Immaterial and Missing Power/Menus

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Story Mode

Story Mode is the mode most of the shmup fans play this game for, as it resembles traditional Touhou games. In this mode, you pick one character and proceed through seven preset scenarios. Gameplay in this mode differs in certain regards:

• The enemy character has "Story Mode spell cards" which are ultra-powerful versions of certain "normal" spell cards, and some unique ones unavailable to normal characters. The intensity of these spell cards depends on the difficulty level selected.
• Enemy characters have a preset number of lifebars, each one corresponding to a spell card they use. Grey life is pre-declare where the AI acts normally, but receives extra damage (it is either 2x or 3x damage). Red life is when they automatically declare and gain hyper armor in addition to using their boosted spell cards.
• You have a limited number of lives (three by default). Each life consists of two bars, the grey one and the red one. Once you go through two bars you expend a life, and once three lives are expended you must continue or end the game. You have three continues available to you, and continuing will forfeit your chances at a Good Ending.
• Gameplay is based on points in Story Mode. You receive points for doing attacks and a bonus for beating your enemy during a spell card as quickly as possible. You also receive a multiplier at the end depending on your difficulty (0.5x for Easy, 1.0x for Normal, 1.5x for Hard, and 2.0x for Lunatic).
  • I don't care about Story Mode at all so I'm not going to bother breaking down point values, if anyone wants to do this go right ahead.

Arcade Mode

Arcade Mode is a straightforward mode where you fight against every single CPU character (including a mirror match), except for Meirin, in normal, non-Story Mode battle. Once you go through them all, that's it and the game's over.

Before selecting your character, you can press Pause to set Auto-guard on or set a damage handicap, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest.

When selecting a spell card, you can obscure your choice by pressing D, giving you a slight advantage if you have multiple viable options. This is because spell card selection is only visible during the character select screen and during spell trance.

To pick the nighttime version of the stage, press down, and then up again to pick the daytime version. Remilia, Yuyuko, and Suika's stages do not have a second version, and Meirin does not have her own stage.

Duel Human

Duel Human is the two-player versus mode, essentially identical to Arcade Mode except you play against a real opponent. In this mode you are able to choose your character's alternate costume color by pressing D to select the character. A list of hotkeys is as follows:

• F2: Change to round 1
• F3: Change to round 2
• F4: Disable practice mode (invincible, infinite bomb)
• F5: Enable practice mode (invincible, infinite bomb)
• F6: Speed fill spellcard meter (hold down)
• F7: Speed decrease spellcard meter (hold down)

Duel CPU

Duel CPU is the same as Duel Human, except you fight against the AI. You can set the difficulty in the Options menu, and you select what character and spell cards the AI uses.

Practice Mode

Practice Mode allows you to select your character and a training dummy to practice your techniques. Note that you cannot use handicap in this mode. Also, your spell card selection is disregarded as you use hotkeys to cycle through the various spell cards. A list of hotkeys is as follows:

• F1: Changes your spellcard. This will cycle through the first three, then the second three (as indicated by your lifebar turning red).
• F2: Cycles through available stock levels backwards, from 9 down to 0.
• F3: Cycles through available stock levels forwards, from 0 up to 9.
• F4: Cycles through the autoguard modes for the training dummy, starting with No Guard, All High, All Low, and All.
• F5: Determines if the training dummy will airtech or not.
• F6: Determines the training dummy's actions: Stand, Crouch, Jump, or CPU.
• F7: Sets whether or not the training dummy moves to the center of the stage.
• F8: Instantly ends spell trance.

Replay

Replay Mode allows you to view replays of matches from either Story Mode or Versus Mode. Replays do not need to follow a filename format, but must end in the extension .rpy. Replays may have a name of up to 8 alphanumeric characters and are numbered and dated, showing the characters used and the difficulty level (if applicable). Replays can be sped up to varying degrees by holding Ctrl and a number from 1 through 7. Press Pause to bring up the menu, which will allow you to continue watching or exit back the replay list.

Option

• Difficulty Level: Easy, Normal, Hard, Lunatic
• Simplify the backgrounds: This helps with slower systems.
• Reduce the framerate by 1/2: This helps with slower systems.
• Display juggle gauge: This shows an EFZ-style gauge for how much "hittable" stun time remains during juggle combos.
• Music volume: Self-explanatory. Note that using the Windows 2000 config.exe will set this to 0 each time you change anything.
• Sound effect volume: Self-explanatory.
• Return to title: Self-explanatory.

Exit

Quits the game.

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