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4/29/2025, 11:33:30 PM
I should learn how to be concise. I'm sorry that I will be dumping this, I don't expect many to read through this and I promise that I will get to the atmosphere part too, but not today.
Before proceeding further, I need to admit that this will be biased. Not only because of all those little things influencing one's experiences that philosophers love to argue about, but also because of two important reasons. Firstly, I played and completed StB before touching DS and I suspect that my annoyance at adjusting in terms of mechanical differences coloured my view on the latter; someone playing in reverse order could come to opposite conclusions. Secondly, I care significantly more about Aya than Hatate. This isn't to say that Hatate's inclusion is bad or irrelevant, it is slight net positive, as I will explain later. However, for someone more interested in purple tengu StB will be at significant disadvantage there compared to DS, but I will not touch this subject after this preface.
I will start with mechanical differences, as both titles are first and foremost games. Shooting is different, likewise scoring. Most of the differences are subtle but they influence the style of playing nonetheless. In StB, if you pressed shift+z and charged up, unpressing shift caused you to enter camera mode immedietely, which was nice for snapshots. In DS, you need to stop pressing both and only then press z, which adds additional delay. In both games the center of viewfinder is dictated by a crosshair that is visible also outside of taking shoots. As Aya, if you are unfocused, it will turn into direction of the movement or, if you stay still, it will slowly position itself in direction of the boss. If you focus, the crosshair will direct itself at the boss almost immedietely. I think in DS crosshair moves a little bit faster while unfocused, both for boss-seeking and movement-following options, but this rarely matters. Hatate has its crosshair on the boss all the time, no matter the focus or lack of it.
In StB the viewfinder is a static rectangular, its longer sides always perpendicular to the longer sides of playing area. If you are at the right distance and diagonal to the boss, Aya will be in one corner, boss in the opposite and the middle of the photo between you. This nature of viewfinder quite naturally promotes shooting when angled, because it gives you the biggest distance from the boss (thus lessening the chance of getting hit by still thick wave of danmaku spawned from her) without any movement of viewfinder when compared to shooting from front, side or sometimes behind, no matter if you were just catching her with the opposite corner or if she was in the middle for the maximum point multiplier. Not only this is safer, but it's also important for the points, because less movement of the camera means it's bigger and cancels more bullets for the base score, but it also made it easier to get Aya on the photo, thus getting further multipliers. All in all, while not possible for every spellcard or position, angled shooting is a go-to style without being singled out as such, especially once you capture all scenes and start pushing your score.
This contrasts with DS, in which shooting from angle is an explicit point multiplier, in addition to the flat score bonus that is awarded based on whether you are generally in front, on side or behind the boss, in increasing order. But probably more importantly, the viewfinder rotates. Its longer sides are either perpendicular to the line between you and boss if crosshair is directed at her, or are perpendicular to the line of your movement if you fly around unfocused. This means that, unless you try to do some wacky positioning while unfocused, you are given at best the length of camera view as your distance to the boss without moving your shot. To drive the point even further, the viewfinder is wider in DS, but it is in turn shorter. Getting Aya on the photo for score multiplier with a horizontal shot often requires getting into very dangerous positions, to much greater degree than it was in StB. Even if you push camera to its limits, you don't cover that much distance as you could before in StB, making gameplay all-around harder. To counteract this, the most visible change of them all was implemented, namely portrait shot, which rotates the whole camera 90 degrees. Now the longer sides are parallel to the aforementioned lines. This gives a lot of distance, even more if you move the camera, but it catches a lot less of stray bullets that probably weren't dangerous, yet could increase your score significantly. You can freely switch between portrait and horizontal as long as you are not in the middle of taking the photo.
Before proceeding further, I need to admit that this will be biased. Not only because of all those little things influencing one's experiences that philosophers love to argue about, but also because of two important reasons. Firstly, I played and completed StB before touching DS and I suspect that my annoyance at adjusting in terms of mechanical differences coloured my view on the latter; someone playing in reverse order could come to opposite conclusions. Secondly, I care significantly more about Aya than Hatate. This isn't to say that Hatate's inclusion is bad or irrelevant, it is slight net positive, as I will explain later. However, for someone more interested in purple tengu StB will be at significant disadvantage there compared to DS, but I will not touch this subject after this preface.
I will start with mechanical differences, as both titles are first and foremost games. Shooting is different, likewise scoring. Most of the differences are subtle but they influence the style of playing nonetheless. In StB, if you pressed shift+z and charged up, unpressing shift caused you to enter camera mode immedietely, which was nice for snapshots. In DS, you need to stop pressing both and only then press z, which adds additional delay. In both games the center of viewfinder is dictated by a crosshair that is visible also outside of taking shoots. As Aya, if you are unfocused, it will turn into direction of the movement or, if you stay still, it will slowly position itself in direction of the boss. If you focus, the crosshair will direct itself at the boss almost immedietely. I think in DS crosshair moves a little bit faster while unfocused, both for boss-seeking and movement-following options, but this rarely matters. Hatate has its crosshair on the boss all the time, no matter the focus or lack of it.
In StB the viewfinder is a static rectangular, its longer sides always perpendicular to the longer sides of playing area. If you are at the right distance and diagonal to the boss, Aya will be in one corner, boss in the opposite and the middle of the photo between you. This nature of viewfinder quite naturally promotes shooting when angled, because it gives you the biggest distance from the boss (thus lessening the chance of getting hit by still thick wave of danmaku spawned from her) without any movement of viewfinder when compared to shooting from front, side or sometimes behind, no matter if you were just catching her with the opposite corner or if she was in the middle for the maximum point multiplier. Not only this is safer, but it's also important for the points, because less movement of the camera means it's bigger and cancels more bullets for the base score, but it also made it easier to get Aya on the photo, thus getting further multipliers. All in all, while not possible for every spellcard or position, angled shooting is a go-to style without being singled out as such, especially once you capture all scenes and start pushing your score.
This contrasts with DS, in which shooting from angle is an explicit point multiplier, in addition to the flat score bonus that is awarded based on whether you are generally in front, on side or behind the boss, in increasing order. But probably more importantly, the viewfinder rotates. Its longer sides are either perpendicular to the line between you and boss if crosshair is directed at her, or are perpendicular to the line of your movement if you fly around unfocused. This means that, unless you try to do some wacky positioning while unfocused, you are given at best the length of camera view as your distance to the boss without moving your shot. To drive the point even further, the viewfinder is wider in DS, but it is in turn shorter. Getting Aya on the photo for score multiplier with a horizontal shot often requires getting into very dangerous positions, to much greater degree than it was in StB. Even if you push camera to its limits, you don't cover that much distance as you could before in StB, making gameplay all-around harder. To counteract this, the most visible change of them all was implemented, namely portrait shot, which rotates the whole camera 90 degrees. Now the longer sides are parallel to the aforementioned lines. This gives a lot of distance, even more if you move the camera, but it catches a lot less of stray bullets that probably weren't dangerous, yet could increase your score significantly. You can freely switch between portrait and horizontal as long as you are not in the middle of taking the photo.
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