Covering (almost) every Touhou game in release order #10 - Undefined Fantastic Object

[Cosmic]

GRAGAGAGAGA I LOVE UFO I LOVE UFO-

As you can tell, I really like this game, and while it's not my absolute favorite in the series, it does come close, so I'm probably just going to spend this entire post gushing about how great it is. Starting with the gameplay, Undefined Fantastic Object finally gets rid of the godawful power bomb system introduced in MoF and returns to having a dedicated bomb gauge, as well as introducing a new UFO system, where certain enemies will drop colored UFOs that fly around on the screen for a while, and can be picked up by touching them. When you pick up a UFO, it's added to your collection at the bottom left corner of the screen, with a maximum of three slots to keep them in, and if you can get three UFOs all in the same color, a giant one will appear at the top of the screen, remaining there for exactly ten seconds. This big UFO will consume any power and point items dropped by enemies, and once it's consumed enough, it'll drop a resource of some kind (a fifth of an extra life if it's red, a bomb if it's green, and points if it's blue), and will also drop the same kind of resource if the player can shoot it down in time.

Alright, here's why this mechanic absolutely slaps and I love it. It mainly comes down to the extra depth it adds to the game, as well as the extremely fast pace it creates; most UFOs change color every few seconds, going from red to blue to green and then back to red, so if a UFO is of the color you want, you need to get to it quickly, incentivizing the player to zoom across the entire screen at all times. Additionally, there's also a nice sense of player freedom in which UFOs you want to go for; I usually just go for the red ones, since I like having the game be extra challenging with a lot of chances to mess up as opposed to being easier but with more punishment for when you do get hit, but if you'd rather stockpile bombs, or go for a high score, you can do that as well. Admittedly, I do think the blue UFOs just giving you points was a missed opportunity, as high score only means anything to a select few players as opposed to lives and bombs which are going to be useful no matter who you are, but I'm not really sure what else they could have been, so it's not a huge issue. Mainline Touhou, for me, is at its most enjoyable when it's encouraging you to move fast, and giving you a lot of opportunities to grab extra lives (but still expecting you to go out of your way for them, as opposed to in some games where they're just a thing that happens) in exchange for extra-challenging bullet hell, and thanks to the UFO system, this game is the absolute peak of that. I think on a pure gameplay level, this is my absolute favorite game in the entire series, even if there is one game in particular that I haven't gotten to yet which just barely ranks higher than it for me overall.

Anyway, moving on from gameplay, the story of the game revolves around the expedition by Murasa, Shou, Nazrin and Ichirin into Makai to free Byakuren Hijiri, a Buddhist nun who was sealed away by humans a thousand years ago for her kindness towards youkai, the previously mentioned four all being youkai she helped at some point; aside from Nazrin, she was just sent by the god Bishamonten to help Shou specifically. Noticing the youkai's strange flying ship in the sky, the player's chosen character, either Reimu, Marisa, or in her first playable appearance, Sanae, decides to go and give it a look, for one reason or another. Some stuff happens, and eventually, the main character ends up freeing Byakuren by themselves, and after this, Byakuren is allowed to return to Gensokyo alongside the youkai who went to save her after all this time, and creates the Myouren Buddhist temple. After the events of the main game, though, Reimu/Marisa/Sanae are still curious about just what those UFO things that seemed to be everywhere were, so they investigate and find that they were actually fragments of a flying vault that were disguised as UFOs by Nue Houjuu, a youkai who was sealed underground but later released thanks to Okuu's actions in Subterranean Animism (loving the continuity between games here), and then decided to get a little silly just for the fun of it and make everyone think the fragments of the flying vault were UFOs.

I personally quite like this story. Having covered each mainline game one by one through this series, I've noticed that this seems to be the point where Touhou stories start to have a little more to them than before, with a few more characters actually getting to do things that are directly relevant to the story in some way; EoSD had 1, Remilia, PCB and IN had 2 each, Yuyuko/Yukari and Eirin/Kaguya, PoFV had 2, Komachi and Eiki, and MoF/SA had 1 each, Kanako and Utsuho. UFO, by comparison, has 4, those being Nazrin (found the jewelled pagoda necessary to free Byakuren), Murasa (captain of the flying ship that sailed into Makai), Shou (brought the jewelled pagoda into Makai) and Nue (disguised pieces of the flying vault as UFOs); you can argue it actually has 5 if you count Byakuren, given that she's the whole reason anything here is even happening and creates the Myouren Temple at the end of the game, but during the main story she doesn't directly do anything by herself, so I didn't include her in the list. Regardless of if you count her or not, my point is that this is the first time more than 2 characters have had a direct role in the events of the game beyond simply helping someone else do stuff, like Sakuya or Reisen in previous games. Despite the game's relatively simple story, this still helps it feel like it has a bit more going on than previous games, a trend that continues to varying extents throughout future games, which I enjoy a lot. It's not particularly exceptional, but it's still on the upper end of Touhou stories for me, something which is definitely helped by its excellent cast of characters.

I'm actually not sure which Touhou game has my favorite cast of characters, but this is definitely one I'd consider if I had to make that choice. Everyone here (except Ichirin) appeals to me on some level; Nazrin is admittedly a little carried by NYN memes for me, but I like her design, Kogasa is funny, Murasa and Shou just generally have really cool designs and I enjoy their vibes a lot, Byakuren is just eh here but I like her a lot in AoCF (I do love how she has a direct reference to one of Shinki's spellcards here though, that was a pleasant surprise when I first fought her), and Nue's design combined with her really just being a silly little gremlin creature who enjoys getting up to mischief makes her my favorite of this game's cast. Admittedly, I do kind of despise Ichirin, but that's more because she doesn't do anything for me personally and I'm annoyed she got the character slot in the more recent trilogy of fighting games instead of literally anyone else from this game, as opposed to it being down to any actually unlikeable traits she has herself, so I won't pretend she's poorly written or at all unlikeable by herself. While there's not a single character here that I'd personally consider a series favorite, or even a top 10, I like nearly everyone here enough that it's one of the most consistent casts in the series for me, and I don't think the fact there's only one single character introduced here that I don't actively enjoy to some extent is something that can be applied to any other game in the series, so credit where credit is due. This game also managed to give Sanae a personality, something which from what I've seen no other game in the series has managed to do, so I can appreciate its character writing for that as well.

Lastly, I want to briefly talk about the game's soundtrack, or more accurately, one song in particular. The whole soundtrack is great, don't get me wrong (Captain Murasa is especially a banger), but there's not much I have to say about most of it... except for Fires of Hokkai. After the extremely chaotic but enjoyable stage 5, and the similarly hectic battle with Shou, stage 6 is comparatively easy, representing a slightly bizarre sense of calm as you finally reach the place where Byakuren has been sealed away for all this time, and Fires of Hokkai does an excellent job at enhancing the vibe stage 6 goes for, so I feel like that one in particular is worth mentioning by itself. Come to think of it, the dynamic between stage 5 and 6 here kind of reminds me of Mystic Square's fifth and sixth stages, which makes me wonder if it was partially an intentional reference to that game or if it's just a coincidence, but given the previously mentioned Shinki spellcard reference, I lean towards thinking it's the former.

Overall, Undefined Fantastic Object is a great and extremely fun game, being by far my favorite of the second Windows era, and it's one of the ones I come back to the most of any game in this series. I honestly can't think of a single thing I don't like about it, which isn't something I can say of most of this series, and I think it's definitely worth playing if you somehow haven't already.

[Juuni]

UFO is my favorite game if we separate from the gameplay and don’t count side games. Its cast is memorable and really cool, with each character being meaningful eventually and having an excellent and interesting group dynamic. Furthermore, the story is simple and really good, being one of the times we actually visit makai. Finally, it has the best overall OST, where there’s really only one song I don’t listen to, and it’s stage 3. The general theme of the music is cohesive and fits each character really well, with no themes feeling out of place and all just making sense. Overall, UFO is amazing lore wise, character wise, and ost wise. Shame I don’t really love the gameplay, which drags it out of the top spot for me.

[Cosmic]

2 hours ago, Juunimeta said:

UFO is my favorite game if we separate from the gameplay and don’t count side games. Its cast is memorable and really cool, with each character being meaningful eventually and having an excellent and interesting group dynamic. Furthermore, the story is simple and really good, being one of the times we actually visit makai. Finally, it has the best overall OST, where there’s really only one song I don’t listen to, and it’s stage 3. The general theme of the music is cohesive and fits each character really well, with no themes feeling out of place and all just making sense. Overall, UFO is amazing lore wise, character wise, and ost wise. Shame I don’t really love the gameplay, which drags it out of the top spot for me.

You're right about the soundtrack, aside from Fires of Hokkai I didn't have much to say about it but it's all consistently great, and I agree with everything else here too. It's a shame you didn't enjoy the gameplay, though, and since it's one of the most fun games in the entire series for me, I'm curious about what exactly didn't click for you with it.

[Juuni]

43 minutes ago, Cosmic said:

I'm curious about what exactly didn't click for you with it.

Well, I haven’t actually played it but I’ve seen a large amount on it. I have played WBaWC, which has a similar mechanic that I didn’t like either. For me, the general difficulty seems to come from more random and sporadic patterns and lasers, which just don’t sit well with me. I will also point out the fact that I am terrible at mainline touhou, with only one 1CC on easy in IN. But in general, it shows the elements that would make me not enjoy the gameplay that much.

[Gri]

Oh, THAT game. People keep saying SA is "so hard" and "merciless", but I can easily say this about UFO. SA was a straight-forward hard challenge. The bosses in UFO are even harder than SA, mostly due to faster bullets and some spells that are tricky AND uses fast bullets (or laser). I think the UFO mechanic was ok, but really implemented poorly. It was a good touch that Zun though of stopping the UFO from changing color when you get near, but they keep moving rather fast (and usually into the upper-half of the screen where enemies can easily kill you) and when you are no longer close, the timer of the UFO to change color doesn't reset, so sometime you just get away for a small moment and the UFO already changed to the "wrong" color (Thankfully, WBaWC fixed these issues). Speaking of "wrong" color, picking a UFO of the "wrong" color is extremely punishing. If you got 2 red, then collect a blue by mistake, you just wasted 3 UFO. The one you collected which should have been a red (that's ok), and the two reds you had are forever lost since they will be replaced with whatever UFO you'll collect after that blue one. In other word, you may lose 2/5 of a life or 1 bomb and a 1/5 for picking the wrong UFO. To make matters worse, picking a wrong UFO can screw your routing for a while. Since UFO always spawn at the same place in every stage, you want to maximize the amount of red UFO (or green, depending on how you play), and collecting the wrong one will require you to improvise, which is quiet hard to do on Hard and Lunatic (on Normal, there's some room to collect some UFO that goes in the upper-half of the screen early since there's less bullets).

Another thing about that game: power. Yes, power-bombs consumed power, but the amount of power item you got from enemies and clearing bosses spell were enough to keep you in good shape (unless you bomb spam). In UFO, boss spell now drop a ridiculously low amount of power (around 0.15-0.2) compared to every other game before it (0.5-0.75. enough to give you a power level after two spell). This make dying on bosses way more punishing than before, especially if you die twice (lowest power level this time is 1.00, so dropping to 2.00 is still rather weak). And yeah, when you die, you drop a ridiculous 0.07-0.1 power. I believe Zun just didn't bother to change the amount of power item dropped, which create this huge issue where power is very hard to come by. Before, each power item gave you 0.05 (collect 20 for a power level), while in UFO, thank to the UFO mechanic that requires a lot of items, each power item only gives you 0.01 (collect 100 for a power level).

Shot-types are more classic this time, which is a bit of a let down after SA (especially the lack of special ability associated to each shot type). Most of them are still good, except that god-awful MarisaB. It is supposed to be a "wide" shot type, which should make stage easy, but the shot is so weak that enemies can still shot a lot of bullet before dying. What's the point of having a wide shot that can't take care of many small enemies and can't do much damage on bosses? And don't get me started on the gimmick of that shot: "Can shot from behind". Yeah, in a game where enemies never spawn on the lower-side of the screen, where the enemies prevent you from going over half of the screen (except some fast macro dodge in stage 5), it is definitely useless. And the "shot" from behind are just 2 pitiful ray of bullet that shots diagonally, compared to the 4 ray you have in the front. Fun fact: this is the only shot type where I had trouble shotting down the UFO mini-boss thank to it's weak power.. Cherry on top: a weak bomb that clear lot of bullets, but doesn't last long and has very misleading IFrames (you are vulnerable before the bomb animation ends) MarisaB took me over 2 week on Hard (and that was after clearing the game with literally every other shot type).

This is really a shame, because the game is very good, and could have been one of the best . Except for Stage 2 (and a little Stage 4 boss), each boss are very fun and have their own gimmick to make them stand out. Byakuren is one of the best final boss in the series (along with Yuyuko and Okuu). Like Cosmic mentioned: UFO give you the choice on which resource to collect, and also give you the possibility to actively get more resource by being better. I think on that front though, DDC did a much better job, since there's a limit on how much UFO are dropped in each stage, while in DDC, you can increase the number of resource by doing more POC. (you could argue that there's also a limit of item dropped, but that almost like saying the stage only last 2 minutes therefore you can't collect resource forever). In UFO, after memorizing the most optimal route, there's little you can do to get more lives, and if the number of lives I can get are limited, I'd prefer to have a more straight-forward system like SA or scoring. Scoring to get lives is good since the player can choose how to get those points, but the problem is that there's either a low number of lives you can get (I believe in EoSD you could only get 4), or that the threshold keeps being multiplied by 2, making it almost impossible to get another lives. This makes scoring to get resource pointless after a while.

I know there's a mod out there to change how UFO behave. It's not the same as WBaWC, but some ideas from there are transferred. I haven't play it because I want to play vanilla versions first (except the continue patch, but it doesn't invalidate any 1CC am I doing, so it's fine). 

I'll say this game is fun when playing casually on Normal, but anything higher than that requires either some serious skill, otherwise you'll be bashing your head on that merciless game for a while.

(I'll skip talking about story and soundtrack here)

 

5 hours ago, Juunimeta said:

I have played WBaWC, which has a similar mechanic that I didn’t like either

WBaWC is quite different. Yes you collect "UFO", but the game is much more forgiving if you collect the "wrong" color. When you do, you still get something, and resource are not related to how many spirit of the same color you can collect, so gaining lives is easier, if not limited.

[Cosmic]

14 hours ago, Gri said:

Oh, THAT game. People keep saying SA is "so hard" and "merciless", but I can easily say this about UFO. SA was a straight-forward hard challenge.

I think this is an interesting comparison. To me, SA and UFO have always seemed similarly difficult, but for different reasons; SA is simply a difficult and punishing bullet hell, while UFO is at a similar level of raw difficulty in its patterns, but exchange for a more forgiving bomb system, expects the player to master its very specific mechanics and to use them to their full advantage. While I personally love UFO, I can recognize that your enjoyment of the game is largely dependant on if you like its core mechanic or not, so I can see why someone looking for a "difficult Touhou game" would prefer SA. I think both types of challenge have their merits, though.

 

14 hours ago, Gri said:

And yeah, when you die, you drop a ridiculous 0.07-0.1 power.

Oh yeah this is literally just bad, I am the world's biggest UFO gameplay simp but I won't even attempt to defend this. It ends up working like this in a few other games after UFO too, and I hate it every time it's done.

 

14 hours ago, Gri said:

Shot-types are more classic this time, which is a bit of a let down after SA (especially the lack of special ability associated to each shot type).

This is also true, I loved how creative SA was with its shot types and it's a shame we haven't gotten anything like it since.

 

14 hours ago, Gri said:

In UFO, after memorizing the most optimal route, there's little you can do to get more lives, and if the number of lives I can get are limited, I'd prefer to have a more straight-forward system like SA or scoring.

I can see where you're coming from, but I still think the UFO system works well in this game for how it incentivizes the player to move quickly. I do agree that SA's system of extra lives was great, though, even if it would have been nice if capturing spellcards got you more than just a fifth of a life. It is kind of a shame that they never brought the SA extra life system back, aside from the Dragon Pipe card in UM, which was a really nice addition.

[Gri]

Something I forgot to add:

I think if the game would allow you to hold 3 UFO in your inventory, rather than just 2, it would have been much more forgiving. If you collect two red , then mistakenly collect a blue, you would still be able to collect a red to replace the blue you have collected. So rather than wasting 3 UFO, you would just waste 1. And if the player really wanted to collect blues after getting two reds, then the reds would just get replaced by blues as the player collect them.
 

4 hours ago, Cosmic said:

I think this is an interesting comparison. To me, SA and UFO have always seemed similarly difficult, but for different reasons; SA is simply a difficult and punishing bullet hell, while UFO is at a similar level of raw difficulty in its patterns, but exchange for a more forgiving bomb system, expects the player to master its very specific mechanics and to use them to their full advantage. While I personally love UFO, I can recognize that your enjoyment of the game is largely dependant on if you like its core mechanic or not, so I can see why someone looking for a "difficult Touhou game" would prefer SA. I think both types of challenge have their merits, though.

Yeah, I know it sounds like I complained a lot about UFO, but I like both games. It really boils down to me preferring a more simple-yet-hard-but-still-forgiving game, rather than a more-complicated-and-unforgiving-hard-game. It is actually a good thing that some games feels different than the rest. It helps keep things fresh, and more people may find one that they like. If all games would be EoSD#123, the series would have died a long time ago.
 

4 hours ago, Cosmic said:

I can see where you're coming from, but I still think the UFO system works well in this game for how it incentivizes the player to move quickly. I do agree that SA's system of extra lives was great, though, even if it would have been nice if capturing spellcards got you more than just a fifth of a life. It is kind of a shame that they never brought the SA extra life system back, aside from the Dragon Pipe card in UM, which was a really nice addition.

SA lives system is ok. Like you said, I think it would have been nice if you got more live fragment depending on how good you do. Not getting hit (including Timeout) = 1 fragment, Capture = 2 fragments. But there's still the fact that when you lose a life, you also lose the opportunity get life fragments. This is why I think score-lives are the best: you can choose to make points with POC, Capture or Grazing (or the game specific gimmick in some cases). If the player is bad at doing one thing, they can compensate by being better in other areas. One thing I like of score-lives and SA system is the fact that you can get lives during a boss, so if you go in with just 1 lives, there's still hope you can gather another live and survive the fight (it feels less hopeless).

UM brings back a lot of thing, including bad ones like UFO's low power (which was included probably to justify Koishi's card that makes losing power less punishing). But that's a topic for another day.

Edited June 3, 2023 by Gri

[Flame Sniper]

I agree with all the Gameplay Shortcomings. UFO is even more punishing when you make mistakes (that the Ufos encourage you to do). In SA you don't need to take risks, just play well. take this situation:

You are chasing the last Red Ufo to get an extra life, but it changed color at the last moment, and you got caught by a bullet that camouflaged with the background. Now, you lost 1Power, 1Life, Ufo lineup, and it was before Shou's boss battle. Did i mention you were playing as Reimu Homing (the character with likely the less amount of damage?).
That makes me want to throw this game out the window, more than SA (that it's fair but really hard) even if every other aspect is among the BEST of the series. I totally agree with Juunimeta here.

The Ufos are a good mechanic, but ZUN did a bad job at implementing them this time. Look at WBaWC, where it was so well done, the game is essentially the easiest if you know how to gather them.

Character wise, i think it has one of (if not) the best group of characters. ZUN fixed the issues with Touhou Lore being hidden away in text files not included with the game. Some things i like about the characters:

Byakuren has a point, she proved that if treated with respect, Youkai are great. I love the conflict it solves in Reimu, as she is in a moral corner to either go all out on Youkai Hunting to protect humans or let them run loose and threaten Gensokyo's balance. Byakuren can be the Youkai Protector and Reimu the Human Protector.

Nazrin (Stage 1 Boss!) is the catalyst to the story, as Shou asked her to employ her Radiesthesia to locate both the missing pieces of the floating vault and the Bishamonten Pagoda. The protagonists also unwillingly help out the cause by taking Nazrin's job to collect the "treasure". I really like that Nazrin used the Pagoda without permission, it gives her a lot of personality.

Kogasa is arguably the less memorable character, but she actually plays a role in the story. She is the golden example that "shot first, ask later" is a bad business model for the humans, as she (with Sekibanki) are among the least hostile Youkai, only needing to scare you to gather energy. Kogasa serves as the example that Byakuren is right with all the "Youkai forgiveness" (on other media, you can see Kogasa hang out with in Byakuren's temple).

I enjoy Nue just pranking everybody. She even makes cameos as the "Glowing Ball" (remember, she can change how you perceive her appearance).


Music wise, it has a great OST full of what now we can consider classics. My favorite tracks are Interdimentional Voyage of a Ghostly Passenger Ship (one of the few instances of the ZUNBass), Captain Murasa, Rural Makai City Esoteria and things like The Tiger-Patterned Bishamonten being among the most intimidating and epic tracks in all of Touhou.
Fire of Hokkai is pretty meh, but it really shows that Byakuren awakened with the heart beat as a drum

Extra things:

Byakuren's spell card, Great Magic "Devil's Recitation" and the fairies in Makai make pretty clear references to Shinki. Makai is depicted as a desolate place compared to Mystic Square.
It further solidifies my head-canon "Alice got the Grimoire out of control" theory. As you see a ruined Makai, with few traces that something once was there, probably the result of the destruction caused by the events in Mystic Square and the Extra Stage (where i think Alice in her egoism pushed the Grimoire too hard and unleashed some world breaking dangers). Reimu also remembers being in Makai, but she doesn't remember Alice or the other inhabitants of Makai, interesting.

At this point i should structure the theory better and make a post in here.

Another detail i enjoy is that the Bad endings are really BAD. You get stuck in Hokkai with no apparent way to get out, it really pushes you to complete the game.

There also exists a Touhou virus/malware someone made called Rensenware (joking with the japanese title of UFO), where Murasa uses her ghostly abilities to encrypt your drive, challenging you to score 0.2 BILLION in LUNATIC to decrypt the drive.
The funniest thing is that if the YouTube comments of the video are right, the author of the virus got himself and a lot of people infected and had to program a decryption tool to solve the incident.

 

[Cosmic]

11 hours ago, Gri said:

Yeah, I know it sounds like I complained a lot about UFO, but I like both games. It really boils down to me preferring a more simple-yet-hard-but-still-forgiving game, rather than a more-complicated-and-unforgiving-hard-game. It is actually a good thing that some games feels different than the rest. It helps keep things fresh, and more people may find one that they like. If all games would be EoSD#123, the series would have died a long time ago.

This is true, regardless of how you feel about UFO in practice (and it seems like I'm actually in the minority with liking how it plays), it at the very least tried something new, which is commendable.

 

11 hours ago, Gri said:

SA lives system is ok. Like you said, I think it would have been nice if you got more live fragment depending on how good you do. Not getting hit (including Timeout) = 1 fragment, Capture = 2 fragments. But there's still the fact that when you lose a life, you also lose the opportunity get life fragments. This is why I think score-lives are the best: you can choose to make points with POC, Capture or Grazing (or the game specific gimmick in some cases). If the player is bad at doing one thing, they can compensate by being better in other areas. One thing I like of score-lives and SA system is the fact that you can get lives during a boss, so if you go in with just 1 lives, there's still hope you can gather another live and survive the fight (it feels less hopeless).

This is fair, I personally like the SA system quite a bit and find score lives a little boring but I can see the appeal of both. Personally, I don't usually care that much about how I'm going about getting extra lives (UFO and DDC have my favorite takes on it, though), as for me it's more about how often I'm getting them in relation to the game's difficulty. Something like UFO, where you're constantly gaining and losing lives, is much more fun to me than, say, Ten Desires, where the actual bullet patterns are relatively easy, but extra lives are made more scarce.

12 hours ago, Gri said:

UM brings back a lot of thing, including bad ones like UFO's low power (which was included probably to justify Koishi's card that makes losing power less punishing). But that's a topic for another day.

True, there's a lot I'd like to say about UM but I'll get to say all of it eventually once I get to actually covering that game in one of these posts, so I don't feel particularly inclined to do it now.

10 hours ago, Pepi said:

The Ufos are a good mechanic, but ZUN did a bad job at implementing them this time. Look at WBaWC, where it was so well done, the game is essentially the easiest if you know how to gather them.

Personally I disagree, I actually like how difficult they are to play around in this game. The way WBaWC handled it was also great, don't get me wrong, but I do very slightly prefer UFO's use of the mechanic for how it demands a bit more of the player than that game. I can absolutely see how someone wouldn't like the way UFOs work in this game, but I think outright saying ZUN did a "bad job" implementing them is a bit much.