Trouble Witches Origin - Episode 1 Daughters of Amalgam

Trouble Witches Origin is a horizontal doujin cute ‘em up bullet hell well worth your time. The Steam version appears to be an enhanced version of an Xbox port (Trouble Witches NEO!) of the enhanced arcade version (Trouble Witches AC) of the original doujin, or… whatever, I’m not getting paid for this, ok? Basically, this is the fanciest version. I was really happy to find this on Steam because the Xbox 360 Live version is no longer available.

Characters are equipped with a standard shot and a bullet slowdown/freezing magic circle with the potential to cancel bullets. If you destroy an enemy while the bullets are caught in the circle the bullets turn to coins, creating an interesting risk-reward mechanic. Additionally, the player can purchase up to 3 magic cards that temporarily change the shot type. These can be purchased from floating shops that periodically appear, along with 1-UPs and meter boosts and other power-ups. In true cute ‘em up fashion, the cuteness is a sinister trap and it is in fact hard as balls.

I have made it my business to play whatever cute ‘em ups I can find and I have found very few that I like. TWO is right up there with Harmful Park, and maybe almost edges it out, and is easily my favorite of the witch-themed cute ‘em ups. TWO has a ton of content and the gameplay is really smooth. Raku Raku mode is genuinely easy [to a point], so if you just want to blow shit up without consequences have fun with that, there are 3 additional difficulty levels, plus multiple versions of the game (arcade, challenge, story) as well as Trouble Witches AC, the enhanced arcade version. Episode 2 is apparently under development, but considering the original doujin came out in 2007 I’m not holding my breath on that one. Additional DLC characters are available, including characters like Cotton (another cute ‘em up mascot), which was a new one for me, as I think I’ve only ever seen shmup DLC for extra modes or soundtracks.

Since obtaining Harmful Park can be a bit of a process I heartily recommend this as a CEU genre standard.