Life in the Eastern Fantastic Land

On top my recent post translating the text of th13's announcement, due to the juicy details offered within, I have decided to spend some time analysing the tantalising images that ZUN has offered us in his blog post.

Note. though, that ZUN offered a disclaimer at the end of his post to discourage unrealistic expectations.

＊ゲーム画面は開発中の為、確実に変わります。ほら変わった

あ、書き忘れた。例大祭で配布するのは体験版ですよ？

The game's interface screen is under development, and thus it will definitely change. Look, it just changed. Also, I forgot to say but the Reitaisai release will be a trial version..

The first thing that most people would notice is that, on top of the Game Start, Extra Start, and Practice Start, there is also a "Spell Practice". However, the latter 3 are greyed out. While Extra and Practice modes are a given, "Spell Practice" may indicate the return of 東方永夜抄　～ Imperishable Night’s Spell Practice mode. Again, bear in mind ZUN's disclaimer. If so, then it is likely that the six-stage structure from before will stay, although the existence of Spell Practice mode does seem to contradict ZUN's reference to keeping the complexity of the game moderated.

Also of some noteworthiness is the fact that the Manual is a permanant feature on the menu. This seems to suggest that either

1. the game features some complex mechanism like Double Spoiler's Shooting, or Great Fairy War's bullet freezing,
2. the Manual is going to be a permanent feature on the main menu,
3. or, that this main screen is just a draft and the trial or final versions may see such unecessary bits taken away.

I am personally leaning towards the last option. Looking at how late this announcement was made(less than 2 weeks to Reitaisai) I get the feeling that this is just a temporary appearance.

Lastly, the three red, blue and green blobs floating behind Reimu suggest that those are our "divine spirits", or at least a fundamental part of the storyline.

A Marisa shot. The lasers seem spread, with unfocussed mode. I noticed that lives are now represented with hearts, and bombs with green stars. Both of them seem to have some kind of counter underneath them.  It's quite asumable that when you collect ten of either you get a full life/bomb. Points and power systems seem to be unchanged from UFO, with the point item value again being a variable for scoring purposes. Although the below shot of Sane having 3.07 power does raise some questions as to the power value of each power item, I think it's a minor issue for now.

On field, there seems to be a lot going on. Most visible is the skull emblem and some item near the bottom. This is likely to be some kind of PCB-esque Shinra-kekkai/Supernatural Border. This is somewhat supported by the image below of Marisa with the timer flashing. The fact that the symbol looks very item-ish suggests it can be activated or auto-activated. Just speculating here. Further, there are grey-ed out blue star items near the middle. These could have somehting to do with the main mechanism of the game.

The most visible feature in here is Marisa turning Super-Saiyan, with a counter visible in the middle. Notice how there is a flood of winged items on the screen. This could be the same blue items as seen in the second picture. I deduce and theorise that these must be grabbed for great justice. The lack of bullets on screen is also somewhat suspicious. Could the winged items actually be bullets transformed?

Also, Marisa's christmas tree missles are back as options, or that the shot during this special -mode allows some kind of shot modification. It's unclear whether there's any gameplay effect from the different-coloured shot though. The fact that she has both these missles and the lasers from above suggests that each character will have 2 shots, 1 bomb, which is further confirmed with the below image of Youmu.

Notice how the point item value here is relative high, -despite Sanae's low graze score? This is strong evidence to suggest that the new mechanism may eschew grazing as a form of scoring, which would be in line with ZUN's suggestion that complexity will be moderated. After seeing Subterranean Animism and UFO's best high score runs morph into grazing orgies, I would say this is a welcome change(perhaps MoF-style?).

Also note the green items on screen. I suspect these are the green equivalent of the blue star, and might change into special items during the "super-saiyan" mode. I could be wrong. The weirdest bit is Sanae's power of 3.07, which really isn't a variable of anything. Perhaps the game starts at one power and each item is worth 0.03 points?

I notice the Double Spoiler/Great Fairy Wars body-portrait conversation style with speech bubbles is back. Also note that despite Reimu's graze score, the point item value is low. Further proof that graze will not be a major scoring mechanism?

Incdentally, the text to translates something like(can't see the goddamn second line well enough) "Were Divine Spirits such bustlingly appearing numerous spirits?".

That's it for now, just waiting for the release on the interwebs, since I am too stuck in school work to go to RTS8.