REVIEW: Touhou Hyouibana ～ Antinomy of Common Flowers


Title	Touhou Hyouibana ～ Antinomy of Common Flowers
Developer	Twilight Frontier
Publisher	Phoenixx
Release Date	April 22nd, 2021
Genre	Fighting
Platform	Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4
Age Rating	Teen
Official Website

The Touhou franchise is something I thought I’d never get into, but after playing a few of its doujin games, I was completely sucked into it. I love the mainline shooters, even if I suck at them horribly, but I’m always up to see what other amazing games are created with characters from the franchise. I was pretty stoked to check out Touhou Hyouibana ～ Antinomy of Common Flowers since it was a fighting game, and I’m always up for a good one of those. Let’s see if this Touhou brawler is worth your coin.

The story here is pretty straightforward. Reimu begins to investigate a strange phenomenon called “Perfect Possession.” This is where a person’s mind and body are completely taken over by another being. She soon discovers this is linked to an unresolved incident called the “Urban Legends Incident.” Gensokyo will battle it out to see not only who is the perfect duo, but to discover if this is all just one bittersweet tale!

The story here is decent, but some of the localization choices here are baffling. They left all of the kanji in the game and decided to just subtitle everything. This works in most cases, but things like the names of the spell cards and such are still in Japanese. There is a picture there so you basically know what it does, but these should’ve been done properly. The translation itself is good, for the most part, but there are a few lines that could’ve used some work to help the player understand what was going on a bit better.

Touhou Hyouibana ～ Antinomy of Common Flowers has all the basic game modes you would expect to find in a fighting game. Story Mode, as you would expect, is a series of battles that reveal the truth behind this new incident. The story battles work a bit differently than normal matches. The first round is a normal fight, but in the 2nd round the enemy will have a powerful shield you must break in order to do damage. They shoot plenty of bullets while you’re attempting this, so it really does give this mode a “Touhou” feel. The other modes are your standard Versus Mode, Online Play and Training. I was never able to find another player playing this online during my playtime.

I had no idea how a Touhou fighting game would work going into this review, but I can say I was pleasantly surprised at how well this came out. It plays a little bit like Super Smash Bros. since you have a couple of attack buttons that perform different moves depending on the direction you are holding. You can chain these together for your own combos, and there are some automatic combos at your disposal as well. There is a button for projectile attacks that works in exactly the same way, you will deplete a meter on these attacks as you throw them out. It replenishes pretty quickly, so unless you were just outright spamming them this shouldn’t be an issue. Since the game is about perfect possession, this means you can switch between two characters at will. The catch here is the master’s spell card and super attacks are the only ones you can use during the battle. This doesn’t make the other character useless by any means since some of their attacks may be better suited to dealing with your opponent, and you can chain attacks together with them for more combos as well.

Touhou Hyouibana ～ Antinomy of Common Flowers is a pretty decent fighting game. It’s fast, fun, easy to play, but has some meat for advanced players as well. I think the online community not being there hurts the replay value of this one a bit, but if you have some local friends you can duke it out with, you should have a great time. Touhou fans should be all over this one, but the $34.99 price tag is a bit much for what you’re getting here, but if you can snag this one up during a sale, I think most people would be satisfied with the quality.