Coming back, it's time to talk the second part of this massive experience. Many spoilers abound, it's all endgame content from here.
Mystia's Izakaya - Part 2 (DLC + Post-Game)
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Before delving into the DLC contents too far though, there's a few mechanics I skimmed over in the main post that are going to pop back up in said DLC releases. So I'll bundle together a quick bit of post-game discussions with some mechanical discussions.
Early on you can find special currency items by doing quests, these show up all over the game and can be traded at specific shops for more unique items. Their main use is in obtaining the unique stations, as Kourindou stocks a lot of specialized stations that take quite a bit of either money or special currency to obtain. Stations end up being a very helpful resources, giving things like faster speeds or greater tips during a night. Bringing these up now, as each DLC has at least one station to be earned within it, and it felt wrong to mention that without even bringing up the stations themselves.
A few other things that slipped my mind, the sparrow's song and crossovers. Singing is a pretty early game mechanic, which has you play a small rhythm game whenever you put a dish up to cook. Not all that hard, it can easily be done even without the BGM to follow, and completing it can give one of three buffs which will eventually combine into hyper mode. You practically always want hyper mode during a night, so cooking consistently and playing the rhythm game well is important.
Crossovers meanwhile are a bit of a strange feature. I believe there's currently 5 in the game. Early on you meet another Mystia, who offers you a sample of The Sparrow's Midnight Dining, a doujin manga all about Mystia's Izakaya, albeit a much more stationary shop. Real cute and worth the read. Outside Mystia's house is also a computer to enable crossover guests. These are treated as special guests, meaning they have likes and dislikes, though they don't all have spell cards. Three Fairies Hoppin' Flappin' Great Journey adds the three fairies as, well, their smaller pixel sprites. Really cute, absolutely hilarious to watch them jump into the shop and order food. Touhou Blooming Chaos 2 adds Rin Satsuki, the fairly well known ditched third character meant for EoSD, along with 2 OCs. These three are the ones who get spell cards, so enable them at your own risk. Finally, there's a crossover with a Minecraft Gensokyo server, which also adds an OC. Really not sure what to say beyond that, it's interesting she was added but she hardly fits into the game. Some of these crossover characters also count as shopkeepers, and they'll have exclusive drinks and recipes to purchase. If nothing else, that's worth enabling them for at least a short bit of time.
In terms of base game post-game contents, there's actually not all that much to do. You can start cleaning up any achievements you've yet to earn and max out bonds if you failed to do that before hosting the concert the first time. There are 2 notably post-game specific tasks though, re-fighting bosses and buying the "special item" from Tewi's punishment shop. Starting from refights, there's no real reason to challenge the first boss again. It might be harder, but there's no actual reward for it and the game doesn't track it. Doing the second and third fights though give pretty good rewards. Defeating Youmu's more powerful second trial allows you to bring Youmu in as a partner in the shop, a good chef to have. Defeating Yuyuko again in her harder refight unlocks her as a special guest who can appear in normal shop locations. This'll be a recurring feature, so keep it in mind.If, after the punishment from Tewi, you decide that you want to buy the absurdly expensive item simply labeled Reisen from her shop, you get an amazing item that makes the game far easier. The "luck" as she puts it disables employee's cuts of your pay. Now the only expenses you have to deal with are what you spend at stores.
Post-game allows you also to relive the concert as many times as you like, which is good as each DLC character gets added to the concert with unique artwork, plus a new vocal track was made for each DLC you've cleared. This means there's a total of 7 vocal tracks at the concert, with a different stage and outfits per each one. So lets see what all you've got to hear songs about.
Starting things off is the Forest of Magic and Youkai Mountain. This DLC definitely feels like it slots right into the base game, featuring some characters who you would've expected to be here to begin with and some easy-going areas that are pretty well known. It opens up pretty early, after getting Human Village open. One of the more immediately striking aspects is that Marisa gets a promotion in this DLC, from just a special guest in the base game to a proper rare guest with bond levels you can advance. She's also the major focus of this DLC, as after beating the game, Mystia will eventually start to wonder where exactly all of Marisa's money came from. She's without a doubt one of the wealthiest customers in the game, so there's got to be some source of cash flow that she doesn't usually have.
A little bit of investigation later, and you find out that Marisa has been working with the Kappa to sell some fruits from Makai to a wealthy customer. While Marisa is easily ready to ditch the whole thing and find something else to do, the Kappa are more concerned about their customer. The boss fight then is feeding Yuuma until she's satisfied. Her tastes can rapidly change and it's up to you to satisfy her and all her copies using the desired tags. Very simple fight, but I enjoyed it quite a bit, enough to decide I would immediately do the refight.
Winning the refight, as before, unlocks Yuuma as a special guest. This is a terrible move. Yuuma's "reward" spell card causes everyone except herself, including all rare or special guests, to order the most expensive dish and drink combo on the menu. While this is fine for normal guests to get some extra pay out of them, Yuuma can show up practically everywhere, including other DLC stores. If her spell card pops, you can expect to not be increasing any bond levels you've yet to finish.
Since every DLC is composed of 2 areas, they all have the usual, 3 friends each with an outift, item, and gatherer reward. DLC1 has pretty cute outfits, but more notable is one of the items this DLC gives, the phone. Using the phone, you can call up any shop or friend (of a high enough bond level) you've encountered so far. Immense quality of life, makes getting all the drinks and such you need so much easier.
DLC 2 covers all of Touhou 11. Seriously, the entire cast of Touhou 11 is here across 2 areas, Former Hell and The Palace of the Earth Spirits. This one opens up with the Hakurei Shrine, as Mystia is informed of a Bizzare Cooking Competition, and she can hardly hold herself back when she hears it involves cooking. Upon reaching Former Hell though, she's informed she needs letters of recognition from the big shots around in order to actually partake. This begins what I believe to be the most tedious, annoying part of the game. I enjoyed befriending characters as I went and the likes, it's fun, but being forced to do so in order to finish the DLC is very annoying. There's no way around it either, your quest goal outright is to get everyone to max bond level so you can ask for a letter. At least it's made up for this in other aspects.
At some point during the DLC, you unlock the option to bathe in Former Hell's hot springs with your partners. This includes all DLC partners as well. It's a fanservice scene, clean and simple, but I enjoyed it. Lots of different reactions and feelings about the hot springs, and pretty good art to go along with it.
The actual Bizzare Cooking Competition doesn't get such praises. I'm not even willing to hop back into it to demonstrate what it is exactly, but in essence it's a three phase boss fight with very strict rules. The usual of requiring a certain amount of food/money/reward spell cards, however Koishi uses her ability to completely destroy the normal ebb and flow. Normal guests will no longer order off the menu, they actually wont order anything at all. It's up to you to make a dish to their liking as if they were a rare guest, and you need to fulfill multiple tags in order for it to count. Then there's rare guests, which act as normal except Koishi is adding extra tags that the dish must contain else it counts as a failure. These can include tags the guest dislikes, which means you have to be extremely careful of everything you do while on the clock. Finally, there's feeding Koishi herself. Not the hardest part, but I felt it was somewhat tedious. Koishi summons clones of herself, which you have to feed according to their demands. Feeding those clones offers up what Koishi's tastes currently actually are, and upon feeding her the proper dish she melts down. You need to give her as much food as possible during this time.
The fight as described isn't all that complex, but I did not enjoy it, and I'm not willing to do any of the refights for it. You can take it all the way up to Lunatic difficulty, but I'd rather never experience it again. As far as I'm aware there's also no reward for the refight anyways, as upon winning the competition initially Koishi becomes a special guest even before the refights.
Also this DLC implemented an anti-Yuuma item, the straw doll. Kicking out one cusomter with it equipped will not break your combo. Very funny stuff.
DLC 2.5 isn't a new area DLC, so it's a bit of an outlier. Rather, across the game on every field now lies an arcade machine. Interacting with it will take you to a brand new rhythm game minigame, akin to the sparrow song that you perform while cooking. It's a simple 2 lane game, akin to Muse Dash, though it lacks the damage mechanics that game contains. There's not a whole lot to discuss about this DLC otherwise, it technically has a story but even calling it that is a bit of a stretch. One character in every area will also have a bit of dialogue to give their thoughts on the machines spread throughout Gensokyo.
As for the songs the game actually provides, you get 3 per area, which make up all of the Izakaya themes. You also are given every vocal track to play, along with the actual 5th crossover I neglected earlier. The opening of Danmaku Kagura Phantasia Lost is playable on the machine, which is pretty funny but very difficult.
Since a lot of this DLC is only really about collecting them, I guess it's as good a time as any to talk about badges. The DLC don't add more achievements to the game on steam, rather they add badges for their main challenges. These are rewarded for accomplishing objectives like harder refights of DLC bosses and clearing these rhythm game stages at high ranks. They don't have much value beyond the bragging rights, so I felt it not worth it to collect all of them. Certainly adds more to do if you're interested though.
Also, upon beating all the stages of the rhythm game from the 5 main areas of the base game and the boss stage of the base game, you're given a message to relax back at home. Visiting again wraps up what little story the DLC has, as Okina arrives to mostly just sit there then leave. Inconsequential event overall. The DLC is mostly just an excuse for the rhythm game.
DLC 3 is one that had me very tired of the base gameplay, and it's where I initially took a break from the game. Somewhat regret that decision though, as it's got easily the second bess boss stage of the entire lineup. The DLC itself opens up with the Scarlet Devil Mansion, as Mystia ends up hearing about another festival hosted at the Hakurei shrine. She, along with her group from the izakaya, are recruited to enter the competition for the Youkai Trail to promote beast youkai. Before competing though, you're encouraged to engage in espionage, which Mystia does the only way she knows how, opening shop and making friends. The story's a cute little one following the groups from the 2 temples, Myouren and Divine Spirit Mausoleum. They're both set on winning the festival competitions too. Though, the actual requirement to access the festival is the same tiring one as last time, reaching max bond with everyone. I would've done it regardless, but it feels more annoying when it's the main task.
The actual festival is one of my favorite parts of this entire game. A unique version of the Hakurei Shrine appears full of stalls and small events you can encounter by interacting with people. You get to talk with your friends quickly before heading into the competitions too. The game even gives you a choice, whether you want to take part in the singing contest or the cooking contest. The singing contest uses the same mechanics as the rhythm game from DLC 2.5, and isn't all that difficult. However, you would be leaving Kyouko out to dry if you were to chose her strong suit and abandon your roots as a chef. The canon route is Mystia taking up the kitchen while Kyouko sings. The cooking competition is worth picking anyways, as it's an entirely different type of boss than any other. You have 3 choices of chef between Mystia, Kosuzu, and Aunn. The 3 friends from the Divine Spirit Mausoleum will also chose one of their own at a time, and you two race to claim customers and fulfil orders in time. It's a frantic dash, and extremely fun. The opponent always has a method of stopping you, but you have no method of stopping them, so you're constantly working to claim tables before the opponent can get you out of the way to claim them herself. Winning the contest in the canonical way also unlocks Mamizou as a new special guest. It's a height of the game with good reason. Though it doesn't quite reach the follow up.
DLC 4 is the absolute best part of the entire game. Nothing else gets anywhere near as good as this. Unlocking once you reach the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, you can finally visit the Garden of the Sun and the Shining Needle Castle. These are very interesting locations already, with the garden being focused on some of Touhou 9's cast, while the castle covers Touhou 14. Aya tries to draw out some stories using the ever popular Izakaya owner by throwing her into these locations, but gets let down as Yuuka would hardly ever consider harming a weak youkai like some sadist, and the castle's group being disorganized at best. As you keep opening the shop, Aya finally hits a revelation for her story, if one doesn't exist, she just has to make one.I'll be honest, I enjoyed this one the full way through. The main quest is much less tedious this time, only requiring 3 max level bonds, a task much easier to achieve. It does however give bonuses as long as you max out everyone. The cast are great and their appearances along with personalities are very well done. There's quite a lot of random features all over the place in this DLC too, such as the game giving you a fishing rod with a minigame that adds extra collectables to each field.
The boss fight this time is a super unique experience. Instead of being another normal feeding minigame, it's a mis-match of a tower defense and the cooking game. With a Plants Vs. Zombies like field (which is very intentional, as the devs directly reference it in some of Mystia's dialogue), you place down every rare guest from the DLC at a table to fend off the attackers. You also have weaker fairy units to fill in empty tables. There's tons of strategy as feeding a character powers them up, but feeding them twice pops a spell card that then causes them to lose said the power up until fed again. There's also wider abilities you can trigger over time. It's a real fun experience, and the ending cutscenes are where the game peaks. At some point during them I gained a large smile that wouldn't go away, it made me feel great watching things play out. Beating the boss unlocks a new special guest, along with a home decoration minigame. The furniture is expensive, so it's meant to mostly be a way to offload excess money you've made over the last few DLC. Harder refights are also open to perform, and I'd personally like to beat one but they can get quite challenging.
Quickly, I want to mention that each DLC also can add unique ingredients for dishes. DLC 4 adds possibly the most silly dish, tomato fries with potato sauce, using the new tomato ingredient. Some part of me is full of a desire to actually try that absurd dish.
DLC 5 is possibly the most unique of the bunch, and it's the one to wrap a neat little bow on the entire game's ideas of Mystia's friendships. Rather than being opened up upon reaching a new area, DLC 5 doesn't trigger until post-game. After credits have rolled, at some point during the nights Rumia will show up, demanding foods she dislikes. Mystia will try to appease her normally, but for some reason it pisses Rumia off. After seeing similar events a second time, Mystia decides to ask for help, and quickly realizes there's a lot more going on than just people's tastes changing. Yukari tasks the bird with yet another heavy role right after Yuyuko's problem had been solved. Go to the lunar capital, and find a way to fight against this vengeful spirit possessing the people. Go to Makai and find the object of the vengeful spirit's fear. The story's pretty interesting, though unlike most of the game it devles much further into fan-works than usual, as both PC-98 and the lunarians aren't all that well explored of topics for the series proper. The main quest this time however doesn't require you to befriend everyone, which is nice.
What isn't as nice is the fact that the possessions can happen on almost any night to any base game rare guest. Serving a possessed guest is a tiring process, as their demands are the inverse of their usual demands. For some, this poses minimal issues. Others though that have quite a number of liked tags that are all very common might as well be suicidal to try serving. The only place possessed guests can't appear is in the DLC 5 areas, so it's an incentive to rush the story as soon as you're in post game.
The boss offers a really nice conclusion to the whole experience. Rare and special guests from all over the base game will appear to make orders. However, one of the guests can be a fraud. This guest will have a different line of dialogue than usual, with the line being taken from someone else. Mystia, as the one who befriended all of these people, has to now conclude who is saying what they properly should, and who is ordering what they actually like. These dialogues can be any of the ones said when ordering food, the drink, or when the customer likes or dislikes a dish. Mystia is given a power to check if someone isn't who they really are, but it's very limited in usage time and slow to move. Popping it too much might cause you to miss out on checking a guest who you think could be possessed. There's also a timer for the boss that goes down as long as guests aren't fed. You need to stay on top of both feeding people and checking for possession if you want to succeed. These last 3 DLC bosses are great at exemplifying the friendship aspect of the game, from friends helping to win contests, to inviting friends over to play a large scale game, to now using everything you've learned about your friends to save them from a greater threat. Sadly though this boss falls short in one aspect, that being its length. Or rather, I guess it should be falls long. DLC 5's boss fight can take ages to finish, you only need to catch the spirit 3 times, but whether the spirit shows up or not is complete RNG. Spent far longer on it than I'd have liked to. Beating the boss fight finally allows Yukari to show herself properly, not hiding away like the usual scheming asshole persona she puts on. Harder refights are a given, though instead of difficulty options this time, you can inflict specific curses on yourself that change the flow of the fight a little.
This DLC adds a few cheat items, including one rewarded for reaching max bond on all characters in the DLC. A box of infinite possibilities, it makes the game quite silly.
DLC 5 also now adds a rougelike mode as mentioned before, and while I'd like to talk about it, it's currently unfinished and untranslated. Personally not too keen on stumbling around through brand new menus I can't read to experience a much less polished game mode at the moment. Maybe I'll come back once it's finished.
That's a wrap proper for the Izakaya. Feel like I got most of my thoughts out there, but I'm sure I missed quite a few things over the course of this. I just wanted to add this to the thread since I spent so long playing the game, and was filled with a desire to put some thoughts out on it. A lot more of the specifics when writing about the DLC over the base game, but that's just what happens when I covered most of the general topics in the earlier post. I feel like the DLC also deserved this spotlight since they're all so fully featured and thought out as miniature stories. While the base game was enjoyable, the DLC are really where I started to love this game. So many cute moments and good characters hidden away in the sidecontent the DLC offer.