A versus bullet-hell shooter
Touhou Kaeizuka ～ Phantasmagoria of Flower View. is the ninth entry in the Touhou Project. The store text calls it a bullet-hell shooter that pretends to be a versus game, wrapped in the skin of Tinkle Star Sprites. Flowers bloom all year in Gensokyo, and the fairies and youkai get worked up over it. Each side has its own field, and you clear the fairies and bullets coming your way while sending trouble back to the opponent. Getting hit drains the health bar at the top of the screen; health never recovers. When one more miss means a loss, a warning appears first, so you always know the round is on the line.
Playing together
Match mode is first to two round wins. Story mode sits on top of the round structure with lives: lose a round and you lose a life, run out of lives and it is game over. Input is set separately for player 1 and player 2, and the game accepts full keyboard, partial keyboard, or pad. For head-to-head the store text recommends two pads. When you are playing alone against the CPU, either pad or the full keyboard works regardless of the config. Charge shot and slow movement can be swapped between two layouts in the options: Slow, where holding the shot button charges and the slow button slows you down, or Charge, where holding the shot button slows you down and a separate button charges.
Attacks and how to fight back
Shots take down the fairies streaming in. A fairy explosion can chain into more fairies and wipe out white bullets, so popping fairies in a dense patch attacks and defends at once. White bullets you send over can be sent back, and after several exchanges they turn into large bullets that cannot be returned. Chain-killing fairies or killing ghosts sends a bird-shaped ghost to the opponent; it is tough to shoot down and its blast does not clear white bullets. Hitting it with your absorb field activates it into a will-o'-wisp that stays put, becomes easy to shoot, and works like a fairy explosion, but it self-destructs after a set time.
Charge shots, EX attacks, and card attacks round out the kit. A card attack needs at least two gauge marks; two marks can draw a counter, three marks fire a card that cannot be countered, and each costs one or two marks. The quick card attack button spends the whole gauge for an instant card at the current maximum level, which is handy when bullets box you in. Card attacks also clear the bullets, ghosts, and EX attacks around you, so they double as an emergency dodge. Filling the gauge fully, or pushing spell points past 100,000, 300,000, or 500,000, sends your phantom into the opponent's field to attack on its own; only one boss can be out at a time. If a boss is already in your field, activating your own boss lets you beat it and send it back.
Combos are counted in the top left. Killing a fairy with a shot is one hit, chaining with the blast adds more, and each white bullet caught in the blast adds to the count. Higher hits speed up spell point gain and increase the white bullets, ghosts, and EX attacks you send. Getting shot or taking damage resets the combo to zero. Spell points keep climbing if you start the next combo soon after the last one ends, and they convert to score when the timer runs out or when you take damage, which also resets them. Past 999,990 the counter stops and each hit adds 5,000 to score instead.
Before you start
The store text warns that the game contains intense bullet-hell scenes and suggests skipping it if you are very young or sensitive to dense bullet patterns. Long stalemates or flat matches bring out Lily White, who scatters large bullets and white bullets across both fields and then leaves. The five playable characters differ in speed, charge speed, slow movement, absorb field shape, and special traits: Reimu has a small hitbox and a wide circular absorb field, Marisa is fast with a forward-infinite absorb field, Sakuya has top-tier slow movement and stops activated spirits in place, Youmu can erase bullets with her sword at no gauge cost, and Reisen has a rotating eye-shaped absorb field with fast-rising activated spirits.