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i hate fangames
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xva
For: I wanna be the HeavenTrap
For: I wanna be the HeavenTrap
fairly regular adventure game by Carnival, however often held back by some poor design choices.
there are some areas with confusing and weird design - mostly the castle and forest areas which seem filled with random traps or very specific pathing. the game is called heavenTRAP after all so I won’t knock it for sticking to it’s name and including traps. at least most of the traps themselves function well, but unfortunately they aren’t Carnival’s best. maybe at the time they were, but crimson’s traps are much better than the ones in this game. as for the bosses, they’re just kinda wack and don’t work sometimes. taiko boss sucked but devil kid and final boss were good.
i bet you thought that the devil kid WAS the final boss
[0] Likes
there are some areas with confusing and weird design - mostly the castle and forest areas which seem filled with random traps or very specific pathing. the game is called heavenTRAP after all so I won’t knock it for sticking to it’s name and including traps. at least most of the traps themselves function well, but unfortunately they aren’t Carnival’s best. maybe at the time they were, but crimson’s traps are much better than the ones in this game. as for the bosses, they’re just kinda wack and don’t work sometimes. taiko boss sucked but devil kid and final boss were good.
i bet you thought that the devil kid WAS the final boss
Rating: 6.5 65
Difficulty: 60 60
Aug 10, 2024
xva
For: I wanna be the Lie
For: I wanna be the Lie
humungous nothingburger of a game with like two screens of awkward platforming and one poorly designed boss
[0] Likes
Rating: 3.7 37
Difficulty: 41 41
Aug 9, 2024
xva
For: I wanna be the Six Elements
For: I wanna be the Six Elements
very Freaky collab game ....
[0] Likes
Rating: 6.4 64
Difficulty: 59 59
Aug 9, 2024
xva
For: I wanna be the Simple Needle
For: I wanna be the Simple Needle
main game is decent, EX is also decent but really really hard. unfortunately this engine sucks really bad and stutters quite often, making nearly every jump harder than it needs to be. would be much better if the engine wasn't ass
[0] Likes
Rating: 3.9 39
Difficulty: 78 78
Aug 4, 2024
xva
For: I Wanna Make It Breaking Out
For: I Wanna Make It Breaking Out
this game is the absolute worst adventure game ever made. nearly every single thing in this game is horrendous and painful to play. I wouldn't even use the word "play" as a verb to describe playing this game. I would rather use the word "suffer through". for lexical clarity I'll use the word "play", but every time I say it, imagine it says "suffer through', as there is little to no fun to be had in this whole entire experience.
for the short of it, I'll say this much:
- almost every boss is total RNG trash, likely some of the worst bosses you will ever play
- almost every single part of this game plays EXTREMELY awkwardly and/or simply feels uncomfortable and unsatisfying to play or beat
- almost all the needle is unfun and unoriginal dogshit
- there's a ton of AIDS-y and poorly made gimmicks by Mizutori
- the final boss is worth playing, but is not worth reaching
- there's ear-piercing 8bit carua music everywhere and it becomes sickening after a few hours
I will now detail my qualms with every single section of this entire, abhorrent, overly-long, total clusterfuck of a game known as I wanna Make It Breaking Out.
the game is generally hub-based, so I'll mention the warps in the order I played them. mind you, the hub room is quite underwhelming but rather iconic.
1) top left warp:
this entire stage is like carua's bread and butter. carua made these rooms and then proceeded to copypaste them in like four of his games while barely even changing them. I have no concept as to why carua loves these rooms so much, since they play like garbage and are nothing special. there's a lot of cycle AIDS present, along with a really odd cherry trap that tends to be ever so slightly different in every rendition of this stage found across carua's games. in Hope the, carua's other really hard game, this trap is much simpler, along with various other parts of these rooms being simplified and/or made easier. there's a very rude end of save trap near one of the final saves, but that's neither here nor there. after this is some more cycle AIDS, this time much worse though since one of the cycles has a leeway of about 2 or 3 frames from what I could reasonably tell.
the boss (gray cherry) has an annoying time gimmick where everything slows to a halt every 7 or so seconds. the only somewhat hard attack is the green spiral which can wall you in a very weird way, where it stops time when you're in a very unfortunate situation, effectively giving you no time to react to whatever read you have to make. doesn't help that this attack is right at the end. rather inoffensive but we'll get to the terrible parts soon.
2) top right warp
classic dogshit carua gimmick that he loves reusing - inhibiting your ability to fucking move whatsoever. this is a poorly thought-out idea and I've explained why multiple times. at least it's not as bad as in Hope the - because in that game you lose your movement capabilities at an inconsistent (but not truly random) rate. here it's a vague timing that you'll eventually get down (once every 3 seconds). if you get frozen mid-air, you just kinda slowly float downward. this is abused a few times but it's generally manageable. there's some stinky timings here and there but that's to be expected. there's a few end of save traps here too because you gotta have those. eventually ice gets introduced and shit gets worse instantly. there's ice, and water, and a gimmick which makes you stop moving, and then there's slow spike traps that are meant to catch you on timings where you can't move. this is very unfun to play around. I suppose it isn't poorly thought out since it's a fairly deadly combination, but it's not a good one per se. well thought out doesn't always equal good. eventually you'll reach an area with yellow blocks, which isn't too notable other than the rather ugly visuals and one of the shittiest most disrespectful traps I've seen yet. there's a random passage after a save that looks like it leads to the next screen, as it's just a two block space with no spikes or anything blocking it. trying to jump through leads to your instantaneous death with no explanation. I tried jumping through this multiple times, thinking there's an offscreen spike on either the right block or the left block. turns out, it just kills you. apparently you're just meant to backtrack.
the boss (cyan cherry) is the 3rd worst boss in the entire game, and that IS actually saying a lot considering the sheer amount of garbage and total slop is in this entire thing. the whole premise of this boss is that you are in water and that there's a cherry just out of reach which you have to shoot (hard to hit btw, because the hitbox is just the regular 20px cherry sprite). blue cherries rain down at a rate of about 1 cherry/1.5s and spawn ice blocks, on which you have to stand in order to damage the cherry. the boss itself has its own attacks, which are (in order): line, cherries that burst when contacting walls, circle. all this, on paper, sounds okay - if not for being executed in the worst way imaginable. the ice often makes you walk off without even getting to jump. it is very hard to deal damage during the 2nd attack, as the boss can randomly begin picking the direction which you're generally in (that being the left or right side) and send way too many cherries over, likely leading to your death. if not your death, it'll just hamper your ability to damage the boss at all. this is the first instance of RNG trash in this game, and oh boy it gets infinitely worse right away at the next attack. the circle is way too dense, making it so you have to stand on the far right or far left of the screen. the problem is getting appropriate block spawns, which have to be in either the block farthest from the boss, or the one next to it. anything else is unusable without severe risk. mind you, you're nervous as all hell from passing the previous luck-based attack which stretches on for some time due to damaging limitations. this boss is extremely, extremely poorly designed and made me give up on the game for the first time. I ended up revisiting the game 2 or so months later and beating more of it.
3) bottom left warp
this area just looks ugly and doesn't play well. maybe I just don't like 8bit graphics and music (and I don't, probably because I associate it with this sort of abhorrent dogshit now). the first part just has some random triggers strewn around the whole screen with some odd platforming and traps. the hardest jump here is a ground gate, so nothing that special. then you enter cycle superAIDS, with this fucking awful-looking swinging thing that has 5 frames of animation. most of these cycles involve abusing this oversight (not sure if it's an oversight if it's intended) and essentially 'clipping' through these weird swinging things. there's occasional end of save traps because you gotta have those. one of them involves turning an otherwise easy gate into a forced 5f into a dropgate. there's actually two cycle objects - there's another one that comes from out of the ground that isn't even visible most of the time. this is really fun to find out about the first time you come in contact with it. oh and to rub it in as well it's right at the end of a save.
the boss (purple cherry) is the 4th worst boss in the game. the concept here is that this one bouncing cherry has about a million health and releases one identical decoy cherry every time it's hit. except the decoy cherry doesn't bounce, but screenwraps! mind you, the distance between the bottom of the screen and the platform you stand on is TWO FUCKING BLOCKS!!! this alone makes this fight yet more RNG garbage, as you just have to hope that there's no vertical cherries, since if there's too many you'll eventually die. you can't really read them ahead of time in the last 15 or so hits, because the screen gets really crowded really fast. every death is extremely tilting since you die to stupid shit all the time trying to figure out what cherry is the one you're supposed to be shooting. sometimes the bouncing cherry you're supposed to hit screenwraps on its own, so you're really just left guessing on this one. music sucks too, I think at this point I entirely muted the game's music except for the few times it's needed later on.
4) bottom right warp
this area is actually the best one out of the first four, as it doesn't look as terrible (it's literally just two colors) and plays somewhat interestingly. other than reminding me of the Swedish flag, that being a good thing or not, the platforming is quite interesting and unique in a good way. there was only one odd segment near the end with some odd cycles, but it's fine.
the boss (Miku) is so far the hardest boss and actually plays very well compared to the garbage that you would've faced before her. the boss itself is nothing special, in fact it's a fairly sub par Miku fight with a bunch of awkward and weird patterns. fortunately it's the best fight so far and you may have some fun playing it if you like Miku avoidances. Miku for some reason disfigures the arena quite badly by the end, sort of like how I wanna be the Underground disfigures your player, idk it just kinda reminded me of that. there's a weird lovetrap cherry pattern near the end which is kinda hard to get the hang of and is likely the hardest part. oh and there's some luck check trash here and there, because of course there is. can't be a boss in this game without some sort of element of luck.
then here is when you change hubs, and enter the 2nd hub - the green hub.
5) top left green warp
some sort of fucking bomberman AIDS where all the enemies can take a few too many hits than expected. the first few screens (or "stages" as the game calls them) are fairly manageable, you just kill all the enemies and a warp eventually appears. the 2nd room introduces these bomb guys that roll around slowly and just randomly explode sometimes (but they stay alive). there are also powerups that aren't that helpful, considering the fact they don't have an effect on what really matters yet again - your damage. they might, but it's such a negligible amount of damage that gets added onto your pitiful starting amount that it doesn't even make a difference. or rather, not one that I can spot. oh yeah there's also a skull that kills you when you touch it that can appear in the shape of a powerup. every room is very time consuming, as you have to account for the enemies' somewhat random but barely predictable movement which can be very annoying and unusual. this can make it so enemies take a while to come out of cover so you can shoot them. the last room (room 4) is by far the most annoying one, because there's a ton of enemies yet again and another enemy variant gets introduced - these weird things that charge. and they charge quite fast, to the point where you're unable to dodge it or even see it coming. only thing you see is your inevitable death barreling towards you. their movement is also equally unpredictable, same with their charges. they charge vaguely when you're near them, but that's nowhere near a good enough descriptor to help you figure out their movement patterns. this just takes a while and isn't very fun, it isn't extremely hard.
the boss (some fucking dog) is the 2nd worst boss in the entire game, as it is almost entirely dependent on luck. the boss room is tiny and cramped, the boss freely moves around at random around the arena and places invisible mines that blink for a few frames before being struck by a bullet, when they suddenly blow up in a plus shape. they can trigger each other, which is what causes most of your deaths. to avoid this, you have to make plus shapes in your head around the spots the mines are placed in, essentially adding a new layer of memory to this fight. eventually the boss itself begins spawning explosions that are shaped in random ways and stretch on for random distances. who the fuck knows what carua or Mizutori were thinking when they were making this boss, it's complete garbage. the first part is somewhat skill based and can be done semi-consistently (and mind you it's a big semi); however the second part is almost complete luck, I think the boss movements become more and more erratic and unpredictable.
6) top right green warp
extremely weird stage, begins with this surreal entrance scene which looks oddly realistic compared to the rest of the game. it's likely a reference to something, I'm just not cultured enough to recognize what. this part of the game is very very weird and unusual, it's somewhat reminiscent of ghost houses from the Mario games. you get this torch that lights up a small circle around you, and you have to make your way around this massive haunted house. there's a weird room with a girl in the center - which, when shot, bursts into an unavoidable explosion of blood that almost instantly kills you. despite having no real purpose, it really leaves you asking what the point of that is. I'm not sure if I should even be complaining about this, as I like it when games add random weird stuff like this - it makes them more memorable. this doesn't particularly impede the gameplay, however it is quite strange. anyway the whole layout is really weird and just kinda loops around hopelessly, I'm not quite sure what the aim of this whole fuckass thing even was. I spent like an hour just going around and around trying to find the exit. eventually I stumbled upon the exit and was greeted with one of the worst bosses I've ever played.
the boss (green cherry) is the worst boss in the entire game. quite literally the worst of the worst. it begins fairly normal, just kinda poorly made. the boss randomly shoots half-circles of cherries which are way too dense mind you - this being one of the main issues in this boss, the sheer density of the attacks. there's three spikes which you can shoot to damage the boss, which is in an inaccessible area near the top of the screen. cherish this first third of this boss, as you can still FUCKING SEE EVERYTHING!!!!!!! after the first third of the boss's health is gone, the entire arena turns dark, and the torch gimmick from earlier returns. I doubt this even helps you, might as well just make the whole arena pure fucking darkness and you're just meant to guess where the cherries are. oh and there's more of those half-circles, they are shot out much more often now. this is pure dumb luck with minimal strategy at all. this is insanely, insanely painful and annoying to play. it's truly mindless garbage. the sheer elation I felt when I finally beat this complete horseshit, after what seemed like several eternities, was much greater than even when I beat the final boss. truly excruciating and horrid.
7) bottom left green warp
this section is at least playable, it's not too difficult and just has a ton of slightly annoying trap needle. the traps are quite unorthodox and weird, being almost impossible to predict. the way the triggers work makes it so that if the moving spikes kill you, they stop in their tracks at the exact frame they kill you, so you can't even see what fully happens in the trap. this would be the needle equivalent of the K2 wing of the moon - when Miku kills you, the entire screen switches to a blank TV screen, making it so you can't see what happens after. either way the resulting needle itself is somewhat difficult, having some fairly tough jumps. this area also looks extremely bland, using default yuuuutu green, brown block sprites and default spikes.
the boss (white cherry) is the most Mizutori boss ever created - it fits right into I wanna be the Symmetry, another game by Mizutori. it's alright, it's the best cherry boss so far. it's kinda like that one pattern in K3 EX Tokoroten but like a thousand times slower and easier. the boss itself is larger making it easier to hit, which is a nice change from the previous 6 bosses.
8) bottom right green warp
this stage begins with some pretty uninspired needlevoidance, some weirdly moving Touhou bullets that some fairy that follows you constantly throws at you, and then INSTANTLY turns into some completely braindead shit. there's some complex 4000 IQ puzzle you have to solve here which involves shooting these stars in a specific order with consideration to certain shot timings. the stars themselves turn specific spikes on and off to make the puzzle possible. the general aim is to hit the fairy right at the end. this is, however, a really complex task, as it requires an unreasonably specific series of shots at unreasonably specific timings. I translated the Japanese text at the top, and it's just there to make fun of you: "A simple puzzle made for NEETs" [sic]. and I really thought this shit was gonna help me in any way.
the miniboss (fairy) is just two attacks, with like one curving attack and one slightly less curving attack. really nothing too special except it's kinda dense.
the boss (Suwako Moriya) is a really tough Touhou fight, likely in the low 70s. a nice difference here is that this fight is actually fair and difficult instead of being bullfuck RNG trash. the final attack is by far the hardest as it requires some precise reading. the attacks are all actually quite fun and well-made, it wasn't painful to play. unfortunately this didn't last too long and I had to continue throughout the shitfest that is this game.
9) blue stage
now the game takes a more linear approach for a little bit with this area. this needle is frankly kinda trash, but it's some of the most fun I've had in the game. the saves aren't too hard, but are just common jump spam - mainly just corners though. there's a few awkward cycle moments and some other unfun stuff but other than that it's mostly okay. throughout this whole part you'll sort of notice that there are random blocks which look slightly different. when you reach the end of the stage, the whole stage flips 180 degrees and you have to get all the way back to the beginning. this backtrack skips most of the aforementioned bad needle, but not entirely as you still have to go through a lot of AIDS to get to the end. four corners and a bunch of 1fs/cancels, mostly to make reverse tbones and other jumps more consistent. there's no boss for this area, likely for the better since that's one less piece of shit boss I have to deal with.
now we enter a new third hub with eight shorter and more gimmick-heavy areas. the items in these sections are door pieces. eventually, the door they make is the door you enter to access the final area of the game - thank fuck.
10.125) top floor top left warp
reminiscent of the first area I talked about (hub 1 top left warp), and it plays similarly. some cycle AIDS as usual, with a weird moving diagonal corridor; and also an annoying and rather puzzling diamond cycle thing.
10.25) top floor top right warp
VERY fucking stupid gimmick, you flip gravity but in the most literal sense - your controls invert along with your gravity, making it so you have to press like four different keys at the same time just to do a diagonal. the falling speed feels wrong and the pathing is quite confusing, as there's multiple ways you can go, of which some are much harder and stupider so they look completely useless. this took a bit but I figured it out eventually.
10.375) top floor bottom left warp
decent needle, not much to say. looks carua-esque. there's a few random rooms you can get, but the gist of the whole area is to do two screens in a row which rewards you with the item. this needle's ok I guess except the tbone screen which kinda sucked.
10.5) top floor bottom right warp
some cycle AIDS and a weird arrow thing that spins around slowly. it's kinda hard to control but the part it's included in is somewhat short and not too hard. nothing too hard here either.
10.625) bottom floor top left warp
some random okay needle, one random backtrack, some random things throwing apples, and then some cycle superAIDS. idk how the hell this shit works it's really weird and I just kinda bruteforced my way through it by going at arbitrary timings based on restarting from a certain position and holding right.
10.75) bottom floor top right warp
these funny Touhou girls follow you around and vaguely mimic your movement patterns. they don't kill you or anything, in fact they help you progress. btw hi if you've made it this far, thanks for reading this review. it's likely the most I've spent writing a review on anything I've ever played. unfortunate that it has to be this bad.
10.875) bottom floor bottom left wrap
weird maze area with a few distinct screens. you just kinda go to random spots and they make spikes disappear, and then you go somewhere else and some other thing happens? I'm not really sure on the intricacies of this one, at this point I kinda gave up trying to figure all of this out. I've sort of had enough of this game's shit by now, after that whole haunted house fiasco I had to go through. the block sprite is kinda unique.. I suppose?
11) bottom floor bottom right warp
epic carua needle. nothing that interesting, pretty sure he's done this before in Hope the's EX stage. there's one really hard fall that I had to 1f to get past. apparently, there's some 2f setup that works (which I couldn't quite get to work).
the boss of this entire thing is like a one-boss equivalent of a boss rush: a bunch of the previous colored cherry bosses combine into this one cherry that changes color, then start doing individual attacks kinda like phases in Destination. except some cherries (like the gray one and the green one) which are both actually from I wanna be the Symmetry. this boss is okay, it's nothing too hard and it plays somewhat well. 1f bug sometimes still happens if I recall but it's not too big of a deal.
now we enter the "five treasures" or "five challenges" area, where this girl asks you to find these five treasures in these five warps. this is the final frontier of the game, and has some of the better parts despite them being rather uninteresting or sub-par compared to the average game of this difficulty.
11.20) red warp
one screen of ok needle. not very notable but I'd rather it be this than whatever carua and Mizutori would come up with to replace it.
11.40) orange warp
by far the best needle/platforming in the game - it's my favorite room in the game by multiple orders of magnitude. I like that Influka picked this screen for K2, as it's the most livable and tolerable screen in this whole entire crap ass game. the second key screen though is kinda shit and is literal RNG.
11.60) purple warp
this puzzle is quite interesting actually and I enjoyed it. it's actually solvable unlike some of the other "puzzles" in this trash (ahem, NEET puzzle, ahem). the two player gimmick works and it makes sense. godlike troll at the end btw, it's the only one I genuinely fell for and felt like it was my fault. no end of save trap garbage can come close to that trap.
11.80) green warp
fucking AWFUL memory game which is RNG dependent. you're given a series of randomized inputs you have to memorize (left, right, shift, Z). this is somewhat poorly abbreviated since the word "shoot" begins with Sh, which happens to be the abbreviation they used for Shift. I guess there's Z to differentiate this and you might see this as a non-issue, but it tripped me up a good amount of times. I'm pretty sure everyone just quickly writes the inputs down somewhere and then does them. this is completely unreasonable to do legitimately. motherfuckers don't even let you see the full sequence, only the last input in it.
12) blue warp
a simple avoidance with two attacks, similar to the fairy before Suwako Moriya from earlier. somewhat dense but mostly readable. this time the curving attack is actually kinda hard.
boss here is commonly abbreviated as "the Touhou boss before Nue Houjuu", so I'll just call it that. this boss is painfully boring and includes a ton of waiting around and doing nothing, just waiting for things to happen. when stuff actually does happen, you do boring movements and boring dodges. I guess there's some curving which can be fun to dodge but it does not move at nearly fast enough of a speed to be fun to read and avoid. final can randomly murder you without anything you can really do about it, since some of the random bursts can move at 12+ velocity - and if they're pointed at you, they're likely going to kill you. maybe I'm bad at reading that attack, but I did get killed once by it and it made me kinda angry, since I'm fairly certain that I died to the last two seconds.
and finally, Nue Houjuu - the final boss of this game.
ironically, I love this boss. it's very well-made as opposed to the entire rest of this flaming diarrhea shitstorm. I beat it very, very quickly - quite literally within 3 deaths. this isn't exactly fair, since I've beaten the K2 version three separate times. K2's version is also more difficult - yes, attacks are removed, but you're given 3 HP in the original boss, and the pattern part is shorter. the K2 boss has the first 2 patterns looped for a while, making them quite a bit harder than these. I found out I could just read all the patterns without getting hit, which I feel highly aided in me being able to clear this boss quite quickly. I enjoyed it, however it was, sadly, quite short-lasted.
in conclusion, nothing here works. nearly all of this godawful game is completely soulless, evil and *transcendentally* stupid. so much RNG shit, so much awkward shit, so much unfun shit, so much bad-looking shit, so much barely playtested shit. doesn't help that this game is as long as Homer's fucking Odyssey, there's always no end in sight. playing through this mostly blind, I never knew this game was such a huge gauntlet of total abhorrent insanity. I knew nothing good would come from this collaboration. all in all - even if you're into this sort of game, run far, FAR away and never play this, for the love of God. this game is the worst thing I've ever had the horrid misfortune of playing and beating.
I really don't know in what universe this game is <80 to you people
[2] Likes
for the short of it, I'll say this much:
- almost every boss is total RNG trash, likely some of the worst bosses you will ever play
- almost every single part of this game plays EXTREMELY awkwardly and/or simply feels uncomfortable and unsatisfying to play or beat
- almost all the needle is unfun and unoriginal dogshit
- there's a ton of AIDS-y and poorly made gimmicks by Mizutori
- the final boss is worth playing, but is not worth reaching
- there's ear-piercing 8bit carua music everywhere and it becomes sickening after a few hours
I will now detail my qualms with every single section of this entire, abhorrent, overly-long, total clusterfuck of a game known as I wanna Make It Breaking Out.
the game is generally hub-based, so I'll mention the warps in the order I played them. mind you, the hub room is quite underwhelming but rather iconic.
1) top left warp:
this entire stage is like carua's bread and butter. carua made these rooms and then proceeded to copypaste them in like four of his games while barely even changing them. I have no concept as to why carua loves these rooms so much, since they play like garbage and are nothing special. there's a lot of cycle AIDS present, along with a really odd cherry trap that tends to be ever so slightly different in every rendition of this stage found across carua's games. in Hope the, carua's other really hard game, this trap is much simpler, along with various other parts of these rooms being simplified and/or made easier. there's a very rude end of save trap near one of the final saves, but that's neither here nor there. after this is some more cycle AIDS, this time much worse though since one of the cycles has a leeway of about 2 or 3 frames from what I could reasonably tell.
the boss (gray cherry) has an annoying time gimmick where everything slows to a halt every 7 or so seconds. the only somewhat hard attack is the green spiral which can wall you in a very weird way, where it stops time when you're in a very unfortunate situation, effectively giving you no time to react to whatever read you have to make. doesn't help that this attack is right at the end. rather inoffensive but we'll get to the terrible parts soon.
2) top right warp
classic dogshit carua gimmick that he loves reusing - inhibiting your ability to fucking move whatsoever. this is a poorly thought-out idea and I've explained why multiple times. at least it's not as bad as in Hope the - because in that game you lose your movement capabilities at an inconsistent (but not truly random) rate. here it's a vague timing that you'll eventually get down (once every 3 seconds). if you get frozen mid-air, you just kinda slowly float downward. this is abused a few times but it's generally manageable. there's some stinky timings here and there but that's to be expected. there's a few end of save traps here too because you gotta have those. eventually ice gets introduced and shit gets worse instantly. there's ice, and water, and a gimmick which makes you stop moving, and then there's slow spike traps that are meant to catch you on timings where you can't move. this is very unfun to play around. I suppose it isn't poorly thought out since it's a fairly deadly combination, but it's not a good one per se. well thought out doesn't always equal good. eventually you'll reach an area with yellow blocks, which isn't too notable other than the rather ugly visuals and one of the shittiest most disrespectful traps I've seen yet. there's a random passage after a save that looks like it leads to the next screen, as it's just a two block space with no spikes or anything blocking it. trying to jump through leads to your instantaneous death with no explanation. I tried jumping through this multiple times, thinking there's an offscreen spike on either the right block or the left block. turns out, it just kills you. apparently you're just meant to backtrack.
the boss (cyan cherry) is the 3rd worst boss in the entire game, and that IS actually saying a lot considering the sheer amount of garbage and total slop is in this entire thing. the whole premise of this boss is that you are in water and that there's a cherry just out of reach which you have to shoot (hard to hit btw, because the hitbox is just the regular 20px cherry sprite). blue cherries rain down at a rate of about 1 cherry/1.5s and spawn ice blocks, on which you have to stand in order to damage the cherry. the boss itself has its own attacks, which are (in order): line, cherries that burst when contacting walls, circle. all this, on paper, sounds okay - if not for being executed in the worst way imaginable. the ice often makes you walk off without even getting to jump. it is very hard to deal damage during the 2nd attack, as the boss can randomly begin picking the direction which you're generally in (that being the left or right side) and send way too many cherries over, likely leading to your death. if not your death, it'll just hamper your ability to damage the boss at all. this is the first instance of RNG trash in this game, and oh boy it gets infinitely worse right away at the next attack. the circle is way too dense, making it so you have to stand on the far right or far left of the screen. the problem is getting appropriate block spawns, which have to be in either the block farthest from the boss, or the one next to it. anything else is unusable without severe risk. mind you, you're nervous as all hell from passing the previous luck-based attack which stretches on for some time due to damaging limitations. this boss is extremely, extremely poorly designed and made me give up on the game for the first time. I ended up revisiting the game 2 or so months later and beating more of it.
3) bottom left warp
this area just looks ugly and doesn't play well. maybe I just don't like 8bit graphics and music (and I don't, probably because I associate it with this sort of abhorrent dogshit now). the first part just has some random triggers strewn around the whole screen with some odd platforming and traps. the hardest jump here is a ground gate, so nothing that special. then you enter cycle superAIDS, with this fucking awful-looking swinging thing that has 5 frames of animation. most of these cycles involve abusing this oversight (not sure if it's an oversight if it's intended) and essentially 'clipping' through these weird swinging things. there's occasional end of save traps because you gotta have those. one of them involves turning an otherwise easy gate into a forced 5f into a dropgate. there's actually two cycle objects - there's another one that comes from out of the ground that isn't even visible most of the time. this is really fun to find out about the first time you come in contact with it. oh and to rub it in as well it's right at the end of a save.
the boss (purple cherry) is the 4th worst boss in the game. the concept here is that this one bouncing cherry has about a million health and releases one identical decoy cherry every time it's hit. except the decoy cherry doesn't bounce, but screenwraps! mind you, the distance between the bottom of the screen and the platform you stand on is TWO FUCKING BLOCKS!!! this alone makes this fight yet more RNG garbage, as you just have to hope that there's no vertical cherries, since if there's too many you'll eventually die. you can't really read them ahead of time in the last 15 or so hits, because the screen gets really crowded really fast. every death is extremely tilting since you die to stupid shit all the time trying to figure out what cherry is the one you're supposed to be shooting. sometimes the bouncing cherry you're supposed to hit screenwraps on its own, so you're really just left guessing on this one. music sucks too, I think at this point I entirely muted the game's music except for the few times it's needed later on.
4) bottom right warp
this area is actually the best one out of the first four, as it doesn't look as terrible (it's literally just two colors) and plays somewhat interestingly. other than reminding me of the Swedish flag, that being a good thing or not, the platforming is quite interesting and unique in a good way. there was only one odd segment near the end with some odd cycles, but it's fine.
the boss (Miku) is so far the hardest boss and actually plays very well compared to the garbage that you would've faced before her. the boss itself is nothing special, in fact it's a fairly sub par Miku fight with a bunch of awkward and weird patterns. fortunately it's the best fight so far and you may have some fun playing it if you like Miku avoidances. Miku for some reason disfigures the arena quite badly by the end, sort of like how I wanna be the Underground disfigures your player, idk it just kinda reminded me of that. there's a weird lovetrap cherry pattern near the end which is kinda hard to get the hang of and is likely the hardest part. oh and there's some luck check trash here and there, because of course there is. can't be a boss in this game without some sort of element of luck.
then here is when you change hubs, and enter the 2nd hub - the green hub.
5) top left green warp
some sort of fucking bomberman AIDS where all the enemies can take a few too many hits than expected. the first few screens (or "stages" as the game calls them) are fairly manageable, you just kill all the enemies and a warp eventually appears. the 2nd room introduces these bomb guys that roll around slowly and just randomly explode sometimes (but they stay alive). there are also powerups that aren't that helpful, considering the fact they don't have an effect on what really matters yet again - your damage. they might, but it's such a negligible amount of damage that gets added onto your pitiful starting amount that it doesn't even make a difference. or rather, not one that I can spot. oh yeah there's also a skull that kills you when you touch it that can appear in the shape of a powerup. every room is very time consuming, as you have to account for the enemies' somewhat random but barely predictable movement which can be very annoying and unusual. this can make it so enemies take a while to come out of cover so you can shoot them. the last room (room 4) is by far the most annoying one, because there's a ton of enemies yet again and another enemy variant gets introduced - these weird things that charge. and they charge quite fast, to the point where you're unable to dodge it or even see it coming. only thing you see is your inevitable death barreling towards you. their movement is also equally unpredictable, same with their charges. they charge vaguely when you're near them, but that's nowhere near a good enough descriptor to help you figure out their movement patterns. this just takes a while and isn't very fun, it isn't extremely hard.
the boss (some fucking dog) is the 2nd worst boss in the entire game, as it is almost entirely dependent on luck. the boss room is tiny and cramped, the boss freely moves around at random around the arena and places invisible mines that blink for a few frames before being struck by a bullet, when they suddenly blow up in a plus shape. they can trigger each other, which is what causes most of your deaths. to avoid this, you have to make plus shapes in your head around the spots the mines are placed in, essentially adding a new layer of memory to this fight. eventually the boss itself begins spawning explosions that are shaped in random ways and stretch on for random distances. who the fuck knows what carua or Mizutori were thinking when they were making this boss, it's complete garbage. the first part is somewhat skill based and can be done semi-consistently (and mind you it's a big semi); however the second part is almost complete luck, I think the boss movements become more and more erratic and unpredictable.
6) top right green warp
extremely weird stage, begins with this surreal entrance scene which looks oddly realistic compared to the rest of the game. it's likely a reference to something, I'm just not cultured enough to recognize what. this part of the game is very very weird and unusual, it's somewhat reminiscent of ghost houses from the Mario games. you get this torch that lights up a small circle around you, and you have to make your way around this massive haunted house. there's a weird room with a girl in the center - which, when shot, bursts into an unavoidable explosion of blood that almost instantly kills you. despite having no real purpose, it really leaves you asking what the point of that is. I'm not sure if I should even be complaining about this, as I like it when games add random weird stuff like this - it makes them more memorable. this doesn't particularly impede the gameplay, however it is quite strange. anyway the whole layout is really weird and just kinda loops around hopelessly, I'm not quite sure what the aim of this whole fuckass thing even was. I spent like an hour just going around and around trying to find the exit. eventually I stumbled upon the exit and was greeted with one of the worst bosses I've ever played.
the boss (green cherry) is the worst boss in the entire game. quite literally the worst of the worst. it begins fairly normal, just kinda poorly made. the boss randomly shoots half-circles of cherries which are way too dense mind you - this being one of the main issues in this boss, the sheer density of the attacks. there's three spikes which you can shoot to damage the boss, which is in an inaccessible area near the top of the screen. cherish this first third of this boss, as you can still FUCKING SEE EVERYTHING!!!!!!! after the first third of the boss's health is gone, the entire arena turns dark, and the torch gimmick from earlier returns. I doubt this even helps you, might as well just make the whole arena pure fucking darkness and you're just meant to guess where the cherries are. oh and there's more of those half-circles, they are shot out much more often now. this is pure dumb luck with minimal strategy at all. this is insanely, insanely painful and annoying to play. it's truly mindless garbage. the sheer elation I felt when I finally beat this complete horseshit, after what seemed like several eternities, was much greater than even when I beat the final boss. truly excruciating and horrid.
7) bottom left green warp
this section is at least playable, it's not too difficult and just has a ton of slightly annoying trap needle. the traps are quite unorthodox and weird, being almost impossible to predict. the way the triggers work makes it so that if the moving spikes kill you, they stop in their tracks at the exact frame they kill you, so you can't even see what fully happens in the trap. this would be the needle equivalent of the K2 wing of the moon - when Miku kills you, the entire screen switches to a blank TV screen, making it so you can't see what happens after. either way the resulting needle itself is somewhat difficult, having some fairly tough jumps. this area also looks extremely bland, using default yuuuutu green, brown block sprites and default spikes.
the boss (white cherry) is the most Mizutori boss ever created - it fits right into I wanna be the Symmetry, another game by Mizutori. it's alright, it's the best cherry boss so far. it's kinda like that one pattern in K3 EX Tokoroten but like a thousand times slower and easier. the boss itself is larger making it easier to hit, which is a nice change from the previous 6 bosses.
8) bottom right green warp
this stage begins with some pretty uninspired needlevoidance, some weirdly moving Touhou bullets that some fairy that follows you constantly throws at you, and then INSTANTLY turns into some completely braindead shit. there's some complex 4000 IQ puzzle you have to solve here which involves shooting these stars in a specific order with consideration to certain shot timings. the stars themselves turn specific spikes on and off to make the puzzle possible. the general aim is to hit the fairy right at the end. this is, however, a really complex task, as it requires an unreasonably specific series of shots at unreasonably specific timings. I translated the Japanese text at the top, and it's just there to make fun of you: "A simple puzzle made for NEETs" [sic]. and I really thought this shit was gonna help me in any way.
the miniboss (fairy) is just two attacks, with like one curving attack and one slightly less curving attack. really nothing too special except it's kinda dense.
the boss (Suwako Moriya) is a really tough Touhou fight, likely in the low 70s. a nice difference here is that this fight is actually fair and difficult instead of being bullfuck RNG trash. the final attack is by far the hardest as it requires some precise reading. the attacks are all actually quite fun and well-made, it wasn't painful to play. unfortunately this didn't last too long and I had to continue throughout the shitfest that is this game.
9) blue stage
now the game takes a more linear approach for a little bit with this area. this needle is frankly kinda trash, but it's some of the most fun I've had in the game. the saves aren't too hard, but are just common jump spam - mainly just corners though. there's a few awkward cycle moments and some other unfun stuff but other than that it's mostly okay. throughout this whole part you'll sort of notice that there are random blocks which look slightly different. when you reach the end of the stage, the whole stage flips 180 degrees and you have to get all the way back to the beginning. this backtrack skips most of the aforementioned bad needle, but not entirely as you still have to go through a lot of AIDS to get to the end. four corners and a bunch of 1fs/cancels, mostly to make reverse tbones and other jumps more consistent. there's no boss for this area, likely for the better since that's one less piece of shit boss I have to deal with.
now we enter a new third hub with eight shorter and more gimmick-heavy areas. the items in these sections are door pieces. eventually, the door they make is the door you enter to access the final area of the game - thank fuck.
10.125) top floor top left warp
reminiscent of the first area I talked about (hub 1 top left warp), and it plays similarly. some cycle AIDS as usual, with a weird moving diagonal corridor; and also an annoying and rather puzzling diamond cycle thing.
10.25) top floor top right warp
VERY fucking stupid gimmick, you flip gravity but in the most literal sense - your controls invert along with your gravity, making it so you have to press like four different keys at the same time just to do a diagonal. the falling speed feels wrong and the pathing is quite confusing, as there's multiple ways you can go, of which some are much harder and stupider so they look completely useless. this took a bit but I figured it out eventually.
10.375) top floor bottom left warp
decent needle, not much to say. looks carua-esque. there's a few random rooms you can get, but the gist of the whole area is to do two screens in a row which rewards you with the item. this needle's ok I guess except the tbone screen which kinda sucked.
10.5) top floor bottom right warp
some cycle AIDS and a weird arrow thing that spins around slowly. it's kinda hard to control but the part it's included in is somewhat short and not too hard. nothing too hard here either.
10.625) bottom floor top left warp
some random okay needle, one random backtrack, some random things throwing apples, and then some cycle superAIDS. idk how the hell this shit works it's really weird and I just kinda bruteforced my way through it by going at arbitrary timings based on restarting from a certain position and holding right.
10.75) bottom floor top right warp
these funny Touhou girls follow you around and vaguely mimic your movement patterns. they don't kill you or anything, in fact they help you progress. btw hi if you've made it this far, thanks for reading this review. it's likely the most I've spent writing a review on anything I've ever played. unfortunate that it has to be this bad.
10.875) bottom floor bottom left wrap
weird maze area with a few distinct screens. you just kinda go to random spots and they make spikes disappear, and then you go somewhere else and some other thing happens? I'm not really sure on the intricacies of this one, at this point I kinda gave up trying to figure all of this out. I've sort of had enough of this game's shit by now, after that whole haunted house fiasco I had to go through. the block sprite is kinda unique.. I suppose?
11) bottom floor bottom right warp
epic carua needle. nothing that interesting, pretty sure he's done this before in Hope the's EX stage. there's one really hard fall that I had to 1f to get past. apparently, there's some 2f setup that works (which I couldn't quite get to work).
the boss of this entire thing is like a one-boss equivalent of a boss rush: a bunch of the previous colored cherry bosses combine into this one cherry that changes color, then start doing individual attacks kinda like phases in Destination. except some cherries (like the gray one and the green one) which are both actually from I wanna be the Symmetry. this boss is okay, it's nothing too hard and it plays somewhat well. 1f bug sometimes still happens if I recall but it's not too big of a deal.
now we enter the "five treasures" or "five challenges" area, where this girl asks you to find these five treasures in these five warps. this is the final frontier of the game, and has some of the better parts despite them being rather uninteresting or sub-par compared to the average game of this difficulty.
11.20) red warp
one screen of ok needle. not very notable but I'd rather it be this than whatever carua and Mizutori would come up with to replace it.
11.40) orange warp
by far the best needle/platforming in the game - it's my favorite room in the game by multiple orders of magnitude. I like that Influka picked this screen for K2, as it's the most livable and tolerable screen in this whole entire crap ass game. the second key screen though is kinda shit and is literal RNG.
11.60) purple warp
this puzzle is quite interesting actually and I enjoyed it. it's actually solvable unlike some of the other "puzzles" in this trash (ahem, NEET puzzle, ahem). the two player gimmick works and it makes sense. godlike troll at the end btw, it's the only one I genuinely fell for and felt like it was my fault. no end of save trap garbage can come close to that trap.
11.80) green warp
fucking AWFUL memory game which is RNG dependent. you're given a series of randomized inputs you have to memorize (left, right, shift, Z). this is somewhat poorly abbreviated since the word "shoot" begins with Sh, which happens to be the abbreviation they used for Shift. I guess there's Z to differentiate this and you might see this as a non-issue, but it tripped me up a good amount of times. I'm pretty sure everyone just quickly writes the inputs down somewhere and then does them. this is completely unreasonable to do legitimately. motherfuckers don't even let you see the full sequence, only the last input in it.
12) blue warp
a simple avoidance with two attacks, similar to the fairy before Suwako Moriya from earlier. somewhat dense but mostly readable. this time the curving attack is actually kinda hard.
boss here is commonly abbreviated as "the Touhou boss before Nue Houjuu", so I'll just call it that. this boss is painfully boring and includes a ton of waiting around and doing nothing, just waiting for things to happen. when stuff actually does happen, you do boring movements and boring dodges. I guess there's some curving which can be fun to dodge but it does not move at nearly fast enough of a speed to be fun to read and avoid. final can randomly murder you without anything you can really do about it, since some of the random bursts can move at 12+ velocity - and if they're pointed at you, they're likely going to kill you. maybe I'm bad at reading that attack, but I did get killed once by it and it made me kinda angry, since I'm fairly certain that I died to the last two seconds.
and finally, Nue Houjuu - the final boss of this game.
ironically, I love this boss. it's very well-made as opposed to the entire rest of this flaming diarrhea shitstorm. I beat it very, very quickly - quite literally within 3 deaths. this isn't exactly fair, since I've beaten the K2 version three separate times. K2's version is also more difficult - yes, attacks are removed, but you're given 3 HP in the original boss, and the pattern part is shorter. the K2 boss has the first 2 patterns looped for a while, making them quite a bit harder than these. I found out I could just read all the patterns without getting hit, which I feel highly aided in me being able to clear this boss quite quickly. I enjoyed it, however it was, sadly, quite short-lasted.
in conclusion, nothing here works. nearly all of this godawful game is completely soulless, evil and *transcendentally* stupid. so much RNG shit, so much awkward shit, so much unfun shit, so much bad-looking shit, so much barely playtested shit. doesn't help that this game is as long as Homer's fucking Odyssey, there's always no end in sight. playing through this mostly blind, I never knew this game was such a huge gauntlet of total abhorrent insanity. I knew nothing good would come from this collaboration. all in all - even if you're into this sort of game, run far, FAR away and never play this, for the love of God. this game is the worst thing I've ever had the horrid misfortune of playing and beating.
I really don't know in what universe this game is <80 to you people
Rating: 0.1 1
Difficulty: 84 84
Aug 4, 2024
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