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The second attempt at something more multiplayer.

Touhou Kaeidzukanote  ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View is a video game created by Team Shanghai Alice for Windows computers in 2005. It's the ninth installment in the Touhou Project franchise.

Spring has come to Gensokyo, but the flowers that bloom are those of every season at once. Sixteen characters set out to figure out what's going on.

A Spiritual Successor to the PC-98 game Touhou Yumejikuu ~ Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream, PoFV has similar Twinkle Star Sprites inspired gameplay, featuring split-screen duels against the AI or another human player. It too would have its own spiritual successor in the form of Touhou Juuouen ~ Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost.

The otherwise unofficial fancomic compilation Touhou Shikoubana ~ Seasonal Dream Vision includes a Short Story prologue to this game titled A Beautiful Flower Blooming Violet Every 60 Years, told from the perspective of Yukari Yakumo (who did not appear in the game itself).

The game's official website can be found here (in Japanese).


This game provides examples of:

  • A.I. Breaker: The AI doesn't look very far ahead in predicting bullet movements and instead relies on reacting to nearby bullets, so certain characters perform significantly better against AI opponents:
    • Aya's high-speed EX bullets and spell cards are easily predicted and streamed by a human player, but move fast enough that the AI is unable to react to them in time to dodge.
    • The large laser in Eiki's summon Spell Card comes with a warning tracer which would be an obvious indicator for players to get out of the way, but the AI will try to move out of the way at the last second and get hit because the laser is too wide for them to move far away enough before it hits.
    • Medicine's EX poison clouds will slow players' movements, and are capable of piling up their slow effects until a player is just about immobilized. Savvy human players will avoid these when given the option, but the AI will happily fly into the masses of poison, get stuck, and become unable to dodge incoming bullets.
  • Arrange Mode: This is the only versus shmup in the series to have Extra, and it effectively works as this trope: You start with no extra lives, only get one hit point per round, and must survive against an invincible AI opponent until their timer runs out. While in the main game score extends are at 10 million and then every 20 until 90, in Extra it's every 5 million until 40, granting a total of one more life after accounting for less starting ones. Additionally, each side starts with a full gauge and Lv. 10 attacks... which means the AI gets to be aggressive that much faster. Consequently, it's easy to die on any stage, whereas in the main game Stages 1-5 tend to be more of filler stages before the AI gets serious.
  • The Bus Came Back: Yuuka returns after not having been seen since Mystic Square, becoming the second (not counting series protagonists Reimu and Marisa) and so far last character from the PC-98 games to appear in a Windows game.
  • Continuity Nod: When accusing Yuuka of starting the incident, Reimu says "Everything went back to normal when I defeated you back then!", referencing Yuuka's role as the final boss of Lotus Land Story.
  • Formula-Breaking Episode: Starting in the fourth game, the series had solidified itself as scrolling shooters with certain core mechanics and a well defined structure. This game takes a break from that to instead revisit the versus shmup format from the third game and try a new spin on it. In the process, it also ditches some core mechanics such as bombs or grazing. Future main series entries would go back to the established scrolling shooter formula, which wouldn't be broken again until the nineteenth game.
  • From Bad to Worse: In the late game, Lily likes to show up at the worst possible times, such as when your opponent just cast a level 4 spell.
  • Game-Breaking Bug: Continuing the tradition of Prismrivers breaking the game, playing the story mode using Lyrica's alternate costume causes the game to crash after stage 8. There is also another bug that often causes the game to crash after trying to save a replay, particularly with Cirno.
  • Heart of Happiness: Kazami Yuuka, a long-lived and dangerously powerful youkai who is being accused of causing the bloom of supernatural flowers that kicks off the plot of the game, caps off a threat with a heart, since she's openly amused by the game's cast (understandably) jumping to the conclusion that she had something to do with it, with a happy quote from her to start her boss battle:
    In a few hours, you'll become a mist of atoms. ♡
  • Hold the Line: Every single battle in Extra Stage is this. The enemy is invulnerable for a set amount of time (scaling similarly to main story) and you must survive until their time is up, at which they often screw up on purpose.
  • Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The difficulty levels are named after various plants:
    • Easy: Skunk Cabbage
    • Normal: Pheasant's Eye Narcissus
    • Hard: Camellia Sasanqua
    • Lunatic: Red Spider Lily
    • Extra: Saigyou Ayakashi (aka the sealed tree from Perfect Cherry Blossom)
  • Lighter and Softer: The previous game dealt with a Weird Moon incident so severe as to get the main characters to buy time by starting another incident, and in the Extra Stage you're used as a pawn in the eternal conflict between two immortals who keep quarreling over a centuries old grudge. In this game, the incident is a lot less serious and turns out it doesn't even need to be solved as it's part of a decades long natural cycle, while many of the characters are just messing around rather than fighting over anything serious. That said, the Final Boss is the judge of the dead who gives warnings to the other characters out of concern that she might have to judge them harshly after their deaths if they don't change their ways, while Medicine poisons Tewi causing her to pass out in the ending and require treatment from Eirin.
  • Move in the Frozen Time: Sakuya's Time Sign "Private Vision" does not freeze the other player if they're also playing as Sakuya.
  • Nigh-Invulnerability: In Extra mode, the AI is immune to all damage until its timer runs out, meaning even Medicine and Aya's A.I. Breaker attacks won't help you there.
  • No Antagonist: Downplayed; while Komachi slacking off exacerbates the scope, the incident itself is not caused by anyone involved and is instead caused by something outside of Gensokyo causing a massive surplus in human spirits.
  • Not Me This Time: Since Yuuka has the ability to make flowers bloom and has caused trouble in the past, she becomes a major suspect in the flower incident, but turns out to be innocent and simply enjoying the flowers.
  • Offhand Backhand: Lyrica can shoot backwards.
  • Promoted to Playable: Several bosses from the previous three games make their playable debuts here:
    • Cirno, the Stage 2 boss of the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.
    • The Prismriver Sisters, the Stage 4 bosses of Perfect Cherry Blossom. Only Lyrica is playable in story mode, with Merlin and Lunasa only being playable in match mode.
    • Mystia, the Stage 2 boss, Tewi, the Stage 4 midboss and Reisen, the Stage 5 boss of Imperishable Night.
  • Recurring Boss: Lily appears every so often on both fields to flood the screen with danmaku.
  • Red Spider Lilies of Mourning: Red spider lilies sprout up all over Gensokyo because Komachi Onozuka, ferrywoman of the Sanzu River, has been slacking off and thus a lot of spirits have been unable to get to the afterlife. In addition, Higan, the far side of the Sanzu River where souls wait to be judged, is shown to be a garden filled with red spider lilies.
  • Refuge in Audacity: When Eiki, the judge of the dead, calls Marisa out on her constant lying, the latter's response is to claim she has never told a lie in her entire life.
  • Sheathe Your Sword: Defied. If you stop shooting for more than a few seconds so the opponent can't send too many bullets at you, the AI's internal timer (which determines when the AI gets hit) will stop until you start shooting things down again.
  • Smart Bomb: Instead of having bombs as a consumable resource, in this game, your Charged Attack clears an area around you of bullets starting at level 2. The higher the charge's level, the larger the area cleared, with level 4 clearing your entire field.
  • Vicious Cycle: The events of this game happen every sixty years. But there is no real danger save for confused people picking random fights with each other, which is just another day in Gensokyo, and the incident resolves itself eventually.
  • Updated Re-release: The Steam release was updated with online multiplayer through direct IP connections, as well as support for Remote Play Together for more stable matchmaking.

Alternative Title(s): Phantasmagoria Of Flower View

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