Undefined Fantastic Object

There was a time when UFO was my favorite game, though it wasn't very long lived, as I eventually settled on Fairy Wars, but there's that. However, over time, I started to feel some of the weaker aspects of UFO. There are many ways in which it is spectacular in my opinion but I no longer think it's one of the best games, nor shmups, nor Touhou games.

So at the time of writing this, there's 16 main Touhou games made by ZUN as well as 4 decimal games also made by ZUN. UFO is the 12th main game, and not counting the decimal games which came afterwards (those are my all-time faves) I think UFO is the last main game ZUN made where it really feels like he was in control, that he knew what he was doing and that he created something that is a big success. Since then it's just not been the same. So thinking only in terms of main games UFO can definitely be considered what should've been ZUN's swan song. Of course, Great Fairy Wars would be the real swan song but reviewing that game is too hard for me cause it's just too good and its qualities way too complex and abstract for me to describe so easily.

So... the "infamous" UFO. When it was released, a lot of people found it too hard, it was even considered unfair often, which is kinda silly to me when you have games like PoFV and EoSD which are no doubt more unfair than UFO no matter how you slice it and UFO, really, there's just a few things about it that aren't really fair, and those aren't things that are commonly complained about. Anyways, these days it's not considered as tough I think it has a lot to do with the release of Touhou 15 LoLK which is in a survival sense probably the hardest main game by now, with UFO/EoSD being farther behind. UFO's main mechanic that many beginners like to complain about involves collecting moving UFO tokens to summon a big item sucking UFO you have to shoot down for a bonus. I've never understood why people complain about that so much, it's kind of like collecting/avoiding the moving evolving powerups in Raiden, that kind of movement pattern. UFOs come in 3 colors and some of them change colors at regular intervals, though you can stall the color changing by being close to the UFO, too. Collect 3 of the same color or 1 of each color to summon a UFO. if you collect a 3rd token that wont summon a new UFO (say, red-red-green) then it just removes the first token you collected, so you still only have 2 tokens until you collect 3 of the same or 1 of each. Red UFOs gives you a life token when collected, and if it sucks up enough items, you get 2 tokens. Green UFOs gives you a bomb token, and with enough items, a full bomb. Blue UFOs are have the highest score multiplier, multiplying all point items by 8 when destroyed. Rainbows are weird, they convert all the power items into point items and with enough items they give you an extra UFO token when destroyed. Describing UFO like this, the distinction between playing for score and for survival is very clear, as making blue UFOs for score is utterly useless for survival, but will deprive you of resources, meaning if you want to score the highest you will get only I belive it was 3 extra lives throughout the game, whereas if you were playing for survival and you collect resources in an optimal manner, you can get a ridiculous amount of extra lives (I think around 17 or 18...)

The mechanics might be a bit unfriendly to the most beginner of beginners, but really, if you are able to move in every direction and keep track of multiple objects, which is obviously totally standard in bullet hell gameplay, then congrats, you can play UFO. The difficulty of juggling the UFOs is vastly overstated, even in top score runs it's considered usually not a hard part of the game. UFO also has quite a bit of focus on grazing to increase point item value, as well as collecting UFO tokens while a UFO is summoned. Collecting tokens while a summoned UFO is on screen simply deletes the token, you can't collect anything during this, but you do get 1000 added to your point item value, which really does add up. As such, Rainbows are pretty valuable earlier in the game, to increase that point item value. Doing this plus grazing will enable some very high scoring blue UFOs later in the game. The grazing in UFO isn't quite my cup of tea. It's not very balanced, the biggest reason why is the 3rd boss, Ichirin, who on all difficulties can award you an insane amount of graze compared to the rest of the game, if you can pull off a series of very difficult tricks. The craziest one I've seen in a WR run is shin's ReimuB Hard mode graze of Ichirin's 3rd non. The technique is so ridiculous that if it wasn't shin who had done it, and just some random player, I would've suspected it to be TAS to be honest.

Now that the obligatory scoring talk is over, let's talk a bit more about UFO from other perspectives. First of all, the difficulty setting. UFO on normal mode is pretty reasonable compared to the other games, but on Hard and Lunatic it gets harder to get into than the previous games, I think. There's more learning involved just for a simple clear. However, it's still true that you can rack up an insane amount of lives and bomb through all the hard things, if you learn how. Still, it's one of the hardest games to beat on Lunatic, as well as one of the hardest to No Bomb and No Miss No Bomb. Next, let's talk about the shot types. They're some of the best ZUN has has designed for a single game, there's 6 shot types, 2 per character, with Reimu, Marisa and Sanae being playable. All characters have different hitbox and grazebox sizes, I think this is good balanced design. You could say that it's unbalanced that MarisaA/B who doesn't compete with ReimuA in terms of pure DPS still has a bigger hitbox, but it's still balanced because she has a bigger grazebox as well. Sanae is in between. All shot types have unique shots and bombs, with both having a lot of effect on the gameplay in UFO during stage portions. Think of it like this, you can bomb to collect UFO tokens, or bomb to destroy UFOs. The shots are important too, for example, ReimuB has homing which can be quite nice in a lot of situations, but her homing sucks at destroying UFOs. MarisaA might seem inferior to ReimuA due to lower DPS, but her lasers pierce, making it great for destroying UFOs. When it comes to bombs, any bomb that slows you down, such as MarisaA's master spark, makes it a pain to interact with UFOs, and must be planned rather than just used randomly. Meanwhile, MarisaB, who is overall the weakest character in the game, has a pretty much perfect bomb for UFO interaction. Overall, the shots are very well balanced in an asymmetrical sense, with different shots being better certain purposes. SanaeB is great for bombspamming through the game, while ReimuA or ReimuB are great for No Bomb runs. The Marisa shots are both pretty bad for survival, but have higher scoring potential.

Next let's talk about the stage design. The stages typically have that simple design we know from past Touhou games, with the last stage being more of an artsy thing, with no real focus on difficulty, rather it's a pure cash in stage. UFO tokens are spawned when you defeat certain enemies that hold them, and there are a lot of these, but they are overall well placed with the UFO system in mind. Simple, but well done, other than the 2nd stage, where the UFO placements doesn't save this stage from being boring. The 5th stage is pretty exciting. Next, bosses. Most people can agree that UFO has a great cast of characters, not as iconic as EoSD or popular as SA mind, but they're a cool bunch. The bosses have a very strong personality and presence in terms of danmaku. Kogasa's rain theme is great, and Shou has some really cool looking attacks and those infamous curvy lasers. In terms of sheer artistry, Byakuren is definitely one of ZUN's best bosses ever. The whole 6th stage as I mentioned is quite artistic, it's basically totally foreboding with one of ZUN's most amazing songs playing, ending with a heartbeat sound as you look at the scenery and Byakuren shows up. Her arsenal of attacks as well are utterly breathtaking, as is her theme song. In terms of artistic value and the uniqueness factor I think UFO is a really damn great game, that's never gonna change. Most of my complaints with the game really lies with the gameplay, which is excellent in most ways, but does have some problems. UFO is the first Touhou game that I would say went a bit overboard with the "glow" style of bullets, which is visually intrusive and hinders dodging. Later games get even worse with this. There are also some attacks in this game that are unfair in a way that is entirely unfun, such as Murasa's 3rd spellcard, which walls you into a very tine space between anchors, and then spawns immobile random bullets that can completely get in the way when you next have to dodge her glow bullets. There are some other attacks I don't like, and I especially don't like the grazing strategies on Ichirin, which tend to involve really shitty safespotting strats. It's also quite annoying how punishing deaths can be, as the power loss makes some attacks in the game much more difficult. For all the problems though, UFO is a very very fun game, for the most part, but it is, I guess, kind of chaotic, so a bit of an acquired taste, if you want something more relaxing. Still, if you learn your UFO patterns, and strategize the patterns well, there's a surprisingly little amount of huge challenge left, in the form of random patterns.

UFO is not a great entryway into Touhou unless you've already played a bunch of shmups before and you're comfortable with some of its quirks, because it's not really recommended to just flat out ignore the UFOs, you have to able to deal with them. It's not that hard, but for complete beginners, I still say, stay away from UFO, because you probably won't be able to keep track of enemies, bullets AND Ufos without a bit of basic fundamental shmup video game skill. For everyone else, though, enjoy this excellent shmup. Personally, I find UFO most enjoyable when playing rather casually, summoning ufos very haphazardly and trying to make it alive through crazy situations that you can avoid with more practice. Having done Lunatic No Bomb runs and some light scoring before, I can say that neither of those is something I'm very interested in pursuing further. As a score game, I'm not totally sold on UFO, unfortunately. The mechanics are very unique, and quite interesting on paper, but in execution it isn't as exciting as one would hope to play for score. That's just what I think, though.