Year: 2024
Platform: PlayStation 5
Genre: Action
Review Date: 2/15/26
Rating: ***

"Touhou Luna Nights" is a fan-made game based on characters from the Touhou Project bullet hell shooting games. It's a 2D Metroidvania-style action adventure where a combat maid named Sakuya Izayoi is sent to a dangerous alternate dimension by her cruel mistress for the purpose of entertainment. She's also been stripped of her powers in order to make it more interesting. Fortunately, early in the game Sakura runs across a friend of hers who gives her a watch that allows her to temporarily stop time, which is the game's main gimmick. Many puzzles and battles rely on manipulating time to take advantage of the environment or an opponent's weak spots.

The game has beautiful pixel art and the characters are cute and well-animated. The controls are tight and Sakuya is a delightful protagonist. Her default weapons are throwing knives, but special weapons can be acquired throughout the game. However, attacks use up MP, which slowly refills, but you have to be constantly aware that it's a finite resource. Similarly, time is also a finite resource and you can only stop time for about 3-4 seconds at most before your watch slowly refills. The only guage that doesn't refill is your health, which can get wiped out really quickly. Thankfully, there are vending machines scattered throughout that can replenish all of your stats, but getting to them can be arduous. It's also annoying that enemies respawn every time that you enter a room, which makes exploration frustrating.

Like many Metroidvania games, it's difficult, and I was stuck on the first boss battle for nearly an hour. After finally defeating my opponent with just a sliver of health left, I was killed immediately afterwards before getting a chance to save my game. LAME! After beating the boss a second time, I was relieved to find out that I could backtrack to a previous save point before having to move forward. That said, the second stage was so ridiculously difficult that I didn't last more than a few minutes anyway, and I put the game away in disgust. At least Stage 1 was fun while it lasted, which was just under two hours.