JRPG wows fans by perfectly recreating the series that spawned Persona, and surprises its own dev by selling "over 8 times what I was expecting"

gamesradar.com:

Too many people only know Shin Megami Tensei as the dungeon-crawler JRPG franchise that ultimately spawned the much more popular Persona series, but MegaTen is still an amazing, ongoing bunch of games in its own right, with 2021's Shin Megami Tensei 5 being its crowning achievement for my money. But old-school MegaTen DRPGs still have their following, and a new game in the impossible-to-pin-down Touhou universe has now recreated this retro style so perfectly that fans are asking MegaTen owner Atlus to hire the dev.

Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia – a remarkably tame name by Touhou standards – is a picture-perfect imitation of SNES-era MegaTen. It's a dungeon-crawler that jumps between turn-based battles, first-person dungeon exploration, and side-scrolling shoot-'em-up sequences. Recruit and train allies as you explore, and assemble an optimal party for the big boss battles. From the art to the menus, it's almost indistinguishable from its inspirations, cute characters aside. 

Instead of recruiting demons, you ally with members (mostly magical girls) of the Touhou universe, which can loosely be defined as a collection of fan games based on a Japanese doujin series called Touhou Project. Touhou games are traditionally shmups, some fighting games, and more recently some bullet hell Metroidvanias, but as demonstrated here there's quite some variety in the margins. That's pretty much all I can say about Touhou without requiring a textbook or booking a two-hour appointment. 

Remarkable authenticity aside, the thing that really drew me to this throwback JRPG was the reviews it's gotten on Steam. Its overall rating of 98% positive is impressive, sure, even with just 200 reviews. But what got me was the overlapping feedback