Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia

Touhou: Artificial Dreams in Arcadia is a blobber (that is, a party-based grid-based dungeon crawler) with some classic SMT elements, a JRPG overworld, and a bullet-hell-based capture mechanic. And it's absolutely amazing. Just looking at the store page and screenshots I was still a bit skeptical, but honestly, the first impression doesn't do the overall quality of this justice. This type of game, in my opinion, lives and dies based on a large number of things coming together, and here, everything does: [list] [*]The old school dungeon crawling and mapping, with good variety, interesting (but not too prevalent) gimmicks, and with a nice little acknowledgment reward for fully mapping out floors [*]The SMT aspect works, if anything, better than it ever did in SMT, at least for me. Because every single character is a Touhou character, and so has their own quirks, expected affinities, and so on, which makes them interesting to encounter/discover/use. The game really benefits from...

I begun playing this game with only incredibly basic knowledge of the Touhou franchise. I knew some characters, I knew what it was about but never have I played a Touhou game. However, I deeply adore classic SMT games and similar Atlus dungeon crawlers. So, this game caught my eye. The game and the steam page is a pretty cover so to speak, game was on sale so I decided to pick it up. Upon playing and completing I can confidently tell you that this game is as pretty inside as the cover on the outside. I went from knowing more or less nothing of Touhou to becoming quite interested in it thanks to the visible love the creators have put in, pulling from so many sources and making the world so much bigger than I can have imagined Touhou to be showing me interesting characters who I would like to learn more of. Below are my thoughts on the game, without spoilers for the most part, but if you want the short answer then yes this game is worth it. Visually and audibly the game is very appealin...

This game is fantastic. I played through it twice back to back because I didn't want to move on from it. This is my favorite Touhou fangame and my introduction to SMT.

It's a very good game but it has some obvious issues: - SP management is a joke, the MC's SP abilities are generally way better making most party members unique skills useless since they deplete SP too, the MC's abilities also ignore turn order allowing them to always go first. 100SP to get a free turn to do what you want can't be beaten in 99.9% of situations. Ignoring turn order also means the enemy can't reduce your SP before you cast. - Transferring the few useful unique skill is a massive pain, to the point I only ever bothered doing so for the one superboss. I didn't get to use them anyways because the boss hit a weakness (thus reducing my SP) to cancel the skill every single time. - In regular encounters hijacking someone turn one every time is not only amazing defensively but will also allow you to get every resource you need: party members, items, money and exp for your team through sacrifice. If an enemy buffed themselves you can simply hijack them instead of dealing wit...

Good tunes, good vibes, and good gameplay. All I could ask for.

the real soul hackers 2

playing this reminded of all the things i hate about early SMT. fortunately, this is the perfect kind of game the touhou audience would love. in a lot of regards, it's put together perfectly - resistances and weaknesses are meaningful, the phone mechanics are pretty neat and interesting, the soundtrack bangs and the art looks fantastic. i just wish i personally liked it more but it is what it is!!

A really fun Touhou take on an SMT game. If you like SMT and Touhou it's an easy reccomend and the dungeon maker and steam workshop support make it all the better.

Did you ever wonder "What if SNES-era Shin Megami Tensei was good"? Here's the answer.