東方幻想魔録W ～ The Devil of Decline

this is the pinnacle of Touhou RPG. so much expansion from the first pc release. this is more of a gensoukyou experience; the music, the art, the story, it will create a sense of fulfillment, without even leveraging ''play with your touhou waifus''. like i said this is the top of the line for Touhou, and will stay so until Zun approves franchise. I played this back in 2010-ish when it first released, for like 2 or 3 runs, then again when its ps4 released for a complete run, no death, 100% collections, so you can imagine how long that took. but it was still worth it.

Nearing the final boss of the game, I can say for certain now that Devil of Decline has been an extremely worthwhile journey. I had come into contact with Genius of Sappheiros Comiket release in my early days of being in the fandom and had always heard that first game had a better reputation. Yet I had still run somewhat out of breath and patience after the Iku bossfight in Genius. Perhaps it's the better circumstances that I've started this game in now, but Devil of Decline clicked and kept on clicking as I played. What I liked especially is how open the world feels. You can explore the shattered Gensokyo in several directions and sequencing happens only at very few places. Often, it's the difficulty of encounters that might persuade you to go the other way. Or they might not and you'll somehow brute force your way through those enemies. Very rarely does this game tell you not to go somewhere because it said so. The result is that the world feels big and the quest to save Gensokyo becomes grand and exciting as a result. I also really appreciate the SaGa influences of the game: The many actions you take during combat all add up to minor boons that keep you motivated. A weapon proficiency level here, an elemental proficiency there, learned a new weapon skill, improved an existing skill...finally, level ups for your shikigami and most impactful: Your own characters. A negative that I did notice is unfortunately that it's not too attractive to exchange a current party member with a newcomer, as they come as blank slates with no already developed proficiencies. To get them up to speed, a lot of investment and temporary loss of your group's power would be required. Oh how I would love to bring along the adorably pathetic Kogasa, but she's just too late to the party. Maybe one day after she's leveled up a lot as a shikigami... The difficulty curve of the game has been very sensible so far. Amusingly, it seems to grow sharper for monster encounters than the actual bossfights. I'm constantly surprised how often I lose against a somewhat overtuned and unlucky "trash" encounter, only for the boss of the same zone to be perfectly manageable after some buffing and debuffing. Overall, I expected Devil of Decline to be a pretty solid RPG with some flaws. Those flaws ended up being quite tiny and those positive expectations were greatly exceeded.