Cir- NO WAY, she's actually playable?!
Yousei Daisensounote ~ Touhou Sangetsusei (more commonly known as "Fairy Wars") is a video game created by Team Shanghai Alice for Windows computers in 2010. It's the 12.8th videogame installment in the Touhou Project franchise, and a spinoff of the Touhou Sangetsusei manga series.
Cirno's house got destroyed by the Three Fairies of Light, and since Cirno took it as a declaration of war, she's going to punish them.
The game features the freezing mechanic. Cirno can freeze bullets that come into contact with ice used by her, and frozen bullets that touch other bullets will freeze them too. The bomb system has also been revamped into the Perfect Freeze mechanic, allowing all bullets on the screen to be frozen.
This game provides examples of:
- Armor-Piercing Attack: The lasers used by the Three Fairies of Light in the final stage break right through Cirno's ice and spread tiny pellets as they go. The only defense against them outside of bombing is to dodge them normally.
- Art-Shifted Sequel: The game's character portraits are in a drastically different art style from the other shmups. It's much more expressive, has more vibrant colors, and puts a lot of emphasis on the characters' clothes. They were drawn by manga artist Makoto Hirasaka.
- The Battle Didn't Count: Played for Laughs. The Extra Boss deliberately lowers the power of her attacks in order to humour Cirno, and while they're both exhausted after the fight, Cirno is the one who gets the "battle-damaged" portrait normally reserved for the loser. She's still shocked at how long Cirno was able to keep going, though.
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: An example that technically happens on both ends; after you defeat the Extra Boss (who, being Marisa Kirisame, is a very formidable opponent, and wasn't even going all out), Cirno is the one visibly injured, but the boss is exhausted as well and needs to go back home and get some sleep. Cirno may be a fairy, but this shows that being one of the most powerful fairies is nothing to scoff at, even when she's clearly outclassed.
- The Bus Came Back: After having gone missing since her debut (barring a couple of manga cameos), Daiyousei from the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil reprises her role as the midboss of Misty Lake. She also joins forces with Lily as the Extra Stage midboss.
- Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Lives in this game are called "Motivation" and expressed as a percentage, with 100% being the equivalent of a life. The idea is that if Cirno gets beaten badly enough, she gets tired or bored and goes do something else. Freezing bullets and defeating enemies slowly increases motivation, while the Extra Boss can create fields that drain it without directly killing you.
- Collision Damage: Unusually for the series, this is averted for most Mook-level enemies. Touching a boss or miniboss will still harm Cirno as normal.
- A Day in the Limelight: For Cirno, who gets her own game after being a stage 2 boss in another game and being a playable but non-main character in several other games.
- Dual Boss: Daiyousei and Lily appear together as the Extra Stage midboss.
- Flawless Victory: You're given golden medals for capturing cards without taking damage, bombing or freezing any bullets. That was probably
ZUN's idea of a joke. - Game-Breaking Bug: Hitting Retry from the pause menu on Stage C2-2 or C2-3 and then subsequently beating the game on route C2 without returning to the menu would crash the game. This one has not been patched.
- Haughty "Hmph": At one point Cirno arrogantly goes "hmph".
- HP to 1: The Extra Boss creates fields that drain your motivation (which acts as your Life Meter), but those fields cannot kill you directly. Even if your motivation gets drained all the way to 0, it'll simply stay there and you'll remain alive until something else hits you.
- Insane Troll Logic: At the final battle in one route, Cirno accuses the Three Fairies of playing dirty by fighting three on one. According to the them, however, the three of them always act as a single unit, so it's a fair one on one fight. Furthermore, it means previously Cirno has been fighting one on one-third, so she was the one playing dirty. Cirno being Cirno, she fell for this.
- Life Meter: In place of lives, Cirno has a "Motivation" percentage which increases as she performs certain actions, and produces a Game Over if it falls under 0%. Getting hit by a bullet reduces Cirno's Motivation by 100%, and the Extra Boss can also project fields which drain her motivation over time.
- Literary Allusion Title: "Yousei Daisensou" (The Great Fairy War) to "Youkai Daisensou" (The Great Yokai War).
- Lower-Deck Episode: This is a much shorter game than usual, focused on a quarrel between Cirno and the Three Faeries. Every single person in the game is a fairy, with Daiyousei, Lily and the Three Faeries themselves as bosses, rather than any of the usual "A-list" cast members. Except at the end of the extra stage, where Cirno takes on Marisa.
- Nerf Arm: In order to go easy on Cirno, the Extra Boss Marisa uses a variant of her signature Master Spark that's powered not by her normal elemental furnace but a flashlight.
- No Ending: If you use continues to finish a playthrough, instead of getting a bad ending like in the main games, you don't get an ending at all and are taken directly to the scoreboard.
- Palette Swap: Lily is dressed in white when encountered in the Forest of Magic and in the Extra Stage, and in black when encountered in Spring Path.
- Recurring Boss:
- If you take Route A2 or C1, Lily will be the midboss of both Stages 1 and 2. (In other routes, Daiyousei appears in either stage instead). Lily and Daiyousei both return as the Extra Stage midbosses as well.
- Throughout the main game, the Three Fairies of Light are first fought separately (two of them as the bosses of Stages 1 and 2, the last as the final stage midboss), before you face them all at once as the Final Boss, with the last one you met leading the charge.
- Recycled Soundtrack: The theme of Stage 1, The Refrain of the Lovely Great War, is originally from the companion CD to the second volume of Strange and Bright Nature Deity.
- Smart Bomb: Cirno's iconic spell, Perfect Freeze. It freezes and erases all bullets on screen, including fireballs, which can't be frozen by regular ice. The Perfect Freeze meter caps at 300% and using a bomb costs 100%, effectively meaning the player can have up to three bombs in stock. You fill up the meter by freezing bullets with regular ice, and you also receive 25% when you get hit.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: During the final Spell Card, due to a glitch, if you defeat the fairy in the center at the same time as either (or both) of the fairies to the sides, the stage will continue indefinitely and the game won't acknowledge this as a clear. The only thing to do is to pause and go back to the title screen.
- Unreliable Narrator: This trope is used as the player's point of view; in actuality, the danmaku Cirno faced was not as dense as it appears in the game, but is presented that way both in the interest of gameplay and because it really looks like that to her.
- Wolfpack Boss: The final boss is a fight against all Three Fairies of Light at the same time.
