I managed to not hear it from IN, MoF, and SA? Geez, sometimes I impress myself with how oblivious I can be. I suppose it isn't too hard when you are just humming along to the theme though :p
In terms of options I guess it is a personal choice, Bill use Sanae A, I absolutely hate Sanae A and much prefer B (and think that A sucks), though I've been sticking with Reimu A/needles for as long as I could. With some games there are clear differences, but otherwise it is just a playstyle thing.
Tri-color UFO gives inverted items, so power to point and point to power, 4x score at maxed out item, and drop another color changing UFO upon being killed/max item.
As for bomb vs lives, well, rather tough. On score runs I believe bomb/blue will be superior, but for people just trying to get through lives is probably the best as it is rather difficult to learn when to bomb. Green = 1 1/3 bomb, red = 2/3 life, but 1 life will refill up to 2 bombs if your bomb count is below 2, rounded down. Ideally you just bomb/blue since you can go through everything without getting hit. Less ideally you take bomb over life because you know when to bomb. Normally you just bomb like crazy and hope you don't waste bombs when you get hit
On August 26 2009 04:52 Antifate wrote: I have some questions:
Are some girls (the ones you use) better than others? I've looked at some touhou vids and everyone seems to use a different one T_T.
What do tri-color UFO's do? They don't really drop anything when they die (kind of like blues ).
Is it better to stock up on bombs or lives first? Or does it depend on the stage?
What does the little "power up" from blue UFO's do?
And is "Graze" just for cool points?
"Are some girls (the ones you use) better than others?" I've been wondering this, myself. I think that they're balanced between 3 attributes: a) main shot spread (for hitting things not directly in front of you) b) main shot damage output c) bomb usefulness (And maybe they differ in movement speed, too.)
E.g. Sanae A has a godlike bomb (it's basically a 5-second Mega Crush ^^), and imo her shot has really good spread, so she probably has low damage output.
IMO, you should pick whichever maiden matches your playstyle. E.g. I don't like to rely on bombs, so I should probably be using a character with a crappy bomb, not Sanae A. ^_^;; On the other hand, I like her shot a lot. And in any case, I'll probably stick with Sanae A or B just because she can DANCE! \(^.^\) (/^.^)/ \(^.^\) (/^.^)/
While we're on the topic of the maidens:
On August 26 2009 02:11 Ecael wrote: Though personally using Reimu A I don't think I've had too many points where I have red/purple overlapping, just higher dps probably.
O_O Wow. If I could defeat Byakuya-whatever-her-name-is before she reaches the red phase, I think I'd have a MUCH higher success rate against that pattern! But, I know from trying Reimu A that I'm bad with her, 'cause when I dodge bullets, I generally don't pay attention to anything else, such as whether or not I'm actually hitting the boss. ^^;;
Tri-colour UFOs do 3 things: 1. They release a colour-changing ufo when they fill up 100%, and they release another colour-changing ufo when they're destroyed. (By the way, every UFO drops a colour-changing ufo when it's destroyed.) 2. They turn blue cards (bonus points) into red cards (shot powerups) and vice-versa. 3. They give you a multiplier up to 4.0x, whatever that means.
For example, say you're trying to collect only red ufos, but there's a solid-blue one floating around. So you collect red-green-blue, fill and destroy the tri-colour UFO, and then you can get 2 reds again by picking up the 2 ufos it drops. Plus you get the extra points, and the bullet-clear when the UFO is destroyed.
Another example: in stage 6, you can get a LOT of blue cards but few red ones, so you can use a tri-colour UFO to quickly get max power by changing all the blue cards into red ones.
"Is it better to stock up on bombs or lives first?" I almost always stock up on lives, because your bombs are refilled to 2 every time you die, and because I usually die before using all of my bombs. I only get green UFOs when I have no bombs left, or when there are solid-green ufos floating around, since I'd might as well use them.
The Wiki link above goes into some detail about how the red and green UFOs compare to each other. The gist of it is, IF you can consistently use a bomb instead of dying, green UFOs are better. This is because each time you die, you lose 1 level of attack power, so bombing is preferable to dying. But, each time you die with extra bombs, you are essentially losing 2 bombs.
"And is "Graze" just for cool points?" It gives you actual points, actually.
Reimu A's dps isn't enough to bring her down before Red, but it is enough to take her down, if you have a good focus on her, by the middle of Red just about when Purple starts showing up. Marisa's lasers might have a higher damage output, but that's just from me messing around with Marisa A during Trial version. Oh, the name is Byakuren. And if you can't hit while dodging bullets, Reimu B or Sanae B are good options? Yay homing/AoE.
Movement speed definitely differ though, Marisa is invariably the fastest, and I feel like Sanae is the slowest normally (oh the amount of doujins on this, so good), there might be a small hitbox difference too. th8 definitely had hitbox size differences, can't remember off the top of my head about other ones though.
In comparing Sanae A to Reimu A, barring my love of characters (pfft Sanae, 2p color Reimu, that's all she is). Sanae A has a slightly shorter bomb duration but better movement speed during bomb I believe, not too sure about bomb power offhand. DPS is slightly lower too, but better utility due to that going in part.
The 4.0x multiplier I believe are just from the score items attached to the UFO, which kind of explains the insane point boosts you can see during stage 6
About dying, if people are interested in high score, it also sets back your score significantly, I believe. The wikia should have a much more comprehensive analysis on lost points. Graze too should be analyzed on the wikia, but iirc it is every 10graze = +10pt max points from blue.
On August 26 2009 06:19 Ecael wrote: And if you can't hit while dodging bullets, Reimu B or Sanae B are good options? Yay homing/AoE.
Erm, Sanae A seems like it would be far better suited.
Sanae B is actually far more nub friendly than Sanae A. Sanae A has a good bomb but her regular shot is dogshit garbage bad now that I think about it. Sanae B has a pretty steady damage output even if you're doding at the edge of the screen.
Nothing will ever beat the awesomeness that was Reimu/Yukari on IN. That character combo is the most nub friendly of any of the touhou period. 1 second delay after getting hit to bomb, both of them have a homing shit and Yukari's regular shot is hellishly powerful. If you really are new to Touhou i recommend starting with Imperishable Night.
I love Marisa A but her Master Spark slows her down SO much it's ridiculous. Her regular shot is the most powerful in the game when maxed out but that bomb is so annoying.
In regards to UFO shottypes, Reimu and Sanae are both the key choices here. Choosing which shot in particular all comes down to style and skill, and honestly, all of them are good choices depending on how you play. ReimuB and SanaeA both deal some of the poorest damage in the game, but they prove to be extremely useful during stages. ReimuA, or needle Reimu, is the primary kicker in the game as usual, with a good mix of high output damage and that lovely small hitbox. SanaeB is somewhere between ReimuB/SanaeA and ReimuA, in terms of both utility and damage.
To be perfectly honest, I don't think that Marisa has been a good character in the games since EoSD. In PCB, she's okay, but I prefer needle Reimu. In IN, Border Team is way too broken to pass up. In MoF, aside for MarisaBugged (which you honestly shouldn't use), she's terrible. Same goes for SA. It's nice to see that masterspark is back, but I really don't care :3
So I tried a bunch of different character types today.
ReimuB felt significantly weaker than SanaeA, and the homing balls frequently targetted the wrong enemies, which made it a lot harder for me to kill what I was actually firing at. She moved a lot slower, too. In addition, I have a habit of occasionally trying to finish off a UFO with a bomb, which obviously doesn't work at all with ReimuB. =/
MarisaA was quite fun to use. I don't question that she has the highest dps in the game, and it was nice to occasionally defeat bosses sooner than usual, often before their spellcards reached their most difficult patterns. Also, she seems GREAT for boosting your score with UFOs, since you can focus on killing a large # of enemies to fill the UFO, then focus on the UFO and rapidly destroy it, even if other enemies are in the way. But overall, I was defeating bosses a lot slower, and I'd usually die while trying to position myself in front of them. =/
SanaeB actually felt weaker than SanaeA. The AOE toads were really good when there were many enemies on screen, but sucked otherwise. On their own, SanaeA's serpents seem to do a lot more damage to bosses than the toads alone (since usually only 1 toad is actually hitting them if they're not directly in front of you, and even then, it's 2 max). And like all the B-types, apparently, SanaeB was much slower.
In general, I found I did best overall with SanaeA. Her serpents seem to be the best attack for damaging bosses when you're not directly in front of them, just a little off to the side, which for me is at least 75% of the time.
Reimu and Marisa's lack of good dance moves, music note emoticon, and the colour green were also key in my decision to stick with SanaeA.
Magician team is pretty good in IN for spell practice because it has the most outstanding DPS...:p
imo the thing about Sanae B is that you have to learn when to give up on focusing and abuse the AoE, the slow speed actually makes it a bit easier for me to manage finer movements, though I've gotten so used to Reimu A at this point that it doesn't matter :p Odd that you should be defeating bosses slower though, but I haven't played with Marisa A extensively past stage 3, so I wonder how I'd do there. Master Spark is so freaking slow though, urg.
Sanae's character feels like it has changed so much from MoF to SA to UFO lol, I wonder how much Touhou doujin ZUN reads heh, just from the things we saw in SA there is no way you'd really see music note emoticon-ing Sanae. Personally I just love a money grabbing Reimu ^^
I personally am a SanaeB user and it works absolutely amazing with unfocused shotgun. The damage output is incredible. But of course, this technique is also a lot harder to use, so I guess only the best players can use SanaeB to the best of her potential.
After various failed attempts, I finally managed to 1cc Normal again today, getting about 250m points twice. I'm still getting red UFOs at least 80% of the time, because when I get greedy -- getting blue UFOs and picking up ufo tokens during a UFO for higher bonus points -- I end up running out of lives somewhere on stage 6.
One was a messed up run with SanaeA where I died twice on the stage 2 boss, and lost my 2nd-last life as Byakuren died (I even had bombs at the time, but didn't think I needed to use one). ^_^;;;;;;
The other was a good run with MarisaB. Her focused damage output seems a tad higher than SanaeA when you're at the bottom of the screen, and significantly higher when you're higher up (so that all the shots are hitting your target). One of the low points of this run was when I realized I could hit Byakuren when she's at the bottom of the screen by using MarisaB's unfocused shot. I got all excited and started trying to think of a way to take advantage of this. =D And this was sufficiently distracting to kill me.
Something interesting I discovered: Byakuren's last spellcard attacks vary direction depending on your position! I was getting all up in her grill with Marisa, and after a while I noticed the rings were coming in at really strange angles that I'd never seen before. o_O Then as I moved back down, things returned to normal. Anyway. there are probably places you can sit that make the pattern significantly easier, and places that make the pattern significantly harder.
Yay I beat stage 4 (going in with 5 lives haha). Only to get gob-smacked by the boss of stage 5. How come Nazrin didn't use those spells when we first fought. :-P
CURVY LASERS ARGH.
Reimu = Red Marisa = Black Sanae = Green right?
In that case I was using Sanae B. ^.^
I actually like the stage 5 boss a lot better than Murasa. Got her down to one star with 2.xx power and 1 life. :D I dodge 3/4ths of the attacks by accident. I die on when Murasa isn't even using a spell most of the time. T_T
Something interseting about Murasa's non-spell patterns is that they are exactly the same every time, with respect to her position on-screen. (Credit to some guy on Youtube for this observation.) E.g. if you sit directly below her when she attacks, you can dodge the pattern in almost the exact same way every time: the only differences come from the handful of bullets that move so slow that they overlap into the 2nd wave of bullets.
I haven't bothered to memorize a path through the patterns, though: I just look for areas where the slow bullets are moving away from each other and/or leaving a large gap, and keep moving to areas like that. Then, when the line of faster bulelts comes, I can focus solely on slipping through it, because there are no slow bullets that are threatening me.
I'm trying to no-bomb practice on stage 4 and it's really not going well.
After some practice, I can make it through her first card without problems 90% of the time, it's just that on her weird second card with the "frozen" bullets that then fall on you I can't make it through without a bomb. Sometimes I can dodge until she's at like two shots away and then I get hit. They bullets seem to appear in columns with empty space in between them so I try to stay there, but then she moves around a lot and summons diagonal bullets which I can't deal with.
Then the anchors of doom appear. Trying to no bomb results in me losing a life every wave (where I'm not invulnerable from my last death). >.> The last spellcard I've already resigned that I'm going to have to spend bombs on. T_T
Edit: Oooh, staying up on the screen during her second spellcard really really really helps.
On August 29 2009 08:50 Antifate wrote: I'm trying to no-bomb practice on stage 4 and it's really not going well.
After some practice, I can make it through her first card without problems 90% of the time, it's just that on her weird second card with the "frozen" bullets that then fall on you I can't make it through without a bomb. Sometimes I can dodge until she's at like two shots away and then I get hit. They bullets seem to appear in columns with empty space in between them so I try to stay there, but then she moves around a lot and summons diagonal bullets which I can't deal with.
Then the anchors of doom appear. Trying to no bomb results in me losing a life every wave (where I'm not invulnerable from my last death). >.> The last spellcard I've already resigned that I'm going to have to spend bombs on. T_T
Edit: Oooh, staying up on the screen during her second spellcard really really really helps.
This might be helpful, if you haven't seen it yet:
Edit: actually, this guy has a much better strategy for the last spellcard (on Lunatic, even):
Notice how he has it timed so that he can move through the bullets horizontally or vertically, rather than having to move on an angle. There's a way to do this on Normal, too: I got it to happen once during the latter half of the spellcard (and it made it a lot easier to clear), but I don't remember the timing or positioning for it.
MarisaA was quite fun to use. But overall, I was defeating bosses a lot slower, and I'd usually die while trying to position myself in front of them. =/
This is just a factor of practice.
Much like the magician team in IN Marisa A sports the highest DPS in the game by a considerable margin so if you're going for just capturing spell cards she will typically kill bosses before you have to go through a second round of dodging. The issue is of course that you have to be right under the boss to inflict said damage... something that is increasingly difficult to do on Hard/Lunatic difficulties if you don't plan for it.
When I see a pattern I sub consciously pick a path that allows me to stay with the boss when I play MarisaA just because I do it so often now. Happens all on it's own. It also makes playing every other character a bit easier because they have a greater margin of error.
You just have to start centering avoidance around the center of the screen and really follow the boss movements much more closely.
Since this is the only Touhou game I play, I figure I'll post this here.
So I've been giving Hard mode a go. Finally figured out how to capture Nazrin's last spellcard (you have to run up inside the prism circle while it's expanding).
Now I'm trying to unlock stage 3 for practice. Actually I had it in the bag just now, but got scammed out of it by a laser that hit me after the boss had died and most of the bullets had already disappeared. I had 2 bombs left, but didn't want to "waste" one. This kind of thing seems to happen a lot, probably because I get distracted thinking "I bet I'm gonna die if I don't bomb..." T_T
Recently, I've started score-running Easy mode for fun. I got 492 mil on my previous run, and decided I wanted to crack 500 mil.
Today, I just finished Easy with 608 million points, but moreover, I did a no miss (no deaths) clear of the entire game!
I can't believe it. This is the first time I've no-missed an entire shmup ever. The pressure was immense: going into Byakuren, I realized what I was about to accomplish and needed to take a minute to just relax and focus. The fight went well overall, except for the curvy lasers where I almost died twice.
For scoring, I used the strategy of increasing the bonus item value as much as possible before stages 5 and 6. I did this by getting only tri-colour UFOs and collecting as many ufo tokens as possible while the big UFOs were on-screen. By stage 5, I had only 95 mil points, but a bonus item value of 35,000. By stage 6, I had 364 mil points and a bonus item value of 39,000. In stages 5 and 6, I got mostly blue UFOs to collect as many points as possible.
My attention far as TH12 goes has already shifted entirely from the game to the doujins, where Byakuren seems to be the best received stage6 boss for a loooong time.
EPT
).
