Touhou crossed with SMT, which is pretty funny as a lot of the PC-98 era of Touhou lifts bits and pieces from SMT itself. The game does a good job of letting you explore Gensokyo, and once you get into the combat cycle it can be pretty fun.

For better or worse, the game left me a wanting of more everything except the core gameplay. One of the main appealing aspects of Touhou is in its music, except sadly there is only one normal Boss theme. There are three normal battle themes throughout the course of the campaign, but only one midboss theme and one normal boss theme. The boss theme is especially egregious, not because it's bad it's good actually, but because the theme chosen matches the first boss you're fighting, so when you face the second boss that leads to a bit of disappointment. The themes that are arranged are good, just having bosses match the music would have lead to more of them.

Another thing I would have liked was more skills. There's some attempts at diversity in the physical skills but everything still feels standard, which would be fine in a game replicating early SMT, but you could have captured a lot more personalities here. There is one aspect where it excels however and that is the Capture system, replacing Demon Negotiations (though a randomized version of them is an option you can choose as soon as you reach the first save point). The Capture system utilizes Touhou's danmaku roots, having you shoot to hack through the Sleeper (which I have and will continue to refer to as 2hu) to get them to join your side. These patterns are mostly based on their in-game self, but capture the essence of each character well.

A similar criticism goes to both the sacrificing and inheriting systems, which prevents the 2hus from truly sticking out in what they can do. Imagine if Satori, one of the earliest 2hus you can get, came with an ability that would show the enemy's affinities for that battle. It wouldn't be great in the long term as your turns become more valuable and you get upgrades, but it'd help the player ease into the game and match Satori's canon abilities. Some do have special skills, but they can all be inherited by others which makes them a lot less special. General skills too, as much as I enjoyed the Immolation+Last Resort paired with another 2hu that has Cover, I wish there were more strategies like this beyond the standard "buff and debuff" and "hit the girl hard."

The slightly barebones nature of things makes it walk a tight line between a groove like the first half and too repetitive like the second, but it manages its functions well and is a delightful experience for any Touhou fan and SMT fan that has enough going on in it to keep you lasting the whole time.

It's kind of funny what a melting pot this game is. SMT fans who know nothing about Touhou playing this, Touhou fans who know nothing about SMT trying the genre out. However, all of it to comes out to almost unanimous praise from both sides. I am from the latter, and as someone who is a 1CC fiend for Touhou, I appreciate the series a lot. I also appreciate Touhou fan games a lot, with Luna Nights being the best Metroidvania I've ever experienced. I was well aware of Potemki11's work through fanart and the extremely solid Udongein X. But this project at first seemed like it wasn't for me. I've always been intimidated by the brutal reputation of SMT games, but I was willing to try it out in a Touhou-adorned game. It was a bit rough at first, mainly due to my freshness with the gameplay, but this game turned out to be one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time. Nothing about the charm of Gensokyo is lost in translation with this game; it is captured perfectly. There isn't a ton of dialogue in this game, and writing lines for all of the sleepers is an impossible task, but every character in the series is expressed well with their gameplay. Shion has great stats for where she is in the game, but has pitiful luck. These subtle characterizations make this game succeed for someone who came into it as a sole Touhou fan. Gameplay-wise, twice there were parts in the game where I thought to myself, "Surely there's only an hour or two left in this game." Then I saw the world open up in a completely different way through an upgrade or area being opened. The difficulty level of this game is extremely fair in my opinion, and for someone who played this as their first SMT-style game, I am satisfied with the difficulty. A lot of annoyances early on are put away by items you gain access to, or upgrades later on which makes progression feel perfect. One of my only gripes with this game is that I wish that the unique abilities that are given to only a handful of the cast were buffed and each character had their own abilities. I felt the rate of new characters with abilities fell off in the mid- to late-game, and the characters felt more like stats at the end, rather than individual characters who could provide their own unique angle in fights. The abilities themselves are also extremely weak, in my opinion, outside of a select few (Hello, Heaven and Hell), and if they were universally buffed, it might save some characters with lackluster stat spreads. But outside of those truly minor gripes, this game is amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with a genre I didn't think I would and am looking forward to Udongein X2!

An amazing tribute to SMT, and a great Touhou fangame as well. The feeling of old-school dungeon crawling, accompanied by grungy SNES-esque music, framed by the variety of wonderful 16-bit aesthetics painting each of the numerous dungeons gave me such a nostalgic throwback towards a genre of game I've rarely dug into.

The battle system felt great to use as well, with animations being fast and flashy (with options to speed them up even further), and the gameplay loop of exploiting weaknesses, buff, debuffs, and SP, made normal fights and bosses feel dynamic for a majority of my time with the game.

To top it off, the game never felt unfair, and felt surprisingly balanced, despite how many 2hu's there were to hijack and fuse. The amount of team-building options lets you either constantly fuse new 2hu's in your party to build around each dungeon, or continually make your group of favorites stronger. Neither playstyle felt any less valid to use, which made team building feel liberating and rewarding to pull off. Because of how flexible this was, I never felt the game to ever be overbearingly difficult (until the Final Boss and the postgame.....).

Overall, an excellent SMT-like dungeon crawler that I might see myself replaying in the future. So much content (30 hour playtime) for only 10 bucks too! Such a steal.

Polaroid's Mega Rush to the 2023 End!! Game 5
Finished: December 24th

I don't really hold much interest in Touhou, nor had I for most of my life, although I've certainly known about it for most of my life- since I first started getting into gaming really. Outside of playing Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil, I haven't really dabbled in the property or read into the lore of Touhou proper...but I do know my Megaten.

What you have here is a best case scenario revival of classic Megami Tensei gameplay, while painting everything with the flair and mythos of the Touhou series. A combination I didn’t really expect yet blends surprisingly well once I started getting into the later sections of the game.

Generally when going back to older SMTs I appreciate them for establishing such strong, abrasive worlds- sending casts into wastelands of a familiar world, getting caught in dogmatic wars fought on loop for time indefinite and metaspace infinite. There’s not a lot of mythos as convoluted and cool as Megami Tensei in the gaming industry and I’m glad that it's persisted as long as it has (if overshadowed by a golden Morgana idol in ATLUS’ office building, but I'll take it).
The issue would just arise from how oddly paced or cryptic some of these games could get. Shin Megami Tensei difficulty remained prevalent throughout the series, however modern gaming design would help alleviate or spice up the monotony. The advent of the 'Press Turn' mechanic along with other unique combat mechanics helped to further distinguish SMT from other franchises with a new array of ways to exploit waves of demons. The older games, by comparison, just get to a point where the combat feels a bit too thin for my liking while dungeons get actively more complex by comparison (or in other cases way too simple if you just Divine Judgment everything).

Where classic SMT remains, a new take on the formula helps breathe some life into the idea, from Touhou of all things. Touhou: ADiA takes many of the mechanical ideas and elements found from the first Digital Devil Story to Strange Journey in 2009- and makes a game that well encompasses while actually avoiding some of the pitfalls I feel these titles all too often dig themselves into.

The general gameplay style reflects the usual first-person dungeon crawling of the older Megami Tensei games, with sparse bases surrounding a dungeon rife with enemies, treasures, NPCs and other opportunities. Your equipment and stats are a mix of several games throughout the series- you don't have to buy individual types of bullets separate from the guns you wield although armor will often come with their own unique properties outside of boosting defense/attack. You generally have less armor than the usual SMT title but there's enough distinguishing from certain armors that you might prefer the cat ears that give a giant AGL boost to something that might have more DEF, but lack that agility boost. Your main character, Sumireko gains abilities and resistances/weaknesses off your Sleepers (demons), however you have to sacrifice them in order to gain them, so use these wisely (or just grind money for database splurging).

The use of Grimoires to toggle on 'risk/reward' type passives is a very cool addition to the mix, and can be well exploited if you know when to turn on certain Grimoires. These can range from 'expands your Map discovery radius but gains less SP throughout battle' to 'Damage against a Sleepers' weakness is further increased, but you otherwise deal less damage' they're a fun way to spice up your dungeon crawling. I would recommend against using the explorer grimoire, alongside a careful use for the ‘Map’ item. Both of these help clear up the map and fully exploring a map does get you a monetary reward, much like Strange Journey. These are fine in practice, especially with clearing out dungeons that are much more obnoxious, although part of the manual cleanup without these tools gains you additional battles with which to gain exp. Exp isn't everything in this game- especially if you're better than I am at party building but its always nice to have the level advantage at all times.

There's maybe a few hiccups in difficulty although I think this happens quite often in these kinda games. Where you have a strong party going through a dungeon or two but run into a snag where you wanna fuse your guys into stronger 'Sleepers' but something about the party composition just isnt giving you the 'Sleepers' you want. I never memorized or figured out a pattern(?) for how you should fuse demons and would often run into this problem of never having a new wave of demons to fuse into, usually just stuck with results that were the same as sleepers from the dungeon I just came in from, maybe one new sleeper? I’m not sure.

The music is mostly fine- there's some tracks early on that feel a bit grating but I was quite elated when- as soon as you hit the halfway point of the game- a new battle theme starts popping up. Always enjoyed whenever RPGs shake up the usual battle themes partway through- and here it happens twice! I would have also liked maybe some better indicators as to who everyone actually was when I was fusing. Somewhat embarrassing on my part, although I still have a hard time remembering most of the characters that weren't from EotSD. On the fusion screen all that's shown is their name and their placement in the party menu, but not levels or any showing of what the characters you’re using look like outside of going back to the status screen. Earlier SMTs also had this trouble before they grew into more iconic designs, with a lot of recolors, some generic looking designs and a lot smaller of a database to choose from- although I would have liked a better indicator as to who I was sending out to be fused not just off name/moveset alone.

Story wise its nothing too complex, and I don’t really know how to comment on any fanservice or continuity or anything like that as someone that is not privy to the Touhou mythos. What I will say is that it somewhat succeeded in piquing my interest for later on- I might actually look further into what Touhou gets into or the importance of certain characters. Why was (X) character the final boss? Why is there a lunar colony with a bunch of rabbits on it (why am I playing another game where this is the case)? What’s up with Torifune? The game itself doesn’t dive too deep into this madness and I think it's better for it, not clogging up the main premise for too many in-jokes or needing to explain everything to the main player if they’re someone like me. Certainly not everything is left in the dark and there’s plenty of nudges I think touhou fans will enjoy but its not too overindulgent which I appreciate, letting this game stand on its own.


Overall, Artificial Dream in Arcadia, while a callback for those longing for another kind of RPG like classic SMT, might ironically serve as a good starting point for those that might wanna try out the old style of Megami Tensei for themselves. It's certainly got its learning curve and a lot of the dungeons can feel somewhat arduous, but with the addition of some Quality of Life features mixed into its mechanics, it doesn't take too long to understand what this particular take is asking of you. I was pretty surprised with how much the game had to offer and how many new things it had to show me- it wasn't a parody like I had been expecting but a full on homage to SMT and hell, the JRPG genre. While not a series I generally have interest in, I'm glad that something I had only seen gifs of during its development turned out less as some kinda gag-crossover, and moreso as a fully realized title that improves upon what it homages.

great classic smt dungeon crawler featuring touhou characters. The game emulates the classic smt style amazingly and has a lot of cool features from future titles. my only issues with the dungeon crawling is the lack of an estoma equivalent added with the fact that a good chunk of the floors are as big as smt1 cathedral which makes dying in dungeons an absolute chore when you have to make your way back to where you were. thankfully the combat is extremly fast and there are certain ways to mitigate these problems.
as for the touhou side i admittedly dont have much experience from the series but it was cool to see the characters i did recognise from the pc98 games

TRUE GODDESS REINCARNATION

Died Oct 8, 2009 - Born Dec 12, 2023

WELCOME BACK, 真・女神転生

To be honest I completely adore this fangame. I was trying to think of reasons to maybe only give it 4.5 stars (cause I struggle giving things number ratings, esp cause I view most experiences as positive) but for me it really did everything right. I love the story, the areas chosen from gensokyo are really cool and all the gimmicks fit in pretty well, the skill and affinity transfers lead the customization of the game to be extremely versatile, the ost RULES, and just so much more. I love how easy this game is as an entry point to Touhou if you've played a lot of DRPGS or specifically classic SFC SMT but still keeping the difficulty relatively high even with a bunch of QoL. I personally only struggled hard enough to game over a few times, but some bosses I didn't even die to ended up being just as hard if not harder as some can be real battles of attrition.

Overall, I just think this game is a wonderful love letter while standing entirely on it's own even if you wanted to treat it as a completely standalone piece detatched from Touhou and all inspirations. Check it out if you have any interest at all!