- Release
- 2011
- Developer
- Len
- Publisher
- Len
Version 1.0 was released on 30 August 2011, with version 1.1 adding the Terminus stage. Version 1.2 was released on 1 April 2013 and introduced Simple mode, a system which is based on that of Phantasm Romance.
In addition, Len has released an associated set of Last Word spell cards in a separate package.
Note: If you're the visual learner type and want a more thorough breakdown, I highly recommend @tori_birb 's videos.
Part 1 talks about general information:
Part 2 talks more about scoring and strategies:
Gameplay Breakdown:
Controls
The game may be played using either a keyboard or a gamepad.Keyboard controls are as follows:
- The Arrow Keys move the character around
- Z causes a short barrage of shots to be fired; hold it down for autofire
- X releases a bomb
- C may be used to release a hyper (if the key setting is on User)
- Shift is for focusing; slowing down the player, showing their hitbox and condensing their shot
- Esc pauses the game and brings you to the in-game menu
- R resets to the Touhou Danmakufu title screen
- BackSpace lets you retry the script
- Home saves screenshots; entire, play field, and 1/4 size version of it
Basic Gameplay
Phantasmagoria Trues plays like a typical danmafuku script, a standard touhou experience where you play a tate shmup, spanning usually 6 stages, with a boss at each stage.There are 3 levels of difficulty, referred to as "zones": Standard, Advanced and Unlimited. Standard removes the hyper system, and you can't access the Unseen Areas on Unlimited. Unlimited is different from Advanced in that revenge bullets are shot for each and every killed enemy.
Terminus isn't a difficulty setting as its the extra stage of this game, but you can consider it as Unlimited in terms of mechanics, with a few deviations like the extend increments, score calculation and the inability to continue.
With default settings, you will start off with 3 lives (i.e. 2 lives in stock). You can lose a life by getting "hit" by an enemy attack.
The hit box in this game is quite small, being a 1x1 pixel size. If you hold Shift, a dot will usually appear, showing the hitbox precisely.
Unlockable Features
To access the three "unseen areas" Trial Mode must be off. This applies to both full runs and Practice mode. The unseen areas are not accessible in Unlimited.- Unseen Area 1 is played between Area 3 and Area 4. To unlock, play through to the end of Area 3 without continuing and having used at most one bomb during the boss battles of Areas 1 to 3.
- Unseen Area 2 is played instead of Area 5. To unlock:
- Select the right-hand route in Area 4
- Pass through Unseen Area 1 OR have a combined total of deaths and bombs on the Area 4 boss of at most 3
- Unseen Area 3 is played instead of Area 6. To unlock:
- Pass through Unseen Area 2
- Have at least 15 spellcards captured at the end of Unseen Area 2
- If not passed through Unseen Area 1, have a base point value of at least 500000 in Standard or 700000 in Advanced AND have maximum multiplier (999x) at the end of Unseen Area 2. Note that this is not possible in Simple Mode due to the removal of the multiplier.
- To face Spell Card No. 110 (Unlimited Area 6): Have a base point value of at least 900000. This can only be encountered in a full run.
- Terminus is the counterpart to the Extra Stage in the official Touhou games. To unlock Terminus:
- Clear Standard or Advanced through Area 6 (i.e. defeat Mima as a final boss)
- Clear Advanced through Unseen Area 3 (i.e. defeat Alice as a final boss)
- Clear Standard through Unseen Area 3 OR Unlimited through Area 6 (i.e. defeat Shinki as a final boss)
- Practice Mode stages:
- Areas 1 to 5 are unlocked for all difficulties when they are cleared on any difficulty.
- Area 6 and the unseen areas are unlocked for all difficulties when they are cleared on all difficulties (i.e. Standard, Advanced and Unlimited for Area 6, and Standard and Advanced only for the unseen areas)
Scoring:
Point Items
Pretty self-explanatory, it's what you'll score with. It starts at 10000 in the regular game, and 500000 in Terminus. As with all sources of points in the game, this is then multiplied by the multiplier squared and by the current rate.Each point item will also increase your base value by 10 if the item was collected manually, and 20 if the item was auto-collected.
Multiplier
Speaking of the multiplier, it ranges from 1x to 999x and is squared before being applied to every source of points in the game (except end-of-stage bonuses). So your goal is to raise it to the max as soon as possible and keep it that way throughout the stage.It increases when collecting multiplier items. When the player stops shooting, a ring appears around the player character. Any point items that enter this ring are converted into multiplier items, which in turn gets auto-collected.
A regular multiplier item increases the multiplier by 1. If the item was converted from a point item, it is equivalent to 2 multiplier items.
Bombing or missing decreases the multiplier, and the rate of that reduction is slowed down when facing a boss.
In addition, there is a gauge just below the rate counter. It drains over time if not firing on an enemy or collecting items; when the gauge is empty the multiplier will drop by 5 per frame (300 per second).
Rate
The rate counter is found at the bottom right of the screen, just above the multiplier gauge. It acts as yet another multiplier to your points, it's initially at 1.00 , can't be reduced and increases depending on:- Capturing a Spell Card: +0.10
- Activating a Graze Break during a stage portion: +0.05
- Converting revenge bullets into items: +0.01 for every 100 bullets
r.E.D. Gauge
Very similiar to Daifukkatsu Black Label's gauge, it represents your rank. the gauge increases when you collect point items, and decreases when collecting multiplier items.The rate of increase scales with the multiplier, and since it's rank the amount dictates the enemy's bullet density:
r.E.D Gauge % | Density amount |
0%-<50% | 1x |
50%-<80% | 2x |
80%-<100% | 3x |
100% | 4x |
Graze Spiritual Strike
By grazing you increase a gauge at the bottom-left of the screen, reaching 200 grazes activates a burst of 100 (200 if multiplier >= 800) items (point during stage, multiplier during boss) and all bullets in the range will be canceled for 4 seconds.Hyper System
In Advanced, Unlimited and Terminus, reaching 999x multiplier will activate hyper mode. This creates a larger ring around the player that creates hyper point items when regular point items enter the area. Hyper point items are worth the same as regular point items and increase base by 20. In addition, every 10 such items will fill the graze bar by 1 graze although you can't trigger the graze burst as a result. Collecting hyper point items will result in 3 frames of invincibility per item, which stacks up to a maximum of 1 second.During hyper mode enemies that are defeated will release revenge bullets. The pattern of the revenge bullets will depend on the enemy.
The hyper can be released depending on the input that the player chose. When that happens all the revenge bullets inside the range will be converted into hyper point items. The multiplier becomes 500, plus 0.75 times the number of bullets converted up to a maximum of 998. In addition, the rate counter will increase for every 100 bullets.
Clear Bonus
At the end of each stage, the player is awarded a point bonus based on their performance throughout the stage. As of version 1.2, the bonus rate is calculated as follows:Main game: PointItemCount x RateItemCount x max(Rate/2,1)
Terminus: PointItemCount x RateItemCount
The three parts of the clear bonus are calculated as follows:
Clear Bonus: Bonus Rate x Bonus Rate
Base Point Bonus: floor(Base Item Value / 100) x RateItemCount x Bonus Rate (Main game)
floor(Base Item Value / 200) x RateItemCount x Bonus Rate (Terminus)
Life Line Bonus: (111 x (4 x lives in stock + bombs in stock)) x PointItemCount x Bonus rate x Area number
Simple Mode
This is a game mode added in version 1.2,. You can't save scores in this mode as it makes the game more akin to Phantasm Romance, these changes include:- The multiplier, r.E.D and graze systems are removed; as a result, the hyper system and the bomb extend system are both not used.
- Clear bonuses are also removed.
- Revenge bullets will be spawned by all enemies in Unlimited and Terminus and are not spawned in Standard and Advanced.
- Point items will not spawn during a bomb, like in Phantasm Romance.
- The multiplier gauge now fills differently and affects the number of point items dropped. In particular, defeating enemies and collecting items now only fills the gauge by 1/10 of its length instead of filling it the whole way. The number of point items dropped relative to in the regular system is based on the gauge as follows:
Multiplier Gauge %PI Drop Amount0%-<25%x0.225%-<50%x0.550%-<99%x199%-100%x2 - Lives are awarded immediately on filling the extend gauge instead of being dropped as an item.
