Touhou 12.8 - 妖精大戦争 ～ 東方三月精 ~ The Great Fairy Wars. F-ff-freezing a-a-article

[Helepolis]

Touhou 12.8 -  妖精大戦争　～ 東方三月精 ~ The Great Fairy Wars



Introduction
Gre..gre..g..g..gr..gre..greetings t..t..t..t..to..to..to..touhou f...f..f..fans. H..h..helepolis h..here wi..wi..wi..wi..th n..n..n..n...ne RED THE NIGHTLESS CASTLE Ah, much better. You know I almost froze to death while trying to take pictures and play this game. I hope my Gungnir is al-- *cough* all right. Let us continue the article.

So, 12.8 has been released by ZUN and as usual, your humble BunBunMaru helper will bring you pictures, information so you can chill out and and discover more about this rather unique game play method which has surprised me again. You are Cirno, the ice fairy who is hanging around at the misty lake. While I will refrain from making stupid fanon jokes, let me just tell you that the impression I got from the dialogue sprites is kind of a "boasting Cirno".



We can clearly see that ZUN has again put some effort into the game as the difficulty selecting/stage selecting is done in a cheerful and extraordinary way. The music is again the all-time classic remixed version as in all of the Touhou windows games.


Even in Lunatic mode, Cirno seems to look confident

The game consists of playing through stages as if it was a regular shmup version. You make your way through various stage fairies shooting bullets at you. At the end of the stage a boss is waiting your arrival to engage in war with you. The first impression you will get from this game is that the HUD is extremely different and the life bar indicator for the boss is now a circular life bar, floating along with the boss.


HUD is different but not too much disturbing.

Character
This game has a very limited amount of characters. In fact, there are only four enemies in the entire game. Therefore I don't see a reason to spoil them. But due to ZUN's earlier screenshots (and the title name) you can probably guess the enemies is the Three Mischievous fairies, but who is our mysterious fourth enemy joining this fairy war? Why don't you play to find out?


Game play
Game play is as I explained in the introduction a regular shmup with a different form of battling. Let us quickly look at the available key commands and meanings of the HUD percentages.

Controls

• Arrow keys - Controls Cirno.
• Shift - Focusses and shows the hitbox
• Z ( hold ) - Uses freezing ability.
• Z ( tap ) - Fires regular shot.
• X - Bombs spell card Perfect freeze
• C - Regular rapid fire.

From top to bottom the % explained on the HUD is explained:

• 1st percentage - Your life. If you die, 100% is subtracted from it.
• 2nd percentage - Current freeze charge. 100% = maximum. Using freeze depletes instantly any % in it.
• 3rd percentage - Bombing indicator. A bomb freezes all the bullets on the screen instantly.
• 4th (bottom) percentage is the experience aka power indicator. By chain freezing and scoring you gain experience, increasing your level thus increasing the power of your regular shot.
• Snowflake (left bottom corner) - A simple indicator to show how many bombs you have on stock

Freezing and shooting
Freezing in this game means in fact freezing the bullets close to you. By holding the Z button you will hear a sound, similar to Double Spoiler, indicating you are charging up, when you release the Z button you will release a chilling air around you, instantly freezing any bullets colliding with that air. The more percentage you have the longer the freezing air is sustained, thus meaning the bullets will be frozen for a longer period of time. When a bullet is frozen, it will chain freeze any bullet it touches. Like this, you will create a chain reaction of freezing bullets strategically along the play field. This can become extremely handy or life saving which is explained in the next section.


Chain link freezing in action

Bullets explode when frozen after a short period of time, the explosion does additional damage and grands experience bonus which is shown in the middle after the explosion. During boss battles, making explosion near the boss is very important as it deals the most damage, meaning less surviving required and thus faster progressing. Freeze charging is automatically done, but at a very slow rate. If you hit enemies with your regular shot, the charging will increase. Holding SHIFT does not increase the speed of charging. So don't get fooled by it thinking it might be Double Spoiler style.  Next to hitting enemies, grazing also rapidly increases the freeze charge. So you might want to keep in mind when battling bosses.

But don't think you can just fly around freezing everything you want. Knowing ZUN, he likes to make our lives miserable and thus he came up with a genius idea: Fire balls and flaming bullets. These bullets cannot be frozen and must be avoided at all costs. You will encounter them quickly during the game and discover that fire and ice do not go together. The only exception to this rule is your bomb, it freezes also the fire bullets.


Looks, sound & music
This time I was kind of disappointed in the looks of the game. While the sprites and dialogue pictures look nice, the actual textures for the game are a bit pixelated. Aside from that we shouldn't be bashing ZUN too much on this, because after the nifty effects from UFO and Double Spoiler, you kind of become too much fed with effects. We can forgive him, right?

But either ZUN has become supreme with his character design or someone helped him. Because damn these dialogue pictures and sprites look fine baby. It makes me feel all chilly.

Possibly cold hearted words are being exchanged between the fairies

Accompanied with some extra sound effects the game tries to take it's character, yet the freezing sound is in my opinion a bit annoying to hear. Does ice really sounds like this? I bet hanging around with Cirno all day will give you a headache, and I am not even talking about her constant boasting.

To be honest I don't have much to tell about this section. The music sounded to me all right. A bit sad that the first boss battles have the same theme to them, how ever the stage themes make up for that. I haven't gotten yet to the final stage, so I have no idea how the music sounds there. But let us not forget that liking or dislike the music is a subjective thing. So not necessary to discuss it in this article.


Conclusion
We can conclude from the game play that again spell card memorization and stage memorization is vital here to efficiently and effectively increase your level or chain explode bullets dealing damage and clearing your screen easier.

I am actually quite charmed by this game, mainly due to the cheerful Cirno and the title screen options. So please give this game and make sure you got are wearing warm clothes and drinking a nice hot cup of Earl Gray tea. (Or hot chocolate milk also does the trick).

-Helepolis

Thanks to all people on IRC helping me out with the HUD explanation

[Alice Fact]

12.8 extra stage theme is "Lose Rain" (ルーズレイン)? could it be "Ruse Rain"?

[Garlyle]

But either ZUN has become supreme with his character design or someone helped him. Because damn these dialogue pictures and sprites look fine baby. It makes me feel all chilly.

Whats-her-name that did the Three Fairies manga did the art for the game this time around.  We've known this since the first blog post he made.

[trancehime]

Whats-her-name that did the Three Fairies manga did the art for the game this time around.  We've known this since the first blog post he made.

I don't think Helepolis was around when people were discussing the blog post by Z00N...

[Tengukami]

The gameplay controls took a little getting used to, but once I got the hang of it, it's a lot of fun.

[Bias Bus]

The gameplay controls took a little getting used to, but once I got the hang of it, it's a lot of fun.

Yeah, wasn't  too big a fan of having to tap the fire button as my main offense against enemy attack...but, eh it's a small setback.

Also eyebrows and everyone's a fatty.

[Tengukami]

I've just been using C. Tapping Z is one of the things I hated about PoFV. I'll have to see if my gameplay improves trying tapping.

[Bias Bus]

I've just been using C. Tapping Z is one of the things I hated about PoFV. I'll have to see if my gameplay improves trying tapping.

Oh right...I could have used C for regular rapidfire.

derp

[Blumiere]

Stage 3's theme is the only music I like so far in this game. I was looking forward to some new tracks like we saw with Double Spoiler but ZUN didn't really deliver this time around. I haven't unlocked extra yet though so I can't say much about that since the music in that stage might be breathtaking ... I've only 1CC'd Route A and B at this current time. Route C is giving me trouble.

It's a really fun game so far nonetheless. Possibly the most fun I've had with any Touhou game.

... although it's getting boring pretty quickly.

[Helix ⑨]

You can use the Ctrl key to auto fire aswell, I find it much easier to hold than C (cause then I have to shift with my pinky and that sux).

By the way, you can earn medals for each spellcard. The first one is awarded for completing it (deaths/bombs included) the second for no death/bomb and the third I assume is no death/bomb/freeze.

[Tengukami]

So maybe we should decide which of the two threads on this game should be the gameplay discussion thread?

[Nobu]

So maybe we should decide which of the two threads on this game should be the gameplay discussion thread?

Alright then, this'll be the new thread for all things 12.8 related :toot: Since the majority of the other thread was speculation and hype, and this seems to be following with past precedent anyway.

[Tengukami]

Good choice!

Well, this far, I'm still trying to get the hang of chaining, but I am really, really glad that continues start from where you die, instead of bumping you back to the beginning of the stage. Trying out the different paths has proven a lot of fun, too. Can't wait for an English patch on this.

I think I totally see where ZUN was coming from when he described this game as something you'll pick up now and then and play for a little while. The enormous amount of continues and the numerous paths provide for just that kind of playing, while still allowing SERIOUS SHMUP players the ability to go after their high-scoring 1LCs.

[BeyPok?Dig]

I really like the music and the controls. I only sometimes forget to charge freezing when holding shift, but i almost don't need shift anyways (at least when playing on easy difficulty)

[Tiliesola x01]

A couple gameplay tips from ZUN ...

　Basically, I'd recommend you freeze enemy bullets with the Ice Attack, restore your power with your shot or grazing, and then Ice Attack again right away, which just feels really fun to play.

　If you adopt a particularly bold playing style, you'll get lots of extra lives. Don't worry about dying a little and just go out and freeze lots of bullets. Fear doesn't have anything to do with Cirno!

Cirno likes freezing large areas of bullets that have scattered all about more than freezing big clumps of bullets close together.

Once the game screen becomes 100%, the percentage of the screen that's frozen will turn into a bonus. You'll get a larger frozen area by waiting for the bullets to spread out before freezing them instead of just freezing them as soon as the enemy fires.

The frozen screen area is initialized at stage 1. Once it reaches certain set thresholds, the shot level increases.

If you find yourself unable to beat the bosses, try actively freezing bullets in a manner that will increase the frozen area!

[Perfect Freeze] only goes up to 100%, so make sure to use it a bunch!

[Tengukami]

That second tip I figured out pretty early on. It's really satisfying to try to get as huge a chain as possible by timing it just right, seeing them shatter like that. It is pretty neat.

[Nobu]

I love how this and the Shameimaru games set a precedent for danmaku dueling rules: If you use some kind of exploit to circumvent dodging, we can make the danmaku that much harder to compensate. I can only imagine how nightmarish this game would be without freezing, even on Normal mode.  :ohdear:

And I figured out how the routes work. You can tackle the first three stages in whatever order you choose, and the stage itself scales up depending on where in the order it is. So you pick the first stage out of the three, then you get prompted to pick one of the remaining two, then the last stage. I haven't been able to make it to the 4th stage yet though. :colonveeplusalpha:

[Slaves]

the bosses all share the same theme?

;_____________;

[Nobu]

the bosses all share the same theme?

;_____________;

Actually, no. The only boss themes that are shared are the ones for S1 and S2, when you fight a fairy individually, but S3 has its own boss theme for when they fight you all at once. And extra stage has its own stage/boss theme as well. So that makes 4 new stage themes and 3 new boss themes, which is a pretty good haul.

[Sen]

Dude I love this game so far. Ice chaining is incredibly fun; been playing on Lunatic so far and setting off screenwide ice chains is just amazing.

[Slaves]

Actually, no. The only boss themes that are shared are the ones for S1 and S2, when you fight a fairy individually, but S3 has its own boss theme for when they fight you all at once. And extra stage has its own stage/boss theme as well. So that makes 4 new stage themes and 3 new boss themes, which is a pretty good haul.

yeah, i know. i guess i was more disappointed by the fairies not having their own themes.

[Nobu]

If it's any consolation, there are a whopping 60 spellcards on Normal alone.

[Sungho]

This game may be the hardest game so far.
The game doesn't give many bombs, and the bomb doesn't do much damage.
Extra is like 'So many (speedy) bullets I'm gonna die!!' and it is very fast paced.

The game has 250 spellcards, but I think some of them are the same and split for the different routes.
It beats the number of Imperishable Night spell cards for 28 cards.

The Touhou Wiki will have a lot of things to do.

I unlocked Extra by 1cc ing every route(on Easy)

You are an amazing man, ZUN.

EDIT : ZUN's afterword says that you can unlock Extra by 1cc ing every route on any difficulty

[Formless God]

Holy shit Easy mode feels just like UFO Normal. Lunatic ... don't even get me started.



The game plays fantastic so far. I'm personally fine with tapping Z since PoFV, though I don't know if switching Z and C around would make things easier.

[Suikama]

What's with the lights the extra boss uses? It doesn't seem to kill you when you touch them. Do they sap your life or something?

[Slaves]

Extra boss theme is incredible. it's so different from regular ZUN stuff, but it's still so ZUN sounding.

[Solais]

This is the best Touhou game Evar.

Nuff said. :V

[Grand Octopus]

Played for a few hours. On Lunatic the game seems to be an exercise in memorization + freeze spamming to overcome disproportionate amounts of bullshit. Not really enjoying it tbh, but then again a new Lunatic usually seems like bullshit to me at first. Maybe with more time.

[Matsuri]

I was pretty uninterested in this game until I played it. It's better than I expected. :3

[Slaves]

I was pretty uninterested in this game until I played it. It's better than I expected. :3

oh yes. ZUN delivers again.




STAR SAPPHIRE IS BULLSHIT GODDAMN SIDEWAYS SPINNING BULLETS