TH 13.5 Hopeless Masquerade

• Mentosftw wrote on 2012-12-30 07:24
  I just tried one round of the trial and played as Marisa. The gameplay is quite unique for a fighting game and it's completely different than the touhou fighting games made before.
  
  Basically, it's all air combat and movement takes place in pretty much 3 layers of the air. By default, the characters will stay in the middle layer and pressing up or down will float you towards the upper and lower layers. After that, the characters will quickly gravitate back to the middle layer.
  
  There's a button for weak melee attacks (z) which are good for creating combos and strong melee attacks (x) which are good for single strong hits. Strong hits can also be chained through good timing.
  
  The third attack is like your super strong attack from what I've seen (c).
  
  Different attacks are made through pressing a direction and then pressing the attack buttons.
  
  This time around, there's a meter on the screen for each character which is used to fuel special attacks. It refills at a relatively quick pace. Different directional attacks will consume different amounts of this bar.
  
  It's very important to position yourself in one of the three layers of the fighting area in order to attack at maximum efficiency.
  
  As always, dashing will negate spell attacks but not melee attacks.
  
  As for magic attacks, there's a and s which are weak and strong spells respectively.
  
  Oh and one more thing. There's not really a knockdown system so you can keep attacking your opponent.
  
  Reimu also has her ability from SA where she can sneak from one side of the screen to the other xD
  
  Marisa has three awesome attacks, down X where she charges downwards with her broom which is a great attack to quickly hit ducking characters, down C which looks like the upside down version of Kirby's final cutter attack and up C where she fires bullets upwards which then rain from the sky. Up C is great for attacking opponents directly above you since it's fired in 90 degrees.
  
  Marisa's master spark is the s or d button. Occasionally, she'll fire a more powerful version of it. I'm not sure how it's done but so far it seems random.
  
  Fights are by default 99 seconds and it's very common to see time outs because fights seem more planned out and slower. Time out wins aren't based on remaining HP but this positive or negative number next to your HP bar. Not sure how it builds or decreases..
  
  Edit: The numbers are most likely based on how much you please the crowd that witnesses the fight. In the two stages you get in the trial, you'll find many touhou characters cheering in the background. For example, the Hakurei shrine will have Yukari, Chen and Ran, the three fairies from the manga and the scarlet mansion characters.
  
  Edit:
  Well, it seems like as for customization, you can now change the directional attacks in the profile screen. The attacks link to each other differently and together they change an attribute chart which roughly describes how your character will behave or something.
• Invertex wrote on 2012-12-30 07:57
  I'm pretty sure C = Z + X and D = A + S
  Respectively, the game command lists seem to list them as A, B, X, and Y for Weak, Strong, Weak Spell, Strong Spell respectively.
  
  Pretty sure you have command normals from inputting a direction and either of the Strong keys and specials (including supers) mapped to whichever combination of A+B+Direction or X+Y+Direction you want. Pretty sure this is what the left/right selects as you mentioned.
• Mentosftw wrote on 2012-12-30 08:04
  The specials is rather hard to do. It's all related to the number next to your hp bar.
  
  It seems like IaMP's spellcard attacks makes a return as you have to announce the special first which adds a graphic layer to the background and then the spell is used a couple seconds later.
  
  The circle meter is the crowd appeal meter.
  
  The HP meter has a blue and white bar at the same time. It's got to do with damage taken (blue bar) and how much hp you have left (white bar).
  
  I think specials are based on this as well.
• Invertex wrote on 2012-12-30 16:27
  Okay, so I messed around with 13.5 a bit more. I'm sure the more dedicated Touhou/Fighting Game places already had this all figured out a while ago. But oh well.
  
  The whole white/blue/red health bar thing is actually fairly simple. Your entire bar starts out as white. When you get hit, you take damage (indicated by the red portion that becomes grayed out), and an equal part of your health bar becomes blue. You also get blue bar for hitting the opponent, but it's nowhere near as much (a quarter/third?) as if you were getting hit yourself. When all your remaining health is blue, you become able to declare a spell card.
  
  Also of note is the timer will not hit 0 when after a spell card has been declared, it will freeze at 01 until the spell card expires or is used.
  
  Meanwhile, at the bottom of the screen there is your spirit bar. Using spells/specials and blocking drains it, yada yada yada. Next to it each character has their own unique marker (stars for Marisa, ying yang balls for Reimu, and a huge character for Ichirin). I've only been messing with Marisa, but every time you either use a special or Y attack, it gives her a star. Upon gaining 3 stars, Marisa's next special or Y attack gains extra damage and different properties (like her broom charge gains a wall bounce).
  
  I assume Reimu and Ichirin's correspond to their own gimmicks.
  
  Also, holding a dash long enough will cause a wind effect and add a special effect to the dash. If you're in this second stage of your dash, you gain access to 66B and your 66A gets powered up. Auto combos are back, and AAAA will give you a default 4 hit combo.
• Mentosftw wrote on 2012-12-31 07:11
  As far as gimicks go, Reimu can warp from one end of the stage to the other by double tapping against a wall while Ichirin's damage increases momentarily when she turns red from taking enough damage.
  
  I didn't know Marisa had that star thing. No wonder her spark would occasionally be more powerful.
• Mentosftw wrote on 2013-01-03 19:51
  Sorry for the double post but am I the only one who's a little bit annoyed by Marisa's costume change?
  
  It's now dark blue/purple and white; a bit like the one from phantasmagoria of dim dream.
  
  And that hat is so freaking big now.