Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity Reviews
For a series that only has a niche following in the West, 'Touhou' really needs to put its best foot forward to win over a bigger audience. Unfortunately, this fan-game spinoff of the doujin series is not it. While not particularly terrible,'Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity' is about as middle of the road as you can get with an action RPG, and as such does not leave a good impression as one of the few English representations of the 'Touhou' series.
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.
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 attempts to blend the action-RPG and bullet hell genres, sadly doing justice to neither in the process.
Even being for those in the target audience, Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity is an annoying, frustrating, and even enraging experience.
There really isn't anything positive I can say about this game, outside of a few choice spots of interesting art direction. The level design is dull, the platforming is simplistic, the graphics look a few generations old, the RPG elements are basic, the music is forgettable, the enemies are pushovers, the difficulty is turned all the way to easy – I'm honestly at a loss for words. I would like to think I have this amazing vocabulary to intelligently convey just how abominable Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity is, but the best I can come up with is just calling it bad. This is a bad, bad game.
With Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity, I found a pleasant time-waster of an action game that provided not a lot of emotional or gameplay depth.