Touhou: New World, Ankake Spa's latest action RPG based on the wildly-popular Touhou franchise, has just been released! Read on to see if its gameplay, bullet hell experience, and replayability are worth your money in our review!
Touhou: New World Review and Score Explanation
Touhou: New World Score Explanation
| Overall | Ankake Spa's latest action RPG adaptation of the Touhou games is one of the games of all time. Though it has slightly improved its gameplay over its predecessors, it suffers from a disappointing audio experience, lack of difficulty, and a confusing connection between it and the main game series. Players risk immediately becoming bored with its standard action RPG loop, lack of immersive audio design, and confusing story. |
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| Story | Not only is the story confusing to new players, but it's also confusing to experienced players of the Touhou franchise. First, Touhou: New World's continuity with the game series is baffling despite the obvious references to the series' key events. On top of that, the game has made the mistake of assuming that everybody is already familiar with the series by severely neglecting to give much context or background, if any, to most of the characters you meet. |
| Gameplay | While Touhou: New World has managed to somewhat capture the essence of bullet hell into their action RPG, they failed to deliver upon one of the key aspects that made the genre popular in the first place: its difficulty. But regardless, the core gameplay is quite solid, and being able to change how each character fights on a fundamental level through equipment and skills is a blessing. |
| Visuals | While it's true that the enemies' projectile patterns are pretty to watch, that's basically all you'll be treated to. Unfortunately, the game is basically the same as the developer's previous work, Scarlet Curiosity. Not only do they reuse many environmental and enemy designs, but most of the combat effects are also simply reused assets. |
| Audio | Players looking for a great audio experience won't get that here. The sound effects feel muted and lack any of the punchiness action RPG fans typically seek. There aren't even any voiceovers at all. The music is nice, though. |
| Value for Money | Despite its many faults, Touhou: New World's price justifies itself for its content quantity. Not only are there multiple characters with their own perspectives on the story to experience, but the decent variety of builds possible through each of their multitude of skills and equipment stats also adds another layer of replayability to the game. |
Touhou: New World Review: Putting The "Hell" In Bullet Hell
Do you like Japanese folklore? Do you like games that force you to be surgical with your movements? Do you like getting flash-banged with bright orbs of light streaking across your monitor in beautiful patterns? If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, then Touhou: New World is a game for you.
I love Touhou. By this point, I've been engrossed in the franchise for at least fifteen years. I avidly play all of the latest releases, including the fighting games, only to be reminded that I have severe skill issues regarding anything remotely difficult. I've also played a lot of fangames over the years and even have quite a sizeable collection of them stretching back to the pre 2010 era. Of course, I've also played Touhou: Youyou Kangeki Musou (Enchanting Swordplay Reverie) back in 2012 and Touhou: Adventures of Scarlet Curiosity in 2014 (and its re-release on Steam in 2018). That's why when Touhou: New World was released, I was eager to try it as well.
It is based on the Touhou franchise, particularly the 18th game in the series, Urban Legend In Limbo. It is a series of games that fall into the subgenre of shmups (Shoot 'em Up) called "Bullet Hell." Yes, it plays exactly like it sounds like. Unlike Namco's legendary Galaga, where players often have quite ample space to work with to dodge attacks, Touhou is a game that prefers carpeting the entire screen with projectiles, forcing players to bob and weave their way through with the precision of a surgeon. That, my dear readers, is why the joke "Touhou players can dodge rain" exists (even though Touhou is entry-level compared to other Bullet Hell games).
Touhou: New World is the newest action RPG by Ankake Spa, the developers behind Scarlet Curiosity and Enchanting Swordplay Reverie, similar adaptations of the Touhou shmup games. It features the same Bullet Hell gameplay that made Touhou famous but packaged in an action RPG format. Although the game suffers from a notably disappointing audio design, a non-existent challenge, and confusing lore, it still delivers a relatively satisfying RPG experience that fans of the series might appreciate.
Pros of Touhou: New World
| Things Touhou: New World Got Right So Far |
|---|
 The Care Gameplay Is Quite Solid The Grind For Equipment Is Satisfying There Are Multiple Perspectives To The Story |
The Care Gameplay Is Quite Solid
Shmups and action RPGs have a very distinct control scheme to them. Shmups, in particular, demand perfect precision from its players and the game itself. This is because most shmup games instantly kill the player when even a strand of their hair (or, more specifically, their hitbox) touches a projectile. Getting touched in a shmup means losing a life, regardless if the player died to a major attack or to stray flying pencil lead. Meanwhile, action RPGs are typically more lenient, providing the player with an entire health bar to work with. This allows action RPGs to pay more attention to realism and flair, such as giving characters animations that eat into the time they take to change directions.
The difference between the kind of controls the two genres need (or want) usually makes the two incompatible. While some games, such as NieR Automata, have integrated the two quite well, it's still a combination that most developers tend to avoid. But that's not a choice for an action game based on Touhou, known primarily for its Bullet Hell gameplay. But fortunately, Ankake Spa has managed to deliver once again, even if it pales in comparison to its predecessor's (Scarlet Curiosity) faster combat and exploration.
In Touhou: New World, the players are provided with three skill slots and one ultimate skill. The skills themselves have a variety of effects, ranges, and coverage. On top of their regular melee attacks, those four skills will shape how either Reimu or Marisa, the game's protagonists, will fight. They can be turned into long-ranged combatants that focus on unloading projectiles onto the enemy, melee brawlers that prefer getting up close and personal with the enemy, or a balance of both.
The Bullet Hell gameplay that Touhou: New World adopted is lenient enough with the carpet bombing that even purely melee players can still fight back. It does this by having the enemies, particularly the bosses, cycle through phases where they focus on shooting at you from afar or come at you to throw hands. This allows any playstyle to have opportunities of fighting back against bosses who would have otherwise simply covered the entire screen with bullets. Moreover, the bullet patterns aren't difficult enough to be impossible to dodge using its action RPG controls, but not easy enough that players can simply ignore them.
The Grind For Equipment Is Satisfying
The equipment in Touhou: New World has modifiers that often make them highly desirable or completely useless. Each character has three equipment slots: one for a weapon, a piece of armor, and an accessory. These will have modifiers that can influence the following stats:
- Life
- Attack
- Critical Rate
- Critical Damage
- Item Drop Rate
- Skill Regen Rate
- Perfect Guard Length
Due to the variety of stats that equipment can have distinct values on, players can create builds that directly compliments their play style. Melee-focused players, for example, can aim for high Attack and Crit values to abuse their regular attacks' extremely low cooldown. In contrast, ranged players can dump all their attention to Attack and Skill Regen Rate so they can unload as many projectiles as they can in the shortest possible time.
It's not even challenging to farm items in the game, as players can simply invest in a high Item Drop Rate stat at the beginning to grind for them.
The game also features a reforging mechanic once they are able to progress past a certain point in the story. By talking to Kogasa over at the main hub, players can reforge their items in the hope of gaining better modifiers on their equipment. Reforging is the players' primary means of using the gold they earn from mission rewards and selling items because all of the equipment Nitori, the game's merchant, sells is pretty bad.
There Are Multiple Perspectives To The Story
At the game's beginning, players are given a choice between using Reimu Hakurei, Touhou's most prominent, airheaded, and proud shrine maiden, or Marisa Kirisame, Reimu's hard-working, rowdy best friend. The two are contrasting characters, evident from their nature. While Reimu is a lazy girl blessed with unmatched, innate talent, Marisa is an average human who can barely match Reimu's abilities by being extremely assiduous in her training and research on magic.
The differences in their personalities provide a fascinating contrast to how conversations are held. But more importantly, it provides an additional layer of replayability to the game. In fact, there's likely even a third perspective that players can unlock, judging from the original game Touhou: New World is based on...
Cons of Touhou: New World
| Things That Touhou: New World Can Improve |
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Where Are The Sounds? The Continuity With The Main Series Is Confusing Combat Is Repetitive And Easy |
Where Are The Sounds?
Despite having released more than one Touhou action RPG before this one, the developers haven't learned anything about the audio. Touhou: New World shares the same problems with Scarlet Curiosity and Enchanting Swordplay Reverie: they all have very disappointing sound designs.
Of course, it boils down to the sound effects. For some, it basically makes or breaks the experience. The game's visuals and audio feed off each other, particularly in action and rhythm games. Complete immersion is achieved when both are in harmony, such as in games like Doom Eternal, The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, Punishing Gray Raven, and even Call of Duty. However, Touhou: New World's sound effects are so scuffed that it even drags its hectic and colorful gameplay down to the dirt. It lacks the punchiness that action games typically demand and even feels muted at times. Honestly, it sounds like they simply took recordings from the original games and ported them to Touhou: New World at offensively low quality.
Marisa's Master Spark lacking the appropriately deafening sound of energy being ejected from her weapon as it pummels everything in front of it into ashes is a mortal sin. Instead, it just sounds like half-plugged speakers.
The Continuity With The Main Series Is Confusing
Oh boy, the plot of this game is sure to confuse Touhou players.
The entire Touhou series is set in the fictional land called "Gensokyo," separated from the outside world by an extremely powerful barrier called the "Great Hakurei Barrier." This barrier hides Gensokyo from the "Outside World," or perhaps more accurately from the "Outside World's logic." That's because as humanity progressed and embraced science and logical thinking, they started to deny the existence of monsters (youkai) as illogical beings. Since monsters relied on human belief to exist, this was similar to an extinction event.
To prevent their eventual deaths, Yukari Yakumo, one of the Youkai Sages, laid the groundwork for a barrier that attracts the fantastic and repels the "mundane." Essentially, it was to create a haven where monsters could thrive. Eventually, Gensokyo was formed when the Great Barrier of Hakurei was erected by the Youkai Sages, including Kasen Ibaraki and Okina Matara, likely with the help of the Dragon God.
The game's main plot concerns Sumireko Usami, a girl tired of life in the Outside World. She sought a way to enter Gensokyo to escape from the consumerism that had engulfed society. This is similar to the plot of her debut game, Urban Legend in Limbo, in the original series. In fact, the entire game seems to be an action RPG retelling of that game. However, 17 games have already been released before Urban Legend in Limbo, excluding the "PC-98" games that aren't considered canon (sorry Mima fans). By the time it came out, there had already been many events that had occurred that acquainted the main cast with the denizens of Gensokyo.
So why does it seem like most of them are meeting for the first time?
Take, for example, the confrontation between Marisa and Sanae early in the game. Sanae Kochiya, a shrine maiden from the Outside World, debuted in Mountain of Faith, the 7th game in the series. Since then, she has become a recurring character in the series, sometimes as one of the antagonists and sometimes as one of the playable protagonists. But in Touhou: New World's scenario, the meeting between Marisa and Sanae is their first encounter.
That makes no sense, especially since Marisa is shown to already be acquainted with Nitori Kawashiro, a kappa obsessed with engineering, in the game. This could not have happened if Marisa didn't participate in the scenario of Mountain of Faith, the same scenario that should have introduced her to Sanae.
Combat Is Repetitive And Easy
While some players wish for bullet hell games to be easier for more accessibility, Touhou: New World suffers from the opposite: the game is way too easy. That is because instead of adapting a typical bullet hell mechanic of instantly killing the players if they get hit, the game uses a health meter that allows for much more leeway in making mistakes. Because of that, besides certain fights (like Yorihime's), players can essentially tank hits with little to no consequence. In addition, the game also features an excessively generous healing mechanic, which is treated like a skill in the game, complete with a cooldown and charges.
This is a big problem in a game like Touhou: New World. That's because the mobs encountered in the game are relatively limited in terms of their AI. While they have some variety in their attacking methods, they tend to hang back until you get within their range. Even when you do approach them, they will only use their attacks quite sparingly. On top of that, every area only has a scant amount of mobs, making each encounter inconsequential as the players can simply pick them off from a distance or rush through the thin curtain fire they release to whack them on the head.
Even most bosses suffer from this kind of problem. They all follow a loop that involves chasing after you for melee attacks, launching projectiles at certain intervals, and then firing a screen-wide projectile pattern whenever their health is lowered to certain levels. While that kind of loop is acceptable to provide melee-focused players opportunities to retaliate, there's an unreasonably long period between each phase. It's less of a window to attack and more of an invitation to wallop the boss freely.
The game's combat becomes quite dull very quickly. The challenge bullet hell games provide their players is almost entirely absent on Touhou: New World, bar certain bosses. Getting hit by a projectile isn't that big of a deal when the player can just heal it off; getting knocked down has no disadvantage since enemies stop attacking the player when they do; the boss projectile patterns are slow enough that a player can adjust very quickly; these are just some of the situations where Touhou: New World proves that the game isn't meant for bullet hell enthusiasts, but rather just a gameplay gimmick.
On top of that, there is no difficulty adjustment feature in the game. So at the end of the day, the game only has an easy mode... which is certainly something many Touhou players will make fun of.
Touhou: New World Overview & Premise
Gensokyo is a land isolated from the outside world by a great, mystical barrier. There, the region's shrine maiden Reimu Hakurei and her best friend, the magician Marisa Kirisame live... questionably peaceful lives. But suddenly, after they discover the mysterious objects known as Occult Orbs, they find themselves transported beyond the barrier and into the strange world beyond. As they find their way back, they encounter Sumireko, a human girl from the outside world who is strangely set on staying in Gensokyo. Her arrival not only signals the start of another incident there but also for the outside world.
It's again up to Reimu and Marisa to solve the incident and set things right!
The plot is textbook Touhou. Every incident is always started by either a newcomer or a bored monster looking for fun. It progresses like the original stories, where the heroines gather clues about the incident, eliminate threatening (sometimes unwitting) monsters, and cross out culprits. Eventually, they find the real mastermind behind the incident (and beat them up).
Who Should Play Touhou: New World?
Touhou: New World is Recommended if You Enjoy:
• Touhou Enchanting Swordplay Reverie and Scarlet Curiosity
• The Touhou Series
• Bullet Hell games
Fans of the Touhou series should approach with caution. Despite Ankake Spa's decent implementation of bullet hell mechanics to Touhou: New World, they'll find only scant instances of the challenge that the genre demands. People explicitly looking for a good action RPG experience will also be disappointed with the sound design. Likely, only players who are into the Touhou series or Bullet Hell games, in general, would even consider buying the game at its full price.
Is Touhou: New World Worth It?
Dodge The Temptation And Wait For A Discount
Even with the decent amount of content the game can proudly display, its $24.99 price tag can still raise an eyebrow. That's because Touhou: New World is basically the previous game, Touhou Scarlet Curiosity, but tweaked in such a way that it plays better in some aspects but worse in others.
Though it does deserve a higher price tag than its predecessor, a $10 difference is still too much.
How Touhou: New World Matches Up to Recently-Released Games
| Games That Came Out Recently | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
 Gylt |
Players looking for a fast-paced gaming experience prefer New World over Gylt. The games also breathe fresh air into a genre dominated by stylish combos done up close and personal, with New World preferring to take an approach seldom done by action RPGs. Bullet hell and action RPGs can work together well. Despite its flaws, Ankake Spa proves this through its games, particularly with New World. | Gylt's narrative is an experience all on its own. The game's audio design multiplies the creepy world design very well and works with bleak visuals to produce a very immersive atmosphere. As a horror game with a broader target audience, most players can enjoy Gylt regardless of their experience with the genre. |
 Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg |
Unlike standard RPGs, New World provides a form of novelty in their core gameplay that many games in the same genre haven't touched upon yet extensively; the inclusion of bullet hell mechanics into its combat system. Though the game lacks a lot of fundamental strengths that the genre typically demands, it's still a novel experience to play due to that. | The remake of the legendary game that started the Atelier series, Atelier Marie, provides everything an RPG fan appreciates: a solid narrative, story, character design, visuals, and audio. Not only that, it's stuffed full of features that players can spend dozens of hours in, such as side content and stories and synthesizing tools and medicine. |
How Touhou: New World Matches Up to Similar Games
| Games Similar to Touhou: New World | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
 Ys VIII: The Lacrimosa of Dana |
Being a game based on the Touhou franchise, New World distinguishes itself from the competition by being an action RPG almost completely focused on the colorful aspect of bullet hell games. It's a hectic experience with casual banter, absurd stories, and many bright lights. | Ys VIII: The Lacrimosa of Dana, first of all, has a far better audio design. Also, the visuals are still crisp despite being a seven-odd-year-old game. Its controls also handle much better and deploying simultaneously with others makes it more enjoyable. The Lacrimosa of Dana offers a far more satisfying experience at a slightly higher price point. |
 Touhou Scarlet Curiosity |
Touhou: New World builds upon its predecessor, Scarlet Curiosity, with better quality of life. This can be seen by adding a heal-on-demand button, which is treated as a skill. There's also a new mechanic, Perfect Guard. It adds a layer of skill to the otherwise monotonous gameplay of shooting enemies or hitting them with a broom. It also opens the path for artificially more difficult game-playing methods. | The predecessor of Touhou: New World, Scarlet Curiosity, has a notably much faster gameplay. This is because instead of having cooldowns on their skills like they do on New World, Scarlet Curiosity instead has a gauge drained by the characters' usage of skills. Meaning the player can use the same skills repeatedly until their gauge runs out. Another difference is that opening chests in Scarlet Curiosity does not involve having to stop in front of chests to hold a button. All the player has to do is attack the chest. |
Touhou: New World Trailers
Touhou: New World - Announcement Trailer (Released: March 14, 2023)
Touhou: New World - Launch Trailer (Released: July 13, 2023)
Touhou: New World Product Information
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| Title | TOUHOU: NEW WORLD |
|---|---|
| Release Date | July 13, 2023 |
| Developer | Ankake Spa |
| Publisher | Marvelous USA, XSEED Games |
| Supported Platforms | PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS4 |
| Genre | Action RPG |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | Everyone |
| Official Website | Touhou: New World Website |
