How to play guide for Chuhou Joutai

This page will serve as a basic **how to play guide for the *Chuhou Joutai* series**. While there is very little information available at this time, we urge you to check back often, as new information is being added all the time! Feel free to edit this guide with any tips, tricks, and suggestions.

## Basic gameplay

*Chuhou Joutai* is a maniac shooter that plays similarly to other games such as *Touhou Project*, in which you assume the role of either Susumu Takajima or Kagami Ochiai on a quest to destroy a stronghold associated with the evil terrorist group SPASDOT. You will always face forwards toward the top of the screen, shooting at anything that moves and evading enemy attacks, which is the main gimmick of the game. The goal of each stage is to defeat the boss, and once you do, you will progress onto the next stage.

You can either go alone or with a friend. In two-player mode in the first two games, player 1 takes control of Driller, while player 2 takes on Kagami. There are four difficulty settings: Easy, Normal, Difficult, and Lunatic. Increasing the difficulty level will make the enemies more aggressive, such as the amount of danmaku sprayed by each enemy, but the rewards will be greater in value. There are eight stages that increase in difficulty in the game, and the game ends prematurely at stage 3 (stage 4 if you're playing *Chuhou Joutai 3*) if you're playing the demo. In order to see the good ending, you must not continue more than once in Arcade Mode.

### Shot

A character's **shot** (ショット, **shotto**?) is your primary method of attacking enemies and bosses. The range of attack varies depending on your choice and can be powered up by collecting newtons. Your attack becomes more powerful when reaching the power levels of 12, 25, 50, 75, and 100%. Once your power reaches 100%, you can auto-collect all items by moving close to the top of the screen. This strategy is very important if you want to achieve a high score!

Please note if you are playing in two-player mode in the first game, your power can only go up to 50%. This is to preserve the framerate to accommodate the second player. You also cannot auto-collect items in multiplayer because of this. However, starting from *Chuhou Joutai 2*, both players can have 100% power, and items can be auto collected like always.

The characters' shot types are as follows:

#### In *Chuhou Joutai* 1 and 2

The first two games have two playable characters with two different shot types, giving a total of four.

* Susumu Takajima's attacks are:
	+ **Type A:** Suspect Seekie - auxiliary bullets chase all enemies within a 128-pixel range. Perfect for beginners, but deals less damage than Driller's main bullets.
	+ **Type B:** Dragon's Beam - fires slower, but deals the same amount of damage than Driller's main bullets.
* Kagami Ochiai's attacks are:
	+ **Type A:** Cherry Bob-omb - auxiliary bullets explode into fragments upon impact, dealing additional damage.
	+ **Type B:** Atmospheric Laser - has the slowest firerate, but deals the most damage to all enemies it hits.

#### In *Chuhou Joutai 3*

The third game has four playable characters, each with their own shot type.

* Susumu Takajima retains his Suspect Seekie attack.
* Kagami Ochiai retains her Atmospheric Laser attack.
* Ryuta Shigematsu inherits Susumu Takajima's Dragon's Beam attack.
* Kumiko Uchida gets a new attack: Evil-Sealing Circle

### Bombs

**Bombs** (ボム, **Bomu**?) are a limited-use method for escaping difficult situations. In the first two games, one use of a single bomb will wipe out all bullets on screen for a short time. At the beginning of the game on default settings, you start with three bombs and get an additional one every 250,000 points. Bombing also requires 10% of your power, so use them wisely. While bombs can wipe out all bullets and enemies, bosses cannot be damaged by them.

The bombs in *Chuhou Joutai 3* are replaced by Spell Cards. Each character has a different spell card, each with their own behavior:

* Susumu Takajima's attack is Thunder Sign "Suspect Seekie". This attack places a large yellow orb at Driller's position and erratically chases after all nearby bullets and enemies, destroying them in the process.
* Kagami Ochiai's attack is Moon Sign "Atmospheric Laser". This attack causes Kagami to shoot a violet laser toward the top of the screen, destroying all bullets and damaging all enemies it touches.
* Ryuta Shigematsu's attack is Fire Sign "Dragon's Beam". This attack creates a laser that spirals around Ryuta, destroying all bullets and damaging all enemies it touches.
* Kumiko Uchida's attack is Dream Sign "Evil-Sealing Circle". This attack places a spiraling amulet around Kumiko that expands in the process.

### HP

*Main article:* Health
At the beginning of every stage and boss fight at the default setting, you start with 30 hit points (abbreviated as HP). This number goes down every time you get hit by a bullet. The amount of damage you take depends on the type, while regular round bullets deal only one point, large ones deal five. Touching heal berries will restore 10 HP, which are dropped by bosses every time you remove one of their segments. Your HP can go over the starting count and there is no limit on how much HP you can have. You will get knocked out if all HP is lost, and if you have enough ingots, you must pay a revival fee to continue playing. The fee for reviving is 25 ingots (20 from the second game onwards), the fee before version 1.3.2 in the first game was formerly ten ingots, which goes up by another 25 for each subsequent revive, so if this is your fifth time you got knocked out, you have to pay 125 ingots. Not having enough will result in a game over, and you have the opportunity to continue right where you left off, but your score will but cut in half and you must restart that stage from the beginning. If you manage to finish the game, you will be presented with the bad ending if you continued more than once.

To make the game easier, you have a small hitbox, which is four pixels in diameter. You can only see it if you are focusing. In order for the game to register a hit from a bullet, a bullet must touch this hitbox.

### Bosses

Bosses are the main gimmick of the game, besides the danmaku. Every boss has multiple segments; the first and second stages have four, while the third through seventh stages have six, and the final stage has ten. All attacks are timed, and if you don't deplete that segment by the time it runs out, the boss will switch to their next segment right away. Waiting for the boss's attacks to self-destruct is enough to beat them, but this is strongly discouraged as you won't get any bonuses from them.

### Scoring

Like many other arcade games, this game employs a scoring system, and below are the different aspects of how points are given:

* Any damage you deal to any enemy gives you 10 points per hit and 50 per kill.
* Grazing a bullet means to have a bullet come dangerously close to you, generally within a 16-pixel range. Each bullet you graze gives you 50 points. You can only graze a bullet once, so you will not gain any additional points by following a specific bullet.
* Ingots are a major source for points in the game. The higher you are up on the screen, the more points you will accumulate. If you are high up on the screen when you collect an ingot, you will get massive points from them. The maximum number of points can be calculated by multiplying 500 and the difficulty, as follows:
	+ **Easy:** 500
	+ **Normal:** 1,000
	+ **Difficult:** 1,500
	+ **Lunatic:** 2,000
* Newtons give you 10 for blue and 50 for purple.
* When you deplete one of a boss's segments, all enemy bullets on screen are tallied up to calculate a bonus. The higher the bullet is, the more points you will get from it.
* Boss defeat bonuses are multiplied by the following:

* Stage clear bonuses go as follows:
	+ **PERFECT!!** - Clear the stage without taking a single point of damage. (20,000 points)
	+ **No Bomb Bonus** - Clear the stage without using a single bomb. (10,000 points)
	+ **No Revive Bonus** - Clear the stage without getting KO'd a single time. (5,000 points)

**NOTE:** To achieve the PERFECT!! bonus, you must also not use either a single bomb or get KO'd at least once.

## Controls

 Move
 Shoot
 Focus
 Bomb

## Tips and tricks

### Gameplay videos

Watching gameplay videos is the best way to come up with strategies for beating arcade mode.