...Okay, that was epic. Few things I would like to address:
First of all, the disorientation spell is cheap. The only indication of what the scramble is at a given moment is actually trying it out, and with the walls flying everywhere, you don't have any room for on-the-fly experimentation. Perhaps if the weird spike things coming out of the player could change color to indicate the status of the scramble...
And I just can't figure out how the last spell works, despite having played through it twice.
Anyways, the enemy graphics were neat, the boss' appearance and animation was cool and stylized, and I like the new score tabulation you made. But the new HUD elements are in the same teeny-weeny annoying size as the rate and bonus text (http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/6045/hudproblems.png). I know this display isn't normal, and I've submitted a query to the danmakufu questions topic(with no response), but Concealed the Conclusion was able to display text over the playfield without this happening to it... Is it possible for you to set the on-field HUD's font to something different to fix it or something?
...and is it me, or is Merlin's hitbox really, really big?
Anyways, I had a lot of fun with this script, and I look forward to this game you're making.
Perhaps if the weird spike things coming out of the player could change color to indicate the status of the scramble...
They do change appearance... plus they switch at a fixed rate, play a sound, AND there's only two possible statuses, so it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out what's going on. There's about ten seconds at the beginning of the script with no bullets (the boss doesn't even have a hitbox), so just figure it out there.
And I just can't figure out how the last spell works, despite having played through it twice.
Duality (the one with red and blue bullets and your position being fixed), or Domination (the actual Last Spell)? If it's the second, then everything is fixed, and there isn't really much to "figure out." If it's the first, then just imagine your controls being normal for the red bullets but reversed for the blue ones. Play around in "spell practice" for a while to get the hang of it. It's supposed to be hard, but if you die it's your own fault - there's no way it will ever form a solid wall, you just messed up your movement somehow.
the new HUD elements are in the same teeny-weeny annoying size as the rate and bonus text (http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/6045/hudproblems.png). I know this display isn't normal, and I've submitted a query to the danmakufu questions topic(with no response), but Concealed the Conclusion was able to display text over the playfield without this happening to it... Is it possible for you to set the on-field HUD's font to something different to fix it or something?
I don't know how to fix that, but that display isn't actually important anyway - the number of slashes is just how many spells you've captured (bottom) and how many you've timeouted (top). CtC probably uses images for everything, which would be possible, but a lot harder to modify and work with.
...and is it me, or is Merlin's hitbox really, really big?
It might be... I didn't know what the "normal" hitbox size is, since you can't access the original Reimu and Marisa scripts. It didn't feel too bad, though. Maybe it's because of my new shot graphics instead of Merlin?
Thanks for the feedback. This is definitely the "gimmickiest" boss in the game, so don't think I'm going to have everything as reality-bending as this. I just thought it would make things interesting if the danmaku looked really easy, but you end up dying to it anyway - sorry if any of it seemed cheap, but it shouldn't be a problem after one or two playthroughs.