"Are you ready for your free market lessons?"

John Locke gulps

Voltaire breathes heavily

Adam Smith nods nervously

Baruch Spinoza sighs

"Yes Zun from Touhou Project" they all say in unison

I had a whole file on my computer where I was writing my thoughts on this and then I kinda fell off of it and have changed computers so whatever, look, I'll need to just get through this before I play the next couple games so I can write about them.

I liked this one a lot! Fun mechanic that is busted as hell in a way these games usually aren't, Sanae is playable again (hell yeah) and I felt like there was a lot I was interested in chewing on thematically. Also god Tsukasa is gender, too me. Oh and some real great tunes but what else is new. The levels stand out as particularly high quality this time.

The plot is that there's trading cards of everyone now so you're characters go out to start punching everyone they find over it since they're all purely reactionary forces who hate it whenever anything at all happens. This is all part of semi-complicated plan by a Chimata Tenkyuu, god of markets, to team up with a tengu and mine a bunch of special ore to make the cards and then they get sold and I guess the tengu makes money.

Given the timing of the release, there's a lot of 'oh it's about the blockchain' and 'oh it's about capitalism' and such but ZUN apparently said it's about Covid. Public places. Markets predate capitalism and all that, after all. So it's about people gathering and, honestly, just sharing their appreciation for Touhou. Like one of the endings the boss says this directly. Markets as a physical place, but more importantly as a real event that brings people together, and the good things that can result from it.

So the mechanic here is that there are a lot of ability cards, some of which are special weapons on a cooldown and some of which are passive. You collect money and get to buy one after each stage, and the baseline difficulty isn't tooooo bad so the availability of super strong abilities makes this fairly easy compared to the harder games. You unlock more and more item slots you can choose to start the game with, using any item you've used before. It's a bit roguelite-ish? From the scoregame perspective I think it probably makes this one worse but I don't care about that. Just watch out if you want to create some kind of ransomware that forces you to get a certain score before it decrypts your files I guess.

Alright that's it. Love the game, had to get this out of the way, still gotta play 18.5 which I think goes all in on the roguelite thing? That sounds fun.

Shoot em up menos táctico de lo que sugiere su sistema de cartas. Casi todas las habilidades son más de apoyo y refuerzo que elementos sobre los que construir estrategias o que permitan formas distintas de aproximarse a los desafíos que te plantean. La estrategia principal sigue siendo la de siempre, el riesgo/recompensa de cuándo usar o no bombas. Las cartas solo añaden más detallitos de los que estar pendiente durante la partida y un punto de gestión y aleatoriedad que le sienta bien al juego.

¿Lo malo de esto? Que no se desvía mucho del danmaku. ¿Lo bueno? Que no se desvía mucho del danmaku. Porque este juego va de esquivar mierdas y eso lo clava. Tiene algunas de las mejores secciones de pura esquiva de cualquier touhou, siendo mi favorita la jefa del cuarto nivel y sus yin yangs viniendo de todas direcciones. Eso sí, también tiene problemas graves de visibilidad de balas en varias secciones, algo que sorprende en la decimo octava entrega de una saga del mismo autor.

En resumen, el sistema de habilidades es bafuroso, le falta la estilización en el diseño de un buen shoot em up táctico y la estrategia final no varía mucho del ofensivo/conservador del resto de la saga, pero supera todo eso a fuerza bruta de presentar un juegazo de niñas con poderes y esquivas ajustadas.

This game is really good. I feel like it often gets overlooked simply by the merit of being new, which is rather unfortunate.

Though, I will say, I do not think this is a good game for beginners specifically. This game's gimmick is that you can get different cards that give you different abilities. While very fun, I think there's some that can become crutches for people learning, and make other games much, much more difficult because of this.

That aside, it's very fun. I adore the card system, and I feel like it adds a ton of replayability. Your cards can affect your playstyle a lot or a little, depending on what sort of built you have going on. I'd almost dare to compare it to a rougelike in that specific regard.

Presumably because of the cards, however, I do think this game is one of the harder entries in the series overall, so be aware of that! Definitely worth playing though.

A really fun game, if a little broken! To be fair, ZUN did state he did not balance this game, and it shows (not that I'm complaining).

The gimmick this time around is capitalism ability cards. Point drops are replaced with coins, and finishing a stage grants you a chance at using them to buy abilities from other characters in the series. This can lead to some extremely broken combinations that can make the game a breeze. Should you choose to not get anything, I'd say the game is nice in difficulty, nothing feels unfair

Plot's neat and the OST is great. Best Extra stage theme so far (though I die in seconds at those)

The weakest OST in all of Touhou, stages are all barren and boring. Enemies are tanky as fuck so you feel extremely weak, the card mechanic is too insignificant to offer a unique game-play experience.

I already hold the opinion that Touhou games are very weak shmups to begin with but this one is even of low quality for a Touhou game.

Easiest score counter-stop of my life

This is probably my favorite Touhou game since Touhou 8. The gameplay is as solid as ever, and honestly even game me a lot more challenge than usual, with stages 4 and 5 always giving me a rough time. Reimu, Marisa, and Sanae are all a blast to play, though I'm still struggling a bit in getting the hang of Sakuya, and the ability card system is one of the most interesting and impactful additions to any Touhou game. The can provide such fun changes to any run and change how you go about playing said run midway through. They can also be good at giving yourself more leeway, or more challenge, or being able to make a specific build that fits your playstyle the best. Sure, there are some card combinations that can COMPLETELY break the game if you know what you're doing, but that's all part of the fun. Overall the game's been a blast to pick up and shoot a few runs at before putting down, even moreso than most previous games, simply due to this card system. It's just so fun to mess around with.

Special shoutouts to the game's story and thematics, as they're stronger and more upfront than usual and have some pretty interesting things to say about environmentalism and capitalism/markets as a whole. Great fucking game.

Es de admirar como Zun innova en una saga ya establecida y se saca de la manga una mecánica nunca antes vista. Hay que recordar que esto lo hace una sola persona y eso se valora mucho mas.

Las cartas le dan una profundidad nunca antes vista en un Touhou, aunque como problema hace que apenas consigas power al añadir un nuevo pick-up como lo es el dinero.

La dificultad es incluso más alta que en otros Touhou, siendo su pico mas alto el Stage 5.

La OST como siempre sublime.

Poco mas queda decir además de que es un must si te gustan los Touhous.