Review of Touhou 15.5 Antinomy of Flowers
Hey guys, this is Ryan and I'm going to be reviewing a game I have been playing recently. Touhou 15.5 Antinomy of Common Flowers is the 6th Touhou 2D fighter game for the PC and the third aerial based 2D fighter in the series. This game has a heavy focus on spacing and projectiles just like two of its predecessors: Touhou 13.5 Hopeless masquerade and Touhou 14.5 Urban Legend in Limbo.
The controls in this game are simple, with 3 different attack buttons: melee, special and ranged, a switch button (will get to this point soon) and a dash/shield button. There are no complex inputs and instead, are based on what direction you are facing and which of the attack buttons you pressed. You also have 3 other attacks: spell cards (performed by pressing special and ranged at the same time), final words (performed by pressing switch and special at the same time) and occult specials (performed by pressing melee and ranged at the same time). Because of this, there is a low entry floor that took me a day to learn with no manual (will get to this point later) and all of my friends an hour to learn with someone explaining the game to them.
What makes this 2D fighter (and the 2 predecessors) different is a lack of floor. This really just means that there is the middle zone, and you can jump both up and down. Despite being such a small change on paper, this change is actually massive. First and most obvious you have a new movement option of “jumping” downwards for an approach or dodge. Also because the down button makes you jump downwards, there is no ducking, therefore no low guards or high guards and instead just a universal guard and a shield button.
Along with all the old mechanics from the prequels, this game also has an added tag mechanic called the slave system. Basically, you pick two characters, the master and the slave and in combat as long as your possession bar is not empty you can switch to your slave until the bar empties and you get hit, or you decide to switch back. Even though the two characters share the same health bar, any grey health you have will heal while playing as the slave.
Speaking of characters, there is a fairly sizable cast of characters in this game, pulling all the characters from the prequel and the PlayStation exclusive, and adding 4 new characters, each with their own set of moves and combos (which can be chained into new ones with the tag mechanic)
Being a fighting game, you have the standard modes of Story, vs Co-op, vs Player, Practice and online. The story mode is quite short but fun with 5 difficulties of Easy, Medium, Hard, Lunatic and Overdrive and unlike most fighting games, the characters you face tend to be much stronger, have better mobility and use different attacks to what they normally have. This mode is quite short and you don’t get to choose your teams. If you are simply looking for a story, this is game not for you.
Co-op mode has 4 stages of difficulties being Easy, Medium, Hard and Lunatic, however the CPU isn’t programmed to switch yet making the game much easier. All together I believe you shouldn’t get this game if you have no one else to play with.
Because vs Player is obvious I will skip over that and talk about vs Online. I don’t know if it is just me or others as well, but I can only connect to players that either I give my IP address to, or vice versa as the other mode does not seem to work.
The soundtrack for this game. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT...ok I may be biased because all of the songs are remixes of the themes of the characters from other Touhou games, but on Steam it does have the tag “Great Soundtrack” and I certainly trust steam on this one, if you want a listen to it you can click this link and decide for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is1ilQkBLg8&index=7&list=PLYTgxxIs4_k8aPBDqiJA-6aBs77ZykY65
My personal favourites are Sumireko’s theme, Jo’on and Shion’s theme and Yukari’s second theme.
Final nitpicks, as I said I was going to mention, I HAD to learn this game without a manual simply because an English one does not exist. This game does come with a link that takes you to a Japanese website that teaches you how to play the game if you can read Japanese however, I cannot and therefore had to learn the game on my own. That being the case, this game does have a few good English tutorials now, however, these were written by fans and require you to search it up. English subtitles were only recently added to the game and I have yet to notice any grammatical flaws yet.
Overall I enjoy this game and recommend it to both to players who are new to the fighting genre, veterans who want to teach their friends how to play fighting games, and fans of the Touhou games already, but only on sale and if you are able to get other friends to join you as $25 USD on Steam I feel is still a bit pricey and this game lacks single-player content.
This is Ryan signing off.
(Images are either screenshots taken by myself or from the Steam page for this game)
The controls in this game are simple, with 3 different attack buttons: melee, special and ranged, a switch button (will get to this point soon) and a dash/shield button. There are no complex inputs and instead, are based on what direction you are facing and which of the attack buttons you pressed. You also have 3 other attacks: spell cards (performed by pressing special and ranged at the same time), final words (performed by pressing switch and special at the same time) and occult specials (performed by pressing melee and ranged at the same time). Because of this, there is a low entry floor that took me a day to learn with no manual (will get to this point later) and all of my friends an hour to learn with someone explaining the game to them.
What makes this 2D fighter (and the 2 predecessors) different is a lack of floor. This really just means that there is the middle zone, and you can jump both up and down. Despite being such a small change on paper, this change is actually massive. First and most obvious you have a new movement option of “jumping” downwards for an approach or dodge. Also because the down button makes you jump downwards, there is no ducking, therefore no low guards or high guards and instead just a universal guard and a shield button.
Along with all the old mechanics from the prequels, this game also has an added tag mechanic called the slave system. Basically, you pick two characters, the master and the slave and in combat as long as your possession bar is not empty you can switch to your slave until the bar empties and you get hit, or you decide to switch back. Even though the two characters share the same health bar, any grey health you have will heal while playing as the slave.
Speaking of characters, there is a fairly sizable cast of characters in this game, pulling all the characters from the prequel and the PlayStation exclusive, and adding 4 new characters, each with their own set of moves and combos (which can be chained into new ones with the tag mechanic)
Being a fighting game, you have the standard modes of Story, vs Co-op, vs Player, Practice and online. The story mode is quite short but fun with 5 difficulties of Easy, Medium, Hard, Lunatic and Overdrive and unlike most fighting games, the characters you face tend to be much stronger, have better mobility and use different attacks to what they normally have. This mode is quite short and you don’t get to choose your teams. If you are simply looking for a story, this is game not for you.
Co-op mode has 4 stages of difficulties being Easy, Medium, Hard and Lunatic, however the CPU isn’t programmed to switch yet making the game much easier. All together I believe you shouldn’t get this game if you have no one else to play with.
Because vs Player is obvious I will skip over that and talk about vs Online. I don’t know if it is just me or others as well, but I can only connect to players that either I give my IP address to, or vice versa as the other mode does not seem to work.
The soundtrack for this game. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT...ok I may be biased because all of the songs are remixes of the themes of the characters from other Touhou games, but on Steam it does have the tag “Great Soundtrack” and I certainly trust steam on this one, if you want a listen to it you can click this link and decide for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is1ilQkBLg8&index=7&list=PLYTgxxIs4_k8aPBDqiJA-6aBs77ZykY65
My personal favourites are Sumireko’s theme, Jo’on and Shion’s theme and Yukari’s second theme.
Final nitpicks, as I said I was going to mention, I HAD to learn this game without a manual simply because an English one does not exist. This game does come with a link that takes you to a Japanese website that teaches you how to play the game if you can read Japanese however, I cannot and therefore had to learn the game on my own. That being the case, this game does have a few good English tutorials now, however, these were written by fans and require you to search it up. English subtitles were only recently added to the game and I have yet to notice any grammatical flaws yet.
Overall I enjoy this game and recommend it to both to players who are new to the fighting genre, veterans who want to teach their friends how to play fighting games, and fans of the Touhou games already, but only on sale and if you are able to get other friends to join you as $25 USD on Steam I feel is still a bit pricey and this game lacks single-player content.
This is Ryan signing off.
(Images are either screenshots taken by myself or from the Steam page for this game)
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