"charming" platformers usually have an issue with lasting appeal, games that have a lot of charisma at the start usually become bland and generic by the end. YuuYuu Jiteki no Yuukarin is thankfully an exception. I had a stupid grin on my face throughout the vast majority of this game and there is no shortage of charm and polish anywhere, most of the game's visuals and humour can be appreciated even if you aren't a touhou fan but of course there's a lot of good homages for fans of the series too.

Yuukarin game is no joke in difficulty either, mechanically feeling like a mix of Kirby and DKC but it takes much more inspiration from DKC in terms of level design and difficulty. I think this is definitely for the best because Yuukarin game is right up the alley of anyone looking for a platformer that is a solid traditional challenge without falling for the trappings of typical kaizo bullshit, and when it works, it works exceptionally well.

The only issues I had with Yuukarin game is that some levels towards the end are just too damn long for their own good and I can think of at least a couple of levels that would have been better split into two or even three separate levels. The extra checkpoints in the steam version undoubtedly mitigates this issue but some of the levels can still feel exhausting because of how dragged out they are.

The other issue you should be aware of is that unfortunately Yuukarin game only has a machine translation into english which is quite awkward and diminishes some of the aforementioned charm. Fortunately I know at least enough Japanese to get the general gist of much of the dialogue so I could sidestep this problem but for most other people this may be a slight dealbreaker. Hopefully the dev becomes more open to the idea of giving Yuukarin game an actual english translation soon because the game sure as hell deserves one.

Overall, yeah Yuukarin game kinda slaps. Highly recommended to anyone who loves DKC-style traditional platformers and touhou girls with big titties.