start date: 7/17/23
story complete: 7/18/23
written: 8/8/23
another day, another touhou post! i almost missed the deadline on this one (not that it really matters, the pace is gonna slow down a lot in a couple posts anyways once i catch up). today's game is a bit of a weird one!
nina's thoughts on Touhou 9 - Phantasmagoria of Flower View
PoFV is a pretty strange game. instead of being a single-player experience like most mainline touhou games, PoFV is a competitive 2-player danmaku vs game. there is still a 1-player story mode, but instead of 6 stages and boss fights each character has 8 versus matches against other characters tied loosely together into a storyline.
the gameplay is neat, its honestly impressive how well the concept of a competitive danmaku battle actually works and it feels pretty natural. as usual the screen fills up with enemies and bullets, but stages dont have defined patterns or moments, instead both players keep surviving through an increasing onslaught of bullets and spell cards until one slips up and takes too many hits. destroying enemies creates a small explosion around them that deals damage to nearby enemies and sends weak bullets in the range to the other player's screen. if you line it up right you can get some nasty chain reaction explosions that can clear up your screen and really put the pressure on your opponent. in addition you can put more direct pressure on the other guy by building up your spell meter, expending it to summon powerful bullet patterns or even your own character as a boss fight onto your enemys side. while at times it can get a bit ridiculous (the two 'villain' characters have completely broken spell cards and insanely good ai piloting) in general the gameplay is fair and pretty fun!
as a fighting game of sorts, PoFV naturally has a rather large character roster, a total of 14 playable characters! we have the returners in Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya, Youmu, Reisen, Cirno, Lyrica, Mystia, Tewi, and Aya. Then we have 4 characters new to this game: Medicine, Yuuka, and the 'villains' of the story Komachi and Eiki Shiki. each character has different stats, shot types, zone shapes, and spell attacks, which makes for a lot of variety in the roster.
to try and unlock everything i beat the story mode for all 12 choices (Komachi and Eiki Shiki don't have a story mode). i didn't aim for 1cc's since the game doesn't differentiate whether you used a continue or not, but a couple of the runs happened to be done without continues: Marisa, Mystia, Aya, Medicine, and Yuuka. i dont remember enough about all the different characters bullets and stats to say that i really prefer any over the others, tbh if i were to play more i would probably just pick a character based on vibes alone. Marisa is my go-to generally, but im also partial to Cirno, Mystia, and Aya.
for the four new characters, theyre cool. it'd be kinda mean to leave only one out, so i'll just talk about all of them
Yuuka is probably my favourite solely because she gets a lot of cute art with Wriggle lol. for some reason the fandom is very split on whether Yuuka is an angry masochist or a lonely but wholesome flower lady. i think shes realistically somewhere in the middle.
Medicine is also a neat concept, being an abandoned doll in a field of poisonous flowers who came to life through raw poisonous energy.
Komachi is goofy, shes basically the grim reaper of Gensokyo but shes also really lazy and always slacking off, pretty much every singleplayer storyline involves her getting caught snoozing by her boss Eiki Shiki.
Eiki Shiki herself is probably the weakest new character imo, its funny watching her judge all the characters supposed sins, but its really all she talks about, and her annoying fight isnt winning her any points for me.
PoFV is certainly a weird outlier in the series, but i think the gameplay does genuinely work pretty well! the idea of making a competitive bullet hell is so out there and they really put in the work to make it happen.
as always, thanks for reading! and if, somehow, someone is reading this who is remotely decent at touhou and wants to try playing the 2-player mode of this game with me, Please get in contact with me through whatever means works for you. i would love to give this a shot against an actual human.