東方潮聖書 ~ Sapphire Panlogism - Hard No Bomb (Hecatia)
0Finally got around to playing this fangame. It came out in the end of May 2021 but just recently a patch came out that fixed some issues with the initial version, such as visibility issues, and adding midboss and boss practice.
While it fixed most issues with the replay system, not all is good, however. They no longer crash if you select a stage other than 1, and don't hilariously break anymore when returning to the title screen in a certain way, but many replay desyncs still persist. As such, I recorded all the videos for this game while playing.
Also, while they did fix visibility, I still chose to turn off backgrounds and effects. Effects lag the game a bit, but while backgrounds don't, I still find some of them quite a bit distracting. Especially the one from stage 3, that background is honestly pretty bad. So yeah, sorry for the empty-looking gameplay. Probably won't attract many people to watch, but such is life, I'm used to it.
(Also even then, without backgrounds, the visibility still isn't perfect. That death shortly after the first stage 3 midboss was just sad.)
Hecatia's shot is very cool. You use the C key to switch between her default Earth shot, which is a decently powerful forward focus shot with some slight spread when unfocused, her Moon shot, which covers a big area in front of you (or sometimes when detecting an enemy, it locks onto it) and does damage evenly, which is basically a piercing effect but in a circle, or a weak rotating full-screen shot when unfocused, and her Otherworld shot, which is a DDC MarisaA-esque shot when focused, and unfocused is kinda like Koishi's unfocused shot from SSS but with less range.
There are really no weaknesses to this shot. Earth is good at dealing damage from far away, Moon is good for chunks of enemies (like the yinyangs in stage 5 when Padma first appears), as well as when you can't get under the boss, and Otherworld for deleting health bars when you get a chance to shotgun.
Also not many Hecatia gameplay videos out there use the Moon shot all that much. I plan to change that, as it's actually very useful!
The mechanic of this game is pretty strange. I know how it works, but I don't know how to explain it well in a way that makes you go like "oh I get it".
Also most of this game is pretty static. I can see why people think that's annoying and boring, but hey, fine by me! Ummu is probably the most random part of the game.
I did mess up quite a bit in this run though. In a previous run that game overed, I had a perfect stage 5. Not the case here. Brainfarts be damned on Padma's final...
0:00 - Stage 1
2:05 - Azure Swirl
3:29 - Stage 2
5:30 - Sakkagumi Yamomo
7:55 - Stage 3
10:55 - Saga Kuramu
13:46 - Stage 4
17:13 - Umehime Kazarashi
20:11 - Stage 5
23:49 - Padma Raksasa
27:24 - Stage 6
29:35 - Ummu Tzumazaru
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