Touhou Double Focus Reviews

its very easy to me give a review right now with so little time.. is a bad game in terms of interface, really is a pain.. and its a gameplay so normal that at average is a bad experience.. yup cute game but very bad game made...

Play only if you like funny art and funny touhous. Only continue playing for kisume and more funny touhous. I like the funny ones. Game isn't that good though but the boss fights are def the highlights. Remember to take pictures of everything for funny touhous. Give kisume funny containers for she is the funniest touhou

Only played about 10 minutes and then had to stop. I will be continuing because it seems really fun but holy hell, dont buy unless you have a controller. I clearly need to get one because there is no way to change menuing controls and the default keyboard controls are really bad. Come on Aquastyle, this is a Touhou game. You should know that Arrow keys for movement and ZXC for actions is the standard for every non mouse keyboard control scheme ever. Having to swap back to tapping K to advance text every 5 seconds after remapping my entire control scheme to work like im used to is not fun.

The good: - The characters all look nice. - Artwork in cutscenes looks great. - Sound effects are decent enough. The bad: - Music is absolutely degrading to listen to. - Controls are janky af. - This game didn't hide my taskbar when I played it in full screen. - Enemies have INCREDIBLY predictable patterns only having like one attack they perform. - The combat is frustrating in very weird ways and for all the wrong reasons. - This game is VERY unpolished. - Backgrounds look very stock and redundant.

Its good fun for a weekend. Its pretty janky and difficult in some areas as a result of that. horror hardcore mode is pretty tough on the difficulty scale. it gets very 'jinsei owata' very fast.

I want to enjoy this one, because it's a Metroidvania Touhou game, a genre that I like a lot, but a lot of factors are holding this back for me, which end up being more a miserable experience than a positive one. - First main problem is the keyboard binding, there is no way to rebind menu control, so you're stuck with the awkward WASD and K L for select and cancel throughout even after rebinding your character controls. Since there is a lot of inventory and map screen navigation required throughout the game, it becomes a real struggle in the long run. - Secondly is the clunky character control, perhaps I'm spoiled by other similar titles of this genre, but there is no animation cancelling in this game, meaning once you're doing an attack, you are commit to it, leaving you very vulnerable. Not even the backdash button cancel it. - There is also the difficulty, there are these armor enemies in the first area of the game that hit you very hard and knock you back quite far, potentially off to the previous screen. Cheap enemy placements where you do a blind fall, only to be greeted with a sword in the face, or get pummeled by lightning attacks from enemies off screen as you enter. - The first boss is also very brutal with her heavy-hitting attacks, spikes in the arena you fight in, as well as a projectile stream attack that can easily drain your health from full to none thanks to the fact you don't gain any i-frames from getting hit whatsoever. - No save points anywhere other than the very beginning room, you can set up portals for two-way travel, but you can only set up one portal per area, so effectively one save point per area. - Healing items can only be obtained through one-time map placements or random enemy drops, there are no shops in this game. If you can stomach through these problems, then perhaps you will more easily find enjoyment in this game, but for me, I just can't accept this one, sadly.

Everything about this game is heart attack inducing adorable as well as having rather solid game play and that same old Aya ya all know and [strike] hate [/strike] love (the tutorials are a little lack luster though. How was neko supposed to know Momiji can run up walls)

It's a fun metroidvania game. However, there's nothing really new here : you explore areas, find items defeat enemies and bosses. The one interesting mechanic is its portal system where you can lay down some portals almost anywhere for fast travelling. You have a set amount of portals you can use and you can only save in the main area so putting portals requires some thought. Also the character switching mechanic is fun to use but it doesn't really make anything unique. Despite being a short game to complete, it has a LOT of charm put into it. The overall presentation is superb. There's a surprising amount of touhou characters and references you can find. There is an incentive to explore and find everything in this game. The animations really add a lot in this game. It feels so good seeing unique animations for every characters in the game, how they move, how they attack or how they are defeated. Soundtrack is also very solid, by the way. If you're a fan of metroidvania games, I recommend this game. If you're a Touhou fan, its a must buy!

Alright, let us begin. Also, this will actually bring up another example of a Metroidvania in the Touhou franchise that does everything much better. Felt it was necessary to bring it up a lot in this review. The engine for Touhou Double Focus is alright. Stamina system is annoying, but could have been more fair if only skills and actual movement reduced it and not your standard attacks. Granted, your standard attack [i]is[i/] considered a skill, but hey. Exploration is tedious for the sake of being tedious, rather than in a way that is more creative such as Touhou Luna Nights. I know it is quite the pedestal to compared a perfectly rated Metroidvania to this one, but the bar is set so high due to Luna Nights also being an older game on Steam side, though not release side since Double Focus predates it by two years outside of Steam. So maybe Double Focus was just unable to understand how a Touhou Metroidvania was meant to work. Another thing too is that Luna Nights fully understood its fan base and my only real complaint with it would be that Cirno is missing from Boss Rush and, even for it being a Metroidvania, is very short. And lacks any kind of post-game past Boss Rush in general, no Hard Mode, a New Game+ where you get to keep your abilities or both. But, I digress. Double Focus' main problem is that the core game is pretty unbearable to trudge through and you really do feel like you are trying to beat it for the sake of beating it and nothing more. And what is even worse is that your controller only has a [i]chance[/i] to work, overall failing a lot of the time. [b]The game makes you sit at the intro every single time you boot it up, even if you try to skip with the keyboard instead.[/b] If I only had a small amount of time to play for a bit, for instance, I just have to accept it will not happen unless I have a full half-hour. And that is under the assumption my controller decides to work correctly in any of those boots. If it does not, the half-hour is wasted doing nothing. I do not care to play with keyboard, especially over how awkward it is and lacking any way to remap it (another plus for Luna Nights having this option). To summarize, I will notice everything good and bad about Double Focus, designated by symbols: + Charm of the Touhou franchise is overall intact with how characters talk to each other. At least, good enough where I enjoyed a lot of the interactions, short as they were. + This also includes subtleties in the menu, such as the adorable sprite adjustments to the sprites whenever Aya has lower health or Momiji does. I enjoy that they look mad at one another depending on who has the lower health. + This is not something I intended to put as a separate note, but feels it deserves it anyway. Being able to hold down to continuously fall through multiple platforms is great and I feel like this should be a standard convention in any platformer. + The art style looks cute in the cutscenes and overall works when being used for stills. - Grammar errors are more noticeable than a lot of other Steam games I have played. - The aforesaid intro being unskippable. This feels like a detrimental flaw in an opening sequence that is [b]four minutes long.[/b] - To add onto that, you will reboot it multiple times if your controller is not read. I tried multiple controllers to clarify mine just had issues maybe, but I realized it worked perfectly fine in Steam and is still within the XInput type, so it makes no sense it should have issues at random. - As previously noted, it does work properly in cutscenes, but in movement, the art style is rough. From Momiji's awkward tail loop you can count the frames on to the very unnatural way characters move, something feels off about it. If I had to give any animation credit [strike](and temporarily break the norm of the "cons" section)[/strike], it would be that Momiji's run animation looks very adorable and the most natural looking out of any other animation in the game. I recommend this game to nobody. If you are a Touhou fan, go play other spin-off games. If you are a Metroidvania fan, you will still not find much enjoyment in Touhou Double Focus and are better off dabbling with other attempts at it such as Hollow Knight. If you were gifted this game and already accepted it, play it so your friend does not feel bad, maybe under the influence as well so that you can get more of a kick out of it. If you desperately want to play a Touhou game in the vein of the Metroidvania genre, go play Touhou Luna Nights. You will get much more for your buck, the price tag is within the range of Double Focus and you will feel much happier with what you paid for. On top of that, it has a significantly better engine, breathtaking remixes and I put it higher up on my own list than even Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. And if you want a more lengthy one, Koumajou Remilia: Scarlet Symphony is just around the corner and is a remake combining the original and sequel together. Both much better options than Touhou Double Focus. Though, Scarlet Symphony does have a feel much closer to traditional Castlevania. Avoid Touhou Double Focus at all costs if you respect the Metroidvania genre.

Truly a Dark Souls of Touhou games. On a serious note, that is pretty much a 2D Souls like about greatest Tengu duet! Basicaly you controling Aya and Momiji, Aya is fast, can evade and has ranged attacks: Momiji is strong, has a shield to block attacks and can RUN (including wall running). Other than that it's your typical metroidvania-souls like game. Buy! Aquastyle makes great games, and this one is not an exception,