天下制覇

Let the catfish reign.

Well, I guess let’s start with the good. I like the new spellcard system where you break the attacks in progress and then get about 5 seconds to lay down some real hurt on the enemy. Plus five new characters (Sanae, Cirno, China, Suwako, and Utsuho) to add in some more variety, although after being forced to play through Sanae’s story mode once, I’d be happy if I never touched her again in my life. So here’s the bad. It’s still Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. I still have the same issues with the janky controls, the same problems with the iffy hit detection (even worse with "my hit box is bigger than my sprite" Cirno) and made worse by OtGing during spellcard breaks, and the same general "shoot lasers; win" AI balance issues that prevent the story mode from being even potentially difficult. I also wish that they could have used a bit more creativity with the player spellcards. It seems like every single spellcard for the new characters is just a larger or longer version of one of their normal attacks. Oh yes, and the weather mechanic is still awful.

As for thoughts on the characters, the less said about Sanae, the better. She’s slow, most of her projectiles have a big delay, and while they do a good job cancelling other projectiles, they take so long that you need to have yours out before the enemy puts theirs out. God help you if they just graze, or attack first. China plays like… well… China. She’s actually kind of interesting because her basic AAAA has different properties than everybody elses’ and can be almost seemlessly done low as well, which is pretty huge for corner pressure, although still poor for damage. At least she finally has a real projectile (6C). Cirno, strangely enough, plays a fair bit like Patchouli, although much much slower and much more focused on direct projectiles. She’s very floaty and pretty useless if the opponent is in your face, but some nice midrange stuff. Utsuho is a beast through and through. She has some control issues in that her dash and jump are about twice as large as some other characters, and she’s pretty slow, but the giant lasers and screen covering specials more than make up for that. Suwako requires unlocking, so… maybe in a week or so I’ll work up the motivation to get around to her. Maybe not. I’m not really sure I could survive playing through story mode as China and Cirno, even with a giant catfish to fight.