start date: 7/6/23
normal 1cc: 7/10/23
written: 8/6/23
continuing my 'grimoire of nina' touhou posting series!
nina's thoughts on Touhou 7 - Perfect Cherry Blossom
PCB is the next touhou in line and it immediately kicks up a notch from EoSD in terms of gameplay. adding Sakuya from EoSD as a third playable character with 2 options of her own, and adding the new cherry gauge system! one of these additions is great, and the other one im not so sure on.
let's start with the more questionable addition: the cherry gauge is absolutely bizarre. the methods of how it fills, what its purpose is, how youre supposed to be using it, etc are all downright incomprehensible without reading the touhou wiki page about it, which im currently doing to make sure i dont get this part wrong. 'the cherry gauge' is actually 3 seperate meters ('cherry', 'cherrymax' and 'cherry+') that are all increased by different means and do different things. you have your 'cherry' value which is increased up to your 'cherrymax' value by shooting enemies and picking up cherry items, and it goes up faster if you shoot unfocused. simultaneously as your 'cherry' increases your 'cherry+' also increases but once that value hits 50,000 it resets and you activate 'supernatural border' which magnetizes items to you and gives you an extra hit, but if you go for a few seconds without being hit it wears off and you gain an increase to your 'cherrymax' based on how many bullets you grazed while in 'supernatural border', with unfocused grazes being worth more. also the purpose of 'cherry' is that when you pick up point items they are worth more potential max points depending on your 'cherry' value. did you get all that? of course you didnt! and i still skipped over some of the nuance involved like losing meter when you die or bomb! all of this nonsense and it just amounts to getting more points to your total that don't even actually do anything cause lives aren't given to you based on your point total in this game like they are in EoSD! [sighs]
anyways, Sakuya is here now! cool! taking a boss from the last game and making her a protag in this one is just sick, and both of her movesets are really fun too! her A set has nutty spread coverage when unfocused and concentrated homing blasts while focused which is just an amazing pair (even if her actual damage kinda stinks). her B set is super weird to control but i kinda love it, moving Sakuya left or right angles her knife throws in that direction, and you can focus to lock some of her knives at that angle while you move around. i already was a fan of it before i even realized the true potential of the focus locking, it gives you insane potential to hit like the entire screen from anywhere without the loss of damage that typically comes with high spread or homing. putting Sakuya aside, Reimu and Marisa both play pretty much exactly as they did in EoSD with the same moveset options, which means theyre both still fun! i played them all a lot but eventually got my 1cc with Reimu's homing shots because they make Youmu and Yuyuko’s fights way easier.
in terms of the new characters, im not as big on the cast of PCB compared to the last game (← statements that will get my killed by the Yakumo family). the characters are kinda all over the place and have varying relation to the actual plot. my favourite of the new additions is definitely
Alice, another magician (no i definitely dont have a type [pushes Marisa and Patchouli out of frame]) who uses an array of magical dolls and rainbow beams to fight, and frequently shows up in later games teaming up with Marisa. she's a really good character and pairs well with Marisa (🏳️🌈), but her inclusion in this game is kinda strange. she just shows up in stage 3 and has no signifigance to the plot.
Youmu is also pretty neat, being a half-phantom dual-sword user, and
Chen is a cute kitty whos trying her best,
but there really aren't many characters in this one i'm super into.
as you may be able to guess from the tone of this one, im not too hot on PCB. Its certainly not bad, its still really fun, but to me its one of the weaker entries, held up by the various characters and concepts it introduces that are expanded on later in the series like Alice, Yukari, additional playable characters, etc.
thanks again for reading, and sorry if youre a die-hard PCB fan! :P