Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity Reviews
The cuteness and novelties of Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity wear off quickly after about 30 minutes, and the shallow, mind-numbing gameplay takes hold. The playability and controls just were not well thought out for a game like this, but anyone who is willing to slog through may still manage to experience an interesting, yet ultimately failed experiment. As far as Touhou games go, Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity is a fair looker, but limited animation accentuates the low budget. Hopefully Touhou projects will continue to get westward localization, and just maybe someone will attempt another project like Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity but will learn from its mistakes.
The highlight of Scarlet Curiosity is easily the boss fights… A love letter to their bullet hell inspiration, the screen quickly overflows with colorful shapes of all sizes
Everything in Touhou just feels pointless; the story is drab, the combat is flat and and the action elements are uninspired. I understand it's a fan made game but I really struggle to find anything to compliment here. I can even imagine fans of the series struggling to like it, which is pretty much the nail in the coffin. Honest opinion: Avoid this like the plague.
Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity is a unique game for sure.
To be perfectly honest, Scarlet Curiosity may not really appeal to you if you aren’t a big Touhou fan like I am, but on the plus side, it also isn’t the cost of a full game either, so if you get it on sale, you probably won’t feel too let down if you don’t end up enjoying it. Despite the occasional frame rate drop here and there, which I attribute to my old computer, Scarlet Curiosity actually ran smoother than I expected, and the control set-up felt really natural to play on a keyboard. As far as Touhou fan games go, Scarlet Curiosity is pretty looking and sounding, and while not as long or in-depth as a standard game, is also simple enough to pick up or ease back into, and low cost enough to at least give it a chance. So get ready to head into Gensokyō to help a vampire and her best meido out!
Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity mixes up different styles into a delicious pie. You can still see the different elements, but they complement each other in the overall game. It is fun and addictive with a clean and cute, modern retro style. Although there are some annoyances such as the camera, it was never enough to make me want to stop playing. The individual game elements are never as deep as they would be on their own, but the game has a great rhythm and feel. It was a very pleasant surprise for me, and I now look forward to future Touhou games.
A basic action RPG that's not without it's charm. Boss fights are an interesting mix of action and bullet hell, however the rest of the game is simplistic and becomes tedious. Players who aren't already familiar with other Touhou games may find this difficult to get in to.