#tpdp:ynk

[communist-ojou-sama]

Anyway, this is my team: Extra Hecatia, Power Yukari, Speed Clownpiece, Power Junko, Power Yuyuko, and Extra Ran. I’m too lazy to go over each of them so I’ll just talk about the standouts. 

That being the case, the biggest standout is my starter, Extra Hecatia,  who’s gimmick is that she’s like aegislash, but her gimmick is even cooler than aegislash: 

she has two alternate forms based on whether she’s using focused or spread attacks (this game’s analogue to physical and special) and as a consequence she’s much stronger and more versatile than aegislash and also unlike aegislash her attack forms are not extremely fragile. Her earth form (blue hair) has both high focused attack and focused defense, and her moon form (yellow hair) has both high spread attack and defense. like pokemon you can use protect to revert her to her defensive form and so careful play can give you a character with extremely high defensive and attacking capability.

The other fun one is Yukari. Sadly, I can’t show you what she actually looks like when she changes forms, but her gimmick is that she is Regigigas but better: for the first 5 terms her SpA and Spe are halved, leaving her to rely on her decent-at-best defense, but if you can get her to survive for 5 turns, at the end of the 5th turn her ability becomes “serious”, an extremely overpowered ability where she essentially gets out of her gap and does a self Quiver Dance at the beginning of each turn, making her into an utterly unstoppable setup sweeper for free. Too lazy to take a pic of her moveset but I use protect and Unknown Flare, which has a chance of confusing enemies, and a steel-type move for coverage.

Also I’ve been talking about how good Speed Clownpiece is, so this is why: Her ability, Telescopic, means that she has a passive 30% boost to accuracy, so despite her mediocre stats outside of speed, I’m able to do devastating damage out the gate with her by using this game’s equivalent to the fire blast series, which she can use with 100% accuracy. I also have a SpA boosting status move in case I’m feeling greedy, and she has a really good matchup. I used to run baton pass and meh, I might put it back on her I never use star flare anyway (And I have that STAB coverage with Hecatia)

[communist-ojou-sama]

Sadly while I’d like to honor Cirno’s warrior spirit and her warrior’s sacrifice we have a plot to move forward, I’m gonna speed through hunting down the rest of the group and defeating them one by one so that we can get to the decisive battle

“the Pupped Liberation Front will free all dols who’ve been captured. Don’t get in our way!”

sorry but I’m gonna have to do that these dolls are awful cute

“To think I’d lose... What could I have done to win...?”

It just be like that sometimes Wriggle dw

I.... forgot to sc Mystia’s defeat line but she did in fact also lose

That’s right! I’m Rumia, the leader!

“..eh? I don’t look like it?” you really don’t :P

“Anyway! As leader, I challenge you!”

and after losing:

“I’ll leave it at that for today!”

A Pretty audacious thing to say after you got team-wiped but I mean, I’m a fan of that kind of spirit. Anyhow, getting to this point is a little like beating the first gym so hooray!

As of now my team looks a little like this; I caught a keine since between her and Seija they have type advantage against basically every doll in these fights, anyhow, now to bask in the glory of doing a civic deed and find out what I should do from here! お楽しみに！

[communist-ojou-sama]

Just kiddin’ there’s clearly only one place to go in a situation like this

“Oh, you’re the rumored...”  I’ve just arrived and I’m already “rumored?” damn you Aya...

“I’ve heard rumors that there are suspicious people plotting something around the village, just in case be careful.”  Yes Akyuu I will do exactly that, I’ll keep an eye out, it’s not as if just as I walk off your estate I’ll run into someth-

“Wawa- my cover’s blown! Retreat!!” 

Hm. Well Wriggle... that’s an awfully, even unwarrantedly suspicious reaction to someone coming out of a gate

hmm.... “ suspicious people” .... “plotting something” 

“You were seen!? What do we do!?”  I mean... I’m looking at all of you right now, thought I guess you’re not facing me Rumia

“Hehe, I, the strongest, will just flatten ‘em!”  true but also cirno you’re looking right at me

That’s our Cirno! you’re so cool!”  Not plot important but: cute

the others leave Cirno to make good on hehr word

“We’re the Puppet Liberation Front! Those who interfere with our plans won’t get off lightly after facing me, the strongest!”  そーなのかぁ *battle starting music*

and after winning:

”... I’ll give up my title of the strongest so the others so don’t dare chase after the others who ran away!”

Cirno... you really are cool, my already high estimation of you has risen and I respect you as a warrior I haven’t decided if I feel like doing play-by-plays for major battles but it seems like kind of a pain, but I’ll at least recount the plot important stuff, anyhow since htis is early game these battles are all a tad trivial anyway

[communist-ojou-sama]

Soon after that first battle I’ve come upon the very first rest stop! This is the last thing to mention about the actual funcitoning of the game and after this I can finally get back to the story :’D

First, front and center as you enter the shop is, well, what you’d expect, a clerk who welcomes you to take a rest with your puppets, which fully restores their HP and SP and heals any status conditions

Second, is a clerk selling sweets

A fun thing about each of these items is that it’s named after a location with the exception of the Fujiwara rice crackers... which I guess are just named after the Fujiwara clan? I don’t really know, in any case the others are, in order, Hakugyoku dango, after Hakugyokurou (白玉楼), Chirei manjuu after Chireiden (地霊殿) and Myouren tea after the Myouren temple (命蓮寺)

anyhow, you might’ve noticed that I didn’t start with any money! Fortunately I can just sell the items that have dropped from enemy puppets to sell for money to buy supplies

Next we have the travelling merchant which will be in every rest stop (though they aren’t solely confined to rest stops)

In this case he simply seals a puppet warding item (specifically prayer beads, which is interesting given that the opening text crawl says that the puppets aren’t like youkai in nature) and sealing threads, others will have other battle items like equips (first post in this saga)

[communist-ojou-sama]

Marisa takes you to the shrine in a flash where you’re introduced to Sanae

“So you’re [player] huh, well make sure not to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“Well, I’m tired, so visitors out! Out!”

yeah, Reimu is still very much Reimu anyhow this is a good opportunity to look around the shrine

as you can see the hakurei shrine on this side is very different, with the exterior maintenanced, and the post covered in ema, one thing doesn’t change from the outside though :P

“the inside seems empty...”

The Moriya branch shrine is here!

As is Genji, for those wondering about that, idk it’s 

as is the storehouse, inside of which you can get a hold item that allows you to run away from wild puppet battles no matter what

this update is quite text-light but that’s b/c there’s a text-heavy one coming soon! (first post in this saga)

[communist-ojou-sama]

whatever starter you pick ends up coming out of the grass from where you’re brought to gensokyo and, before anything else can happen, Marisa accosts you and warns you that puppets are dangerous, she lends you her own puppet and leads you into a battle thats basically a tutorial

in case it wasn’t already obvious, Puppet Dance is basically a pokemon game except that what you battle with are living puppets that just so happen to have the exact apperance and mannerisms of your favorite Touhou characters

In this fight Marisa has the two basic moves that every doll otherwise starts with one of: Yin Energy and Yang Energy, which are basically Tackle and a special version of Tackle Two things to note here: both attacks are Dream-type, whch is basically a hyper-Normal type that his neutral against all other types without being resisted or subject to immunity by any other type (type chart here); unfortunately these are the only two Dream-type moves. The other is that attacks in red text are Focused attacks, which in this game mirrors physical attacks, while attacks in blue are Spread, which mirrors special. PP is replaced with SP

once you beat the puppet in question it seems to be fond of you and joins your team, and you can give it a nickname! True to my form I’ll proobably only nickname my starter but, once i assemble the Lunar Invaders team I want (which is to say, Hecatia, Junko, Clownpiece, Yukari, Ran, and Yuyuko) I might decide otherwise  (part 1)

[communist-ojou-sama]

Huh, a barrel huh, well I know pokemon games tend to reward you for Poking around Vessels, I wonder if there could be anything in--

oh hey there seija

anyhow catching her here marks a momentous occasion!  I mentioned this before but when a puppet is capable of learning new moves the game doesn’t actually make you decide on the spot whether to teach it or not! it simply notifies you, at set levels taht are the same for all dolls, that theres a new move in the pool of movsthey can learn, anyhow, lets take a look!

Okay, an earth-type, 65 base-power Focused move. Wait, why’s it Earth type? Isn’t Hecatia void-type? (she is) Well, getting into that will reveal why i chose her and why she’s my favorite puppet, mechanically, so far Anyhow, lets get a move-on to the village, there’s nothing else particularly interesting on Route 1

Just as we’re entering the city, we run into Medicine, come to think of it, I wonder how a sentient doll would feel about this whole puppet incident thing and puppet battle, certainly That won’t be important to the plot! In any case she tells us to watch where we’re going, and that we Should hope we don’t cross her path again

“Over there is the School. Keine-sensei is teaching the kids how to study. Sometimes I hear strange sounds coming from it though... what could that be?” Keine and the Mystical Headbutt

“You came from the Hakurei Shrine? I heard it’s completely overrun by youkai, was it alright?”

“Kirisame General Store: We have everything! Except what we don’t!”

Not canon or anything but it Would explain some things about how Marisa is

“Wha- Don’t look at me from behind! It’ll blow my cover as a youkai!”

Gotta love the sanctuary for humans from youkai that we all call the Human Village :P

Anyhow... I wonder if there’s anywhere I could get some good information about what’s going on. Hmmmm.... (first post in this saga)

[communist-ojou-sama]

And so, by Sanae’s advice, you set out toward the human village! But before you leave she gives you 10 Sealing Threads! They are essentially this series’ Pokéballs, bu I’ll explain in better detail in a bit

first, a note about stats: they’re laid out basically how you’d expect, HP/FoA/FoD/SpA/SpD/Spe, and in the case of your starter, perfect IVs in all six! which will be very useful in this case; not also the item, the Dream Shard, which raises every stat a small amount, thereby making all of your beginning battles a piece of cake

if you go into the puppets menu, below the usual things you see in a pokemon game theres this “strengthen” option (or “edit” in the english patch), this is one of the mechanical things I think that this game handles much more elegantly than actual main-line Pokémon games

from here, when you Do learn new moves theyre listed here, at the “Learn a Skill” button and you can spend pp, the amount of which is listed in the corner, in order to learn any skill in the puppet’s moveset at any time, thhe other aoptions are “Strengthen Stats” above, an easier way to deal with EV investment that avoids inherent EVs as the Pokemon series uses, and “Learn from a Skill Card” which is basically learning a mvoe from a TM, which is free, don’t worry

anyhow I set out and I meet my first puppet! in this case a Daiyousei, and now I can explain how sealing threads work: they are your main means of catching wild puppets, when you do there’s a brief animation of tying a knot, as you can see here and then there’s a floating sigil imposed over them

once you succeed in sealing them you need only knock them out in order to capture them; no false swipe needed, and thankfully catch rates for all dolls are relatively high

anyhow one of the first things you see as you set down the road is a Jizou statue, at which you can leave an offering if you feel like it

I do, in fact, because I feel like that’s just a very Touhou thing, and after all, it can never hurt to accumulate more good karma, now can it?

“When your eyes meet with another puppeteer, it’s time to battle!”

A few things to note here: you essentially start out with Pokemon X/Y era EXP Share, and all exp is earned at the end instead of as you defeat puppets, along with experience puppets gain PP according to the Cost of the enemies defeated, and instead of prize money, enemy puppets drop items that you can sell at shops for money (first post in this saga)