Should You Pull? Festival: 'Tis the Season for Bullets

Maybe, but slightly leaning toward No. As you would expect, this prayer is focused around the event that is currently being reran: 'Tis the Season for Bullets. While not every Friend featured here may appear in the event (looking at you, Iku...), all of them have a costume that can give you bonus event points during the event! All of their costumes look cute on the Friends, which may be your own reason for pulling, but it helps that all of the Featured Friends have a good use, which should be expected when all Friends are Festival Friends. 

The main thing that is holding this prayer back is, as usual, its competition. You've got three different Ultra Festival Friends if you are pulling for the meta: B5 Reisen Udongein Inaba, B3 Watatsuki no Yorihime, and B3 Reisen, whose value is even higher when considering the Divine Paper Doll most regular players will obtain from sources such as anniversary presents and the monthly login. Nue Horjuu and Nazrin are also newer than these Friends, and very valuable in their own right. One may see Iku Nagae, an especially high-tier Friend, featured here, but with how many times she has been featured in special events such as the Forever Prayers and Lucky Bags, the value of this prayer can feel lower when compared to more limited opportunities. Still, this can be a very consistent method in obtaining all of these Friends.

This Prayer will last as long as the event it is based on, meaning it will end on June 10th. As all of the Friends are Festival-rarity, all of them will require 150 Exchange Points to exchange for. Additionally, this prayer has the ever-so-popular Ascending God Crystal Step-UP, giving you more of a reason to perhaps try pulling once with 60 God Crystals for a guarenteed Friend.

+ P0 Wood on Spread shot
+ P0 Water on Focus shot
+ Powerful AoE and Yang damage
+Can inflict up to a total of 7 Paralyze Barriers on all foes
+ Last Word possesses 2 levels of 2 Yang DEF DOWN
- Applies Paralyze barriers to her allies
- Weaker in longer fights, where she must spend Barriers to survive and thus cannot benefit from her character ability

+ Great damage in short and long fights alike
+ Incredible support for Yang attackers
+ Good Accuracy support
- Best Yang DEF DOWN debuff only last one turn
- Slightly lacking break potential

+ Great Turn 1 Damage
+ High set-up damage
+ Yin-only Spell Cards helps her damage on spells
- No team utility
- Almost no Breaks
- Heavy-damage crown has been taken by many future Friends

+ Damaging All-targeting Last Word with fantastic Hard scaling
+Average to Fire and Metal, with some Wood on Last Word
+ Gains a lot of Spirit Power
- Selfish attacker with no utility outside of Breaks
- Second Spell Card hurts herself

+ Fantastic amount of Healing and Barrier restoration
+ Great Poison Barrier support, for either Anomaly Breaks or supporting Yang Attackers
+ Last Word can deal a lot of damage if set up
- Poor Barrier Break potential
- Backloaded Last Word
- Hard to support

Exiles of the Moon: Eientei Residents

The first pair of Friends here are ones that debutted with each other, and are very difficult to see separated from one another. They have stuck close to one another ever since being exiled from the Moon, and it will likely stay that way for eternity. While both of these Friends' have distinct uses, they are sadly and most likely the least valuable Friends here tier-wise. Don't count them out of pulling for if their uses appeal to you, though!

As her outfit and role as a doctor would obviously imply, Eirin Yagokoro is heavily oriented toward healing the entire party. She does so in two ways: healing HP via her skills or restoring barriers via her spells and Last Word, both of which serve as great supportive utility. For those who don't know, HP healing is scaled off of the % of the Friend using the skill, not the % of each Friend healed. This makes Eirin's healing very impactful, due to her high HP value. Unfortunately, having barrier restoration on spells make it less spammable, and barriers can generally be seen as highly valued due to adding many buffs to Friends once they Graze. Additionally, Eirin lacks elemental breaks outside of a few Moon breaks and her damage is not the highest, making her purpose in a fight focused on healing most of the time. That does nothing to devalue how great she is at nursing her patients, though!

Kaguya Houraisan is an interesting Technical-type Friend, heavily boosting her own Spirit Power in order to access more of her own bullet lines. Her elemental spread is low but rather varied, covering some Metal on one spell, Fire on the other, and even some Wood on her Last Word. It might look a lot more outdated compared to more modern Friends (and even some featured on this prayer), but the elemental access still has its uses! Other than that, Kaguya is a very selfish buffer, wanting to play all by herself and buff her own Yin and Yang ATK, as she is a mixed attacker as well. This can be strange to support at times, but pull it off right, and you will definitely get some high damage numbers from the Princess of Eientei!

Guardians of the Moon: Lunar Capital Residents

This second pair of Friends may have not interacted with each other as much in canonical Touhou Project, but they share a connection from their status as Lunarians. Along with that, they hold great respect for the Lunar Sage, Lady Yagokoro (Eirin is only her Earth name, her real name being one no one can properly pronounce!). Toyohime has fallen from grace since her initial release, but can still be very strong for event farming and some challenging content. Meanwhile, Sagume has remained as strong as ever!

Watatsuki no Toyohime is your definition of an Attack-type Friend: shooting first and asking questions never. Her access to elemental bullets might be even worse than the average General Friend, but what she lacks for that she makes up for with power. This power comes from heavy Yin ATK buffs, increasing her spell cards' attack, as well as Accuracy buffs to ensure she makes her mark. To further boost her power, her spells, most notably her Last Word, hold some great Killer bullets such as Human-Killer and Youkai-Killer. Killer bullets mean that the Friend will always land a critical hit with that bullet line on Friends with the same tag as the Killer bullet, making for an easy way to increase damage output on the right target. Toyohime's damage is still decent on enemies without the Killer buffs, but sadly damage is Toyohime's main goal. She does not buff her allies nor debuff the opponents', meaning her main use will be for damage, which has been somewhat outmatched by many later Friends. Still, don't let that stop you from nuking many simple event farms with this proper Lunarian lady!

Sagume Kishin is all about debuffing, specifically in the Yang DEF field. Both her spell card effects and skills decrease the enemy's Yang DEF to support any Yang nukes on your team and can even decrease their Evasion to help less accurate Friends! Sometimes you don't even need other Yang attackers, as Sagume can certainly hit hard herself thanks to buffing her own Yang ATK as well. To top it off, Sagume is definitely the best Moon breaker on this prayer, holding 3 breaks of Moon on every spell and even 3 Star breaks on her Last Word. Her main weakness boils down to still lacking some breaks and her Yang-related debuffs not assisting Yin Friends so much, but she is obviously not built for this. Debuffs are all she really has for team utility too, lacking any partywide buffs. However, none of that stops Sagume from solidifying her place as one of the stronger Lunarians in Touhou LostWord!

Messanger of the Moon: Gensokyo Resident

Last but definitely not least is someone on their own, Iku Nagae. Surprisingly enough, she still holds some relation to the Lunarians thanks to her role as the messanger of the Dragon Palace. While other Japanese myths place this location under the sea, the Touhou universe has the Lunar Capital be based on the Dragon Palace, which can be seen through the naming conventions of Toyohime (who is based on the Japanese goddess Toyotama-hime) and the ways the Moon itself is described as a sea based on Toyohime's abilities.

When it comes to Iku Nagae's abilities...she just does a lot. First off, you already have amazing elemental utility thanks to 0P Wood and Water access on basic shots, topped off by spells with Moon and Water access and a Last Word that is entirely Wood. After you're done being shocked (get it?) by that, Iku lays plenty of Paralyze anomalies, both on foes to debuff them and herself to gain Agility and Accuracy buffs. The Agility buffs help her do even more damage on her Last Word thanks to Slice-scaling, a type of scaling which increases your power based on your Agility value. The biggest things to look out when using Iku is the way she applies Paralyze on the entire team, which can accidentally immobilize your allies if you don't Graze away the anomaly. Additionally, while Iku does not take on the negative effects of Paralyze, opponents who can break Paralyze anomalies can still certainly do so to Iku, which can definitely put her in a bind! Still, Iku's value on a team is gigantic, especially considering any other Friend with Paralyze anomaly breaks can also take advanatage of the enemy being Paralyzed for even more breaking action. She might not be a Lunarian herself, but her power perhaps even surpasses the majority of them on this prayer!

Want a closer look at the featured costumes shown this article? Check their pages out below!