Gensou Shoujo Wars/Gameplay
Gameplay closely follows standard SRW, such as with movement, attacking and counterattacking/defend/evade, player/enemy phases, Spirit Commands, etc. Along with that are several original elements added to reflect the gameplay mechanics of the Touhou danmaku games.
Basic Gameplay
Follows standard SRW.
Spirit Commands
Follows old SRW games, where each character begins a stage with a certain amount of SP, which is depleted as you use Spirit Commands.
Terrain Ranks
A unit's terrain ranks affect their accuracy, evasion, and received damage while within that terrain. An attack's terrain ranks affect the damage dealt against an opponent within the terrain in question.
Night
Aside from Land, Sky and Water, GSW introduces a 4th "terrain", which is Night. During Night maps, or in squares treated as Night terrain due to special effects/skills from enemies or allies, those with an S rank in Night will gain a single rank boost for the other 3 terrain ranks, and deal +10% damage dealt.
Movement Methods
All ally units who permanently join your team are capable of flight. During flight, moving through each square costs 1 MP.
Units in different movement methods (Sky/Land for example) are incapable of performing Support Attacks/Support Defends for each other.
Suwako Moriya is capable of accessing one more terrain type, which is Underground (地中). Burrowing through the ground prevents both her and the enemy from attacking each other, however the enemy AI will still be drawn to her position. Burrowing will also allow Suwako to ignore danmaku field effects, but also prevents her from switching to her pair partner or receiving terrain bonuses. Of course, this movement method is only available for maps with land terrain.
Power
In the Touhou danmaku games, obtaining Power items throughout the game will strengthen the playable character's shot type. In GSW, Power is treated like Will in SRW games.
Points
Points are obtainable items that will increase the player's score counter in the Touhou danmaku games. In GSW, Points are treated like funds used to upgrade ally units' attacks in SRW games.
Cost
Each ally unit is assigned with a a deployment cost ranging from 1.0 to 4.0. All stages will give you a certain deployment cost limit, and you cannot deploy a selection of units which exceeds that limit. Early on, this won't affect you much since you will only begin with a few units. As the game progresses, you will no longer be able to deploy everyone you might want, making you pick and choose who you want to use.
Personal Skills
Personal Skills (固有スキル) are selectable perks that the player can choose for their character during the intermission. Many of them behave like pilot Ace Bonuses or units' unique Full Upgrade Bonuses in SRW. As a character levels up, they can obtain more Personal Skills, or have some of their existing Personal Skills accordingly leveled up as well. Only one Personal Skill can be equipped per character for each stage, so switching between different Personal Skills depending on the upcoming stage is recommended.
Marking
Press the assigned Start button to mark a square. The square will then be marked by a green-colored frame within it. Hold the Start button and quickly press the Up/Left/Down Arrow to get a blue/orange/yellow frame instead. Press Start again on a marked square to remove the mark, and hold Start at anywhere on the map to remove all marks on squares.
Other Shortcut Keys
- Hold Start + R1 + R2 simultaneously to revert to the current mid-stage save.
- Quickly press Start + R1 + R2 simultaneously to return to the main menu.
Basic Gameplay (Continued)
Pair Units
From Eternal Chapter onwards, you will be capable of forming and deploying pair units - 2 characters fighting together as a single unit. This system is a reference to the 2-character partner system of Touhou Eiyashou, the first Touhou game that GSW's Eternal Chapter covers, and is implemented by adopting the Tag Battle System of SRW Z3.
As mentioned above, the pair unit system in GSW closely follows the Tag Battle System of Z3. Pair units are formed during the intermission, and cannot be separated during a stage. There is a front character and a rear character, whose position you can freely switch with the "Switch" (交代) command. When the pair unit attacks an opponent, the rear character will strike first, followed by the front character. The front character can use whatever attacks they like, but the rear character can only attack with an "Assist Attack" (支援攻撃). The range of the rear character's Assist Attack depends on what the front character uses; as long as the front character's attack can reach the target, so can the rear character's Assist Attack. Aside from this, the rear character's Assist Attack still consumes MP/ammo as usual. The rear character can also provide Support Defend for the front character if they have the skill, provide Friendship Bonuses, and allow the front character to perform a Combination Attack that is shared between the front and rear character. Furthermore, if a character at the rear has a higher cost than the fromt character, the front one will gain an Accuracy buff that scales to the difference.
If any of the combining characters are in a team with a character not part of the combination, the combining trio will not be able to combine. So Sunny/Luna and a solo Star would be able to combine, but not Sunny/Luna and Star/Daiyousei.
Pair units can only be formed by the player team; as such, there are no enemy pair units.
The Palanquin Ship and Hisoutensoku are the only intermission-available units that are not capable of being put in a pair unit.
Full Power Mode
In the Touhou danmaku games, Full Power Mode is the state when the playable character has accumulated the maximum amount of Power after obtaining Power items, with their shot type strengthened to the limit. Reaching Full Power Mode also converts all enemy bullets on the screen into obtainable Points for a split second.
In GSW, Full Power Mode bears some resemblance to SRW Z3's Maximum Break. Introduced in Gensou Shoujo Wars Yume, Full Power Mode allows a rear character in a pair unit that has both characters at 150 Power to use whatever attacks they like, with no damage penalty. When both characters of a pair has reached 150 Power, a quick animation will play noting they are now capable of activating Full Power Mode. Simply select the Full Power Mode (フルパワーモード) command from the unit menu to do so. Similar to an Assist Attack, the rear unit does not have to worry about range when using their chosen attack.
Each pair unit can only activate Full Power Mode once per stage. This limitation can be lifted through certain stage events or through the use of Personal Skills.
This system substantially increases the use of characters primarily specced for the back like Yukari, and is an overall massive buff to the damage a single team can do.
Danmaku System
Danmaku/Danmaku Fields
Literally meaning "curtain fire", danmaku is a general Japanese term for the hail of bullets that cover the screen in any given STG. In order to simulate this in Super Robot Wars fashion, all enemies in this game are capable of emitting fields of danmaku represented as orange squares (generic) or blue squares (Boss Spell Cards). Any player units standing in these fields will suffer from a combination of Defense, Evasion, and Movement penalties, and sometimes (or often, in the case of Boss Spell Cards) a special penalty too. The penalties will be displayed on the bottom left of the screen. These fields also can increase the stats of various enemies if applicable/stated should they be inside it. Danmaku field generic penalties can stack, which is visually represented as the colored squares being brighter.
The penalties typically scale with difficulty, as does how many fields go up at once. On Normal, danmaku penalties are 75% as effective. On Hard, danmaku penalties are increased to 125%. On Lunatic, danmaku penalties are increased to 150%.
This system is fairly harsh on both Supers and Reals alike, thanks to the Defense and Evasion penalties. It also makes blowing through boss health bars riskier than your average SRW, as each bar is associated with a new spellcard and thus a new danmaku field. The danmaku field associated with the spellcard barring generic penalties are typically unique to the boss and may vary in difficulty.
Fast Mode/Slow Mode & Graze Damage
All ally units in GSW are capable of switching between Fast Mode (高速) and Slow Mode (低速), reflecting the action of playable characters moving at a slower speed when the player holds the Shift button in order to dodge dense danmaku easier in Touhou danmaku games. In GSW, Fast Mode is the character's standard state, while Slow Mode replaces Fast Mode's movement range with a lesser one, but makes up for it by allowing the unit to ignore danmaku effects completely (aside from special effects), which, of course, include movement penalties. A unit currently in Slow Mode will have a white circle added over their map sprite, reminiscent of the same white circle which appears on the playable characters' sprites when they are in slow mode in the Touhou danmaku games.
Entering Slow Mode will also cause a unit to take Graze damage instead of completely evading enemy attacks like in Fast Mode. For example, in Slow Mode, if the enemy has a hit rate of 40%, this means that there is a 40% the ally unit will get hit directly, and a 60% chance the unit will take Graze damage; the Graze damage is equal to 40% what the unit would've sustained when hit directly.
Entering Slow Mode will also increase an ally unit's Accuracy rate by 10%.
For Kou only, remaining in Slow Mode for a turn will cost 5 MP.
Spell Cards
Named bullet patterns/attacks unleashed by bosses in Touhou games. In GSW, the amount of Spell Cards that a boss have will be displayed in their status screen as blue cards, with used Spell Cards blackened out. A boss will usually start with a generic danmaku field in their first HP bar. Some Bosses will activate a Spell Card immediately after they appear on the map however. For Bosses who start with a generic danmaku field, after their HP first bar has been depleted, the boss will activate their Spell Card, gaining the titular attack, +10 Power, and a new HP bar, while also deploying a danmaku field unique to that Spell Card.
When facing a Spell Card, the player has the option to either "capture" the Spell Card by depleting the Boss' current HP bar, or wait until all of the Spell Card's turns, displayed on the upper right corner of the screen, have passed (also known as timeout). This will allow the player to move to the next Spell Card. Some Spell Cards don't have a turn limit however, and you are forced to capture the Spell Card in order to continue on with the stage. Since activating a Spell Card counts as an action, if the Boss' Spell Card is activated through a counterattack from the player team during the enemy phase, the Boss will not immediately attack any player units right after activating their Spell Card. This is especially useful in preventing a Boss from using a dangerous attack, such as a MAP attack, on the player team, while also allowing the player to unleash the full might of their forces on the enemy boss in the following player phase and finish the Spell Card quickly. Meanwhile, there are also several forced timeout Spell Cards, where there is no opponent to damage, and the only option available to the player is to ensure that at least 1 ally unit stays alive until the Spell Card runs out of turns, all while facing a MAP attack from the Boss which covers an extremely wide area of the map, with limited safe spots available.
This process will repeat until the Boss is out of Spell Cards. There are a few Bosses who still have one extra Spell Card that is not displayed among the cards in their status screen, activated after all of their displayed Spell Cards have been defeated, meant to catch the player by surprise and to dramatize the story, so be prepared.
Bombs
A Spirit Strike (霊撃), commonly referred to by Touhou players as "Bombs", is an obtainable item which represents the player characters' Spell Cards that they can use to wipe out a large number of bullets on the screen and damage opponents in Touhou danmaku games. In GSW, since playable ally units can already use various Spell Cards as standard attacks, Bombs are repurposed into a handy tool to completely delete danmaku fields (both generic and Spell Card-unique) for 1 turn and deal damage to any enemy unit within the Bomb's effective range.
Characteristics of Bombs:
- The Bomb's base damage is 2500; final damage dealt to enemy units depends on the user's Ranged statistics.
- Critical cannot occur
- Usable post-movement
- Have a standard radius of 4 (Kou/You)/ 3 (Ei/Yume) squares surrounding the player
- User loses 10 Power
- Does not cost any resources
- Always hit any enemy within its effective range
- Obtained points, EXP and PP are halved when defeating enemies with Bombs
- Ends the ally unit's turn after using the Bomb
Due to the above characteristics, Bombs can also be considered as an effective MAP attack that any ally unit could use, but with several demerits as mentioned above.
Bombs can only be obtained during a stage, by shooting down an enemy which has the green B symbol on their map sprite, which could also include Bosses on their first HP bar. Bombs do not carry over onto the next stage, with the exception of two-parter stages in Kou and You.
