Touhou : Scarlet Curiosity Review

Fan games are often an interesting mix of passion, knowledge and poor game design. I'm not saying every fan game ever made is bad, but they often lack the polish that seasoned game developers can put into a title. Step up Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity, a fan game based on the official game series. Billed as a “bullet-hell action RPG” the game tries its hardest to blend multiple genres together, but never manages to excel in any single one of them.

The story is based on an “all powerful” vampire named Remilia Scarlet; the premise is that she finds herself a bit bored, but luckily there’s all these small monsters she can run around battering. There also a really big one that she wants to batter. That’s pretty much the lowdown of it. I’m not even being hyperbolic, that is the entire reason why she fights every single person she meets, friend or foe.

This pretty much sets a precedent for the writing in Scarlet Curiosity. Nothing ever extends past shallow reasoning with dialogue that portrays itself as infantile. You never find yourself caring about the goal of each mission and how the story will develop; the gameplay is just driven by the basic desire to reach the end.

The gameplay is pretty poor to be perfectly honest, and while “bullet-hell action RPG” sounds like an interesting mix, the actual execution is very sloppy. Combat is basic with a three hit combo and a few special moves to choose from. Players do have the option to jump as well, but it ruins the bullet-hell approach to combat as you can jump over any bullets that are thrown your way. There are a few enemies that mix things up with more vertical projectiles but there just isn’t any difficulty there. The biggest issue with the combat in Scarlet Curiosity is that it’s incredibly easy. It feels like every AI slider is scrolled down to dumb as enemies kind of just wait for you to hit them - even the bosses present no challenge. There never seems to be a difficulty curve, and many of the enemies are all exactly same. Bosses offer a slight challenge over them, but you aren't ever going to get stuck.

Another big issue in Touhou is just how poorly designed the levels are; paths wind around to dead ends and there's only ever one way to proceed. Most of the dead ends lead to weapons and items, but this never justifies accidentally wandering the wrong way. Exploration of this nature should be properly rewarded, but the player is just given weapon pickups they can usually swipe from dead enemies.

Graphically the game looks incredibly outdated, towing the line between last gen and this gen thanks to HD textures. The art style can be nice in places but this is largely down to the use of colour. It’s something that is rarely seen in this era of brown and urban looking environments in videogames.

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.