Gensou Shoujo Wars Complete Box/Overview

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.

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.　

Aside from the aforementioned perks, entering Slow Mode while not within a danmaku field will also increase an ally unit's Accuracy rate by 10%.

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 either blue (normal attack) or red (MAP attack) 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", 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 a fixed amount of 2500 damage to any enemy unit within the Bomb's effective range.

Characteristics of Bombs:

• Usable post-movement
• Have a standard radius of 4 squares surrounding the player
• Does not cost any resources
• Always hit any enemy within its effective range
• Obtained points, EXP and PP are unaffected 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.

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.

Cost

Throughout the entire game, a character will be assigned a deployment cost ranging from 1.5 - 4.0. All chapters will give you a certain number, and any units selected will have their deployment cost subtracted from that number. For example, chapter 50 gives you 45.0 units of cost. You could deploy any number of characters so long as you do not exceed the deployment limit. In the case of chapter 50, you can deploy either eighteen 2.5's, twenty two 2.0's, or (if you somehow had that many) thirty 1.5's. You can also deploy any variation of these costs so long as you do not go past the 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. Beginning with chapter 36, you will be able to pair units together, similar to Alpha 2's Squad System or Fire Emblem 13's pair up system as a team. You can pair whomever you'd like together with no limitation, so long as you do not exceed the deployment limit.

Hidden Effects

• The higher a character's cost, the more damage they will do in Team attacks.
• If a character in the back of a team has a higher cost than the person in front, the front will gain an Accuracy buff that scales to the difference.
• The Oshira Icon increases a Unit's SP by +20 grants them a buff depending on their original cost.
• The formula itself is very simple. [(5 - Original Cost) * 100].
• The buffs are:
  • 1.0: +400 base damage to all attacks.
  • 1.5: +350 base damage to all attacks.
  • 2.0: +300 base damage to all attacks, +0.05 to Team attack damage modifier.
  • 2.5+: +250 base damage to all attacks, +0.10 to Team attack damage modifier.

Pairs

From the third section onwards, you can put characters in pairs in the intermission menu. Keep in mind that they can not be split up during the chapter.

For the most part, teams are treated as just being the character in front with a few extra bells and whistles. You can switch who's in front or select from both characters' spirit menus, but the bulk of the back character's use is in battle. There they can attack with whatever team attack they have (disregarding the usual attack range), cover the person in front with Support Defense, enable Combination attacks if they have one with the front character, provide Friendship bonuses, and enable the use of Full Power Mode after it is unlocked in Stage 42. Similar to the sources for the third section, Imperishable Night and Subterranean Animism, the player is the only one who can form teams. As such there are no ALL attacks or anything of the like to consider.

Teams play havoc with combining characters. If any of the combining characters are in a team with a character not part of the fusion, the 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.

Unlike in FMW Dream, Hisoutensoku can now be put onto a team with others (without the use of glicthes and exploits) and thus has use of Full Power Mode.

Full Power Mode

Introduced in Chapter 42, Full Power Mode bears some resemblance to Z3's Maximum Break. When both characters in a team are at 150 Power, a quick animation will play noting they can now use a Full Power attack. Simply select the option from the menu next time that team initiates an attack to do so. Full Power Mode allows the back character to use whichever attack they'd like, with no penalty to damage. And just like always, they can use any attack regardless of range.

This option severely 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. Note, however, that each team can only reach FPM once per chapter.