Touhou: Dance of the Inverted Heart

Starting with what isn't spoilery, wow this game has some great arrangements. The piano arrange and the final escape music both made me be sure to check them out in full in the gallery. Minigames as a way to break up a VN are cool, but even better when they tie into the story as well as they do here. The art is vibrant throughout. The character portraits are very nicely stylized and, as is critical for a VN, very expressive.

Now to get into the writing, I cannot really avoid SPOILERS so stop reading if you haven't played yet. Which you should.  Seija is a rough character to write for, since her amanojaku nature makes it hard for her to interact with uninverted people in a mutually positive way. This VN tackles it in my favorite fashion- showing someone overcome their nature and not be held back by how they were born. And I double appreciate it was not fairy tale magic that did it. Seija grows enough as a character to decide for herself who she wants to be. Fantastic. On the flip side (heh), there are some pacing issues that hold back the story a bit. The canon lore comes in as exposition dumps, which disrupts flow. Separately, Tenshi ends up gluing too much of the story together. She knows Seija's internal body issues, she knows where Shinmy is, she knows where the special door is and how to open it. That she knew Shinmy was in trouble, knew how to reach her, wanted to help her, but was also just bored and picking fights instead doesn't really make sense when you put it all together. Still, a lovely read and a great way to tell the story that takes places around DDC and ISC.

Good game with different styles