Should You Pull? Ultra Festival: Love With a Hidden Agenda

Yes. As with the rest of the Temple Friends of the Lunar Capital, B3 Kaguya Houraisan, who goes by the codename of Nayotake during the events of Bm3, is an extremely powerful Friend who is an easy pick for any meta-focused player. She holds a more specific niche than other Ultra Festival Friends, trading in some supportive utility and instead going for heavy Agility and Evasion buffs to outpace opponents. While other Friends may have random Evasion buffs or Accuracy debuffs as downsides, B3 Kaguya can keep up the Evasion for so long that it can be a viable option!

As for the current competition, in terms of Ultra Festivals you have her rabbit underling (though with different universe tags, I suppose she isn’t…?) B5 Reisen Udongein Inaba and the other Lunar Capital peacekeeper B3 Reisen. B3 Reisen is not as good as Kaguya, but B5 Reisen can definitely cover a defensive end if that seems more appealing than Kaguya. As usual with Ultra Festival Friends, their utility pretty much outranks any other current prayer, such as the current Nue Houjuu and Nazrin, the upcoming ‘Tis the Season for Bullets Festival Part 2, and perhaps even A10 Sanae Kochiya and Mononobe no Futo. 

There’s no God Crystal Step-UP, but since the 1st Anniversary hype is still going strong, you can get x2 the Fortune Dust for any God Crystal pull this Prayer! Nayotake is classified as an Ultra Festival Friend and will cost 250 Exchange Points to exchange for. Also note this banner's long runtime of until June 24th, giving you plenty of time to decide to pull for her.

+ Extremely high P collection rate. Her self inflicted Paralyze and Blind barriers contribute to this.
+ Very high damage potential on Last Word.
+ Solid elemental breaks mainly from Spread Shot and Spell Card 2.
+ Defensive niche is very good when used in a proper situation.
- Supporting her to reach full potential is hard as she does not have a single CRIT ATK buff in her kit and only a few YANG ATK buffs to work on.
- Outside of Evasion and Agility utility, she does not have any other party utility to speak of.
- Multiple elemental breaks on Focus Shot and Spell Card 1 is hard to utilize against enemies with low weakness counts.

B3 Kaguya Houraisan, Code: Nayotake, and the Love Temple of Benevolence and Conscience, is one of the Four Temples and leader of the group trying to fight back the Kaiju and save the Lunar Capital. Her sense of humor and brightly shining positive attitude permeates the group, raising morale and inspiring hope against the seemingly endless waves of Kaiju. But she’s not just some cheerleader; her ability, “to manipulate eternity and the instantaneous”, is extremely powerful when used with the right amount of knowledge in a given situation, which Kaguya also tends to usually have, being a long-living immortal who has drank the Hourai Elixir.

When it comes to her attacks, the first thing that should stand out are the pretty rainbow of colors that makes up her bullet line compositions. Every single bullet of her kit, from her basic shots to all of her spells, contain an element! Of course, this doesn’t make all of them amazing breaking attacks, as her focus shot, Charity Grenades, and her first spell card, Divine Treasure: Jeweled Branch of Hourai -Dreamlike Paradise-, in particular are mainly a jumble of many elements that can make it hard to get multiple breaks on enemies with little elemental weaknesses. Charity Grenades may have a Moon break at 0P, but her spread shot, Love and Laser, does that as well as having a consistent 3 lines of Moon and Fire breaks. Her second spell, New Impossible Request: Mysterium, is another great breaking spell, having 3 lines of Moon and Star, just like her Last Word, Hourai Medicine Tank. As for Hourai Medicine Tank itself, just as expected for a Last Word, it can be extremely strong under the right situations. The situations this time, being with a good amount of Agility buffs due to great Slice scaling, as well as having the current highest Agility stat in the game at 1500, and when fighting Youkai, as Youkai-Killer bullets will guarantee critical hits. Unfortunately, Kaguya’s kit lacks any form of CRIT ATK to take greater advantage of these critical hits, but with her second skill, Virtue of Loyalty, she can at least reach 2P turn 1 and cast off some good damage.

As for setting up, this is where many of her spell pre-ATK effects and skills come in. The main theme of Kaguya’s kit is speed, both in terms of Agility as well as Evasion. Obviously, she wants to keep her Agility high in order to take advantage of the Slice scaling of her spells. It helps that all of her effects are partywide, meaning either the entire party gets Agility/Evasion UP (with the exception of her second skill, Virtue of Loyalty, buffs and third skill, Virtue of Love, which raising her Agility by 3 or 4 levels) or all foes get Accuracy/Evasion DOWN. But what is the point of lowering the opponents’ accuracy chances instead of just lowering defenses for nuking potential? It is mainly a niche purpose that Kaguya excels at very well, as she is able to reach at least 8 levels of Evasion UP on turn 1 with a combination of Virtue of Courtesy, Virtue of Love, and boosting twice with her character ability. Thanks to the amazingly fast cooldowns on some of these skills, particularly Virtue of Courtesy, she can even keep up the dodginess for extended periods of time!

Of course, the main issue that comes from focusing so hard on such a specific playstyle is that it might not offer as much to Friends who are just looking to nuke the enemy. She does have good teamwide Agility buffs, but other Friends can definitely do it better or just support themselves. Plus, even though she has the very high Yang ATK stat of 1890, Kaguya herself actually does not buff her Yang ATK as much as other, more offensive Friends. She might not be an immediate powerhouse, needing time to set up, but something she definitely isn’t is Spirit Power-starved. Virtue of Loyalty was mentioned before, but she also gets 0.20 Spirit Power when absorbing Paralyze and Blind anomalies, something she inflicts on herself while attacking with her spells. On top of that, her third characteristic, End of Imperishable Night, allows her to restore 0.25 Spirit Power upon the start of a combat turn. This both helps Kaguya reach more of her varied elemental breaks and retain some offensive potential even if she needs support for better Yang or CRIT ATK buffs.

All in all, Kaguya might be trying to go for a crazy strategy, but don’t make her out to be clueless. Her ability to manipulate eternity is not one to be underestimated, as just imagine you being forced to continuously attempt to take down a dodgy moon princess. Do you think you would be having fun? Yeah, I thought so.