Kioh Gyoku is the second game in the Seihou series, this gameplay is more or less the same as TH3 with the bonus of being extremely graze-focused, grazing is when you play your protagonist as close as possible to the bullet withou actually killing you, it's also a core mechanic in Touhou as it allows to get a much higher score but i only mentioned in SH2 because here grazing is… quite imporant. for bad reasons
In SH2, the entire previous cast returns with the excepetion of Vivit who only get one single mentions and a cameo in angel form, making Vivit the only Seihou/Touhou Expanded Universe character to have not a single canon outfit, on the other side we get a couple of new characters named Morgan and Muse and Yuka Kazami (apparently Mima should have joined too but ig ZUN already got tired of her), like the previous one this game OST was composed by ZUN and to be honest... it's one of the two reedeming qualities
SH2 might rival TH1 as one of the worst game ever created, even Seihou fans know this game is… quitw unfinished, for a compairison TH3, the game this one is heavily inspired by, features a story, a route for each character where you fight the entire cast and then you get an unique ending, in SH2 there is no story, you pick a character, the game choses at random 4 opponents you have to fight, then you face Morgan as semi-final boss and Muse as final boss, and if you do, you get a white png of the game cover saying "thanks for playing", beautiful
Also there is NO difficulty setting, this game should be a free demo at best
Now, this wouldn't be bad if the game was good of course, but… it's not, this game is ABSURDLY easy except for Muse (at least we get an decent final boss ig), with battles lasting less than a minute if you are lucky enough, and i fear the grazing mechanic is to blame for that, you have to graze bullets to win but the AI isn't able to do that and this results in your enemy AI crashing into the bullets or getting in stuck in the corner, it's a overral an HUGE step back in quality comparated to SH1 in every field
On the bright side: the graphics are pretty good! there is even a fire attack which i kinda love
As for the cast, this time each character has their own entry giving just like TH3, in SH1 only Reimu and Marisa had entries (probably written by ZUN) so it's nice to see them here at least, and we got some pretty basic lore, like the name of their mecha aircraft and what they were doing before SH1, in other like Muse you get gibberish, honestly reading them felt like i stumbled in a bad fandom wiki of an old sci-fi manga, also they keep mentioning a war for some reason??
The other reedeming quality are the battle quotes, in TH3 they were quite forgettable but here each character gets 3 quotes (except Marie towards Erich) for each win and most of them are honestly hilarious, it's funny how everyone hypes Morgan but treats Musa who is supposed to be a GOD who doesn't even need a battleship to destroy them like a dumn child barely stronger than Mai and Mei
By far the best ones are Erich (who gets a new robot-shaped mecha for some reason?) and Marie, i adore Marie in general like yes please more mean femme lesbian mecha ride 19yo military legend please
To conclude... let's talk about Yuka, i was quite disappointed in how... empty she kinda feels?
No one has any idea who she is nor where she comes from, and her quotes are all generic, which is a shame because i love her potray and theme, you just don't realize how good ZUN's art is until you compare Yuka's to everyone's flat generic designs
tangentwithtanner
gummygunk
vaporwave
gamechangershow
germansingergirl
pixelskylines
izzy806
andulkaphoto
kianamaiart
