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Sunday, September 3, 2017

Touhou Corner: Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom


Released on August 14, 2015 in occasion of the 88th Comiket, Touhou Kanjuden (lit. 'Ultramarine Orb Tale') ~ Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom (東方紺珠伝 ~ Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom) is the 15th main-line vertical danmaku Touhou Project game.

Following the events of the fighting spin-off game Urban Legend in Limbo, a spider-looking probe crashes in Gensokyo, roaming around the land and withering everything on its passage. Once that the recluded-on-Earth Lunarian people living in Gensokyo found out that this attack was launched by other Lunariarns in an attempt of 'land purification', the Lunarian pharmacist Eirin Yakogoro tasks one of the game's four heroines (Reimu, Marisa, Sanae and Reisen Udongein Inaba) to stop the assault from its roots. The expedition will lead the chosen heroine to the Moon, finding out that the attempted Gensokyo offence was the side-result of a long-lasting war between Lunarians and the sagacious spirit Junko, whose grudge against the Lunarian deity that killed her son has led to her complete refinement as a spirit of pure resentment towards the pluri-millennial Moon civilization.

The main feature sported in Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom is the addition of Pointdevice, a new gameplay mode to go along with the usual arcade-styled one (here dubbed as 'Legacy mode') where the usual life/credit model is instead replaced with a quick-respawn system that breaks down each of the main game's stages into chapters; every time the player dies, he/she's sent out to the most recent checkpoint instead, with the same amount of bombs and a slightly-reduced firepower stock. The scoring system is reliant on both the enemy takedown percentage and, once again, bullet-grazing action, which can reward the most skilled of players with either extra Bomb pieces (Pointdevice) or Life pieces (Legacy) once that a fixed point threshold is reached at the end of a chapter.

After the rise of a wide assortment of die/respawn games such as the infamous PC platformer I Wanna Be The Guy, Team Shanhai Alice's ZUN wanted to try to implement a similar system to one of his Touhou games while having an actual story explanation in-game as to why the player is granted the power of infinite attempts; for Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom's Pointdevice mode, that is the case of the titular Ultramarine Orb elixir that is able to grant such powers. Among the many official Touhou Project games, this is the very first one that doesn't feature English titles/subtitles for any of its overall score's tracks.

The legacy of the 15th main Touhou title in Taiko gaming is currently represented by a single track among the most popular fan-made music arrangements.

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-Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom songs-



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