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I just get stuck at the fairies throwing that huge amount of bullets everywhere on her stage.

So after buying 13.5 Hopeless Masquerade, 14 Double Dealing Character, & 14.3 Impossible Spell Card and trying them out last night, I've decided it's about time for me to get off my ass and actually finish some more of these things (though I may not bother with Phantasmagoria of Flower View, as I had already done everything except Extra and I lost my saves and their back-up).

For now I'll give my impressions of the series' three newest entries.

Hopeless Masquerade:

I didn't bother reading anything about this, or even change setups, and went into story mode completely blind. This game is by far the easiest of the fighters so far as, even having no idea how the mechanics worked, I still beat Reimu's story easily, WITH A KEYBOARD. I was only on normal, but in the older fighters, even then I struggled to get more than a couple of fights in without a controller.

I will admit that I am curious as to what affects how many times your opponent can revive. Most of them had to be killed twice, but two of them took three deaths and the final boss had to die seven times before it stuck. I suspect it is related to the No/Neither/Yes gauge in the corner, but I'm not sure exactly how it works. I'm pretty sure that you have three revives however, as you have some kind of stock that goes down when you die, which starts at three (I died twice, once against the second last opponent and once against the last). I also kind of wonder what the deal is with the right of your health gauge turning blue when you land a projectile. I couldn't figure out what the deal is with the d/c moves either. I don't know under what conditions they can be pulled off, but having a full meter isn't enough and I couldn't see a separate indicator for them. I'll probably look this stuff up before I play it again.

Despite the "difficulty" on normal I think that, compared to the previous fighters, this seems both more fun and a better fit with the Touhou world. I'm also pretty sure that there are no more RNG dependant mechanics, which is a huge step up.


Double Dealing Character:

I played this before I even knew thcrap was a thing, and just assumed that there was no English patch, so I played this in Japanese. I did have a rough idea how the gimmick worked though and had thought I would hate it. It was actually quite interesting; it certainly changed the way I played quite a bit. Intentionally avoiding items and rushing up to the PoC at the last second feels weird, but it actually works pretty well.

Really my only problem with it is that the game is designed to encourage you to bomb like a madman, but in Danmaku I've always bombed far less than I should. I think it's a combination of my "never use consumables" and "I should use x now, but I won't, because I might win anyway and then I'll be in the same position, but with one more x" mindsets that I've always been stuck in. It's really my problem and not anything wrong with the game, but it is still annoying.

Anyway, I died once on the second boss and then lost the rest of the lives I had amassed in about a minute or so of starting stage three. Stupid bullets spawning from nowhere...

Impossible Spell Card:

Out of the three games this was the one I was most hyped for. The concept is very interesting, from both lore and gameplay standpoints. I haven't played much yet, but I think there is a definite chance this will knock PoFV from its spot as my second favourite Touhou game. Like with DDC, I played in Japanese and hadn't read much before going in, so I sort of winged it and just used the Nimble Fabric, since I couldn't be bothered to figure out what the other items did.

I cleared each of the Day 1 Spell Cards once. Like Shoot the Bullet and Double Spoiler the difficulty is kind of all over the place. 1-4 took me about 10 tries, but 1-5 is one of the easiest Spell Cards I've seen in all my time playing Danmaku. After going to the bottom of the screen at the start, I didn't even have to move.