No Need For Flowers Hard 1cc Esther

FURRY CODED SHMUP HELL YEAH!!! Did fairly well for the first three stages, but messed up big times on Lobelia (st. 4 boss) and Plumeria (st. 5 boss), but still clutched out a 1cc in the end thankfully. Chose a non-default color for Esther cuz I'm too used to Touhou and reacts better to a red hitbox lmao Found out about this game not long after it got out of beta. Overall a very nicely packaged experience. Stages are fun and boss spells are pretty interesting. The game only has easy/normal/hard difficulties (there's a secret one but it's the same as hard but no extra lives) but the patterns on hard sometimes do just remind me of lunatic from Touhou 😅 Notable things gameplay-wise: Control is very responsive. No detectable lag from my experience. Stop shooting for 0.5s does the same thing as going to the top of the screen and collects all items at max value. Death bombing during spells don't negate spell bonus, only halves it. Attacks are very well telegraphed so you know what to expect. No shenanigans such as extremely fast aimed shots with no warning line. Game has practice mode for both spells and full stages. Bombs are tied to your power (max 4.0). You can go to 0 power so it's a total of 4 bombs, but lower shot power makes the game harder, noticeably on bosses. Defeating boss spells gives less power items the worse you do (0 if you died, 0.5 if you bombed, 1.0 otherwise) and compounds on top of bombs consuming power. Quite a few patterns are static actually, even when it doesn't seem like that at first glance. Noticeably Poly's spell right before her last stand. Balancing of difficulty can be a bit wacky at times. Poly's non spells are very hard with the crossing red fireballs for a stage 3 boss. Lobelia has some very dense patterns too. Velvet's thermoflare spell is deceivingly hard as well. Many bosses also move around a ton, and the spell timers are kinda tight so you sometimes are just forced to time it out. Parts of the game disables your bomb and makes it only give you invuln and not do damage. I like it on principle but it seems to show up a bit too frequently to my taste, especially during stage portions. Plumeria's attacks frequently pushes you down to the bottom which I'm not personally a fan of, but that's more or less a skill issue lol. (Also why is Plumeria's last stand the EASIEST spell of her lmao it's just streaming and doesn't even need to restream) Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/33...