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tbh Lost Word just an FGO for Touhou, but sightly worse, creating alternative character, make some "boring" gameplay, and somehow forced player to use real money for win the battle. But, there's a difference between Adaptacion franchise gacha game, and Normal gacha game: Lost Word must keep their franchise known as Touhou, Nextninja cannot make an OC character because it would make Touhou lore break (Except ZUN decide to adding some Characters based on Lost Word on his manga/game). So they decide to make an alternative character, even they alternative story doesn't related to real Touhou game, they still need to keep touhou vibe alive. Imagine if all Touhou characters already relased in Lost Word, what should they do next? making more story event exiting? i doubt one exiting event story can bring players an hype Or creating a new gacha system called Equipment to increase maks stats? just like other gacha game? (Guardian Tales) it only make the game looks more greedy. Gacha game like LW is not just an Fangame, they need to be more creative so the game will last longer, you dont want this game ended like Touhou Cannonball right? that had been shut down on Sep 2020 They need to still alive using Touhou Franchise, when you click gacha banner, you want all those roll currency that you been keep months worth to spend right? you expect an new or freshy character every 2 weeks right? imagine LW never relase alternative character, and their done relase every character on Touhou today, what if you already have all of them year later, you dont want to roll anymore right? you only roll and expect on Dupe, because it can increase stats sightly. then you get bored and decide to sell the account an Normal gacha game (Arknights, Priconne, GBF (that's a name of the game that you just found on discord), kancolle, etc), they all freely to setup their franchise, lore, characters, new gacha mechanism as they want. They can create some new characters every 2 weeks, no matter it's Alternative version or not. They also can make an new lore for the new charaters freely, because it's their own franchise. Even if you already collect all the characters on game, you still need push foward to collecting gacha currency for upcoming characters, because that's what Game Developers do, making their player still play the game by keeping them an new Update, such as new characters Normal gacha game also advertise their game more efficieny, for example making an "name game" Cafe Theme in Akihabara, big banner on Videotorn. Lost Word probaly can't do that, even if they so, it ended up promoting Touhou, not Lost Word (said by the some touhou fans) for conclusion, Lost Word can't be compared by an normal Gacha game since it's Adaptation game based on Touhou. They still need to keep the Touhou assest on their game, and have an Limit Choise to keep the touhou lore stable

Currently, the two big Touhou fan-games going with the gacha formula are Danmaku Kagura (a rhythm game with gacha elements) and Touhou Lost Word. Since I do not know very much about the former, I will focus on the latter. Feel free to add your opinions or whatever you want to share about DanKagu. This thread comes from the point of view of a person who never touched a gacha game before Lost Word, and so am not very used with many of the ethics of gacha games. So yeah, there is this one thing going. Due to not personally playing DanKagu, I will not be able to say much about it, so this will predominately focus on Lost Word. Also, it will more than likely turn into a long rant about how the character system works, so there’s that too. Since the last LW thread seems to be from June 2021, it might work well as an update too, now that we are in March 2022, and almost 1 year in since the Global version was released. I am nothing more than a casual player, who does not intend to spend any money in this and just wants to collect a few characters I am interested in (currently got 6 out of the 10 from my list of favorites). Touhou as a series is known for having a large cast (over 140 characters). Until now, Lost Word has added a large part of them, the JP version lacking only the TH17.5 and 18 characters, as well 1-2 other characters here and there. In this situation, it seems like the creators have gone the following route(s) in order to not fully exhaust the cast: - create alt versions that fit with the story told by the game - in a way, they make sense, I guess, since the game revolves around travelling in various alternate universes of Gensokyo (and the Moon, going the Hifuu story-line) - create character alts in the form of chibi-fied characters - until now, we have chibi versions of Yuyuko, Yukari and soon Junko. Yuyuko has been fine, given the fact they gave an explanation on why that version of her ended up chibi-fied, but the other two apparently came to be only because Yuyuko had success in sales and tried to capitalize on that - release of "classic" reskin version of the important characters - the name says it all. Normally, the versions of the "normal" characters you can get are design-wise a sort of a blend between all their iterations in official materials. However, these reskins come to cover a specific game version of the character (like MoF Kanako, PoFV Aya (with MoF spellcards), EoSD Reimu, Marisa and Sakuya, MoF Nitori, UFO Byakuren and so on). The biggest problem with this kind of alts is that many of them seem to be a lazy attempt at grabbing some more money, instead of buffing characters that actually need the buffs. Developer A: "Kanako and Byakuren are very weak in their "vanilla/normal" form. Bottom tier even. Should we improve them like we did with Meiling?" Developer B: "Nah, let them be. Better release some reskins of them that solve the problems, and totally not induce power-creep" My problem is not that these "classic" characters exist. My biggest gripe is that they decided going for them as individual units instead of having them as skins. And skins in the game are already useless, nothing more than just for "waifu looks cute in new clothes". I think it would have made getting a new costume for your character more interesting. It is also impressive how quick they managed to exhaust such a large cast. There is still at least 1 full game they need to add, then they are done (even if PC-98 is uncharted territory outside of of an alt version for Reimu and Marisa). In a bit over a year, it seems like the cast has been added. 150 unique characters (at least according to the character sorter) can be added into Lost Word. Out of these, 29 characters are missing (6 from TH18 and 23 from PC-98 - hope I counted right), so we have a total of 131 unique Touhou characters. It has been 662 days, or 94 weeks and 4 days since the original game release (April 20th, 2020- JP). This brings the average of releases at 5 days between each new character. With all the alts, this beings the average even lower. So I think they did rush a bit to release so much content through these almost two years, and now they ran out of what to release. And since Lost Word is a gacha game, you always need to provide fresh content, otherwise people get bored, no longer play and you lose money. I am not a great expert in RPG games, but from what I know, the costume or armor your character is wearing determines some of the stats and abilities. It would have been interesting if this was implemented in Lost Word, skins offering some new attack or elemental abilities that could fit in one situation or another. Right now, they offer you nothing but a different look and, best case scenario, a 2-3% bonus for points collected during specific events. Another problem with gacha games that makes me ask is the genre works with Touhou is the gameplay itself. Danmaku Kagura is the kind of rhythm game in which you have to hit the correct notes at the speed of the game. Perfectly fine, even if it makes the game look just like a rhythm game with Touhou skin. On the other hand, Lost Word plays like any other gacha RPG - you go through a long cut-scene explaining the story, then touch 1-2 buttons to order attacks, win battle, watch another cutscene then repeat. After a while, it just turns into a farming simulator with Touhou characters, made even more so by recently added auto-farm feature. Just leave your phone in a corner while doing something else, and leave the game auto-play the same battle for a specific number of times. And with the recent additions in Lost Word, numerous ties it has been a long series of cutscenes with little battles (the kind of 6 stages chapter, out of which 4 are long cutscenes and 2 are actual battles). I did like the Hifuu story until now, I got so bored at all the cutscenes. Only the presence of Maribel and Renko (with some beautiful in-game portraits), two characters I really like, has helped me bear through all of them. Last but not least, it would be the question of meta, power-creep and in-game purchases. In a way, I do not feel this is really in the spirit of Touhou games. Usually, the games require skill, patience, and sometimes just a bit of luck. However with gacha, you can just whale some money into it, get a meta character or card or whatever, and basically get yourself a "Press to win" button. I still keep playing Lost Word thanks to the large variety of characters you can get. I am not very interested in getting the alts, but I am looking forward to complete my list of top 10 characters: - already have: Youmu, Akyuu, Yuuka, Iku, Junko, Hecatia - still need to get: Eiki Shiki, Raiko, Mayumi, (it is quite unlikely Maribel and Renko will ever be added as more than just NPCs) Only after getting all of these, I may think about getting anything more meta-related. I think there might also be some good things though. Both games (DanKagu and Lost Word) have made it possible for music groups to get their music featured to a larger audience. Also, I find it cute the use of fan-art in order to illustrate things like "story-cards", and it is also good that in most cases they also give the names of the artists, which in turn creates some more exposure for the artists themselves. More than once I have tried looking for an artist or a specific music arrangement used in the game, and found out more stuff I ended up enjoying from those creators. But what do you think? Do you consider there is room for gacha-style games in the world of Touhou fan-games? Why/why not? And how would you try create such a game to stay in the spirit of Touhou games? For further reading, MegaPig9001 had done an overview over the topic of combining Touhou and gacha games. His video is from November last year and might need some updates here and there to better reflect the current situation, but still brings an interesting view in the whole problem: https://youtu.be/4yxsoiOIItE

For me, I think they are the band I have constantly listened to the most ou tof the past couple years. There is just something I love a lot about Stack and her voice, quite different from other musicians. Personally, I made a playing containing some of my favorite out of their songs, and the collection is ever expanding. Until now, it contains no less than 50 songs, including: Treasure Cirno Warning x Warning x Warning Necromantic Adieu, to This Lively Graveyard Money Money 天地上乗有頂天 (Riding the Heavenly Grounds in Ecstasy) Witchcraft Heptagram Muzzle Flash Cyanotype Still Here HANIPAGANDA Shout It Out Loud! Eternal Summer PANDORA66 Atomica Tokamak TILL WHEN? Inori no Utsuwa White Spirit, Ultra Red Two Witches Seisai no Reload Sky Generation Trance Dance Anarchy The Creator SATORI Bye Bye Love Azure Raindrops (both the PV and Acoustic version) The Show (English version) 風神パパラッチ Bhavacakra Gray Zone VENTEN HELLOHELL Reverse Trigger Black Mirror on the Wall Coooonsultant! DIG IT DIG OUT Infinite Gradation Metamorphosis KARMANATIONS No Way - Gravity Driven Raven Sadomasochism Psycho Lily 幽鬼傀儡、あるいはその愛と再生 (The Spirit Puppet, Or Rather Her Love And Resuscitation） Bad Magus Hedonism Samurai Ghost Girl, KILL! KILL! Emotional Rhythm KILLOVE FIREPROOF Rock-On! Bloody Devotion Last Alarm Mindeater Lucky Step Necromantic (Acoustic Version) Album source:

Hello Isaac! Nice to see you in here, and thank you for all. I remember I started playing Lost Word on the global server since Day 1, and ever since I got to more or less the game daily. I think the new stories and hope some more characters will be added kept me playing (I am still looking for some of my favorites, including Eiki, Raiko, Mayumi, Tenkyuu and Okuu), and so I promised myself to spart only when characters from my list appear. However, I broke that rule quite badly at the new Toyohime banner, and still got nothing. It is what it is... Danmaku Kagura seems like an interesting game. I never played rhythm games, nor am I sure how good I would be such a game. However, it might be nice to see a Global version even if just for all the music it has in it (including a decent amount from ym favorites like Akatsuki Records). Besides extra points and score, do that cards you get through gacha actually give you any other advantage, or they can be treated as purely an optional feature? You have brought up some very good points. I am not one to be familiar with gacha games (Lost Word is the first one of its kind I am playing), and so still find a lot of its features weird. For someone who got used to single-player, already full on release games like the old Total War games (I really like both Rome 1 and Medieval 2) or even the official Touhou games (despite only dipping my toes into Touhou 7 until now), having a game that constantly updates with new content and "surprise mechanics" is quite a different story. As far as I knew, RPG games are also about the equipment you use on you character to determine certain stats, but like you said, that can very easily be exploited and turned into more obvious pay-to-win. It is indeed difficult to make such a game on an already established franchise like Touhou, therefore a lot of the problems and cannot be compared with other gacha games where the universe is specially created for that game. This is why I even started the thread with the following title: Do Touhou and gacha work together? I did not get to talk about Danmaku Kagura in the original due to my lack of knowledge regarding the way the gacha system works there, and so could not tell anything. I just find it strange to have multiple versions of the same character, and I guess the limited gameplay might come from both the style of game chosen, as well as LW being a mobile game. I just think characters came a little bit too quickly (an average of a new one every 5 days just for the lore/non-alt versions), 131 characters coming in a bit over a year out of a 150 characters pool. And yes, I can understand the need to keep the game fresh with content, and I am just not used to the way these games operate. Which brings us back to the question I have started with. Again, MegaPig had an interesting answer to the "gacha paradox" back in October 2021, but ever since we really need an update on that video. But any point of view is absolutely welcome. After all, that is why I even opened this thread to begin with. Last discussion (and the only one) I saw about Lost Word in here was from June last year, and that was from when the game was still brand new in its Global version. No matter what happens, I will most likely keep playing this game for a while. At least until I managed to reach some of the objectives I am so looking for.

A bit of an update, 2 weeks later. Probably a few things I have not added, and perhaps should have, at the time I wrote the original post. It is still focused on Lost Word, and might still be more about the characters system than anything else. 1) I have gained quite a bit of frustration from some of the game mechanics, namely the gacha aspect. It just feels like crap to hoard a lot of resources, then try your luck and get nothing useful out of your totally-not-gambling activity. I was told that is just how things work, which normally I would not find normal. I would stop playing the game, but I do not have yet another Touhou fan-game to play and fill the gap. Lost Word fills most of the requirements for a game, and I do not know what else to play and have a bit of fun with. 2) Character alts. I have already talked about these, but there is more. It seems like alts and re-skins are the new fashion as the JP game version almost ran out of characters to add. Again, gacha players this is normal, and that it is much better to have 100 versions of the character but with different stats and abilities, than have skins for an already existent character that give you new abilities. They also said the latter would make the game even more p2w than it already is. Up to this point, this would be an (in)complete collection of all the alts available on both JP and Global server: - Reimu Hakurei -> EoSD Reimu, Reimu: Shaman, PC-98 Reimu, “Blue Reimu” - Marisa Kirisame -> EoSD Marisa, Marisa: Enchanter, Witch of Scarlet Dreams, PC-98 Marisa - Youmu Konpaku -> Youmu (S. Saint), Youmu: Gardener, PCB Youmu - Sakuya Izayoi -> EoSD Sakuya, Sakuya: Servant - Sanae Kochiya -> MoF Sanae, Sanae: Enchanter - Aya Shameimaru -> PoFV Aya (ironically, with MoF attacks and abilities) - Cirno -> EoSD Cirno - Reisen Udongein Inaba -> Reisen: Soldier, IN Reisen - Yorihime -> Code: Kannagi - Toyohime -> Code: Otohime - Yukari Yakumo -> PCB Yukari, “loli Yukari” - Yuyuko -> Yuyuko (L. Ghost) - Junko -> “loli Junko” (update: apparently, she is called "Space Horror (Junko)") - Remilia Scarlet -> Little Devil Miss - Flandre Scarlet -> Hunter Vampire - Rei'sen -> Hifuu EX story alt - Sagume -> Hifuu EX Story alt - Byakuren - UFO Biakuren - Nitori -> MoF Nitori - Kanako Yasaka - MoF Kanako - Patchouli Knowledge -> EoSD Patchouli As expected, all these alts and re-skins are much more powerful than their normal counterparts. Because there is nothing like power-creep, and if you don't add new characters that are stronger and stronger, for challenges that become higher and higher to justify the acquisition of these new units, nobody will play your game. Example from another gacha (I have no idea what it is, I found it on Discord) This way, following the baseline idea of how gacha games work, beach outfits/swimwear 2hus when. Also, do we really need stuff like this, but 100 individual versions of the same Touhou character? Also explained in a funnier manner by our friend, Archibald Extra 4) These are literally games in which you barely have to do anything at all. You build a team, and can just put them auto-play the stages for you, without you having to do anything. It just turns into an auto-farm grind-fest, which after a while makes you feel it does not bring any achievement, and is just repetitive. But again, you somehow get back to it, no matter how much you may end up despising it.