click for gelbooru

1cc on normal! woooooo!  4 touhou’s down, 3 to go ^^  東方花映塚 (tôhô kaêzuka (kunrei-shiki)) is the ninth game in the series and very very different from the previous ones.  In pofv you battle against an opponent split-screen as faeries, spirits, and bullets randomly spawn and attack you.

The white bullets get sent over to your opponents screen if you can destroy them by killing a nearby fairy or activated spirit.  Other features include powering up your spell gauge which lets you unleash more powerful attacks (while also clearing your screen of enemies).

If you charge up your gauge all the way and unleash your level 4 spell, a copy of your character will appear on your opponent’s screen and start attacking.  Not quite the same as a boss battle in the other touhou games, but it still makes things more hectic due to the randomly generated clutter that’s already attacking you.  You can read more about the gameplay here if you’re interested.

click for gelbooru

Chose to unlock and use aya after reading this thread on the character strengths and weaknesses.  Not sure how credible the original thread author is but it worked out for me ^^  Reimu’s 360 field wasn’t working out for me as I’d activate spirits all around me and not destroy them in time (which spawns 3 red bullets aimed at you).

click for gelbooru

Now I’m on to Mountain of Faith.  Ironically aya is kicking my butt in stage 4 orz  Keep trying to capture her last 3 cards and getting caught off guard.  Think I just need to get back in my bombing groove and I’ll churn out that next 1cc fairly easily ^^

quick update on figures, just got an e-mail from hobby search:

“Also, please note that order recombination is not possible any longer,
since the shipment process of the item(s) is already underway.”

3 alter releases in 1 month!  Can’t wait ^__^

以上！

IN was actually the one and only touhou I’ve ever 1-shot… kind of.  Back in August I had played a couple times on normal I believe, decided to give easy a try, 1cc’d it on my first attempt.  So technically it wasn’t the first time I had played IN but it was the first time I had played it on easy (and the first time I had ever seen lots of the later stages/cards).  Here’s the replay for that run:

As I continued to pound away at eosd and pcb I would often come back to easy IN to indulge in a low stress 1cc ^^;  Guess I partook in that more than I thought… got enough practice in to do a no-death run ^^;

Back to the normal run – I actually first 1cc’d normal with a ludicrously generous 7 lives… don’t have that run recorded yet though (and I’m sure you’re all dying to watch it start to finish, na? na? :P)

IN is the only touhou to feature spell card practice so I was happy to actually capture at least one of kaguya’s cards ^^;

Sadly I think my performance during the normal parts of the stage and non-card attacks is worse than usual ^^;

I believe a bunch of touhou goodies I ordered are in the mail now so hopefully I’ll have a post ready soon after Christmas.

To recap I’m going through the touhou’s in order (only the integer numbered games atm), 1cc’ing them on normal.  That means pofv is next… not especially looking forward to that one ^^;  On a mission though, hopefully it’ll be over quick.

Barely on topic… anyone planning to pick up that gift reimu?

以上！

I’m addicted to playing on easy now for the false sense of skill it provides ^^;;; On my first play through on easy (had been playing on normal up ’til now), got all the way up to utsuho’s 2nd to last card or so. Frustrated at being so close, played a few more times and this is the result ^^

As you can see on my progress page I’ve gotten all but UFO 1cc’d on easy… currently working on spell practice in IN to hopefully but a normal 1cc under my belt soon…

feito-chan is in the mail.  slightly apprehensive because of how her face looked in the pics i’ve seen but nevertheless, nanoha needs company :P

期待しててね！

以上！

Figures after I put up my whine post I go and 1cc pcb a few days later ^^;;

You may have noticed I added another top level page – 東方プロジェクト (touhou project).  It’s just a list of all the “regular” touhou games and my progress through each.  By regular, I just mean the touhou games that got an integer number, i.e. th6, th7, etc. through th12 but not including th7.5, 9.5 etc.  (though I am curious why potfv was given a regular integer number since it’s not much like the games before or after it).  Once I get my hands on the other games, I’ll add ‘em to the list.

Kinda sucks that my run was ~32 minutes long.  Didn’t divide up into youtubable chunks nicely at all.  Ended up with stages 1 & 2 in the first vid, then each stage after that having to go to a separate segment.

Been practicing stages 4, 5 and 6 almost daily, yet I put out one of my worst performances on each -_-

My yuyuko fight was particularly bad, where i fail to capture a single card.  (for non-touhou’ers, the ‘cards’ are the special attacks that follow when you see the character portrait appear on the screen.  to ‘capture’ you must survive without dying or bombing)

Think I’m going to try and repeat the miracle with a regular 3 life clear then move on to IN.  My extra stage queue is building but I get brutalized so bad I think I’m gonna wait for the IN extra (IN features a spell card practice mode) before making a serious attempt.

Relieved to get this one under my belt!  2 down, 5 to go!

以上！

Dunno how many random posts covering a variety of topics I’ve done, so this one has been labeled version epsilon for no reason.  Quick Japanese vocab lesson: 色々＝＝いろいろ＝＝iroiro == various.  As a na-adjective you’d say iroirona [something] to say “various [something]“.  In casual speech this is often contracted to 色んな＝＝いろんな==ironna.

Anyhow, today it’s figures, anime, and touhou again.

Preorders &  Orders

I’m sure you’ve seen the movie version nanoha & k-on’s yui go up for preorder.  I’ll give you one guess as for what that meant for my wallet :P

Pics from hobby search. Click links above for product listings.

Actually I was taken aback by nanoha’s price but that only delayed me a minute before placing my order for the both of ‘em ^^;  Guess I’ve just kinda resigned to letting Alter bleed me dry…

From the already ordered department – not one, or two but three figures are actually in the mail now.  narika & kanu i may have mentioned before but volks fate I had totally forgotten about ^^;  Now actually I’m a bit worried about fate… mostly after seeing these pics of volks’ hayate release.

narika/kanu pics from hobby search and fate from official site. see above links for source

Granted… rein is really tiny so I’m willing to overlook the hack job there… but still it just felt like i was noticing sloppy painting on hayate in a few too many places. (also a dedicated hayate review on that blog).  Guess we’ll see how fate turned out next week…

I’ve been trying to be (slightly) more financially responsible lately, so I consolidate my shipments from hobby search now.  This ends up translating to 1 or 2 shipments a month, unlike the insane flurry of packages I used to indulge in.  So if you’re wondering why I’ve lightened up my figure posts of late, that’s partly why (the other part being touhou (could you tell? :P)).  Oh, and the months I get 2 packages… that’s because of the not-really-ideal system at hobby search where you can only combine orders if they have the same release month.  So when something is released at the very end of the month… it usually gets bumped off the original month’s shipment and made separate -_-

かなめも ~ kanamemo

I forget if I’ve actually done a formal post on it yet, but kanamemo is a manga I picked up (#27) last time I was in akiba.  Soooo many piles of it at practically every store I walked into so I had to get volume 1 to try it out.  If you haven’t tried it out yet, it’s, as far as I can tell, an all-female-cast slice of life taking place in a little newspaper delivery company.

yuri, loli, oppai… you’ll probably find a character to your liking in the varied cast. Not to mention a buncha of big name seiyuu!  Well, not big name necessarily, but seiyuu for a lotta characters I’m familiar with ^^

toyosaki aki – yui, koyoi, yoshino
mizuhara kaoru – isayama yomi
endou aya – miyuki, sheryl
horie yui – naru, ayu, makie, eri, suzu, minorin
kitamura eri – kokonoe rin, kawashima ami, sakihata rimi
kugimiya rie – shana, louise, nagi, taiga, tacos(yuuki)

Maybe I just haven’t read far enough but one difference I noticed is that the anime added a heavy dose of loli groping.  (one of the oppai gals is, for all intents and purposes, a drunk lolicon).  Really could have done without it in my opinion… I like to enjoy my slice of life comedies without feeling morally corrupt ^^;;

At any rate, it’s a pretty lite comedy so far with kawaii characters so it fits my bill for “light hearted show I don’t have to give my undivided attention to”.

東方紅魔郷 ~ eosd

Finally a 1cc on normal with the default 3 lives!!!  Not sure I actually got any better… just bombed more conservatively ^^;  On the other hand, I did set a personal score record with this run – 100,457,380 – somehow placing me at number 4 on the normal reimuB scoreboards at shrinemaiden.org.  I assume that’s just for lack of players posting there/lack of interest in doing a high score attempt on normal difficulty.

Uploaded my replay to gensokyo.org in case you’re interested (need the game to view it).  I’ll probably capture a video for  youtube later.

Finally figured out an easy way to get past those 6 faeries right before stage 6 sakuya that spray the radiating circles of bullets.  I think their aim is adjusted based on your character position, so if you position yourself in the same place every time (before they come on screen!), the pattern is exactly the same.  Given that… stay in the lower left corner before they appear on screen… then all you have to do is move slightly to the right to dodge everything.  Basically move right until you’re just to the left of the bullets that are aimed straight down (the 3 from the 3 circles above you should pretty much all line up).  Not conducive to high scoring since you’re not picking up all the point items, but perfect if you’re just trying to save lives & bombs (like me ^^;).  Though do be on the look out for a stray faerie retreating off screen.  Might be headin’ right for ya :P

Anyhow, with this accomplishment under my belt I think I’m going to focus on the eosd extra stage and a 1cc for normal 東方妖々夢 (pcb).  Is it just me or are all the game terms like cherry points and cherry max… … … nevermind. ^^;;;

Praying that my package gets out of customs tomorrow (well, technically today, just past midnight here…) so that I can pick it up on Saturday… otherwise I won’t be able to do any reviews until probably mid next week.  Not to mention I’m itching for another figure infusion :P

以上！

Click for gelbooru. MASTER SPARK!

Been experimenting with converting the replay for youtube – think the quality turned out pretty good.  If you’d like to see what touhou is like and/or how bad I am, take a look – stages 1-3, stages 4 & 5, stage 6 (all of ‘em also embedded below).

Some notes:

Stage 2 Boss チルノ a.k.a. ⑨ – Stopped thinking and moved wrong during ⑨’s opening spray of bullets. Bombed as I freaked out -_-
Stage 3 Midboss 中国 – Bad positioning during her opening attack lead to another bomb… then I die shortly thereafter orz

I absolutely hate losing a life before stage 4.  Yet for some reason lately I keep getting hit by 中国 or *sob* ⑨ (or having to bomb -_-).  I think that’s been messing up my reimuB playthroughs lately… I’ll die early on and lose my concentration and die some more.  At least in this play through I manage to avoid actually dying on Cirno, but it still shakes my concentration.

Stage 3 Boss 中国 – I top things off by using two bombs to finish her off orz

Stage 4, Before koakuma – Freak out during the green stuff and bomb.
Stage 4 Boss Patchouli Knowledge – Thought I wasn’t gonna make it through rage trilithon and bombed.  Was actually dodging things for once in metal fatigue but couldn’t keep it up and was out of bombs (so I die).  That death had me on edge and ended up bombing during wafer elf.

Now begins the bomb spam.  Well, actually I do successfully pull off a nice little trick which not only trivializes the midboss version of sakuya’s initial attack, but nets me a ton of graze.  You can see it during the video, but for a full explanation, I go thru it in the tips later.

Stage 5 Midboss sakuya – Was going fine until I positioned myself too high and freaked out during misdirection.  I also finish off sakuya too early and fail as usual during the following spam -_- ‘nother bomb used.
Stage 5 Boss sakuya – Right as boss she opens up I decide to fly right into some bullets, wasting a life and bomb… more bad positioning on clock corpse, respond with a bomb…. felt trapped before lunar (luna?) clock engaged, spend another bomb… aaand right as lunar clock starts, i bomb again… after lunar clock i’m out of bombs, fail to dodge, and die… yet again I fail to avoid knives. bomb… thought i was in the clear, then sakuya freezes time and gets close and personal. didn’t want to risk dying and bombed to finish her off.

Even having bombed that much I’m able to start stage 6 with 6 lives and 1 bomb in stock.  At this point I’m thinking, well crap, I didn’t need to start with 5 lives after all.  Of course I was terribly wrong…

Was doing fine during opening spam. Then I decide to run into a bullet and die, wasting a bomb in stock.  I bomb out of the expanding bullet rings.  Was spooked by the earlier death and didn’t want to risk wasting 3 bombs…  Then I go and die on sakuya, wasting 2 bombs in stock, and again freaked out, bomb to finish her off.  Seeing a pattern? I bomb to get through remelia’s opening attack -_-  Get through star of david but end up bombing twice to get to scarlet netherworld.  The second bomb was totally because i wasn’t familiar with the spell card and positioned myself right in front of her as she prepared to unload a barrage in my face.

Curse of Vlad – was sitting there innocently enough at the bottom and just let that knife hit me. Real great. At least I had used all my bombs. Was finishing it off but wasn’t paying attention to remilia’s life and waste a bomb as I depleted her life -_-  Stupidly die with 2 bombs stocked trying to get to scarlet shoot.   Then I die with THREE bombs stocked failing to dodge scarlet shoot.  Totally freaked out now, so I bomb the rest of scarlet shoot, robbing me of the opportunity to zap remilia as she begins red magic.

You’d think 1 extra life and 2 bombs would be plenty for red magic? Well for me, just barely. Bomb the crap out of her (which she’s immune to), chipping down her life bit by bit in between.  Expend my last bomb with 1/6 of her life left or so, thought I was done for… but thankfully not!  I crawl away with my first 1cc ^^;

It took about a month and was really sloppy (especially during the end) but I’m ecstatic to have this milestone under my belt.  Most importantly it opened up the extra stage, and I was finally able to face flandre!  She’s… a beast ;_;  Gonna be a while before I take her down…

Tips for EoSD Touhou Beginners from a Touhou Beginner ^^;

On the off chance that a fellow touhou enthusiast is playing eosd for their first touhou and happens upon this blog, thought I’d share some things I thought were important/woulda helped me out if somehow had explained.  Probably lots of obvious stuff for shmup veterans… and I’m no expert myself, but hopefully I’m not too far off the mark ^^;;

1.  Score points!  It took a while before I realized I needed to get that score up to gain those extra lives.  I was so focused on just staying alive at first it was actually hurting me!  In eosd you get a life at 10, 20, 40 and 60 million points.

Click for gelbooru

2.  Get your power up fast!  I was sort of lazily collecting power ups in the first stage until I realized I could be at 60ish power when engaging the stage 1 boss and max power shortly after cirno (mid-boss).  You can probably even do a lot better (I suck at collecting power ups ;_;).  This ties into #1 because once you’re at max power you can use the auto-collect to get max-value point items.

Click for gelbooru

3.  Sometimes you’re killing yourself.  I was ready to just accept the fact that I wasn’t good enough to beat sakuya’s second phase mid-boss form until I watched a replay and noted how easy it was to dodge everything — don’t move!  Many enemies target you so if you’re flying all over the place the screen gets covered in bullets and you’re digging your own grave.  In the sakuya case each wave is separately targeted so stay in place while her red knives (kunai?) fly out, then you’ll have a brief moment to adjust and freeze again before she starts firing the blue knives.  If you do it right, everything comes out in nice, easy to dodge rows.

Click for gelbooru

4.  It doesn’t hurt to cheese. :P  Sometimes it’s even the key to a high score.  My favorite move is the one I got from watching kagamin’s replay – for sakuya’s mid-boss first phase, you can simply hover above her the whole time.  The kicker is that not only are you perfectly safe, but you also rack up a ton of graze.  After the initial spray, she’ll settle into a pattern, starting with blue knives from left to right (sakuya’s right to left).  If you position yourself on her left shoulder you should not be hit, while damaging her.  As the knives fan out, simply move to sakuya’s right shoulder and you’ll remain safe.  Then, before she’s done with her barrage, move upwards to avoid colliding with her as she moves around.  Rinse and repeat.  Takes a bit longer than hitting her straight on but the safety, added graze, and the fact that you *want* to drain the time make it all worth it.  (or at least, I desperately need that time drain.  The ensuring chaos after you down her is often unmaneagable for me ;_;  If you take long enough on sakuya, you avoid it entirely).  You can see me using this technique at about 6:04 in the stage 4 & 5 vid.

Click for gelbooru

5.  Bombs ftw.  I am really horrible at using bombs.  I have this stupid tendency to conserve them… wanting to save them until I really need them.  That has really hindered my progress.  If you’re of like mind, think about it this way – each bomb is like an extra life since it gets you out of an impossible situation.  You gain 2 extra lives from items and 4 from points during a normal playthrough.  6 lives * 3 bombs each == 18 extra times you can mess up!  Add in the 3 lives you start with (or 5, if you’re giving yourself the best chance for a no-continue clear) and that’s 27 bombs & 8 deaths (would game over on the 9th) or 35 mistakes to be made.  Maybe I’m the only one suffering from this complex but I had to break it down like that to help overcome my stinginess with bombing ^^;  Makes those full bomb deaths 3x worse!

Other games have penalties and you do get less points at the end if you don’t have as many bombs in stock but in eosd you mostly benefit from bomb use.  Because bullets are converted to star items during the bomb, high level players expend their bombs to maximize score.

Click for gelbooru

6.  Flandre is so mean ;_;

Click for gelbooru

7.  Master spark is really awesome when you’re like me and can’t deal with bosses for very long ^^;  It lasts for freaking ever.  However remilia will make you pay because during her final life bar she goes invulnerable when you bomb orz.  I learned recently that flandre is also immune to ‘em in general.

Alrighty, that’s enough touhou from me ^^;;  Figures are in the mail so some reviews should be comin up in the next couple weeks (though I will have to go out of town for work so that may delay things -_-).

以上！