WaruiReview: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

[Jango]

Intro: No doubt if you're on the internet (especially on gaming boards), you're at least familiar with the Touhou series. If you're not, I'll fill you in. The Touhou series was initially started by a doujin group that developed for the PC-98 platform, where five games were created. Following the collapse of the platform, one of the developers, ZUN, went on his own and started his own doujin circle, Team Shanghai Alice. Yes, you heard right. Team Shanghai Alice is entirely one person. ZUN would go on to create the first Touhou games for the Windows environment, and a huge fanbase developed. You had doujin music groups COOLNCREATE and IOSYS creating music based on obscure sub-boss characters, a shitload of doujin manga-ka writing original stories to fill in story gaps between games and develop the characters further, a team-up with doujin game developers Twilight Frontier to create the only two "fighting games" in the series, Immaterial and Missing Power and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (I'll review those later), and quite incredibly, yearly conventions devoted entirely to Touhou related products. So you're probably wondering how all this madness got started, especially considering that there was no such fanbase during the PC-98 era. Believe it or not, it all started with the first Touhou game on Windows, The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. And if you're like me, you're probably wondering "how the fuck did this piece of shit get so famous?"



Gameplay: Think of your favorite SHMUP (If you said Parodius, I salute you). Now imagine it with shitloads more projectiles to dodge. This type of SHMUP is referred to as "Bullet Hell," and this game is considered to be the starting point regarding interest in the subgenre. That's pretty much all this game is. Instead of a spaceship, you're a loli that flies around shooting... I guess they're fairies or something, I don't know. As mentioned, there are a lot of projectiles on the screen at the same time, and the game rewards you if a projectile goes over your sprite but doesn't hit your invisible collision box, an event known as "grazing." Grazing really doesn't reward you aside from a point bonus at the end, so to be honest it's a bit useless from a gameplay perspective. What you want to be doing is collecting the power-ups dropped by the enemy, especially the red blocks that read "P." Like other shooters, "P" will upgrade your gun to be stronger and the like. The other blocks eventually add up to collecting spell cards, or this game's equivalent to "bombs." When you start the game, you can choose between one of two characters (a shrine maiden or a human witch), and select one of their spell cards. Depending on which one you pick dramatically affects your strategy. I wish there was more balance in this regard, however. Naturally Reimu's "Homing Amulet" bomb is probably the most effective in the game, as it locks onto bosses and does massive damage. Meanwhile, Marisa's "Stardust Reverie" is a scatter shot that does a very little damage. I can understand that it can hit a wide area, but seriously, does this matter if you have another character that can just lock her attacks onto the opponent? I think not!

Sound: I'll give ZUN credit here, as he did a pretty good job on the soundtrack. The music sometimes follows a strange sort of orchestration-synth fusion, while at other times, it's more obviously electronic. And as the popular music trend on Youtube has proven (I'm sure you saw the one with Ronald McDonald synched to one of the songs with this game), the songs are really memorable, as if they were from old school shooters. And for that, I have to commend ZUN for creating a memorable soundtrack all on his own.

Graphics: Y'know, I thought I would go easy on ZUN seeing that this was his first attempt at programming a game, let alone one in an environment he wasn't accustomed to, but damn these graphics are terrible to look at. Here's a screenshot of the first boss-fight



While I'm not too big on aesthetics, oftentimes, I feel the large number of bullets combined with the bluriness of the character "sprite" makes it difficult to navigate, leading to a lot of deaths due to being overwhelmed with what's on screen. As far as the story factor, goes, check this out:



I'm sorry, but I really can't get connected to the story when I see artwork like this. And yes, the dialog is this corny throughout the game.

Rehash Factor: Naturally, you will be frustrated every time you get a game over. However, you will most likely find yourself continuously trying to play again, just to know that you can beat the game. Then you finish Normal difficulty and you want to beat the next difficulty. I can't tell if that's a good or a bad thing, but either way, you'll be wanting to keep playing this game.

Plot: You know, I really couldn't tell in how the story was presenting itself in the game, as it seemed like a series of disjointed battles, so I had to turn to whatever sources I could. Apparently, the mythical land of Gensokyo is being covered in a crimson mist, and Reimu/Marisa are going out to investigate it. Unfortunately, I really can't get involved in this story. From experience, the best video games either have a good, well-developed storyline, or are totally devoid of one. TEoSD is an attempt at making a good story but falls on its face as the author has made no attempt at all to develop the characters we are seeing. In this case, the storyline and character development is lukewarm, and in this case, that's not a good thing.

Difficulty: This game is incredibly hard. Even on the easiest difficulty, I was having a hard time getting through the first two levels. Considering that I can do a pretty good job at SHMUPS otherwise, that's saying a lot.

My Score: 6/10

Sum-up:
+ Great Soundtrack
+ Extra points since this is his first effort
+ Interesting concepts here and there (namely spell cards)
- Graphics are either poor quality or obstruct game view
- Bad balance between characters
- Poor storyline and development

Final Thoughts: I can't believe this is the game that made people take interest in Touhou. Also, in b4 flaming

[Insanius]

In their defense, the story/dialogue probably makes more sense in its original language.

[Jango]

Actually the English there is a fan translation that was available (although then again, that was more of a side-note than an actual criticism)

[Robert the small]

Also, I think Marisa and Raymoo have two extra sets of bombs, I think Marisa's is a giant fucking laser as her secondary bomb so...

[Jango]

Yeah I know I was just using those two as an example.