12.0 hours played
Written 12 days ago
You will have already seen the 'Overwhelmingly Positive' rating this game has, and it has that for good reason. A little bit of background first.
This is a fangame of Touhou Project, which is a japanese bullet hell franchise developed by a man called ZUN. What you're allowed to do with the franchise is much more lenient than other IPs, and as a result, the series has flourished due to a massive fanbase that is dedicated to making hundreds of thousands of derivative songs, pieces of artwork, literature, and games. Touhou Luna Nights is one of those games, and as such comes with already established characters and songs which are derived from ZUN's melodies.
You play as Sakuya Izayoi, maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and who is capable of stopping and slowing time. She's transported to some kind of construct that limits her powers for the sake of her mistress' entertainment, and that's all you really need to know. The story isn't the focus here. Characters in Touhou are written loosely enough that fanworks such as this one can take any facet they want of any character and make what they want with it. Some depictions of Gensokyo are feelgood and wholesome experiences (like Mystia's Izakaya, another amazing game), and some are a lot more violent than that, and both have some kind of support in canon, so both are valid, it's all dependent on what the person wants to make.
Team Ladybug have taken Sakuya's ability as a forefront focus and built the game around it. There are gimmicks and platforming and puzzles in this metroidvania that are dependent on your ability to stop and slow time. You start with a time slow, which is already potent and an upgrade that any other metroidvania might have later into the game, and then unlock time stop maybe 15 minutes later. You can start only stopping time for a few seconds, though you will unlock upgrades for that number that can let you catch your breath for more like 15-20 seconds, if you want. Your time drains faster as you move and attack, but this is still a completely busted ability for a protagonist to have.
So how is it balanced? Well, as mentioned, moving and attacking drain it massively, and you have a limit to the amount of knives you can throw (your primary attack in this game) while in stopped time. You can only get a dozen or so out at first, so it'll serve more as a repositioning and evasive tool in combat. While out of timestop, your knives cost MP to throw, and this is a limited resource that you only get back through grazing (getting very close to but not actually hitting an enemy, borrowed from the bullet hell games), or picking up missed knives. You also regenerate HP through grazing. Now, while in timestop, grazing is easy, but barely replenishes MP, and does nothing for your HP, instead replenishing your time a little bit. You cannot scum easy heals out of this, the closest thing being to throw all your knives into a wall and replenish MP by picking them up out of timestop.
Then, gimmicks. A number of creatures and projectiles will be unaffected by timestop, with their own unique glow, and some will *only* move in timestop. This is a construct built around Sakuya, after all. Those two alone are enough to make the bosses engaging despite having a pause button that doesn't apply to you. The exploration of the world is fun enough, too. Timestop will serve to help you reach high places by standing on things that would normally be in motion, to freeze water to walk across it, and make impossible timers a breeze.
Everything being built around you makes the direction of the game's exploration and combat feel very solid and satisfying to pull off, especially with the floatier movement that lets you fly over and rain knives on your opponents. It delivers in every aspect.
And last but not least, music. There is no Touhou game with bad music; it simply doesn't exist, and this is no exception to that rule. Every song is derivative of a melody that ZUN made for these characters and stages before, and if the foundations are good, a well executed remix is bound to sound great. Part of the fun of it is being able to recognise the songs from just a few notes, and the songs here distinguish themselves from one another very well while keeping what was so good about the originals.
It's not a long game, this 12 hours of mine being after 100%ing the game (partly with a guide) and playing a bit of the boss rush mode, but it's worth the price. An easy recommend.
