Part 6: Chapter 58 (Part 2)

New Characters

Tenshi Hinanawi
Personal Skills
-Steel Maiden: Wall's cost is reduced to 10 SP. (Costs 20 normally).
-Sword of Ebullience: If her attack has an S in the enemy's terrain, it will always be a Critical.
Spirits: Wall, Strike, Guts, Yell, Valor, ???

As per standard Touhou fanon, Tenshi is The Tank. She has the highest Defense in the game, and one of the highest Armor stats as well (350 more than Meiling!). Combine that with her Steel Maiden PS, and it's pretty clear what her job is.

Nicely enough, she's actually quite strong, too. She mainly uses ammo-based attacks, and then switches to MP for her finisher. Her strongest weapons all have high damage, and her finisher is 3-8 range, so she can blast people from long range quite easily. Her basic Sword of Hisou attack has an S in all terrains, too, in case you wanted to use Sword of Ebullience.

All-in-all, a very solid pick for 3.0 Cost. You can't go wrong with Tenshi.

Rin "Orin" Kaenbyou
Personal Skills
-Skilled Support: Devote (Gives target 50 MP) affects both units in a pair.
-Underworld Beasts L3: Friendship level with Utsuho increased by 3.
-Cat's Impetuousness: While in Cat Mode, +15 Mobility and Cat's Walk gains +1 range.
-Rekindled Ashes: Devote becomes Revive.
Spirits: Accel, Focus, Alert, Devote, Friendship, Valor

A solid enough 2.5. I don't have much bad to say about Orin. She's not the strongest or dodgiest unit around, but she can do the job well enough, while also supporting your team with Devote and Friendship. If you're using her with Utsuho, then the Underworld Beasts is a fantastic PS. She can Cat Mode, zoom ahead, and then let Utsuho wreck shop.

Revive is one of those weird spirits that used to be in older SRWs, but has mostly been excised from recent games. I bring that up because there's a lot of spirits like that in FMW4. Anyway, it revives you with 50% SP, so your unit at least won't be dead weight (though if they have any use-limited abilities, like Alice's dolls, they'll be Zeroed out). On the other hand, it costs 90 fucking SP, and I'd rather just have Devote.

Utsuho Reiuji
Personal Skills
-Yatagarasu Guide: While above 130 Power, +40% Accuracy.
-Solar Reactor: While Limiter Released, gains 20% HP Regen, and Max Power is increased by 50(!).
-Underworld Beasts L3: Friendship level with Orin increased by 3.
Spirits: Strike, Grit, Self-Destruct, Yell, Friendship, Valor

At first glance, Utsuho is a pile of contradictions. She has 140 Mobility, but bad Evade. She has good Defense, but only 1200 Armor. She has 7 movement, but focuses on long-range attacks. She's a damage dealer, but has Friendship (actually this owns). She also commits the cardinal sin of having a 1-3 range basic attack that costs 25 MP. However, we can't really talk about Utsuho without talking about her central gimmick: Limiter Release.

To explain it, here's Utsuho's normal attack list:



When Utsuho hits 130 Power, she gains access to the Limiter Release command, which gives her +10 Mobility(lol), gives her a 750 damage reduction barrier, upgrades her 10% MP Regen to 20%, and also:



Boosts all her weapons by 100, and gives her 3 new attacks! Sounds pretty good!

However...



It gives her this Heat gauge. The way it works is, her new attacks all raise this gauge by some amount. Uncontainable Nuclear Reaction Dive (2nd to last) by 40, Abyss Nova (last) by 80, and Giga Flare (the MAP) by 160. That last one is virtually unusable, since the gauge's limit is 200.

With that in mind, there's two basic ways to use Utsuho. Option 1 is to play it cool with her for the first parts of a chapter, then LIMIT BREAK and drop finishers on the boss. She has Grit but not Wall, so she's better at dealing with bosses anyway. Option 2 is to equip Solar Reactor, transform her ASAP, and lean into the gimmick as much as possible. Either way, she does almost as much damage as Marisa, and can benefit from Shotgunning, so you can get some bigass numbers out of her, if you so desire.

So, what happens if the gauge hits 200, you might ask? Why, the same thing that happens when she uses Self-Destruct:


(This video is a pro-click btw)

You get Utsuho Cooldown! As you might expect from the only playable 1.0 unit in the entire game, she is pretty shitty! You can also manually change her into this form in the main menu, though you shouldn't because this form sucks and is mostly a punishment for letting your Heat get too high. At least she still has the Hyper Gold Luxury Full Automatic Shin Final Virtual Romancing Tokimeki Punch!

Self-Destruct is another of those weird old SRW spirits that never shows up anymore, btw.

---

Tenshi's Attacks
Nitori's New Attack: Fly! Sanpei Fight!
Orin's Attacks
Utsuho's Attacks
Meeko's Attacks

Btw, I don't have much to say about Nitori's new attack. It has 1 Ammo and runs off her Melee stat (she's a Ranged unit). Much like everything else about Nitori, it isn't unusably terrible, but it feels like a cruel joke.

--

ROUTE-SPLIT VOTING



As the dialogue at the end implied, we have a "route split".

Importantly, we have to do all 3 chapters anyway, we're just voting on the order. A couple aspects of Reimu and Alice's chapters get harder if you do them later, though Marisa's is always the same. For my money, Marisa's chapter is the easiest, and Reimu's is the hardest, in case that influences your voting at all.

So thread, decide who's map we're going to first:
-Muenzuka with Reimu
-Nameless Hill with Alice
-Human Village with Marisa