It's a Let's Play oneshot!
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It's Fairy Wars, the latest Touhou game!
Already apparent are two things:
1. Cirno is the main character.
2. ZUN got someone else to do the art for him.
Both of these are awesome! The artist in question is Makoto Hirasaka, the same artist who did Touhou Sangatsusei, the manga from which the Three Fairies originated. She(?) is a good artist!
As a changeup to the normal series, there are three routes! The game has three stages, and each route starts on a different stage. After stage 1, you can pick which stage to do second, so the end result is that you can play the game's three stages in any order.
Let's play!
Gameplay is, at core, similar to a traditional Touhou game. But this is a 'decimal' game (12.8, not 13), so it must have some gimmick!
HERE IT IS:
ICE BARRIER.
How this works is:
-If you hold down Z for about one second, then release, you create an Ice Barrier - just the big ice block around Cirno in the screenshot.
-If any bullets touch the ice, they freeze, turning into more ice.
-After about two seconds (at full charge, at least), all the ice breaks, destroying the bullets and earning you points and power.
And let's look at the various numbers we have to keep track of!
From top to bottom on the right:
Fighting Spirit
More accurately translated as "motivation," but that's the general idea. This starts at 200%, and goes up as you defeat enemies and freeze stuff. Every time you get hit, it drops by 100% - if you don't have at least 100% fighting spirit, getting hit spells game over. Max is 1000%!
Ice Power
This charges gradually, charging quickly if you defeat enemies or graze bullets - under the right circumstances, it can fill in about two seconds. If it's 30% or higher, you can use Ice Barrier, and the closer it is to 100%, the longer the barrier lasts!
Perfect Freeze
This one starts at 0%, and rises very gradually as you freeze bullets. Max is 300%, and if it's at least 100%, you can tap X to cast Perfect Freeze, freezing every bullet on the screen. It's like bombs!
Freeze Coverage
Each time an ice barrier breaks, A number pops on screen showing how much of the field your ice covered (the 3.91% on the last screenshot). That is added to Freeze Coverage, which persists across the entire game. The higher this is, the more powerful your basic shot becomes!
Level
Basic shot level.
And now, bosses! I'm only going to go through Route A-1, but there's not too much variation.
Lily White
One of the game's three minibosses, the fairy that heralds the beginning of spring! Like the other minibosses, she has no dialogue, so we only know who she is due to involvement from previous games. Also appearing is Lily Black, but she's not on Route A-1.
Not very hard!
The game has a story! It is a simple, fairy-sized story. The three fairies wrecked Cirno's house for some reason related to wanting to start an incident with the power of fairies alone, so Cirno has DECLARED WAR.
This is the stage one boss, by the way!
Luna Child
The first boss, the fairy with the power to mute sound! Actually She can be the second or even third boss depending on the route, but this is route 1 so she's the first boss.
Route A-1 is the easiest route, and this is the stage 1 boss fight, so she's quite the pushover!
Stage 2 takes us to Cirno's home, the Misty Lake! Let's see what adventures await in this land.
Daiyousei
The second miniboss, it's the big fairy with no special characteristics! She's only a character at all because the fans needed a name for Cirno's midboss in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. No dialogue, no nothing.
It's stage 2, so this is a bit more intense, with some fast bullets in her second pattern, and also introduces the mechanic of fire bullets, which can't be frozen. Tricky!
It's more plot! And by more plot, I mean Cirno shouting at people incoherently.
Time for the second boss battle!
Star Sapphire
At the end of stage two, it's the fairy who can detect animate objects! Also she's powered by starlight, hence the danmaku theme here.
This fight isn't actually that hard, although I did have to drop a Perfect Freeze on one of her generic patterns. This card is a slight pain because the freezable bullets barely move, making it hard to get big ice combos!
LET'S GO FINAL STAGE
The final stage is some place at night. These patterns can look hard, but all the big bullets are moving straight downwards, so dodging them is a breeze as long as you can keep the smaller ones frozen. I'm burning with fighting spirit!
Suddenly our pattern is broken! Our midboss battle is preceded by actual dialogue!
Sunny Milk
As our final midboss, it's the leader of the three fairies, with the power of light refraction!
This fight is actually stepping the difficulty up a fair bit - those bullets are pretty fast, and I take a hit, losing some fighting spirit. She also introduces the game mechanic of lasers, which are not only unfreezeable but can break ice you've formed, turning it into dangerous fragments. Look out!
So wait, if she's the leader, then WHO WILL THE BOSS BE?
Oh.
Oh snap.
The Three Mischevious Fairies
It's the power of hot-blooded ice and stupidity VS the power of cooperation! This three-against-one battle is actually quite brutal!
[ BGM: Great Fairy Wars ]
While my main target is Sunny in this battle (it depends on the route, naturally), I CAN take out the other two fairies - but whenever the attack pattern changes, the defeated fairies come back. Whether or not they're worth fighting depends on the spell card.
This attack - the aptly named "Ice Dissolver" - is nasty for two reasons! First, the small bullets are coming from behind you, and slowly, so it's hard to get much ice coverage. Second, the fairies are being totally trigger happy with their lasers, meaning that any ice you DO form gets broken apart almost instantly. Rely on your dodging!
Utter chaos! Each fairy is using their own signature nonspell attack at the same time!
Sunny has a penchant for these dense, high-speed radial bursts of sunlight bullets. They're very hard to dodge, but there's always a sizeable gap between them. Use your ice barrier to break through!
As we approach the climax of the battle, Sunny takes the stage for herself for a moment! Mixing fire bullets with normal bullets, all my ice barrier can do here is reduce the intensity for a while...
FINAL SPELL CARD
"Three Fairies"
Normal bullets feed in from Luna and Star, then radiate out from Sunny, while fire bullets fly in from the sides of the screen!
Then, when Sunny charges up...
All the bullets turn into fire bullets! My ice is useless...
...OR IS IT?
FINISHING MOVE
PERFECT FREEZE
That's right. Cirno can create ice so cold that it freezes fire.
And so Cirno proves that teamwork isn't all it's cracked up to be!
Then there are some indecipherable antics in the ending. Whee!
And that's pretty much Fairy Wars, EX stage aside! It's pretty fun. Looking forward to Touhou 13!
It's Fairy Wars, the latest Touhou game!
Already apparent are two things:
1. Cirno is the main character.
2. ZUN got someone else to do the art for him.
Both of these are awesome! The artist in question is Makoto Hirasaka, the same artist who did Touhou Sangatsusei, the manga from which the Three Fairies originated. She(?) is a good artist!
As a changeup to the normal series, there are three routes! The game has three stages, and each route starts on a different stage. After stage 1, you can pick which stage to do second, so the end result is that you can play the game's three stages in any order.
Let's play!
Gameplay is, at core, similar to a traditional Touhou game. But this is a 'decimal' game (12.8, not 13), so it must have some gimmick!
HERE IT IS:
ICE BARRIER.
How this works is:
-If you hold down Z for about one second, then release, you create an Ice Barrier - just the big ice block around Cirno in the screenshot.
-If any bullets touch the ice, they freeze, turning into more ice.
-After about two seconds (at full charge, at least), all the ice breaks, destroying the bullets and earning you points and power.
And let's look at the various numbers we have to keep track of!
From top to bottom on the right:
Fighting Spirit
More accurately translated as "motivation," but that's the general idea. This starts at 200%, and goes up as you defeat enemies and freeze stuff. Every time you get hit, it drops by 100% - if you don't have at least 100% fighting spirit, getting hit spells game over. Max is 1000%!
Ice Power
This charges gradually, charging quickly if you defeat enemies or graze bullets - under the right circumstances, it can fill in about two seconds. If it's 30% or higher, you can use Ice Barrier, and the closer it is to 100%, the longer the barrier lasts!
Perfect Freeze
This one starts at 0%, and rises very gradually as you freeze bullets. Max is 300%, and if it's at least 100%, you can tap X to cast Perfect Freeze, freezing every bullet on the screen. It's like bombs!
Freeze Coverage
Each time an ice barrier breaks, A number pops on screen showing how much of the field your ice covered (the 3.91% on the last screenshot). That is added to Freeze Coverage, which persists across the entire game. The higher this is, the more powerful your basic shot becomes!
Level
Basic shot level.
And now, bosses! I'm only going to go through Route A-1, but there's not too much variation.
Lily White
One of the game's three minibosses, the fairy that heralds the beginning of spring! Like the other minibosses, she has no dialogue, so we only know who she is due to involvement from previous games. Also appearing is Lily Black, but she's not on Route A-1.
Not very hard!
The game has a story! It is a simple, fairy-sized story. The three fairies wrecked Cirno's house for some reason related to wanting to start an incident with the power of fairies alone, so Cirno has DECLARED WAR.
This is the stage one boss, by the way!
Luna Child
The first boss, the fairy with the power to mute sound! Actually She can be the second or even third boss depending on the route, but this is route 1 so she's the first boss.
Route A-1 is the easiest route, and this is the stage 1 boss fight, so she's quite the pushover!
Stage 2 takes us to Cirno's home, the Misty Lake! Let's see what adventures await in this land.
Daiyousei
The second miniboss, it's the big fairy with no special characteristics! She's only a character at all because the fans needed a name for Cirno's midboss in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. No dialogue, no nothing.
It's stage 2, so this is a bit more intense, with some fast bullets in her second pattern, and also introduces the mechanic of fire bullets, which can't be frozen. Tricky!
It's more plot! And by more plot, I mean Cirno shouting at people incoherently.
Time for the second boss battle!
Star Sapphire
At the end of stage two, it's the fairy who can detect animate objects! Also she's powered by starlight, hence the danmaku theme here.
This fight isn't actually that hard, although I did have to drop a Perfect Freeze on one of her generic patterns. This card is a slight pain because the freezable bullets barely move, making it hard to get big ice combos!
LET'S GO FINAL STAGE
The final stage is some place at night. These patterns can look hard, but all the big bullets are moving straight downwards, so dodging them is a breeze as long as you can keep the smaller ones frozen. I'm burning with fighting spirit!
Suddenly our pattern is broken! Our midboss battle is preceded by actual dialogue!
Sunny Milk
As our final midboss, it's the leader of the three fairies, with the power of light refraction!
This fight is actually stepping the difficulty up a fair bit - those bullets are pretty fast, and I take a hit, losing some fighting spirit. She also introduces the game mechanic of lasers, which are not only unfreezeable but can break ice you've formed, turning it into dangerous fragments. Look out!
So wait, if she's the leader, then WHO WILL THE BOSS BE?
Oh.
Oh snap.
The Three Mischevious Fairies
It's the power of hot-blooded ice and stupidity VS the power of cooperation! This three-against-one battle is actually quite brutal!
[ BGM: Great Fairy Wars ]
While my main target is Sunny in this battle (it depends on the route, naturally), I CAN take out the other two fairies - but whenever the attack pattern changes, the defeated fairies come back. Whether or not they're worth fighting depends on the spell card.
This attack - the aptly named "Ice Dissolver" - is nasty for two reasons! First, the small bullets are coming from behind you, and slowly, so it's hard to get much ice coverage. Second, the fairies are being totally trigger happy with their lasers, meaning that any ice you DO form gets broken apart almost instantly. Rely on your dodging!
Utter chaos! Each fairy is using their own signature nonspell attack at the same time!
Sunny has a penchant for these dense, high-speed radial bursts of sunlight bullets. They're very hard to dodge, but there's always a sizeable gap between them. Use your ice barrier to break through!
As we approach the climax of the battle, Sunny takes the stage for herself for a moment! Mixing fire bullets with normal bullets, all my ice barrier can do here is reduce the intensity for a while...
FINAL SPELL CARD
"Three Fairies"
Normal bullets feed in from Luna and Star, then radiate out from Sunny, while fire bullets fly in from the sides of the screen!
Then, when Sunny charges up...
All the bullets turn into fire bullets! My ice is useless...
...OR IS IT?
FINISHING MOVE
PERFECT FREEZE
That's right. Cirno can create ice so cold that it freezes fire.
And so Cirno proves that teamwork isn't all it's cracked up to be!
Then there are some indecipherable antics in the ending. Whee!
And that's pretty much Fairy Wars, EX stage aside! It's pretty fun. Looking forward to Touhou 13!