One of the best Touhou fan-games I've ever played, perfect for fans of the series and a great tactical SRPG in its own right!
Touhou Gensoyonbaiken^2 offers a campaign scenario with around 20-30 hours of gameplay and rather high replay value due to allowing for some varying paths, optional boss battles, a large amount of recruitable characters to try out and customize into different team compositions and the ability to start a new game with your current level and stats ala NewGame+. What does not carry over is the recruited characters whom you'll need to defeat in battle once more if you wish to recruit them, but rather than being a set-back I think this serves a purpose as some of the harder battles can only be reached by avoiding the recruitment of certain characters.
The story is of course nonsensical in the best of ways, as is typical of Touhou games, and the characters all act as you'd expect leading to a lot of funny and interesting interactions. What is unfortunate however, and by far my biggest gripe with this title, is that it is not yet fully translated into english so it is alienating a large chunk of potential players. The developer gave others access to the script and allows for fans to help translate, and since I started playing a lot of work has been done; all attacks/spellcards are now translated, as are character names and the vast majority of stats and gameplay features, however the main plot and all the dialogue is still only available in Japanese.
I personally still enjoyed my experience by using it as a chance to practice Japanese, using my very basic understanding of the language and translating any kanji I did not recognise while playing. However, I understand most people who do not understand the language would rather just play in English. Hopefully soon the whole title will be available in more languages, and I might try to help participate in the translation however I am not so confident that my own translation was entirely on point, though I got the gist of it.
Without going into specifics you can expect to see a large chunk of the most popular Touhou characters and you should find at least someone to your liking. They all play differently and apart from a few shared/similar moves, they're all very much unique with their own special attacks (spellcards). Some do not play as you might expect; Reisen for example is made out to be fairly fragile in the Touhou fandom, often staying as far away from enemies as possible and using her fingertips to shoot bullet-shaped bullets. However, in this game she worked more effectively as a tank of sorts, at least for me. While she still has the ability to shoot enemies from afar with a very long-range attack, and she can still use her hypnotic eyes to mess with enemies (in this case reducing AP and dealing damage), her main appeal is her self-buffing special Evil Undulation which essentially makes her impossible to hit, letting her "tank" enemy attacks without even taking damage and avoiding crucial crowd control spells.
Of course, as it is a tactical SRPG, your options are not limited to what characters you pick or what moves you choose to use. In Touhou Gensoyonbaiken^2 you can also equip characters with a wide array of different items, level up their individual stats through item-uses, unlock/buy new skills and more. Some characters rely heavily on others to work as intended, Toyosatomimi no Miko for example has a special move called "Royal Clan's Chaotic Dance", which from what I've been able to figure out cannot be used at all unless you have her minions in your party as well. This means some characters work optimally in certain compositions, however even without dragging along her allies I was still able to make good use of her other special which not only does decent AoE damage but also breaks any items equipped on the target essentially working as a permanent debuff of sorts. Just be careful with your character's placement as a lot of enemies love using AoE spells and many of your own special moves can also hit allies if they're caught in the cross-fire.
Oh, and it's a given since it's a Touhou game, but the music is of course excellent as always and there are many rocking arrangements to spice up all the epic boss-battles even further.
In short, the game has a ton of strategic depth as should be expected of any good Strategy RPG, and it has quite a bit of replay value with many different characters to encounter and recruit if you so wish. The story is still not translated, but hopefully will be soon, however all gameplay aspects are more or less fully translated and the game can be understood and enjoyed without any knowledge of the Japanese language.
PS. Byakuren is in this game, as a recruitable boss character, and she plays perfectly! As a worshipper of the Holy White Lotus this makes me love the game even more than I would have otherwise.
