TLDR- Quirky fun, a rather awkward entry though, being the bridge between the difficult hell that is SA and UFO to the new generation
Ten Desires fits into the category of “awkward” of Touhou mainline games. Awkward is a complement however. Coming off the heels of the experimental and incredibly difficult Undefined Fantastic Object and Subterranean Animism, Ten Desires looks to take a step back in bullet density and scale of the former games, even stated as so by ZUN in the omake.txt of this game. To understand this game you the former two games need to be taken into account, SA and UFO were a continuation of the vastly significant increase in story focus that MoF provided. However I think the series got a bit lost in the progression of those two games. I love SA and UFO a ton don’t get me wrong but something feels off about them in the scale of the series, classically described as “the two weird and EXTREMELY hard games in the 2nd Windows era” I think those two entries lost a bit of what made Touhou what it is, losing some intangible sense of identity the series had was lost to the new focus on world building. Every effort in Ten Desires reflects an effort to “humble” the track of the series in a sense, bring it back down to the magic that Touhou 6-8 were, with less scale and less drastic gameplay qualities. These humblings work in its favor though and it becomes a forgotten diamond right in the middle of the series.
The scaling of this game is most apparent in its characters deliberately being focused on. UFO had great characterization on a personal scale, but Ten Desires excels in relationships, as well as getting great personalization too. This game from the offset was made with the idea of being a scaling back of the series and you see that with the first boss, Yuyuko returning from her final boss status from Perfect Cherry Blossom. Immediately this shows that familiarity will be a huge part in this game. Yuyuko returning was such a great move to for the first boss of the game, most first bosses are forgotten in the long run anyways so making the least important boss slot an important character in the past that is relevant to the current plot a decision that gives a lot of bang for your buck storytelling wise. I’ll jump to stage 3 (stage 2 does really feel like where the game starts with the boss being a character that doesn’t play a huge role in the story, still love Kyouko tho <3) where Kogasa from UFO shows up again, playing into the familiarity theme again. The stage 3 boss Yoshika goes down and then you meet her again with her master on the stage 4 boss Seiga, who adds to the familiarity again. You already have fought Yoshika once at this point, so you know her patterns to an extent, this constant reiteration from attacks past like Yuyuko attacking on a scaled down version from PCB, fighting Kogasa one game retired from her home game, fighting Yoshika with Seiga; all of these call back and reused characters and attacks make the characters in this game feel interconnected the best in the series (maybe 18 is vying for that now but we’ll see). This interconnectedness gives a piece of that magic back that was lost in SA and UFO, while those games have good characterization, the characters themselves don’t feel connected, despite having a deeper lore connection than the Ten Desires cast. But the effort put into reiteration and characters interacting in the ways they do in this game makes the characters feel incredibly genuine, especially for a series such as this one. Jumping to Miko, she too has this theme of interconnectedness by attacking with Soga and Futo for a spell, making it feel like you're taking down a clan rather than one person doing wrong as is often the case in this series. All of this leads to an incredible cast, not one carried by strong personalities or cool stories or designs, but one that's strength is bonds, which is an incredibly unique take on the characters in this story.
The gameplay also humbles itself in Ten Desires too, less bullets and easier patterns. That isn’t to say this game is easy or anything, I actually found it surprisingly difficult. This game finds its difficulty not from tough patterns but from punishing mistakes, with one of the lowest amount of extra lives given in the series. But this more punishing system is complemented beautifully with the new “trance” mechanic, making you invincible for a period of time and giving you different sub effects based on the character you chose. This mechanic gives you an incredibly powerful mode that might be unmatched in usefulness in the series, so it balances out the punishing nature of the extra lives in the game. Pattern wise, it’s a pretty average affair, nothing too crazy (Outside of Mamizou but extra bosses always get crazy things). The most interesting thing in this game pattern wise in my opinion is stage patterns, some get ridiculously hard at times (end of stage 4 and stage 5) and a lot of routing is required to learn when to trance for a good amount of bomb pickups. This game has a lot of stage focus, which is fine just something interesting as UFO had a lot of that too, but again, scaled down in this game. The AWFUL continue system used in SA and UFO are finally gone, replaced with the more traditional credit system which is far superior in my opinion. As for shot types, Reimu is your standard fare, small hitbox and good stages. Marisa I believe is underrated, with a very powerful trance, but is hindered by difficult stages. Sanae is nerfed to hell from her glory in UFO, and a ton of shotgunning is required to make her decent. Youmu is here for the first time, introducing a charge character. She's really hit or miss imo, it’s a neat addition but execution of her is extremely difficult and she feels terrible to play without full power. Maybe she’d be better if her hitbox actually did get smaller when charging as said in game but alas ZUN coding prevented it. The gameplay of this game is fun however, with it being as punishing as it is, you end up going on long streaks of fighting through attacks that are very doable and it leads to great back and forths, it feels like the energy of an extra stage the entire game.
Aesthetically, this game is also toned down in most facets from the grand scales of the sunsets over Hokkai and Hell. The one knock I do have on this game is the environments are rather boring, stage 5 being the only one to stand out to me. The music in this game is also equally as subdued but it works in the favor of the game. The more subtle environments lend themselves to the more low key music in the game. The fastest and most exciting song in Ten Desires, Desire Drive, is still rather calm and more whimsical than anything for this series, ESPECIALLY for some of the music put out by the series. Graphically, ZUN art is whatever to make fun of, but bullet clarity is great throughout, which is always a plus.
This game is humble, and I think the series needed it to be honest, ending the 2nd windows generation on an increasingly epic in scale games would eventually make this series a contest to top the last and that's exactly the last thing I think it needs, the series has never been afraid to calm itself, (Look at this game after 11 and 12, 16 after the wackiness that was 15, 9 being a completely different game after 8). All of these examples show ZUNs skill as a designer to adjust his craft. His adjustment led to this great but humble game, this game feels incredibly genuine and was the beer cracked to settle down the 2nd window generation before the craziness of touhou 14-18 was unleashed.
Ten Desires fits into the category of “awkward” of Touhou mainline games. Awkward is a complement however. Coming off the heels of the experimental and incredibly difficult Undefined Fantastic Object and Subterranean Animism, Ten Desires looks to take a step back in bullet density and scale of the former games, even stated as so by ZUN in the omake.txt of this game. To understand this game you the former two games need to be taken into account, SA and UFO were a continuation of the vastly significant increase in story focus that MoF provided. However I think the series got a bit lost in the progression of those two games. I love SA and UFO a ton don’t get me wrong but something feels off about them in the scale of the series, classically described as “the two weird and EXTREMELY hard games in the 2nd Windows era” I think those two entries lost a bit of what made Touhou what it is, losing some intangible sense of identity the series had was lost to the new focus on world building. Every effort in Ten Desires reflects an effort to “humble” the track of the series in a sense, bring it back down to the magic that Touhou 6-8 were, with less scale and less drastic gameplay qualities. These humblings work in its favor though and it becomes a forgotten diamond right in the middle of the series.
The scaling of this game is most apparent in its characters deliberately being focused on. UFO had great characterization on a personal scale, but Ten Desires excels in relationships, as well as getting great personalization too. This game from the offset was made with the idea of being a scaling back of the series and you see that with the first boss, Yuyuko returning from her final boss status from Perfect Cherry Blossom. Immediately this shows that familiarity will be a huge part in this game. Yuyuko returning was such a great move to for the first boss of the game, most first bosses are forgotten in the long run anyways so making the least important boss slot an important character in the past that is relevant to the current plot a decision that gives a lot of bang for your buck storytelling wise. I’ll jump to stage 3 (stage 2 does really feel like where the game starts with the boss being a character that doesn’t play a huge role in the story, still love Kyouko tho <3) where Kogasa from UFO shows up again, playing into the familiarity theme again. The stage 3 boss Yoshika goes down and then you meet her again with her master on the stage 4 boss Seiga, who adds to the familiarity again. You already have fought Yoshika once at this point, so you know her patterns to an extent, this constant reiteration from attacks past like Yuyuko attacking on a scaled down version from PCB, fighting Kogasa one game retired from her home game, fighting Yoshika with Seiga; all of these call back and reused characters and attacks make the characters in this game feel interconnected the best in the series (maybe 18 is vying for that now but we’ll see). This interconnectedness gives a piece of that magic back that was lost in SA and UFO, while those games have good characterization, the characters themselves don’t feel connected, despite having a deeper lore connection than the Ten Desires cast. But the effort put into reiteration and characters interacting in the ways they do in this game makes the characters feel incredibly genuine, especially for a series such as this one. Jumping to Miko, she too has this theme of interconnectedness by attacking with Soga and Futo for a spell, making it feel like you're taking down a clan rather than one person doing wrong as is often the case in this series. All of this leads to an incredible cast, not one carried by strong personalities or cool stories or designs, but one that's strength is bonds, which is an incredibly unique take on the characters in this story.
The gameplay also humbles itself in Ten Desires too, less bullets and easier patterns. That isn’t to say this game is easy or anything, I actually found it surprisingly difficult. This game finds its difficulty not from tough patterns but from punishing mistakes, with one of the lowest amount of extra lives given in the series. But this more punishing system is complemented beautifully with the new “trance” mechanic, making you invincible for a period of time and giving you different sub effects based on the character you chose. This mechanic gives you an incredibly powerful mode that might be unmatched in usefulness in the series, so it balances out the punishing nature of the extra lives in the game. Pattern wise, it’s a pretty average affair, nothing too crazy (Outside of Mamizou but extra bosses always get crazy things). The most interesting thing in this game pattern wise in my opinion is stage patterns, some get ridiculously hard at times (end of stage 4 and stage 5) and a lot of routing is required to learn when to trance for a good amount of bomb pickups. This game has a lot of stage focus, which is fine just something interesting as UFO had a lot of that too, but again, scaled down in this game. The AWFUL continue system used in SA and UFO are finally gone, replaced with the more traditional credit system which is far superior in my opinion. As for shot types, Reimu is your standard fare, small hitbox and good stages. Marisa I believe is underrated, with a very powerful trance, but is hindered by difficult stages. Sanae is nerfed to hell from her glory in UFO, and a ton of shotgunning is required to make her decent. Youmu is here for the first time, introducing a charge character. She's really hit or miss imo, it’s a neat addition but execution of her is extremely difficult and she feels terrible to play without full power. Maybe she’d be better if her hitbox actually did get smaller when charging as said in game but alas ZUN coding prevented it. The gameplay of this game is fun however, with it being as punishing as it is, you end up going on long streaks of fighting through attacks that are very doable and it leads to great back and forths, it feels like the energy of an extra stage the entire game.
Aesthetically, this game is also toned down in most facets from the grand scales of the sunsets over Hokkai and Hell. The one knock I do have on this game is the environments are rather boring, stage 5 being the only one to stand out to me. The music in this game is also equally as subdued but it works in the favor of the game. The more subtle environments lend themselves to the more low key music in the game. The fastest and most exciting song in Ten Desires, Desire Drive, is still rather calm and more whimsical than anything for this series, ESPECIALLY for some of the music put out by the series. Graphically, ZUN art is whatever to make fun of, but bullet clarity is great throughout, which is always a plus.
This game is humble, and I think the series needed it to be honest, ending the 2nd windows generation on an increasingly epic in scale games would eventually make this series a contest to top the last and that's exactly the last thing I think it needs, the series has never been afraid to calm itself, (Look at this game after 11 and 12, 16 after the wackiness that was 15, 9 being a completely different game after 8). All of these examples show ZUNs skill as a designer to adjust his craft. His adjustment led to this great but humble game, this game feels incredibly genuine and was the beer cracked to settle down the 2nd window generation before the craziness of touhou 14-18 was unleashed.