This was my first exposure to the Touhou… franchise? Expanded universe? Mass hysteria? I'm not sure if any of those terms are correct, or perhaps it's all three. In any case, I have never ventured into the Touhou waters before. Other than knowing it was a bullet-hell shmup series featuring magical girls who were well-beloved by its adherents, I had no idea what to expect. I was, however, slightly more primed for the bullet hell portion of the offerings, given that I'm the occasional shmup (or shoot-em-up) enjoyer. I won't claim to be a pro by any stretch of the imagination, but I've done a one-credit clear or two in my day, and I love filling screens with multi-colored pellets and scrambling for power-ups.

Touhou Spell Carnival goes the extra mile by adding a strategic element to the shmup formula. The core conceit is that you are controlling Reimu and a selection of the other girls in a combat grid, rather than guiding a single ship (or, uh, girl) along the scrolling conveyor belt of typical shmup games. If the thought of controlling multiple characters in real-time during a bullet hell shmup sounds overwhelming, well.. it kind of is, but it's not quite real-time. Each character can move rather freely but doesn't attack constantly. Instead, a timer fills up based on each character's speed and builds up stocks to take action. Then you and your enemies spend these stocks or charges to use different abilities, which might be different bullet spread patterns, laser attacks, healing auras, and the like. The girls and their foes all have stats including health bars, meaning that they have different damage and defense values, can take multiple hits, etc. Additionally, you can use a grazing mechanic to soak up enemy attacks, bombs to clear the screen of bullets, spell cards, and unique equipment to alter your capabilities.

Again, if this all sounds like a lot, it both is and isn't. The end result is hectic but more akin to the Active Time Battle system from Final Fantasy games. You have a flurry of action, then tense pauses, then when characters come online you scramble to put in your orders quickly and efficiently. Not every single action has to be micro-managed, however, as you can double-tap certain buttons to move as a group or fire a basic attack with all team members at once. Still, there's a lot to manage and you need to get comfortable quickly cycling through team members to use their abilities in clutch situations.

The story and characters charmed me quite a bit, I must say. I found myself enjoying all of their interpersonal interactions and hijinks, despite not having any background with other Touhou works. I can see how this series gets its claws in you because the core cast is really well-developed and entertaining to watch. There are times when stories with large casts that have similar powers to one another – like say various magical girl, tokusatsu, or superhero works – can struggle to stake out a distinct identity for the various team members on the crew. Touhou Spell Carnival does not suffer from this, and you get a real sense of who Reimu, Marisa, and the rest of the gang are. The side stories add to their characterizations, and the main storyline gives them all chances to shine at at least one point or another.

The presentation is strong, too. The character designs are very lovely and they have a healthy amount of motion during the dialogue scenes between battles. The voice actors in particular give great performances; I found myself laughing quite hard at some of the comedic outbursts and picking up on more subtle emotions during slower scenes. The in-battle visuals are simple, but they have a low poly charm that is pleasant. There's also a strong selection of tracks from the OST, with a good variety of tempo and soundscapes.

The game's presentation is not without its flaws, though. The battlefields – where you spend most of your time playing – are not terribly interesting to look at. I understand the need for a simple battlefield to make the characters and attacks stand out for ease of play, but there's not a lot of distinction between them. There are different backgrounds, but they're muted, and by the time you layer on the grid and all of the characters, bullets, and so forth it can be really hard to tell one location apart from another. Even with the use of some “terrain” like tiles, all of the battles end up looking like anime figures thrown on a chessboard regardless of what the context for the battle is.

Additionally, some of the charm of the visuals is lost in the hectic nature of the battles. Because so much is happening on screen and the scope of what you need to track is so large, it's really hard to focus on the character designs. Everything blends together, and those unique character looks and behaviors all get washed away as you rapidly flit around trying to control your team in battle.

The mechanics also feel somewhat lopsided. It's not a difficult game per se, and I didn't have any trouble progressing through the stages. But it felt like I was relying pretty heavily on the group move and group attack commands just due to the sheer breadth of what I was being asked to manage. Each stage has you commanding multiple team members, each with multiple abilities, and trying to dodge dozens of bullets shot by a gaggle of enemies. I often found myself forgetting which girl had which attack power or ability – especially as the roster can change between battles – or having trouble telling my characters apart in all the chaos. It was often easiest to remember one or two key abilities and focus my micro on maneuvering that one girl for that one clutch ability usage, then just group-moving and group-attacking through the lion's share of battles (especially as focus attacking a single target removed them from the battlefield and therefore removed a lot of the visual clutter they would produce). More than once I found that losing characters mid-fight actually increased my capabilities because it freed up more of my mental bandwidth by having fewer characters to manage and maneuver.

I… doubt that is the desired outcome.

Then again, perhaps this is alleviated with sufficient practice and focus. Much like the bullet hell shmups that Touhou is so famous for, perhaps the intent is to play repeated sessions and hone your pathing until you can solve most levels before they've begun. Run the same teams repeatedly, learn their abilities until they become second nature, and run set offensive and defensive strategies rather than trying to adapt on the fly.

Still, it's hard to shake the feeling that the increased complexity is almost too much at times. Playing a standard shmup there is a distinct feeling of connection with your lonesome ship (or, uh, magical girl as the case may be) - it's just you and your little avatar against the odds. By having multiple characters to manage at once I ended up spreading my attention across a wider net and feeling less connected to the cast overall - a strange knock-on effect of the underlying mechanics.

But progress is never stopped after one failure. You can try stages again without issue, run prior maps again for additional experience/money/items, and more. Like with most RPG titles you can modulate difficulty downward with a bit of grinding and item/ability loadout choices.

Overall, Touhou Spell Carnival is a pretty great time. It's certainly a novel experience in a setting that hooked me despite my lack of background knowledge of the series. The wedding of real-time tactics, action RPG framework, and bullet hell combat stylings makes for a novel experience that is hard to find anywhere else. The presentation is superb and the characters are charming, making for an engrossing cast that is easy to connect with - provided you can overlook the more hectic moments of the tensest battles.