wäre das die Mechanik mit der zufällig auftauchenden Okkult-Kugel schon ein wenig nervig ist.
Es baut auf HM auf, verbessert die Spielbarkeit aber deutlich. Einziger Kritikpunkt, den ich hätte, wäre das die Mechanik mit der zufällig auftauchenden Okkult-Kugel schon ein wenig nervig ist.
3D printed gun