Hunting the Elusive

Some might know that I like Touhou games. I have a particular preference for Phantasmagoria of Flower View, but wasn't such a big fan of Shoot the Bullet (the lack of aggression on the part of my player character was disturbing). With TH10, ZUN (the creator of these acid-trip games) returns to the roots with a good ol' curtain shooter screen which doesn't have dual playing fields a la Phantasmagoria. There goes multiplayer hopes for now I guess.

According to information gleaned from the net, this game is supposed to be much easier to play. Yeah easier to play if you have mastered the others already -- and I think I have only beaten "Lunatic" mode once on Phantasmagoria. Right now with Mountain of Faith, I am stuck at "Normal". Yesterday I was stuck on the third level of Easy, so it's a marked improvement. I got my trusty Logitech Rumble Pad 2 dusted off and set off to do some serious thumb twiddling.

As with most Touhou games, the more you delve into it, the more details you will uncover about the gameplay. But for now, I could only notice a few things about this demo.

You get 3 lives, which is extendable by special bonus if you beat the boss in record time. This is pretty OK, but a bit stingy compared to what you get for Phantasmagoria. Then again it is much easier to die in Phantasmagoria. Also, unlike Phantasmagoria, you can just hold down the fire weapon and your character will fire continuously, so you won't get RSI on your trigger finger.

Like the traditional games, shoot the fairies and stuff on the stage and they will drop bonuses which you have to catch. But ZUN has put in an "Item Get Border Line" near the top of the stage, which is of course traditionally seen as the most dangerous zone because that's where all the enemy emerge from. Cross the border and all the bonuses currently floating around on the stage converge on you. Get enough of the right type of bonuses (especially the large type of "P") and you get upgrades to your weapons system for a pretty impressive array of armament coming out of the proximity of your character.

You can choose either Reimu or Marisa in the demo. Additionally you can choose the weapon system. I am particularly intrigued by the third weapon system for Marisa which seems to allow you to leave your extra "turrets" sitting somewhere in the field when you activate your "slow motion". This is especially handy if you are facing a boss character. Camp your secondary turrets in the upper middle of the screen to inflict constant damage on the boss sprite whilst you run around dodging things and getting in shots at the boss with your primary weapons. Primary weapons do more concentrated damage, so you can't just rely on your secondary ones to do all the work for you. As soon as you let go of the "slow" button, the turrets return back to you so be careful.

Detached turrets keep firing if you are firing.

No ghosts in this game, so no field to turn them into little bubbles. All the same the slow button is very useful for micro-navigating through clouds of bullets, and there is no better feeling than the raw edge you get steering the girl through a shifting minefield and getting out of all of it alive. As usual, the less movements you make, the better your chances of surviving (just make little twitches to get out of the way of bullets).

21 seconds left to kill the boss (indicated top right on stage).

You can also cast special spells once you have enough power to clear the jungle around you, but I think it costs you bonuses. As does failure to bring down a boss within an allocated time.

Anyway, that's all I've found out for now. It's a mighty fun game, so I highly recommend a play. Get it from the torrents all around the place, or from direct http download.