Can someone explain the elements of imperishable nights and perfect cherry blossoms to me?
I have the english patches for them but I still cant understand anything about either game.
What is that info at the bottom left corners?
What are "points" and "time" on the side bar?
What are "cherry"?
What is a phantom and how do I get it?
What is all this junk falling off things I kill? Blue squares, red squares, pink squares, green squares, tiny circle things. What do they do when I collect them?
What is the relationship between these terms from the spellcard selection menu in PCB? "Spirit Sign-Pursuit Type-", "Homing Amulet", "Hakurei Amulet", "Fantasy Seal-Spread-", "Fantasy Seal-Concentrate-". "Dream Sign-Rapid Fire Type-", "Persuasion Needle", "Extermination", "Evil Sealing Circle", "Duplex Barrier"?
I heard there is a complex scoring system. How does it work?
Thank you for any help
Someone please explain how to play touhou?
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SockPuppetHyren
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Re: Someone please explain how to play touhou?
I'm not an expert at PCB or IN, but I'll see if I can break down some of your more basic questions.
In Perfect Cherry Blossom, the guage that appears is the Cherry counter. It guages the amount of Cherry point you collected, and your current maximum. Check links below for more in depth information.
Likewise, Time is the amount of Time orbs you collected, and how many you need to collect by the end of the stage.
Red squares = Power Items. They increase the power of your shot. They're only worth 10 points each. Since these are the Windows games we're talking about, power items won't appear when you're at full power. They're replaced by more point items in Imperishable Night and Cherry point in Perfect Cherry Blossom.
(PCB Only) Pink Squares = Cherry Points. They are an important part of Perfect Cherry Blossom's score system. Check the links below for more information.
(IN Only) Tiny Orbs = Times orbs. Since this game is about halting the night (lol fairy tale story), it is implemented in the game via these orbs. Players have to beat the game by 5:00 am (by the game's time). Since an "hour" passes with each stage normally, you have to collect a certain amount of time orbs decrease the amount of time you lose. Check the links below for more information.
Perfect Cherry Blossom
Imperishable Night
These should have all the information you need.
In Imperishable Night, that's your Human/Youkai guage. It is affected by which of the two character team you use more (You switch by holding shift). You can only collect Time orbs by being completely on one side of the gauge. It also affect how you collect Time orbs (On the Human side, you collect them when you hit enemies with your shot. On the Youkai side, you collect orbs by grazing)rig wrote: What is that info at the bottom left corners?
In Perfect Cherry Blossom, the guage that appears is the Cherry counter. It guages the amount of Cherry point you collected, and your current maximum. Check links below for more in depth information.
The Point gauge counts how many point items you collected in the stage.What are "points" and "time" on the side bar?
Likewise, Time is the amount of Time orbs you collected, and how many you need to collect by the end of the stage.
Cherry points. Those pink squares.What are "cherry"?
If you're talking about PCB, I'm guessing it's the Phantasm Stage option, available after you beat the extra stage. I haven't played PCB for a while, so my memory is rusty.What is a phantom and how do I get it?
Blue Squares = Point Items. They increase your score depending on where you collect them. You'll get the highest point value if you collect them at the very top. Likewise, you get the least points if you collect them at the bottom.What is all this junk falling off things I kill? Blue squares, red squares, pink squares, green squares, tiny circle things. What do they do when I collect them?
Red squares = Power Items. They increase the power of your shot. They're only worth 10 points each. Since these are the Windows games we're talking about, power items won't appear when you're at full power. They're replaced by more point items in Imperishable Night and Cherry point in Perfect Cherry Blossom.
(PCB Only) Pink Squares = Cherry Points. They are an important part of Perfect Cherry Blossom's score system. Check the links below for more information.
(IN Only) Tiny Orbs = Times orbs. Since this game is about halting the night (lol fairy tale story), it is implemented in the game via these orbs. Players have to beat the game by 5:00 am (by the game's time). Since an "hour" passes with each stage normally, you have to collect a certain amount of time orbs decrease the amount of time you lose. Check the links below for more information.
Those are shot-types what kind of bomb comes with them.What is the relationship between these terms from the spellcard selection menu in PCB? "Spirit Sign-Pursuit Type-", "Homing Amulet", "Hakurei Amulet", "Fantasy Seal-Spread-", "Fantasy Seal-Concentrate-". "Dream Sign-Rapid Fire Type-", "Persuasion Needle", "Extermination", "Evil Sealing Circle", "Duplex Barrier"?
Now, this, will take forever and a day to explain. Fortunately, there are in depth guides for both games. Don't you love the internet?I heard there is a complex scoring system. How does it work?
Perfect Cherry Blossom
Imperishable Night
These should have all the information you need.
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BulletMagnet
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Well you don't have to have Windows to play the Shrine Maiden games... The first 5 Touhou games were released on NEC's PC98. (See Toho Project.) Thouh I doubt most of you have one of these machines sitting around either. 
There are a few different emulators for it, but I don't know of any emulators for the PC-98 that AREN'T Windows-based. I ran the Windows based games in Linux just fine with Wine using the Nvidia proprietary drivers installed and no extra tinkering around was necessary. You could even run an emulator in an emulator to play the older ones, but I can't say I've tried it to see how well it works...
Well, other than Imperishable Night my favorite was probably the 5th one, Mystic Square. It was everything great about Touhou but it played/felt like a Genesis shmup at the same time. So those are all fun to look back on and play, whatever method you get working.
There are a few different emulators for it, but I don't know of any emulators for the PC-98 that AREN'T Windows-based. I ran the Windows based games in Linux just fine with Wine using the Nvidia proprietary drivers installed and no extra tinkering around was necessary. You could even run an emulator in an emulator to play the older ones, but I can't say I've tried it to see how well it works...
Well, other than Imperishable Night my favorite was probably the 5th one, Mystic Square. It was everything great about Touhou but it played/felt like a Genesis shmup at the same time. So those are all fun to look back on and play, whatever method you get working.
Collect lots of blue squares to get points. Collect lots of red squares to power up your weapons. Collect pink squares to get extra lives. The green square powers up your weapons to their max level?; I'm probably wrong about this. Tiny circle things come in two colors and do the following: blue squares are point items, purple squares increase the amount of points you get per blue circle AND blue square.rig wrote:What is all this junk falling off things I kill? Blue squares, red squares, pink squares, green squares, tiny circle things. What do they do when I collect them?
In PCB, there are no such circles, but everything else applies. Could I explain this any worse?
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The first five were released for the NEC PC-98.PPA wrote:Is there a way to play these games on a non-Windows platform?
Are there any tohuo developed for MACs or Linux based systems?
No, but most Touhou games were reported to work with little problems in WINE.
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Mischief Maker
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Both games:
Red items power up your weapons. When your weapons are at full power, the point of collection becomes active. The point of collection is an invisible horizontal line about 1/4th the distance from the top. Crossing the point of collection with full power will draw all the bonus items on the screen to you.
Blue items give you points. The higher up on the screen you collect them, the more points they're worth. picking them up at the point of collection or higher gives you maximum points. There is also a "point" counter on the right side of the screen. It counts how many blue counters you've picked up. If you collect the indicated number of point items, you get an extra life.
When you are in a boss fight, there is an indicator at the bottom of the screen showing the boss' position. This allows you to keep your attention focused on your hitbox instead of your shots and will increase your survivability. Your hitbox is the tiny circle that appears over your sprite when Shift is held down. You will only die if a bullet makes contact with your hitbox. Some bullets have larger sprites than their actual hitboxes. Finishing off a boss' spellcard without dying or using a bomb "collects" the spellcard and adds a huge and accumulating bonus to your score.
Imperishable Night:
The story of the game is that you're trying to slow time so you can restore the stolen moon in time for a moongazing ceremony.
The purple circles are time tokens. On the right side of the screen is a time counter, which measures the number of time tokens you've picked up. If you finish a level with the indicated number of tokens (dying makes you lose several) the game clock will only increase half an hour instead of an hour. Once it's 5am, the game ends. Finishing the game with time to spare gives a huge score bonus. In addition, on normal difficulty and above, if you finish the level with the requisite number of time tokans, the boss gets one last "bonus round" spellcard where you can neither die, nor bomb.
Normally your character is in human form. When you hold down Shift, she transforms into her phantom partner. The human form moves faster and usually has weaponry better suited to taking out waves of weak enemies. Phantom form moves more slowly (to better navigate complicated bullet patterns) and usually has weaponry suited to concentrating more damage on a single enemy.
All bosses and many enemies have ghostly orbiting options that augment their firepower. Their appearance is heralded by that "Wooh!" sound effect. You can shoot down the options with the human form. In phantom form, however, your character can physically pass through the options, and their bullets go through with no effect. Killing an enemy causes all their remaining options to explode and provide a mess of time points as well as a score bonus for each option that was active when the enemy died. You get more points for killing an enemy with all their options intact at the cost of having to dodge the additional bullets the options are spitting out.
On the bottom left is the phantom gauge. Shooting things in human form nudges it towards -100, while shooting things in phantom form nudges it to 100. When the gauge is between -80 to -100, every bullet you fire in human form that makes contact also creates a small time token that you automatically collect. Between 80 and 100, every bullet that you graze (let pass dangerously close to your hitbox) gives a similar time token, though this only works with bullets from bosses and midbosses.
Just shooting in a certain form moves the gauge slowly, but there are several methods for moving it back and forth quickly. Bombing in a certain form will instantly shift the gague to 100 for that particular form. Collecting a large number of time orbs also moves things quickly (eg. blow up an enemy with a couple satellites in phantom form, then quickly release shift before the time tokens make contact with you. The tokens that touch you in human form will shift your bar to -100). Shooting down a satellite in human form (without killing the main enemy) shifts the bar toward 0, so don't do that.
Red items power up your weapons. When your weapons are at full power, the point of collection becomes active. The point of collection is an invisible horizontal line about 1/4th the distance from the top. Crossing the point of collection with full power will draw all the bonus items on the screen to you.
Blue items give you points. The higher up on the screen you collect them, the more points they're worth. picking them up at the point of collection or higher gives you maximum points. There is also a "point" counter on the right side of the screen. It counts how many blue counters you've picked up. If you collect the indicated number of point items, you get an extra life.
When you are in a boss fight, there is an indicator at the bottom of the screen showing the boss' position. This allows you to keep your attention focused on your hitbox instead of your shots and will increase your survivability. Your hitbox is the tiny circle that appears over your sprite when Shift is held down. You will only die if a bullet makes contact with your hitbox. Some bullets have larger sprites than their actual hitboxes. Finishing off a boss' spellcard without dying or using a bomb "collects" the spellcard and adds a huge and accumulating bonus to your score.
Imperishable Night:
The story of the game is that you're trying to slow time so you can restore the stolen moon in time for a moongazing ceremony.
The purple circles are time tokens. On the right side of the screen is a time counter, which measures the number of time tokens you've picked up. If you finish a level with the indicated number of tokens (dying makes you lose several) the game clock will only increase half an hour instead of an hour. Once it's 5am, the game ends. Finishing the game with time to spare gives a huge score bonus. In addition, on normal difficulty and above, if you finish the level with the requisite number of time tokans, the boss gets one last "bonus round" spellcard where you can neither die, nor bomb.
Normally your character is in human form. When you hold down Shift, she transforms into her phantom partner. The human form moves faster and usually has weaponry better suited to taking out waves of weak enemies. Phantom form moves more slowly (to better navigate complicated bullet patterns) and usually has weaponry suited to concentrating more damage on a single enemy.
All bosses and many enemies have ghostly orbiting options that augment their firepower. Their appearance is heralded by that "Wooh!" sound effect. You can shoot down the options with the human form. In phantom form, however, your character can physically pass through the options, and their bullets go through with no effect. Killing an enemy causes all their remaining options to explode and provide a mess of time points as well as a score bonus for each option that was active when the enemy died. You get more points for killing an enemy with all their options intact at the cost of having to dodge the additional bullets the options are spitting out.
On the bottom left is the phantom gauge. Shooting things in human form nudges it towards -100, while shooting things in phantom form nudges it to 100. When the gauge is between -80 to -100, every bullet you fire in human form that makes contact also creates a small time token that you automatically collect. Between 80 and 100, every bullet that you graze (let pass dangerously close to your hitbox) gives a similar time token, though this only works with bullets from bosses and midbosses.
Just shooting in a certain form moves the gauge slowly, but there are several methods for moving it back and forth quickly. Bombing in a certain form will instantly shift the gague to 100 for that particular form. Collecting a large number of time orbs also moves things quickly (eg. blow up an enemy with a couple satellites in phantom form, then quickly release shift before the time tokens make contact with you. The tokens that touch you in human form will shift your bar to -100). Shooting down a satellite in human form (without killing the main enemy) shifts the bar toward 0, so don't do that.
As a fan of traditional vertcal shmups, I find I can't get into these Touhou games at all. You seem to spend ALL your game watching the bullet patterns (which don't vary that much) at the expense of actually shooting shit.
Actually a lot of the japanse horis are more fun - Trouble Witches, Prizhm,
Suguri and Thunder Love being good examples.
Jap vertical shmups like Zillion Beatz and Sonic Ironstorm are much more enjoyable IMHO.
Actually a lot of the japanse horis are more fun - Trouble Witches, Prizhm,
Suguri and Thunder Love being good examples.
Jap vertical shmups like Zillion Beatz and Sonic Ironstorm are much more enjoyable IMHO.
Shoot, dodge, collect . . .it's the ONLY way to be !!
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Mischief Maker
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Um... you do realize you're supposed to be shooting back at the boss, right?You seem to spend ALL your game watching the bullet patterns (which don't vary that much) at the expense of actually shooting shit.
It's funny how many people say they loathe Shanghai Alice games with the exception of Shoot the Bullet, which they say is genius. The fact of the matter is, ALL Shanghai Alice games are about timing and dangerous maneuvers to maximize your score. Just playing for survival is missing the point. You're not supposed to be hiding in the corner and making tiny shifts in your position on a bullet-by bullet basis. You're supposed to be scraping against thick bullet storms, zooming up past the point of collection, and letting enemy satellites keep firing at you to maximize your points when the leader is killed.
Sonic Ironstorm is a fine game, but there's not very much depth to it beyond survival. In Shanghai Alice, survival is just the beginning. It's not about reaching the end, it's about doing it in the wildest and most stylish manner possible. Think of Shanghai Alice (and most quality shmups in general) less like a mad dash to the end credits and more like a Tony Hawk game.
Of course, I shoot anything that moves. What I meant was that it's hard to concentrate on shooting when you're dodging millions of close-packed bullets.Mischief Maker wrote:Um... you do realize you're supposed to be shooting back at the boss, right?You seem to spend ALL your game watching the bullet patterns (which don't vary that much) at the expense of actually shooting shit.
Shoot, dodge, collect . . .it's the ONLY way to be !!
Since Touhou games spend a much larger percentage of the player's time during boss fights than old school shmups, and because there isn't destructable scenery or boss parts, you shoot much less things/min in Touhou games. Most of the time you are "watching bullet patterns" is during bosses obviously. His post makes a lot of sense, whether or not you agree with his stated preference for traditional shmups.Mischief Maker wrote:Um... you do realize you're supposed to be shooting back at the boss, right?As a fan of traditional vertcal shmups, I find I can't get into these Touhou games at all. You seem to spend ALL your game watching the bullet patterns (which don't vary that much) at the expense of actually shooting shit.
Even if you disagree, I hope you would admit that it is reasonable for others to only like STB, since it's much different from the other games. It would make a lot less sense to say "the only genius Touhou game is Mountain of Faith" for example.Mischief Maker wrote:It's funny how many people say they loathe Shanghai Alice games with the exception of Shoot the Bullet, which they say is genius.
And how many people are you thinking of, maybe 3? Compare that to how many Touhou or PCB fans out there haven't even tried STB. I don't think you need to shed any tears for the other games. Also I think if someone loathes Touhou, they wouldn't be able to like any of the games. There's a big difference between loathing something and not really caring for it.
As opposed to traditional shmups touhou has:kennyrh wrote:As a fan of traditional vertcal shmups, I find I can't get into these Touhou games at all. You seem to spend ALL your game watching the bullet patterns (which don't vary that much) at the expense of actually shooting shit.
Actually a lot of the japanse horis are more fun - Trouble Witches, Prizhm,
Suguri and Thunder Love being good examples.
Jap vertical shmups like Zillion Beatz and Sonic Ironstorm are much more enjoyable IMHO.
-Slow bullets, main focus is about your ability to read patterns and accurate movement as opposed to faster bullets and having little time to react. A matter of preferance.
-Play is a lot more passive and the need to redirect bullets is almost non existant. A lot of situations can be handled with simple tapping to left or right. You rarely have to go across the halfway of the screen unless you wish to collect items.
-Scoring system is based on survival, grazing (most games) and collecting items of point of collection border. That's the reason you'll find only a small number of touhou players actually playing for score. Scoring system is quite bad and doesn't really attract players that are used to more complex and different scoring systems.
-Stages have poor diversity, you'll pretty much face same enemies each stage and the main difficulty in the games lies actually in bosses and midbosses.
These are propably the main rasons why someone doesn't 'get' the games but that's just a wild guess so don't yell at me if I was wrong.
And if you can or can't follow boss movement and keep in line of fire with the boss lies solely in your own ability and experience. And there's always the 'enemy' notice in the bottom during bosses if you have difficulty in looking at the actual boss.
STB? Personally I find that the least interesting game of the series. I find it more enjoyable to be playing actual game runs as opposed to trying stuff over and over until you get lucky. Notice for me getting lucky means I clear something I can't clear more than ½ of the time.
Toho games don't usually attract traditional shmup players and traditional shmups don't usually attract toho players. Actually most of the toho fanbase doesn't play or hasn't played other shmups at all and find them boring and horrible on every aspect so the barrier applies to both sides. I don't know about Sonic Ironstorm or Zillion Beatz but as for myself I find doujin shmups like Zen-Ichi far superior but then again this thread isn't about my opinions.
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Mischief Maker
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I guess I was feeling a little punchy today after gametunnel burned Cloudphobia for being too haaaard. They're the gamespot of indie review sites and I have high hopes for Cloudphobia opening the door for more doujin shmups to be released as affordable direct downloads for us in the states. Meanwhile gametunnel went and awarded #5 indie action game of the year to frigging T.W.T.P.B. less than a week after it came out!
As for the "bullet grazing is a boring and simple scoring system" argument, why doesn't anyone level that same complaint at the Shikigami games?
As for the "bullet grazing is a boring and simple scoring system" argument, why doesn't anyone level that same complaint at the Shikigami games?
What? But Cloudphobia is damn awesome, damn accessible and, sadly, victim of its own awesomeness!Mischief Maker wrote:I guess I was feeling a little punchy today after gametunnel burned Cloudphobia for being too haaaard. They're the gamespot of indie review sites and I have high hopes for Cloudphobia opening the door for more doujin shmups to be released as affordable direct downloads for us in the states. Meanwhile gametunnel went and awarded #5 indie action game of the year to frigging T.W.T.P.B. less than a week after it came out!
As for the "bullet grazing is a boring and simple scoring system" argument, why doesn't anyone level that same complaint at the Shikigami games?
And it has 5 stages, not six. Plus the guy put an extremely old screenshot. =/ "Punishing"... He never played DoDonPachi Dai-Tou-Hou, I mean, DOJ.
Back to the topic:
The "spellcard selection" was the good old way to pick your weapon types (prior to Subterranean Animism Reimu meant homing bullets and slow-ass damage and Marisa usually meant broken overpowered lasers and a bigger hitbox) and bombs. Sadly, ZUN decided to take out bombs and replace them with "spirit attacks" or something like that.
Be sure to check which is the weapon type that suits you but usually with ReimuA you will be just fine in PCB and the Border Team is probably the best (in fact, overpowered, right?) for Imperishable Night.
NOW REACHES THE FATAL ATTRACTION BE DESCRIBED AS "HELLSINKER". DECIDE DESTINATION.
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SockPuppetHyren
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There was once a time, where I actually believed that.LtC wrote:Actually most of the toho fanbase doesn't play or hasn't played other shmups at all and find them boring and horrible on every aspect so the barrier applies to both sides.
Then I stopped caring about such things and got back to enjoying my hobby.
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A_Civilian
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Personally I've never played any of the Shikigami games. As for graze based scoring being bad system I think it depends on the game. In PCB it works out pretty well since you don't have to mass graze all the time. But when it comes to SA it's ridiculous because there's only 1 shot type that can competitively score. Also you'll need to suicide a few times during the game if you want to increase scoring effectively.Mischief Maker wrote:As for the "bullet grazing is a boring and simple scoring system" argument, why doesn't anyone level that same complaint at the Shikigami games?
Not really. To me it's a victim of it's own cleverness. When I saw it reviewed on GameTunnel my first thought was finally a real smhup but then I played the actual game... The way I see it, Cloudphobia isn't that far removed from the usual shmups that get's talked about in indie-land. You have to much to gauge at one time for such a fast moving game and it's to much of a puzzle. Sure, once you get into it it's fun but there's to much to learn before you can do that. And the game does a bad job of conveying to the player what he is actually defending. Why do I have to defend all sides when I can only face in one direction for instance? This seems to arbitrary to me. I have a feeling you have to be deeply entrenched in the world of Doujins to be able to 'get' the game.Observer wrote:What? But Cloudphobia is damn awesome, damn accessible and, sadly, victim of its own awesomeness!
All in all the game is sadly to far removed from traditional shmups for us to be able to call it a breakthrough.