天下制覇

 

A unending night under an incomplete moon.

Yes yes, I’m aware that Comiket technically starts in a few hours and that leaked things are already coming out. Tough! I blame Japan for being 13 hours ahead.

As the Harvest Festival approaches, the spirits of Gensokyo are restless because there’s something wrong with the moon. A tiny sliver of it is missing. For humans, all the moon provides is light, but for demons, an incomplete moon is the same as no moon at all, so four spirits gather their human companions and cast a spell to create an unending night while they head out to get to the bottom of this mystery before the morning of the festival.

Imperishable Night is the next in the series and the most recent in the ‘traditional’ form of the games, with Phantasmagoria of Flower View being a Vs Shooter and Shoot the Bullet off in its own little world. StB doesn’t even have a story anyway. Anyway, unlike PCB or EoSD, each character only has one pattern, but each character is now a team of two characters. Reimu and Yukari form the Border Team, Marisa and Alice are the Mages, Sakuya and Remilia are the Scarlet Team, and Youmu and Yuyuko form the ghost team. Each character has a unique shot pattern and special abilities, as well as each team having its own special ability.

The human/spirit switching is the crux of the new engine. Controlling the scoring in Imperishable Night is the Time Meter which has two parts, the Phantom Gauge and the score. The score is easy, it just goes up as you collect Time. The Gauge is different. As long as you’re unfocused (using the human member of the team) and shooting, it’ll drop. If you’re focused (spirit member) it’ll increase. If you’re within 20% of the minimum, then you generate Time by shooting enemies. If you’re within 20% of the maximum and fighting a boss, you gain Time by grazing. If your ratio is in the human side and you’re unfocused, you’ll also gain extra points for grazing. Collecting Time also moves the Gauge in whichever direction you’re currently using when you pick up the Time. 

That’s not the only way to gain Time though. Also new to the engine are the enemy Slaves… magical spirits that the fairies (and bosses) will fire. When the source enemy is destroyed, its slaves die as well and destroy any nearby bullets, turning them into time. Humans (unfocused shooting) can destroy the Slaves, but their destruction in this manner doesn’t generate time and decreases the Phantom Gauge. Spirits on the other hand, cause the Slaves to fade out of existence. You can’t collide with the Slaves while focused or shoot them, though you can still kill their master. Capturing a Spellcard will also net you a chunk of Time and is a good way to immediately shift from one extreme on the Gauge to the other. Just like Cherry in PCB, you lose a chunk of Time whenever you die or bomb.

Each stage also has a minimum amount of Time that you should collect. If you make it to the end of the stage without that minimum, then the clock will advance by an hour instead of a half hour and you won’t face the boss’ Last Spell. Last Spells are basically just bonus attacks worth a ton of points, but you’re not allowed to bomb. If you’re hit during the Last Spell, you’ll just automatically counterbomb and fail the spellcard, but won’t lose a life or bomb. There are also a series of Last Word spellcards unlockable through the Spellcard practice mode which are some of the hardest patterns around and a showcase of each character’s signature styles.

   

The first boss that our heroines will encounter is Wriggle Nightbug, a firefly. Unfortunately, Wriggle just thought that the heroines looked weak and decided to attack. Like all first bosses, this didn’t go particularly well for her. Unfortunately, there’s really not too much more to say about her.

  

Next up is poor Mystia Lorelei, the sparrow. She loves singing to cause chaos and confusion, and she can also cause total night blindness, a sore point for the somewhat hard-of-seeing Reimu. In the Ghost Team’s path, the poor girl ends up being eaten Yuyuko, so she’s a pretty popular joke character just for the sheer incredulousness. She’s not particularly powerful (or difficult for that matter), but her power to blot out the entire screen except for a tiny area around your character can certainly make things difficult for the first few times you face her.

  

The Team senses some kind of magic at work, and finds a village with its history erased, hiding it from normal people. Keine is the one responsible, though she just wanted to protect it from whatever strange magic was affecting the moon. Keine looks human, but she’s actually a spirit who transforms under the full moon. That said, since the moon is incomplete, you won’t see her in her spirit form until the Extra path. After being defeated, she does point the team off in the direction of the true culprits though they make a stopover to face either Reimu or Marisa, dependant on the team. I’ve already covered them though, so let’s just head to stage 5.

  

Coming to the Eientei mansion, our heroines encounter the rabbits Tewi Inaba and Reisen Udongein Inaba. Tewi is pretty quickly thrashed. She’s just a minor spirit with the power to bring fortune, but loves pranks and lies. Reisen is another story. She’s the final guardian of her masters and has sealed the door to their chamber. Her eyes can also cause complete insanity in humans, though most of the humans fighting her are sufficiently unhinged enough to get bye. She’s a pretty popular character with fans thanks to her bunny ears and schoolgirl-looking outfit, though there are a pair of buttons on her ears that suggest that they may not actually be real. Every official picture of her also always has one of her hands cocked as a finger gun for reasons not fully understood. She also has the unofficial nickname of Zayaku (suppository) because her bullets apparently look like them. Reisen is also rather put upon, as Eirin calls her Udonge as a somewhat strange nickname.

  

There are two versions of the final stage dependant on whether you haven’t continued, and whether you’ve beaten stage 6A with that team on that difficulty before. If either is not true, you head to 6A for the ‘false’ ending where you’ll face the Lunarian in exile, Eirin. She’s the one who sealed… not the moon, but the Earth in order to protect her fellow exiles, Reisen and Kaguya. She’s likely the most intelligent person in Gensokyo and has the ability to make pretty much any medicine, including the elixer of immortality, so she can be a nasty customer to tangle with.

  

The true boss of Imperishable Night is Princess Kaguya of the moon. Driven from the moon for using an elixer to become immortal, her exile was eventually revoked, but she had grown to love living on the Earth and feared that the Lunarians may try to forcefully return her, so she had Eirin seal the passage between the Earth and Moon. After being defeated, she unleashes her full control over Eternity and Time in order to break the spell that the heroines cast and bring an end to their unending night. She’s defeated even then though, and finally relents and the true moon is returned.

   

The Extra Mode of Imperishable Night is a bit silly. Kaguya basically sends the team on a test of courage to go into a forest. They first encounter Keine in her spirit form, but then find Fujiwara no Mokou, Kaguya’s longtime rival and fellow immortal. Mokou was originally human, but became immortal after drinking a Hourai Elixer, and unlike Kaguya, she can still feel pain and die, but she just won’t stay dead for long. The heroines let slip that Kaguya sent them, and Mokou believes them to be yet more assassins in their endless games so attacks with all her phoenix powers.