I'm doing this one before 18 even though it came out after because I feel like it and that only happened due to a long delay in its release. Also, it has a few different names and Sunken Fossil World is probably the most official but I like Submerged Hell of Sunken Sorrow better so I'm going to just call it SHOSS. I'm saying it as a word in my head. Shoss.
A lot of people really want ZUN to just have their exact politics, and while I remain dubious about making many assumptions based on the very little writing in Touhou games, this one is about how fossil fuels come from hell and are made from the suffering and greed of human souls, so there's something there probably. Since Shoss is a Twilight Frontier game (the fighting game team) the plot mostly consists of what you'd expect: a chance to have a bunch of different characters interact. This isn't a new fighting game, though, so the case is drawn from a broader base. Mostly it's the 10-12 band, with wild inclusions like playable Captain Murasa. Also, the sprites are smaller than in the fighting games to suit the gameplay but they're still great, and the character portraits are just gorgeous. Maybe the best these girls have ever looked. Really striking, thick linework and cool poses.
But you know the thing is that Shoss isn't actually a fighting game, but it's kinda like it's trying to be one? The story structure is a lot like one of the fighting games. The boss structure is a lot like the fighting games. The controls? A bit like the fighting games! Sometimes it seems like it was meant to be multiplayer, but it's not and never really could be. It is simply an action game composed of boss fights with combo attacks that kind of don't work or make sense, platforming that also kind of doesn't work, and multiple playable characters who engage with different subsets of the same few fights. Not every character is actually playable, but with the last update, most of them are, and every playable character is also a boss. It's just hard to describe succinctly, but it felt like one of the fighting game story modes while also feeling totally different.
Where the comparison falters is the fact that every playable character plays totally differently. Actually I guess it falters where there is literally no multiplayer but if there was, it would be one where everybody is playing by different rules. But for a single player game that's rad as heck! The further you go, the more you start having to deal with the same obstacles with odd movesets and special rules that only apply to one character. Starting up someone new was always a delight for this reason. The difficulty you'll have with different opponents and spell cards will vary a ton as a result, but that's also super cool. It's not a coincidence that the final boss gets longer and more elaborate as you gain access to characters that have an easier time with the earlier parts.
With that all being said, Shoss is just really frustrating at times. Whoever you're using, the gameplay largely revolves around your opponent having super armor until particular moments in her attack pattern. You might try to damage through it or wait for those vulnerable moments depending on the situation, but the combos you're doing never feel particularly designed for the encounters. Even attacking a stunned boss, when you have the most use of those combos, feels kind of unintended. A lot of your basic combos will send the boss flying away, so you'll instead be motivated to do weird juggles a lot of the time. Also, the boss patterns involve tons of bullets and RNG, occasionally spawning attacks at the bottom of the screen. In a shooter where you can move freely none of this is an issue, but in a platformer/beat-em-up kind of thing it's way more annoying. Being successful is really all about understanding some fairly dubious rules of when you have iframes and exploiting that without letting the natural movement of your attacks sending you careening into a hurtbox.
All that said, I beat every story on normal difficulty with a modest number of continues and only a bit of recurring frustration. I love to see a fully wild experimental game in the mainline series and I'll be super happy if they do something else like this again but refined. Shoss lands solidly in "interesting experiment that I'm glad exists" territory with bonus points for Totetsu Yuuma, a shark-toothed sheep girl who uses her giant spork to eat crude oil. I love her.
A lot of people really want ZUN to just have their exact politics, and while I remain dubious about making many assumptions based on the very little writing in Touhou games, this one is about how fossil fuels come from hell and are made from the suffering and greed of human souls, so there's something there probably. Since Shoss is a Twilight Frontier game (the fighting game team) the plot mostly consists of what you'd expect: a chance to have a bunch of different characters interact. This isn't a new fighting game, though, so the case is drawn from a broader base. Mostly it's the 10-12 band, with wild inclusions like playable Captain Murasa. Also, the sprites are smaller than in the fighting games to suit the gameplay but they're still great, and the character portraits are just gorgeous. Maybe the best these girls have ever looked. Really striking, thick linework and cool poses.
But you know the thing is that Shoss isn't actually a fighting game, but it's kinda like it's trying to be one? The story structure is a lot like one of the fighting games. The boss structure is a lot like the fighting games. The controls? A bit like the fighting games! Sometimes it seems like it was meant to be multiplayer, but it's not and never really could be. It is simply an action game composed of boss fights with combo attacks that kind of don't work or make sense, platforming that also kind of doesn't work, and multiple playable characters who engage with different subsets of the same few fights. Not every character is actually playable, but with the last update, most of them are, and every playable character is also a boss. It's just hard to describe succinctly, but it felt like one of the fighting game story modes while also feeling totally different.
Where the comparison falters is the fact that every playable character plays totally differently. Actually I guess it falters where there is literally no multiplayer but if there was, it would be one where everybody is playing by different rules. But for a single player game that's rad as heck! The further you go, the more you start having to deal with the same obstacles with odd movesets and special rules that only apply to one character. Starting up someone new was always a delight for this reason. The difficulty you'll have with different opponents and spell cards will vary a ton as a result, but that's also super cool. It's not a coincidence that the final boss gets longer and more elaborate as you gain access to characters that have an easier time with the earlier parts.
With that all being said, Shoss is just really frustrating at times. Whoever you're using, the gameplay largely revolves around your opponent having super armor until particular moments in her attack pattern. You might try to damage through it or wait for those vulnerable moments depending on the situation, but the combos you're doing never feel particularly designed for the encounters. Even attacking a stunned boss, when you have the most use of those combos, feels kind of unintended. A lot of your basic combos will send the boss flying away, so you'll instead be motivated to do weird juggles a lot of the time. Also, the boss patterns involve tons of bullets and RNG, occasionally spawning attacks at the bottom of the screen. In a shooter where you can move freely none of this is an issue, but in a platformer/beat-em-up kind of thing it's way more annoying. Being successful is really all about understanding some fairly dubious rules of when you have iframes and exploiting that without letting the natural movement of your attacks sending you careening into a hurtbox.
All that said, I beat every story on normal difficulty with a modest number of continues and only a bit of recurring frustration. I love to see a fully wild experimental game in the mainline series and I'll be super happy if they do something else like this again but refined. Shoss lands solidly in "interesting experiment that I'm glad exists" territory with bonus points for Totetsu Yuuma, a shark-toothed sheep girl who uses her giant spork to eat crude oil. I love her.