Covering (almost) every Touhou game in release order #9 - Subterranean Animism

[Cosmic]

Next on the list is Subterranean Animism, which was a weird one for me to cover, because at first, I didn't really have a whole lot to say about it. The characters are all decently likeable to some extent, although Yuugi and Okuu are the only ones that really stand out to me (even if I can appreciate the amount of depth ZUN gave Parsee for a stage 2 boss), the soundtrack is consistent bangers all around (Last Remote my beloved), the story is perfectly serviceable (although the fact that it's a direct continuation from Mountain of Faith is a really nice touch), and it's just a generally pretty solid game that I enjoy a lot. But, there are two things I think are especially worth noting about it, so I've decided to break away from the usual format of these posts to just talk about those aspects in particular.

First of all, this game has my favorite implementation of shot types in the entire series. Like the previous game, Reimu and Marisa are the only playable characters, and each has three shot types, but each shot takes on the form of a support character who's helping you out from a distance (Yukari/Suika/Aya for Reimu, and Patchouli/Alice/Nitori for Marisa), and can see everything that you see as well as being able to talk with you and the boss, with this being possible in-universe due to varying different things depending on the character but usually boiling down to Yukari getting up to some shenanigans behind the scenes. I love this for a variety of reasons, but my main one is really just that it's a fun excuse to bring back previous characters and allow them to be actually relevant to the story in ways that they wouldn't normally have any reason to be (hooray for Patchouli getting to do stuff despite never going outside), and as someone who's mostly here because of the large cast of characters, it's just great getting to see them all interact. The two pairings that stood out to me the most in this regard were Reimu/Aya, more just for the fact that Aya is my favorite character in the series than anything, and Marisa/Alice, being a nice evolution of their Imperishable Night dynamic and having them be a little more on the same page than before, while still retaining the element of Alice trying to be rational and Marisa wanting to just go full unga mode that makes them so enjoyable as a pair to me. All of the support characters are written excellently, though, and it's by far my favorite aspect of this game.

Additionally, the shot types themselves all work in really weird and unique ways. Suika and Yukari's shot types are fairly standard, being mostly just Reimu's usual homing shot and forward shot respectively, but even they have their own added gimmicks, with Suika being able to autocollect every item on the screen by fully releasing all buttons, and Yukari being able to wrap around to the other side of the screen if you're at the edge. The other shot types, though, are a bit more strange; Reimu's third support character, Aya, has a shot that aims in the opposite direction to the one you just moved in (for example, aiming directly forwards if you move back), being fixed to aiming in one direction while focus is held, and if she stops shooting, she can move extremely quickly. Despite this being seen as the hardest Reimu shot to use, it's the one I used when I first played the game because Aya + I like fast movement in any game genre, so it's the one I'm most used to, and partially as a result of this, my favorite.

Now, for Marisa's shot types, all of which are a bit strange to some extent. Nitori's is probably the simplest, being Marisa's slow magic missile shot type she has in most games, but it also has a weird quirk where instead of just using a bomb, pressing X instead creates a camouflage shield around Marisa; if she gets hit while it's out, it clears out nearby bullets and she loses it without losing a life, but if she can last for long enough with it out, she gets the power she spent to use it back. Alice's shot type also has a fun way of utilizing bombs, where instead of the maximum amount of power being 4 like every other shot, it's 8, with each added level of power adding another doll to your side that fires a consistent laser beam, and since this game uses the power bomb system established in Mountain of Faith, each bomb is contextualised as you sending out one of the dolls to briefly fire an extra powerful beam and clear out nearby bullets for a few seconds before it disappears, which I think is a fun little extra touch. The dolls also do this weird thing where the unfocused shot is the one that fully focuses your power forwards, while the focused shot type is the one with the wide spread, which feels really weird, but I haven't played using this shot type enough to know if I like it or not.

Meanwhile, Patchouli has possibly the strangest shot type in the game, or any other mainline bullet hell, for that matter. If you press shift and Z at the same time, you can cycle through shooting with the Fire, Water, Wood, Metal and Earth elements, each one shooting in a different direction (fire is directly forward, water is a wide spread, wood shoots diagonally left and right, metal shoots directly left and right, and earth shoots behind you). This is actually really fun in my opinion, and it's by far my favorite of Marisa's shot types, even if Metal and Earth are, from what I've played, largely useless outside of specifically Parsee's "Grandpa Hanasaka, Jealousy of the Kind and Lovely" spellcard, which is also by far my least favorite spellcard in the series unless I'm using either the Patchouli or Aya shot types. It's far from the hardest, but it's definitely the one that annoys me the most, and I can't stand having to put up with it, so Patchouli giving me a way to largely get around the thing that makes it so annoying to deal with is appreciated. That aside, it is just a generally really fun shot type to use, and it can be fun to experiment with which elements are best used in which situations.

However, it does also bring me onto one thing I like a lot less about this game, that being the power bomb system, as well as just how bombs work in this game in general. Like in Mountain of Faith, instead of having a dedicated meter for bombs, each bomb use consumes a full level of power, but unlike Mountain of Faith, this game is exceptionally difficult. While I'd argue multiple harder games have been released in the series since, at the time, this was by far the hardest game in the series, so having bomb use heavily impact your ability to deal damage is much more of an issue here than in MoF. Additionally, a lot of the bombs here are just... kinda bad? Nitori's is really good, and probably the only one in the series that actively benefits from the power bomb system, becoming a much more interesting risk/reward system of putting up the camouflage for better defence but losing some damage in the process as opposed to just having it on 24/7 like you would if it existed anywhere else in the series, but the rest are just... eh.

Alice's is alright, it's not nearly as good as most bombs in the series but I think it's justified by the fact that you get twice the bomb capacity as any other shot type with her, and Yukari and Aya's are decently useful screen-clearing tools, but my god, Suika and Patchouli's have to be the worst bombs in the series. They both clear out an incredibly small radius around the player, and only last a couple seconds, meaning that it's not uncommon to end up using two on a single spellcard, halving your ability to deal damage in the process. Alice also occasionally ends up using two, but at least there it's made more tolerable by her higher capacity and ability to actually damage bosses with her bombs, these two just have no excuse, and more often than not, using a bomb as Suika or Patchouli can actually be detrimental to your success, and it's best to just outright avoid using bombs entirely with them. It feels like ZUN saw that bomb spam was an issue in the older games, so he ended up overcorrecting way too hard and this was the end result, I don't like it at all.

So, those are my thoughts on Subterranean Animism. I'm aware this post was a bit different to the usual formula I've established by now, but even though I do like it quite a bit, I really just don't have much to say about the rest of this game, so instead I wanted to focus in on just the bits that really stood out to me, for one reason or another.

[Gri]

Ah, SA, my favorite along with PCB.

The shot-types are definitely a good part of that game. They take some time to getting used to, but they are great once you master them (at full power, Alice and Patchouli can make some stage a walk in the park). While the game is harder than other Touhou, collecting extra lives in this one is extremely easy and consistent. You don't have to do anything specific: just survive boss attacks without getting hit (which is already what you need to do). This make the challenge is this game hard, but straight forward, unlike game like UFO or DDC where you need to both collect resource and avoid getting hit (and these goals sometime conflict with each other. In some case, using a bomb would help you collect resource, but this also means you have one less bomb to survive tough parts)

I agree with your bombs review: Yukari+Nitori are great (long duration + screen clear), Aya+Alice good, Suika and Patchouli bad. I'll only add that the worse is Patchouli, since at least Suika returns some bullets to the enemies (even if it is unreliable). My trick for Suika and Patchouli is to use the bomb as close as possible to the boss. That way, they deal good damage (especially Patchouli), but it only work if the attack allow you to get close, or if you want to skip a specific attack and place yourself next to the boss before the bullets spawn.

Alice shot is what I like to call a "Double-Focus" shot-type. To shot the "focused" shot, you need to first move around in focus mode, then once in place, release the focus and stop moving. You need to constantly press and release Focus, rather than just holding it. There's not many shots like that. The only other I can think of is Youmu+Yuyuko in IN, and Yuyuko wide-shot dealt decent damage, so not using Youmu more powerfull shot wasn't a problem.

Regarding Power-Bomb, I agree that Zun might have overcorrected it in SA. There's no longer a "free" power level like in MoF, and there's some section in SA where enemies are not dropping power items (like after stage 4 intro) making Power harder to get back. I think either keeping the "free" level or keeping a amount of power items similar to MoF would have been ok, but decreasing both just makes using multiple bombs too punishing (using just one is fine). Thankfully, most shot-type options are weak, so losing power isn't a big deal unless you are playing Alice or Patchouli. And with Alice, you can abuse the fact that the game drops a "F" item on your last live. With 8 bombs, there's a good chance you'll have collected an extra live before using up all your bombs.

[Flame Sniper]

I don't have a lot to say about this game, the difficulty is just too much for me to have fun at the moment with the game. Just recently i got a chance to finish the games with continues thanks to a thcrap mod that restores the old continue system.
I probably approached the game wrong, as i counted 10 continues to beat the game. I have a mental block with this game, so I'm keeping it brief.


The atmosphere of the game is wonderful, you get a constant sense of danger thanks to the combination of the music and stage design. It's brilliant to have Lullaby of Deserted Hell on stage 5 while the background is literally on fire as you get closer to the living reactor Utsuho, only being stopped by the cat that was following you since Stage 4, only to reveal she can take a human form with a BODY CART and Orin absolutely carried me in the cart to some hellish fire, lol.

Honestly, i feel this game is being let down due to its mechanics. If it used either Point Device like 15 or restored the old continue+power system... One can dream.

The story is among the best and the idea to have partners gives the dialogs a lot more depth. I played Reimu+Yukari and Marisa+Alice. I didn't like Yukari here as she felt like a tutorial constantly explaining what's going on. But Alice like always complements Marisa's dialogs, behaving more like friends who tease each other and less like Yukari trying to act as Reimu's Mom.

[Cosmic]

7 hours ago, Pepi said:

The story is among the best and the idea to have partners gives the dialogs a lot more depth. I played Reimu+Yukari and Marisa+Alice. I didn't like Yukari here as she felt like a tutorial constantly explaining what's going on. But Alice like always complements Marisa's dialogs, behaving more like friends who tease each other and less like Yukari trying to act as Reimu's Mom.

I haven't played as Reimu/Yukari that much, so I can't comment on the quality of the writing there, but I agree that the Marisa/Alice writing is great, I love their dynamic. Especially the part in stage 2 where Alice is trying to explain to Marisa that caves don't have floors like video game dungeons (how do they know what a video game dungeon is lmao) and Parsee just appears out of nowhere and goes "you are now on floor B666", it's great.

[Gri]

22 hours ago, Pepi said:

I don't have a lot to say about this game, the difficulty is just too much for me to have fun at the moment with the game. Just recently i got a chance to finish the games with continues thanks to a thcrap mod that restores the old continue system.
I probably approached the game wrong, as i counted 10 continues to beat the game. I have a mental block with this game, so I'm keeping it brief

Yep, 10 continues hurts a bit. My worse run was UFO on Hard with 11-12 continues (in a month and a half, I cleared all shot types, including the awful Marisa B). Here's are a few tips for SA:
 

1. If you haven't done so already, reduce the difficulty to Easy (pretty sure it gives you the good ending if you 1CC). That difficulty will allow you to have an easier time learning the various boss spells. When increasing the difficulty, some spell can be dodge using the exact same trick, except that there's a bit less space to dodge, or more bullets just to "show-off".
2. For shot-types, use either Reimu-Yukari or Marisa-Nitori. Both are easy to use (only 2 spell you need to watch out with Nitori's slow missile). Reimu can trivialize half of stage 6 with her warp ability (and some rare boss attacks), while Marisa's shield can protect you while you try to dodge the bosses spell, making dodging "stress-free". Marisa also gets an easier stage 4 boss.
3. Keep doing runs until you get to about 2-3 continues. At first, you'll improve fast, then you'll improve slowly until you get 1CC (In my UFO run, I had gone from using 11 continues, to 9, to 6, to 5, to 3, to 2, 1, 1 but only needed 1 extra life, then 0) 
4. If you don't have it, install thprac. This is a tool that replace the practice mode of any Touhou game with an actually good practice mode that allow you to practice every stage segments, boss attacks and boss spells with the amount of resources you want (from 1 to 9 lives, from 0 to max power). Once you get to 2-3 continues and you can't seem to beat certain parts of the game, use thprac to practice it. Speaking of practice mode, It is very disappointing that Zun never improved the practice mode in future games after TD. While most boss have simple non-spell attack, almost every stage 5 and stage 6 bosses have non-spells that are just as hard, if not harder, than spells, so practicing these would have been nice (being allowed to only practice spells just doesn't make sense).
5. Try to finish the runs you started, unless you just feel like you can't focused or have a "bad touhou day" (this happens sometime. When this happen, don't take the end result of your run too seriously).
6. To avoid getting sick of the game, try playing 1 game a day. This is just enough to not get rusty, and not too much that you burn yourself out.
7. Don't give up. With each game, you are getting closer to 1CC. Took me about a week (7 games) on normal to get my first 1CC. Other 1CC took me less attempt, as I knew the boss pattern (stage do require adjustment since each shot-types behave pretty differently).