Touhou Project Shooter Maihana Soumakyou (Ps4)

[2dvertical]

Is this game still a go or has it been cancelled? Or is it on the jp store and i just cant find it? All the articles of the announcement seem to be a few years old

http://www.dualshockers.com/2015/05/05/ ... 4-as-well/

http://lost-identity.jp/souvenir/html/M ... l/Top.html

[Elixir]

It's still coming as far as I can tell. The developer has been working on Croixleur Sigma's PS4 physical release, which also apparently has VR support and released last month. It's not a shmup though, it's a dungeon crawling type deal.

You could always contact the dev @kagring on twitter if you're really curious.

[BulletMagnet]

This is now out on the US PSN, and it IS a shmup, a Deathsmiles-style one to be precise. Decided to pick it up, will need a bit more time before posting impressions.

[BulletMagnet]

Pkayed a bit more of this, hopefully enough to offer a quick overview:

- As I mentioned, it's a horizontal Deathsmiles-style shooter, with one button to shoot left and another to shoot right, along with the "bomb" ("death bombing" included) and "focus" functions you'd expect. The "point of collection" is here too, in slightly-altered form; move all the way to either side of the screen to collect stuff dropped only by enemies that appeared from that side, you'll need to head to the opposite end to vacuum up pickups from baddies that came from there.

- Speaking of pickups, the requisite "P" and point items return, along with a new green icon that's basically money, used to buy accessories for your character in the "shop" menu; some offer distinct advantages (smaller hitbox, an extra starting life) while others are tailored to personal preferences (raising or lowering movement speed), but they're all optional if you want to ignore them. Weirdly I don't see an "arcade" mode which restricts players to their "default" stats, though, which might affect the apppeal of competitive score attacking for some.

- Mechanics-wise the main addition is an invincible dash, which cancels bullets and damages enemies; it's governed by a recharging meter (you can usually get two or three additional dashes after the first before it empties), so you're encouraged to use it a lot, especially since enemies killed with it are worth more (grazing makes it refill faster, too). All boss phases need to be finished off with a dash attack, which sounds annoying but isn't too bad since 1) Your dash meter automatically tops off once if you wear a boss down enough for a dash to KO them, 2) Dashing through bullets strengthens the attack's power, so you can end phases early if you charge through a big pattern, and 3) An icon appears around the boss signifying when your dash's current power is enough to do the job. The one caveat is that careless dash use can sometimes land you in a bad spot when it runs out, so a bit of discretion is still needed.

The other new feature is an "emergency" shield that you can use even when you're out of bombs and dash meter; it lowers your power level, but can save you (or your attempt to "capture" a boss' spell card, since only bombs will scuttle it) if you rememeber it's there.

- On that note, taking a single, lone hit does not instantly kill you (though it does lower your score multiplier no matter what); instead, you're stunned for a moment, during which time you can only move, and VERY slowly. If something else gets you before you recover THEN you're dead, but if you can survive being stunned then you'll recover and be able to take another "stun" hit before dying. Mind you, if you get tagged when you're in the middle of a thick pattern you're pretty much certain to die anyway, but this system does take some potential frustration out of being nicked by a random stray shot; off to the side, you can also make your hitbox visible either all the time or only during "focused" movement in the Options menu.

- At the start Reimu is the only playable character, but there are three shot type variations to choose from; if the trophy list is any indication beating the game with her unlocks Marisa and doing the same with the latter unlocks Cirno. The standard selection of difficulty modes is present, but you need to unlock Lunatic and Extra. There's also the usual silly story dialogue (voiced in Japanese), but most of it can be skipped; one minor touch I appreciated is that bosses seem to have a few different phrases they can say at various points in a battle, and they shift around a bit each time you play, which cuts down on the tedium some. An unlockable encyclopedia/gallery is here too, along with a tutorial for a quick go at the game's systems.

Overall one of the better Touhou fan games I've tried, IMO (and one of the few actual shooters that's made it to the PS4), though the emphasis on making things accessible to newer players will turn some off; it's 30% off for another week or so, though, so if you're interested in snagging it now's not a bad time to look at a few videos and see what you think (though apparently it's also coming to Switch at some point?).

[CloudyMusic]

Thanks for the write-up. Sounds like it might be somewhat up my alley as a fan of Deathsmiles, so I decided to pick it up while it's still on sale.