Touhou Review: TH05 (Mystic Square)

TH05 (Mystic Square)

Hi people. Sorry for the delay in posting this blog. Today is a hectic week for me and finally I have some time to actually write this blog. I need to catch up big time since it is only a few days left for me to post the next review. Phew. Alright, here comes the fifth installment and the final touhou game that was platformed for PC-98. This game has new mechanics which is dream point which stacks by collecting point items, grazing which enables the point item to give even more points when the bar is fulfilled. However, using bombs and dying will cause the player to lose a chunk from the dream point bar. It has exactly the same button mapping for controls.

The story starts with vast amount of demons and evil spirit from Makai suddenly enters Gensokyo (the realms that the heroines living in). Now it is time for Reimu to deal with it with her youkai extermination power. Marisa knew about the situation decides to tag along while Mima (from Touhou 2) and Yuuka (from Touhou 4) also available as playable character for this game.

Below are some screenshots and video of the game play

Alice Margatroid, she will be one of the important characters in the future series so stay put.

Homing lasers because... why not?

Final boss battle. That is some crazy bullet hell >_<

Stage 4 will be slight different since the player will be fighting against 2 bosses at one time which are 2 witches Mai and Yuki. Trust me, It is hard. the player can choose to defeat which ones first, leading to second battle against the remaining boss. As for me, I would choose to beat Yuki (the black witch) first since the next battle is much easier  rather than the other one. I'll post video of the battle for each boss and witness the difference in the difficulty between Mai and Yuki

The easy one (Mai) *I love her battle OST*

The hard one (Yuki). Just by seeing the video length is enough to know which one is harder

Stage 6 boss battle. No joke. this is a hard battle despite it is on normal difficulty. Compared to all the previous games I mean

 Extra stage game play. This is a fail run though. Try to compare the difficulty level with Touhou 4. I found that this is very hard. Oh ya... it is a rematch against Alice but now she possesses the "Grimoire of Alice" where it can still be seen in future games

I guess for the ones who are new to Touhou project, this game is a bit unfair because it is very difficult compared to the previous games. Practice hard, improve fundamental danmaku maneuvering skills and it should be no problem. Sooner or later I will try to show one of the basic movement skills in danmaku games.

Links to the emulator: (clicking it downloads the file directly)

http://www.zophar.net/download_file/2143

Link to the game: (moriya shrine)

https://mega.co.nz/#!mZNwQAIa!Axo2wEboKudZdRK7XYFvD2FpqJhjVZqAScI24nFWYII

I guess that is all for Touhou project review for the PC-98 platform. Next week will be Touhou 6, the first Touhou game on windows platform. see ya!