Seems like I'm nearly finished with Genso Wanderer Reloaded, as all I have left are Marisa and Sanae's side stories.
Futo's side story was painful to complete. That last dungeon with the Big Tenshi's sniping you from the other side of the dungeon, and Miko's fight becoming unwinnable if she absorbs Youmu's Half-Phantom, all of it is super frustrating.
Aya's side story was weird. It's basically a prequel, an advertisement AND an epilogue for Double Focus all at the same time. The actual gameplay portion wasn't too bad, it's just one short dungeon with one really annoying boss. The hardest thing about the dungeon is actually scrounging up good items, as there's no Nito Fusion and the shop kinda sucks. My tip would be to make use of Compound Gaps; use those gaps with Antidotes will give you Good Medicine, and those can be turned into Yagokoro Cure All's. Mamizou always sells at least 1 in her shop.
The boss for Aya's story was tough... until I got a Unicorn Horn to drop. If you have that weapon, all you have to do is go to the bottom right of the boss (but be 3, 4 steps away), and then you hit it until it's dead. From that position, you don't get hit by the fog, you don't get pushed back by its special and you don't have to dodge it's instant kill beam. You just gotta worry about not dying (you can easily do this with Cure All's and spellcards)
I also gave that bonus Dungeon in Rei'Sen's room a spin and
oh my god this is too much. No items, no partners, no Nito Fusion, unidentified items AND it's
99 floors long. The best I could do was Floor 56 with careful save scumming... had to stop there as I got stuck in an unwinnable scenario. I have no idea how you're supposed to beat this without getting incredibly lucky (like getting good equips and enough food in the earlier floors)
Anyway, the game is really fun. There's occasionally some eye-roll worthy anime bullshit with the writing, but the core gameplay is really addicting without being as frustrating as some other roguelikes I've played (e.g. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon).
I 1cc'd Touhou 17 hard mode, my first hard mode clear ever. Funny how in all the previous playthroughs I die in stage 5 or before, and then all of a sudden I get a skill bump and make it with one life and two bombs left.
My thoughts on the game: I like it better than Touhou 15 and 16, just better boss patterns, character designs, and gameplay gimmick. Stage 1-2 somehow feels slower and unengaging than usual, making every new playthrough tedious. This is a game that is way better in the latter half, the opposite of LoLK. Like most previous Touhou, the difficulty scale is weird. Stage 5 is easier than stage 4. Stage 4 is difficult because of fast bullets, high concentration, and precise timing requirement to prevent things from becoming overwhelming. Yatchie would not be so bad if it weren't for the non spells, which are ludicrously fast and narrow. Stage 5 boss is one of the easiest one in all of Touhou, and that is because Mayumi's pattern are some of the most static and routable. Keiki is the hardest, a lot of it owing to the fact that 2 of its spell cards requires really precise dodging, and another one really tests of your reading and control ability. The final card is theoretically pretty easy, the key is to realize if you get the timing and movement repeated the same way every time, the pattern is static. In essence, memorizing a route is the hardest part to capturing it. I personally didn't do it because after 600 tries and getting 3/4 of the way there, I decided it was tedious.
I also tried the extra stage. I don't have much thought about it yet, but it is easier than I expected so far and Saki's theme is really good.
Music sort of disappoints overall, like Touhou 16 and 9, but that said, it has my favorite title card in the whole soundtrack. My 5 favorites are:
Title card
Dark Pegasus
Electric Heritage
Beast Metropolis
Unlocated Hell
Idolatrize World
Congats on the Hard 1cc! I still haven't really gone back to Touhou 17 yet.. but I have tried to go back to Touhou 16 and I strongly agree it's a step up from that.
HSiFS is a total TD-style situation again for me; I like everything in TD and HSiFS *except* for how the game actually plays. The balancing just feels weird in both games (though in different ways. I'm specifically talking about Normal here btw), the spellcard patterns are all kinda uninspired (except for Mamizou in TD) and I don't really like the sub-systems in either game. I haven't revisited LoLK, but I remember liking that game up until you get to Clownpiece.
But yeah, Touhou 17 is pretty cool. I actually really want to go back to it after I complete Genso Wanderer Reloaded. Last I played, I think I was planning on doing Otter-Marisa with a focus on picking up Eagle Spirits. I think my plan was "Otter-Marisa gives you an extra long bomb and Otters for Keiki's final spellcard" and "Eagle-Roaring Mode lets you kill bosses so fast, you don't have to learn how to dodge some spellcards"
