Gensou Shoujo Taisen

[GTF234]

Yo everyone. Don't intend to be a phantom member, but life happens. Well here's something I've been meaning to share with you for a while:

Gensou Shoujo Taisen

It's a touhou themed doujin game based on Super Robot Wars by the circle calling themselves Sanbondo. While many of you who are interested in that stuff are probably already aware of WERK's similar Type-Moon themed project, Battle Moon Wars, GSW takes it even further. The interface is practically identical to the old Alpha and Alpha Gaiden games in both the battle and intermission menus. But the biggest kick is the music, primarily made up of amazing remixes of Touhou music that is remixed to blend in Super Robot Wars themes. This results in some brilliant things like a fusion of Casket of Stars with Time to Come, or Wind God Girl with Neppu! Shippu! Cybuster!. ...actually the one that will make you eargasm the most is probably the most hidden one, which is a fusion of U.N. Owen was Her? and Violent Battle. It only plays under very specific conditions in Ch 13Marisa and was left off the official OST for reasons Sanbondo never really clarified.

You have two main routes Reimu and Marisa, as if that wasn't going to be obvious. Having a clear data for both routes will unlock a short 4 chapter route with Sakuya as the main heroine- assuming you have the game properly updated. For the most part, the paths send them to very different scenarios, bringing different characters to you sooner, but the chapters based on the more important events are combined scenarios. While the spells and most of the skills all function like classic SRW spells and abilities, there is one new system they put in, the curtain fire fields and grazing. Enemies can put out a field around them in various shapes and ranges, representing the danmaku style of the source material. Unique to each enemy type, the fields have varying penalties to your movement, defense, and evasion, as well as possibly having another special effect. You have the ability to put your characters into focus movement, which will grant +10% accuracy and negate the movement, defense, and evasion penalties, but not the special effects. Focus has its own movement pace, generally 50% of normal movement, but it's independent of that as some characters like Marisa have really high normal movement but can barely any move while focusing. The drawback to focusing is that you get 10% more exp and money while killing things unfocused, but more importantly you cannot dodge anymore. Instead of dodging you have to graze, which makes you take damage equal to the damage you would have taken, multiplied by your evasion chance. So you'd graze a 1000 damage hit for 300 if the enemy had a 30% chance of hitting you, when you dodge- you might still end up actually getting hit by that since the chance of hitting wasn't 0 after all. This system adds a rather interesting layer to the game since it now forces you to balance focusing and not focusing as you try to reach timed battle masteries, get more money and exp, etc.

The plot picks up as a re-imagining of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, with the first 15 chapters, dubbed GSW Kou or Scarlet, being about the scarlet mist incident. It begins with Reimu revealing she's just learned to fly without Genji in response to fairies attempting to exploit her old handicap, assuming you picked her as your main heroine. Old things are brought up a lot and things from beyond TH6 are introduced much sooner as well.

The game currently only has the Kou chapters, as the next installment is not out yet,Gensou Shoujo Taisen Phantom. They're taking the same approach WERK did and release things in batches, which I approve of because it gives me something to have rather than just wait for years.

http://www.sanbondo.net/ Go here for their website, where they have quick links to GSW Scarlet and Phantom's websites as well as links to their newest trailer for all the improvements they made for Phantom. The website for Scarlet has the links to the update patches.

I know it's not all that hard to find...digital copies...of the game on the web, but I do highly recommend buying the actual game, and OST because damn is it good. They do sell it on W-Canvas, which does to international shipping last time I checked.

Edited March 21, 2011 by GTF234

[shadowofchaos]

Sheesh.

Internet Rule #6969: If it exists as a video game, there is a Touhou-ified version of it.

[GTF234]

Undeniably true, there is very little that won't get a touhou spin to it. However, that in of itself doesn't mean the resulting product is bad. There is a lot of effort put into this one to keep it in line with what it is a huge homage to, such as the sprite work and animations pretty much being intentionally designed as a throw back to to PSX Alpha standards. It's also not like BMW and GSW are doing anything completely out of line with mainstream SRW anyway- the series always was a giant pile of fanbait in turnbased strategy format with flashy effects and fireworks.

Similarly, Twilight Frontier's New Super Marisa Land is an amazingly fun and well put together game, dismissing it because it's "Touhou + Super Mario Land would certainly be a shame and waste. Same goes for Touhou Labyrinth, it's a pretty damn good dungeon crawler with some mercilessly brutal but fun gameplay that would be missed out on if you roll your eyes and don't give it the time of day just because it's "Touhou + RPG".