DANMAKAI: Red Forbidden Fruit

the touhou

Moo. Do you like grazing? If so, then Danmakai: Red Forbidden Fruit will likely be right up your alley. To cut to the chase: Danmakai is an immensely sharp and potent bullet-grazing shmup with extremely few flaws. And while there's a number of issues to get out of the way (which I'll get to shortly); what Danmakai does well, it does so well that its relatively few shortcomings are easy to ignore and even forget about. Danmakai's single biggest flaw is that it doesn't support keyboard rebinding despite curiously supporting controller rebinding. So if you're like me and you play your shmups with a keyboard and absolutely cannot deviate from the key binds you've spent years -- or even decades -- honing your skills with, then allow me save you the trouble with a simple AutoHotkey v2 (AHK2) script that'll sort you right out: ;Save script as: AutoHotkey64.ahk SendMode "Event" #HotIf WinActive("ahk_exe Danmakai.exe") 1::z 3::x 4::Shift i::Up k::Down j::Left l::Right If you don't know what AHK2 is, your search engine of choice will guide you accordingly. The keys to the left of the double colon are your desired keys for input. For the sake of clarity I always use 1 for Shot, 2 for Special, 3 for Bomber, and 4 for Focus Shot in all my shmups (Danmakai doesn't have a Special though). Also, the very first line (SendMode "Event") is required to prevent a common issue with keys appearing stuck when using AHK which is particularly prevalent when AHK is tasked with mapping a rapid amount of simultaneous keystrokes. With that out of the way, Danmakai plays beautifully well with my cozy key binds. And now onto one of the biggest positives of the game while staying on topic of controls: Danmakai is sharp, and I mean like, ludicrously sharp. You really do feel one with the game and your character when playing Danmakai; this game is exceedingly responsive and fluid with its input. It's genuinely sublime. And it gets better from here; because not only is Danmakai sharp with its controls, it's exceptionally sharp with its visuals too. Danmakai has got to have the absolute best hitbox design of any shmup I've ever played, and oh boy are you going to be taking advantage of it because you'll be micro dodging a LOT. For anyone who has ever struggled with hitboxes in shmups, I highly recommend Danmakai. I'm not entirely sure why, but Danmakai's hitbox is extremely easy to focus and lock your eyes onto while ignoring absolutely everything else which doesn't matter, and it's thus excellent to practice micro dodging with. While a little unconventional though; this hitbox disappears if you're not in focus shot, and I actually don't mind that at all because your character moves *fast* when not in focus. You also get a little blue circle around your character which denotes your pickup range for gems and for grazing bullets, which expands into a bigger blue circle and smaller red one when in focus to show your gem pickup and grazing range. In Danmakai you'll be grazing, and you'll be grazing a lot. Danmakai implements grazing in two critical areas of gameplay: grazing bullets is used to both power up your shot and your score multiplier (or "rate" as it's called). Moreover your bomber ("buster") is tied to your shot power, and using it resets your shot power level while momentarily cancelling all bullets into white gems which are used to further increase your rate. So even if you were to ignore scoring, you're still encouraged to graze for the purpose of leveling up your shot (though you could in theory keep your shot power at maximum and never bomb). It's not just input and visuals where Danmakai excels either; both sound effects and music are exceptional and I'm exceedingly happy with my purchase of its soundtrack. You also get two starting characters (and one bonus character, awarded after a 1CC on Normal difficulty or higher); and these characters play sufficiently differently that it'll affect both strategy and level routing. And now onto what's going to potentially be a key sticking point for a number of players: difficulty. Make no mistake, this is not an easy game, even on Normal. While there's technically an Easy difficulty, I cannot comment on it as I always begin my shmups on whatever is considered the Normal difficulty and I only did a single run on Easy to clear an achievement which you cannot get on higher difficulties (odd). Danmakai implements a dynamic difficulty rank (from 1 to 16) for three of its four difficulty levels (Easy, Medium, and Hard), and with Medium and Hard there's a lower limit on the rank no matter how often you miss; as for Lunatic you'll be rank-locked to 16 (lol). From about rank 8 onwards expect your journey to get spicy; boss patterns aren't just tight, they're tight and fast. Each rank results in a noticeable increase in bullet pattern aggressiveness, and this is only going to be the beginning of your struggles, because the bosses on Hard and Lunatic also possess spell cards which are unique to the difficulty in question. Yep, you've read that right. You can ace the game on Normal, get your 1CC, feel very good about setting yourself up nicely for Hard, and you'll reach a familiar boss and encounter an entirely new bullet pattern and promptly die. Fantastic. I'm not sure how much I agree with this design as I feel that the progression from easier to harder difficulties should be as natural as possible; but it is what it is. As for Lunatic? Let's just say that in Danmakai this difficulty is well and truly deserving of its name. You'll be in a whole new and different world of pain. You'll reach the last boss with 8 extends feeling real good about your progress and she'll delete you and leave you with your face firmly planted onto your keyboard. This game tracked 130 attempts for me to get my Lunatic 1CC, and that was after spending a good amount of time 1CC'ing Normal and Hard. And if that isn't painful enough, Lunatic Challenge has you covered. This is a mode where you're required to individually clear every single spell card in Lunatic with no extends, no bomber, and with your shot power starting at 1. Oh, and you'll have a few extra spell cards to deal with which are unique to this mode because of course. This was annoying to say the least, because in most shmups I tend to treat missions and optional challenges as an avenue to practice for the main game. In Danmakai you'll be playing the main game to practice for Lunatic Challenge. It's insane. With all that said though: if you do manage to 1CC this game (especially on Lunatic), and if you do manage to acquire the achievement for clearing Lunatic Challenge with all characters, Danmakai: Red Forbidden Fruit will make you a better STG player; but you're going to have to earn it. It won't be easy, it will certainly be exasperating, and you'll often be wondering what in the world you've gotten yourself into. And finally: I'd just like to give one final shout-out to the bosses in this game, especially the final one; because hot damn are they immensely fun and outstandingly well designed. But what an amazing gem of a game it is. Absolutely first class. Highly recommended!~ <3

better than 2hu

im top 10 worst bull hell player the OST is bangin

[h1] 只能给中评 [/h1] 画面瞎眼——子弹晃动、背景与子弹区分度小、背景配色过于鲜艳、这些都是STG画面设计的大忌。 虽然弹设还不错，但并没优秀到可以让我顶着头晕眼花的症状继续研究下去（我打了个LNB就跑了），只能说有点遗憾。 如果你看了demo觉得画面不瞎眼可以接受，那么以下意见供参考： [h1] 难度 [/h1] 1. 推荐使用第3个机体（猫猫），纯诱导火力压制力很强，道中基本白送，boss战（大部分情况）也很好使。 2. Lunatic混关大概和东方正作差不多水平。最好在后面有充足Power补给（道具、擦弹）的情况下丢雷，稍微记得一点版面就能做到。 3. LNB比东方正作简单很多，因为难点少、残机多。[spoiler] 主要难点可能是画面瞎眼影响看清子弹？ [/spoiler] 4. LNN有人打出来了，感兴趣可以搜下视频学习打法。 [h1] 关卡设计 [/h1] 1. 道中和boss弹设均以基本功类型为主，解谜不多。 2. 道中设计还行。猫猫机体基本可以无视道中，导致道中没什么存在感。另外，直线机的道中是能玩的。 3. boss弹设从避弹的角度来看还不错。 [h1] 其他 [/h1] 1. 手感好。 2. 程序完善，有练习、符卡挑战、Replay功能。 3. 立绘挺可爱。 4. 官方中文是机翻。 5. 音乐个人觉得一般。 6. 画面已经在开头锐评过了。

One of the best shmups i've played, and boy i have played a lot. You can see the love that was poured into making this game

controls don’t work on latest proton experimental on OLED deck EDIT: works now. very fun danmaku

Extremely solid bullet hell that wears its Touhou influences on its sleeve but still manages to have an identity of its own. One of my new favorites! Some gameplay information: [list] [*]Enemies only drop one kind of pickup, gems, which increase your score and several other stats. There is no point of collection like in Touhou games. [*]There are four power levels (0 to 3) that upgrade your shot damage and spread. Collecting gems and grazing enemy bullets increases your power. [*]Bombing varies in effectiveness depending on your power level but always drops your power level to 0. You need to be at at least power level 1 to bomb. [*]You gain extra lives by reaching certain milestone numbers of collected gems as well as boss drops at certain set points in the game. Dying does not decrease or reset your power level. [*]On all difficulties but Lunatic the game has a rank system which dynamically adjusts the difficulty of enemy bullet patterns. Grazing and collecting gems increases your rank and dying or bombing decreases it. [*]There are three characters (one which is unlockable) which each belong to one of three shot type archetypes (straight, spread and homing). [*]The main game has six stages and there is an unlockable extra stage. [*]There is a challenge mode which lets you practice individual boss attacks and acts sort of like Spell Practice in Touhou games except you always start at 0 power and your rank is fixed. Reaching certain milestones in this mode unlocks new extra challenging attack patterns that are exclusive to this mode (similar to Last Words in Imperishable Night). [*]The game has stage practice and supports saving replays. [/list] The sprite graphics and character artwork are lovely and the boss attack patterns are visually interesting. Some specific attacks have slight visibility issues and can be difficult to read but overall most patterns are well-designed and feel fair. The music serves its purpose well but is nothing outstanding. In the main game it never gets repetitive but in the challenge mode it can be tiring to listen to the same short loop over and over. The story and setting is simple but fun. The English translation is poor and seems machine translated but the way it awkwardly phrases certain lines of dialogue is adorable and arguably works in favor of the game's quirky aesthetic. Difficulty-wise I would say the game is only slightly less challenging than most Touhou games but will still present a good challenge to seasoned danmaku players. Bombing is less forgiving because of the power loss but you gain extra lives at a much higher rate. And if you get tired of the main game the challenge mode is a lot of difficult fun (especially the unlockable attacks!). Overall, I really like this game and strongly recommend this game to both new and seasoned players. I remain hopeful that the developers make a sequel at some point in the future!

A PC-98 PlatineDispositif Game.

This is my favorite 2hue of the series!!!