東方 神霊廟 ～ Touhou Ten Desires [TRIAL], an article full of desires and SPOILERS!

[Romantique Tp]

Is there really no death-bombing? I swear I did it once.
With the emphasis on ONCE.

http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Ten_Desires/Gameplay#Bomb

[Helix ⑨]

I see.
On a different note. Why are there so few bonus lives in this game? Is this only to make the demo a little harder? My best try so far was 1cc with 4 lives left, that was 2 starting lives + 25 life parts. Even if you maximize the highest potential of life parts you'd end up with only 2 extra. For comparison: you could earn 2 lives in the first stage of UFO.
I noticed some fairies had purple fire behind them (also some red), maybe these will drop life parts in the full version?

[ふねん1]

I don't know if the color of the fire has to do with what spirits they drop - I believe all of them drop blue and, if you're chaining kills, gray spirits anyway. Bomb and life fragments come at scripted events.

As for the number of life fragments, keep in mind that the first three stages are not especially long. Both stages and boss fights get longer as the game continues, so you'll see a steady increase in the later game anyway. Mefidex also claimed that he found something related to +3 fragments somewhere in the coding (obviously not used in the demo, though there was a fairy that dropped 2 in Stage 2). So we can assume that the full game will compensate for higher life requirements. I actually don't mind the apparently fewer resources this game gives so far, but that's only because I want the challenge. Something a bit closer to other shooting games, and perhaps something to force a bit more strategy in when to bomb/hyper bosses for scoring.

[Minch]

Is there really no death-bombing? I swear I did it once.
With the emphasis on ONCE.

You can deathbomb. BUT your trance level cant have one spirit level full.

[Drake]

Mefidex also claimed that he found something related to +3 fragments somewhere in the coding (obviously not used in the demo, though there was a fairy that dropped 2 in Stage 2).

I can attest to this. You can get +1, +2 and +3 from life and bomb spirits; although I don't think you can in the demo. There are also Point+30 and +50 values (and thus+300 and +500) as well.

[ふねん1]

I'm trying to remember here, the Stage 2 fairy dropped 2 individual life fragments instead of 1 +2 fragment, right?

And wow, +30 and +50 blue spirits? Even more incentive to save bombs/hypers for later. Then again, if people instead farm the living daylights out of later bosses like they are the earlier ones in the demo, it would probably make the game too easy since earlier bosses, for the most part, aren't tough to play normally anyway.

[Chaotic Phoenixma]

Yuyuko is not the hardest stage 1 boss. Timing out her third card may be difficult, but outside of that, nothing she has gives me any issue compared to Nazrin final with a few characters(which still isn't too bad) or even Yamame's opener and final.

[Helix ⑨]

Yeah the only hard spellcards IMO are zombie girls first and third. Third is do-able but not easy. The first one I still haven't figured it out, killing a spirit by accident means she heals, doing it on purpose to reduce danmaku density also heals. Taking spirits yourself is not really an option since there are many bullets and zombie spawns a ring of oval things if you get close. Only choice you have = stay underneath her and dodge everything (very possible, but can get quite tough). It's a nightmare on youmu since charging your sword = loads of spirits die and heal.

With that said ZUN's mindset of making the game more accesible to noobs failed in my opinion. Cards might be easier, but the spirit and trance system is too hard to grasp for new players.

[Suikama]

Well the trance on death thing does help you get past those spellcards that keep killing you

[ふとくていなねこじょおう]

I love trance mode.

As long as one of the spirits is completely filled I can give the boss one last 'FUCK YOU' before going pichuu~n.

[Paper Conan]

I'm mostly sad/annoyed that you can't deathbomb unless you have your Orin Meter empty...
The worst part is that I was starting to get good at it. :qq:

[Savory]

Youmu's gimmick is pretty neat. And her charge shot is strong too! It kills the 1st stage mid-boss in five hits. And Youmu just messing with them. Her slashing not even stop!

[Mimachiro]

I'm thinking ZUN will have death bombing in the final version. There seems to be conflicts with the new stuff he has in here. The bug that causes a crash if Yoshika is defeated while healing is one. We've never had a healing boss before, though, so he's probably working to figure out how to fix it. Same with the trance meter, since that's new, it probably conflicted with his existing death bombing code in some way he hasn't figured out how to remedy yet. It's the first demo, so we just need to be patient.

[Nimono]

By the way, random question. It's noted that Kogasa only has a spell on Hard and Lunatic. I watched a video of a Lunatic run, and I noticed that she didn't even have a second nonspell on that difficulty...and her spell looked just like her second nonspell in Easy and Normal. (And, of course, just like her first nonspell.) So, is it possible that her second nonspell on Easy and Normal is supposed to be a spell?

[Drake]

No, it just upgrades into a spell on higher difficulties, that's all.

[Yonowaaru]

It's just somewhat longer on hard mode. It isn't even necessarily harder.

[Whatthe]

Also fucking hell photobucket why you do this

Late reader here, curious: what was it?

[Sen]

Loving the game so far, did a blind Lunatic run my first try an got up to just before Kogasa. Really fun game overall, but learning to balance bombs vs. trance meter is proving to be difficult, especially with the scarcity of resources so far...

EDIT: When you quit a run while playing Youmu, if you go back to the character select screen, it'll bring you to Sanae instead of Youmu. It's like the game is telling me YOU'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO PLAY AS YOUMU.

[E-Nazrin]

Late reader here, curious: what was it?

AND NOT A SINGLE FUCK WAS GIVEN THAT DAY

[Shizuka]

> The bug that causes a crash if Yoshika is defeated while healing is one.

I fixed this bug ( http://www.mediafire.com/?qxjdr4pfhj38ty5 ), though obviously if a replay requires the game to not crash, and you use an unpatched exe, it will crash.

Testing welcome.

[Mayson]

It's just somewhat longer on hard mode. It isn't even necessarily harder.

Well, the bullets seem to spread more, so it's harder to find a gap between them and it's like a wall of bullets is coming towards you.

Also, I agree with there being few lives in the game. At least in the demo it's impossible to get more than two. In other forums I visit people keep saying that the game is far easier, but they don't take the scoring system into account. It happens so often that I get trashed by random spawning enemies because I wanted to get the spirits they drop... :/

Regarding Youmus Shot type: Yes, it's strong, but in the harder difficulty levels you don't get easily near the boss anymore and the focussed shot has a quite limited range.

[Mimachiro]

The range isn't as bad when at full power. Once your hit, though, you're done. It's probably best to use Youmu after you've already played through with one of the other characters, since you really need to know the patterns fairly well in order to get close enough to use Youmu effectively.

[ふとくていなねこじょおう]

So, what features would you like ZUN to add to the full game?

Personally, I'd like death bombing to be possible regardless of how full your Orin meter is.

[shadowbringer]

- per-frame rank increase when orin meter is full   (the sound whenever an orin soul gets filled up is hilarious... not sure if this is a good idea, but IN had this before)

- counterbomb (with one free IN-style deathbomb, not sure if it should be as long as in IN) not being limited to empty orin meter

- visible chaining meter for the gray spirits

- ability to maintain the chaining meter by grazing (could help improvisation, as long as the game doesn't focus on this element too much)

[Helepolis]

I noticed that if the Trance meter is at least not filled until the first spirit blob, it won't even kick in if you die. Did anybody else specifically tested this out? I first thought it was me being careless but I am somewhat doubting now.

[Drake]

Yeah, Trance won't activate until you have one filled. Conversely, you can't deathbomb after that one is filled.

[Helepolis]

Guess I need to adjust my article then slightly.

So basically, ZUN grants you deathbomb ability until 1 spirit is full in the Trance meter and after that it is becomes risking. That is kind surprising. Not being able to deathbomb is kind of harsh. As you won't want to enter trance mode because it is always death (unless your meter is full).

[Savory]

That is kind of surprising.

Though in any case, you can still activate it manually.

[botibalint]

Can somebody help me? 
My touhou runs really slow, at about 40 fps. what can I do about it?

[Erppo]

Not being able to deathbomb is kind of harsh.

No, that's the norm. Deathbombing is just the game being extra generous and you should be grateful to the game for letting you live even though you screwed up, rather than expecting it to do this. :V