Hopeless Masquerade - New Official Touhou Fighter!

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
41

Look underneath the health at the %. Basically, when you use special moves, you use up the blue bar at the bottom and it turns red. If you spam special moves and that bar hits deep into the red, your % will drop, eventually going into the negative. Basically, to keep your percent from going down, you just need to add in delay between your special moves. This is what decides the winner in a time out situation, not health. The only importance health has is for KO’s.

It’s an anti spam system and it’s god damn retarded. Easily circumvented, but I suppose in a game with homing projectiles and instant full screen beams, it helps.

42

Game reminds me of the Supersonic Warrior DBZ games.

43

The percentage number under the health is an some kind of damage indicator as well as super meter indicator. When it reaches 100, yes, you can do a super move. Also, if timer runs out, the person with the higher damage output percentage is the winner regardless of health from what I’ve tested.

Current characters in the demo are as followed:

- Reimu
- Marisa
- Ichirin (New character with cloud summon attacks)

Ichirin is a close-quarter fighter from what I’ve picked up and as one, she’s hella good. Every character has a special ability as well:

Reimu - She’s able to teleport to the other side of the screen if her back is against the wall and dashes back against the wall.
Marisa - Has 3 stars next to her spirit meter. Every special move or Y bullet (her laser) she preforms adds one star to this gauge. When it’s full, her next special move or Y bullet gains additional properties, such as damage or wall slam.
Ichirin - has a rage meter (similar to K-Groove in Capcom vs SNK 2 or the rage meter in Samurai Shodown) that fills up as she gets hit. Filling this meter causes her to temporarily turn red and deal additional damage.

Some other notable things to be aware of in the game as well as it’s systems:

[LIST]
[]Immaterial and Missing Power-style spell cards declaration system. This involves “declaring” spell cards before you’re able to use them. Declaring a card comes with a delay. Unlike in Immaterial and Missing Power, more than one spell card can be chosen per match, but once one spell card is declared, you cannot use a different one until you use up your declared card or time on your declared card runs out. You cannot actually declare until your “Blue life” (which increases based on how much damage you’ve taken) matches with your current life.
[]“Ultimate spell cards” (actual name unknown). Hitting opponents fills up a percentage under your life bar and getting hit lowers it. Once it reaches +100%, your character emit a golden aura and can use this special spell card.
[]The Limit system (for limiting combos) makes its return from Scarlet Weather Rhapsody/Hisoutensoku. Unlike in those games, reaching maximum Limit does not prevent you from getting hit with spell cards. When you’ve been Limited, you enter a White stun state that renders you invulnerable to normal attacks while downed, but not spell cards. If you get hit with a spell card, you enter a Red stun state where you’re invulnerable to everything while downed.
[]“Instant Guarding” (actual name unknown). As normal from the other Touhou fighting games, guarding attacks can chip away at your Spirit gauge. However, if you guard right before an attack hits, a blue barrier will surround your character, the opponent will be pushed further back than usual, and you will take less Spirit damage. If you Instant Guard the first hit of a multi-hit attack, you will automatically Instant Guard the rest of the hits in that attack. However, if you block the first hits of a multi-hit attack normally, you can shift into Instant Guarding by tapping back during the blockstun.
[/LIST]

Most of this was taken from the Touhou Wiki as well as testing to verify.

44

Paletweb doesn’t have the trial version, so sad…
Still, I did acquire it through more questionable means just to see what’s changed and whatnot.
Turns out this game is like nothing I’ve ever played before, and that’s certainly not a bad thing.
Game’s quite nice looking in sharp contrast to the previous fighters too.
Looking forward to buying the full version whenever that comes.

45

game seems fun
it is funny how every combo in this game that isnt trash dizzys
you get declare supers off for free because of it too

i couldnt dizzy people non-corner with ichirin but with marisa you get touched anywhere and its dizzy central

46

I made a day one combo video (with only Reimu and Ichirin), but the last combo shows a midscreen combo with her (the down fist you use depends on where she ends up from the opponent after the wall-slam)
[media=youtube]XXCrGQ9Duv8[/media]

Anyways, for people confused on the mechanics and such

The percentage below the health is your “popularity” with the characters in the background. It is important for two things that I’ve noticed so far.

  1. To get your “Last Word” when your popularity reached 100%, which are the most damaging spell cards/supers
  2. To settle ties/time-outs, as it’s settled by higher popularity, not health

This works as it goes with the story being all, “who’s the most popular character we all beat each other up for popularity” kind of thing, but to gain popularity you generally have to be very aggressive. As in, dashing forwards a lot gains popularity, getting hits in or combos gains popularity, and etc. Turtling, however, takes away popularity, as well as moving away or just guarding, etc.

Basically, the game encourages more aggressive and offensive play, which I appreciate since that’s generally how I play anyways :V

Hopes this clarifies a lot of things

47

The popularity system worries me.

It’s made to encourage rushdown but once you’ve built enough popularity, it looks like you just have to sit there and turtle your opponent to death. And since you keep your popularity rate at the end of the round, you can start the round with a huge popularity advantage.

This needs further testing though, has anyone played the game thoroughly in 2 player mode ?

48

You don’t even need to rush down to gain popularity. Maybe I didn’t go into super detail in my post, but like I said, as long as you put a delay between your special moves, your popularity will still go up. Especially with what’s her face with the broom, her beam is a combo and boosts popularity like hell. It’s a stupid system.

49

Problem is that if you continue to turtle your popularity will also decrease, and as long as the opponent stays aggressive her popularity will also increase.

This is only a demo though so things are subject to change for sure, they’ve made changes before the full release before.

50

I’ve never had that be an issue, or at least I’ve been able to finish rounds with 45%+, while being able to keep my opponent’s popularity well below 20%, meaning any negatives never came into play as either my opponent would die or the round would end with me in the lead.

Even if they fix it, I’d still be upset with the mechanic, because I’m against any and all mechanics that hinder or weaken defensive play. It’s stupid and unfair, plus it leads to a watering down of the game’s meta since some strategies are less effective. There’s no way they could alter the mechanic that would make me happy, and the fact that in time over situations, what is supposed to be the payoff for a successful keepaway game, the winner is decided by a mechanic that hinders keepaway instead of life is much more infuriating.

51

This is a game with no mixup, since there’s no high/low or throws, they have to have a system that makes you press buttons.

52

In touhou fighters, this is supposed to be solved by blockstrings and guard crush. This didn’t work well in SWR though because of almost-free roll cancel.
idk about this game. The defending player can instant block or simply press up/down but it seems that both options can be dealt with by carefully delaying your moves.

53

while haven’t tried this out my self I feel i wont grow to appreciate this “Popularity” system. It reminds me too much of arcs negative penalty system which is nuisance more than anything. Hopefully they can manage it well but I have my doubts. Negative penalty is barley acceptable to me but I’ll roll with the punches.

54

Completely unrelated : most people should have noticed by now, but up/down movements have graze frames at startup, meaning you go through projectiles but can’t block physical attacks during that period.
The more you know.

55

OK so failing to land your last word after (automatic) declaration means losing because popularity drops to zero. Now that’s bullshit.

Edit : here’s another thing I found : if you normal block a 2-hit move, you can instant block the 2nd hit.
I’m currently testing stuff to see if guard crushing is viable in this game, doesn’t look so :confused:

56

If you guys want more info on the game mechanics, this should REALLY help, as it shows even more on Popularity and how important it is than JUST Last Words and figuring out ties.

57

Sounds like it’ll be fun, not something to take serious though.

58

You’d be surprised, they actually had big tournaments on Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and Hisotensoku because of how big Touhou is in general, despite how madly broken and silly it was (mostly because of the RANDOM weather factor and Spell cards in the game).

Yeah that game was scrutinized a lot by the Immaterial and Missing Power players a lot despite its apparent success in the fandom

59

I know about SWR and Hiso tournaments, I played in some shit was really fun and pretty legit SWR more so.

60

OK I give up, guard crushing seems nigh impossible in a real match, spirit damage is waaaaaaaaaay to low. Basically that means the only way to land a combo is when your opponent does something stupid.
So far, Hopeless Masquerade seems to be Poplarity management : the game. Sounds terribly unexiting.