Hey there! Despite this being a shorter game, I had a fair amount of things going on. One of those things was attending the CDMX YGO regional, where I finished 84th out of nearly 600 players—just short of the Top 64 cut. My deck ended up being quite different from the one I posted a few weeks ago, mainly because I didn’t expect everyone to be running Engravers. But between that and a binge into Oshi no Ko, I managed to find time to play this game.
Incidentally, I’m a newcomer to both this genre and this series.
So, what is a Touhou?
Prior to writing this review, my experience with Touhou and bullet hells in general is super limited. From my limited understanding, it’s basically a game where you get shot at in tons of places while your admittedly small controlled character dodges them.
So basically, bullet hell games tend to look like this:
I have played Nier Automata and Furi, which have sparse bullet hell segments. This is technically the second Touhou game I’ve played, the first one being Touhou: Luna Nights, which is more like a Metroidvania game. From what I understand, Touhou games are more like independent works on this shared universe, and a skim through the TvTropes site seems to confirm this.
All of this I say to mean that I am a newcomer to both the genre and the series, with virtually no expectations from it. I’m just trying out something new. Let’s start with the story!
One-note characters and simple plot
From what I’ve skimmed, it seems that Touhou games are always filled with pretty anime women, and this is no exception: I don’t think there is a single male character in the game, and all the characters have this stylized “waifu” aesthetic that is common in this ‘verse. For instance, this is what one of the bosses looks like: The art and character design of everyone looks pretty good, and the in-game models look fine, but I did find it kind of jarring that they look like Newgrounds flash games.
No shade towards the devs here. I just felt a bit weirded out by this; it looks fine, just too reminiscent of flash games for me not to notice.
On the note of characters, I actually don’t remember much about Luna Nights, but apparently you even fight this game’s protagonist there. Sadly, I think lack of memorability is a common thing with both of these games: while the designs sure look pretty, characters are often one-note, and the plot itself here is as barebones as it gets.
The short and long version of the story is that Cirno’s princess was captured, and she wants to get her back. She meets and fights a few cute women among the way, usually having some sort of interchange where she looks stupid, before facing the final boss. Usually, I don’t really care about a game’s lack of story, as I think that a game just giving you context on what’s going on is perfectly fine; however, I must admit that by the end of the story, the dialogue was so corny and bad that I actively started skipping it, something I didn’t even do for another game which I felt had lackluster dialogue.
This game makes Tactical Breach Wizards look like Shakespeare. In that game, every character was snarky and detached, but I’d take that over this game’s approach, where every conversation feels like a slightly different version of ‘the player character is stupid’ as a punchline
These are, thankfully, where the game’s only major problems.
Exciting Combat, exciting music
Hero of the Ice Fairy is structured like a boss rush game. You fight one boss, get some dialogue, then go to the next boss. For this game’s gameplay and tone, this works pretty well; I even found it reminiscent of one of my favorite games, Furi. There are no random enemies to distract yourself with, and almost every boss fight feels exciting, with all of them having flashy attack patterns that live up to the cool anime fantasies I assume they are appealing to.
To reinforce this, on top of having dashes that give you invulnerability frames, this game sports a flying move that makes you completely invulnerable. However, using it comes with a slight delay upon landing, adding a layer of risk to its utility, and you can’t shoot while performing this move: more experienced players will be able to get by the bosses quicker by just dashing instead of flying, and newer players (like myself) will be able to escape even the most densely packed bullet patterns by flying.
The game also features a decent customization system for your hero’s abilities. You get to choose from two powers that you unlock throughout the game (its final selection still being small, but all of them being good choices), which reward you for getting damage in without receiving any in turn. This is how it looks:
It’s okay, nothing too deep. I enjoyed it for the options that it gave me.
It isn’t a very long game, but I have never had a problem with short games; in this case, it has around 8 bosses (oddly, I couldn’t find an exact count online) and, at the time of writing this, Hero of the Ice Fairy is releasing a roguelite mode. I don’t know the specifics, but it’s probably some sort of boss-rush mode, which if you liked the game, might give you more bang for your buck at what is already a pretty cheap game ($120 MXN in my region, and it goes on discounts often).
The music itself is just as engaging as its gameplay. It makes all the boss fights feel more exciting, so you’ll have moments where you’re barely dodging or surviving a boss’s phase while something like this sounds in your ears. It is not without its soothing tracks, either, making the soundtrack well-balanced on top of being just straight-up good.
Personally, the charm of the game died out quickly; by the last couple of bosses, I was just finishing it for completion’s sake, and I was playing with the game muted while I listened to a video essay. This is just me, though, there’s nothing really wrong with the game, it’s just how I felt at the last couple of bosses.
On a last note, this is the first true bullet hell game that I have ever played, and I didn’t find it too difficult. I think I beat all the bosses at around my third try, managing to do a few on my first try. For what it’s worth, I’ve been playing games for all my life, but if you’re interested in bullet hell games, this is probably a good first stop, speaking from my own experience.
Conclusions
While the story and characters did nothing for me, Touhou: Hero of the Ice Fairy delivers engaging boss battles backed by a strong soundtrack. I doubt this game will stick with me for long, but for fans of the genre or newcomers to bullet hell games, it’s a solid, short experience worth checking out—especially given its low price… and hey, it did leave me curious enough that I might play another Touhou game in the future – so that has to count for something!
But what do you think? Did you find the game more fulfilling than I did? Let me know in the comments!
Want to see the registry of my backlog? You can see it in this public view Google Sheet.
