Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity

A simple, but unique fusion of a bullet hell shooter and action RPG. 

By Urian Brown October 19, 2016

If you want to dive down a weird rabbit hole, I suggest reading the Wikipedia entry on the Touhou Project. There's a whole world of Touhou-related stuff I knew nothing about before this game! Dozens of fanmade bullet hell shooters stretching back to the mid-nineties. The games spun off into manga, novels, and eventually many years later, this action RPG shooter. Although I admit, I’m not exactly sure how Scarlet Curiosity fits into this universe as the Wikipedia page didn’t mention it. C’mon, Wikipedia people! I depend on you to make me look I know what I’m talking about!

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Anyway, even if you know nothing about this universe and decide not to go down that Wiki rabbit hole, this is still an interesting and entertaining game. It’s really simple, though. There’s not much of a story, but there's some fun to be had running around levels dodging bullets and destroying everything in your path.

You play as one of two girls in frilly dresses--a vampire named Remilia Scarlet or her maid named Sakuya Izayoi. Both have different attacks and fighting styles. As the game goes on and you destroy more enemies, you’ll gain experience and the new more powerful abilities. The upgrades come quickly and there’s a decent amount of variety so you can mix and match to find a fighting style that you like. 

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Aside from ability upgrades, you can also bolster your stats with equipment and weapons. You can obtain them from fighting enemies, or explore the map and try to find hidden treasure chests. You can also buy or sell them from a curiosity shop that opens up a little later in the game. 

As far as combat goes, it’s not complicated. You can take out enemies from a distance with projectiles, or jump in and fight them up close. There are also area damage attacks and one big super move. Enemies vary from little fairy girls to frogs to giant centipedes and more. But nothing is much of a challenge and healing stuff everywhere. I never died once, until I fought a boss. Well, actually, I fell off a cliff during a small platforming area, but that was more me being a derp than any kind of challenge. 

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The game is billed as a bullet hell shooter and action RPG fusion. In some ways, the combat does a reasonable job of pulling off this unusual combination. Like bullet hell shooters, you’ll tear through smaller enemies, spend a little more time on mid-size ones, then get challenged by the bullet-absorbing bosses. But where the game fails to capture the essence of both is the "dodging bullets" aspect. In bullet hell shooters, you’re confronted with wave after wave of bullets that leave you only the tiniest area of the screen to stay alive in. And you have to be a master of spotting patterns so you can predict where to move next. The only time the game comes close to that feeling is during the boss battles.

But most the boss battles are still too easy. In traditionally bullet hell shooters, the bosses take up half the screen and must be taken down piece by piece while you try and avoid their blizzard of bullets. The bosses in this game shoot off enough bullets that make you feel like you’re almost there, but it’s never quite enough to feel like you've actually been sent to bullet “hell.” It’s more like bullet heck.

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The game is nice to look at, though. The levels, while simple, have a quaint beauty about them. The camera is zoomed in just right with neat blurring effects thrown in, so it kind of looks like you are running through a diorama of some sort. 

While Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity won’t win any Game of the Year awards, it’s still a novel enough concept that it's worth playing. And the enemies are so easy, it’s kind of relaxing to breeze through them to the pleasant soundtrack. There are far worse ways to spend twenty dollars and an afternoon.

Hint: The third boss is actually kinda hard! Stay back and whittle her down with projectiles!

by Urian Brown