Scarlet Weather Rhapsody


Touhou Hisouten ~ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. is the second versus fighting game in the Touhou Project, and is the spiritual successor to Immaterial and Missing Power by Twilight Frontier and Team Shanghai Alice. In the Touhou Project overall, it is labelled as the 10.5th Touhou game, though the game was first planned to be numbered 9.8. In western gaming communities, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody is often abbreviated as SWR.

Gameplay

Scarlet Weather Rhapsody stayed true to its predecessor Immaterial and Missing Power in that it retained most of the Immaterial's basic system and moves. Projectiles are still the main attack feature, and grazing is still an effective way of evasion. In addition, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody added the ability to fly, a different card deck system, and a weather system that deals out various handicaps.
Scarlet Weather Rhapsody also provides built-in support for multiplayer games over the internet, something that its predecessor lacks.

Card deck system

Expanded from the Spell Card system of Immaterial and other games, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody allows the player to assemble a "deck" of 20 cards. Cards become available for in-play use as the player deals or receives damage. New cards can be obtained through various actions in gameplay.
Cards fall into three categories: System Cards, Skill Cards, and Spell Cards. System Cards include bombs, weather change, and other miscellaneous options. Skill Cards upgrade special attacks to do more damage, allow the player to gain alternate special attacks, or both. Spell Cards are powerful attacks that automatically work once activated. Proper assembly of card decks according to the player's style is key to mastering the game, since the decks limit what the characters can do during a match.

Weather

The weather changes during a match, which subjects the two combatants to some handicap according to the weather, as listed below. Note that although there are weather changes in the Story Mode, they are for visual effects only and do not carry any handicap like in other modes.
WeatherAssociated withEffect
Temperament
気質		N/ANo effect until the timer reaches 100.
Sunny
快晴		Reimu HakureiBorder Escapes are free, flight cost is halved.
Drizzle
霧雨		Marisa KirisameSpell card damages increase.
Cloudy
曇天		Sakuya IzayoiDecreases spell card cost by 1.
Azure Sky
蒼天		Youmu KonpakuSpecial attacks can be canceled into other special attacks.
Hail
雹		Alice MargatroidSpirit Orb Recovery speed is doubled, increases damage of bullet-type specials.
Spring Haze
花曇		Patchouli KnowledgePlayers cannot use any melee attacks, though Special melee moves still can be used. The delay in spirit recharging after an attack is removed as well.
Dense Fog
濃霧		Remilia ScarletInflicting damage on an opponent restores a small bit of health to the player.
Snow
雪		Yuyuko SaigyoujiHitting an opponent will cause her to lose some of her card gauge. Cards lost this way are returned to the player's deck.
Sunshowers
天気雨		Yukari YakumoIncorrectly blocked melee attacks result in an instant guard crush.
Sprinkle
疎雨		Suika IbukiAll special moves and Skillcard moves are upgraded to Level 4.
Tempest
風雨		Aya SyameimaruMaximum Airdashes/Flys allowed increased by one, characters can high jump cancel their melee attacks.
Mountain Vapor
晴嵐		Reisen Udongein InabaSpellcards in reserve are hidden with a "?"
River Mist
川霧		Komachi OnodukaNormalizes the distance between opponents.
Typhoon
台風		Iku NagaeCharacters gain superarmor and will not enter hitstun, and also lose the ability to block.
Aurora
極光		Tenshi HinanaiCause a random weather effect.
Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
緋想天		Tenshi HinanaiStory Mode only. No effect.

Plot

Unlike previous Touhou games where the multiple endings are numbered, leading to ambiguous canonicity of each ending, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody does not number its endings and all story routes are considered as canon. This is achieved by placing all story routes in different places in the plot's continuity, though the chronological order in which the characters' stories are played out is not immediately apparent to the player.
A bizarre phenomenon is occurring in Gensokyo. In the middle of summer, untimely rain and hail fall in the Forest of Magic, snow blankets Hakugyokurou, the Scarlet Devil Mansion is enveloped in a cloudy, dense haze, and the Hakurei Shrine is levelled by a sudden earthquake. Throughout the game, Reimu and the other protagonists set out to investigate the source of the strange occurrences.
The culprit behind all these is the celestial Tenshi Hinanai. Finding her newfound life in Heaven boring and monotonous, she enviously saw the youkai of Gensokyo stirring many incidents from above. Wielding the power to control the earth and the divine Sword of Scarlet Thought, the jaded celestial decides to instigate a catastrophe of her own.

Characters

Scarlet Weather Rhapsody retained all characters from Immaterial and Missing Power while adding three pre-existing characters of the Touhou Project into the game and introducing two new characters — bringing the total roster to 15 characters.
Like with Immaterial and Missing Power, ZUN of Team Shanghai Alice only did parts of the game while Twilight Frontier did most of the game-making. ZUN, besides overseeing the whole development, also provided the storyline, new character designs, spell card names, and three new music tracks for the game.
The public was first given a hands-on trial of the beta version of the game in the fourth Reitaisai in 2007. Though eight laptops were set up for the game, it reportedly took over an hour of waiting in line before one could have a try at the game. A trial version was sold at the Comiket 72 on August 17 of the same year for 100 yen, and a new demo was offered for free download on the Twilight Frontier's website on April 29, 2008. The full version was released at the fifth Reitaisai on May 25, 2008.
Unlike the main line of Touhou games where the character artwork is drawn by ZUN, the dialog character sprites and ending artwork in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody are drawn by alphes from the Twilight Frontier team, as is the case with Immaterial and Missing Power.

Merchandise

The soundtrack of the game was compiled into an album named Zenjinrui no Tenrakuroku, first sold in Comiket 74 on August 16, 2008. As was the case in Immaterial and Missing Power, half of the songs were remixes of existing Touhou songs.
Twilight Frontier also made "Hisouten Furoku ~Weatherlight~", turning in-game cards into paper, first sold in the COMIC1☆3 convention on April 26, 2009. Each deck contains 15 cards, one spellcard for each character, all redesigned and re-illustrated by alphes, the artist of Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. The cards are meant to be for collection only; there is no card game associated with these cards.