~Beyond the Border~ > Akyu's Arcade
[VLP] The Disappearing of Gensokyo - For Touhou, fandom is canon?
Gesh86:
My absence wasn't nearly as long as I calculated it to be. I'll take it! Episode 14 takes us to a place that should be outside of Gensokyo's barrier. Lunarians, your game is through, cause now you'll have to answer to...
We can put a checkmark on using every perk on the fourth position. Here's how it looks in total:
Dowsing Rod 1, Quick Recharge Beta, Quick as Panther and...
"Unrelenting - Shield always regenerates 5/second" - The recovery rate isn't especially high, but it adds up and makes a difference over time. However, you have to know that "always" isn't truly always. If your shield breaks, you must wait out your natural recovery before the effect returns. Because of this, I like "Unbreakable" a little better.
We've got another set of three logbooks that a certain moon tourist has left for us:
This one can be found at the destructible moon lander in the southeast corner of the map. A lot of fanworks do characterize the moon rabbits as an expendable and anonymous caste within the Lunar society. It's very disheartening to think of countless Reisens getting thrown into a meat-grinder, so let's not.
"Are you reading this, Chang'e!?"
There is another lore entry at the t-section between the bossfight and the moon rover. It can be found directly next to a large hourglass, another piece of scenery on the moon's surface. This entry is dedicated to Clownpiece, once again from Junko's perspective. The Hell Fairy's design was chosen to be star-spangled because the Lunarians were meant to be a symbol for China during the Cold War. Just like they had demonized and denounced the United States, Clownpiece is viewed as the greatest menace to the Lunarians. That's the analogy ZUN intended with this.
Chang'e probably will not read this despite the feverish and repeated mentioning of her name...
Next to the Jade Rabbit moon rover and the third magic piece is the last note I was able to find. It mostly deals with the relevance of Shinto "impurity" for the Lunarians. This is a pretty complicated subject, especially because Junko's ability to purify anything has nothing to do with purity in this sense. It's terminological confusion at its finest! In the end, bringing fairies to the moon is an ingenious plan.
If you interviewed Chang'e about Junko's obsession with her she would probably ask you "Doesn't ring a bell. Who is this Junko again?"
One more thing: I was concerned with us getting to the end of the game without being able to purchase another upgrade for Marisa, so I got the screenshots for today by doing another run through the level with our Let's Play's file instead of my file for testing purposes. We'll have roughly 300 additional point icons when Episode 15 comes along. No other farming should be neccessary. I did this mostly because I really didn't want this project to conclude with a large amount of unused points. I also didn't want to invest everything into Cirno simply out of neccessity.
Gesh86:
The moon arc is in full swing! In today's episode 15, we'll be swimming in low gravity and not feeling any of those effects. This is also around the point of our adventure where the attention span of our rag-tag band is so exhausted, they stop taking anything seriously and laugh at very forced vampire-jokes:
Today's the last time we'll have only 4 symbols to describe how we're set up. It's only slightly different from the previous one:
Dowsing Rod 1, Quick Recharge Beta, Quick as Panther and Unbreakable. Pretty typical for me. There's some perks that we never have and likely will never use, specifically those in rows 2 and 3 that affect ammo and bomb collection.
I'm glad to inform you that although lorebooks were once grossly affected by the early version of the english patch (as mentioned in the post-combat section of today's video), they've improved into very proper, readable language. Here they are:
You come across this one already a few steps into the level and it's just at the side of the road. Vulgar Yukari has been a faint plotpoint throughout the game but is just not appearing in any way apart from barriers she has set down here and there. Will she turn out to be a red hering? Or does she make a last-minute appearance after all? We'll see.
You find this one right before the second magic piece and I've got to warn if you're reading for yourself: Enemy groups may already flood in while you're still inspecting it. It happened to me when taking this screenshot. We once again have several theories about phantoms thrown in front of us here. The second to last sentence is very intriguing though: Gensokyans are indeed becoming more fanonical as the game goes on. If anything, this would explain the butt-drilling joke between Tenshi and Iku of last episode...
This is the text right next to the destructible rock and it explains everything we need to know about Junko, for example her very unique species of "Divine Spirit". The placement of this lore makes it obvious that Junko is going to be the next boss fight, even if there weren't a million other hints towards that. We've long woken up to how unstealthy DoG is about these things.
Her supposed identity of Ch?n H?, a (non-historical) vengeful empress-mother of China, is not mentioned here. Junko is a reference to a mythical figure, but definitely not the Buddha. Unlike him, you would only need to punch her in the face once instead of thrice to get her raging.
Gesh86:
Sorry for the long delay for making this post! We've had a lot of issues with making the image tag for screenshots work again on our forum these last days and only today did someone find a workaround. Episode 16 has been out for a few days and it looks something like this:
If you're not on top of your game against today's opponent, no perks can help you. Nonetheless, we're using these:
Ranged Defense, Quick Recharge Beta, Fast as Rabbit, Unbreakable and...
"Comet - Fire tracking Danmaku on Enemies" - The bullets this option fires reach far and will be automatically aimed, but are extremely weak. This is actually not one that I would recommend using for this slot, I like others better. Why we chose it anyway is out of temperance: Since it's not actually likely for a new player to have gotten enough magic pieces until Junko, I wanted to take a level 5 perk that wasn't too impactful. The fight in the video should still be somewhat representative of how it will feel for a first timer. After today's stage, it's realistic to bring them. We won't be holding back like this in the future!
This being a boss stage, we have no lorebooks to read once again. For information on Junko, the last one from episode 15's post is the one to refer to.
It may be some time until the next video comes out. Not because of unexpected delays, but because I'm thinking of pre-producing the next two or three episodes and then releasing them in quick succession (possibly one per day). My decision is not yet final on this, but know that this would be sensible with how the next stage is structured.
Gesh86:
Time for our endgame! While it won't hold a candle to Avengers: Endgame in the eyes of the general public, at least you'll be able to watch it in less than 3 hours. The start makes Episode 17. Expect its continuation on Friday or Saturday, that one's already mostly produced.
No matter where she flees to, Reimu will never escape from the jokes about her poverty. We choose a setup that isn't too different from the last one, with the exception that I'll get to pick a satellite that I find awesome:
Ranged Defense, Quick Recharge Beta, Fast as Rabbit, Unbreakable and...
"Yin-Yang Orb - Fire straight Danmaku on enemies" - The bullets of this option are a little less accurate than those of the Comet, but at least they don't come at a snail's pace. We talk more about this perk at around the 3-minute-mark. In summary: This one is great because it actually amounts to something.
Either my mind blurred them out, or there were again no lorebooks in today's episode. I think the game is actually done with presenting its information in this kind of way and puts more emphasis on us having dialogue with our adversaries now. Stage 17 by the way is the only instance in this title where stage portions and bosses are not strictly divided from one another. That's one way to raise the stakes. Hopefully not over Remilia's heart...
Gesh86:
The conclusion to the previous part's cliffhanger has arrived. What was our choice? Good or evil? Purification or Shura? Well, the thumbnail of Episode 18 already reveals our course of action:
Victory can be so close, yet so far in this encounter. There are once again no lorebooks, nor does it even make sense to post our perk lineup again, as it's the same as it was for part 17. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't have switched anything. The video still comes from the same playsession as the previous.
Those screenshots sure make Dark Reimu seem like a final boss, don't they? She technically is. Technically...
Edit: It'll be a while until the next video. Not because there's anything keeping me from it, but because there's 36 minutes worth of footage. So many NPCs to talk to in that ending...