3910271
OH MY GOSH, trial in six days

3910302 i want my old 7.5 sprite style back

I am the Touhou lesbian, none may compare! Oh my.

3910336
I am partial to the HUD though~

3910257

First the train and now this?

I....I need this

My, interesting development~
Reimu can borrow the power of gods, it might not be strange that she borrows Yukari's powers~

One thing I'm curious about is what characters tehre are in the game

And I hope they fixed the waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too simple HM AI, they were so predictable even on Lunatic

Count down!

The location depicted during the battle is apparently Kourindou.

KASEEEEEEN



The wild and horned hermit Ibaraki Kasen is playable

3910467
Darn it, I've probably spoiled myself to the third trial playable but this is so awesome

3924996
Kasen playable huh? I honestly don't even know her too well yet, but I guess it's an interesting addition. That does also mean Kosuzu could be related to whatever is going on~

3925010

Her secret has not even been revealed. Perhaps it will in this game?
Perhaps, yeah. She could~

3925012
I honestly also hope that some older characters would appear, the likes of Mokou for instance. I still feel a little bad that Mokou and Kaguya were cut from UNL

3925016
I'm rather inclined toward Kagerou, Sekibanki, Yuuka and perhaps a character as early as Flandre Scarlet. Playable Mokou would be fun.

3925018
I feel like Flandre would only come out with a reason similar to Komeji in HM, but... she cannot stay in the sunlight, so might not be able to do much storywise.
(I of course hope for Alice and Yuyuko but doubt they would appear )

There might even be a possibility of an Maribel and Renko making a cameo in the background with the urban legend topic, but I doubt they would be able to fight.

3925026
Flandre likely could handle the sunlight too, she would just feel inconvenienced by it. She escaped temporarily during Shoot the Bullet to daylight, I believe. I hope for those two as well.
If so, it would hint at the release of a new album.

3925035
I will say that Kasen appearing in a game, thus bridging manga and games, is already quite the development, which certainly makes me think that more would be possible

There actually is no indication that Flandre's spellcards happen outside, they can be inside somewhere in Stb. Or it could also have been nighttime...
Actually, looking at a video of the stage before her aura appears, it seems to be inside the mansion~

3925045
How odd. I recall the background being brighter. Ah well, an occasional hitch. Still, Remilia herself does not feel terribly unable to bask in sunlight. She us weakened by it, but does not get too hurt. Hence the time where she had direct exposure to it during Silent Sinner is Blue.

3925045
Apparently, Last Words remain. There are some changes in mechanics as well, band screenshots for things to happen, but I'm keeping myself moderately blind until I can provide both Arctic and I with a download~
A boss character's stage is within a vortex.

3925055
Remillia is fine when she has a parasol, even ample covering seems to be plenty for her to deal with it~

3925056
I'm quite curious to see more Last Word animations then, though I do hope they allow the animations to be recoloured when the character uses an alternate pallete~

3925055

There it is, you can clearly see the light pouring in through windows on the carpet, it does get bright when her spellcard aura begins but this is what it looks like before that~

Playing the trial now

I've recorded the trial's Story Mode demo and am currently uploading it to Youtube, I will post when it finishes and put the video in the first comment of the discussion as well as the new post, it will be nice to discuss some of it then~

3925260
I'll be sure to watch it once I've discovered it with Arctic.

Yeah, I remember those things. I checked the Ex-stages and lo, it was inside.

This is the mysterious character appearing as a figure in the vortex.

The entire storymode! There are a few noticeable changes in the combat system, which take some getting used to, but overal I find it to be much more straightforward to pick up than HM was~

I've done some observing of various menus, and couldn't help but notice that profile images contained faces of Reimu, Marisa, Kasen and Ichirin. This makes me very curious if Ichirin and possibly others will return, or if it might use a system similar to SWR and UNL to have HM characters as "extra" content.

3925393
That might either be subject to change or a reference to how the previous demo went. Either way, I doubt many from the Hopeless Masequerade cast would return here. One or two, perhaps.

While HM had 6 buttons to work with, 2 for melee, 2 for danmaku and 2 for specials, ULL only has 1 for each of these, with 2 extra buttons. 1 of the extra buttons is for a dash, which i used often in UNL, and the last is for spellcards. The spellcards you have are also decided diffirently, as you can choose 1 of 3 spellcards to go into battle with, each having 1 of the 4 stats:
Power, speed, range and future.
You charge up the spellcard by taking damage and dealing damage, which is a simplified and more static way than was used in HM. You can even charge up a spellcard to double, which I assume leads to a stronger version (such as Master Spark and Final Spark, I can atleast confirm that double charge makes it do twice the damage).
The dark orbs required some testing, but it seems that staying near them will get you points on it, the one with the most points on it gets the orb. I think you need a certain amount for Last Words, but I can't be sure yet
In story mode, you need to fully charge the orb to get a spellbreak, which is the only time you can deal some reasonable damage to the enemy.
Also, each time an orb appears in vs matches, it will bring about a special effect to influence the field.

There is something I've noticed right away:
Selection of 3 spellcards reminds me of IaMP.
Orbs bringing forth effects reminds me of SWR's weather effect.
(Possible extra characters from previous game reminds me of UNL).
Graphics and engine are obviously HM.

They seem to be taking aspects from other games. The focus also seems to be on making the controls simple and giving only limited options for customisation. So simple and accessable seems to be keywords here.

Oh right, and the AI seems to be greatly improved over HM, they even seem to use spellcards intelligently which was a rarity even in UNL, the improved AI is certainly excellent

3925466
EDIT: At least four Occult Balls are needed for an unlocked Last Word which grows stronger the more you collect.

3925925
I have seen videos on the last words and have checked out some writing and effects of the occult balls' presence.

It seems the girls are using the rumours to their advantage in fights and are having a bit of fun with it.
I think we should do a lot of versus and check out what possible occult ball effects there are, though I feel a lot of the ones I've seen remind me of Yukari

3925942
Well, her boundaries are horrors.
Yeah, this should be fun. I'm maining Kasen, by the way. I'm learning!

3925962
Maining Reimu at the moment while trying to figure out how stuff works~

3926001
So am I with the aforementioned .

3926089
Hmm, I tried out Kasen... but I still feel as though the best combos for me come from Reimu. She just seems to be more fluid in it than Kasen and Marisa~

3926089
Oh! I just discovered something! Both the Danmaku and Special buttons can be held down for an aditional attack of each!

3926301
I feel more comfortable with Kasen, so I guess it's just a matter of preference.

3926326
Is that so? Would that be the X button then?

3926336
The Danmaku button attack can always be used. The special button one consumes an occult ball, so use with care. It is the way that Marisa drops a piano on someone however~

And I don't know, I don't use the standard setup

But doing some quick checking, yes, X is the danmaku button and C the special one~

3926343
Thank you. Now I learnt how to soar with the eagle and drop, but not how to send it into the opponent.

On the note of discussion; Yukari is, apparently, partially based on the legend of the mysterious Gap Woman who watches people through a gap. That would be how Reimu borrows the power of boundaries. Also, I can not get over "So Great! Hanako-san of the Toilet!"

3926437
Oh, that makes perfect sense. Marisa instead seems to cycle through 5 or 6 of the 7 mysteries that were on the poster, the last one being her Last Word spell (which seems soooo humiliating too )

3926437
Actually, the hawk is up+special, Kasen's charge danmaku is a rainbow thingy that I don't know what to do with, her charge special is a dark hand for a ranged grapple~
EDIT: plus, you need to use melee attack to swoop with hawk~

3926514
It's her cut-in that sells it

3926526
Ah, thank you then. New knowledge toward toward mastering the Kung fu hermit!

3926566
Oh, I just noticed something while doing a Reimu vs Reimu match...
I got a vibe as though the AI was learning by what I was doing, as it seemed to start copying things
I wonder if it's true...

And I have to say, Marisa's Master Spark card is epic in chaining, it can be added to almost any succesful strong attack

3928043
I have had encounters with strangely intelligent AIs which seem to actually wait for an opening to start a chain.
Is that so? I've never really been good at using Master Spark in the fighting games.

3928043
At some point the game suddenly started running much faster. Oh my gosh.

3928061
I also seem to be having a much easier time collecting the occult balls on Reimu than I do on Marisa. Reimu seems to attract the occult balls, from what I could see, I guess it's a passive ability for her?

3928133
Hah, and hten it got a lot harder huh

3928148
That, or she's just more mobile? I played Marisa for a bit and I found that she too can get to the Balls quicker. I'm still maining Kasen though, because she's fun.

3928150
Yes. It's less tedious now though.

3928185
BOOM!
I managed to hit Kasen with a piano