Based on Maria Watches Over Us, you pick a pair of soeurs (Sachiko/Yumi, Shimako/Noriko, Rei/Yoshino and Yumi/Touko) and travel through sidescrolling stages while being assaulted by everything. You have two shot buttons, one to shoot left and one to shoot right, as well as a lock-on laser to hit enemies in the background. Only the leading character can get hit by enemy attacks.
Lilian Fourhand provides examples of:
- Background Boss: Touko goes into the background periodically and Uzawa Mifuyu spends the whole battle in the background, making them only vulnerable to the lockon laser.
- Boss Rush: Stage 6, but the battles against Eriko, Sei and Youko aren't repeated, due to them instead teaming up for the final battle.
- Cool Car: Sei's car, which you fight before her in stage four. It has a missile launcher in the trunk and a machine gun under the hood.
- Dual Boss: Minako and Mami. The final fight is a dual boss fight where you fight two of the roses, tagging out with each other occasionally... until they become a Triple Boss.
- Endless Corridor: The fights againts Tsutako, Touko, Kanako and Kanina all take place in areas that scroll forever until they're defeated. Not so weird for the first three, as they are all outside, but definitely applies for the fight against Kanina, as the dance hall the fight takes place in just goes on forever until you defeat her.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Schoolgirls, birds, spiders, bees, chestnuts, and just about everything else.
- Final Boss, New Dimension: The final stage primarily takes place on a walking path at night... until you're transported to a field of red, white and yellow roses with a giant Virgin Mary statue in the background for the final battle.
- Flunky Boss: Four of them.
- Takeshima Tsutako is flanked by other students throwing things from the bus windows, respawning when the windows close.
- Tanuma Chisato calls in kendo club members that need to be fought off before she can be damaged herself and does it again if you don't defeat her in her first attack cycle.
- Kanina Shizuka is backed up by both a choir and a levitating piano, both which are destroyable but can be ignored as they die automatically when Kanina is defeated.
- Youko is supported by a neverending stream of Benibara Shiteinai for the first half of her life bar.
- Forehead of Doom: Eriko shoots lasers with hers.
- Huge Schoolgirl: Since Kanako is this in the source material, here it is taken to the extreme, with her taking up most of the screen height and acting a lot like a kaiju.
- Les Yay: The portraits of the teams, especially the two Rosa Chinensis teams.
- Mirror Match: If you play with Yumi & Touko, you still fight Touko as the stage 1 boss.
- Mythology Gag: A lot of the game feels like a general reference to the earlier game Rosa Chinensis Four Hand by the same developer (and that game was even included as a bonus on the Lilian Fourhand disc), which was a one-screen bullet hell battle against Kanina Shizuka where you controlled Sachiko and Yumi. Apart from it being a shmup(ish) game where you control two characters, Yumi has the same three-way spread shot which was the unfocused shot in that game and you have a dash move where you're immune to damage (though in Rosa Chinensis Four Hand it was more of a jump), but the midboss battle against Kanina brings the reference up to eleven, including the piano player and backup choir singers that were prominent parts of Rosa Chinensis Four Hand. The angels in the stage look similar to the angels in that game, too.
- Power-Up Letdown: On Normal, a bird will drop a Shot powerup right before the battle with Mifuyu... who only takes damage from the lockon laser that isn't affected by the Shot powerup, you have to shoot your normal shot to fire the laser as well, and the Shot powerup runs out by shooting.
- The laser powerup is almost never useful, as all it does is increase how many targets you can lock on to, and there's almost never that many background targets TO lock on to. And you lose it when you get hit.
- This Is a Drill: Touko's projectiles, both as a boss (in her final attack) and playable character.
- Unlockable Content: Yumi & Touko as a playable character team and a few game modes.
