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Perfect Cherry Blossom/Gameplay

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Title screen of the game

Gameplay

Controls

The game may be played using either a keyboard or a gamepad.

Keyboard controls are as follows:

  • The Arrow Keys move the character around
  • Z causes a short barrage of shots to be fired; it may be held down for rapidfire
  • X releases a bomb, also known as a Spell Card (presuming that any are left)
  • Shift slows the character's movement, and changes the nature of the character's shot and bomb; it generally makes your attacks more focused
  • Esc pauses the game and brings you to the in-game menu
  • Ctrl fast-forwards through any dialogue
  • Home produces a .bmp screenshot in the /snapshot directory.
  • Q returns you to the title screen when the game is paused
  • R returns you to the beginning of stage 1 when the game is paused

Basic Gameplay

Perfect Cherry Blossom plays like a fairly typical vertically-scrolling danmaku shooting game, in which the player's character is always facing towards the top of the screen, shooting at anything that moves, avoiding and weaving between enemy bullets, and confronting difficult bosses at the end of a stage.

There are 4 levels of difficulty: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Lunatic. Each difficulty level features differences in the number of bullets fired by each enemy, rate of fire, variations in the bullets' pattern of movement, and the number and type of enemy Spell Cards used.

The player will traverse 6 increasingly harrowing stages through the course of a regular game. The trial version ends prematurely at Stage 3.

Once the game has been completed without continuing, an Extra Stage is unlocked, available for any character that has accomplished that feat. The Extra Stage features significantly stronger and faster enemies, an extremely difficult midboss and boss battle, and no option to continue if all lives are lost.

The Phantasm difficulty of the Extra Stage is unlocked for a character once you clear the Extra Stage and capture 60 spellcards with all characters combined. This one is like a "second quest" of Extra. Many of the Spell Cards are similar, but all of them are ramped up in difficulty.

Shot

A character's "shot" is the player's primary method of attacking enemies. While the shot's attack area and behaviour varies depending on the character type the player has chosen, the shot can be powered up by filling up the Power Level by collecting power items. The shot gradually becomes more powerful when the player reaches the Power Levels of 8, 16, 32, 48, 64, 80, 96, and 128 (MAX), respectively. When the player reaches MAX power, all bullets on the screen cancel out and become star items which are automatically collected. While the player has maximum shot power, the player may auto-collect all items on screen by moving their character close to the top of the screen. This ability is very important for achieving high scores.

Shot Types

Reimu A

Spirit Sign, Pursuit Type
At Normal Speed:
Shot: "Homing Amulet" (「ホーミングアミュレット」)
Bomb: "Fantasy Seal -Spread-" 「夢想封印 散」)
At Focused Speed:
Shot: "Hakurei Amulet" (「博麗アミュレット」)
Bomb: "Fantasy Seal -Concentrate-" (「夢想封印 集」)
Rate of Cherry increase per shot: Low
Cherry penalty for bombing: 19.95% unfocused, 21.75% focused

Reimu B

Dream Sign, Rapid-Fire Type
At Normal Speed:
Shot: "Persuasion Needle" (「パスウェイジョンニードル」)
Bomb: "Evil-Sealing Circle" (「封魔陣」)
At Focused Speed:
Shot: "Extermination" (「エクスターミネーション」)
Bomb: "Duplex Barrier" (「二重結界」)
Rate of Cherry increase per shot: High
Cherry penalty for bombing: 16.8% unfocused, 16.625% focused

Marisa A

Magic Sign, Power-Oriented Type
At Normal Speed:
Shot: "Magic Missile" (「マジックミサイル」)
Bomb: "Stardust Reverie" (「スターダストレヴァリエ」)
At Focused Speed:
Shot: "Magic Napalm" (「マジックナパーム」)
Bomb: "Milky Way" (「ミルキーウェイ」)
Rate of Cherry increase per shot: Very high
Cherry penalty for bombing: 30.0% unfocused, 32.5% focused

Marisa B

Love Sign, Penetration Type
At Normal Speed:
Shot: "Stream Laser" (「ストリームレーザー」)
Bomb: "Non-Directional Laser" (「ノンディレクショナルレーザー」)
At Focused Speed:
Shot: "Illusion Laser" (「イリュージョンレーザー」)
Bomb: "Master Spark" (「マスタースパーク」)
Rate of Cherry increase per shot: Fairly high
Cherry penalty for bombing: 34.5% unfocused, 40.8% focused

Sakuya A

Illusion Sign, Attack-Range-Oriented Type
At Normal Speed:
Shot: "Jack the Ludo Bile" (「ジャック・ザ・ルドビレ」) [1]
Bomb: "Indiscriminate" (「インディスクリミネイト」)
At Focused Speed:
Shot: "Jack the Ripper" (「ジャック・ザ・リッパー」)
Bomb: "Killing Doll" (「殺人ドール」)
Rate of Cherry increase per shot: Very low
Cherry penalty for bombing: 28.0% unfocused, 28.75% focused

Sakuya B

Time Sign, Tricky Type
At Normal Speed:
Shot: "Misdirection" (「ミスディレクション」)
Bomb: "Perfect Square" (「パーフェクトスクウェア」)
At Focused Speed:
Shot: "Power Direction" (「パワーディレクション」)
Bomb: "Private Square" (「プライベートスクウェア」)
Rate of Cherry increase per shot: Fairly high
Cherry penalty for bombing: 25.6% unfocused, 28.5% focused

Bomb

A character's "bomb" is the player's limited-use method of getting out of difficult situations. A bomb's attack area, duration, and power varies depending on the character type the player has chosen, but it typically deals heavy damage to every enemy it touches, in addition to cancelling out any bullets in the bomb's way, as well as automatically collecting every item on screen. The player's character becomes invincible during and for a short time after the bomb's effect wears off. At the beginning of the game and any time your character respawns, you will start off with X bombs, where X is determined by your character. Bomb items will increase your current stock by one. You can carry up to a maximum of 8 bombs at a time. If you receive a bomb when you already have the maximum, that bomb will be lost.

Lives

With default settings, you will start off with 3 lives. You can lose a life by getting "hit" by an enemy attack.

The hit box for your character is quite small in comparison to your on-screen sprite, approximately only 5 pixels by 5 pixels in size. If you hold Shift, a white dot will appear, showing the hitbox precisely. If the hit box of your character's sprite comes into contact with the hit box of an enemy bullet, laser, or the enemy itself, then you have been hit.

If you have bombs in stock and the Bomb key is pressed within a short time of the player's character being hit, then the hit can be negated and countered with a bomb. This counter-bomb time varies based on your character, 6 frames (0.1 sec.) for Sakuya, 8 frames (0.133 sec.) for Marisa, and 15 frames (0.25 sec.) for Reimu, after which you will lose a life as normal. A Supernatural Border being activated within this interval has the same effect, negating the hit and immediately canceling the border.

The player is awarded extra lives upon reaching certain point item totals (not by raw points, unlike the previous game) or by collecting 1up items. For the regular game, extra lives are awarded at 50, 125, 200, 300, 450 and 800 point items and every 200 items after that, and a 1up item is dropped after defeating the midboss in stages 3 and 5. For the Extra and Phantasm stages, extra lives are awarded at 200, 500, 800 and 1,300 point items, and a 1up item is dropped after defeating the midboss and after the first spell card of the boss. You can carry up to a maximum of 8 extra lives at a time. If you receive an extra life when you already have the maximum, you will receive a bomb instead.

Upon losing all their lives, the player is given the choice to continue right where they left off. However, if you do continue, your current score will be reset back to 0 + the number of times you have continued, you will not be able to save a replay of your game, and you will reach the "Bad Ending" if you finish the game. You may continue up to 5 times.

Rank

There exists a rank system in this game. As rank increases, enemy bullets will generally become faster and more plentiful. Unlike earlier games, the effect that rank has in this game is almost negligible, and usually only has a noticeable effect on certain attacks (most notably Lyrica's first nonspell). Rank does not affect spell cards or Stage 6. Note that the game does not display the numerical value of rank at any point - under most circumstances, it can be estimated only by observing bullet pattern behaviour.

Rank ranges from 10 to 32 (from 12 to 20 on Easy, and from 15 to 16 in Extra and Phantasm), and is set to 16 at the beginning of the game. It increases gradually with survival time, item collection, grazing and gaining an extra life through score, until it reaches the cap corresponding to the highest variable difficulty. The rank value is decreased by 16 whenever the player loses a life, by 2 when the player uses a bomb, and by 0.03 when an item disappears through the bottom of the screen.

Difficulty

Like most of the Windows games, Perfect Cherry Blossoms has alternate names and descriptions for the various difficulty levels.

  • Easy: Entrance - For people who don't like shooting games much.
  • Normal: Normal - For people who are comfortable with shooting games.
  • Hard: Difficult - For people who play arcade shooting games.
  • Lunatic: Marvel - For weird people.
  • Extra: Liu Feng - The road that shouldn't be taken. [2]
  • Phantasm: Fantasy - Planned chaos.

Boss Battles

The main challenge and the main attraction. Each boss has multiple lives, which are represented by multiple health bars shown at the upper left of the screen. Bosses usually alternate between attacking normally and attacking with Spell Cards, switching once with each health bar. Coloured sections on the health bar indicate the start of a Spell Card attack when the boss' health is depleted that far.

Normal attacks are incrementally stronger versions of the boss character's basic attack. Spell Card attacks bedazzle the player with combinations of complex patterns that often involve the use of projectiles and obstacles crafted especially for use with that Spell Card. If the player manages to defeat a Spell Card attack without getting hit or using any bombs, a substantial score bonus is rewarded for the feat.

Each attack is accompanied by a timer. When time runs out, the boss will switch to their next attack pattern even if their health bar isn't empty. Waiting for a boss character's attack pattern to self-destruct may be enough to beat them, but mere survival won't earn the player any score bonuses.

When fighting a boss, a position marker shows up on the bottom margin of the screen, indicating where the boss is on the horizontal axis. Since your target can be completely obscured by bullets at times, use this marker to help you aim your shots.

Character Statistics

There are three characters to choose from, each of which have two styles of attack. The player decides which character to play and which attack type to use at the start of the game.

Reimu

Basic Performance:
Normal Speed: Medium
Focused Speed: Slow
Initial Bombs: 3
Cherry penalty for dying: 100,000 or 50% of Cherry, whichever is smaller
Special Characteristics:
Small hitbox.
Extra time to use a bomb after getting hit, but before dying.

Marisa

Basic Performance
Normal Speed: Fast
Focused Speed: Medium
Initial Bombs: 2
Cherry penalty for dying: 100,000 or 50% of Cherry, whichever is smaller
Special Characteristics:
The point-of-collection boundary is low.
The height where items have their maximum value is low (a bit lower than the point of collection itself).

Sakuya

Basic Performance:
Normal Speed: Medium
Focused Speed: Fast (relative to the other characters)
Initial Bombs: 4
Cherry penalty for dying: 60,000 or 33% of Cherry, whichever is smaller
Special Characteristics:
Large graze-box.
The amount of cherry points lost when hit is less.


  • Reimu A: Homing amulets
  • Reimu B: Needles
  • Marisa A: Missiles
  • Marisa B: Lasers
  • Sakuya A: Knives, fires straight.
  • Sakuya B: Knives, will fire in the direction Sakuya's moving.

Screen Layout

Screen Layout
  1. Your character
  2. Player Score
    • High Score: your highest score for the current character, type, and difficulty
    • Score: your current score
  3. The number of remaining lives and bombs / The approximate location of the point of collection
  4. Player Status
    • Power: your shot power level, maxing out at 128
    • Graze: the number of enemy shots that have grazed your hitbox during the game
    • Point: the number of point items you have collected during the game, and the amount needed for an extra life
  5. Enemy Status
    • Left bars: the number of health bars the enemy has left in reserve
    • Right number: the amount of time left before the enemy's attack spell self-destructs
    • Middle bar: the current health bar of the enemy
  6. Cherry Status
    • Cherry: your current Cherry level, maxing out at CherryMax
    • CherryMax: your current CherryMax level
    • Cherry+: your current Cherry+ level, activating Supernatural Border at 50000
  7. Spell Card Status
    • Title: the name of the Spell Card being used
    • Bonus: the constantly-updating value of the Spell Card Bonus
    • History: the number of times you have "collected" the Spell Card currently being used, and the number of times you have faced it.

Unlockable Features

  • To unlock a stage to practice in "Practice Start" at a specific difficulty level and for a specific character and type, you must complete that stage in the standard "Start" game mode at that same difficulty, using the same character and type. The stage will be unlocked even if you have used continues.
  • To unlock the Extra stage for a specific character and type, you must reach the "Normal Ending" (finish the game on any difficulty without continuing) with that same character and type.
  • To unlock the Phantasm difficulty of the Extra stage for a specific character and type, you must beat the Extra stage using the same character and type, and also "capture" (beat without bombing or dying) 60 unique Spell Cards, all characters combined.

Bad Endings

To view the bad endings, finish the game using one or more continues.

  • To get Bad Ending No. 1, use Reimu, any type.
  • To get Bad Ending No. 2, use Marisa, any type.
  • To get Bad Ending No. 3, use Sakuya, any type.

Normal Endings

To view the normal endings, finish the game on any difficulty without continuing.

  • To get Ending No. 4, use Reimu A.
  • To get Ending No. 5, use Reimu B.
  • To get Ending No. 6, use Marisa A.
  • To get Ending No. 7, use Marisa B.
  • To get Ending No. 8, use Sakuya A.
  • To get Ending No. 9, use Sakuya B.

Full Unlock Code

To unlock all unlockable content at once, navigate to the Hard mode records screen and hold either Shift or Ctrl, then press Up three times, D two times, Down two times and Q three times. If done correctly, the 1up sound effect will play and the practice mode stages as well as the Extra and Phantasm Stages will be unlocked for all shottypes.

Secrets

  • There is a window of approximately a half second after a Supernatural Border ends where you are invincible to any form of attack without consequence. In theory, you can collect a Supernatural Border Bonus, get hit during the temporary invincibility, and be able to collect a Spell Card Bonus since you didn't die, bomb, or break a Supernatural Border.
  • If you rename replay files to "th7_ud*.rpy", where * is any string of characters, you will be able to view them in the "Replay" menu, and they won't take up any of your precious 15 slots for saving replays. However, the first 4 characters of the * in "th7_ud*.rpy" must be unique from any other * in the replay folder, or else that replay won't be recognized by the game.

Scoring

The scoring system is heavily tied to your Cherry level, somewhat similar to Mystic Square. Listed below are the details for how points are given in Perfect Cherry Blossom.

Enemies

Any damage you deal to any enemy, whether it be caused by your shots or your bombs, will cause your score, Cherry, and Cherry+ to increase very slightly. Actually destroying enemies will award you slightly more points, but the points earned from this are around the range of hundreds to thousands of points per enemy. This is not a significant amount at all. However, enemies shoot bullets for you to "graze" and release items for you to collect, and those are very important for scoring as covered below.

Grazing

"Grazing a bullet" means to have a bullet or laser come dangerously close to your hitbox. Each graze will add 2000 to your score, and will increase your "Graze number" by 1, which is used to calculate the Clear bonus. You can only graze a bullet once, so you won't gain any additional points or graze by following a bullet. Lasers can be continually grazed throughout their duration, but once again, moving around will not gain you any additional points or graze.

Clear bonus from graze count is capped at 499,950 (before the difficulty multiplier). No more clear bonus is added after the 9999th graze (per stage).

Grazing also increases your Spell Card bonus, if you happen to be facing one at the time.

Point Items

As its name implies, point items are the major source of points in the game. The higher up on the screen you collect them, the more points they are worth, up to a defined maximum. You can easily tell when you are collecting point items for their maximum value, since they show the value in yellow text. The point of collection (where items can be auto-collected, if at full power or in the Extra/Phantasm stage) is the same height as the height where point items reach their maximum value, so take advantage of this fact wherever you can for massive points. The maximum value for point items is equal to your Cherry level or 50000, whichever is greater. Below the POC point items are worth one-fifth of the maximum value plus between 0 and 40000 points depending on how high on the screen they are collected.

An important thing to keep in mind is that point items collected below the maximum value threshold are worth less their maximum value. At merely a pixel below the line, the value drops drastically, from 99% at very low Cherry to 25-30% when you have a high Cherry level. This is a very large difference, so do your best to collect items without prematurely retreating down to the lower parts of the screen. Also, point items collected at the bottom of the screen are worth around 20% of their maximum value. The number of point items collected per stage is used to calculate the Clear bonus, to be discussed later.

Power Items

While your shot is not fully powered up, power items are worth only 10 points. Once fully powered up, all power items currently on the screen become cherry items. While the character is at max power, power items no longer appear, and cherry items appear instead.

Large power items are worth 8 power items. There is also a full power item, which appears if you continue. It brings you to full power, and is worth 1000 points if you are already at full power.

Cherry Items

Cherry items increase both Cherry and Cherry+ by 1000 + (100 * the number of Spell Cards successfully collected). If the player is not at CherryMax, they are worth zero points. Otherwise they are worth 50000 above the point of collection, and decrease in value in a linear fashion as they descend. You can easily tell when you are collecting cherry items for their maximum value, since they show the value in yellow text. Their point value is separate from their cherry value.

On the bosses of stages 6, Extra, and Phantasm, defeating an attack phase or spell causes the bullets to turn into Cherry items instead of Star items. These are worth 100 Cherry/Cherry+, and the same number of points as a star item would be.

Mini Cherry items look like small cherry blossoms instead of squares. They increase Cherry/Cherry+ by 30 points.

Star Items

These items appear any time an enemy bullet is cancelled out. This can happen when you defeat an attack pattern of a boss (by depleting their current healthbar), at the moment you gain maximum shot power, when you destroy a certain enemy, or when you erase enemy bullets with a bomb. Each star item is worth 300 points + 10 points for every 40 grazes you have by that point. So for example, if you currently have 304 graze and you collect a star item, it will be worth 300 + 10 * floor(304 / 40) = 370 points. The only exception is when star items are created by a bomb, in which case each star item generated is worth exactly 100 points. Star items are also worth 20 Cherry and Cherry+ each normally, and 5 when created with a bomb.

Enemy Bullet Bonus

When you finish off one of the boss's lives (caused by completely depleting the visible healthbar) or defeat a Spell Card of a boss, all enemy bullets on screen are tallied up to calculate the Enemy Bullet Bonus. The more enemy bullets there are on screen, the higher this bonus becomes. This bonus is independent of any star items collected from finishing off a boss's attack pattern. Finding the correct time in a boss's attack to finish them off can mean the difference between an Enemy Bullet bonus of 100,000 and one of 4,000,000 or more.

Spell Card Bonus

Sometimes, a boss will attack using a Spell Card. You will know this is happening when the background changes and the Spell Card's name appears in the upper right corner of the screen. If the boss's healthbar is depleted within the time limit and without getting hit, using a bomb, or breaking a border, the Spell Card bonus will be added to your score. The starting value of the bonus depends on the Spell Card used:

Stage 1 midboss spells 2,000,000
Lingering Cold (Easy/Normal) 2,200,000
Other Stage 1 boss spells 2,400,000
Stage 2 spells 2,600,000
Stage 3 spells 3,000,000
Stage 4 spells 3,500,000
Stage 5 spells 4,000,000
Stage 6, most spells 5,000,000
Resurrection Butterfly 3,000,000*
Extra stage midboss spells 6,000,000
Ran's spells, except survival spells 7,000,000
Yukari's spells, except survival spells 8,000,000
Extra/Phantasm survival spells 4,000,000*

As the time remaining decreases, the bonus decreases in value as well, at a constant rate of (initial value) / (time limit in seconds + 10) per second. However, it increases by (Cherry/1500) * 20 + 2500 for every graze during the spell. This value can go up to more than 30,000,000 on a few Spell Cards. If the bonus increases beyond 100,000,000, the ten-millions digit will be replaced by another game graphic, but the bonus will still add the correct amount of points.

Certain spell cards are considered survival spells: Yuyuko's final spell (all difficulties), Ran's ninth spell, and Yukari's ninth and final spells. For these spell cards, the boss is invulnerable, but you can receive the spell card bonus by surviving until time runs out without getting hit, using a bomb, or breaking a border. The bonus also does not decrease over time (except for Yukari's final spell, which decreases to 3,905,550 before stopping). The survival spells are marked with an asterisk in the above table.

Clear Bonus

At the end of each stage, the player is awarded a point bonus based on their performance throughout the stage. The bonus is calculated as follows:

Stage     x 1000000 (stage number, Extra = 7, Phantasm = 8)
Point     x   50000 (point items collected in the stage)
Graze     x     500 (graze count for that stage, capped at 9999)
CherryMax x      10 (current CherryMax value)

In addition, if the stage happened to be the last stage, the following is added:

Player x 20,000,000 (lives in stock, not including your current one)
Bomb   x  4,000,000 (bombs in stock)

Finally, depending on the conditions you played under, the result is multiplied by these modifiers, rounded down to the nearest 10:

4 Initial Lives:     x 0.5
5 Initial Lives:     x 0.2
Easy Difficulty:     x 0.5
Normal Difficulty:   x 1.0
Hard Difficulty:     x 1.2
Lunatic Difficulty:  x 1.5
Extra Difficulty:    x 2.0
Phantasm Difficulty: x 2.0

The end result is then added on to your score.

Cherry System

The heart of the scoring system. The Cherry system is based on 3 values: Cherry, CherryMax, and Cherry+. They fluctuate based on your performance.

The starting values of Cherry and CherryMax depend on your chosen difficulty:

Difficulty Cherry CherryMax
Easy 0 200,000
Normal 0 200,000
Hard 0 250,000
Lunatic 0 300,000
Extra 200,000 400,000
Phantasm 300,000 400,000

The Cherry value is the primary number. Every point item you collect above the point of collection gives you a number of points equal to your current Cherry value. It goes up when you shoot things (at a rate based on your character). This rate is cut drastically, about 90%, if you are focused. It also goes up when you collect cherry items and when you collect star items. It goes down if you die, if you use a bomb, or if you fail to defeat a boss within the time limit. The penalty for dying or bombing depends on your character. The penalty for bombing is also scaled by the current difficulty level. The penalty is reduced by 50% on Hard, and by 75% on Lunatic. Your Cherry value can never increase beyond your CherryMax value.

The Cherry+ meter is the method for increasing your CherryMax. It goes up at the same times your Cherry goes up. When it hits 50000, you go into Supernatural Border mode. During border mode, all items are automatically collected, and give their full value no matter where on the screen you are. Also, every graze will increase your CherryMax: 30 points for grazing while focused and 80 points for grazing while unfocused. The border lasts for 9 seconds (540 frames). You can view how much you have left using the Cherry+ meter, which counts down. Also, a sigil around your character appears and gradually shrinks during the border.

A border can be stopped prematurely by getting hit or pressing the bomb button. However, you do not lose a life or spend an actual bomb for stopping it this way. If border mode is ended prematurely in this way, all bullets on the screen will turn into mini cherry items and be automatically collected.

Once your border ends:

  • If time ran out, you gain 10000 points to your CherryMax value, and a point bonus equal to your current Cherry * 10.
  • If you pressed the bomb button or got hit, all bullets on the screen turn into mini Cherry items which are collected by your character. You do not get any other bonus.

Your Cherry+ meter then resets to 0. You are also invincible for a brief moment after the Border wears off.

All increases in CherryMax bring a corresponding increase to your Cherry.

Glitches

Merlin behaving strangely

This is a list of known glitches, bugs or other unusual capabilities that aren't supposed to be part of the original gameplay.

Glitches reported in the full version:

  • Berserk Merlin: If you play as Sakuya and choose Merlin Prismriver during the first Spell Card in Stage 4, then end Merlin's second and third nonspells as well as the first and second Spell Card with specific timings, Merlin will act weird. She will not team up with her sisters during their final Spell Card, "Burial Concerto", and instead has her behaviour from the previous Spell Card. This results in a rather asymmetrical bullet pattern. Also, if you end the final Spell Card with specific timing, Merlin will continue to fire her laser during the end dialogue and the Clear Bonus tally. It is possible to graze and get hit during this period. Video of this glitch.
  • Manji lasers lingering: A similar glitch exists with Ran and Yukari. If you finish Ran's "Ultimate Buddhist" or Yukari's "Butterfly in the Zen Temple" Spell Card at the precise moment when they switch between the colored manji, the fading manji will remain on screen. It will then power up a few moments later as usual, then disappear completely once it powers down again. While powered up, the lasers are lethal and you can graze them. Interestingly, the manji does not rotate, which allows you to just sit next to it and run up the graze counter and, if you have a border active, your cherrymax. Video of this glitch on Yukari's version of the spell.
  • Final spell slowdown bug: After defeating a last or extra boss, cinematic slowdown is supposed to activate for a few seconds, but sometimes the slowdown never ends. The exact conditions for this are unknown. The game remains in this state until you return to the main menu.
  • Deathborder glitch: If a Supernatural Border is initiated during a death, both the death and the border will be cancelled, distorting the player character's sprite in the process. The power items that spawned as a result of dying are collected as well. Video of this glitch.
  • Alice laser bug: For unknown reasons, sometimes Alice's red lasers during her midboss Spell Card can kill you before they actually spawn.
  • Prismriver health glitch: On the Prismriver sisters' second nonspell, if you damage a leaving sister on the last frame she is present for, the sister doing the second Spell Card will automatically lose health, without the player shooting at her.
  • Cherry display bug: If your Cherry exceeds 1 million, the number will not display correctly. Only the display is affected; the actual number is working correctly in score calculations. This is fixed when using vpatch.

The following apply to multiple games, including Perfect Cherry Blossom:

  • Pause menu storage: Pausing the game exactly when the statistics screen is about to open up causes the game to show both the statistics menu and the pause menu at once, giving you control of both simultaneously. Unlike Embodiment of Scarlet Devil or Imperishable Night however, PCB will often freeze if this is performed.
  • Dialogue pause desync: If the game is paused during dialogue, and then unpaused by pressing Z to continue playing, any replay made of such a run will desync on the stage the dialogue unpause was performed on. This can be prevented by unpausing with the Esc key.
  1. Ludo bile (лудо биле) is a Bulgarian slang for belladonna (Беладона). Ludo bile means "mad herb".
  2. It is unclear what 流風 (the extra stage title) is meant to refer to.