Labyrinth of Touhou Tri -The Dreaming Girls & The Mysterious Orbs-

Edit for Steam Deck mention: I played this game probably 75/25 between Steam Deck/PC. Steam Deck sometimes crashes on boot but once you are in it works well until specific instances. Attacks with huge effects will crash the game sometimes, and I encountered one specific dungeon floor that the game just wouldn't load. I believe I encountered 4 instances where the game would always crash on Steam Deck: 3 due to specific attacks from enemies and once because of that dungeon floor. If you only have a Steam Deck I'd wait for fixes, but if you can play PC as well you can get around it. I experienced zero issues when playing on PC. Normal review: Genuinely some of the best turn based combat you can find. You bring 12 characters into each dungeon run, where 4 are in front and 8 are in reserves. Allies and enemies have an active time gauge that fills based on their speed. You have a "formation" command, which lets any character on their turn swap any other character out from reserves to the frontline, or to simply move the frontline around. This means you can for instance do an attack with a very high delay, then with a different character immediately afterward swap the delayed character out for someone else. That and much more strategy is provided just through the formations, but you also have 48 total characters all with unique SKILL TREES and playstyles, as well as gear to upgrade. Every character is actually useful, though most shine in specific situations such as enemies being weak to their primary element or debuff. I thought Chen the housecat was a joke character for a long time yet they carried a couple of physical-weak boss fights when I gave her a chance. By the way, the bosses are difficult. Start the game on Lunatic difficulty, and if you aren't liking it you can lower it (but not raise it back)! Besides the combat there are dungeons which each have their own puzzle mechanics. The puzzles stay relatively simple until you're pretty deep in, so you're eased into it if you're new to this kind of game. Labyrinth of Touhou Tri has a ton of QoL such as wiping in the dungeon just sending you back to base with your save intact. You can easily exit the dungeon any time from the menu, freely edit character skill trees, level down characters, retry bosses immediately after wiping while also being able to swap characters in and out from base. I knew almost nothing about Touhou going into this game. There are a lot of high concepts and in-jokes that are difficult for a newcomer to understand, but the game tries its best to explain various things and even provide a couple paragraphs per character every time you recruit a new one. To be honest the story is not something I was getting the game for so I didn't give it too much attention, though it did get some laughs out of me. The characters regardless are very cool and I definitely came out with some favorites; namely Sakuya, Sagume, and Koishi character wise. My favorite to use in combat were Chen, Doremy and Kokoro. Also worth mentioning this game is getting a FREE huge postgame update (which they have apparently done similar in the previous game?). Multiple new dungeons, bosses, equipment, and I don't know what else but I will be there no matter what. This has become a top 10 all time for me, and I heavily recommend anyone even slightly interested in this gameplay to give it a try.

The difficulty of Lunatic mode is interesting to me. You can't grind levels but you absolutely can, will and must grind items and stat upgrades. Very nice way to keep the game challenging for us grind enjoyers. Special care was put into spell card animations. They really look and feel like they do in the real touhou games! Nice. There is one negative you can't really figure out enemies until you see their spells and what they do. You really must keep touhouwiki open at all times. That is all!

If you liked 2, you'll probably like this one too. If you're someone looking for a turn based (action bar based?) RPG with a focus on teambuilding and strategy, you'll like this game. Some of the teambuilding aspects have been watered down from LOT2 but the new content they add (skill trees that can give a character multiple playstyles, and equipment upgrading) makes up for it.

So far its been very fun, I am still very early into the game so I cant say too much yet, but it managed to pull me in as someone who normally doesnt play this genre of game. I am very excited to keep playing, and I would highly recommend. Also the dev seems to be very passionate about this game, which is always a wonderful site.

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An excellent DRPG with great map design and engaging bosses at a bargain price. Be aware before you start playing: there are currently major issues with the save system that may result in lost progress. 1. Every individual save slot is actually a set of ~100 tiny files stored in a folder. This is apparently too much for the Steam Cloud sync system to handle. Uploads / downloads of save data frequently fail silently, resulting in partial losses of progress (for example, it might sync your characters' level up progress, but not your map progress). These problems are particularly common if you install the game on multiple PCs / devices and have Steam running on both of them simultaneously. 2. If you disable Steam Cloud (cloud saves) for this game after previously using them, your saves will unpredictably delete themselves. I lost many hours of progress as a result of this bug. I'd strongly suggest only installing this game on one device.

ゲームシステムそのものがつまらない。道中のギミックはただ時間を食うだけではなく、確率が上昇し続けるエンカウント仕様によって手数が増えたりやり直したりするほどパーティが全滅しやすくなり、拠点に戻るとやり直し。こんな萎えるだけの仕様をよく考えついた開発者のクソ馬鹿な頭脳に脱帽。 ボスも味方の攻撃が外れてたりするなどしてパターンが崩れると敵の行動パターンに合わせた対策ができずあっという間に全滅させられる。ゲームをプレイすることで開発者のゲーム製作能力がとても低いことがはっきりと感じられる。 開発者様へ、二度とゲームを作らない方がよいかと思いますよ！頭を使って何かを作るのに向いてないですね。