Part 6: Chapter 2R: A Visitor to the Human Village - Part 2

Whew. Well, that settles that.

What a disaster. No one got eaten, did they?

No. Fortunately, everyone seems to be okay.

I'm glad. Looks like we were able to defend the place.



Ones that just amble around aimless like that? It didn't feel like she had any goals or convictions.

That's just how that class of youkai is. Their only value is in surprising humans.

That kind of youkai that think they can just get by scaring or attacking humans. They're the reason why humans aren't scared of youkai anymore.

Youkai are only able to exist because humans believe in or are afraid of them. The reason Gensokyo was established in the first place was because the humans of the outside world stopped believing in youkai, and everything started to fade away.



Then all they will be are mere wild beasts who attack humans. Hm... If it's come to this, maybe I should start teaching history to youkai... It might be able to raise their level of intelligence...

Yeah, yeah, we all know how zealous you are about teaching.

I'm being serious. You know about the vampire incident, right Reimu? It became such a mess because the youkai were weak of mind. They just mindlessly did whatever the vampire said.

The vampire incident was a pretty big event that directly led to the drafting of the Spellcard rules. The cliff notes version is that some hotshot vampire fell into Gensokyo and quickly organized a bunch of lesser youkai into a huge army. That was a Bad Thing, and the residents of Gensokyo responded accordingly.



You should at least try to learn from history a bit. What do you think Youmu?

What? Are you asking me?!

Now now, I'm sure you are all just tired. Besides, you should not worry so much about those simple-minded youkai. It may be true that the number of youkai who see no meaning in themselves... That number may well be increasing.



I have heard that some youkai have even begun to sell their abilities as a service.

Hm. You've got a point.

Well, I have been observing Gensokyo's youkai for a long time, after all. I look forward to seeing how the youkai of today will mature as they get older.

When you say it like that, it makes me want to start paying attention too.

You'd better hope you live for a long time.

How rude. I'm not that old...

Settle down, if you would.



Ah, oh yes. Well, I did not expect you to lend us a hand today, so thank you.

I should be thanking you for letting me look through your archives. So long for now.

Youmu leaves.

Well, should we head out too? I want to do some shopping in the market.

Now that you mention it, I need to go shopping too. Mind if I tag along?

Not at all. They're gonna close if we don't hurry though.



Okay. Please come back whenever you want.

Keine and Reimu leave too.

*sigh*... I can not believe she was biting my wall... Let's see... "The Youkai of Twilight, Rumia."



I'll have to add this to the Gensokyo Chronicles.

Akyu: unbiased chronicler.

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There's very little to do this time.



I upgrade Keine's HP and Armor to make her even more of a tank.



Keine and Reimu are still saving up Graze. Reimu would be much closer if I hadn't handed the second Rumia kill to Youmu.



I dump 20 WP into Reimu and get Youkai Buster Lvl 1. I'll try and get everyone's first level Wife Bonus for some variety.



Finally, I put this on Keine like I said I would.

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This time around there are no new characters to discuss, so instead I'll talk about some sort of game mechanic. On today's agenda:



Difficulty levels. One thing the SRW series has always had trouble with is making non-bullshit Hard modes, and FMW is no exception.



Let's take a look at this fairy across all four difficulties.





Here's the baseline on Normal.





On Easy, all enemies have lower HP, their attacks are weaker, their Hit rate took a hit, and they give up more Points.





On Hard, it's the opposite. More HP, stronger attacks, higher Hit rate, less Points, and enemies will immediately spawn Danmaku whenever possible. But there's more than that.



Hard enemies are also more aggressive; on Easy/Normal this red fairy would just spawn danmaku on the first turn, but here it's attacking Marisa.



Next, moving over to Reimu's story for a bit, notice how there are more enemies this time. A select few chapters also feature increased enemy count.

The final thing to note about Hard is that a couple of the Spellcards are changed. Besides having harsher defense/evasion/move penalities, a few of the spellcard grow larger/last longer. Night Bird is not one of those Spellcards however, so no pictures.





Lunatic has even tougher enemies, thicker danmaku, and even less Points. And if that wasn't enough,



enemies will now Defend. If they're low on health or are unable to counterattack, enemies on Lunatic (and Hard, once you're a couple chapters in) will Defend, making battles absolutely excruciating. Remember, the effects of danmaku have increased, and if you can't kill the enemies spawning them the danmaku fields will stack.



And once you start stacking fields, crazy stuff happens. By the way, in case you were thinking of just bombing through the danmaku, nope! On Hard and Lunatic, some enemies that originally carried Bombs no longer do so (and vice versa, on Easy more enemies hold Bombs).

What really makes Lunatic hellish, though, is something I can't show a picture of without blowing my brains out and actually playing through a couple chapters of it. Bosses will start casting Spirits. Have fun dealing with stronger bosses when they have 100% accuracy for a turn/increased evasion/take half damage while you have nerfed characters due to the reduced Points! Or rather, don't even do it because there is no reward whatsoever for playing the game on a harder difficulty.

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Next time on Fantasy Maiden Wars E: Silver Servant

Both Reimu's group and Marisa's group, chasing after the source of the incident, cross paths at the human village. As they exchange information, they catch sight of Hong Meiling and Sakuya Izayoi. Can the group capture the girls who said that they were involved in the mist incident?

"Yes, we know everything about this mist."