No Need for Flowers

Look, it's really fun to play and both the art and musical pieces are amazing. However, it's also really hard to dodge bullets when you have tears in your eyes. (serious note, it was very approachable for being a bullet hell, feel free to just enjoy the ride)

Played through Hard mode with all three characters. Stage design is pretty interesting and forces you to do a bunch of unconventional things. Boss patterns are also beautiful and unique. You actually have to make use of most of the play field, which I’m a big fan of. Attacks are well-telegraphed and you probably won’t die from a cheapshot. I say probably because I’m a moron and for my first playthrough, I didn’t notice the purple colour gradient during one of the final boss’ attacks and she proceeded to rain hellfire on me, oops. Final boss in general has neat setpieces. The system for survival is pretty vanilla, but that's fine because the stages do most of the innovating. Can’t speak for scoring because I have zero experience on that aspect. If I had to nitpick, I’d say that there’s too much aimed patterns sometimes. Eg. With the exception of one burst wave which is random, the entirety of the stage 5 boss’ last stand is aimed at you and all you have to do is slow streaming. That attack feels like the Rainbow Ring of People of this game. Not quite sure what happened there… Bullet visibility isn’t an issue in this game except for possibly Poly’s third nonspell on Hard (the one w…

I have a little experience with shmups and bullet hells. I may or may not have bought Ikaruga like, at least three times, including on the Gamecube. I love 'em, though sometimes I can really struggle to actually get into them. I saw this game, I got curious, eventually I picked it up, and boy am I happy I did. Wonderful visuals and characters, a cute and effective storyline, a soundtrack that aggressively announces "oops all bangers", and most importantly, gameplay that feels tight, very rewarding, and straddles the line between demanding, challenging, and just forgiving enough to keep you going, all at the same time. There's more than enough depth to reward multiple playthroughs, let alone practicing to get better and better at it. Whether you're a seasoned veteran of touhou games or just trying to poke your snout in and see what it's all about, I can absolutely recommend No Need For Flowers as a fantastic piece of kit.

Yes. 100% Yes. This game is a wonderful (and surprisingly accessible!) Touhou-inspired danmaku shmup made with love. It tells a lovely story with a host of endearing characters, has fun and exciting patterns, and a ZUNpet-filled soundtrack that is absolutely perfect. It even has a few little secrets here and there! If there's any part of you that enjoys danmaku games, or even WANTS to like danmaku games (but perhaps finds Touhou too difficult,) then I can't recommend this game highly enough. Lily, your froggy spell is wonderful; thank you for sharing it.

Definitely a solid bullet hell. The final boss is a little bit of a freebie compared to earlier stages, but the soundtrack and presentation sells it. The writing and story aren't bad per se, but it's a little strange how it kind of feels like going through the aftermath of another story. Who plays bullet hells for the story, though? Good music and some shockingly unique ideas for patterns. I don't find them all fun, but the game was still a solid experience overall.

A wonderful and approachable bullet hell game! I love the characters :)