Let's talk about a different project: The Touhou Project. I just learned that Touhou means "Eastern". Well, that just fits with that one article of Phil's I keep quoting, about how Japan didn't exist. By 1996 it kind of did, though. Not entirely, but it kind of did. The veil between our worlds had become transparent, much like the veil between the world of humans and the demonic realm of Gensokyo. On the other side, an alchemist known only as ZUN tinkered with a Japanese computer, first creating a Breakout-style game. A year later... who knows what happened? Perhaps in his dreams he saw them. The bullets. The patterns. The patterns are so pretty. They entice, like an angler fish, and then the jaws come. Each one spells certain death for you, a meeting with Peko the Destructor should you touch their beauty. But you know that. You've seen them before, haven't you? Gaze upon the face of madness that has shocked and horrified many who know of Touhou. Gaze at the relentess spread of instant death bullets. Gaze at a new creature, born from the heart of Japan-Gensokyo and tearing through the veil to terrorize us. Look upon the Dread Beast DANMAKU, and feel ultimate despair. I have. I have ventured into Gensokyo, and I have come back after three days of weaving through its curtain fire. I have come back to tell you......that I love every bit of it.
To be clear, I played the seventh game in the series: Perfect Cherry Blossom. I have previously dabbled with some of the PC-98 games, including an extended series of attempts to best the first true shooting game, Story Of Eastern Wonderland. Perfect Cherry Blossom is the second in the series to be made for Windows, and... It's perfect. I almost have no words to express how satisfyingly good I found this. I understand the Kool-Aid that fans of this series adore so much now. All of this despite the fact that I am complete garbage at shooting games. You've seen some disdain for them here; hell, the whole Dread Beast GREED thing was invented because of Image Fight. The scrolling shooter was built to siphon your quarters, and in the 8-bit era they were still learning not to do that. Touhou, like Axelay before it, was created from the ground-up to be "not for the arcade". Axelay exorcises the Dread Beast GREED with its reversal of Gradius Syndrome. Perfect Cherry Blossom is set in a realm where it can't even exist. This is the land of the Dread Beast DANMAKU, and its multi-colored eyes glare at dear GREED and send it running to hide in a pile of hundred dollar bills. Now, I made the mistake in the past of running as well at that glare. One shouldn't. A German Let's Player pal of mine, who is a whiz at Touhou, has lots to say about Touhou and its status as an Impossible Video Game holy fucking shit look at those fucking bullets Joe--
Sorry? I was rambling. Anyway, Gesh here has lots to say. Basically, the average Video Game Fan will look at one of the really intense Touhou challenges and assume that all the game consists of is ridiculous curtain fire. Untrue. It eases you into things before throwing the scary stuff at you. So it went with me and Perfect Cherry Blossom. I will confess. I started on Easy Mode. Now, a lot of super Touhou fans will scoff at Easy mode. Fuck that, I say. It's probably a bad idea to coddle yourself outright and only play Easy mode Touhou without dipping your toe in a higher difficulty, but that shouldn't make it verboten outright. One must learn to crawl before they learn to walk... but one can't crawl for the rest of their lives. I spent two days learning to crawl. Here is how you crawl in Perfect Cherry Blossom, and how wonderful it is. You've got three playable characters, each with two different "styles" of shot, so to speak. I went with a maid named Sakuya who shoots knives, and gave her a homing shot. She also had four bombs per life. These are the tools Perfect Cherry Blossom gives you to survive. Shooting, moving, and bombing. Those first two we understand. The bombs? In my case, they did damage and cleared away bullets in a set area around me. They are a panic button, something to press when you weave your way incorrectly and need to save yourself. Losing a life will cost you all the bombs of that life, but using a bomb just costs... well, one bomb. Still, one cannot bomb willy-nilly. In my case, I hit a balance. I learned to weave through certain patterns of danmaku fire, moving gracefully and not letting my tiny dot of a hitbox get poked. At some points I thought I was in a field full of cows because of all the damn grazing happening. At others? HOLY SHIT SCARY PATTERN BOMB BOMB BOMB.
Oh, there are mechanics for getting high scores. Like the Supernatural Barrier. Get a bunch of points and you get this temporary shield that will absorb one hit. The kicker is that you can dismiss it early and clear every bullet off the screen. Since I gave more of a care about completing the game, I considered these bonus bombs and used them accordingly. If you save the shield, though, you get a point bonus. Which could be helpful if you're good. Which I'm not. I'm rambling, but these are almost all of the tools the game gives you. The mission then is to clear it and get a "good ending" by beating all six stages without using a continue. In this realm, the Dread Beast GREED's usual scheming is thwarted. Touhou doesn't want your quarters. It wants you to feed it as little as possible. Unlike GREED, who couldn't care less about your victory so long as you give it money... DANMAKU wants you to succeed. So much so that it gives you the option to practice any stage you've cleared. In my case, I used the continue option to clear the whole game, and then set to work on practicing the other stages. Learning the spreads as best as I could. Attempting to optimize life preservation and bomb use. I eventually succeeded. No continues... on Easy mode. I then bumped up to Normal, expecting pain... and it wasn't so bad! The things I had learned still applied! Some patterns were faster and more involved, but I handled it within a day. By the absolute skin of my teeth, I got the one credit clear on Normal. A difficulty which Touhou fans recognize. This counts. This is a realm I have survived.
This game lives up to its name. It's perfect. Perfectly balanced with difficulty. It's scary, but completely learnable and passable given some planning and practice. The game's length of about 30 minutes also means it doesn't drag on. The six stages go by, and a failed attempt can still teach you things. It respects you enough to want you to succeed, but doesn't patronize you by pulling its punches, even on Easy. By god, I like it. I like Perfect Cherry Blossom. I like it so much that I don't want to play another Touhou game. Not because it exhausted me and made me wary of putting my soul through that again. No. Because I want this experience to stand resolute in my mind. My three days in Gensokyo, dodging the dread beast DANMAKU's assault and bettering my reflexes with each retread. To do it over again with a new coat of paint would almost cheapen it. No. For now, this must be my only foray.
Perfect Cherry Blossom is perfect. Why can't more shooter games be like this?
...I mean, you've pretty much done all the good NES games already. Except Super Mario Bros.
ReplyDeleteOh, there are lots of good ones left. Absolute pillars of the NES library are few and far between at this point, though.
Delete