Holy shit get hype.
Hype be gotten. This just went from "meh, when it comes out and I get time to finish what I'm doing" to
where's the download link.
The game balance very much reminds me of Phantasmagoria Trues (imagine that) in that your stock fluctuates wildly between Infinite Miko Works and virtually nothing based on being able to sustain chains of hypers and (more importantly) not chain-dying as a result of not being able to sustain chains of hypers. I thought that bombing for points would work out a lot better than it does - I think that enemies drop drastically fewer point items during bombs. I think that being able to hyper through bosses is intentional; otherwise they wouldn't drop something like half a bar of pointsicles with each capture.
Most of the game's difficulty is in the stages, I think. The bosses (so much as you can't hyper-plow through them) are by and large not places to spam resources, although all of them have ways of punishing lazy players.
What's the dominant shot type in this game? Just playing around...
*ReimuA seemed particularly weak at first glance, even the homing.
*ReimuB seemed fairly standard.
*ReimuJanitor actually looked pretty interesting. I'm not sure its gimmick is worthwhile in a several places, but the hyper (with incredible auto-collect range!) is great boss repellent without needing to stay directly under them.
*MarisA FINALLY FINALLY SOMEONE ACTUALLY MAKES A GOOD MARISA TYPE I'm sorry that was favoritism but she actually has both game-highest damage (I think) and the ability to use it.
*MarisaB didn't seem particularly better in the damage department, and the missiles seemed both unreliable and distracting. The lock-on (from MSD?) during the hyper was interesting, but strong enough to bother.
*MarisaC was actually pretty strong and there are definitely parts of Stage 3 where you want a back-firing shot, but the short-range only hyper was kind of rubbish. It didn't seem much stronger than any other hyper given its range, and if you're close to the stage enemies in this game you're probably about to die horribly.
IMO the game suffers from a case of Can't See Shit. Using MarisA didn't help (much like with UFO, dodging bullets directly in front of you involves prayer due to your bright alpha-blended options), but the pointsicles that the bosses drop are really not easy to distinguish from other bullets (especially blue butterflies).
The backgrounds are good (Stage 3 looks great); the music is disappointing.
You can see a different Kodama based on the shot type you're using (A, B, or C).