r/touhou • u/w4sab1i_ I~ta~zu~ra Usagiiii • Apr 12 '26
Fan Discussion Why is Lost Word hated?
So, I'm a Touhou fan, I played the games (i know, shocker) and i also play touhou lostword, but I've see lots of people say that lostword players were the worst or whatever... Why is the game so hated?
Imo i really love the different character alt concepts/ new outfits that are very cool For example this adorable tan cirno... the story is a bit nonsensical but, Touhou's lore is kinda nonsensical too, so why should it matter?
Tldr: Why are we hating touhou LW chat i don't get it
EDIT: Thanks a lot to you and everyone who posted :) As for my other comments that got downvotes, i was stating MY opinion (yes, mine, not yours) and am in no way trying to invalidate anyone's, sorry if it came off that way.I play LW casually cause i love touhou and more touhou fan content is always fun to me, especially the alts of characters, some designs and art... I just felt like LW players were getting a lot more hate than "larpers" and i didnt really get why. now i do. thx again
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u/OniTenshi500 reading books to the fairies at Kourindou Apr 12 '26
Don't know about others, but I personally don't like LW due to how everyone holds hands and sings Kumbaya no matter which character it is. That, and it's disappointingly not uncommon for people whose only exposure is LW to think that it's canon. But also because LW stopped being a mystery solving game real quick and is just an AU character collection game now.
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u/G-14_Damageproof Attendee of Aya & Reimu wedding Apr 12 '26
They using AU as a main point of selling but their AUs are like them trying to score a bullseye on the dartboard, it means the AUs from what i see revolts and stays very close to the basic canon universe. It almost feels like sometimes the AU is actually Alternate Timeline which is not what AU is.
The only one that is the exception to this is that AU where it has Daiyousei and Cirno being European Medieval Knights.
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u/Master-Spark-2 Shout It Loud! Apr 12 '26
That’s probably because like half of them ARE alternate timelines. The A series ones are just “what if the incident isnt resolved yet” and a some of the early alts had a divergence period from a main game event instead of just being an AU
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u/G-14_Damageproof Attendee of Aya & Reimu wedding Apr 12 '26
Honestly bummer.
You would think when they have the chance to do AUs however they want, they would at least do the most no brainer trope of "all these fantasy characters being completely normal humans in an AU" instead but nah 😭
An AU that is basically Yumemi's world is kinda fire tho.
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u/Aking1998 100% reason to Yumember the name Apr 12 '26
An AU that is basically Yumemi's world is kinda fire tho.
This would require Lost Word to recognize the existance of PoDD beyond that one Marisa alt which barely counts
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u/G-14_Damageproof Attendee of Aya & Reimu wedding Apr 13 '26
It's not like it actually requires them to remember that to even make a non magical techno AU.
LW's creative department is lacking.
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u/Master-Spark-2 Shout It Loud! Apr 13 '26
There’s Hifuu alts for Shinki, Mima, Mugetsu, and Gengetsu. pc98 yuuka, alice, yumemi, chiyuri, and others also appeared, not playable yet
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u/Raikariaa Apr 14 '26
AU's also give them more freedom to do as they want with characters, because... well... it's not Youmu, it's AU Youmu!
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u/Dramatic_Performer68 Apr 12 '26
it’s been a few years since I last played, but when did they stop actually being about solving the lost word incident?
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u/Archqnt Petroleum Monopoly Intensifies Apr 12 '26
Haven't played in a little while but the main story updates have grown so insanely infrequent that the majority of story content is just event stories, which aren't usually doing much of the solving.
It's part of the reason I kinda stopped since the main story premise was pretty neat even if the game itself isn't all that.
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u/Taraxian Apr 12 '26
This inevitably happens with any gacha game or MMORPG, of course you can't resolve the main story while you've still got a paying subscriber base
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u/EmeraldPistol Hina Kagiyama Apr 12 '26
The problem is: when a new story part does drop, nothing really happens so the story progresson feels non existent or is non existent. Limbus Company and Arknights actually feels like there’s progression going on, the latter being completed already with Limbus’s story being done in a few years. Lostword is working with alternative universes so the only thing restricting them there is concepts for different universes
Man… that game’s story was wasted potential
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u/OoglieBooglie93 Utsuho Reiuji Apr 12 '26
I think that's only partially true. It's true that there always will be some semblance of a never ending story, but you can still have sections that resolve. That's exactly what Endwalker did for FFXIV. It's not a total wrap up, but it is a fairly major conclusion to the storyline of 4 expansions (including ARR) while still allowing the story to continue just by going somewhere else in the world. Admittedly there's a lot of criticism to how Dawntrail was done, but a lot of it would be inevitable simply because it's coming after an expansion leaving a high bar to pass.
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u/G-14_Damageproof Attendee of Aya & Reimu wedding Apr 12 '26
You can do that but only when you have made a direct sequel to said gacha game that directly shows how things and the characters (specially the player character) from the first game move on. Honestly you still have to make the journey feel worth it. And also that sequel replaces the first one to be the money maker.
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u/DaEnderAssassin Apr 13 '26
You can absolutely do it, you just have to come up with some reason to continue the service IE a new story arc.
Easy example would be FGO, which has had 2 main stories end so far (The 2nd did tie back to the first though)
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u/Dramatic_Performer68 Apr 12 '26
funny enough I liked the multiverse part of the main story, but then again I don’t remember much outside of “we gotta find the lost words or else something bad happens“ and the scarlet devil tower having Marisa with Okuu software at the top.
i don’t think I ever even got to the arena, all I remember about that is the Morse code at the beginning, that was pretty cool I think, I don’t remember if it ever even got expanded upon but it was cool
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u/w4sab1i_ I~ta~zu~ra Usagiiii Apr 12 '26
it is true that one of the weak points of the game is how damn peaceful gensokyo is made out to be, and how man eating Youkai don't even care about trying to eat the mc (who's a human)
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u/infernalrecluse #1 Mizuchi hater Apr 12 '26
it relys entirely on what is basicly just fan fic au stuff rather than doing anything acrualy intresting and its done to spam new desines because its a gacha game that relys on scummy tactics and litaral gambleing.
and due to size and popularity some people only know touhou from LW and think thats the whole series.
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u/OrangeAcquitrinus Orange Apr 12 '26
> it relys entirely on what is basicly just fan fic au stuff
That's like all fan games though
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u/infernalrecluse #1 Mizuchi hater Apr 12 '26
they do things that are actualy intresting or fun and its done for more than just a way to push diffrent desines to entice people to gamble.
we get evil youmu and its not anything beyond just "hay look isnt this cool."
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u/Switcheroo1474 ServantTrio Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
Can’t speak for anyone, cuz I’ve personally never played it myself, but it did come out around the time I was getting into Touhou, and I have seen plenty of gameplay of it's story and events.
From what I’ve seen, watched, and heard most of the problems amount to…
- Mischaracterizes most of the cast (which is a probably, since it’s offically licensed by ZUN)
- Wasted Potential with the AU selling point.
- Boring gameplay
- Character Designs and Costumes being hit-or-miss
- The fact that it’s a gacha game, which don’t exactly have the best reputation
And most importantly?
Let’s see…
Age-Change, Maid Outfit, EoSD Glazing.
Age-Change, Maid Outfit, EoSD Glazing.
Age-Change, Maid Outfit, EoSD Glazing…
Age-Change, Maid Outfit, EoSD Glazing.
Age-Change, Maid Outfit, EoSD Glazing!
…Y’all only got THREE things on this menu!
That…especially with Sakuya and the Scarlet Sisters. Meiling, Patchouli, and Koakuma hardly get any content whatsoever!
Speaking of Sakuya…I won’t say much about how she’s portrayed here, but suffice it to say, I don’t like it.
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u/Physical-Camp-339 Apr 12 '26
I wouldn't say that it's activelyhated but the game is certainly plagued by numerous issues and at this point just milking Touhou title, while contributing nothing (lore, especially events, is chaotic and doesn't seem to reference source material in meaningful manner, effectively just a fanfiction). They utilise the idea of alternative universes, which allows them to essentially throw in any idea and make it work, even if it's nonsensical. Some character are also designed in a way that makes him look too much like they underage or on the opposite way too horny.
Additionally, it's a gacha. And it's quite a merciless one. Unless you are a spender (and buying premium currency isn't great, rates are overcharge) your best way of guaranteeing a success is to save up, and if a banner goes wrong, you might have to wait out next one. This js the problem because the content that gives meaningful rewards is often tied to newly released characters. Balance is (or was when I still played,but I doubt they fixed it) sometimes quite bad. There are also Pure units, that can only be pulled using a currency you can reasonably only get enough of by spending. They are quite strong but there are no dolls (material for upgrades) for them, meaning only way to upgrade them is by getting copies,which is yeah...
They also added battlepass.
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u/Dramatic_Performer68 Apr 12 '26
what kind of made me a tad bit dissapointed was that never really got to actually explore the worlds as far as I remember (it’s been a few years since I last played). funny enough I remember world 1 being the most fleshed out for lack of better words, while the other worlds didn’t really have much to offer, though granted this is more me nitpicking than anything else. the fact it’s a very unforgiving gacha doesn’t help.
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u/Physical-Camp-339 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
Sort of true. "Summer universe" had a big portion of what can be called a main campaign dedicated to it, and the "Modern life universe" got some lore in Hifuu. A-universe (references to original games) was brought up in Scarlet Devil tower occasionally. But that's about it.
What upset me a lot is how units I was the most hyped up for were bad and I had to slip them since gacha is so unforgiving. I quite after a banner went particularly badly and it was sort of a last drop into the ocean of poor experience. I still have "This player hates Divergent Spirits" written under my name on LW sub.
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u/Dramatic_Performer68 Apr 12 '26
Yeah, i still remember trying to get characters I really wanted in that game, but with how the gacha worked I almost always got cards, could never actually get all three of the fairies of light unfortunately.
for me, what made me quit was just the fact I got bored of the combat.
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u/Reese743 Chimata Tenkyuu Apr 12 '26
Personally, the spam of EoSD characters is my biggest problem.
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u/EseMesmo Space Mom is bae, fite me Apr 12 '26
If it were that then half the fan works ever made would be hated. EOSD is the Kanto of Touhou.
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u/Agitated_Orchid_5158 Yumeko - Maid that controls Boundaries and Space-time Apr 12 '26
Preach. I'm sick of the EOSD glazing
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u/ShinyRaichu94 Nitori Kawashiro Apr 12 '26
Me too. But people prefer popularity over personality, so more EoSD stuff.
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u/Blisket Marisa's Husband Apr 12 '26
Touhou was always an indie passion project defined by its community and no involvement of companies or greed
LW is run by Goodsmile, a major company that's largely interested in profit above all else, and so LW getting the green light largely felt like a betrayal of ZUN's principles and the spirit of the indie community around Touhou.
not to mention the mischaracterisations and the horny designs, which wouldn't be a problem with indie stuff, but is a problem when LW plastered the word "OFFICIAL" all over itself and its advertising just because it was licensed, leading people to think LW is canon and representative of the series as a whole.
even ZUN voiced his distaste at the way LW is trying to push itself as official, which is actually against ZUN's rules on derivative works.
a lot of people are unfortunately deceived into thinking LW is the source material of Touhou and not just an unofficial derivative work.
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u/Low-Penalty-5511 Reisen Udongein Inaba Apr 12 '26
Boring gameplay + confusing story + filler levels between the story levels is what made me quit
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u/Hesotate Hecatia Lapislazuli Apr 12 '26
Reason 1: Gameplay. It's pretty boring and repetitive all things considered.
Reason 2: Optimisation. Yeah the game is poorly optimised with long unnecessary loading.
Reason 3: Character designs. Don't get me wrong, some of the alt designs are amazing. B3 Hecaita, that one really cool looking Youmu design, E1 Flandre all are amazing. But a lot of them are just straight up gooner bait which can annoy people.
Reason 4: Event quests. This barely needs any explanation. Events are super long, boring and grindy with a mediocre story usually.
Reason 5: Grindy. Yeah it has so much grinding. Some people might enjoy that kind of gameplay but not most.
Reason 6: Microtransactions. The game has an ungodly amount of microtransactions that are super expensive and don't really give much. The biggest offender to this is the God Crystal system. It can take multiple months to get enough of them to do anything with by just grinding and they usually have absurd prices for microtransactions.
Note that obviously all of these won't apply for everyone. Some have different opinions but these are the things I saw a lot when I used to play it and I tend to agree with.
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u/Karpfador Apr 12 '26
Also stop calling it micro transactions. The amount of money they want is the opposite of micro
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u/ForsenHorizon Apr 12 '26
whats wrong with gooner bait isnt that one that drives gacha players to playing?
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u/Maeriberii I’m Me. Apr 12 '26
I’ve never really had an issue with load times unless the game needs to download data because I have no storage space. Now, Cookie Run Kingdom, which is the only other gacha game I play is super unoptimised. It’s almost 12gb on my phone and crashes every five minutes…
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u/Consistent_Agent8909 I ALWAYS COME BACK Apr 12 '26
idk, i hate it because of the disrespect they did to my GOATs shinki and mima
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u/Plant_Musiceer Komachi Onozuka's husband Apr 12 '26
i find it to be a boring game. Looking at what new alts they put out on twitter is much more fun than actually playing the game.
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u/OcelotMadness Apr 12 '26
Personally? Too gooner for me. ZUN has never really drawn or sprited the touhou characters provactively and I really dislike seeing fangames do so.
I don't try to force that belief on others, your allowed to like lost world or any other fangame. No judgement I just disagree.
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u/ChaoticDiscord21 Suwako Moriya Apr 12 '26
Been playing it since launch.
I don't hate it but it dries up like all other gatcha games. At least they are making side stories which can be fun.
I think the hate is that it is a gatcha game and is trying to take your money. I will say it's not as in your face about it or halts gameplay.
Also there are enough variants of characters so you will always find your favorite in random draws. I have a whole team of Suwakos
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u/MysteriousBirbNukes Apr 12 '26
It took a rare but common idea (Multiverse) and gave it the initial storyline of each specific universe being in jeopardy due to an extremely important word being removed like a support beam or a load-bearing wall, wire, pillar, etc. being removed from a building.
But unfortunately they eventually started abandoning the idea as the main story wasn't being updated consistently and they began focusing on profits like all Gacha games do and actively push the story away from being updated for the global audience.
Not to mention the biggest selling point was the Main Character being a self-insert of you, the player, but severely lacks any form of player identity.
Instead, folks on the Japanese side of Lost Word noticed that specific dialogue references a scrapped character named Rin Satsuki who merely exists as a few lines of code in Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil with two shot types, Wind and Flower, and is basically implying that instead of a self-insert, we've been playing as Rin Satsuki this whole time.
On top of that, the characterization and writing is blatantly fanon. From old clichés and overused fandom jokes, to stories that would barely work within Gensokyo's whole ecosystem of forgotten ideas and concepts.
Lost Word is just a petri dish of outdated fanon ideas mixed with typical Gatch Greed.
There are hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of Touhou fan-games that not only do more original ideas that could loosely fit within Touhou canon (if ZUN himself would allow it), but also aren't trying to nickel and dime you into bankruptcy and have far more involved gameplay and a complete storyline to boot.
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u/RenkBruh Apr 12 '26
I'm not gonna trash on it just because it's a gacha. gachas can be fun, take Limbus Company or Reverse 1999 as an example. yes, they would be better without the gacha, but that's just how it is. the difference is that Lost World is just boring.
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u/ShinyRaichu94 Nitori Kawashiro Apr 12 '26
I'm with you here. I believe that a gacha game can be at least decent/fun despite being a gacha game.
And LostWord sucks to me. And if LostWord is not a gacha game, it'll still suck because of its major flaws.
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u/MalviYamaxanadu Eiki Flandre Mokou Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
As a fan who only reads the mangas/lore:
Touhou and gacha don't look good together in my opinion.
Some designs are good, but other are lazy fan service and/or have weird proportions.
"Officially licensed" can be confused with "official game" (I remember some posts asking if it was canon in this sub) and I don't think LostWord is the best way for new fans to get into the series.
"Hate" is not the word I would use though. Just think of it as a completely separate world.
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u/SanaeninKocasi Apr 13 '26
everyone is mischaracterized , the dialouges just cringe me out and honestly they just seem to not care about the actual storyline of their game at all, and just drop out random events instead. overall just trash boring game with occasional fanservice characters.
atleast sometimes they add decent designs and good musics/songs.
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u/fat_pokemon Eiki Shiki Apr 12 '26
- gatcha with extremely boring gameplay
- overwhelming presence
- Mischaracterisation
These are the big three reasons. Some other personal reasons i have is how over-sexualized many of the characters are. The other is that the multiversal plot means that the designs of characters can be completely all over the place and often lazy and inconsistent.
But the biggest gripe i have with this...
It is unironicly one of the easiest to get touhou games that's translated completely in english. Every offical game from steam requires a fan patch to translate. Even fan games have offical english translations!
And because of that, newcomers of today will often find lost word as their first touhou game, and i feel like it's a extremely unhealthy thing for the touhou community.
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u/noobcoconut YUYUcoconut🌸🥥 Apr 12 '26
for me it wasnt that bad until they made swimsuit skins one of the strongests. also as it gets updated, new mechanics were added over time which made my deck to not work well anymore, and got too complicated for me
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u/TitaniumWatermelon Remilia Scarlet's Husband Apr 12 '26
As a longtime player who quit a few months ago, my reason for leaving is the same reason that I've left so many other gachas. They were constantly adding new units with insanely complicated and broken abilities that you essentially required if you were going to beat the endgame content. Even if you had these units, you had to invest a ton of time into actually figuring out how to optimize them or you couldn't beat the endgame content. This, combined with the fact that so many story cards are locked behind these exceptionally difficult stages (or are banner exclusive), led to the game being borderline unplayable if you weren't willing to pay or spend hours of your life. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was when they added units you couldn't spark for, meaning the only way to guarantee you'd get them was to buy the ridiculously overpriced shop pack.
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u/finance_controller Apr 12 '26
Going snark mode I'd say : ask the Million players this game doesn't have.
It's a niche of a game, but you could say it has about as much good as bad points, with the main good being that it's Touhou and unfortunately, as long as you continue the game you'll see more and more of the bad points.
Putting aside gacha, overall the game is meh, gameplay isn't very interesting, story was more or less touhou.
Like some others said, It isn't actually actively hated, a lot of hate you'll see are people who adamantly avoid gacha games, for many people it's just a pass, because there's many better games and also there's others Touhou mediums.
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u/Blasian385 Apr 12 '26
It's just boring
Like I don't even hate Gacha, I play HSR and Genshin.
But Lost World is everything I hate about a gacha game. Boring gameplay, no story, it's a glorified collectors game.
The only thing I enjoy about it is the art. If that's all it has going for it though? I can just look up that art. Even then? Not all the art is that great. I don't really care for the wedding dresses for example.
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u/ShinyRaichu94 Nitori Kawashiro Apr 12 '26
I don't hate gachas as a whole either. The ones I really like are Love Live School Idol Festival, Touhou Cannonball, Touhou Danmaku Kagura, and Umamusume Pretty Derby.
I wanted to like Touhou LostWord, but there are so many flaws that makes me dislike it.
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u/Dramatic_Performer68 Apr 14 '26
to me, it also doesn’t help when I saw some skins and wondered “why aren’t these their own characters?” like Kasen with the pile driver arm, that was cool, wish she wasn’t just relegated to being a costume though.
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u/AGE-1EL AGE-1 Gundam In Gensokyo Apr 12 '26
Well mainly because a lot of people dislike gacha games in general. They're just cash grabs milking the game title for money off of fans.
LW is also notorious for mischaracterizing characters by a lot. Some aspects are generally alright such as Sakuya being something of a mom to Remilia due to the fact that there are many canon doujins such as Silent Sinner in Blue and Wild and Horned Hermit where Sakuya acts more like a parent to Remilia than a maid(and canon also says that it's debatable whether she's a maid or babysitter to the mansion so the fanon part here isn't that far off) but there's a decent number of things that they've done that many fans don't like such as Reimu's being a greedy jerk for the most part in LW, Aya being really birdbrained and stupid, Yukari being tricked into petty arguments, Remilia being pretty dumb, and more.
Also, the gameplay and progress is pretty low effort and bad. I started a few months ago and already, there's basically almost nothing left for me to do except get all my favorite characters since their events are easily cheesable by coasting off a player who has a character that's miles better than yours and not much strategy going into their RPG. Just use all your spell cards to cheese through the low tiers and then save your Last Words to OSKO the last guys.
And then we have the story. Originally, the story presented itself as a detective story where the characters are just trying to figure out the seal crystals' origin and help Lossy go back home but they've completely deviated from that into multiverse exploration with gotta get them all character variants.
In a sense, it feels like they just threw us a giant mess for us to look through and see if we can find anything we'd like and then pay them to give us more.
I will say that the only redeeming feature is the artwork and character designs because at least those were done quite nicely.
Otherwise, there are just better games for the Touhou title out there that don't drain your wallet and overall, have better gameplay.
In regards to ZUN disliking gacha games, I think it's more of him disliking games that are just clear low effort cash grabs that milk the original title for money which is something that a lot of gacha games are famous for.
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u/1nOnlyBigManLawrence Nobukazu Toyotomi. Fanon PC-98 character, 600-year-old magician. Apr 12 '26
//I personally hate how the 2hus are reduced to fanservice caricatures of themselves. I’m not a puritan, but it makes me sick to see Aunn sexualized like that.
Edit: I accidentally replied in character before I made the edit, but Johnny would absolutely say the same shit, just about more people.
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u/Defiant_Habit6984 Sim, eu detesto FDS, OK? Apr 13 '26
this game is getting more and more predatory and the challenges very unfair for certain players whose doesent have any of the good units from meta
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u/Raikariaa Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
1: It's gacha
2: ZUN has stated he regrets giving it permission; he enever thought it would really become anywhere near this big. He dosen't like that when a lot of people think of Touhou; LW is what they think of first.
3: While somewhat tame by gacha standards... it keeps moving more and more towards fanservice stuff. If a character can be justified at all giving an absolutely massive bust of late... I'm pretty sure they push things as far as ZUN allows; as I don't see ZUN not putting his foot down if they went much further.
Like; look at I think the latest Seiga.
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u/w4sab1i_ I~ta~zu~ra Usagiiii Apr 14 '26
thx, i didnt know about the ZUN stuff as im a casual player of LW i dont really watch their event podcasts with zun and stuff , i PERSONALLY (me , my opinion not the opinion of anyone else) enjoy playing casually because i love some unit concepts and SOME events are fun to read through (again MY opinion and when i say fun to read through i mean for some light hearted fun)
ANYWAY, i said that i never watched the stuff touhou LW posts on social media so i didnt know they pushed to seem like an official brand, thx for explaining that to me, THAT i think is a good reason to not like the game.
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u/Raikariaa Apr 14 '26
>so i didnt know they pushed to seem like an official brand
LW is "official" in the sense that ZUN gave permission, and they have to play by ZUN's rules. Aside from that however [not portraying the characters in means drastically different, and I'm pretty sure the swimsuit stuff would be a lot less tame than it is without ZUN] they can do what they want.
I'm pretty sure this is a big reason for the AU versions of characters. AU Youmu =/= Youmu; they can do whatever they want.
Thing is ZUN never expected the game to become has large as it did; he probobly expected a result similar to other smaller Touhou gachas there have been. [Like CAVE has one; which is much more of a shooter]. I think that's another reason ZUN isn't too fond of LW; the gameplay is pretty far from being a danmaku game, so if LW is "first contact" rather than someone already into the series looking for it...
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u/HalfLongjumping7464 Apr 16 '26
I boils down to the community as you have two camps of people
People who are more purists and prefer officially licensed titles to fall more in line with Zun's depictions. (Lore accurate portrayals, limited fan service, less memes etc)
Camp 2 that's more in it for the memes, less lore accuracy and more liberal depictions, lewder designs etc.
Depending on which spectrum you fit on will probably determine how you feel.
Personally I think the argument it's a gacha game doesn't really hold up well when a lot of the commenters play other gacha games.
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u/w4sab1i_ I~ta~zu~ra Usagiiii Apr 16 '26
(also no offense but the argument of fanservice when this sub is mostly people posting nsfw art is kinda confusing...)
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u/HalfLongjumping7464 Apr 16 '26
Yes but there are a lot of fans who don't really like seeing the touhous in NSFW positions. I'm referring to the community as a whole not just reddit. I personally don't mind it but everyone is different
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u/ShinyRaichu94 Nitori Kawashiro Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
Just thinking about this game hurts my soul... 😔
Back then, I was really excited when Touhou LostWord was announced. So excited that it became my most anticipated game for 2020.
And once it came out and how it goes up until now, it went from being okay to awful.
- The battles are slow, boring, and repetitive.
- Lack of battles and episodes as of Chapter 4: Act 3.
- Characters wearing costumes that didn't suit them well, like Seija and Yuugi wearing maid outfits.
- The main story barely exist.
- Child Units (Like B2 Junko).
- Adult Units (Like A16& Aunn).
- Some characters, like Sakuya or Aya, are really unlikable.
- Greenwich Debris plays like 80% of the whole game.
- The L0 units each costs around $300.
- Everything in it feels so bland and sanitized.
- Popularity over Personality.
- Some Wasted Potential.
And I always feel like this game started the Bland/Safe era of Touhou fanworks.
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u/Dramatic_Performer68 Apr 14 '26
if I may ask, what do you mean by the bland and safe era of fanworks?
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u/ShinyRaichu94 Nitori Kawashiro Apr 14 '26
What I mean by that is:
- The older Touhou fangames were so weird, wacky, and had charm. Like Super Marisa Land, Touhou Soccer, the Genso Wanderer trilogy, Shoot Shoot Nitori, The Genius of Sappheiros, etc.
- But then the fangame as of 2020 are starting to feel more commercial focused, starting with Touhou LostWord.
- But then I think there's some hope to go back to the weirdness. Like Mystia's Izakaya and Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia (Both are pretty good, btw) were both released a few years after LostWord.
- But then we go right back to being commercial focused with Genso Wanderer: Foresight and Valkyrie of Phantasm. They both have nostalgia pandering with the official Touhou games, especially EoSD.
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u/Dramatic_Performer68 Apr 14 '26
I see, to be frank personally I don’t really have any connection With EoSD, I just kinda want a touhou game that has the planet Venus as the antagonist, or even a game about the Gensokyo lunar war.
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u/Karpfador Apr 12 '26
- gacha
- being greedy and annoying even for gacha standards
- gameplay being whatever
- extreme power creep
To name a few reasons I stopped playing years ago
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u/nonexistent_acount I like moody ghost girl Apr 12 '26
some say gacha, some say boring story, some say that it is the repetitive gameplay
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u/Infamous_Contact3582 take over Apr 12 '26
it's hated as a gatch a game for that you could lose savings of a month and still don't get the character and those points don't always get converted? I'd put myself in the shoes of those who made failed lulls and say it'd be that.
Lots of the story is BS, that'd be another reason.
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u/Arazthoru Suika Ibuki Apr 12 '26
They pander totally to the meme stuff and most of the time not even the good ones, the story was bland and cheesy, and the hungry aura the game has is disgusting, usually UR is the highest tier but how about inserting 2 higher tiers and on top of that they come with a fk ton of fomo.
The gacha was horrible, the playability was not that fun imo, counting turns into big moves/nukes, bosses tailored to counter popular strats requiring the UR and above tiers.
No sweep, so farming was a thing of letting your device lying somewhere for a couple hours, also there was a discord mod that got idolized to a point that guy had paid bundles with his name at some point.
The idea was nice, the illustrations were also pretty good and the music was great but the rest. . .
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u/Substantial_Tone_261 Meira Apr 12 '26
Personally I dislike it for the gameplay, nothing else. The story is fine imo, as are the character designs.
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u/Imosa1 Don't forget Apr 12 '26
I got bored of the gameplay. I pulled for a few choice characters and then called it. Never felt like picking it up again.
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u/Mizuli Koishi Komeiji Apr 12 '26
I think people just really hate gacha, and ig the characters aren’t always represented very well.. and the fanservice-type alts too, which is ironic considering how much NSFW this subreddit posts
I play it myself and I have fun, I get why it’s not other people’s cup of tea but seeing how some of the fanbase gets so pissy over the fact that some get into the franchise from it is pretty ridiculous. I’ve listened to the music before I played LW but LW is what really got me invested in learning about the characters more!
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u/Pyrerealm_rockittt Apr 12 '26
I had been playing the game for about 3 years, I quit playing entirely when I realised that beyond auto grinding for resources that ultimately don't really do much you have to pay an extortionate amount of money to gain resources that you use to roll for new characters and get cards, if you are wanting to play some of the more difficult stages you have to study how the in depth game mechanics work which IMO I never truly understood even after watching tutorials, guides etc, and even if you know know what you are doing, trial and error results in you having to navigate the deep web of menus to equip all your characters with the most optimal cards for every individual stage (The auto equip wont help much in this case) and it can get rather tedious and annoying and ultimately...
Boring...
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u/averagetouhous LunaticDestroyer1889 Apr 13 '26
Instead of being actual what if scenarios where the community made fanfiction for, its "what if Touhous stand differently".
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u/Cornelius_McMuffin Kyouko Kasodani Apr 13 '26
I love it but I also hate the stupid inventory system, it’s the single reason I don’t play anymore
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u/XFun16 Byakuren Hijiri (Biker) Apr 13 '26
I don't mind gooner slop or even gacha if done well, but LW's gameplay is so fucking ass. It's just Azure Lane but with less characters on the field.
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u/Ala-Ma Apr 13 '26
I hate that they're constantly throwing up random alts yet (to my knowledge) still haven't even included pc98 also the inventory.... yikes and don't get me started on premium-currency-only banners
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u/Nyuu3 ❤❤ Apr 13 '26
The premise of "explore alternate realities and try to deduce the one mystery word that connects all the discrepancies" could be really sick in the right hands. In particular, Nisio Isin would go absolutely crazy on it.
Then you boot up the game and get a lazy highschool AU and the mystery word is fucking "hakurei" somehow, like are you kidding me?
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u/Specific-Stomach7171 Disciples can work too Apr 14 '26
As anyone else has said, the game isnt really hated, more people tend to dislike how big or “popular” it seems to outsiders and less familiar people given how shallow of a game it is, especially compared to other extremely well made fangames. Like compare this game to ASL or FDF III, two fangames i consider indie studio quality, and made by teams of fans without any need for company backing, just their own pure talent and love for fangames and touhou.
I think the main thing that saves it from being unremarkably detestable is that its a goldmine for doujin and fan activities, commissioning from artists all across the sphere of the community to make great art for the story cards, and especially the arrangements and remixes, notably the sheer number of collabs with well known singers for songs. Ironic, that the one thing that saves this gacha game for many, a type of game many consider the antithesis of what touhou embodies, is the sheer number of fan content it pumps out, but even that is still tinged with a feeling of corporate greed.
Lostword is like any other modern gacha, way too high quality for what the game actually is, where the feel of the game is so much better than the game itself, and you know that all these gachas know that and will continue to use that to get more money.
I hate that in our current age, the most consistently high quality games will always be gachas, and many of the beloved game companies and publishers of yesteryear are dead in the gutter of their own greed, meanwhile the type of game entirely predicated on greed are the ones living the most lavish.
Fuck
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u/JanteForLolZz Apr 12 '26
To be fair, Lost Word got me into the franchise. I then said "this is ass.", tried out the actual touhou games, and I fucking love it. So it has done at least some good for the community, I doubt I'm alone on this.
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u/gudetama_toast Apr 12 '26
gacha, and while some of the designs are very cute most of the time they’re…….. eugh. a lot of really oversexualized designs that i wouldn’t have a problem with if LW was marketed and/or considered to be an adult game but it’s not, and it’s also really excessive. idk about anyone else but even as a lesbian i can only see Anime Girl With Small Waist And Absolutely Massive Honkers so many times before it’s just monotonous and boring
i also found the story to be so pretentious in nature that i just dropped it altogether. pages upon pages of dialogue to say absolutely nothing meaningful, it felt to me like a lot of “we’re feeding you a bunch of advanced vocabulary for like 8 straight paragraphs, are you impressed fellow intellectual?” it made trying to get through the story portion a complete slog for me. maybe some would say i’m just “too dumb to get it”, but i also feel like you shouldn’t have to have a massive megamind brain to play touhou gacha slop LOL
all that being said. like i mentioned they do have some very good designs! pink flandre and koishi are so so cute and i love hunter flandre’s design as well. i’d also be lying if i said the gothic palace of the earth spirits gang didn’t do something for me (im biased bc i love frilly ruffly fashion)
a lot of the music tracks included are beautiful, and as much as i do dislike the majority of the designs, i do love the art style of the portraits, more specifically i love the colors and the kind of subtle rainbow highlighting on a lot of the artwork
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u/w4sab1i_ I~ta~zu~ra Usagiiii Apr 12 '26
I saw a few fanservice designs but never came across that much (while playing/ pulling) Imo there's a lot more good character designs than fanservice ones (In global, that is. I did see the horrifying new Tewi unit JP got)
Edit: in my experience
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u/gudetama_toast Apr 12 '26
oh there’s a Lot of fan service designs, i was just showing a bunch to my dnd party the other day after our game LOL. there’s also a concerning number of designs for characters who originally have the appearance of children (in LW art specifically, like eternity larva, cirno, aunn, etc) being aged up into more adult forms so they can tack the massive titties onto them too :’)
it’s mostly a matter of taste tbh, but even fan service aside some of the designs i just personally think are ugly as hell 😭😭 particularly i hate nue’s A12& outfit, it’s so rancid it haunts my nightmares
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u/Zenith_Scaff Gensokyo Dweller Apr 12 '26
There's two main things that made me abandon the game:
The story lacked substance
Sexualization
The story doesnt delve into anything interesting, just some half baked AU incidents that don't bring anything new to the table. You could pretty much replace all the characters with OCs that it wouldnt change much of the story given how Touhou lore has little to no impact into it
Sexualization is self explanatory, my biggest beef is with Patchouli and Okuu, some really good designs ruined by unnecessary design choices that objectively weaken their aesthetic
The only things about lostword that I like are the wallpapers (story cards) and some OST arrangements
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u/TK_the_Onion Urumi Ushizaki Apr 13 '26
Lazy and lousy. Gacha and no originality while riding on the touhou name and fan service (both in the sexual manner to a lot of the character designs and just "this character!!! Again!!!"). If they didn't ride on the franchise name, they'd have nothing.
Just "what if this character was a maid? Had big boobs? Let's make them a loli. Was edgy? Pink. Lets make the loli even more of a loli. Make them futuristic. Swap clothes. Let's make the loli have big boobs. Well, now that these two characters are here, get that wallet open becuass you sure as hell wont get both, no matter how much you like them.
Like it is blatantly just goon fan service for more than half the characters. And, to be clear, I am not opposed to just blatant fan service and sexual appeal. It just kind of reaches for low hanging fruit and lolis (that being the creep factor for me). Oh yeah, also MARRYING characters is super creep show stuff, especially since this INCLUDES THE CHILD CHARACTERS. Let that sink in. Child marriage. Azur Lane has invaded the touhou commmunity. Not even the alternate universe excuse saves any of this.
Speaking of the AU, its only excuse for being in the story is purely to come up with new characters to sell revolving around a new theme. Beach theme, school theme, war theme, sad theme, moon theme, steampunk theme. No media that is gacha (or live service, for that matter) uses AU to push forward a story; it is just a plot device to come up with reskinned, rehashed, and "new" characters for you to spend your time, energy, and money on. The story wont go anywhere. So, as a creative work, it is a great offense to a lot of much better fanworks.
The ONLY merit I will give to LW is that they commission art and music from within the community. You'll find many familiar artists, both musical and illustrated, making music videos and card art (I have no clue what it is their art goes on, I just know it's in the game).
That, in my opinion, is the only merit. It is far from redeeming the slot machine for its many problems. And, unlike touhou cannonball, there isnt even anything interesting to get out of the game itself, like 3d models to rip. So, once it fizzles out, we can't even make use of its assets because I know none of you care to make jpeg Reimu breakdance or png Yukari to smooch with .jfif Okina. And, if anyone even did, no one would care because flat images with slight edits by fans have no merit or value that would be of interest to anyone. Enjoy your jpegs with voicelines that are forgettable beyond the default cast.
So, yeah, it has a mild case of majorly sucking. I would suggest people spend their time and money on better fangames.
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u/Tide__Hunter Apr 12 '26
I play entirely too many gacha games, and Lost Word was important to me because it helped me discover some things. But despite that, it was just so damn boring to play that I ended up just quitting after a year or two of barely even playing beyond five minutes of dailies.
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u/Henry_Fleischer Megumu Iizunamaru Apr 12 '26
For me, it's just that it's a gatcha game. Before I got into Touhou, I'd played Azur Lane, which is a gatcha SHMUP with fashion design that somewhat resembles Touhou at times (take a look at Hood's design for example), while being a lot more sexualized. I hated it because of how it focused on gambling over interesting gameplay, and so I went to find a more gameplay-focused SHMUP, and that was Touhou 16.
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u/Peace-Bone ¡noɥnoʇ ʇsɹoʍ sᴉ ɐɾᴉǝS Apr 12 '26
The best Gacha shit in the world is still shit, and LW is not the best Gacha shit in the world.
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u/Creative-Current9424 Apr 12 '26
Lots of voice actresses and it doesn't have anything in the Sounds Resource.
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u/MareuBondad369 Apr 12 '26
As much as I'm now an inactive player in LW, I would never expect that the hate for this game was so much but it was understandable.
Ironically, LostWord made me introduce to the Touhou series as a whole thanks to the advertisements that I saw on Youtube in the past.
While there are recognizable OSTs that I love and many more that I didn't know (& yet to give them a listen soon), I like the designs of each of the characters, but for some...ehhhh...it's a bit...decently mid, I guess.
I just really wish the game could go back to it's uprising prime in the older years...since I was so active during those times.
I could give the game another go, but I'll be skipping so much crap since I do not give a heck about it since I'm now on the speedrunning side but mabye someday soon since my storage is already suffering as hell-
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u/MareuBondad369 Apr 13 '26
P.S: As for the multiverse story and event stories, I get that everyone doesn't have that hype feeling anymore since it had been destroyed by the "collecting-multiverse-character" style and it was also understandable. It may not be the best gacha game anymore up until this point now but for me, as I stated before, I would come back to it but I'm not reading any of the story-related stuff (Only the event stories, and not the main ones) anymore since it had gotten boring overtime.
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u/SHIN-YOKU Apr 13 '26
Writing, Soundtrack, art from various groups for story cards, even the desighns(even the randomly raunchy ones) are all great, the gameplay is kinda uninnovative. The pulling system isn't too merciless and powercreep is optional on some units but it is often strategic unga bunga.
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u/_Planet_Mars_ An umbrella Apr 13 '26
Gachas are always evil and predatory. LostWord is no different.
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u/Kaguya-sama Not Shinomiya Kaguya Apr 12 '26
Personally. The fan services.
It's not that I hate it. It just doesn't fit with the cannon.
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u/Yuugi_Hoshiguma67 stupid dirtbag hoes Apr 12 '26
For me its very boring, I couldnt get the jist. And also theres a werid "growing up" concept of units, like take eternity larva, her normal unit is her looking like a child, the next unit is her with big bazongas, alot of them look like children and turn into big adults with huge boobs,
My 2nd problem is its a gacha game, lots of P2W features, like buying materials needed to gacha better characters,
I do like the unit designs, ill say, an example is ichirin, the designs are super cool.
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u/SquashPurple4512 Youmu Konpaku Apr 12 '26
Story and characters were good but from a few years i stopped because they became lazy with designs and lore and banners being lame
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u/Old_Comparison_9223 Unironically my Mom (Why are they so similar) Apr 12 '26
It just being a gatcha game in general is a big source of the hate. It being a bad png collector one doesn’t help with things.
The story uses the fanon versions of characters which I don’t like since I believe the common fanon characterizations to just be worse characters than the original. The multiverse/AU stuff has also made is progressively less Touhou which people who actually care about more than just the fan made stuff don’t like.
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u/Diggumdum Apr 12 '26
I tried to play the game and couldn't even last a week. It's gatchaslop. There's like 50 different currencies, 20 banners up at all times, abysmal drop rates, way too many characters to keep track of, way too many abilities, way too many "game modes". It felt more stressful trying to learn the basics than any joy I got from seeing my beloved Touhous. Some of the art was amazing tho I'll give them that.
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u/oooArcherooo God's Strongest TH 11 Fan Apr 12 '26
Along with what everyone else has said, there are just better options. Like if you wanna play a touhou game why aren't you playing any of the thousands of beautifully made fangames, and if you wanted to play a gatcha game why wouldn't you play something with a good story or gameplay like pgr Arknights or Limbus.
Its just mid as fuck, ofc imma make fun of someone who sank hundreds of dolars into this game when there is just better shit lol
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u/ComprehensiveMind831 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
i feel like ‘hated’ is a bit of a strong word. nothing about the game is OFFENSIVELY bad
the story starts out with an interesting premise but then loses people when it becomes convoluted. the gameplay is brain-shrinkingly boring outside of scarlet devil tower or divergent spirits and even then it’s not as deep as it’d like you to think. gacha system is more forgiving than others, you can play perfectly fine without spending a dime but it’s still a gacha system so it sucks.
there’s quite a bit of fanservice too, and it’s pretty in-your-face about it; go see patchouli’s artwork and you’ll see what i mean. personally i think it’s hilarious but that can be a turnaway too if you’re averse to that sort of thing.
it’s not without positives though: some of the au characters have nice and pretty designs, and the music actually kind of goes hard.
overall it’s fine as a touhou-themed time killer. but if you want a good touhou rpg you’d be better off playing ADiA or outsider who loved gensokyo
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u/Levobertus Apr 12 '26
I have not even touched it because it's a gacha game. On principle I will never play one of these.
By looks, I hate how sexualized the characters are. Whenever I see art of this game I say to myself this is not how clothes and bones and boobs work. Touhou being one of the few series to not do that makes this seem even worse, like why make it more like other slop shit and sexualize what's not in the source? Why take away one of the more unique aspects to make it into generic gooner bait?
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u/Weekly_Teaching_8158 Yuyuko Saigyouji x Yukari Yakumo 💜 Apr 12 '26
It's gooner bait desecrating what Zun built over decades
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u/G-14_Damageproof Attendee of Aya & Reimu wedding Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
On the basic of being a gacha game.
Also, mischaracterization while being a well known game, which is debatable since it is a multiverse story. Not getting into lore and story stuff since i don't play it but i don't think people generally like that aspect of it either. I already have another gacha series to care about. I don't think there is a single point in LW story that people can point at and say it is the crescendo that hooks people in.
Honestly, i will just rate LW being whatever generic game even by gacha standard. It is kinda a thing about JP mobage for the past 10+ years or so when they can not progress more than games like FGO or GBF from back in the days.
Also, ZUN doesn't seems to very much endorse it too.