I like Touhou games
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Time to talk about a game for one fairly in-depth post, then not continue! Kind of a one-shot LP.
I shall call it...
Let's Skim Double Spoiler
Double Spoiler is the latest official Touhou game, the 12.5th in the franchise. The reason that it's 12.5 and not 13 is that it's not a conventional shooter like the other games; that's just not how Aya rolls.
Double Spoiler is a game about photography! It is divided into individual scenes, which can be done in any order once unlocked; there is no continuous main game. The goal of each scene is to take a certain number of pictures of the boss before getting hit by their attacks.
There are a couple nice changes from the last game ZUN did in this style, Shoot the Bullet! Stage 1-1 is a tutorial battle, with relatively little difficulty[1], that explains the general mechanics of the game. If you know Japanese.
Also new: By pressing X, you can change your viewfinder from landscape to portrait! How handy for getting those far-away shots.
Anyway, there are 30 characters in this game, so let's check them out!
Minoriko Aki
Minoriko is the first stage midboss of Mountain of Faith, and the younger of the two Aki sisters. Despite being a Goddess, I guess fighting isn't her strong point, because she gets her role as the Tutorial Boss, and then three other scenes, none of which are particularly hard or notable!
Shizuha Aki
Minoriko's older sister is, uh... marginally more menacing? She's still a stage 1 boss, but she's got some cool spellcard gimmicks, like this one with its enormous regular bullets that trail smaller shots that move like falling leaves.
Parsee Mizuhashi
On to Level 2! Parsee isn't as nasty as this screenshot makes her look - half of those are moving in and the other half are moving out, so there's a convenient gap between the two. This attack actually killed me a whole bunch of times to the point that I put the game down for a while, then came back and beat it in one try. Go figure.
Hina Kagiyama
Hina has some cool attacks, and also really advance the concept of using the camera defensively - the game's puzzle solving aspect. You see, when you take a picture, in addition to hitting the boss, it also clears out all bullets within the scope of the photo. This attack alternates thick waves of bullets from the top and bottom, and the best way to deal with them is to take a picture as the wave approaches, hitting Hina and also clearing a path through the wave.
Yamame Kurodani
Yamame has one spellcard, not pictured here, that actually gave me a whole lot of trouble! Once I figured out the trick, though, it was cake. That's what I like about this game - it's way more strategic than normal Touhou games.
Kogasa Tatara
I was surprised to see Kogasa this early, considering that she's an Extra Stage midboss! Especially because Nazrin is later down the line. Her attacks aren't too bad, although she has an intense Rainbow attack that is nigh-impossible to solve without some strategic defensive photos.
Kisume
Whoa, sudden power up for a dialogueless stage 1 midboss! Her attacks are pretty intense and in-your-face, in keeping with her "hides and jumps out of the darkness at people" theme. She kind of reminds me of Yayoi from my fangame.
Nitori Kawashiro
Nitori's attacks are kind of disappointingly simple, but she never was that interesting in terms of gameplay. Still, her MoF cards are more exciting than these.
Momiji Inubashiri
Momiji finally gets some spellcards and canon! The fandom seems pretty upset about how different her new personality is from fanon, but I'm not gonna go into that here. Her attacks are swift and brutal! This one in particular took me quite a while to deal with successfully.
Ichirin Kumoi
God I love fighting Ichirin. More specifically, I love fighting Unzan. GIANT FIST PUNCHING!
On this one in particular, fists pound down from above, and send out shockwaves when they hit, so you have to go into the shadow of the fist as soon as it passes you by. Intense!
Minamitsu Murasa
Murasa is where the game really starts picking up in difficulty, if you ask me. She is also the first person who has a spellcard I have yet to clear! Her anchors can be destroyed via photo, which is nice, because they tend to linger on a lot of her attacks.
Yuugi Hoshiguma
Oh god, Yuugi is brutal. I've managed to clear most of her spellcards, but the one pictured here? I have no idea. You have to spin around her. I cannot spin fast enough, and thus always die. Halp.
Suika Ibuki
Suika is... about as hard as you'd expect, considering she was an Ex Boss in Shoot the Bullet. This is her hardest spell, and her only spell I've het to clear - dodging all her bullets and still being fast enough to get out of the way when she freakin' body slams you at 10x size is so damn hard.
Shou Toramaru
Aarrrgghh. Back in UFO, I never had the same animosity towards Toramaru that behold_the_void did, but in this game? I can't clear any of her spells. Not one!
Nazrin
Nazrin has a lot of really fun spells! This one is cool in that she constantly spawns those giant stones, but when they hit the bottom, they stack up, slowly filling the stage. Thus, you have to balance taking pictures of Nazrin and taking defensive shots to clear out piles of doom rocks from below you.
Rin Kaenbyou
Rin is quite nasty in this game, as to be expected! A lot of her more interesting/fun spells involve swarms of zombie fairies, but the normal bulletspammy cat form attacks are probably harder.
Utsuho Reiuji
She's in there somewhere, I swear! Reiuji is a goddamn beast in this game. I've yet to actually clear any of her spells, although I've come close on a few... they're about as frantically intense as they were in Subterannean Animism, so I'll keep trying.
Satori Komeiji
Satori is haaaaard. I've cleared two of her four cards, one via subtle trickery (she's as tricksy as you'd expect from a mind-reader), and one by trying it over 100 times.
Koishi Komeiji
Remember what I said about Satori being hard? Koishi is harder. She has more freakin' spinning crap, and in general just attacks I don't really know how to deal with in any reliable way.
Tenshi Hinanai
Tenshi gets some real spellcards! It's all very new and fresh, since she was only in the fighting games until now. Her cards are really fun, too - they're fast, straightforward, and intense.
Iku Nagae
Her friend Iku, on the other hand, is less fun. Lots of curving lasers. This one is pretty cool, though, with the player having to squeeze through gaps between spinning stars.
Kanako Yakasa
Well... at least she's not as much of a difficulty curve breaker as she was in Mountain of Faith! I've actually cleared two of her cards, she feels legitimately hard instead of horseshit. Except for the snake attack card, that one's horseshit.
Suwako Moriya
Suwako is expectedly hard! Her attacks are fast, dense, and furious, and I don't necessarily have what it takes to handle them.
Byakuren Hijiri
So, so hard. Then again, this is the final stage, so that makes sense, huh. The pictured spellcard in particular is cool, because your only source of protection from the rain is Byakuren herself, who sometimes jumps out of view for a moment, forcing you to carve a connecting path using your camera.
Nue Houjuu
Ostensibly the final boss of the game? I beat her last spellcard! Which is not to say I can beat any of her other ones.
Reimu Hakurei
And thus, we enter the Extra Stage. Which is stupidly hard. Oh god, I can't handle Reimu's spellcards. This one here I'm amazed I can get ONE photo on.
Sanae Kochiya
Sanae's spells in this game are pretty weird. Shots go out from you, then back to her. Doesn't that seem backwards, somehow?
Marisa Kirisame
Marisa is in usual ridiculous form, tearing across the screen like a comet. A nice, subtle touch of this card? When she's coming from the right, her charging noise comes from the right speaker, and vice versa. If I'm wearing headphones, I can use it to predict her path.
And that's it, aside from one thing...
This is Level Spoiler, the final area of the game. Unfortunately, I either need to clear 6 more scenes or clear 3 scenes on level Extra to unlock it. However, rather than leave it ambiguous, I shall end with a video, because the battle rules!
Hatate Himekaidou
No, there was no point to this post! I'll go back to playing this and looking forward to Touhou 13.
[1] I still died on it somehow.
Time to talk about a game for one fairly in-depth post, then not continue! Kind of a one-shot LP.
I shall call it...
Let's Skim Double Spoiler
Double Spoiler is the latest official Touhou game, the 12.5th in the franchise. The reason that it's 12.5 and not 13 is that it's not a conventional shooter like the other games; that's just not how Aya rolls.
Double Spoiler is a game about photography! It is divided into individual scenes, which can be done in any order once unlocked; there is no continuous main game. The goal of each scene is to take a certain number of pictures of the boss before getting hit by their attacks.
There are a couple nice changes from the last game ZUN did in this style, Shoot the Bullet! Stage 1-1 is a tutorial battle, with relatively little difficulty[1], that explains the general mechanics of the game. If you know Japanese.
Also new: By pressing X, you can change your viewfinder from landscape to portrait! How handy for getting those far-away shots.
Anyway, there are 30 characters in this game, so let's check them out!
Minoriko Aki
Minoriko is the first stage midboss of Mountain of Faith, and the younger of the two Aki sisters. Despite being a Goddess, I guess fighting isn't her strong point, because she gets her role as the Tutorial Boss, and then three other scenes, none of which are particularly hard or notable!
Shizuha Aki
Minoriko's older sister is, uh... marginally more menacing? She's still a stage 1 boss, but she's got some cool spellcard gimmicks, like this one with its enormous regular bullets that trail smaller shots that move like falling leaves.
Parsee Mizuhashi
On to Level 2! Parsee isn't as nasty as this screenshot makes her look - half of those are moving in and the other half are moving out, so there's a convenient gap between the two. This attack actually killed me a whole bunch of times to the point that I put the game down for a while, then came back and beat it in one try. Go figure.
Hina Kagiyama
Hina has some cool attacks, and also really advance the concept of using the camera defensively - the game's puzzle solving aspect. You see, when you take a picture, in addition to hitting the boss, it also clears out all bullets within the scope of the photo. This attack alternates thick waves of bullets from the top and bottom, and the best way to deal with them is to take a picture as the wave approaches, hitting Hina and also clearing a path through the wave.
Yamame Kurodani
Yamame has one spellcard, not pictured here, that actually gave me a whole lot of trouble! Once I figured out the trick, though, it was cake. That's what I like about this game - it's way more strategic than normal Touhou games.
Kogasa Tatara
I was surprised to see Kogasa this early, considering that she's an Extra Stage midboss! Especially because Nazrin is later down the line. Her attacks aren't too bad, although she has an intense Rainbow attack that is nigh-impossible to solve without some strategic defensive photos.
Kisume
Whoa, sudden power up for a dialogueless stage 1 midboss! Her attacks are pretty intense and in-your-face, in keeping with her "hides and jumps out of the darkness at people" theme. She kind of reminds me of Yayoi from my fangame.
Nitori Kawashiro
Nitori's attacks are kind of disappointingly simple, but she never was that interesting in terms of gameplay. Still, her MoF cards are more exciting than these.
Momiji Inubashiri
Momiji finally gets some spellcards and canon! The fandom seems pretty upset about how different her new personality is from fanon, but I'm not gonna go into that here. Her attacks are swift and brutal! This one in particular took me quite a while to deal with successfully.
Ichirin Kumoi
God I love fighting Ichirin. More specifically, I love fighting Unzan. GIANT FIST PUNCHING!
On this one in particular, fists pound down from above, and send out shockwaves when they hit, so you have to go into the shadow of the fist as soon as it passes you by. Intense!
Minamitsu Murasa
Murasa is where the game really starts picking up in difficulty, if you ask me. She is also the first person who has a spellcard I have yet to clear! Her anchors can be destroyed via photo, which is nice, because they tend to linger on a lot of her attacks.
Yuugi Hoshiguma
Oh god, Yuugi is brutal. I've managed to clear most of her spellcards, but the one pictured here? I have no idea. You have to spin around her. I cannot spin fast enough, and thus always die. Halp.
Suika Ibuki
Suika is... about as hard as you'd expect, considering she was an Ex Boss in Shoot the Bullet. This is her hardest spell, and her only spell I've het to clear - dodging all her bullets and still being fast enough to get out of the way when she freakin' body slams you at 10x size is so damn hard.
Shou Toramaru
Aarrrgghh. Back in UFO, I never had the same animosity towards Toramaru that behold_the_void did, but in this game? I can't clear any of her spells. Not one!
Nazrin
Nazrin has a lot of really fun spells! This one is cool in that she constantly spawns those giant stones, but when they hit the bottom, they stack up, slowly filling the stage. Thus, you have to balance taking pictures of Nazrin and taking defensive shots to clear out piles of doom rocks from below you.
Rin Kaenbyou
Rin is quite nasty in this game, as to be expected! A lot of her more interesting/fun spells involve swarms of zombie fairies, but the normal bulletspammy cat form attacks are probably harder.
Utsuho Reiuji
She's in there somewhere, I swear! Reiuji is a goddamn beast in this game. I've yet to actually clear any of her spells, although I've come close on a few... they're about as frantically intense as they were in Subterannean Animism, so I'll keep trying.
Satori Komeiji
Satori is haaaaard. I've cleared two of her four cards, one via subtle trickery (she's as tricksy as you'd expect from a mind-reader), and one by trying it over 100 times.
Koishi Komeiji
Remember what I said about Satori being hard? Koishi is harder. She has more freakin' spinning crap, and in general just attacks I don't really know how to deal with in any reliable way.
Tenshi Hinanai
Tenshi gets some real spellcards! It's all very new and fresh, since she was only in the fighting games until now. Her cards are really fun, too - they're fast, straightforward, and intense.
Iku Nagae
Her friend Iku, on the other hand, is less fun. Lots of curving lasers. This one is pretty cool, though, with the player having to squeeze through gaps between spinning stars.
Kanako Yakasa
Well... at least she's not as much of a difficulty curve breaker as she was in Mountain of Faith! I've actually cleared two of her cards, she feels legitimately hard instead of horseshit. Except for the snake attack card, that one's horseshit.
Suwako Moriya
Suwako is expectedly hard! Her attacks are fast, dense, and furious, and I don't necessarily have what it takes to handle them.
Byakuren Hijiri
So, so hard. Then again, this is the final stage, so that makes sense, huh. The pictured spellcard in particular is cool, because your only source of protection from the rain is Byakuren herself, who sometimes jumps out of view for a moment, forcing you to carve a connecting path using your camera.
Nue Houjuu
Ostensibly the final boss of the game? I beat her last spellcard! Which is not to say I can beat any of her other ones.
Reimu Hakurei
And thus, we enter the Extra Stage. Which is stupidly hard. Oh god, I can't handle Reimu's spellcards. This one here I'm amazed I can get ONE photo on.
Sanae Kochiya
Sanae's spells in this game are pretty weird. Shots go out from you, then back to her. Doesn't that seem backwards, somehow?
Marisa Kirisame
Marisa is in usual ridiculous form, tearing across the screen like a comet. A nice, subtle touch of this card? When she's coming from the right, her charging noise comes from the right speaker, and vice versa. If I'm wearing headphones, I can use it to predict her path.
And that's it, aside from one thing...
This is Level Spoiler, the final area of the game. Unfortunately, I either need to clear 6 more scenes or clear 3 scenes on level Extra to unlock it. However, rather than leave it ambiguous, I shall end with a video, because the battle rules!
Hatate Himekaidou
Click to viewNo, there was no point to this post! I'll go back to playing this and looking forward to Touhou 13.
[1] I still died on it somehow.