Touhou Luna Nights

Touhou is a strange series. It's a series of bullet hells made by sole developer ZUN, but he allows pretty much anyone to make their own Touhou games and sell them. As a result, the Switch E-Shop is populated with Touhou "fan games", many of which are actually pretty decent. My favorite, however, is Touhou Luna Nights, an incredibly fun and tight metroidvania that executes polish.

Touhou Luna Nights has you play as the maid Sakuya, who has the ability to stop time and throw a seemingly infinite amount of knives. She works at a gothic castle called the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and the game has her fight her way through a parallel universe of said castle to get home. The story isn't super important here, it's mostly just a means to explain why Sakuya is fighting her own acquaintances. Besides, the area where Luna Nights truly shines is in its gameplay. Touhou Luna Nights is a metroidvania where you, as mentioned prior, stop time and throw knives. The gameplay is incredibly fluid and clean, and there are tons of ways to play around with time to solve puzzles, fight enemies and bosses, and navigate around the castle. As the game progresses, you even unlock moves and consumable abilities that can make you even more powerful. The castle is filled with fun platforming-puzzles that utilize your time-stopping abilities in unique ways, from items that rewind when time is stopped, to a clock tower filled with gears, conveyor belts, and swinging saws.

Luna Nights absolutely nails its combat, mostly due to its genius graze mechanic. Touhou's main bullet hells have a mechanic where going just close enough to bullets will help increase your score, in some games it even helps you gain bombs that you can use to get out of tough situations. Luna Nights perfectly translates this mechanic to a platforming game, as narrowly dodging attacks will replenish your health, the amount of knives you have, and how long you can freeze time for. It's an excellent risk vs reward system that encourages you to really get up close to your enemies. The combat especially shines during the phenomenal bosses, all of which have an amazing progression of learning their attacks and how to utilize them to graze. My favorite boss fight in the game is with the librarian Patchouli, who uses primarily projectile attacks making it feel just like the bullet hell games Luna Nights is based off of.

The presentation of Luna Nights is also amazing. The spritework is insanely detailed and fluid, and the characters are super expressive. Sakuya is even more fun to play as just for how well animated she is, but it's the bosses that are the most impressive, of course. The way Marisa balances on her broom, Patchouli floats in the air, or Cirno bombards you with icicles continues to impress me with how well-animated it all manages to be. The soundtrack is also excellent, pretty much entirely made of remixes of pre-existing Touhou music. However, all of these remixes have a strong sense of intensity and drive, and do a great job of getting you pumped up to stop time and throw knives. The final boss music is particularly amazing, implementing the iconic rave remix of Sakuya's theme, Night Of Nights, once the second phase begins. It feels like the tables have turned, and it's immensely satisfying.

My only major gripe with the game is its length, as in Luna Nights is really short. The game has its difficult moments, but the main campaign can be beaten in just a few hours. There are also a whole bunch of collectibles, a side quest about throwing cans into the trash, but I managed to 100% the main map fairly quickly. There's also an extra stage, which is much more difficult and lengthy than the most of the normal stages, but that really just added an hour to two to my playtime. By the time I had gotten an S rank on the game's boss rush, it hadn't even been 10 hours. On one hand, I do really like that Luna Nights hadn't overstayed its welcome. However, I also think that they could have added a bit more to the game, like a New Game Plus.

Overall, Luna Nights is an incredibly polished experience that feels more than just a Touhou fan game. Despite its short length, fun and fluid gameplay, phenomenal boss fights, and beautiful presentation made Luna Nights an absolute gem that I highly recommend you check out.

5/5 Stars