If i could leave a neutral review I would for this game. This game is a tribute to both Super Mario RPG, and Touhou. Overall I did have quite a lot of fun with this game in the early, and middle portions of the game. The story for the most part was interesting, and I loved just how many characters appear in this game. The art style overall is really nice and recreates that feel of Super Mario RPG quite well, as with Mario RPG this game too has parts that the isometric perspective just messes with me and makes platforming and such a challenge. The character art was insanely fan-servicey like holy moly, almost every character in the game has massive boobers, its honestly a bit over the top and I kept asking "Why is every character in this game so dang stacked?" lol. The battles for the most part are fine, I was able to get through pretty much the entire game on the Normal difficulty. The music is honestly just kind of whatever, like its not bad or anything but none of it was really all that memorable. It honestly didn't really sound like Touhou music and more so just generic music, I never felt like it got to the point that it would need to be muted, but I would not be able to remember any of it after i stop playing the game like I would with actual Touhou music. The mini-games were actually quite a lot of fun, each mini-game I played didn't feel too complex and was just the thing to break up the flow of just battling, they honestly did a great job with all of the mini-games, my fav one was the one right before the final area of the game. Now i'll get onto the things I really didn't enjoy about this game. Firstly the defense mechanics in this game are just kind of weird. Like each character has their own "Dodge" value which is supposed to make defending yourself in battle easier or something if they have a higher value, idk it was really unclear. I played on the normal difficulty and like a good 90% of the time I was never able to figure out the timing to defend yourself from a lot of different attacks, especially the ones that put a visual effect over the whole screen like fire attacks or ice walls. As it turns out if you pick the Normal difficulty instead of Easy you are going to just have to guess the correct time to defend yourself as for many of the attacks in the game the timing is extremely unclear. It got so bad for the last half of the game, most of the later enemies and bosses have attacks that completely one shotted a party member just because I did not know the timing to defend myself, and honestly that in of itself became quite a drag to deal with that sucked the fun right out of the last like 6 or so hours of the game for me. This game has an absolutely insane difficulty spike in the last half of the game, so much so that even with grinding up to level 42 I was still being one shotted by bosses just because the defense timing was so unclear. Being one shotted and having to waste items even after grinding up so much really got on my nerves in the last half of the game. The final boss was the nail in the coffin for me, It was blatant bull crap. The first phase was fine, I got through it all right on Normal, but as soon as the 2nd phase hit all crap hit the fan. Firstly when the 2nd phase hits it removes the defense and attack buffs you might have placed on your party which is just poor game design in my opinion. After she removes your buffs you learn that she has a main body and a head which you have to separately attack, as well as 2 guards alongside her. Every single time it got to her turn she could attack 4+ times due to the guards and the separate body parts. This means that at least for me on Normal it was an unwinnable fight. Like I have said before the defend timing is pretty much a guessing game on normal, and it pretty much means that I had to just heal every turn since I could not figure out how to guard her attacks properly at all since she spams so many on her turn. Eventually I ran out of healing items and died to the final boss 2nd phase, this is where I threw in the towel and used the item "Talisman of ease." and honestly I should have just used this item earlier. Upon returning to the boss fight on Easy mode I learned that they would actually show the defense timings above your party members head with a ! icon. WHY DOES NORMAL MODE NOT HAVE THIS AS A FEATURE!!! Being able to see the timings would have been such an incredible help throughout the entire game. However even with the ! icons to try and defend better some attacks just have horrible timing windows that were basically a few frames for you to press the button which still made defending a freaking gamble. The final area of the game was honestly just brutal since I never did figure out defending properly so I just got obliterated quite a few times and I just found myself wanting the game to end already which is not a great feeling to have. It kind of ended up souring the actual ending for me pretty hard which is sad since I did genuinely enjoy most of the game. Overall I would say this is a pretty good game, but if its your first playthrough it really should be on Easy mode if only for the sake of learning the defense timings since Normal mode will not teach the correct timings. I do enjoy this game and maybe at some other point ill come back and actually try and beat the final boss on Normal, but for now I am just done with this game. I got about 24 hours out of this game which is a pretty good runtime, so id say I got my $20 worth from the game (I got it on sale btw normally its $30 but even still 24hrs is a good chunk of time for that price point). Overall I recommend checking this game out if you like Touhou project and Mario RPG.
