Touhou Luna Nights - My First Look at a Touhou Game

I am not really familiar at all with the Touhou universe or it's fan games, as I was never a big fan of Bullet Hells. That being said, I've always enjoyed when bullet hell elements get placed into another genre, a great example being Furi a few years back. Touhou Luna Nights fuses those elements fused with a Metroid-Vania style game. And as my first real introduction to Touhou, this was actually a pretty fun experience.

The story is pretty simple, you are a maid with time magic who gets forced to play a game devised by her master, and her time powers are stripped from here. There is a twist that comes later, but it doesn't really matter all that much. I get the distinct impression of how much you care about the characters is going to be relative to how many of the other Touhou games you've played. There is a distinct impression they all have a history together you won't know if you aren't familiar with the series. That said, there is so little to the story regardless not having any emotional attachment to these characters didn't really prove much of a hindrance.

The first thing to note is that while on the surface the game is a Metroidvania, it doesn't really feel like one. The big thing about that genre is how often you backtrack through areas discovering secrets and new paths forward, whereas in this game you will occasionally backtrack for the sake of finding a small upgrade of some kind, but it's never really necessary. It's a lot more straight forward then you would expect it to be. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a bit odd considering the look of the game at first, It feels a lot more like a typical side-scrolling platformer.

That being said, the game does that remarkably well. To start with combat, the controls are very precise using the default keyboard settings and considering what you need to do in this game the tight controls are definitely a necessity. The Bullet Hell elements come in full force so there are plenty of times you are going to be needing to narrowly dodge attacks, and if the controls were at all sloppy this game would have been borderline unplayable. Conveniently the only times I died stupidly were because I am not typically a keyboard user, and found myself stupidly hitting the wrong keys. Once I adjusted though, the game really does get to the point where it's almost entirely skill based, with practically no luck involved.

While many abilities you get are very basic for games like this, double jumping and a slide, for example, it's the ability to mess with time that makes things interesting. You can slow time down for short bursts, or by using the time Meter freeze it all together. Some objects will actually still move in Frozen time, some only move in frozen time, and some reverse directions. The same applies to certain enemies as well. Red Mist will prevent you from Freezing time if you enter it, and water cannot be entered. The game does a great job and forcing you to get your timing and reflexes down to advance through various areas of the game.

Normal enemy encounters can become a bit dull after a while and are a bit on the easy side, they are really only engaging at all when you go to new areas for the first time. Even then a couple of strategies that work early on will get you through pretty much every fight, so that aspect of the game does start to feel a bit tedious after a while. It's a good thing the platforming elements of the game carry the majority of the gameplay.

The boss fights, however, are very fun and fast paced. Each boss is wildly different, and you are forced to make use of your time abilities to their fullest. The boss fights are all at least a little bit challenging, the final two being the best of them. They get progressively harder and more intricate as you advance, so there feels like a real level of progression as you advance through the game. The final boss really gets crazy when you are dealing with a large number of objects on the screen, a lot of things that only move in frozen time as well as plenty of regular offensive attacks coming at you. The last two fights do a fantastic job of getting the overwhelming feeling of a Bullet Hell game into a platformer boss fight.

And while the story itself isn't really anything noteworthy, the overall visual design and animation of the characters are pretty great. Regular enemies can get a bit dull, but the actual characters and bosses do have quite a bit of life and personality in their designs and movements. And while those are the only really great visuals, the rest of the game doesn't have anything that looks particularly bad, it's overall nice to look at even at it's worst.

Touhou Luna Nights is a game that blends together platforming and bullet hell well and gives you a rather fun and unique experience that is enjoyable the entire run through the game. The game doesn't take too long, I have six hours on time and I'm sure more experienced players of these kinds of genres could clear it a bit faster, and honestly, there isn't a whole lot of reason to replay it. But for the six hours, you'll spend with it, especially with the developers working on additional content that seems to be coming with future updates to the game, it's worth the buy, even if you are not up to speed on Touhou like

The last thing I'll say is that I do understand the price can be a bit on the high point in comparison to the length of the game. It is sitting at 18$ on Steam right now, and with only 6 hours to complete I can understand a bit of hesitation, even with the promise of the future updates including more content to play through. So while I stand by the gaming being worthwhile due to who incredibly polished the game is, for many it may not be a bad idea to wait until more content comes out and jump on them.