Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia

I’ve been getting into Touhou (I’m so bad at shoot em ups) recently and part of this was trying out Artificial Dream in Arcadia which surprised me with how much of a fun experience it was! I’m not really one for dungeon crawlers, in fact I’d go so far as to say they’re usually my least favourite part of RPGs, but I saw it on sale for a dollar so I figured I’d give it a shot and I’m glad I did!

I’ll be honest, the only reason why I gave it a shot initially was because I was getting into Touhou and it was cheap. However despite me not liking dungeon crawlers I had a good time with it. I think a lot of it could be attributed to the relatively short dungeons, not much of a focus on grinding, and offering tools to avoid random encounters (though I still had my gripes with those). The characters/sleepers were fun to collect and it helped that I liked their designs (shoutouts to Touhou designs). There wasn’t that much character interaction/story but the snippets that were there were fun. The music was enjoyable too though admittedly the main battle theme played a LOT.

I think what kept it fresh and enjoyable for me was navigating through areas didn’t ever feel like they took too long, and the pacing of the game in general never felt like it dragged either. Not having to grind for levels or sleepers was nice and the hijacking minigame was fun too.

My biggest gripe with the game is that the random encounters in some areas felt like they got repetitive pretty quickly. I felt like I would run into the exact same group of sleepers many times. With that occurring while trying to fill out the map for dungeons it got a bit frustrating and while I appreciated having items like sleeper alarms to get around it, they didn’t last that long and took away the SP resource which I sometimes wanted for various things.

The other complaint I had is that with the exception of the final post game boss (which was a massive difficulty spike lol), it felt like the same strategy usually worked for every encounter/boss. Buff party, debuff enemies, whack them (as a str build) until they died. Though I liked being able to flex Sumireko’s affinities so that I could more effectively counter the bosses, I almost wished there were more gimmicks/unique aspects to the bosses that made them feel more unique than tankier/stronger enemies with more turns.

Again though, for the price I got it at and considering how I normally don’t like these types of dungeon crawlers, it was absolutely worth the time I spent! It also played amazingly on steam deck which was a huge plus for me haha, though unfortunately that means I’m going to have to find a new game for travel…