len'en project (Read 1,394 times)

[Aeon]

len'en project is a small series of touhou-like free games that has been growing in popularity recently. i know very little about it but hey maybe you guys do and have something cool to say



the first time i tried one of the games, i forget which, i had no idea what was going on, there was no translation, and i didn't get past stage 4. now? there are a couple translations, i've seen a couple at least danmakufu fangames, and some len'en touhou crossovers. well, that's kinda easy to work with because from my understanding mugenri (place of len'en) is pretty similar to gensokyo

anyway it seems cool it's got a pretty unique artstyle the couple shot types i tried were neat and its still being made. i'll post here when i play more and have some better things to say but i figured it wouldn't hurt to initialize the thread now. games are free and translation probably isn't too hard to find, i wouldn't surprised if the touhou patcher supported it, so check them out if you wanna try some up and coming danmaku girl games

[spongelevator]

ok I do not know about lenen but I have heard of lenen and also seihou as those types of uuh
touhou-like creation
I know ZUN had some part in the first few seihous though I dunno if lenen had something like that or if it was entirely independent
I tried playing first one though mega removed one of the english patches so I just used the older versions of everything
and well uuh I could not see the things well so I died very soon
I noticed enemies take longer to kill at least because they got to me first lol
if series is not chronological then I'll try a later one in the series first to see what it's like

[Aeon]

zun helped out with the first two seihou games, yeah. other two are all original. len'en has all been original from the start though

i think it is chronological but so is touhou and you can kinda jump around until you get what is going on in whole, i'm pretty sure
i still have to try one of em again soon

[lazulum]

I had not heard of Len'en before reading this thread. It sounds neat and the games being free gives me a real reason to give them a try before too long.

Is Len'en a sort of community created universe where anyone can make entries? Reminds me of some of those old community projects such as SCP if so. That's kind of neat.

Checked the link just now, cool that is has a wiki too. May read a page or two for leisure today.

[Aeon]

i have 1cc'd the first game, evanescent existence, on normal. tried extra and hard a couple times but have been unsuccessful thus far

spongelevator
i got the same problem with the english patches, try the first download from here

the mechanics are pretty cool, mostly the flash bombs. while unfocused, you can't bomb normally and instead use a flash bomb, a very tiny thing that will get rid of some bullets around you but won't make you invincible, kinda like a release from hsifs. it charges with graze in a bar on the left, and you can only hold one at once. also you can still capture a spellcard if you use one. also shoutout to the extended deathbomb window, its no imperishable night but its pretty cushy

did some more research, it looks like the creator (JynX), also released something like a touhou 3 remake. it's more just for the pvp and lacks the story mode but looks nice and has all the characters. pretty cool. they're also working on two more len'en games at the moment, one of which is [some type of non-danmaku 2d game] and the other is an srpg business management thing. funky

lazulum
i don't think it's that much community created, but i looked at the guidelines for fangames and it was basically just "no bigotry, don't sell the assets i made, tell me if you want to put something on steam", which is even more lenient than zun's already incredibly generous policies, in the way that you are allowed to make freeware doujin content with len'en's official assets
i agree though, full community things like SCP is neat. the lisa rpg series is kind of like that

[spongelevator]

ok I tried the first and second games about 3-5 times each and in the first one I consistently failed to get past the first state midboss
in the second one I got past the first stage at least though definitely I am gonna have to play it differently from touhou if I want to ever see who the first stage boss is
I tried the touhou 3 one the guy made and I was just fine at it so I have no idea what is happening but it seems I must git gud
also the story section of the wiki for the third lenen game is like 5x as long as the one for the first game
does it mean the games build upon each other's story or is it just longer

[lazulum]

Would you say that Len'en is much tougher than Touhou? Sounds tough. How's the music?
Quite interested in hearing some first impressions

Will get around to trying before long I hope, long long day very very tired.
I have not forgotten the Remix thread either, still looking forward to listening to Tastch Music.
Keeping it all in mind for when this week is over.

[Aeon]

spongelevator
i just played the third one, i gotcha

SPOILER: Click to show

{basic outline of some things}
the first game: introduction to the two main protagonists and some of their friends, yabusame houlen (weird wide shots) and tsubakura enraku (super focused shots). in the extra stage they get hired by some shrine person to take over incident resolution while they go on vacation in the outside world
the second game: doing their job, the two resolve an incident. neat. no idea what extra stage is like and i've only gotten one ending
the third game: the final boss from the last game is also feeling like resolving an incident but other than that its just its own thing. maybe. i just beat the extra stage boss but uh
i couldn't beat the extra stage. it has a surprise in store

i skipped a lot of details but it kind of seems like the main focus is on houlen and enraku exploring mugenri and getting to know what is going on since the person who hired them told them just about nothing. the wiki page said the first four games are part of some specific arc, so it'll probably make more sense in the fourth game

it's been a lot more interesting than i expected, though. i played the first len'en a long time ago and stopped rather quickly after likely failing to clear any stages but after actually completing one of the games it's pretty rad. glad i made this thread

lazulum
usually i play on hard, but at least evanescent existence was able to kick me down to normal. i just 1cc'd the second game in only a few tries, and the third on my first try in normal, so it might be getting more relaxed. could also be that i've warmed up after not playing much danmaku for a while
the danmaku style is certainly different, though. i suppose mugenri has its own bullet culture

it's hard for me to gauge the music too much the first couple times i play a danmaku game, gotta prioritize dodging and it's also a ton of tracks in a short span of time. six stages, six bosses, only in 20 minutes or so
just on the vague first listens though? it was nice. seemed to go with the characters and patterns with no small use of piano. favorite track i can remember specifically is the first game's extra boss theme

i still have to get to the remix thread too, oops

[lazulum]

Interesting hearing about the danmaku style. I am actually really starting to look forward to giving this a try sometime.

That's fair about the OST, it takes a few playthroughs to really take it in I think
Will look forward to the extra stage then

[Aeon]

i kinda went crazy with the len'en for a bit. beat the first three games and now the third extra after i figured out how to get past the surprising bit. (just doing very well before it and bruteforced my way through by burning four lives)
and then i tried the fourth game
it's nothin like a danmaku game i've ever played before. almost wanna call it a flash-style upgrade game + roguelike + danmaku. you kinda have to play it (and 100% read the gameplay description on the wiki) to know what's up but it has a staggering amount of stuff.
12 playable characters and shot types, each game is played with a combination of three of them (one for shot type, one for bombs, and one for i have no idea), and you get to pick who gets what role. it has two layers of an hp system, something like map movement, and over time you acquire a currency called alcohol, which is used to make general upgrades for everyone and personalized upgrades for certain characters. you'll probably need those though, because this game is <i>not easy</i>. i mentioned before i was bumping it up to hard, but this there hasn't been something that stops me dead in my tracks before clearing stage three in a while. normally i would get at least a bit annoyed after a couple tries like that though but this thing has VARIETY. with those 12 shot types in conjunction with that map movement i mentioned earlier, i don't think i've had a single run go down the same way. each stage seems to have three different bosses you can get depending on how you move, so if i don't feel like doing weird laser boss i can just do the umbrella kid. no idea how many combinations even up to stage three i haven't tried

biggest problem: holding on to power. in every other len'en it seems easy enough to get max power even before stage 2, but i've only gotten max power twice total. the hp system means using bombs is less important, and each time you get hit is gonna take 5-15% (more if very unlucky) from your power. not 15% of what you have, 15% of the max. if you're at 25% and lose a life, you go to 10%. making it easier to get and hold onto the stuff is where i've been putting most of my upgrades

anyway, it's quite a bit. better to play this game like a roguelike instead of trying to do it in one go at the start. it's easy to pick up and just play for a few minutes, though. this is now the third time i have posted much at once about what i have learned about the len'en i've been playing at the time, i apologize
if you guys play it and think of any cool strats or team combinations, post them here, i've still got a lot to try out. my favorite team so far is kuroji main, aoji sub, and hooaka support

[lazulum]

Finally got around to downloading the first three games. Will probably give them a try late tonight.

Will get to your post with a proper reply then, Aeon

[lazulum]

Aeon

Played the first game a bit, I'll try to play a little at a time as you recommend.

At first the Touhou likeness was quite strong, but the second stage through me for a spin haha
Those circle danmaku beams on stage two, not quite used to anything like those, a lot of difficulty getting the hang of those

That four game sounds quite interesting, will be really looking forward to giving that one a try eventually.

The music influence and dialogue in the first game so far I can see the Touhou homage, very much iterating on the style. It's a little endearing to see, but I suspect it will change and become far more of its own thing with each title.

[spongelevator]

ok it has been many more tries so I probably am actually doing something wrong
I have tried the first game at least 7 or 8 times normal and easy and the best I could manage was beating stage 1 with 2 continues on normal
the second game I can get to stage 3 at least and I think I could probably just play it more and I'd be fine
but man there is something about the first one that makes it very difficult to play compared to anything else
is there some way I should be playing it differently from touhou or what because man I can usually get to stage 4 hard in any touhou game with the same amount of bombing and continues as stage 1 lenen

[Aeon]

lazulum
second stage is where things get scary, yeah. a lot of bosses seem to have a strong specific pattern many spells are derivative of instead of an overarching style like touhou

the fourth game is indeed interesting, almost to the point that i would say the first three could be played for the sole purpose of getting the most out of the fourth, kind of like you can't see stardust crusaders properly without seeing phantom blood and battle tendency. all of them are pretty cool

dialogue i've noticed, especially in the later games, can be a lot less brief than touhou. maybe this is due to three and eventually four people being in each conversation, but i don't mind it. reimu is succinct, direct, and elegant, while tsubakura is messing around a lot, verbose, and detailed

spongelevator
i do recall having the most trouble with the first game, third one was easiest for me, but i dunno. just like how bombing always should be used before losing lives, you should probably also flash bomb before bombing, but that's all i can say. if it wasn't for the way the first three games go into the fourth, i'd say skip it if it's taking you a bit but after getting this far i can say: there is some continuity, particularly with the first and third games are important

stick with easy mode if it's tough, i had to downgrade to normal myself. the extra stage also has an easy mode so hopefully it would let you unlock it?
compared to touhou all i can say is that i bomb even more at the smallest things because of very scary gimmicks like the first game's stage 2 boss

SPOILER: Click to show

brilliant pagoda or haze castle has been the only game i've played since downloading it. i believe i have unlocked latent danmaku potential by not playing nearly any danmaku games for a long period of time before going crazy with len'en and i have gotten a no miss hard mode sightread run so now i am playing unreal (lunatic) and just got a sightread clear on a different route with two extra lives. i should have taken marisa's advice, danmaku is all about power and after maining tsubakura sub shion support yabusame the world has opened before my eyes and there are countless possibilities. tsubakura is not a missile they are the result of turning the sun into a 1d object and pointing it at your enemies. max power shot is stronger than the bomb and shion has some free damage spirit things, it is quite ridiculous. going to go back to others eventually because everybody has a very different relationship and my only non-tsubakura clear is with fumikaido on left, which has quite a different dynamic

i've only done the pure neutral, the pure left, and the pure right route but left and right bosses had awesome stuff going on. left boss had some very wide-sweeping object and unclearable danmaku patterns while right had what i can only call hitscans. speedy stuff going everywhere, felt like a glitch at first until i got used to it. a miracle i won at all, let alone my first attempt

not gonna be like "len'en games > toho games" because everything has its own good parts and touhou has incredible pure danmaku and is more like vignettes or especially in the case of everything between 14.5 and 16.5 part of a large event but brilliant pagoda or haze castle: the best standalone danmaku game i have played and tsubakura is like the nuke marisa used to be in wavering amounts before getting nerfed to hell lolk and onwards. cant say they play the same though because flash bombs change so much

also some of this music is absolutely jamming, whole soundtrack isn't zun-level but stuff like the right route stage five? instant slam

i am concerned that my posts end up being very brief or too long. i do not intend you make you read essays in a thread about touhou music or a slightly funky danmaku game, i simply think of many things and somehow now this post is 763 words long
also sorry for the slow responses, classes have been heating up again and when i am not doing classes or other things, as you may guess, i have oft been attempting len'en. i am quite satisfied with my last two runs however so lunatic red will precede the next run
and many thanks for checking out this series just because of this lil thread, it has been pretty cool figuring it all out with these posts

[lazulum]

Aeon

Yeah I got bodied quite hard there haha
I had forgotten just how different danmaku is from traditional shumps, going to take a little getting used to
Looking forward to the next try though

You're getting me quite hyped for the fourth haha
That reminds me, have to watch JoJo one of these days, have the first two volumes though. Caught them for $1 a piece one night on my way home heh

I like the way that you juxtaposed the conversational dispositions of the characters, well put.
The first game is still on the more succinct side

Don't worry about the posts being long I'll read them short or long
I'll get to the other half soon, going to get some sleep

I thought I was the one who should be apologizing for late replies haha
Long, long week. But a good week still.