New game, yay ~ <3
Sooooo ... can you say that ... what we're getting this time is a ... bullet hell ?!!! *WINK WINK WINK WINK WINK*
You'd figure that someone who knows unusual words like phantasmagoria, trilithon and tokamak would know how to spell ghost but apparently not. Not that I'm complaining tho, what with there being an etanity since the release of the last integer game, so, hey.
From what I can gather from the screeshots, getting at the very least 3 animal "goasts" of the same type enable you to use some sort of power up shot. Maybe it's one of these things where the more you have of one certain type of thing, the longer the effect for the bonus that type of thing grant is gonna be longer or something around these lines ? At any rate, it seems to me that the shot power up this time might potentially be reminiscent of the fangame Riverbed Soul Saver's hyper mode.
What I'm a bit curious of are the things on the bottom left of the screenshots that look like a paw shaped power item (pawer item ? *WINK WI-) for one, and a paw shaped point item (pawint item ?) for the other. Like, do activating whatever gimmick this game's got while you got 3 pawer items's is gonna get you lives or something else and would an activation with 3 pawint item earns you some kind of score related bonus during activation ? And what happens to the excess items you have (the ones different from the 3 similar items) during activation ? Do they get tossed in the garbage can if they're animal items or do they give some kind of bonus (As in, bomb shards / items for otter "goasts", life shards / items for pawer items, PIV items for pawint items) ? And if so, what happens to the Wolf and Eagle items (since they're supposed to give a bonus to the Mega focused shots or Mega unfocused shots duration respectively)
And more questions ...
Anyway, regarding gameplay mechanics, what I'm the most curious of is the way [animal name] mode thingy is gonna work : does it make you invulnerable or not ? And do you have control over when to stop it ? Cuz depending on how these questions are answered, this game may either be one of the more balanced ones in terms of mechanics or very, VERY brokexploitable. Like, very. Also, speaking of shots power ups, I wonder if it's possible we're gonna get a repeat of HSiFS demo's Winter release bazillions damage or something much more modest.
Also I'm pretty glad Youmu's back. I was a pretty big fan of her charged attacks from TD, which served me really well in its extra stage, so I hope she'll still have it.
Anyway, uncertain gameplay speculation aside, if there is something that I would "want" or "not want" regarding how things are gonna work for this game, then I hope that if a character from a previous game is to make an appearance, then I'd hope it would be as a midboss rather than a stage boss, that way it won't take a spot nor conversation away from new characters.
And while Hell stuff has been more relevant in the manga, I hope the story and the in-universe conversations going to explain things that were already brought in the mangas but for the game, like, the story should manage to stand up by itself and not need to be complemented by OUTSIDE, extraneous work in order to make sense as a story. Dunno if I'm clear.
Also, the animal parts of the japanese title on the title screen seems a bit suspicious to me. Like, what if they're hinting a wee bit towards the identity of the big bad this time ? Someone from Hell with those animal motifs ... or not.
