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Gameplay

Basic Gameplay

Highly Responsive to Prayers is unique within the Touhou series. Rather than being a Danmaku shooting game, it plays similar to Arkanoid, but allows the player a much greater variety of abilities, including multiple ways to influence the movement the ball. Highly Responsive to Prayers could be considered a Danmaku puzzle game.

There are 4 levels of difficulty: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Lunatic. Each difficulty level features differences in the number of bullets fired by enemies, rate of fire, variations in the bullets' pattern of movement, and chiefly, the difficulty of boss encounters. When playing on the Easy difficulty, stage enemies will not fire bullets. On Lunatic, each overturned card fires a single bullet at Reimu's position.

In order to clear a regular stage, the player must overturn every card in the play field through the (often haphazard) manipulation of Reimu's Yin-Yang Orb. As the orb passes over cards, they are considered to be hit. In early stages, cards only require one hit to be overturned and eliminated from the field, however, in later stages, cards may require as many as three hits to overturn.

The player will traverse 20 increasingly harrowing stages through the course of a regular game. Boss encounters occur every five levels, or at Stages 5, 10, 15, and 20. After completing Stage 5, the player is offered a choice between two distinct routes to follow for the remainder of the game: the Demon World (Makai) Route, or the Hell (Jigoku) Route. Each features different stages and boss encounters, as well as different ending sequences.

Highly Responsive to Prayers does not have an Extra Stage. (VERIFY?)

Controls

The game must be played using the keyboard.

Keyboard controls are as follows:

  • The Left and Right Arrow Keys move Reimu around
  • Z causes a single shot (properly, Ofuda) to be fired toward the top of the screen
  • X swings Reimu's wand (Gohei) back and forth
  • Combinations of the Arrow Keys and the Z and X keys may be used to perform Special Moves, detailed below.
  • Esc pauses the game and brings you to the in-game menu

Shot

When the player presses the Z key, Reimu tosses a single Ofuda skyward. These shots can be used to manipulate the movement of the Yin-Yang Orb. Additionally, when a shot collides with a small white bullet fired by an enemy, both are cancelled out.

The shot can not damage boss enemies.

Wand

When the player presses the X key, Reimu swings her wand, or Gohei, back and forth. The wand too can manipulate the movement of the Yin-Yang Orb, as well as deflect small white bullets. If the wand contacts the orb on Reimu's first swing (clockwise), the Orb will be repulsed at a high rate of speed, however, if the wand and orb contact during Reimu's second swing (counter-clockwise), the Orb will only be repulsed lightly.

The wand can not damage boss enemies.

Special Moves

Slide

When pressing the Left or Right Arrow Keys in conjunction with the X key, Reimu performs a short distance slide that can be used to repel the Yin-Yang Orb, as well as move quickly across the screen. Also, while sliding, Reimu has a smaller than usual hit box, making the move useful for escaping difficult situations. Reimu will continue sliding for as long as the player continues tapping the X key while holding a directional key.

Moving Flip Kick

While sliding, Reimu occasionally lifts one of her legs into the air. If the player releases the directional key but continues to tap the X key at one of these moments, Reimu will perform a flip kick while moving forward. If timed correctly, up to three of these kicks can be done consecutively. The flip kick repels the Yin-Yang Orb with great force.

Stationary Flip Kick

While sliding, Reimu occasionally lifts one of her legs into the air. If the player presses the directional key opposite to the direction that Reimu is moving in while continuing to tap the X key at one of these moments, Reimu will perform a stationary flip kick. If timed correctly, up to three of these kicks can be done consecutively. The flip kick repels the Yin-Yang Orb with great force.

Rapid-fire Multishot

While Reimu is sliding, if the player presses the directional key opposite to the direction that Reimu is moving and the Z key at the same time, Reimu will cease her movement and rapidly fire 8 shots upward (at slight angles).

These shots can not damage boss enemies.

Bomb

Reimu's Spirit Attack, or "bomb", is the player's limited-use method of getting out of difficult situations. When activated, the bomb cancels out all bullets on the screen, and hits every card one time. Reimu becomes invincible during and for a short time after the bomb's effect wears off. At the beginning of the game and any time Reimu respawns, you will recieve 1 bomb. Your bomb stock is not reset when Reimu is hit. Bomb Extend items will increase your current stock by one. You can carry up to a maximum of 6 bombs at a time. If you recieve a bomb when you already have the maximum, that bomb will be lost.

The bomb can only damage boss enemies when you have 0 lives remaining in reserve.

Lives

With default settings, you will start off with 3 lives. You can lose a life by getting "hit" by an enemy attack.

The hit box for Reimu is approximately the same size as her sprite. If Reimu's hit box comes into contact with the hit box of an enemy bullet, laser, or the enemy itself, then you have been hit.

The player is awarded extra lives upon reaching certain score totals. For the regular game, extra lives are awarded every 400,000 points, up to seven times. You can carry up to a maximum of 6 extra lives at a time. If you recieve an extra life when you already have the maximum, that life will be lost.

Upon losing all their lives, the player is given the choice to continue from the beginning of the stage. However, if you do continue, your current score will be reset back to 0 and you will reach the "Bad Ending" if you finish the game. You may continue up to ?? times.

Regular Stages

Boss Battles

The main challenge and the main attraction. Each boss has a notched health bar that represents their current status. In most cases, bosses can only harmed by Reimu's Yin-Yang Orb, which removes one notch from the bosses' health bars whenever it contacts the bosses' weak points, which are not visually indicated.

Each boss battle is accompanied by a timer. When time runs out, a flurry of small white bullets begins raining down from above, and continues until the boss is defeated, you are hit and more time is added, or you run out of lives, in which case you lose.



The only playable character is Reimu Hakurei, who frantically tries to get a bouncing Yin-Yang ball to hit various on-screen targets, "cards" and "bosses" alike. Reimu can knock and manuever the ball around by wacking it with her gohei, slide tackling it, and firing shots at it. Enemies will be trying to hinder your progress by firing at you, but you can cancel out their shots with your own shots, or even deflect them by swinging your gohei. Only the Yin-Yang ball can damage the enemies, so simply firing your shots at enemies will have no effect. As a last resort, Reimu can use a "bomb", once per life, to hit all cards on the screen. There is no guarantee that any given card will be "hit". Bombs will often fail to damage a boss.

The game consists of several fixed-layout levels which increase in difficulty, with a boss fight occurring every fifth level. To complete a level, the player should disable all cards or hit the boss of that level a certain number of times. There are two selectable paths the game: the Jigoku (Hell) path and the Makai (Demon World) path. Reimu will lose one of her lives whenever she is hit by an enemy's bullet/laser/magic or gets hit by her own ball (no pun intended).

This game features no dialogue and a less-cute version of Reimu.

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