let's have a sleepover and hit each other with spells

maiden & spell is a lighthearted boss rush bullet hell where you play as a magical girl fighting monster girls and your magical girl friends. it's got both a versus mode (against cpu, local and online) and a story mode with four routes (six stages each) plus two beefy extra stages, and challenge true magnuses where you clear a single (difficult) spell with limited lives. i pretty much only played the story mode because i don't like pvp.

the game is fairly short (depends on how much you die, but it takes around 20-25 minutes for a clear ime, which is touhou speedrun time), and on the easy side of things, on purpose (the dev said so in this interview (more of a podcast type thing really. no timestamps sorry)). which i'm very happy with. cute is nice and easy, and normal is at this sweet spot where it's challenging but not so demanding you can't tell what hit you. hard is where things really get scary, but you still get your spell cards (a "currency" between lives and continues) replenished after each magnus. as far as i can tell all modes have infinite continues, though your score will suffer.

but regardless of difficulty, the game has an absolutely revolutionary feature: save and quit. oh yeah baby it's already a perfect casual game but now you're telling me i can keep my progress and get back to it later if i have to? delicious stuff. if only it had cloud saves... nevertheless, this makes it really good for when you're ready to leave the house but have just enough time to play something first.

the story is pretty chill and low stakes. it's rather self aware in a very charming way, i liked all the pre-fight dialogue with its tone of friendly competition even between the adventurers and monsters. at the end you get some illustrations too, to tie things up nicely. you can turn off the story events on the settings to speed things up on subsequent playthroughs.

the battles are structured as such: the first part plays exactly like versus mode, with the two of you trading blows using your regular attacks. this part is pretty fun because you really get to be the touhou, and the girls get very mean on hard and above. once your opponent is down to her last life, you get a magnus attack (aka a spell card), where things get properly danmaku-y. your goal here is just to exhaust her hp by going all out with your attacks, and the magnus time is what counts for scoring. defeat a magnus and your lives and spell cards get replenished, and it's back to versus until she exhausts her spell cards (2 to 4 per battle, final boss has 5), though the last two magnuses are back to back. if you die you repeat the current phase from the versus segment, but you only need to replay a cleared magnus if you get a game over or continue from a save (it puts you at the start of the encounter).

as for the extra stages (i'm not sure whether EX1 unlocks after getting a 1cc or just by clearing one of the unlockable character routes, because i did both at once; EX2 unlocks after clearing EX1), they're each a single long fight (10-15 minutes) and a solid step up in challenge from the main story routes. i've yet to clear the second one, but i really like the different magnuses introduced on both. EX1 has you playing as hero, and there are patterns where you pretty much need her dodge roll, it's rather unique. the fight looks really pretty and i enjoy the story. in EX2 you play as one of the monsters, dreadwyrm (you might wanna practice her moveset on versus mode) and i particularly enjoy the 2v1 because i always love it when characters mix their danmaku. it looks great and adds tasty complexity ^_^

overall, the game is built on a very solid foundation that makes it a great arcade-y title, and the lower difficulty is great if you, like me, love bullet hells but suck at them. it goes on some very nice sales so it's just such a little treat of a game, like going out for ice cream on a wednesday.

tips and strats

the wiki is focused on pvp, since it's hosted on a versus game site. i'll be focusing on solo. usual disclaimer that i haven't played much on hard yet.

never stop attacking. ok this may be stupid of me but because the tutorial introduces special attacks alongside the magnus, i didn't realize at first that regular attacks are still perfectly effective. which is why my first run was abysmal. so um yeah keep using Z and X while waiting for your special's cooldown during the magnus attacks.
the perfect run. you can get hit and still get a perfect run. what counts for that is whether or not you lost any spell cards. and you can still have a 1cc even if you lose cards. the game is very kind.
hero of frost. she felt the most familiar to me, because you can hold down her main fire forever, and it gets stronger while focusing. she also gets a dodge roll in addition to her bullet clearing special, meaning she's overall a very defensive character — i found that to be kinda boring after a while, especially on the versus segments, but it also means you can better focus on surviving rather than dps.
- hero's match against priestess is pretty dangerous. while shooting you're just a little too slow to avoid her big circle attacks so take it easy on the held down Z and/or be ready to dodge roll as soon as the circle reaches you. and remember her big circle attacks have a brief window where they're orange and don't have a hitbox yet
- same goes for the final fight but maybe i'm just bad against chimera. best tip is to not get too close to her, and try to catch her with your wide shot.
royal arcanist. i played her first, and she tripped me up a bit since her primary attack has to be manually fired continuously, rather than held down. her defensive also takes a while to come out so you can't rely on it very much to save you. however! she does have two offensive specials: a big ass moon and a status effect beam. the status effect is technically a variation of the defensive, and you can spam it forever as long as the timestop isn't on cooldown.
- her route has both of the game's pure dps checks, the final magnuses of hero and depths. if you don't beat them fast enough you'll get hit continuously with very little time to get some extra damage during your invincibility window, so pile on that damage and try not use your defensive if you can: it's slow and will lock you out of your debuff attack.
- her wide shot can be held down and slows you down to a pretty nice dodging speed. it's a good choice when you really need to focus on a magnus: you can still use the moon while holding down the button.
silent redhood. she's the easiest character imo (to play. she's a strong foe), her wide attack places a minefield so she can absolutely dominate the arena, and it deals damage over time during magnuses. she's the best at hitting opponents during the versus phase. she's super mobile and her defensive is really solid, besides resetting her special.
- i find the final boss to be the trickiest here, because lich's deal is also putting down a ton of hazards and she's better at it than you possibly could. your mobility can act against you and make you bump into bullets, and her final magnus feels particularly restrictive, so be mindful of when you spend your defensive lest you get cornered by her aoe.
- during magnuses your wide is a great source of continuous damage, so don't neglect it. it can kill the boss while you're busy evading and getting hit and it's a huge relief.
sun priestess. i don't think i play her well at all. she feels very slow to me, and i feel her special doesn't do as much damage as her regular shot during magnuses.
- during the fight with arcanist, your defensive will dispell any debuffs you're hit with. you might not want to get rid of giant though: it increases your damage.

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