So I've known about the Touhou Project series for years now, but I finally decided to actually give those games a shot, just to say that I have.
The thing is though, I don't like shoot-em-ups. I think they're too difficult, and kinda boring to boot. Gradius, R-Type, you name it, I don't like it. (I kinda enjoy Parodius, but more so for the theme.) And one look at a Touhou Project game and it's obvious that it's going to be one of those crazy-hard games. But like I said, I wanted to give them a try just to be able to say that I gave them a try.
And what I found was a shoot-em-up series which is both EASY and FUN!
If you take a quick look up online for Touhou Project, you'll see screenshots where the entire screen is filled with projectiles. That's why they're called bullet-hell games. But what you don't see is that these projectiles are moving very slowly, and you have the tiniest hitbox, making it very easy to avoid all of the projectiles.
The best way to describe it is, do you know those mazes you find at the back of a cereal box? It's like drawing a line through one of those, without touching a wall. It's not exactly hard.
But it's also just so fun!
Well, firstly there's the music, and the fact that you're constantly reading the entire screen and how to thread the needle so to speak. But it's also kept simple, without overloading the game with too many mechanics. And most importantly, if you get hit, the action doesn't pause for a second. No restarts from checkpoints or anything. It just keeps going until you run out of lives. And even then you can use a continue, and that's no different from losing a life although you probably won't get the best ending if you do.
My favourite entries so far are 3 and 9, primarily because of the unique splitscreen VS thing they've got going on. I mean, I finished them both with ease, and I've gotten pretty far into them on the Lunatic difficulty (although I obviously couldn't finish them on that difficulty).
Unfortunately, as is usually the case with me, my favourite games in the series are the ones that everyone else hates. Just like it was with FNAF world. Which is a shame.
TL;DR
If you hate shoot-em-ups, then play the Touhou games, because they redeem the genre.
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The thing is though, I don't like shoot-em-ups. I think they're too difficult, and kinda boring to boot. Gradius, R-Type, you name it, I don't like it. (I kinda enjoy Parodius, but more so for the theme.) And one look at a Touhou Project game and it's obvious that it's going to be one of those crazy-hard games. But like I said, I wanted to give them a try just to be able to say that I gave them a try.
And what I found was a shoot-em-up series which is both EASY and FUN!
If you take a quick look up online for Touhou Project, you'll see screenshots where the entire screen is filled with projectiles. That's why they're called bullet-hell games. But what you don't see is that these projectiles are moving very slowly, and you have the tiniest hitbox, making it very easy to avoid all of the projectiles.
The best way to describe it is, do you know those mazes you find at the back of a cereal box? It's like drawing a line through one of those, without touching a wall. It's not exactly hard.
But it's also just so fun!
Well, firstly there's the music, and the fact that you're constantly reading the entire screen and how to thread the needle so to speak. But it's also kept simple, without overloading the game with too many mechanics. And most importantly, if you get hit, the action doesn't pause for a second. No restarts from checkpoints or anything. It just keeps going until you run out of lives. And even then you can use a continue, and that's no different from losing a life although you probably won't get the best ending if you do.
My favourite entries so far are 3 and 9, primarily because of the unique splitscreen VS thing they've got going on. I mean, I finished them both with ease, and I've gotten pretty far into them on the Lunatic difficulty (although I obviously couldn't finish them on that difficulty).
Unfortunately, as is usually the case with me, my favourite games in the series are the ones that everyone else hates. Just like it was with FNAF world. Which is a shame.
TL;DR
If you hate shoot-em-ups, then play the Touhou games, because they redeem the genre.