Touhou 東方真珠島 ～ Hollow Song of Birds - Perfect Extra Clear (NMNB)

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The Extra stage for Hollow Song of Birds came out yesterday, HSoB being the latest Touhou fangame in the long running line of fangames created by Ido en co.
They always release their Extra stages a couple of months later.
As always, the presentation, music and graphics are all very nice.

The Extra stage has a unique gimmick in that you use a rainbow orb.
With the rainbow orb you can choose two orbs from the seven normally available and then freely switch between them with the user key.
This actually works really well and it's quite fun to use. It also gives a lot more depth to the system, because now you want to optimize using two different shots at once. Kinda makes me wish this was in the main game too.
The white and black orbs are still available, for those who want to use them.
I picked red and orange. In the main game there was a split between whether red or orange was better, but with the rainbow orb you get the best of both world.
For those that don't remember, red sets enemies on fire and is in general really powerful. The shot on orange is really weak, but if you graze you get homing lasers that do a lot of damage.
In general I use orange when there are a lot of bullets to graze and switch to red when there are none.
Another difference is that the Extra stage doesn't have the normal bombs anymore, all your bombs are Z-Spells.

Visiting all the stages from the main game in the Extra stage is a neat idea.
You get a short condensed section of a stage and then move on, which makes for good pacing. The part where you shoot down is also quite unique.
Though I don't really like how a lot of the patterns are just rehashed from the main game without doing anything new or interesting with it.

The boss has a lot of varied and unique attacks, it's quite fun. All the various plates and vases also have a very satisfying 'crunch' to them when you destroy them.

Overall a pretty nice Extra stage.

Download the game here:
https://www.freem.ne.jp/win/game/19424

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