CountVonNumenor

I guess it is how it is. The developers preferred releasing a duplicate character in which they fixed past mistakes instead of repairing the already existent ones. Even the most outrageous ones, where improvements would be absolutely necessary (and not that Fantasy Rebirth, both normal and 2.0, are that much of a help in improving their stats or even access to elements - something I was greatly disappointed with in regards to 2.0)

I have fallen in love with this music group for almost two years now, back in my early days of exploring the Touhou community. However, up to this day I am still confused about a few things: - how this this music come to be, and who founded it? - who is/was ACTRock, and how/why did they leave what we know today as Akatsuki Records (also has the music groups always been named "Akatsuki Records"?) - did the music group have multiple singers? because the early MVs from their official channel have a number of other singers besides Stack, but in the past years it has only been Stack singing - are the first songs of the band (the wiki states their first album to be LAST DESTINY from 2012) available either here on YouTube or Spotify? - (more of a specific question raised after watching this MV) - is this this the first music video the group has done, or there have been any other previously? Given that ENDLESS FANTASY is the first single (11 August, 2012), but this music video was posted in May 2014; also how does it come it is not on the official YouTube channel of Akatsuki Records? I am not very familiar with the history of Ridzuto besides uploading pretty much every song of the group (something I greatly appreciate) And now, given there should be a Reitaisai, do we have any idea what will the group come up next?

Alright, here is something I forgot to add: The one thing I noticed from the video is how much of a power and utility discrepancy there is between game release characters and characters from much later/today. Simply reading the skills for Daiyousei show much outmatched the early units are, or how much stronger, almost "do everything" characters got since. And don't get me talk about many, if not most game release characters had no elemental break at P0, many did not have any break even at max boost or had any element break AT ALL (looking at cases like L1 Alice and Chen, or Ran who only has element break in her Last Word). The game has changed quite a lot... That images are so cute! Are they all related to Reimu, or there is also for Marisa? Given there is both purple hair Reimu and a blonde girl looking like our favorite ordinary magician.

Another news roundup, snack edition (I think I will go by this name when there is just one or two things I wanna talk about): News and updates Yet another PC-98 character reveal. But with the way this game is handled, we really should not expect her to become playable (at least any time soon, just like the rest of the PC-98 cast). Interesting we did not really get any new JP character banner news in a while that was not a retro though... I think their latest alt was the Hifuu universe Patchouli. [EDIT: oh wait, I forgot about smol Satori and White Koishi] Anyway, on with the retro era character: Yes, yes, Mima is here. But just like in any game made by after Mystic Square, she is/will not be playable.

Time for news roundup News and updates With the latest maintenance, a few new things have come into LW Global. The stars of this patch have to be Tenkyuu, Momoyo and Mike, who came together in the same banner. Meanwhile, LostWord JP just announced their next retro unit. This time, we are talking about PCB/A7 Yuyuko. Also, this week's news have also been presented by the colleagues from Kakashi Spirit News. Looks like Hatate is back at her job after a rather long absence, time in which she was replaced by the new (more) famous Scarlet Talk. Community discussion and memes Probably a good way to put the relation between your average Touhou fan and the existence of Touhou LostWord: Sorry for the shorter edition, but this time there really is not so much to talk about. It s getting very late, and my internet connection has been rather bad for the past couple days.

Sure, it might be something different, but I really wished to share it here as I wanted to relieve all my thoughts in one go. I actually may question a little bit the "aren't doing it for money". From what I have seen (yeah, I did have to do some "research"), various captions for their art mention either the fac they were commissions, or art produced t be sold at Comiket (especially for the more lewd content, drawings or doujins). Fair enough. However, at least on a personal note, I would either gradually start to diversify what I am doing, maybe do something like cross-overs, or make the transition as smooth as possible from one series to another. I have seen people posting to their communities about wishing to take a break from x series or y subject and do something new, which is usually well received since people at least know clearly what is going on and what are the motivations of the artist. But again, that is just how I would personally do it. Perhaps I am little more sarcastic or skeptic in my nature, so I may say the main driver for jumping into the bandwagon of the most recent trend would be caused simply by the income one could get from commissions. Since one series is very popular, that means there would also be a high demand for art depicting that series and people wishing to commission art of that thing (even if I have a strange fixation of pointing fingers towards those who are horny "in #general-chat" and commission lewd art, all I can say is that at the en of the day, i guess it is honest work on the side of the artist since they get paid for a service after all). But yeah, it is always nice to see high quality art of a series you enjoy. Maybe it would not have been so bad had gacha games not been, well, gacha games - predatory games that trick you into paying lots of money and draining your soul in the search for 2D waifu JPEGs in scanty clothes. It is just that you see these series everywhere, and nothing else. Just as if nothing else existend besides these titles. Are these games or series even any good? Or they are just average bait for horny fans and even hornier fan artists? This is probably the amazing part about Touhou. I don't know what is more amazing: the series still not having become mainstream after over 20 years despite the massive fandom it has, or the fact we have such a massive and dedicated (even with all the stereotypes regarding the "average Touhou fan") community that will drawn the internet in Touhou-related content based on a niche bullet hell game coming from just as niche of a game genre. In this instance, I really did not rely on r/touhou and "#OC-art". If there is one tool for me to look for Touhou fanart daily, that would be through Danbooru. But if you mean specifically only just fanart made in the western community, then yeah, probably Reddit is the place where I see most of the stuff I 100% am sure came from the west. However, given the nature of Pixiv, I can't really tell if an artist is from the west, or they are just another one from Japan. I would definitely love to see some of these examples you were talking about though. I would have definitely like to write a longer reply. However, I am feeling very tired after a long day in college, so I think I may soon go to sleep. Good night, and see you tomorrow.

Well, you got me again guys. Already delivered the news before the next news roundup (which has been only a few days ago). I appreciate the engagement into the thread though, anyone is welcome to leave some thought here.

Personally, I have been looking at this thing from another point of view. Think of an artist (or any sort of creator) that builds up a fanbase around them. The people gather as they like the art of the person, or they like the topic they are drawing. After a long time of familiarizing your fanbase with one thing, you are all of a sudden switching to a completely different franchise, without any warning or explanation. In some of the cases, the artist may even delete their works related to the previous franchise. Those who have been around since the artist used to draw what they used to enjoy are now confused, not really understanding why the change (bonus points if they never address again the previous franchise they used to draw from). While the new topic may gather new fans, you have the chance of also losing the ones that really appreciated your art for what it used to depict. Some of the details in here are very specific because way too many times I have met the situation, even in our fandom. Artist draws cool Touhou stuff, then suddenly switched to another series (bonus points if it's a gacha game series/any other series with easy to lewd waifus). Yo find their old Touhou art on an image platform like Danbooru or Zerochan, want to see the original upload on Pixiv/DeviantArt/Twitter/whatever other platform, but you see a "this post has been deleted". You go back to the image board, see the artist has more Touhou stuff. This time, you just want to check their Pixiv/DeviantArt/Twitter/whatever account as a whole. And to your surprise, there is no more Touhou pictures there - everything was deleted. Personally, I believe deleting your old art is a bit of a sin. Not only do you leave a false impression be not showing any great artist started from low, but you also erase a part of your artist identity and past. Just like when trying to erase parts of history just because they do not fir your agenda anymore. To me, they (this kind of artists) are basically just mercenaries nowadays, switching from one series to another together with the trend. Latest anime series, this flavor of the month game, you name it. Whenever something falls out of fashion, the artist will also switch to the next big thing. Also why call them "mercenaries"? In the past, mercenaries used to be those professional soldiers who used to fight for the one who could pay them the highest. Nowadays, I would call artists as such since they are also can get paid a lot by milking popular franchises of the week/month, as well as these series giving them basically infinite resources to lewd - let's be honest, a lot of the designs from the series listed below in the spoiler area basically have a big sign next to them saying "pervert me" - totally on purpose because of the original game design for that characters - that, and people being horny after ship girls, gender-swap historical figures and CCP Chinese gacha game (all hail Zhong Xina!). Overall, I just feel the idea Touhou fanart is rather low(er) in quality than what those mercenaries are producing nowadays for other franchises and their fandoms. But I think the element of Touhou fanart that has a special spot in my hear is the great variety of people it brings together, everyone with their own style. "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." is a rather pertinent idea for presenting our fandom, so unique in its way of being and creating their content.

This us quite a natural thing. After all.you may feel bored of one series after a point, so you want to do something different and refreshing. In term of artists drawing fanart of various franchises, I noticed two things after a brief walk through Danbooru: 1) a lot of artists that nowadays draw stuff like Genshin, Fate Grand Order, Azur Lane, KanColle or Idolmaster used to draw Touhou in the early days of their career; 2) connected to #1, there seems to have been a big migration towards those mainstream series and flavor of the week/month gacha game; given some of the authors doing that very high quality (at least in terms of drawing techniques, not the topics depicted - maybe I should call it more professional-looking art if that's the term I'm looking for) art, I wonder what contribution would they have been to the Touhou fanart community Anyway, is the migration a positive thing, or maybe you would have liked people to keep a tie, no matter how loose, with where they started from/come back to origin every now and then?

Time for the news roundup. News and updates This week, "In the West Nothing New" (or as everyone knows it better, "All Quiet on the Western Front")... I mean nothing new happening in regards to LW Global. However, JP seems to be having a little bit more activity: It looks like LW is trying to blue-ball us again with a PC-98 character. Again, do not expect her to be playable in the nearby future. If anyone from PC-98 will be playable AT ALL, given the uncertainty of the answers given by LW staff during the AmA session. Besides her, there is also a new Hifuu Space War character. Meanwhile, Relic Festival Sakuya has been announced, and will soon be part of the game. There is also a new event, which may finally make sense why in the Morby story, Kagerou, Sekibanki and Wakasagihime were all dressed like each other (during that event on Global, there was no explanation or context to what was going on): Community discussion and memes Not so much in terms of discussions this week, but there are memes:

I used to read a lot as a child. Back then, I feel like I had a greater drive to do it, which started to get lost during high school though. I used to love reading Jules Verne (consuming as many of his volumes as I could), then probably one of my greatest achievements in terms of reading was going through Lord of the Rings in just 2 weeks. As I got into high school though, the passion for literature started to fade out, as we were getting dug into unlikeable mandatory reads. At least i still had the specialized history stuff... Getting into college, I pretty much ended up reading more material in a week than I read in years before. Might have still been mandatory readings, but they were more interesting. I started to slowly get back a little bit of my old interest for reading fictional literature, even if that started through visual novels. First, this little thing... ...then, as I got into Touhou, I ended up reading the first 4 volumes of Forbidden Scrollery (and intend to complete the collection until the end of this year). It just makes you feel as if you missed a lot of stuff by not having read until now.

Alright, time for another news roundup. News and updates Since I barely had any time this week to look and write for this series, and the fact Isaac already covered the most important updates, guess I have o deal with the bare bones... Anyway, here is the rest of the events: In 2 days from now (just a bit over 24 hours actually, according to my time zone), we are going to get the next maintenance. It is interesting we are getting a rerun of Yakumo Ambition, which is a rather recent event (just 4 months ago, back in June). Probably the other big thing sticking out like a sore thumb is the A6 Sunny Milk "retro" unit. Again, how did Sunny an EoSD character? Community discussion and memes The reception of Sunny as a retro unit is already being received in an interesting way. She is not even out yet, but the discussions are on. A few opinions: Technically THIS Sunny Milk isn't canon. She never appeared in EoSD. But she was technically a maid at some point alongside Luna and Star in the Manga. That was due to them infiltrating the Scarlet Devil Mansion and dressing as maids to try and blend in with the other fairy maids to go unnoticed. eo$d - that's it. EoSD is the Pokemon gen 1 of Touhou, so NN is intent on milking EoSD for everything it's worth. I'm still baffled that we're getting fucking EoSD Daiyousei, who has no spellcards or art from EoSD. I'm really excited to see A6 Sanae because she was playable in the EoSD fangame Fantastic Danmaku Festival. The main thing that rubs me the wrong way is that no other game in the series would ever get this much preferential treatment. does anyone think we're really going to get an A7 Letty? A10 Minoriko? A12 Kogasa? Nope. I saw this theory somewhere that Sunny Milk could've became a maid due to the Scarlet Mist Incident since the A6 universe is where the Scarlet Mist incident doesn't stop so not just the EoSS crew will be affected by the incident. People are making their own predictions in regards to what units will be coming next into the game And of course, we cannot forget about the memes in regards to how to create a Relic unit: Closing thoughts Again, that is why I called the whole thing a PR stunt. Many I have talked to told me it was surprising it took LW 2.5 years to realize their game has problems, which led to the AmA and then developer manifesto the following day. Surprisingly, I did ask about Arcadia Record at the same time, given we have not really seen that game being discussed for the past coupe months since release. What i was even more surprised was to hear that not only is the game still alive, but that it is actually much better than LostWord right now. That is has an actual development team listening to the issues players report and fix them in mere days. That the game gets quickly updated and it takes 2-3 days at most to implement QoL updated whenever needed. That AR is actually starting to attract music circles to collaborate with, including Akatsuki Records (music group who, at the current point, is only missing from LostWord out of all Touhou mobile games ~ under what category should Touhou Spell Bubble be added?). Maybe that game does have a chance to survive... All I know about Reimu and Marisa in their PC-98 form is that they appeared in one of the Hifuu story cutscenes... and that's about it. They also did appear on some promotional material, but nothing more about actually implementing the units. Oh, you would be surprised to know how many people were actually asking for a collab/cross-over with Azur Lane. Which may not be impossible, given that LW is pretty much a clone of that game.

News roundup. A little less structured or cohesive than last time, but some things happened since the weekend. News and updates It looks like the LW team has pulled a PR stunt with some sort of Q&A thread on r/touhou_lostword. Due to being busy the entire first half of the day and overall unfortunate timing, I could not submit a question for this session. The idea was simple: people ask questions, the dev team answers them. Let's see what happened: Below, I have selected a number of questions that have been relevant in regards to the development of the game and what the crew has to say about it. A special section for unanswered questions will come at the end. Keep in mind, some of the answers might be rather vague, while for others they have completely avoided answering at all. Many of the answers have been given by Phantasma, while others went to different members of the team the questions were addressed to (Masayuki Yamagishi (Yama-P), Comp (Butaotome), Caroline, Phantasma, team members from the translation team). Q: Is Rinnosuke going to be playable? A: No plans at the moment regretfully! Q: Only one question: Will we get playable Pc-98 characters at some point in the future? A: If we have a chance this is something we would love to do! Q: Will the game stay on mobile or would you ever consider putting it on steam or on the switch? A: Would love to do Steam if there's an opportunity in the future! Q: Hello! Link from Argentina here! Is there any plans for a Spanish translation? A: This is something we honestly really wanted to do, but LostWord is a game with an abundance of text that makes this unrealistic regretfully, it's already a massive job for English [*guys can't even finish translation for English, let lone expand to other languages (Coming Soon...)] Q: When are we going to have the normal text of the Story Cards that only have the coming soon text? A: Caroline: Thank you for your patience. We're currently in the process of translating the Story Cards we didn't have time for previously. You'll be able to read them soon! Q: Is PVP/Coop PvE going to be implemented directly anytime? Like for example, 1v1 or raids. A: We're currently thinking about multiplayer type features, however, the development load for such systems is quite heavy and requires much more deliberation Q: Do you guys actively play the game as well? A: Yep all of us play the game, I believe the highest level out of all of us today is in the late 100s! Q: Will we get/be able to equip costumes to UFES and/or EFES units at some point? It seems we only have costumes for L1 units currently, and I was wondering if other universe types will get costumes/be able to use existing costumes for their other universe counterparts. A: At the moment we have no plans for costumes for the additional series Q: Will there be any future changes to the core fundamental gameplay? (ie. new mechanics in battle, enemy mechanics, player actions, etc.) A: We have a variety of battle system improvements and additions in the works as we get more into development we'll be announcing them via our new development manifestoes which will begin from Sept 28! Q: For Comp: 1) Are you in charge of choosing the BGM of the game? (Spellcard themes, etc). 2) What's the process behind the making of the MV project; how do you pick the singers, circles, and characters/themes? 3) Do you have any involvement in the creative process of the global-only collabs? A: 1) I choose the BGM in collaboration with the Game Director. 2) I think about which singers and circles would make for the most interesting and fun collabs with each character. Then I make them an offer. 3) Yes. Q: Is there a reason you guys don’t list the VAs for each character? I follow a lot of seiyuus and I’ve seen some names and heard some voices I’m familiar with be in the project, but I’d love official credits like that A: A big reason is that if we list voice actors people will end up choosing to use that character or voice due to who the voice actor is, but we would like everyone to choose voices based on what voice they feel fits the character best Q: Why was the development manifesto only announced recently? Wouldn't it have been more beneficial to have a line of communication between the developers and players since the launch of the game? A: Within the team we've always had one, but we we though saying too much early wouldn't be the best. But reading more and more comments from everyone we understood that it would be best to get the lines of communication open and be more transparent in the development process. Q: The Chinese version of Touhou LostWord currently features exclusive story cards only available in that version, as well as an exchange point spark for Epic Festival banners. Alongside the remaining gacha pool cards only available in the Japanese version, will the global version introduce a feature like that if it is met with popular demand? (There are two more questions, those going to the "Unanswered" section) A: Original Story Cards from the Chinese version, we currently have no plans to bring them to JP or global! Q: Do you have any comments on the translation process for LostWord? LW is interesting in that it's significantly more loaded with (what is to Westerners) more esoteric religious and spiritual concepts and Japanese traditional culture than many other titles. You can expect the Touhou audience to be much more receptive to this sort of thing, but it's still quite notable. Do you have guidelines internally for what you translate via expansion, calques, or leaving the original Japanese name for a concept in place? Any other issues or struggles you've had? A: Translation Team: I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying the story. Yes, we try to leave the original Japanese names for most religious and mythological concepts and supplement them with an explanation where possible, like in the Story Cards, Spell Card, and Ability descriptions. However, it's difficult to fit all that information within the story, so we sometimes have to change a few things to make it understandable to a more general audience. Q: How is it like developing Touhou lost word and is it enjoyable? A: There are lots of enjoyable aspects and also some tough aspects! For tough aspects especially the translation is tough as a lot of the story and world is grounded in a variety of Japanese culture, but it's great to bring the game to everyone around the world! Q: Do you guys plan to have a Collaboration with other games? A: No plans at the moment regretfully on this one! Q: To Japanese dev team: Are there any plans for new game modes anytime soon? A: Look forward to the development manifestoes as we'll be releasing info about new content from time to time! As Phantasma now works on both teams the chance of version exclusive content is diminished as we would like to strengthen the game as a whole to provide a more fun experience to everyone! Arena update will be coming in soon for units as they still require some translation and data creation. Q: To Japanese dev team: Are epic fes friends here to stay? Will they replace super fes friends? A: (same as above) Q: To Japanese dev team: Will general units get reduced to 100 pity like in global? A: (same as above) Q: To Japanese dev team: How was JP player reception to stages like the L1 Reimu extra stage? (where it heavily punishes players who lack a certain unit like c3 Yukari). A: (same as above) Q: To global people: Are there any plans for global exclusive content like elemental extra stages? A: (same as above) Q: To global people: Now that we're mostly caught up with JP in terms of character releases and story, what plans does global have for future releases? Will we just get new banners the same time as JP does? A: (same as above) Q: To global people: When will arena get updated with modern units? I noticed that newer units like Megumu appear in JP arena. A: (same as above) Q: Are there any game aspects that the team is really proud of? Or in the opposite, wish to change? A: From Yamagishi-san but he feels the following. The 5 main points of a RPG he feels are done quite well - Characters, Story, World, Battle, Music. In terms of change, rather than change he and the rest of us would like to improve upon all of the aspects as we go forward! Q: What was the process for selecting the songs in the game so far? Are there plans to add songs from other circles? A: Comp: I choose songs to match the story. Yes, there are plans to add songs from other circles. Q: I only have a few for this AmA. How long will the story be as it seams its almost ending or just getting started at this point by this I mean how many chapters there are in total once the full main story is out? (There are three more questions, those going to the "Unanswered" section) A: We have no end in plan for Touhou LostWord's story and plan to continue to expand heavily on the world! Q: Are we going to see the return of Mochi pounding event? If so, are you guys cooking unique game modes for global? A: Hope to bring our friend Kagami-Mochi back some day but, we're also thinking about different fun forms we can implement events like this! Q: Will black Youmu Fumo be on sale again? A: Sorry this is something that our friends at Gift deal with! Q: Are there plans to add in-game players interaction? I'd love to show off my UFES to my friends A: We are discussing these types of features currently! However, the development cost is quite high so we have no solid details at the moment Q: Can we get a little behind the scenes of the gacha game industry with an explanation of why THLW, like so many other phone gacha games have different servers for different regions instead of one unified game that everyone plays together with a language toggle? I understand it would be a hassle to get them synced when they start at different times, but I feel like it would be worth it due to all the negativity that results from global having different pacing and out of order releases that makes a lot of players feel like global is just an afterthought. Thanks! A: The architecture we use requires no option for selection server and in terms of language we answered this in another question but LostWord has an abundance of text compared to many titles, resulting in us only being able to offer English globally. In terms of why JP and global aren't synced, there are an abundance of processes the title have to go through before release which make it difficult to have a synced release. It would require a much larger team than we have currently to have made a reality. Q: Is the translator team still at purple heart? A: Translation Team: I'd say the translation team is at orange heart at the moment. We will have an update on it soon, so please look forward to it! Q: What is the reason behind the decision of not adding the pity exchange shop for the JP story card farm stage? A: (unanswered) Q: I noticed that Phantasma is no longer doing the live stage, where the team can communicate with the players on the direction of the game and future plan (as well as answering some of the players' concern). Is that because you no longer have time to do so? A: Phantasma's responsibilities have expanded, so it's tough at the moment but look forward to a Q/A forum in discord that will be implemented soon. Q: Will you consider giving further rein1.5 buff that actually fit the unit core issue (like Sakuya bad slicing scale, Lily White bad healing utility/focus down that harm allies, Seiran lack of useful debuff utility, etc). A: (unanswered) Q: Will there be any other way for Epic Dolls to be obtained easier. A: As time progresses we would like to add more methods to get the Epic Paper Dolls & the others. Q: Thanks Touhou Lost Word Team, AMAs are very awesome. Here's a question for the translation team. When translating for characters from very niche Japanese folklore how do you go about getting the translation across to an audience that may not be familiar with the original source. An example being someone like Iku Nagae. A: Translation Team: Yeah, it's not easy. There isn't really much space to convey the folklore within the story unless it is also written in Japanese. However, in the Spell Card and ability descriptions, we try to add a few more explanations while leaving some of the Japanese terminologies so people can more easily research it for themselves if they are interested. Q: Looking at the ongoing success of this game and with seemingly no risk of EoS anything soon, is there the possibility of either a sequel, prequel, or spinoff game of LostWord? A: In terms of further direction of Touhou LostWord itself, we would like to continue strengthening the title as a whole which will open up more possibilities in the future for us to discuss Q: Do you plan on hosting any events in real life for global players? (ie. story card submission contest) A: In Japan things like Reitaisai we participate it from time to time, but for global we don't have any solid plans at the moment, though it is something we discuss frequently so we hope to get something going in the future! In terms of contests we may be able to get some going this fall or winter! Q: I asked this on this sub once before, but would like an answer directly from the team, but what's the best way to support LostWord other than in-app purchases? I know there was a dark Youmu Fumo at some point, but is there any other merch or other ways of supporting the game and the team? A: Besides in-app purchases, participation in Discord, Twitter, YouTube and other places are great ways to support! Questions here on Reddit are already a great way to support! Q: Not sure if you can answer this since it's not really game-related. Are there any plans to make more Lost Word action figures? I placed an order for mysterious swordsman Youmu Fumo months ago and I can't wait for it to come. A: Our publisher Good Smile Company has a line of LostWord figures they are working on! I believe some may be available for preorder currently Q: Did you ever consider leaving honorifics in? Its a breath of fresh air to have many of the native names of the mythological and historical concepts. A: Translation Team: It was considered, but we decided that it would be easier to read without honorifics for a wider audience. And they are generally just kind of clunky in English. Q: How did the idea for Lost Word originate? The callbacks and fanservice in the story, the involvement of dojin music circles, non-predatory pricing model shows this game was made with love. Do you consider Lost Word a "fan game"? A: Yama-P: We wanted to make an RPG based on Touhou Project. So we thought it over between Comp and the directors. We decided that it would be good to have lots of various artists create the art for the Story cards and music. The original games aren't voiced, so we decided to provide three options so the player could pick what they felt suited the character best. We wanted to create a game in collaboration with lots of other creators. Q: Will the 4-komas in JP be translated? A: Hopefully some day in the future we'll be able to get the manga in the game, but we still have quite a few event stories and others we need to get done, so once we're in a better place there we'll discuss the manga to see what can be done for global Q: Are we to get more vocal tracks on Lost Word i would love for more circles to participate on the game (Stack maybe pls)? [Count's comment: PLEASE] A: Comp: There will be more MV project songs. Please look forward to them. Q: Butaotome was the first circle that got me into Touhou doujin music 待チ人ハ来ズ。it's one of my all time favorites Thank you so much A: Thanks so much for listening to Butaotome. I'm really happy to hear you enjoy it. Thank you for the support. Q: If you could, would you want to collab with more Virtual YouTubers in the future? Additionally, when Pomu's Heat of My Fingertips came out, I expected for a Pomu Friend to get released. You're probably never going to have non-Touhou characters as Friends, right? A: We loved working with everyone at NIJISANJI & Pomu Rainpuff so we really hope to do more in the future! Q: Will there be a way to make the special cards made for the Epic characters more available? IE: Behind the Bullets: Reimu and The Heat of My Fingertips. Could it be done like the elemental EX stages. A: Look forward to an update on this as our first development manifesto that releases on the 28th will have a bit of info on this! Q: Are the story cards with "Coming Soon..." actually coming soon? A: Caroline: They will...! We're working on some right now! Q: Are there any chances that concepts like character fusions or duo characters be implemented into the game? Fusions, at least I feel, would do really well since it takes two good characters and makes an even better character and duo characters could be a nice homage to Touhou 8's main gimmick. A: At the moment no plans on this end! Q: I know translations for the main story/events and Tower are a priority, but do you believe the untranslated story cards will have a translation one day? A: We hope to get more of these in once we hit Floor 200 of the tower! Q: Which music group would you love to partner with the Music Videos, and are you willing to partner with any that not know for Touhou music? My dream is getting Jun Senoue (Crush 40) or Tomoya Ohtani from the Sonic Team to partner in a MV. A: We plan to collaborate with many different types of artists through the MV project. Please look forward to it. Q: How was the survey for the game, did you guys learn a lot from it and now taking considerations for the game because of it? A: We want to take the various answers on board to improve the characters, story, music, battles, and setting. Please look forward to the updates. Q: Considering how many songs are being added to the game, will there be a way to sort them? Are there plans for adding QOL features? (like better ways to manage spell cards and friends) A: This type of QOL is always in the works but as it requires quite a bit of UI work it takes time to get in! Q: Hi THLW dev team, do you guys plan on adding any of the .5 characters to the game? A: Similar to a previous answer but if we have a chance, we would love to do it! Q: Will the 30fps lock be fixed? A: No plans at the moment, but it is a topic that comes up from time to time so we may do something in regards to fps options some day Q: Will Ele EX get a drop rate up through the future? A: There will be a large update coming in on this eventually so look forward to more details soon! Unanswered questions: With governing bodies around the globe taking strides to regulate gambling mechanics in all video-games, how will Touhou Lostword Global evolve in order to remain legal in most countries? Would the gacha system be dropped in favor of something like a battle pass? Question for the Devs: You guys been giving us a lot of free stuff since day 1, compared to JP players, we're basically spoiled by you guys and we appreciate it, but I'm curious if there's any consequences to this, like does it affect the monetization? Are you guys still earning money? And who gets to decide on what Stuff to give out to us players? Is it only phantasma or something else? As an individual who cares deeply about this game, I'm somewhat curious in the financial status of it, we surely don't want a sudden EoS due to lack of money right? More of a Personal question: So phantasma, do you happen to have time to read The Scarlet talk series? It's something I've been doing every Dev letter here on reddit and any kind of input would be appreciated Your thoughts on my Spirit News Article no.1 on the discord server is the reason why scarlet talk exist, so i would like to hear any comments from you :) According to a friend of mine who was formerly a staff member working with the team, they told me one reason for their falling out was due to poor communication between higher ups and staff and supposed "drama." Will the current staff members look towards rectifying these wrongs by reaching out to former staff members with an olive branch, whether it be public or personal? One of your server staff members and GamePress writers was formerly involved with an infamous Touhou piracy website and distributed pirated Touhou content themselves. Since NextNinja is officially partnered with Team Shanghai Alice, doesn't this present a conflict of interest considering that LostWord is an officially licensed product? 2) What does the Mc we play as/control look like it most likely fan interpretation but if you have your own look for the Mc what is it? 3) Will there be some sort of trading of friends to exchange duplicate friends you have for another or any kind of coop that will be added in the future? 4) Will friend prayer rates be improve at some point since there so low and most of the time it's story cards when the banner does not increase the odds for a friend? What are your opinions on the other Touhou mobile games like Cannonball and Danmaku Kagura and do you think something could of been done better to increase the longevity of those games seeing how they only lasted around 1 year? How do you feel about LW bringing in a large number of new fans to the Touhou culture? One thing that i love is that you can make your favorite friend powerful with some time and dedication (me in particular Seiga and Momiji) apart of incenses and rebirth will there be more ways to improve a friends power in the future? While I love the story it's kinda hard to read all of it for me. Will there be a way to have like small story bits when skipping the story? Do you intend to make the Epic Paper Doll more accessible for all players? Since the "only" means to have it is in the Fortune Dust store and with Packs (which in some countries (such as Brazil) are extremely and ridiculously expensive.) Do you intend to make all units that are in the main story JUST Epic Festivals Friends and no longer Ultra Festival Friends? Well, if the answer is yes, that reinforces what I said in question number 2. Are there plans to take a second look at C3 Hecatia and debuffs in general? The sentiment among those invested in strategy is that C3 Hecatia does not compare favorably with her Epic peers due to the transient nature of debuffs being disadvantaged in multi-wave/gauge content and her extreme focus on it at the cost of an otherwise robust kit. This is to the point where she is compared directly to her gen/fes debuff peers (Recent Debuffer EoSD Sunny Milk being a very striking and assessed-as-superior example, especially once you include the fact she is exchangeable). As of now, there are many aspects in LostWord that can be improved so that players will have an incentive to actually try them out instead of outright skipping them. For example, the Arena revampt was mediocre at best, seeing how it only gives the players some stats to boost their friends and literally the increased in parametre does little to none to help them gain an upper edge, or how the so-called "end game content" EX stages are more or less geared toward a set of characters for an easy clear instead of being an actual challenge. To back my arguement, the Dev Letter of Global LostWord mentioned that around 15 to 20% of the playerbased cleared the Elemental EX out of around 2000-ish challengers, but considering the fact that at that moment, there were more than 1 million unique downloads, and let's assume 10% of the downloads continued continued on playing the game, it means that only ~2000 out of 100000 (or ~2%) actually want to try the new challenges. Will there be any plans to improve these factors or taking these into account when creating newer contents? As of now, many local players (I will not disclose the nation where we are from) are discontented with the release schedules and designs (both gameplay and visual), as well as the abysmal lack of communication between the playerbase and the developer. Are there any plans to improve the communication as well as the transparency of the game as most of the rifts between the two parties were majorly due to the lack of these factors? (For Global team) How do you choose which events and banners appear in Global (considering how different it is from JP’s schedule)? (For JP team) Similarly, how is music selected for the game? Would it be possible to add a feature that lets you select any part of a character them to play it during their spell card. Many people would like to change the part that they hear during Patchouli A6's spell cards so could it changed? Any plans on making alternate versions of characters from Touhou 16 or above? Any plans on being able to set the 3-star Story Cards (as they're mostly landscapes) as home screen backgrounds? Some of them would work really well as backgrounds. Any plans on making a 3x speed setting, or even a 4x speed setting for battles? The newer stages are taking increasingly long to finish due to modern units's longer Spell Card animations, plus the stages themselves requiring more turns than before. Why not put the new UFes Patchouli and Koakuma on the same prayer if you were going to release them at the same time anyways? It would have been a neat way to celebrate 2 mil downloads and makes sense for the two of them. The dev letter gave my friends and I the impression that you guys were going to do it that way. There was once a mention of Wood EX (Global Dev letter #13 iirc) so I'm wondering if there's any update about that or it's just completely forgotten? When it comes to adding characters to the game, what’s the general process for this, if possible to be answered? Are characters planned far in advance from when they release, when/how is their music decided on, VA recordings, that’s the gist of what I’m asking if it’s able to be answered Edit: a bit of an addendum but have you ever had to scrap characters, or heavily postpone them? How do you pick your ideas? Like, for example, thinking of a new alt character, the costume or colors that she'd have, names for the spellcards, animations, etc. Why haven't you released Kagerou (and other units) yet you're releasing newer units instead? Most of them epic and relic ones. Will all units get a rebirth or will this be exclusive to L1 units only? Why is a single character skin equivalent in cost to a $30 crystal pack. What was your inspiration for the Lost Word storylines? Can you make that you can date the girls pretty please. Like giving them presents spending time with them [Count's note: I guess this player would like the game to implement a dating simulator element, perhaps similar to other gacha games?] Community discussion and memes Even if going through the "become Fumo" process, Remi & Patchy are still up to presenting the news in their new plushy form. And of course, it cannot be a regular day if the AmA did not spart some memes out of the answers.

Time for the news roundup. News and updates On the Friday-to-Saturday night (at least according to my time zone), there has been a Dev Letter for LW Global. Quite a few things have been announced, given the game reached 2 million downloads. Looks like LW will not die out any time soon... Let's see what the game will put at our disposal. Keep in mind, the 2 million downloads celebration might be coming just in time with the 1.5 years game anniversary for Global. Last year, the 0.5 anniversary was celebrated by cutting some of the free features, so I wonder if we are gonna lose anything this time around. The main features that have been announced: guaranteed friend festival: from what I can understand, you are getting daily one Guaranteed friend ritual, which might also contain retro versions of the characters (compared to the classic ritual, which only contains general pool friends) special tasks: my guess is that through these tasks, the players will receive either increased resources or special, rare ones bonus for daily logins - music connected to the Hifuu universe versions of the SDM cast battles will cost half the Sprit Points - finally, I was really looking to this one, as I am running dry on resources with the current event; I have not seen my SP count go below 20K since last year at least - to be fair, I am also using expensive units for farming more x4 rewards for main story and Hifuu x3 School XP for a week Interesting they have decided to split the news into 2 parts this time: Hifuu Patchouli and Koakuma are coming; unfortunately, they are separate banners new 72H Newcomer banner current event is getting the Extra stages - get ready for more Morby the general friends pool is getting an update in regards to Guaranteed Prayers more floors opened in the Scarlet Devil Tower more characters are getting Fantasy Rebirth 2.0 Meanwhile, the colleagues from Scarlet Talk have decided to cover the news their own way. Get ready for more Remy & Patchy shenanigans: The artist for Remilia and Patchouli actually has a Pixiv page, and can be found here https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/4972747 . He's got a lot of cute stuff You can always find Remi & Patchy's news roundup here Community discussion and memes This time, an interesting video I would recommend. It is about the original game inspiration for Reimu's shot types and spellcards. Maybe the person has not used the best examples everywhere/could have used better images at times, but the effort is to be appreciated. Also know your enemy:

Oh, this might be one of the miscellaneous drawings ZUN did. In the time gap between Mystic Square and EoSD, ZUN draw a lot of images. That one in itself represents an interesting era in the evolution of his art, given it is the transition era towards early Windows games art. I really want to talk in a separate thread about those drawing because they are very cool as concept and he drew them for quite some time.

Welcome to gacha hell. Sadly, there is no playable PC-98 character in LostWord. At most, we have seen PC-98 Reimu, Marisa, Shinki and apparently an alt character that the LW community seems to be referring to as being based on PC-98 Yuuka. Here is the thing. The drawn character everyone associated with "Rin Satsuki" IS NOT ACTUALLY Rin Satsuki. That image only represents a mascot for Team Shanghai Alice ZUN came up with at the time, while Rin only remained a forgotten name coded into EoSD, which was never pictured. The name "Rin Satsuki" coded into the EoSD files Team Shanghai Alice's "poster girl" Basically, the image we associate nowadays as "Rin Satsuki" fits the following situation: a character without an image, and an image without a name. As fans wanted to fill in the gaps, they merged the two and we ended up with this:

Holy shit, after that little trip into the gacha world of summer skins, the ones LW gave us are literally nothing compared what those other games of the genre pull for their player base. But again, the main point of these games is to have good art and attract through horny. Had the art not been good, nobody would have invested their time playing a gacha after all. I am more than sure by not there will be more stupid, outrageous, stupidly outrageous and outrageously stupid stuff to come in the future. Now that classic monetization methods are starting to run dry, they will have to make money out of something else. Either by pulling some new bullshit into the game, or throwing the game under the bus and move to the next project.

Time to come up with yet another update. Get ready for the news roundup (with a copious amount of spicy towards the end) News and updates JP version of Scarlet Devil Tower is receiving yet another alt... I mean retro character. And not just anyone, but Sunny Milk Maid. For some reason, she is branded as an A6 character (even after exhausting the EoSD cast, you can still find way to milk it). I do not even understand how she is a retro - have we ever seen Sunny in maid outfit in canon? Also, wouldn't she be either an A10/11 (as for the debut of the Three Fairies) or even an A12.8 character? Nonetheless, she is the latest JP banner, at the same time as Momoyo. Community discussion and memes With the current event uphold, there have been numerous memes spawning out of the meta/self-aware tone of the story. Here are some of the ones that caught my attention: "It's Morby time!" New character in LW? Meanwhile, someone has figured out the only reasonable way of how to win for good at this game... ...while others are looking for the recipe of success though new units... ...and others just found a new way to keep themselves even with that tiniest bit of happiness they still have. Out of context meme format Before dropping the final, spicy bit, I have one question for everyone around: And now, the part you may have been waiting for. Since the latter part of past summer, Touhou LostWord has decided to pull a classic gacha move and make a beach episode, complete with summer skins, actually I mean completely new characters just to sell summer skins at the prove of an overpowered, unsparkable unit. Looking at you, EFES Yukari and Hecatia... Around the same time, I was taking a look at the bigger general gacha communities. It just happened that they were talking about summer skins, just in a different way and about other games. Given they are gacha communities after all, the way the approach gacha game tropes sure is different from us, people who tend to be more used to the world and community of Touhou. Anyway, I will let the results talk by themselves: Alright, so here is what the people answered (I will only select a few answers I found more substantial, or at least interesting. Some of those will also be accompanied by image support of the comment linked images, which if needed will be marked as spoiler). Before anything, I ended up believing the summer skins LostWord gave us are purely child's play compared to whatever those people are talking about (I am not very familiar with the world of gacha, and at best I can recognize some of the game titles but not associate them with anything) This, i just played DC (Destiny Child) this week and shocked how most skins are very lewd. Got summer and towel skin Anemone for free only need grinding. If any want to play now is best time to try they give a lot freebies for new player. Make sure you downloaded the taptap version cuz its uncensored there dont download the Google Play one. [Azur Lane fans getting angry their game is not lewd enough]: Not anymore. April 2021 was the last event that had the regular top tier skins. Since then, no full frontal unobstructed bikini skins at all. - most adult characters are drawn facing away from the viewer. - most adult characters have 0 summer themed skins - I mean look at Taiho. Yunsang is wasted, look at his 2020 skins vs now. Night and day. - only the Loli characters have lewd skins. Actually, I believe New Jersey’s design was dumbed down because of the regs. If she were released a year earlier, she would 100% have an open chest and regular thigh highs, not a BS black body suit. It makes me angry because they ruined such a good thing. I’m not even looking forward to Musashi and Yamato anymore, because I know both designs will be dumbed down to appease the woke mob over in China. I mean look at ALs marketing. The teased swimsuit skins for every event this summer in the advertising. But what do we get? - Tutus. - Sports skins. - Half assed swimsuits that have obvious obstructions (and only two total). The Chinese Minister of Culture has ripped out the very soul of this game. On the AL subreddit you will get downvoted into oblivion by the woke mob who view the ships as cute, and they don’t want them to be to undressed or some bullshit. The games whole point was the lewdness. Just to put it simply: From 2018-2021 I spent $17,000 on the game. From 2021 to now I have only spent ~$1k. Azur Lane hasn't had good summer skins lately but the old ones are fine. Listed some I like below: (* = generally well liked by "coomunity") Big Tits: - *Zara - Poolside Coincidence (Big tits) - Honolulu - Summer Accident (Big tits) - Sirius - Scorching Hot Seirios (Big tits) - *Vittorio Veneto - The Flower of La Spezia (Big tits) - Atago - Summer March (Big tits, well liked) Medium tits: - Prince of Wales - Sun shing upon Windsor (Medium tits, nipple) - Surcoff - Loisirs Balneaires (Medium is Premium) Ass: - Drake - The Golden Hand's Respite (Big Ass) - *Pola - Seaside Coincidence (Big Ass and A Starfi) Other: *Richelieu - Fleuron of Waves (Classy, same artist as Surtr) Unrelated to the summer skins, but a general idea of what people mean through Azur Lane skins (one of the mild outfits) There is literally WAY TOO MUCH content to put it in here, so I guess a link will have to do it instead https://azurlane.koumakan.jp/wiki/Skins#Swimsuits-0. People in the Reddit discussion also wanted to point out the following two skins: People keep on talking about Azur Lane, so I guess I will add more shit from there: - Kashino’s Hot Springs Relaxation - L2D - Surcouf’s Loisirs Balnèaires - L2D - Pola’s Seaside Coincidence - L2D - Formidable’s Lady at the Beach - Zara’s Poolside Coincidence - L2D - Nicolas’s Summer Cleaning “Volunteer” - Vitterio Veneto’s The Flower of La Spezia - L2D - Richelieu’s Fleuron of the Waves - L2D - Those are all of my favorites of the swimsuit skins, but there is a lot more good ones Actually, I believe Azur Lane might be more relevant than one would think, given Touhou LW is pretty much a clone of this game. Azur lane (Before last year April 2021, The italian swimsuit batch was the best and there were plenty of good summer Live2Ds before that era such as Kashino/Zara/Surcouf/Sirius etc. Nothing as good since then has been released, skins have not been as skin-revealing and fanservicey since then). GFL (some of the Live2Ds were reaaaaallly lewd, like the close to nude one with the starfish) FGO, for creativity. Problem with most gacha’s summer skins is that they just put the character in a swimsuit and call it a day. While the art is usually very lovely, it’s also somewhat boring. They are pretty much “exactly as expected”, with gacha artists just trying to out lewd each other. Every single one of FGO’s summer outfits all have some kinda goofy secondary theme/motif to them, giving them a lot more visually interest outside of “just swimsuit”. Because FGO’s format is to have each character have 3 separate sprites, they usually allow 2 outfits to be a standard swimsuit while 1 is something wacky and unexpected. Some great examples would be Nitocris being fully covered in a Medjed sheet on 1st ascension, Meltryllis having a penguin parka -> ballerina swimsuit, Jeanne being a dolphin trainer, Tomoe playing VR beat saber, BB’s final ascension switching from swimsuit to eldritch tentacles, Kiara changing from swimsuit to police dominatrix outfit to a full mermaid transformation, Saint Martha punching enemies with iron fists, etc. The unpredictability of FGO’s summer costumes makes them all visually entertaining and highly distinct. Some even greatly changing the base design of the characters (Wu Zetian goes from angry child to a proper adult, complete with jiangshi and magic) or have other unusual elements (the Valkyries are a free character, but you can only choose 1 out of 3 of them, and each can swap to a different Valkyrie, resulting in 6 sets of voicelines and sprites). It gives them all an added layer of fun that I feel a lot of other gachas lack in their alts, which typically play too safe. I'm gonna have to dig a grave and do a little necromancy to say King's Raid. Tons of tight bikinis of various sizes and designs. Hell, there's even a loli in bandages, you see quite a lot. KR fanservice and swimsuits were AMAZING and their sizes of booba and skin revealing was wild. Counterside has some good ones coming this week. For Reference: Azurlane by far, the Live2D ones are on another level. With the special touch when you tap their chest or ass they will play with the swimsuits and comment something equally as horny as you are. Dunno where to see Ash Arms has the best summer costume, even after the recent summer event ended 5 days ago. But the art style isn't consistent, looks like they are from different games. I'll just list the characters with their summer costumes, and you'll take your verdict: I personally love the sailor event Twisted Wonderland put on! It's not sexy or anything of the sort but it's cute. Not exactly a skin but it's summer-themed cards. Azur Lane has amazing swimsuit skins like Atago, Vinetto, and Tosa. Sadly, they have toned down the fan service because of potential censorship issues. AL is mainly monetized by their amazing skins, so it should come as no surprise. I like the costume Pansirone got for halloween during the "swimsuit fiasco" in King's Raid. The "swimsuit fiasco" was half a year when all thematic costumes released in the game were swimsuits, because a poll stated that users liked those costumes the most. However the comunity got tired and started to rant and be vocal about it. Guardian Tales (images linked in the original comment below): Fruits Fulcute has some pretty nice art, too bad its a 虚無ゲー. Some of the sex scenes are animated, some are static. Typically anniversary skinned characters are animated. (I wanted to load the chibi GIF animations for those two, but they are on such a shoddy wiki page that 90% of the time when you want to load it, it gives a runtime error) For degeneracy then destiny child no debate, some characters there are almost close to nude already that they use nipple pasty only, its important to downloaded the taptap uncensored version. Would put Last origin on first place cuz they really hired some hentai artist's on that game but sadly its not in global. Closing thoughts Wow, it really took me much longer to write this than I expected. But I guess it was mostly coming from the summer skins part. I am not very sure how to continue this thread. There has been less and less noteworthy stuff going on with the game, so I don't have what to write about in the news round-up. If I am to write opinion texts, they are starting to showing an increasing degree of frustration and wish to be done with the whole thing while I still can (only intensified as we are getting closer and closer to the shutdown of DanKagu). My only other options are either put an end to the whole thing, or start diversify. But I can't just close this down so easily. The thread already reached 10K views and over 200 replies, so a lot of effort went into it for half a year. And do not get me started on the whole slowly gathering negativity towards LostWord. I hate that exactly the laziest, cheapest and most soulless of the Touhou mobile games is the one to have survived. I don't think we will ever hey to see nice Live2D animations for characters in a Touhou game (and now I mean mobile games - I don't have money for computer games, nor refer to them - do they use Live2D for any of the Touhou fan games on PC?). I don't think there will be anything too soon to beat the cute animations and animated dialogue from DanKagu, if there will be anything at all. DanKagu failed financially so hard it could not even afford to make a server outside JP, as it failed to incentivize the players to pay for any in-game content. Therefore, it will get the axe in a month from now. This is one of the scariest things about "games as a service" kind of content (yes, I do believe all of the Touhou mobile games fit in this category). You fully depend on the creator's servers, many times can't play without internet, and if they decided o shut down the game (most of the time only because it is not profitable enough), the player loses everything (and if you spent any real money in the game, then I guess you are fucked because nobody will give you compensation) as you remain with nothing when the game ceases to exist (many times without the chance to recover/salvage it). The games basically become lost media. Scott Ross, the creator of famous machinima series "Freeman's Mind" has a very interesting video about the whole concept of "games as a service", why hates them so much and why he considers the whole concept to be a fraud.

Reactivating this thread after quite some time with an interesting text I wanna quote: It comes from this thread, which was a discussion about FS

News roundup. Finally something to talk about this week... News and updates In the following hours, we are going to get another maintenance. This time, things that will actually make people pay attention. - new event: Capsule Crazy Gensokyo - banne coming with it contains Seija, Raiko and Sumireko (2 gen units everyone was looking for) - another banner: retro MoF Nitori just another attempt at selling a reskin to compensate for the fuckup with the original Nitori Meanwhile, JP is getting more new units - time to fully milk EoSD with Daiyousei alt and Koakuma; what I appreciate is that they went with the battle sprite for them - and speaking of Koakuma, there is also her version from the Hifuu universe Community discussion and memes Surprisingly, there has been nothing relevant going on this week besides having us play Human Phantom Maid for the third time, so I really can't write about any interesting discussion.

Holy shit they are extremely overdue (like about a year of you give listen to the guys from the subreddit community), but now I think I can finally die peacefully*. Also does this mean we are getting the Horismriver March event next? We did skip that one, even if it was supposed to come long ago * unless I am gonna wait for Chimata too

Another quick news roundup, given that maintenance starts in a matter of hours: News and updates Not too much besides the maintenance summary, to be honest. Epic Prayer continues, we are getting Fantasy Rebirth for Yuyuko and Suwako, new Scarlet Devil Tower content, retro SA Satori banner and 2nd rerun (third time overall) of Phantom-Human Maid for a Day (get ready to experience again all the Meiling abuse). Community discussions and memes Again, no big discussions going on these days. Instead, I will skip to the memes. Old discussion, but it is dubious how much Space/Hifuu Yorihime resembles the Yorihime design from KKHTA Not necessarily about Touhou LostWord, but still in the realms of gacha games. One day, we might even happen to have this discussion about LostWord itself...

Quick news roundup before anything new happens: News and updates JP has two new units that will be features as banner. This time, it will be Chimata and Mike. Knowing from the way Misumaru and Takane were released on Global not very long after JP, then we can expect them on Global soon enough. To me, that is fine, as I was really looking to get Tenkyuu. For some reason, it looks like the two will be separate banners though instead of coming together. If I understood correctly, Mike will most likely be the GEN unit, while Tenkyuu will be the FES Meanwhile, it looks like Global will receive the SA retro version of Satori instead

Well, I really an not feeling in the finest of moods (basically a combination of fear, dread, panic and lack of self confidence) right now due to an upcoming exam retake, so I might be missing for a while, or at least reflect my problems into the way I will address the current news roundup. Anyway, with 1 day delay, emergency news roundup: News and updates This week, we have had a Dev Letter revealing the latest, shiniest stuff going to come to Global. Oh boy... - "I can't with this shit, I just don't have the words anymore man, like this is unprecedented levels of plain stupid beyond what I can comprehend, both for Global and JP, like someone explain to me how this could possibly be healthy for the game?" (u/Kdog8273) Anyway, overall information about the update can be found in here: Now, let's go into a bit of detail, shall we... Dev Letter has decided to start the roundup with new Fantasy Rebirth costumes - Suwako and Yuyuko Along with them, Nitori, Daiyousei and Patchouli will receive the Fantasy Rebirth 2.0 treatment? How useful will it be? Not very much, as it will more than likely barely make them any better? "2 times 0 is still 0". Since I do not know exactly what else to say, I will leave it in the hands of the users of r/touhou_lostword: "In response to Phantasma's concern of people not rebirthing their units: Give more meaningful buffs to characters. Daiyousei's ult is one of the worst ones in the game, yet they decide to make her a weird pseudo tank after she ults? What purpose does this serve? She can't do anything meaningful if she has no spellcards. - So many older units are terrible because they lack breaks, have no utility, and have unfocused kits that are completely outclassed by almost every modern unit. Rebirths can let these older units be viable in some way. L1 Reisen's ult buff actually makes her do damage. Focus on that, not gimmicky or meaningless stuff like Daiyousei's rebirth buffs. - Don't penalize farmers for rebirthing units. 14 SP cost is very high for one unit. This is the major reason I dont rebirth units unless they get significantly stronger for CQ. Maybe implement a system where you can choose specific rebirth units to have a lower SP cost." "You can't suggest them anything related to SP costs, I did try to make that suggestion through discord and it will never go through cause their rules. I bought 2 rings with fortune dust, other 3 were free, I'm not planning to use fortune dust to buy more because glorified 14SP bricks with a wedding dress simply do not work. I don't understand why after Rebirth the exp needed to bring our chars back to 100 is doubled instead of halved. Rings have a cost and right now two kind of dolls have more value than a nice jpg for a brick Rebirth 2.0, would be very fine if it only was about farming more mirrors and MAYBE use some coins to buff rebirthed units even more, but since it cost rare tiles and scrolls and since the drop rate of those mats it's now very null, you probably need around a month and an half to farm enough scrolls and tiles just to RE2.0 your 14SP brick, in the meanwhile in a month and an half I can brick around 2 retro units or a generic fes units which are more useful than L1 Marisa and L1 Reisen with RE 2.0. People it's bundled with waifus, I'm in Touhou cause Ran's dedication, Marisa and Aya freeloading attitude, Yuuka, Kokoro and Nue quirks, a certain Iku and Nue garage kit, Suika, Yuuka and Eiki songs and also MoF orchestra OST, Okuu and Orin cause, fuck it... M1 Grand Prix nonsense and other randomness that steered my attention towards this games which are made for no-braindead people (aka your average CoD, Siege or your generic modern console player). Too many waifus demand too many rings and my room it's filled with scale model kits and I still have my freedom of choice, so rebirth + rings it's a big no, so is a big no wasting SP, school slots, time and whatever to bring'em back to 100." Alright, it looks like we are getting the third rerun of this event. Meanwhile, Tojiko and Raiko waiting for their own events to be released because we have skipped them:... It also looks like the beach hag is getting her own EX stage. How unexpected... At least the story card's art has strong yuri smell, not gonna lie. Since I have not completed Chapter 4 yet, it looks like I will actually have to go through it now. Just for the Epic Doll I will not use anyway... Also I guess 1 free prayer (minus the 1500 coins) for completing a game related survey. From what it looks like, the survey will open up tomorrow and will last for a few days, until...well, scratch that, it will last this whole month. The survey has also been mentioned in here Oh, we are also having the release of 2 general units. It was about time for them to give us something that is not a FES reskin/UFES/EFES/Relic FES Let's not forget Summer Hecatia is also coming. This time, she is not coming with the free 140 prayers we got when Blue Reimu and Summer Yukari made their debut. And finally, new costumes, The only one that really caught my attention was the one for Eirin. Finally, she got something that is not...whatever the Christmas outfit was, This one is really fitting actually. Funny how we are getting the nurse outfits, given there is no sign for that event actually coming, and that we even skipped it long ago (that was supposed to be the event that would mark the debut of Tojiko) Community discussion and memes The colleagues from Scarlet Talk have decided to present the latest update their own way. At least this mad the day slightly better: You can always find Remi and Patchy presenting the news their own way right here Closing thoughts (new category) I would have written a long text here, but again, I think there are a few comments that, if put together, perfectly transmit the way I am feeling about this game right now: And there's the reason I started to slow down with/almost drop LostWord. The fucking EFes being dropped into the game every few months or so that have abysmal drop rates and the useless Fantasy Rebirths that should be ashamed to even be called such things. Between some Story Cards being locked behind paywalls (i.e. practically needing EFes due to the elements they have for the Elemental EX which you might as well be paying for) and the drop rates for any of the Story Cards on Hard/Lunatic, I stopped caring about Touhou LostWord and just kinda forgo about booting up the app whenever errands are finished. Doesn't help that there's still the endless black screens that show up from time-to-time be it trying to boot up the game itself or heading into the school in some capacity. I haven't even touched the Scarlet Devil Tower since that one update that lowered a few stats for the early floors and even then I didn't touch it after beating a few floors when it first released. The game is just that boring. It was fun at first but with the flip-flopping between updating the story and the constant events happening it stopped being fun and start looking like a wasted promise. Even the concepts in the game are wasted and stop being cute and start to feel creepy. The Fantasy Rebirths were cute at first, but once it was confirmed that the MC is basically a child thanks to several events scattered throughout the main story, SDT and even the weekly/monthly events (minus Hifuu which seems to take place in an alternate universe) it started to feel weird trying to gather tons of Mirrors just for a literal wedding costume, being booted back to level 1 for the character being rebirthed and some useless stat boosts. Like they look cute, don't get me wrong. And some characters probably would enjoy wearing such outfits. But canonically most of the characters that have Rebirth costumes could care less about getting married with a human. (Especially a child.) Most of them are youkai after all, they would probably be focused more on trying to either guide us to safety or trying to scare/eat/kill us. (Even youkai have morals and standards, may not be much depending on the youkai but it's there.) The only benefit some characters would have is Reimu getting tons of money or Marisa getting a free chance to steal more depending on the character rebirthed. Mokou's confuses the everliving daylights out of me. Rather than making it a suit (something that would have pants, something she would be familiar with fighting in), they made it a dress like everyone else. The only ones that don't wear wedding outfits are: Reimu (not even sure what the outfit is based off of). [CVN's note: it is a a traditional Japanese wedding dress called shiromuku] Reisen (a clichéd military outfit). Kasen (don't recognize the outfit design). Nitori (a white version of her normal outfit with more advanced machinery and no backpack in the art itself). Youmu (a kimono... yay?). Patchouli (an actual mage outfit complete with staff). Alice (something that looks like it came from the PC98 era or even Alice in Wonderland itself, fitting given the character). Meiling (a more fancy version of her usual outfit without her iconic hat). Sakuya (looks like she's going out for a night on the town if Gensokyo had one). Ran (not sure what the outfit is based off of). Chen (a shrine/shrine maiden outfit). And Kaguya (a strange futuristic princess-like outfit). Most of the other outfits are either literal wedding dresses or what might as well be the flower girl/ring bearer. They could've done something spectacular with the Rebirth outfits, but instead they just went the lazy route and just made them mostly wedding outfits with the characters listed being the only ones to go against the norm and have outfits that don't typically fit a wedding and look more like something that would be an event costume of some kind. (Which eventually became the case as depending on the event some Rebirth Costumes can be used to gain more Event Points.) Also looking at Kasen's rebirth outfit has me laughing, the dragon and tiger look extremely durpy while the eagle looks either pissed or scared shitless for what might be coming at it. But regardless, there's a myriad of reasons why Touhou LostWord is starting to dwindle in popularity. One of them is definitely the repetitive gameplay. It's just unbalanced. You're stuck with a limited selection of resources while the enemy gets an unlimited selection of resources. You permanently lose a Spell Card or Last Word meanwhile the enemy can use as many Spell Cards or Last Words as they please which can and will result in your defeat if you don't plan properly or don't have the resources necessary to beat them. The meta also doesn't help matters. Like I said before, a lot of popular/useful Story Cards are either locked behind events or Lunatic battles in the Story mode. Witch of Scarlet Dreams for example, is only obtainable through the final battle of chapter 2 and has a notoriously low drop rate like all 5 Story Cards. You have to do so many battles just to get a single one of those Story Cards. Also not helping it's case is the fact you need to spend thousands of God Crystals to increase the Story Card inventory to a reasonable amount before having to do it all over again thanks to the max prayers usually giving ten Story Cards at a time which can pile up really quick. So if you want the best Story Cards you need to spill an endless see of blood just to get the best cards and have a shitton of money to increase your Story Card inventory. This whole situation could've been avoided had they not made the default drop rate of God Crystals abysmal for errands. Because unlike Seal Crystals which have multiple ways of being obtained, God Crystals can only be obtained through either Errands or the occasional Everyone Wins Champaign without paying for them. Speaking of God Crystals and going back to talking about costumes, I really dislike the fact you have to pay with God Crystals instead of with something like Coins or Event Points depending on the costume. These aren't alternate characters for fuck's sake, they're quite literally just alternate outfits. If you really insist on making us pay God Crystals for more fancy PNGs to look at than at least make them cheap. Not like to voice changes depending on the costume anyway. (Greedy pieces of shit.) Why is GL so insistent in pumping out the next big character? JP’s at fault making these unsparkable EFes characters and GL’s at fault in trying to keep up. They really need to just slow down for their own good. Ugh, at least there’s a step-up (though I kinda liked the free summons before ngl). Also, skipping both Raiko and Sumireko yet again and not releasing Tojiko or her costume alongside the other event costumes is sorta criminal. But, at least we got more General pool units so eh. The JP team. They don't care if Global's release schedule is cohesive, has meaningful continuity, or is fair, providing it's meeting profit targets. JP is the "main" version, and they will switch Global servers off like a light if it stops making enough money. It's enough to question how anyone would invest money into gacha games, given how abruptly they can just shut them down due to the devs' own greed and poor decision making. LW has been spiralling in that direction for a while and is rapidly getting worse. I've spent a bit of money on the game (only on cheap packs/Nitori's delivery mind you) [not me, CVN, but the original person who posted the comment] but as it stands I'm not confident enough in the game's health to invest in it right now; and if enough people share that concern EoS becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Emergency news round-up coming in the next hours. A lot of things happened since the Dev Letter dropped and found some gacha shenanigans I want to share (both about Touhou LW and unrelated) as seen from the eyes of other, non-Touhou gacha communities.