Author Topic: My first lunatic 1cc  (Read 56625 times)

Lunatic_Reimu

  • No Bomb Enthusiast
Re: My first lunatic 1cc
« Reply #30 on: May 25, 2019, 12:04:15 PM »
Even if you look at the story content we have I think 27 games with a 28th coming out, multiple printed works and whatnot so I did kind of just want to jump into some of the story content a bit, at least when it came to the main games. When it comes to the printed works and spinoff games I'm willing to take things a bit slower and meet the characters as they show up (like I haven't met Kokoro properly ingame but I have seen her in Forbidden Scrollery and fanart and whatnot). I can see why you go about the no bomb runs like you do with going through the lower difficulties/characters/shot types and just kind of building up to and finishing with that Lunatic Reimu no bomb run and then just whatever other characters you might find interesting. I'd definitely want to pick and choose a bit with games like 8 or 9 too with how many different ones there is XD I wouldn't want to do all the singles in 8 with a no bomb run, although it could be interesting too try a few of them since the singles gameplay really does change up how you need to deal with a lot of the attacks in 8. And jeeze, I can imagine the games with more limited lives must be scary on a no bomb run! I believe 3 and 9 are similar in that sense where there's far more emphasis on reflexes over memorization. It's one reason I focused on 9 for my first lunatic/extra 1cc since I felt like only needing to rely on my reflexes and intuition made things a bit simpler for me. It still requires me to constantly doing quick plans but it's a lot less worrying about certain spellcards and more trying to control the flow of the fight.

I did check out the T98 and I was having the same issue with 2, 4 and 5 so I figured it might be a case where the game files themselves were corrupted. I tried finding another package for the games and tried that and it seems to work, only thing is these ones aren't translated, but at least now I know it was the games themselves and not the anex or T98. Now I just need to sit down and figure out how to patch the games to English. I found a guide for it but I haven't sat down and tried it yet, but at least I know the issue was with the games and not the emulator.

And yes! I think 7 is a fantastic intro the series and I really need to give it credit for being able to initially hook me onto a genre I never thought I'd be able to get into. The gimmick is very noobie friendly and in general it's just an all around really solid Touhou game and it also has some of the more iconic characters within the series. Plus it lets me play as Sakuya so big plus there :) 

If you ever do decide to check out Madoka Magica just prepare to strap yourself in because it's a little bit more of a ride than most shows within the genre. Completely worth it though! It's one of those stories that just has so much love and care put into it at every angle from the animation to the music and the story. And yes! I have seen Little Witch Academia :) I enjoyed it a lot! I watched another anime by the same studio called Kill la Kill many years ago and really liked it so when LWA first was announced I was excited and watched it as it aired. Just like in Touhou that's one of those series where all the characters are so likeable. Even the side characters are great :D and ditto on the huge anime list to watch... More then I could ever possibly finish in fact. It's why usually I prefer the shorter but sweet kind of animes rather than the ones that span hundreds of episodes and take forever to watch. Also as a side note I've always liked ZUNs art, even when it was admittedly kind of bad it still had a lot of charm to it :) He has gotten a lot better over the years though. I still need to try 17 myself! I noticed when the demo was released but I figured I'd wait until I could play it translated.

If it makes you feel any better I was 29 when I first found it so I feel your pain! On the one hand it's kind of exciting because there's just soooo much I haven't experienced yet which means there's equal amounts of stuff to look forward to but I still can't help but wonder how much further I'd be along if I had started this series 5 or 10 years ago. When you're pushing yourself to your limits and trying to see how far you can go it sucks to think of all the potential time and practice you could have had to refine your skills if you discovered it earlier. I totally get what you mean about this series bringing back that magic and spark, I've had series that have really meant a lot to me in the past, but this series is truly something special that I don't think can be replaced or even surpassed for me at least.

I checked out the dBU white lotuc track you mentioned and it was absolutely fantastic. There's such a range to this piece that makes it special. Yuyuko's theme is really beautiful which I feel fits her fight perfectly, in general I think it's one of the most pretty fights in the series. Oh and the other piece I feel has so much range to it similarly to Emotional Skyscraper is Necrofantasia, absolutely love that piece. I also recently listened to a haunting remix for Kagome Kagome ~ Cinderella Cage I thought was great too that I'd recommend if you're interested! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkML_4j586Q

If I had to guess I'd say this Extra stage is going to go on for about 20 minutes from the looks of it :o It's almost like a whole game within a game! Ah yes, many clip deaths, also sometimes you misjudge when an enemy is going to die and starting moving away too quickly, or sometimes you get trapped and squished ect. I just try and always look at it as practice regardless. Over time my general odds of capturing a spellcard seems to rise so I try not to get too caught up in stressing over individual attempts although I'm sure everyone knows what it's like to have those deaths that make you yell "what?! That's complete bullshit!" at their screen from time to time lol and those off days where you just can't seem to get a good attempt can certainly be frustrating. I think the worst is when you start off amazingly, conserve most your resources quite far into the stage and then have things go horribly wrong later on. It's painful to make it really far into the stage without using a bomb only to suddenly get 2 misses back to back in a single attack. I am at the point where I think this is probably the most I've ever attempted a single thing in a game before. I can really see the effects of refining the muscle memory over the countless times I've slammed Reimu face first into a bullet :V I can't say I'm feeling burnt out though, I'm actually enjoying this a lot and I'm not necessarily in a rush to finish it and I feel like this is really effecting my overall skill with the series.

Doremy has a few spellcards like the one you mentioned with Patchouli. I really like her extra stage fight one like that even if you have to be pretty careful not to get trapped in it which can happen very quickly. It wasn't that long ago that I usually would just sit myself on the bottom of the screen and try to play it safe. I've long since come to realize that mentality simply just won't fly at all in the higher difficulties. The series really pushes you to be willing to use the entire screen. I've become much more comfortable doing that over time but initially it was really tough. Hell, even using the top of the screen to collect items use to terrify me. You really need to be able to adapt in this series, as there's a lot of parts that will punish you for trying to approach everything with the same mentality. 

I'm excited to get eventually try out 6's extra stage, it seems like it's one of the most iconic in the series. I know Flandre's theme is probably the single most well known Touhou track and probably the first from the series I ever heard myself. I'm also kind of curious about the no bomb runs. What made you decide to focus on those over normal 1ccs? I'm guessing being able to experience each game a bit deeper probably has something to do with it? Also how much practice does that usually involve to complete a game like that? Also good luck on getting through Flandre's last 3 spells, you can do it! :)
Oh yes indeed, there definitely is a lot of story and characters to meet, so your way has it?s benefits over the way I play the games. Also don?t forget to include the Seihou games, Samidare, Uwabami Breakers, and Torte Le Magic, ZUN had influence or the music composed for these games, apart from some cameos (in Seihou 1 the Extra Stage is vs Marisa and a very difficult Reimu back to back, in Seihou 2 you could control and fight against Yuuka from Touhou 4 and 9, and in Samidare you meet Yuki and Mai from Touhou 5, plus the Extra Stage is vs Gates and Vivit from Seihou). It?s a huge universe, so I completely understand your ?rush? to want to grasp as much as you could. Ahhh Kokoro is amazing, while I haven?t met her yet, I really like her, I?ve seen art of her and her Last Word on Youtube, and she?s a really cool character, I love how emotionless she looks. Yes it definitely helps stacking the difficulties as I do, although I just started Lunatic on Touhou 6 4 days ago, and damn, it?s quite a jump from Hard, and some parts need to be played completely differently to how you?d tackle them on Hard, but you get the jist of how the attacks work, just with more bullets, and slightly faster. Oh I find all characters interesting, I?d like to do Lunatic No Bombs with all characters if possible, but it just takes me too long sometimes, and I want to experience the other games too, cause there?s soooo much I haven?t seen yet. I?ll definitely look up that checklist in the future though and come back to tackle the ones I haven?t done :) Yes 8 and 9 have a ridiculous amount of characters, pair that with 8 having 2 routes as well to make it longer (Final A and Final B). Yes it definitely makes the game more difficult playing No Bombs since you have far less resources (in Seihou 1 for example you only get 5 lives, that was a doozy to No Bomb). Yes 3 and 9 are very close to gameplay (although thankfully in Touhou 9 you have focus which is a lifesaver, believe me you?ll miss it when you don?t have it). Yes true that about the reflexes vs memorization games, no need to plan out routes and position yourself accordingly when playing Touhou 3 or 9, since it?s all random, although I find it more fun on the other games to be honest, getting to that spot in time, preparing for a stream or a certain attack, etc.

Ahhh I?m glad to hear you got your issues with Touhou 2, 4, and 5 sorted :D They?re amazing games, although 4 is a bit on the easy side compared to 2 and 5 in my opinion. Still awesome though, and you get to fight against Reimu or Marisa in Touhou 4, depends on the character you?re using :) IIRC you need a small program called Edit Disk to be able to patch the translations into the games. It?s not as complicated as it sounds, and I believe there were instructions on how to do it in the English Patch Pack. Here?s a link to the English Patch Pack in case you don?t have it (got it from the wiki): http://www.mediafire.com/file/yxcg7mvg1lj1i6g/TouhouProjectPC-98-CompleteEnglishPatchPack100.rar Huge note, Reimu?s hitbox is way bigger in Touhou 2 than in the other games, you?ve been warned!

Oh yes definitely, 7 is simply beautiful from every regard, the music, the patterns, cherry blossoms, the story, the characters, it?s simply brilliant! Haha and yes, controlling Sakuya is lovely too, especially after facing her in Touhou 6, she?s such a cool character! xD

Oh I definitely will watch Madoka, I just need to get round to it, so many anime to watch! Haha I get what you mean about strapping yourself in, when I was going through Dragon Ball Z there were times where I watched 14 episodes back to back, get stuck in an amazing fight and just get glued to the TV xD Anime really is brilliant and wondrous. I?ve heard of Kill la Kill also but never watched it, it?s highly praised by everyone that mentions it. Oh yes indeed about everyone being likeable in Little Witch Academia, I really loved and enjoyed that anime. So much love went into it, you could tell. Hahaha I completely get you about preferring shorter anime to long ones, feels like you?re getting through more stuff and experiencing more different anime. When I went through Dragon Ball, I started from the roots (i.e. when Goku was a kid) and kept going to Z and all the movies, that was around 450 episodes combined and 15 movies, took me around 5 months to watch all that! xD Not complaining, Dragon Ball is awesome, and now Super is out too which I haven?t watched yet, so I need to find a time when to binge watch that. Oh yes don?t get me wrong, I like ZUN?s art too, the PC98 games have some very fine art, Touhou 6 took a small nosedive compared, but then started going up and even better as the games progressed. By no means am I dissing his art, Touhou is literally perfect in every way for me xD But that Touhou 16 and especially Touhou 17 Reimu is just tooooo adorable xD (I?m a huge Reimu addict in case you didn?t notice :P).

Haha your misfortune won?t make me feel any better mate, but I understand what you mean. I get the same thoughts too, if only I discovered this series 15 years ago I might be hitting Perfect Lunatics or Pacifists today :?( (plus would have cut a lot of the backlog of amazing fangames to play, the Touhoumons, Labyrinth of Touhou, and Gensou Ningyou Enbu which is the latest Touhoumon game, and the PS4 Genso Wanderers). But screw it, no use crying over spilled milk they say, we?re here now, and thankfully it?s made it?s way into our lives :D Indeed, I?ve been playing games for the past 25 years (seriously I picked up a NES controller when I was 4 years old) and from all those games I?ve experienced, NOTHING ever came close to the love I feel for this series. I literally boxed away my PlayStations and bought a powerful PC due to this series. I started off on my old budget laptop when I had seen that Koishi fight on Youtube (pc gaming wasn?t really my thing, preferred the simplicity of consoles where you just chuck the disc in and play) but this series COMPLETELY changed me as a gamer and as person :)

Ahhh, glad you got some time to check out that marvelous track, the part with the violin around 2 mins in is literally to die for. dBu are brilliant, almost all the tracks I hear by them I fall in love with. If you like that style, check out Arietta Incalzando by them too, it?s Reimu?s theme for the first 4 mins, and then it?s Marisa?s theme for the last 4 mins, the song really shines with Marisa?s theme, I think it?s the best arrange I?ve ever heard for her theme, and really takes me back to when I faced her for the first time in Touhou 2, such beautiful memories. Ohhh too true about Yuyuko?s theme, I think it?s one of the nicest themes in the whole series, simply heavenly. A cool rock arrange I heard of her theme is called Butterfly Delusion by J&B, worth checking out too. Oh yes, definitely agree with you on Necrofantasia, that theme has some powerful moments in it too which I really enjoy, and facing off against Yukari at the same time as hearing that is marvelous! Oh yes I?m definitely interested, I?ll check out the youtube link you gave for Kagome Kagome ? Cinderella Cage when I get home (I?m currently at work and Youtube (and some other social sites) is locked off here *yawn*, I hate this place with a passion, such a damn waste of time when I could be Touhouing instead, but f*ck it we need money to live).

20 mins for an Extra? Damn that is almost as long as a full game haha. Haha yeah you just mentioned my main causes of frustration, the clip deaths, moving away too fast, etc, but yes, keep at it and don?t abandon the run, it will serve as practice which will come in handy down the line ;) Yes in general me too, spell card capture rate tends to improve the more I face a card, with some of them even ending up trivial / 95% chance that I?ll capture it once I learned it, although some keep giving me trouble, like that damn Scarlet Meister that Remilia uses, just can?t grasp that attack at all. Hahahaha I get a bit more violent with my words than just ?what? this is bullshit? when I get hit in a run that was really going well haha. Yeah the off days are the worst, but don?t let them bring you down, tomorrow is a brighter future they say, so keep your chin up. What type of day you?ve had makes a huge difference in the way you play (i.e. didn?t sleep well, had a bad/busy/tiring day at work, something on your mind worrying you, etc). The part you mentioned when everything starts off well, and the goes to sh*t in an instant truly is the worst as you?re stating. That?s when I really get angry at it. Happened in my last Hard No Bomb run I did with Marisa B, all was going really well, I had only lost 3 lives in the whole run till I got to Stage 6, had 6 lives remaining, which in my head I said ?it?s a given, I?ve done it, impossible to mess it up with 6 lives in stock?, and damn I played the worst Remilia I?ve ever played since I?ve started Touhou 6. Ended up clearing it with no more lives left in stock!! Very close call. The profanity I was spewing at that point. . . let?s just say I?ve lost my soul lol. Yeah once you get it in your head that it?s that type of game, you get used to the countless deaths and multiple attempts, it still stays fun, although stressful, and yes what you?re accomplishing now will definitely help you down the line for what?s in store for you in the future! Keep at it! ;)

Ahh that sounds cool regarding Doremy, it was fascinating facing something like that with Patchouli in Extra for the first time. So I?m sure Doremy will provide the same experience, especially with Touhou 15 being regarded as very high up in difficulty :) The claustrophobic feeling of feeling trapped is amazing, really gets me immersed into the game. Oh no, that?s one of the biggest mistakes that people new to Touhou do, never just stay at the bottom. 1. You deal more damage the higher up you are (at the risk of getting hit quicker), so some parts like the 4 bullet spewing fairies in Touhou 6 Stage 5 (exactly before the Sakuya midboss) will die MUCH faster and shoot out way less bullet chains if you?re almost midway up the screen. 2. Sometimes you?ll need to back away. If you?re already at the bottom, you?re screwed from that regard. But yes, initial reaction, especially when new to a game and not knowing what to expect is to stay at the bottom and play it safe, it could feel overwhelming when you just started a game and go higher up on the screen. Haha yeah I agree with the point of collection being terrifying sometimes, if you hesitate, you?re probably gonna get rammed by a stage enemy, so timing is crucial in that regard. Yep, adaptation really is key to this game, which is what makes it fun, not just being lazy and staying at the bottom all the time.

Oh yes Flandre is very cool, and her stage portion is quite a doozy till you get used to it, very fun fight though! :D And yes she uses attacks which will make you need to use all of the screen as you stated in your previous paragraph, especially her 9th attack where she transforms into a ball of light chasing after you and leaving a bullet trail wherever she goes! You?ll certainly get walled in if you stay at the bottom. Well, I went for No Bombs cause I wanted to face every single attack in the game, as you said, experience the game deeper. I was feeling like I?m cheesing an attack out just by making all the bullets vanish by using a bomb, so I?ll gladly lose a life trying to power through it and know I tried facing everything, rather than clearing everything off the screen with a bomb. That, and also I feel like the game is a bit ?too easy/not challenging enough for me? with bombs, to the sense that I have too many resources. Touhou 6 for example, you get 9 lives, and 3 bombs per life: that makes 27 bombs and 9 misses, apart from the bombs you pick up during the course of the game also. No Bombs is a bit too tough for me then, which makes it seem like a worthwhile challenge which I could practice and keep persevering with. Don?t get me wrong, I?m not gonna try pretending I?m some godlike player or whatever like these guys that hit Lunatic Perfects, I know I?m nowhere near that level of perfection then, even No Miss instead of No Bomb isn?t my cup of tea, an accidental clip-death and back to the beginning. . . I just wanted to make the game a suitable challenge for me while still keeping it fun :) Well it takes me a while, but I don?t get to play too much (I play around 4 times a week, usually an hour to an hour and a half whenever I play, and I usually have a Touhoumon or fangame paired up too so time is limited), so YMMV, but it usually takes me 4 ? 6 months to hit No Bombs: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Extra with all characters, and Lunatic No Bombs with Reimu for sure and whoever else I pick, and also Lunatic Perfect Stage Practice all stages with Reimu (Remilia's Scarlet Meister is going to ruin so many of these attempts, followed by a very high rank Scarlet Gensokyo since I wouldn't have gotten hit). Touhou 6 I reckon I?ll Lunatic No Bomb with all 4 characters, since 2 of the characters are Reimu (A and B), and I want a Marisa clear too, so that?s 3 playthroughs, figure I?ll just do the 4th Marisa as well while I?m at it :) Oh yes, Flandre gave me the biggest heartbreak, No Bombs of course, no lives remaining at her final card Q.E.D., health bar is literally empty. . . she?s blowing up. . . and I clip-death. . . . seriously Flan, for 2 seconds till you blow up???? Oh well. I was also attempting Flandre?s Maze of Love differently. I want one run where I?m running around in circles like you?re supposed to, and another run sitting at the bottom dodging between the tiny gaps! I?ve seen someone do it like that on Youtube before and it looks awesome! I?ve actually abandoned the Extra for a while though and focusing on Lunatic. It?s giving me more trouble than I thought it would. Patchouli really got beefed compared to Hard.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2019, 12:23:51 PM by Lunatic_Reimu »

Re: My first lunatic 1cc
« Reply #31 on: June 01, 2019, 08:34:26 PM »
Oh yes indeed, there definitely is a lot of story and characters to meet, so your way has it’s benefits over the way I play the games. Also don’t forget to include the Seihou games, Samidare, Uwabami Breakers, and Torte Le Magic, ZUN had influence or the music composed for these games, apart from some cameos (in Seihou 1 the Extra Stage is vs Marisa and a very difficult Reimu back to back, in Seihou 2 you could control and fight against Yuuka from Touhou 4 and 9, and in Samidare you meet Yuki and Mai from Touhou 5, plus the Extra Stage is vs Gates and Vivit from Seihou). It’s a huge universe, so I completely understand your ‘rush’ to want to grasp as much as you could. Ahhh Kokoro is amazing, while I haven’t met her yet, I really like her, I’ve seen art of her and her Last Word on Youtube, and she’s a really cool character, I love how emotionless she looks. Yes it definitely helps stacking the difficulties as I do, although I just started Lunatic on Touhou 6 4 days ago, and damn, it’s quite a jump from Hard, and some parts need to be played completely differently to how you’d tackle them on Hard, but you get the jist of how the attacks work, just with more bullets, and slightly faster. Oh I find all characters interesting, I’d like to do Lunatic No Bombs with all characters if possible, but it just takes me too long sometimes, and I want to experience the other games too, cause there’s soooo much I haven’t seen yet. I’ll definitely look up that checklist in the future though and come back to tackle the ones I haven’t done :) Yes 8 and 9 have a ridiculous amount of characters, pair that with 8 having 2 routes as well to make it longer (Final A and Final B). Yes it definitely makes the game more difficult playing No Bombs since you have far less resources (in Seihou 1 for example you only get 5 lives, that was a doozy to No Bomb). Yes 3 and 9 are very close to gameplay (although thankfully in Touhou 9 you have focus which is a lifesaver, believe me you’ll miss it when you don’t have it). Yes true that about the reflexes vs memorization games, no need to plan out routes and position yourself accordingly when playing Touhou 3 or 9, since it’s all random, although I find it more fun on the other games to be honest, getting to that spot in time, preparing for a stream or a certain attack, etc.

Ahhh I’m glad to hear you got your issues with Touhou 2, 4, and 5 sorted :D They’re amazing games, although 4 is a bit on the easy side compared to 2 and 5 in my opinion. Still awesome though, and you get to fight against Reimu or Marisa in Touhou 4, depends on the character you’re using :) IIRC you need a small program called Edit Disk to be able to patch the translations into the games. It’s not as complicated as it sounds, and I believe there were instructions on how to do it in the English Patch Pack. Here’s a link to the English Patch Pack in case you don’t have it (got it from the wiki): http://www.mediafire.com/file/yxcg7mvg1lj1i6g/TouhouProjectPC-98-CompleteEnglishPatchPack100.rar Huge note, Reimu’s hitbox is way bigger in Touhou 2 than in the other games, you’ve been warned!

Oh yes definitely, 7 is simply beautiful from every regard, the music, the patterns, cherry blossoms, the story, the characters, it’s simply brilliant! Haha and yes, controlling Sakuya is lovely too, especially after facing her in Touhou 6, she’s such a cool character! xD

Oh I definitely will watch Madoka, I just need to get round to it, so many anime to watch! Haha I get what you mean about strapping yourself in, when I was going through Dragon Ball Z there were times where I watched 14 episodes back to back, get stuck in an amazing fight and just get glued to the TV xD Anime really is brilliant and wondrous. I’ve heard of Kill la Kill also but never watched it, it’s highly praised by everyone that mentions it. Oh yes indeed about everyone being likeable in Little Witch Academia, I really loved and enjoyed that anime. So much love went into it, you could tell. Hahaha I completely get you about preferring shorter anime to long ones, feels like you’re getting through more stuff and experiencing more different anime. When I went through Dragon Ball, I started from the roots (i.e. when Goku was a kid) and kept going to Z and all the movies, that was around 450 episodes combined and 15 movies, took me around 5 months to watch all that! xD Not complaining, Dragon Ball is awesome, and now Super is out too which I haven’t watched yet, so I need to find a time when to binge watch that. Oh yes don’t get me wrong, I like ZUN’s art too, the PC98 games have some very fine art, Touhou 6 took a small nosedive compared, but then started going up and even better as the games progressed. By no means am I dissing his art, Touhou is literally perfect in every way for me xD But that Touhou 16 and especially Touhou 17 Reimu is just tooooo adorable xD (I’m a huge Reimu addict in case you didn’t notice :P).

Haha your misfortune won’t make me feel any better mate, but I understand what you mean. I get the same thoughts too, if only I discovered this series 15 years ago I might be hitting Perfect Lunatics or Pacifists today :’( (plus would have cut a lot of the backlog of amazing fangames to play, the Touhoumons, Labyrinth of Touhou, and Gensou Ningyou Enbu which is the latest Touhoumon game, and the PS4 Genso Wanderers). But screw it, no use crying over spilled milk they say, we’re here now, and thankfully it’s made it’s way into our lives :D Indeed, I’ve been playing games for the past 25 years (seriously I picked up a NES controller when I was 4 years old) and from all those games I’ve experienced, NOTHING ever came close to the love I feel for this series. I literally boxed away my PlayStations and bought a powerful PC due to this series. I started off on my old budget laptop when I had seen that Koishi fight on Youtube (pc gaming wasn’t really my thing, preferred the simplicity of consoles where you just chuck the disc in and play) but this series COMPLETELY changed me as a gamer and as person :)

Ahhh, glad you got some time to check out that marvelous track, the part with the violin around 2 mins in is literally to die for. dBu are brilliant, almost all the tracks I hear by them I fall in love with. If you like that style, check out Arietta Incalzando by them too, it’s Reimu’s theme for the first 4 mins, and then it’s Marisa’s theme for the last 4 mins, the song really shines with Marisa’s theme, I think it’s the best arrange I’ve ever heard for her theme, and really takes me back to when I faced her for the first time in Touhou 2, such beautiful memories. Ohhh too true about Yuyuko’s theme, I think it’s one of the nicest themes in the whole series, simply heavenly. A cool rock arrange I heard of her theme is called Butterfly Delusion by J&B, worth checking out too. Oh yes, definitely agree with you on Necrofantasia, that theme has some powerful moments in it too which I really enjoy, and facing off against Yukari at the same time as hearing that is marvelous! Oh yes I’m definitely interested, I’ll check out the youtube link you gave for Kagome Kagome – Cinderella Cage when I get home (I’m currently at work and Youtube (and some other social sites) is locked off here *yawn*, I hate this place with a passion, such a damn waste of time when I could be Touhouing instead, but f*ck it we need money to live).

20 mins for an Extra? Damn that is almost as long as a full game haha. Haha yeah you just mentioned my main causes of frustration, the clip deaths, moving away too fast, etc, but yes, keep at it and don’t abandon the run, it will serve as practice which will come in handy down the line ;) Yes in general me too, spell card capture rate tends to improve the more I face a card, with some of them even ending up trivial / 95% chance that I’ll capture it once I learned it, although some keep giving me trouble, like that damn Scarlet Meister that Remilia uses, just can’t grasp that attack at all. Hahahaha I get a bit more violent with my words than just ‘what? this is bullshit’ when I get hit in a run that was really going well haha. Yeah the off days are the worst, but don’t let them bring you down, tomorrow is a brighter future they say, so keep your chin up. What type of day you’ve had makes a huge difference in the way you play (i.e. didn’t sleep well, had a bad/busy/tiring day at work, something on your mind worrying you, etc). The part you mentioned when everything starts off well, and the goes to sh*t in an instant truly is the worst as you’re stating. That’s when I really get angry at it. Happened in my last Hard No Bomb run I did with Marisa B, all was going really well, I had only lost 3 lives in the whole run till I got to Stage 6, had 6 lives remaining, which in my head I said ‘it’s a given, I’ve done it, impossible to mess it up with 6 lives in stock’, and damn I played the worst Remilia I’ve ever played since I’ve started Touhou 6. Ended up clearing it with no more lives left in stock!! Very close call. The profanity I was spewing at that point. . . let’s just say I’ve lost my soul lol. Yeah once you get it in your head that it’s that type of game, you get used to the countless deaths and multiple attempts, it still stays fun, although stressful, and yes what you’re accomplishing now will definitely help you down the line for what’s in store for you in the future! Keep at it! ;)

Ahh that sounds cool regarding Doremy, it was fascinating facing something like that with Patchouli in Extra for the first time. So I’m sure Doremy will provide the same experience, especially with Touhou 15 being regarded as very high up in difficulty :) The claustrophobic feeling of feeling trapped is amazing, really gets me immersed into the game. Oh no, that’s one of the biggest mistakes that people new to Touhou do, never just stay at the bottom. 1. You deal more damage the higher up you are (at the risk of getting hit quicker), so some parts like the 4 bullet spewing fairies in Touhou 6 Stage 5 (exactly before the Sakuya midboss) will die MUCH faster and shoot out way less bullet chains if you’re almost midway up the screen. 2. Sometimes you’ll need to back away. If you’re already at the bottom, you’re screwed from that regard. But yes, initial reaction, especially when new to a game and not knowing what to expect is to stay at the bottom and play it safe, it could feel overwhelming when you just started a game and go higher up on the screen. Haha yeah I agree with the point of collection being terrifying sometimes, if you hesitate, you’re probably gonna get rammed by a stage enemy, so timing is crucial in that regard. Yep, adaptation really is key to this game, which is what makes it fun, not just being lazy and staying at the bottom all the time.

Oh yes Flandre is very cool, and her stage portion is quite a doozy till you get used to it, very fun fight though! :D And yes she uses attacks which will make you need to use all of the screen as you stated in your previous paragraph, especially her 9th attack where she transforms into a ball of light chasing after you and leaving a bullet trail wherever she goes! You’ll certainly get walled in if you stay at the bottom. Well, I went for No Bombs cause I wanted to face every single attack in the game, as you said, experience the game deeper. I was feeling like I’m cheesing an attack out just by making all the bullets vanish by using a bomb, so I’ll gladly lose a life trying to power through it and know I tried facing everything, rather than clearing everything off the screen with a bomb. That, and also I feel like the game is a bit ‘too easy/not challenging enough for me’ with bombs, to the sense that I have too many resources. Touhou 6 for example, you get 9 lives, and 3 bombs per life: that makes 27 bombs and 9 misses, apart from the bombs you pick up during the course of the game also. No Bombs is a bit too tough for me then, which makes it seem like a worthwhile challenge which I could practice and keep persevering with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not gonna try pretending I’m some godlike player or whatever like these guys that hit Lunatic Perfects, I know I’m nowhere near that level of perfection then, even No Miss instead of No Bomb isn’t my cup of tea, an accidental clip-death and back to the beginning. . . I just wanted to make the game a suitable challenge for me while still keeping it fun :) Well it takes me a while, but I don’t get to play too much (I play around 4 times a week, usually an hour to an hour and a half whenever I play, and I usually have a Touhoumon or fangame paired up too so time is limited), so YMMV, but it usually takes me 4 – 6 months to hit No Bombs: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Extra with all characters, and Lunatic No Bombs with Reimu for sure and whoever else I pick, and also Lunatic Perfect Stage Practice all stages with Reimu (Remilia's Scarlet Meister is going to ruin so many of these attempts, followed by a very high rank Scarlet Gensokyo since I wouldn't have gotten hit). Touhou 6 I reckon I’ll Lunatic No Bomb with all 4 characters, since 2 of the characters are Reimu (A and B), and I want a Marisa clear too, so that’s 3 playthroughs, figure I’ll just do the 4th Marisa as well while I’m at it :) Oh yes, Flandre gave me the biggest heartbreak, No Bombs of course, no lives remaining at her final card Q.E.D., health bar is literally empty. . . she’s blowing up. . . and I clip-death. . . . seriously Flan, for 2 seconds till you blow up???? Oh well. I was also attempting Flandre’s Maze of Love differently. I want one run where I’m running around in circles like you’re supposed to, and another run sitting at the bottom dodging between the tiny gaps! I’ve seen someone do it like that on Youtube before and it looks awesome! I’ve actually abandoned the Extra for a while though and focusing on Lunatic. It’s giving me more trouble than I thought it would. Patchouli really got beefed compared to Hard.

I'll definitely have to look into the Seihou games because I don't know if I've heard of them! I definitely get what you mean when you say you want to do every character but in some cases it can take too long. Even with regular 1ccs in games like 8 it can take quite a while to get them all. Normal isn't that bad to do but when you start moving into the higher difficulties which require much more work I'd imagine you could spend ages just stuck running a single game with everyone, let alone trying to do no bomb runs! That said I do think you gain a deeper understanding of that game by playing it so much. I'm sure by the time you decide to move to the next game you know the previous one inside out  :D I have to agree that in general I've found the other games more fun than 9, in fact 9 was one of my least favorites initially although it did grow on me. It's one of those games where every now and then I'll get an itch to play it a bit since it can be nice just going with the flow of combat.

I did see that guide for editing the translation of the game, and it did look slightly intimidating but I'm sure if I follow the instructions I'll be able to make it work. I'll keep that in mind with Reimu's hitbox in 2! And here I thought she wasn't suppose to gain weight thanks to her orbs  :D (j/k)

My first 1cc I got was with Sakuya so I definitely have a soft spot for playing as her. Aside from just being so damn cool I also really liked how she had so many bombs in 7 starting out. It made me feel like I had way more room for error and also I liked that I could do a constant reliable stream of damage regardless of where I was onscreen which was useful when learning the patterns initially although I'd say I've changed a fair bit since then and would probably be best with a character like Marisa in PCB these days.

I was a huge Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z fan growing up. Ahhhh I remember the anticipation of coming home every day excited to see if a new episode was out yet. Back before streaming/downloading was a think so sometimes you were stuck months or even years waiting  :( Super was a lot of fun! It sort of felt like a combination of Dragon Balls creativity and wackiness with DBZs more fight oriented focus which felt like a nice blend for the series. I think if you eventually watch it you'll enjoy it if you were a fan of the original series growing up. Also I don't blame you for being a Reimu addict! She's such a wonderful character and I can't really imagine why anyone would dislike her. I mean she can be a sliiiight bit of a jerk at times (sometimes just shows up and starts beating everyone up and asking questions after XD) in the story sometimes but she's got a heart of gold. I also love her ability to "float" it's one of those powers that sounds like it wouldn't be particularly effective but when you actually start looking into what she can do with it then things get pretty insane. I kind of feel like she's just the perfect main character for the series too, both her and Marisa I feel really encompass a lot of the philosophy present in these series well, particularly duality. Also she's just completely adorable in general.

I have to agree that there's never been another game series that came close to how amazing I think this series is for me. Don't get me wrong, there's tons and tons of absolutely fantastic games out there that are completely worth playing through, but Touhou is just like utter perfection. If I wanted to show people how games can be considered a form of art I'd show them this series, because I think it's one that has serious potential to inspire and change the people that play it like it did with you and me.

Going to listen to Arietta Incalzando right now! I really enjoy dBu's stuff and I got several of their tracks on my phone I listen to regularly when I go out for runs. They did one for Pandemonic Planet too which is from the boss of 15s extra stage that also uses a violin in it which does wonderful things to my ears  :) I'll check out the Butterfly Delusion after too! There's a rock/metal artist I've followed for a number of years that does Touhou remixes named Richaad I also really like and anytime I see a notification pop up on my phone of him putting out a new Touhou cover. He recently did one for Flowering Nights in which he mentioned how much it hurt his fingers to actually play it on the guitar and I had to laugh a bit because I couldn't help but think "well, it wouldn't truly be Touhou unless you're suffering at least a little" :D And I completely get the hating going into work bit. My coworkers have heard the saying "I'd rather be at home playing Touhou right now" more than a few times >.> But yes need money so we can play Touhou. Also Touhou merch!

I'm quite pleased with my physical collection right now. I saved up for about 6 months and went a bit crazy at the anime con in our city last month. As of now I have 22 of the games (which I think is everything outside the PC-98 ones), 14 of the official music CDs, about 10 art books, All 7 volumes Forbidden Scrollery (7th volume just came out a couple days ago which I grabbed immediately), the official Grimoire of Marisa (which I can't actually read but I still wanted to have in the collection) a lovely Marisa figure with an awesome Reimu one currently on the way to keep her company :) Let none say I do not support the series! That said if I could find a way to live off just Touhou that would be like a dream. If I'm not playing the game then I can promise you at the very least I'm obsessively thinking about it lol. My sister recently told me about a thing some of the hardcore Tetris players would get if they played enough where they could actually be able to see the games playing out perfectly in their head even when they didn't weren't playing and I had to laugh, because yeah I get that exact same thing with this series too. I can't even begin to deny that I'm obsessed with this series because you almost start to see the patterns everywhere in life. It really does shape the way you think.

Unfortunately I broke one of my wisdom teeth last weekend so I've been taking a break from 15 while I wait to get it fixed this upcoming Wednesday since it's tremendously painful all the time and seriously effects my ability to concentrate. I figured I'd break away and try some less intense things until then so I hopped onto 7s extra stage just for fun just to see how it was and it's crazy that it took me about an hour of practice to hit the 3/4 mark through the entire extra stage where that took me a couple weeks to get to that point in 15. It's really giving me some perspective of just how hard 15s actually is. I really want to beat Ran in PCB though so I can unlock Yukari and see her fight and meeting with Reimu properly. I absolutely love Yukari and she's a serious contender for one of my favorite characters in the whole series. There's times I can be completely calm playing this series but I also know those times you want to freak out at your monitor too XD Clownpiece initially had me yelling some very colorful language quite frequently as I played. It does make sense with just how much we pour into this game that sometimes the frustration is just going to explode a little, especially when you're so determined. I can start getting really upset at myself as well when I'm dying lots on parts I feel I should know, which in turn seems to just make me play even more sloppy.

I *completely* get what you mean about the claustrophobic in some of those types of spellcards just completely immersing you in the game, and oddly enough they're some of my favorites too. I really enjoy the final spellcard Doremy has in the extra stage like that where I feel like I'm almost navigating a self creating maze. I remember first seeing videos of people playing in lunatic where they'd spend a ton of time at the time of the screen and I originally thought they were insane, but you start to realize by only using the bottom of the screen you're seriously handicapping yourself as certain spellcards can get a lot more dense the lower you go and as you mentioned enemies will die much quicker when you're right up to them, it also has a serious impact on your ability to collect resources when you're willing and confident enough to use the PoC line more regularly. Some of the later games really force you to use different parts of the screen too. Like the enemies that chase you or will actively attack the bottom more you're screwed on if you stay down there. It was a bit tough to break out of that initial mentality but once you do you can do so much more in this series  :D Grazing is another one, while not directly important in most the games outside score, it is important to learn in 15 and it's something I can much more comfortably do than I use to. Back when I started the further I was away from bullets the better, unfortunately that mentality can also get you trapped quite easily too.

I really want to do Flandres stage since it seems like one of the most iconic in the series. 6 is a game in general I really feel like I haven't played enough of and is a bit higher up on my list of ones I want to sit down with in the nearish future and really work on more because outside not having your hitbox show in focus it still seems like one of the best in the series. I mean the artwork is a bit derpy but I still find it endearing XD Ah yeah I know what you mean wanting to fully experience every attack in the series. That's why I think pacifist would be incredible to try, but I can only imagine how hard that would become in higher difficulties. At that point though you really are swimming in an ocean of patterns. It's hilarious to just have Reimu do nothing but dodge and yet still have the ingame dialogue people complain what a bully Reimu is for beating them up XD Ah that's really painful when you're that close to beating a boss and you die, I've had that happen so many times and it kills me a bit inside every time. My first normal 1cc in PCB I had that happen several times with Yuyuko in the last few seconds of the fight before I had an attempt where I finally got it. I wanted to cry once I finally did get it though. I've heard Patchouli can get pretty tough. I've still only seen her in normal so I can't comment too much but I do know stage 4 bosses often tend to be a bit more on the brutal side. I've also heard Scarlet Gensokyo is a serious 1cc ender for people on higher difficulties too. I've stumbled on a few posts about people raging hard about dying to it in the past.

So if you make a significant mistake well you're working on your 1ccs do you keep going then? I admit a lot of times I'll just restart particularly if the mistake was early on because I know I'll need those resources. Usually if I'm in the later bits of the game or a level I'll just try and finish it though and do my best. Sometimes if you lose a lot of resources early and you make it like 95% through the stage before you die it just feels so heart breaking.

Just a few more days until I can get my broken tooth removed and get back to some of my more serious goals in this series. I can't wait at this point. It's pretty depressing when you have those moments you just cannot play and enjoy the series properly :( Plus even without being able to play tooth pain is agonizing in general. I'm going to be playing a bit this weekend but I doubt I'll do anything too serious since I can't properly concentrate. As soon as I'm better I'm going to continue pushing a lot more on some of these extra stages. Ah I did manage to make a coworker laugh quite hard though when he told me he was sorry to hear I was in such pain from the tooth I told him "that's okay, as a Touhou player I'm use to constantly suffering anyways" :P

Also I listened to the entire Arietta Incalzando album and I really liked it! :) Definitely one I'm going to have to download for my phone

Edit: Ahhhh managed to beat Ran too. Another Extra stage I can say I've completed! :D
« Last Edit: June 02, 2019, 07:43:16 PM by Dreamleaf »

Lunatic_Reimu

  • No Bomb Enthusiast
Re: My first lunatic 1cc
« Reply #32 on: June 06, 2019, 10:29:27 AM »
I'll definitely have to look into the Seihou games because I don't know if I've heard of them! I definitely get what you mean when you say you want to do every character but in some cases it can take too long. Even with regular 1ccs in games like 8 it can take quite a while to get them all. Normal isn't that bad to do but when you start moving into the higher difficulties which require much more work I'd imagine you could spend ages just stuck running a single game with everyone, let alone trying to do no bomb runs! That said I do think you gain a deeper understanding of that game by playing it so much. I'm sure by the time you decide to move to the next game you know the previous one inside out  :D I have to agree that in general I've found the other games more fun than 9, in fact 9 was one of my least favorites initially although it did grow on me. It's one of those games where every now and then I'll get an itch to play it a bit since it can be nice just going with the flow of combat.

I did see that guide for editing the translation of the game, and it did look slightly intimidating but I'm sure if I follow the instructions I'll be able to make it work. I'll keep that in mind with Reimu's hitbox in 2! And here I thought she wasn't suppose to gain weight thanks to her orbs  :D (j/k)

My first 1cc I got was with Sakuya so I definitely have a soft spot for playing as her. Aside from just being so damn cool I also really liked how she had so many bombs in 7 starting out. It made me feel like I had way more room for error and also I liked that I could do a constant reliable stream of damage regardless of where I was onscreen which was useful when learning the patterns initially although I'd say I've changed a fair bit since then and would probably be best with a character like Marisa in PCB these days.

I was a huge Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z fan growing up. Ahhhh I remember the anticipation of coming home every day excited to see if a new episode was out yet. Back before streaming/downloading was a think so sometimes you were stuck months or even years waiting  :( Super was a lot of fun! It sort of felt like a combination of Dragon Balls creativity and wackiness with DBZs more fight oriented focus which felt like a nice blend for the series. I think if you eventually watch it you'll enjoy it if you were a fan of the original series growing up. Also I don't blame you for being a Reimu addict! She's such a wonderful character and I can't really imagine why anyone would dislike her. I mean she can be a sliiiight bit of a jerk at times (sometimes just shows up and starts beating everyone up and asking questions after XD) in the story sometimes but she's got a heart of gold. I also love her ability to "float" it's one of those powers that sounds like it wouldn't be particularly effective but when you actually start looking into what she can do with it then things get pretty insane. I kind of feel like she's just the perfect main character for the series too, both her and Marisa I feel really encompass a lot of the philosophy present in these series well, particularly duality. Also she's just completely adorable in general.

I have to agree that there's never been another game series that came close to how amazing I think this series is for me. Don't get me wrong, there's tons and tons of absolutely fantastic games out there that are completely worth playing through, but Touhou is just like utter perfection. If I wanted to show people how games can be considered a form of art I'd show them this series, because I think it's one that has serious potential to inspire and change the people that play it like it did with you and me.

Going to listen to Arietta Incalzando right now! I really enjoy dBu's stuff and I got several of their tracks on my phone I listen to regularly when I go out for runs. They did one for Pandemonic Planet too which is from the boss of 15s extra stage that also uses a violin in it which does wonderful things to my ears  :) I'll check out the Butterfly Delusion after too! There's a rock/metal artist I've followed for a number of years that does Touhou remixes named Richaad I also really like and anytime I see a notification pop up on my phone of him putting out a new Touhou cover. He recently did one for Flowering Nights in which he mentioned how much it hurt his fingers to actually play it on the guitar and I had to laugh a bit because I couldn't help but think "well, it wouldn't truly be Touhou unless you're suffering at least a little" :D And I completely get the hating going into work bit. My coworkers have heard the saying "I'd rather be at home playing Touhou right now" more than a few times >.> But yes need money so we can play Touhou. Also Touhou merch!

I'm quite pleased with my physical collection right now. I saved up for about 6 months and went a bit crazy at the anime con in our city last month. As of now I have 22 of the games (which I think is everything outside the PC-98 ones), 14 of the official music CDs, about 10 art books, All 7 volumes Forbidden Scrollery (7th volume just came out a couple days ago which I grabbed immediately), the official Grimoire of Marisa (which I can't actually read but I still wanted to have in the collection) a lovely Marisa figure with an awesome Reimu one currently on the way to keep her company :) Let none say I do not support the series! That said if I could find a way to live off just Touhou that would be like a dream. If I'm not playing the game then I can promise you at the very least I'm obsessively thinking about it lol. My sister recently told me about a thing some of the hardcore Tetris players would get if they played enough where they could actually be able to see the games playing out perfectly in their head even when they didn't weren't playing and I had to laugh, because yeah I get that exact same thing with this series too. I can't even begin to deny that I'm obsessed with this series because you almost start to see the patterns everywhere in life. It really does shape the way you think.

Unfortunately I broke one of my wisdom teeth last weekend so I've been taking a break from 15 while I wait to get it fixed this upcoming Wednesday since it's tremendously painful all the time and seriously effects my ability to concentrate. I figured I'd break away and try some less intense things until then so I hopped onto 7s extra stage just for fun just to see how it was and it's crazy that it took me about an hour of practice to hit the 3/4 mark through the entire extra stage where that took me a couple weeks to get to that point in 15. It's really giving me some perspective of just how hard 15s actually is. I really want to beat Ran in PCB though so I can unlock Yukari and see her fight and meeting with Reimu properly. I absolutely love Yukari and she's a serious contender for one of my favorite characters in the whole series. There's times I can be completely calm playing this series but I also know those times you want to freak out at your monitor too XD Clownpiece initially had me yelling some very colorful language quite frequently as I played. It does make sense with just how much we pour into this game that sometimes the frustration is just going to explode a little, especially when you're so determined. I can start getting really upset at myself as well when I'm dying lots on parts I feel I should know, which in turn seems to just make me play even more sloppy.

I *completely* get what you mean about the claustrophobic in some of those types of spellcards just completely immersing you in the game, and oddly enough they're some of my favorites too. I really enjoy the final spellcard Doremy has in the extra stage like that where I feel like I'm almost navigating a self creating maze. I remember first seeing videos of people playing in lunatic where they'd spend a ton of time at the time of the screen and I originally thought they were insane, but you start to realize by only using the bottom of the screen you're seriously handicapping yourself as certain spellcards can get a lot more dense the lower you go and as you mentioned enemies will die much quicker when you're right up to them, it also has a serious impact on your ability to collect resources when you're willing and confident enough to use the PoC line more regularly. Some of the later games really force you to use different parts of the screen too. Like the enemies that chase you or will actively attack the bottom more you're screwed on if you stay down there. It was a bit tough to break out of that initial mentality but once you do you can do so much more in this series  :D Grazing is another one, while not directly important in most the games outside score, it is important to learn in 15 and it's something I can much more comfortably do than I use to. Back when I started the further I was away from bullets the better, unfortunately that mentality can also get you trapped quite easily too.

I really want to do Flandres stage since it seems like one of the most iconic in the series. 6 is a game in general I really feel like I haven't played enough of and is a bit higher up on my list of ones I want to sit down with in the nearish future and really work on more because outside not having your hitbox show in focus it still seems like one of the best in the series. I mean the artwork is a bit derpy but I still find it endearing XD Ah yeah I know what you mean wanting to fully experience every attack in the series. That's why I think pacifist would be incredible to try, but I can only imagine how hard that would become in higher difficulties. At that point though you really are swimming in an ocean of patterns. It's hilarious to just have Reimu do nothing but dodge and yet still have the ingame dialogue people complain what a bully Reimu is for beating them up XD Ah that's really painful when you're that close to beating a boss and you die, I've had that happen so many times and it kills me a bit inside every time. My first normal 1cc in PCB I had that happen several times with Yuyuko in the last few seconds of the fight before I had an attempt where I finally got it. I wanted to cry once I finally did get it though. I've heard Patchouli can get pretty tough. I've still only seen her in normal so I can't comment too much but I do know stage 4 bosses often tend to be a bit more on the brutal side. I've also heard Scarlet Gensokyo is a serious 1cc ender for people on higher difficulties too. I've stumbled on a few posts about people raging hard about dying to it in the past.

So if you make a significant mistake well you're working on your 1ccs do you keep going then? I admit a lot of times I'll just restart particularly if the mistake was early on because I know I'll need those resources. Usually if I'm in the later bits of the game or a level I'll just try and finish it though and do my best. Sometimes if you lose a lot of resources early and you make it like 95% through the stage before you die it just feels so heart breaking.

Just a few more days until I can get my broken tooth removed and get back to some of my more serious goals in this series. I can't wait at this point. It's pretty depressing when you have those moments you just cannot play and enjoy the series properly :( Plus even without being able to play tooth pain is agonizing in general. I'm going to be playing a bit this weekend but I doubt I'll do anything too serious since I can't properly concentrate. As soon as I'm better I'm going to continue pushing a lot more on some of these extra stages. Ah I did manage to make a coworker laugh quite hard though when he told me he was sorry to hear I was in such pain from the tooth I told him "that's okay, as a Touhou player I'm use to constantly suffering anyways" :P

Also I listened to the entire Arietta Incalzando album and I really liked it! :) Definitely one I'm going to have to download for my phone

Edit: Ahhhh managed to beat Ran too. Another Extra stage I can say I've completed! :D
Oh yes you definitely should. I only played the first Seihou game, but it?s brilliant, it focuses more on faster but less dense patterns, instead of Touhou which is slower but dense. It will also help in increasing your skills when you get used to dodging some it?s faster patterns. Yes believe me, the no bomb runs are quite time consuming, but fun nonetheless, and I get a huge sense of accomplishment once I finally get that clear. It?s like all that hard work paid off in the end :) Yes 8 has way too many characters and 2 routes to boot, so I?ll definitely have to be choosy on that one otherwise I could be stuck for a year trying to no bomb Lunatic with all those characters lol. Yeah true that about ?knowing the game inside out? by the time I finish it, it?s kind of required for a no bomb run cause I?ll need my lives for the parts I struggle with, so I need to know the rest of the game very well to save my lives for those bits. Yeah same here, 3 is very similar to 9, while I did enjoy it also, it surely is my least favourite one from the Touhous I played. But yes, still fun just relying on reflex and going with the flow of battle as you called it. I?m still looking forward to play 9, and Seihou 2 (it uses the same system) though, so by no means am I saying that I don?t like the versus shooters.

If it gives you trouble let me know and I?ll see how to help you out. I managed to patch the translations in them in the past, so I?ll have a look at it again if so :) Haha @ ?Reimu not supposed to gain weight from her orbs?, is that something you read in Forbidden Scrollery or something, or just made it up? (I wouldn?t be surprised if it?s official judging by how crazy Touhou humour could get). Yes the difference is quite noticeable in her hitbox size, even some of the bullet?s hitboxes are bigger than you?re used to from the other games, but don?t let that ward you off from Touhou 2, it?s purely magical, and surely one of my favourites from the series, the music is amazing too for it, and as I?ve stated before, it?s the start of a beautiful rivalry with Marisa, you just can?t go wrong with that game. You also get 2 soundtracks to choose from, and the MIDI (alternate) version is really worth a listen/doing a playthrough with it.

Ahhh that?s part of the reason Sakuya is so precious to you then, she was your support when hitting your first 1cc, and you?ll carry that with you through the entire series. I feel the same way towards Reimu, since I started from Touhou 1, followed by Touhou 2, only playable characters in those games are Reimu, so I really bonded with her, and through all that toil and struggle, finally pulled of my first Lunatic 1cc with her :) She saw some really hard times, I had never played a danmaku shmup before, but me and Reimu persevered through it till the end :) Definitely agree with you there on Sakuya being such a cool character, I just *LOVE* her fight in 6, all those knives freezing and changing direction, damn, feels so menacing, even using knives as her bullets. Yeah you adapt with time, as you stated you found it easier with Sakuya in the beginning due to being able to hit anything no matter where you are on-screen. That will make it easier/more helpful, same as using a homing Reimu. For bosses though, Marisa and needle Reimu will trump homing any day. I love the damage output of those characters, plus it feels more skillful having to maneuver under a boss to deal damage.

Haha yeah same here about Dragon Ball, used to watch it on Cartoon Network or Toonami back in the day with just an episode a day! Thank god for streaming and downloading services these days, that way we could binge it! xD (which let?s be honest, that?s how a Dragon Ball fight is meant to be watched). Yes a friend showed me parts of Super, it really does look ?super? (haha sorry for the lame pun lol), and I saw the Beerus movie, which was just ORGASMIC. I love how cocky and confident Beerus is, really amazing movie. Oh yes I will definitely watch Super, just need to get round to it, soooo many anime, my ?short list? is around 20 anime currently, and I know that Super is quite a good few episodes (I need to watch GT, and Z Kai before Super as well, so that?s gonna end up another 400 episode marathon I reckon). A friend showed me a new series they?re making called Dragon Ball Heroes if I?m not mistaken, it basically cuts lots of the filler, and focuses more on faster fights. Worth checking out if you haven?t already. Oh yes Reimu definitely is, I love her to bits, just adorable as you?re saying. Hahahaahah at ?being a jerk and beating up everyone and asking questions later?, typical Reimu and Touhou humour, love it. If you want a jerk though, look at Marisa. She makes me laugh with how troublesome and power hungry she could be, and she lies lol. Even when meeting Flandre, Flan asks ?who are you??, Marisa says ?I?m the shrine maiden, Reimu Hakurei?. Haha trying to pin the blame on poor Reimu lol. Yes definite duality between the two, which makes for such a good contrast, Reimu is more your goody-two-shoes shrine maiden to save Gensokyo, when Marisa is. . . Marisa I guess lol xD (troublemaker, lust for power, liar, kleptomaniac xD). Oh btw, yes Reimu?s float ability could even lift herself off of this plain, as you can see in spell card 215 in Touhou 8. It?s even stated in the wiki that if it wasn?t for a time limit no one could beat her: https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Imperishable_Night/Spell_Cards/Last_Word

Yes I definitely agree with you there. There were good games back on my PlayStation days don?t get me wrong, but NOTHING ever came close to the love I feel for this series, so we?re in agreement there :) It really is perfect in every way, and I agree with you about describing the game as a form of art, both for it?s music, and the beautiful patterns it portrays.

Damn, Arietta Incalzando is an album? I never knew that! I heard the Reimu/Marisa track from it in one of the Touhoumons I had played, and thought it was the name of the song! I?ll definitely have to check out the full album then! Ahh I?ll check the Touhou 15 Extra arrange they did also, can?t go wrong with dBu! I?ll also have to check out Richaad, thanks for the info! Btw I listened to that Kagome Kagome - Cinderella Cage arrange you linked, it?s a haunting style, quite original, the only time I?ve heard something of a similar class was by O-Life Japan (this is a folk arrange instead but still sounds eerie at parts), an arrange of Koishi?s theme, which really fits being done eerily seeing as Koishi plays with the subconscious mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1ofnslOBRs Haha good one about the suffering and ?it wouldn?t be Touhou if not?, haha so true. Oh yes, that?s the only good thing about work, the Touhou merch!!!! xD I?ve got this beautiful Reimu pre-ordered, really can?t wait for September to roll on!: https://myfigurecollection.net/item/604477 Sooooooo pretty!!! <3_<3

Ahh that?s quite a nice collection you got there! Well done, and keep it up! Always satisfying to add more to your Touhou collection! xD (especially when they take close to a month to get here from Japan!!). Which Marisa and Reimu figures do you have? This is my figure collection in case you want to check it out: https://myfigurecollection.net/users.v4.php?mode=view&username=lunatic_reimu&tab=collection&page=1&status=2&output=2&current=keywords&rootId=-1&categoryId=-1&sort=category&order=asc I got my hands on the first print edition of Touhou 14.5 for the PS4 recently, which came with the 2nd OST for Touhou 14.5! (which is quite rare since it was a bonus for the first print edition). I was so happy when that finally arrived after a month and is safely in my possession xD Haha yeah same here mate, if I?m not playing the games, I?m obsessively thinking about them, not an hour goes by that I don?t think about Touhou, it really is life changing as we?ve been saying in this thread :) Hahaha what your sis told you about the Tetris players applies to Touhou fanatics like me and you for sure xD As you?re saying you start seeing patterns everywhere xD Especially in fireworks xD

Ouch dood, really sorry to hear about the wisdom tooth :/ I?ve never been through it but know someone that did, and they say those are really painful buggers. Really wishing you the best about that, and hope you got that sorted yesterday so you can focus back on Touhou again without that agony of the tooth pain! Ahh yeah, the stuff you?ve faced in Touhou 15 will definitely help you for Touhou 7?s Extra (and any other Touhous you?ll play), especially due to 15?s high difficulty. That?s awesome about clearing the Touhou 7 Extra btw!!! :D That was quite quick! So onto the Phantasm now then, or doing the Extra with other characters? xD Ahh yeah Yukari definitely is cool, especially her final spell card, and the Last Word version of it in Touhou 8 is even more beefed! Yeah I?m usually calm when I just started playing for the first half hour or so, but then when the silly mistakes start happening, and after I?ve been doing the same thing for a while, or ESPECIALLY dieing at something which I know I?ve beaten before. . . that?s where the curse words start following. Like making a silly mistake in the stage portion of the Extra gets me into mega rage mode cause I know I did it flawless several times before. And yes, anger will make you play more sloppy usually, rage takes over focus, so it?s important to keep the rage outbursts to as short a timeframe as possible so you could calm down and continue focusing on the run. There are times I get hit twice in close succession cause I?ll still be fuming from the first hit, so the second one could have been avoided if I manage to keep calmer (quite difficult though, especially on a Lunatic 1cc, the adrenaline coursing through your body at that point. . .)

Yes definitely a plus for the claustrophobic cards and the immersion they bring with them! My heart starts racing, I?m on the edge of my seat, usually on the tips of my toes for maximum alertness, it really is a wonderful feeling, I could almost feel the aura of the bullets passing right next to me haha. Yep I completely understand you from that regard about Doremy?s final card and navigating through a maze, you should enjoy some of 6?s Extra cards then if you like that style :) and also the sound the bullets make when lots of them spawn in succession is awesome, kinda like a mini-machine gun trt-trt-trt-trt-trt, gets me so much more into it! Yes I agree with you there, I used to think that only the most skilled players used to play higher up on the screen, but you?ll be doing this without even noticing on Lunatic cause you WILL get walled in if you just stayed at the bottom all the time. And yes, it definitely is a difficult habit to break, and scary going up higher on the screen when you?re not used to it, but it will come to you on it?s own, all you gotta do it play, you will adjust to it without even noticing. Yes grazing is important too even if not for score as it makes you feel more comfortable with bullets close to you, rather than ?the further away you are from a bullet the better? as you put it. Sometimes you will need to stay close to bullets on your left for example to give yourself space for something that you need to dodge to the right. It all comes naturally the more you play, just be sure to adjust yourself appropriately and be careful of clip-deaths when grazing.

6?s Extra is really enjoyable, and Flandre is awesome as a character, especially her Four of a Kind spell card, I love the ability of duplication, the stage portion is quite difficult though till you get to Flandre, the stage gives me more trouble than Flan usually. Ahh, 6 definitely deserves your time, it?s a really good kick off to the Windows era, and there?s quite some stuff to master in it, especially with Patchouli having 4 different fights depending on the character you?re using. Don?t worry too much about not having your hitbox show, you?ll adapt to it and learn where it is even without it showing :) (Reimu?s white shirt part, and the centre of Marisa?s pink bow). If you want a clearer indication of where it is, just graze one of Rumia?s lasers at Stage 1, the attack where she uses lasers and green circle bullets, you?ll see the hitbox flicker when grazing her lasers). Remember the PC-98 games don?t have visible hitboxes either, so if anything, 6 will help you for when you come to play those games :) Yeah that?s mainly the point of my no bomb runs, as you said, to fully experience each attack, even at it?s hardest moments, rather than clearing everything off-screen when it gets too tough. It?s nice seeing fully what this marvelous series has to offer :) Pacifisit would be such a beautiful achievement, but yes it could get very difficult, and long, I saw a pacifist for Koishi and it dragged the fight out for 25 mins!! Hahahaha at the dialogue, well I imagine your opponents must be exhausted after using up all that magical energy to attack you for such a long time xD Pacifist is really beautiful though and requires quite a level of mastery of each spell card since you need to know it well enough to time everything out! Yeah regarding Flan, it was quite a heartbreak, but I?m over it now, I no bombed Extra with Reimu A playing Maze of Love at the bottom (more difficult playing it this way than running in circles), and I did Reimu B no bombs Extra, in which I lost my first life at Flandre?s QED!!! So close to a Perfect!!! Would have been my first one :?( Still happy though, I was aiming for a no bomb run after all. But yes, I fully understand what you mean about it ?killing you a little bit inside? when a 1cc ends so close :?( Oh yes definitely understand you about Yuyuko, her final attack (with the beautiful Border of Life track, those trumpets!!) with those red-ish bullets that sway is very difficult to read, I could imagine how that could be a 1cc ender, and how many heartbreaks that could bring. Hahah I could imagine tears of joy after doing that xD Yeah Patchouli got seriously beefed, didn?t expect such a change, even attacks I had learned well on Hard were giving me trouble on Lunatic. Ahhh yes, Scarlet Gensokyo is gonna be rough, but I?m more worried about Scarlet Meister to be honest.

If I get hit in Stage 1 or 2 that?s an instant restart, I?ll need those lives for the stage 5 or 6 boss, as you said, I?ll need those resources (plus it looks damn ugly for my recordings getting hit so early on, especially when I do those stages perfect almost all the time). From Stage 3 I?ll cringe but I?ll tolerate it, but yes as you said, I?ll try doing my best to make up for the life lost. From Stage 4 onwards it?s completely acceptable and justified to me then, cause the game really starts picking up from that point.

Hopefully you got that sorted yesterday :) How does it feel currently? All pain subsided or still not 100% healed yet? Hahaha I agree with you there on what you said to your coworker, even my friends call me a masochist lol :P

Amazing work on the Touhou 7 Extra btw as I stated above, keep at it! Good things will come your way with the dedication and love you have for the series ;)

Thanks for keeping up with these chats btw, I know it takes quite a while writing all this (took me close to 2 hours typing this post), so I appreciate your time and love for the series to keep these chats lively :) Hope you enjoy writing/reading these posts as much as I do.

Re: My first lunatic 1cc
« Reply #33 on: June 14, 2019, 05:33:54 AM »
Oh yes you definitely should. I only played the first Seihou game, but it’s brilliant, it focuses more on faster but less dense patterns, instead of Touhou which is slower but dense. It will also help in increasing your skills when you get used to dodging some it’s faster patterns. Yes believe me, the no bomb runs are quite time consuming, but fun nonetheless, and I get a huge sense of accomplishment once I finally get that clear. It’s like all that hard work paid off in the end :) Yes 8 has way too many characters and 2 routes to boot, so I’ll definitely have to be choosy on that one otherwise I could be stuck for a year trying to no bomb Lunatic with all those characters lol. Yeah true that about ‘knowing the game inside out’ by the time I finish it, it’s kind of required for a no bomb run cause I’ll need my lives for the parts I struggle with, so I need to know the rest of the game very well to save my lives for those bits. Yeah same here, 3 is very similar to 9, while I did enjoy it also, it surely is my least favourite one from the Touhous I played. But yes, still fun just relying on reflex and going with the flow of battle as you called it. I’m still looking forward to play 9, and Seihou 2 (it uses the same system) though, so by no means am I saying that I don’t like the versus shooters.

If it gives you trouble let me know and I’ll see how to help you out. I managed to patch the translations in them in the past, so I’ll have a look at it again if so :) Haha @ ‘Reimu not supposed to gain weight from her orbs’, is that something you read in Forbidden Scrollery or something, or just made it up? (I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s official judging by how crazy Touhou humour could get). Yes the difference is quite noticeable in her hitbox size, even some of the bullet’s hitboxes are bigger than you’re used to from the other games, but don’t let that ward you off from Touhou 2, it’s purely magical, and surely one of my favourites from the series, the music is amazing too for it, and as I’ve stated before, it’s the start of a beautiful rivalry with Marisa, you just can’t go wrong with that game. You also get 2 soundtracks to choose from, and the MIDI (alternate) version is really worth a listen/doing a playthrough with it.

Ahhh that’s part of the reason Sakuya is so precious to you then, she was your support when hitting your first 1cc, and you’ll carry that with you through the entire series. I feel the same way towards Reimu, since I started from Touhou 1, followed by Touhou 2, only playable characters in those games are Reimu, so I really bonded with her, and through all that toil and struggle, finally pulled of my first Lunatic 1cc with her :) She saw some really hard times, I had never played a danmaku shmup before, but me and Reimu persevered through it till the end :) Definitely agree with you there on Sakuya being such a cool character, I just *LOVE* her fight in 6, all those knives freezing and changing direction, damn, feels so menacing, even using knives as her bullets. Yeah you adapt with time, as you stated you found it easier with Sakuya in the beginning due to being able to hit anything no matter where you are on-screen. That will make it easier/more helpful, same as using a homing Reimu. For bosses though, Marisa and needle Reimu will trump homing any day. I love the damage output of those characters, plus it feels more skillful having to maneuver under a boss to deal damage.

Haha yeah same here about Dragon Ball, used to watch it on Cartoon Network or Toonami back in the day with just an episode a day! Thank god for streaming and downloading services these days, that way we could binge it! xD (which let’s be honest, that’s how a Dragon Ball fight is meant to be watched). Yes a friend showed me parts of Super, it really does look ‘super’ (haha sorry for the lame pun lol), and I saw the Beerus movie, which was just ORGASMIC. I love how cocky and confident Beerus is, really amazing movie. Oh yes I will definitely watch Super, just need to get round to it, soooo many anime, my ‘short list’ is around 20 anime currently, and I know that Super is quite a good few episodes (I need to watch GT, and Z Kai before Super as well, so that’s gonna end up another 400 episode marathon I reckon). A friend showed me a new series they’re making called Dragon Ball Heroes if I’m not mistaken, it basically cuts lots of the filler, and focuses more on faster fights. Worth checking out if you haven’t already. Oh yes Reimu definitely is, I love her to bits, just adorable as you’re saying. Hahahaahah at ‘being a jerk and beating up everyone and asking questions later’, typical Reimu and Touhou humour, love it. If you want a jerk though, look at Marisa. She makes me laugh with how troublesome and power hungry she could be, and she lies lol. Even when meeting Flandre, Flan asks ‘who are you?’, Marisa says ‘I’m the shrine maiden, Reimu Hakurei’. Haha trying to pin the blame on poor Reimu lol. Yes definite duality between the two, which makes for such a good contrast, Reimu is more your goody-two-shoes shrine maiden to save Gensokyo, when Marisa is. . . Marisa I guess lol xD (troublemaker, lust for power, liar, kleptomaniac xD). Oh btw, yes Reimu’s float ability could even lift herself off of this plain, as you can see in spell card 215 in Touhou 8. It’s even stated in the wiki that if it wasn’t for a time limit no one could beat her: https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Imperishable_Night/Spell_Cards/Last_Word

Yes I definitely agree with you there. There were good games back on my PlayStation days don’t get me wrong, but NOTHING ever came close to the love I feel for this series, so we’re in agreement there :) It really is perfect in every way, and I agree with you about describing the game as a form of art, both for it’s music, and the beautiful patterns it portrays.

Damn, Arietta Incalzando is an album? I never knew that! I heard the Reimu/Marisa track from it in one of the Touhoumons I had played, and thought it was the name of the song! I’ll definitely have to check out the full album then! Ahh I’ll check the Touhou 15 Extra arrange they did also, can’t go wrong with dBu! I’ll also have to check out Richaad, thanks for the info! Btw I listened to that Kagome Kagome - Cinderella Cage arrange you linked, it’s a haunting style, quite original, the only time I’ve heard something of a similar class was by O-Life Japan (this is a folk arrange instead but still sounds eerie at parts), an arrange of Koishi’s theme, which really fits being done eerily seeing as Koishi plays with the subconscious mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1ofnslOBRs Haha good one about the suffering and ‘it wouldn’t be Touhou if not’, haha so true. Oh yes, that’s the only good thing about work, the Touhou merch!!!! xD I’ve got this beautiful Reimu pre-ordered, really can’t wait for September to roll on!: https://myfigurecollection.net/item/604477 Sooooooo pretty!!! <3_<3

Ahh that’s quite a nice collection you got there! Well done, and keep it up! Always satisfying to add more to your Touhou collection! xD (especially when they take close to a month to get here from Japan!!). Which Marisa and Reimu figures do you have? This is my figure collection in case you want to check it out: https://myfigurecollection.net/users.v4.php?mode=view&username=lunatic_reimu&tab=collection&page=1&status=2&output=2&current=keywords&rootId=-1&categoryId=-1&sort=category&order=asc I got my hands on the first print edition of Touhou 14.5 for the PS4 recently, which came with the 2nd OST for Touhou 14.5! (which is quite rare since it was a bonus for the first print edition). I was so happy when that finally arrived after a month and is safely in my possession xD Haha yeah same here mate, if I’m not playing the games, I’m obsessively thinking about them, not an hour goes by that I don’t think about Touhou, it really is life changing as we’ve been saying in this thread :) Hahaha what your sis told you about the Tetris players applies to Touhou fanatics like me and you for sure xD As you’re saying you start seeing patterns everywhere xD Especially in fireworks xD

Ouch dood, really sorry to hear about the wisdom tooth :/ I’ve never been through it but know someone that did, and they say those are really painful buggers. Really wishing you the best about that, and hope you got that sorted yesterday so you can focus back on Touhou again without that agony of the tooth pain! Ahh yeah, the stuff you’ve faced in Touhou 15 will definitely help you for Touhou 7’s Extra (and any other Touhous you’ll play), especially due to 15’s high difficulty. That’s awesome about clearing the Touhou 7 Extra btw!!! :D That was quite quick! So onto the Phantasm now then, or doing the Extra with other characters? xD Ahh yeah Yukari definitely is cool, especially her final spell card, and the Last Word version of it in Touhou 8 is even more beefed! Yeah I’m usually calm when I just started playing for the first half hour or so, but then when the silly mistakes start happening, and after I’ve been doing the same thing for a while, or ESPECIALLY dieing at something which I know I’ve beaten before. . . that’s where the curse words start following. Like making a silly mistake in the stage portion of the Extra gets me into mega rage mode cause I know I did it flawless several times before. And yes, anger will make you play more sloppy usually, rage takes over focus, so it’s important to keep the rage outbursts to as short a timeframe as possible so you could calm down and continue focusing on the run. There are times I get hit twice in close succession cause I’ll still be fuming from the first hit, so the second one could have been avoided if I manage to keep calmer (quite difficult though, especially on a Lunatic 1cc, the adrenaline coursing through your body at that point. . .)

Yes definitely a plus for the claustrophobic cards and the immersion they bring with them! My heart starts racing, I’m on the edge of my seat, usually on the tips of my toes for maximum alertness, it really is a wonderful feeling, I could almost feel the aura of the bullets passing right next to me haha. Yep I completely understand you from that regard about Doremy’s final card and navigating through a maze, you should enjoy some of 6’s Extra cards then if you like that style :) and also the sound the bullets make when lots of them spawn in succession is awesome, kinda like a mini-machine gun trt-trt-trt-trt-trt, gets me so much more into it! Yes I agree with you there, I used to think that only the most skilled players used to play higher up on the screen, but you’ll be doing this without even noticing on Lunatic cause you WILL get walled in if you just stayed at the bottom all the time. And yes, it definitely is a difficult habit to break, and scary going up higher on the screen when you’re not used to it, but it will come to you on it’s own, all you gotta do it play, you will adjust to it without even noticing. Yes grazing is important too even if not for score as it makes you feel more comfortable with bullets close to you, rather than ‘the further away you are from a bullet the better’ as you put it. Sometimes you will need to stay close to bullets on your left for example to give yourself space for something that you need to dodge to the right. It all comes naturally the more you play, just be sure to adjust yourself appropriately and be careful of clip-deaths when grazing.

6’s Extra is really enjoyable, and Flandre is awesome as a character, especially her Four of a Kind spell card, I love the ability of duplication, the stage portion is quite difficult though till you get to Flandre, the stage gives me more trouble than Flan usually. Ahh, 6 definitely deserves your time, it’s a really good kick off to the Windows era, and there’s quite some stuff to master in it, especially with Patchouli having 4 different fights depending on the character you’re using. Don’t worry too much about not having your hitbox show, you’ll adapt to it and learn where it is even without it showing :) (Reimu’s white shirt part, and the centre of Marisa’s pink bow). If you want a clearer indication of where it is, just graze one of Rumia’s lasers at Stage 1, the attack where she uses lasers and green circle bullets, you’ll see the hitbox flicker when grazing her lasers). Remember the PC-98 games don’t have visible hitboxes either, so if anything, 6 will help you for when you come to play those games :) Yeah that’s mainly the point of my no bomb runs, as you said, to fully experience each attack, even at it’s hardest moments, rather than clearing everything off-screen when it gets too tough. It’s nice seeing fully what this marvelous series has to offer :) Pacifisit would be such a beautiful achievement, but yes it could get very difficult, and long, I saw a pacifist for Koishi and it dragged the fight out for 25 mins!! Hahahaha at the dialogue, well I imagine your opponents must be exhausted after using up all that magical energy to attack you for such a long time xD Pacifist is really beautiful though and requires quite a level of mastery of each spell card since you need to know it well enough to time everything out! Yeah regarding Flan, it was quite a heartbreak, but I’m over it now, I no bombed Extra with Reimu A playing Maze of Love at the bottom (more difficult playing it this way than running in circles), and I did Reimu B no bombs Extra, in which I lost my first life at Flandre’s QED!!! So close to a Perfect!!! Would have been my first one :’( Still happy though, I was aiming for a no bomb run after all. But yes, I fully understand what you mean about it ‘killing you a little bit inside’ when a 1cc ends so close :’( Oh yes definitely understand you about Yuyuko, her final attack (with the beautiful Border of Life track, those trumpets!!) with those red-ish bullets that sway is very difficult to read, I could imagine how that could be a 1cc ender, and how many heartbreaks that could bring. Hahah I could imagine tears of joy after doing that xD Yeah Patchouli got seriously beefed, didn’t expect such a change, even attacks I had learned well on Hard were giving me trouble on Lunatic. Ahhh yes, Scarlet Gensokyo is gonna be rough, but I’m more worried about Scarlet Meister to be honest.

If I get hit in Stage 1 or 2 that’s an instant restart, I’ll need those lives for the stage 5 or 6 boss, as you said, I’ll need those resources (plus it looks damn ugly for my recordings getting hit so early on, especially when I do those stages perfect almost all the time). From Stage 3 I’ll cringe but I’ll tolerate it, but yes as you said, I’ll try doing my best to make up for the life lost. From Stage 4 onwards it’s completely acceptable and justified to me then, cause the game really starts picking up from that point.

Hopefully you got that sorted yesterday :) How does it feel currently? All pain subsided or still not 100% healed yet? Hahaha I agree with you there on what you said to your coworker, even my friends call me a masochist lol :P

Amazing work on the Touhou 7 Extra btw as I stated above, keep at it! Good things will come your way with the dedication and love you have for the series ;)

Thanks for keeping up with these chats btw, I know it takes quite a while writing all this (took me close to 2 hours typing this post), so I appreciate your time and love for the series to keep these chats lively :) Hope you enjoy writing/reading these posts as much as I do.

I'll definitely check them out! As someone who's still relatively new to the genre it's surprising how versatile bullet hell gameplay can get. Like how you can get a smarter character who focuses on tricking you and mixing you up or trapping you compared to a character who relies on more overpowering or fast kind of attacks. I definitely believe the no bomb runs can take a while. It seems like it's essentially just cutting your resources down to like 1/3 or 1/4 of what you'd normally get. I think of the amount of time and practice it takes to learn the attacks well enough to do them with bombs and imagine how much more practice is required to do it with so much less. The plus side with 9 is I don't think you'll struggle much compared to the other games doing a no bomb run, I rarely used them myself well playing since it drains all your power. You know, I think I'd like 9 a lot more if it had Yukari and Alice in it lol. Eiki is admittedly pretty awesome though. I like that her extra stage is just her going around on her free time lecturing people XD

I will! I was planning on trying to patch it last weekend but I ended up being out and about for most of it so I'm going to shoot for it this upcoming weekend. If I do I might even give Touhou 2 a shot finally! I'm excited to try it out especially since you're so fond of it. I'll also definitely try to remember to try the MIDI soundtrack out at some point with it. Oh so regarding the weight thing apparently according to one of the endings in SoEW that Genji tells Reimu that her Yin-Yang orbs have 3 abilites which are: The ability to eat sweets and never get fat, the ability to have whatever scent she wants, and the ability to turn into a cat. It's one of those random obscure things that is mentioned once in the series and then never again :P Still I've heard the dumb joke made that's why her hitbox is so small and I can't help but laugh XD

You're absolutely right, I think the fact my first 1cc came from Sakuya really has endured me towards her. Her time stop powers in general really make for a fascinating fight with her too. Her fight is easily one of the most memorable in the series. I can absolutely see why Reimu means so much to you. She's been with you since the very start of this journey you've been on since you started Touhou :) Plus I feel Reimu just really represents what Touhou is all about and what makes it so great. Most of the 1ccs I work on these days I do so with Reimu because it just feels right. I completely agree on Marisa and needle Reimu, it forces you to be extra aware of where you are in relation to the boss but it's also very rewarding since bosses will just melt once you learn what you're doing.

I haven't seen Heroes yet myself! I have heard of it from friends though. I've seen everything else. Only thing is I'd recommend watching Super first instead of GT. Frankly it's more worthy of your time. Kai you could skip as well unless you want a refresher to the series, although it's admittedly pretty polished up and nice! Super is quite long, well over 100 episodes but it does have some great moments. I really liked the Beerus movie myself! He becomes a main character so if you like him you'll get to look forward to seeing a lot more of him :D And yes, Marisa's lies so much! I burst out laughing so hard in 9 when she told Eiki she never lied. You ain't fooling anyone Marisa XD Plus don't forget she's a thief too! I remember one of the games (I think Mountain of Faith) mentions in her description that her ability for casual theft is second to none XD You got to give her credit though she's a damn hard worker! Reimu is like the laid back natural genius well Marisa has no where near the natural skill but makes up for it through her willpower. I remember hearing about that with Reimu floating above existence. That ability is one of the first things I learned about Reimu and I found it fascinating that such a powerful move could come from such a seemingly simplistic and basic ability. I really need to get back to the Last Words in 8. I've only done a few of them but I had a ton of fun on the ones I saw.

I really wish I could properly explain to others just how amazing this series is, but it's tough describing it to people not familiar with bullet hells, which I get since from the outside it can be a pretty intimidating genre. Getting into the genre was like discovering a whole new world for me, I wish I could share that feeling with more people since I don't think they realize just what they're missing out on :(

This is the Arietta Incalzando album I listened to if you're interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH2V6wnSZXI I noticed there was a 15 minute video one too but I'm guessing the album one has those tracks in it as well. Nice Koishi arrange too! I've heard a couple covers/remixes and whatnot for her theme and they're usually pretty awesome. Koishi is one of the best characters in the series and it's only fitting she gets one of the more cooler tracks to go with her too. It does fit that subconscious theme she has too.

I got the Ques Q version of Reimu and Marisa which I see you have as well! They're definitely high quality figures and also so adorable ^_^ I was considering getting that Reimu preorder you're getting instead of the one I got but I figured the Ques Q Reimu would go nicely with the Marisa one I already had (and it does). I really want to get that Koishi one you have from them too, as well as Satori's eventually. Oh you got a great figure collection yourself! I'm a bit jealous XD Also grats on the first print of 14.5! That sounds like a worthy addition to your collection. I haven't seen fireworks since I started the series but I can absolutely understand why those would remind you of the series. It makes me want to see a fireworks show with touhou music, how perfect would that be?

The tooth and the pain is gone now thankfully! It's fully healed up now so now I can actually fully focus on the game besides the usual things like work day fatigue or stress. Really makes me appreciate being able to enjoy this series when I'm not in constant pain lol. Thank you!! I'm working on the Phantasm stage now. I was pretty damn busy on the weekend but I managed to get a few attempts in and I freaking love it. I feel like I'm in gaming heaven in this stage. I even managed to make it to around the 80% point with 2 lives and a few bombs, but the spellcard with Ran bouncing around utterly destroyed me due to how differently she moves in that one compared to Chen. Thankfully I saved the replay and watched it right after so now I have a better understanding of how to avoid Ran next time I make it there at least. Working on this fight is a pretty big deal for me since beating this was one of my original goals in the series and it was only a few months ago that I still thought even beating Ran was beyond what I was capable of at the time. I want to try checking out Yukari's Last Word after I beat her in PCB. I'll need to see if I even have that one unlocked yet next time I boot up the game. Yeah, I'm very much the same way where typically the first 30ish minutes is when I'm at my best, but once you die repeatedly to those sections you already know and have done many times it really does throw you off and it can sometimes be tough to get back in the flow of things. I find sometimes I can almost immediately recover from my mistake mentally but over the course of a session it can become increasingly difficult to snap back after those kind of mistakes due to the adrenaline. Sometimes it hits a point where I know I got to step back and calm down a bit but that's where the overdetermination can work against me.

Ah I love that tick-tick-tick noise get when grazing tons of bullets in those claustrophobic kind of attacks myself. There's just something oddly satisfying about it and it really does add to the feeling of immersion. You're absolutely right about the top of the screen and tbh, getting into becoming more comfortable using the entire screen really wasn't that bad, it did come pretty naturally as I pushed into content that required it more. It was mainly just getting over that initial fear. I found it really helps to become comfortable doing these things once you realize just how much control you have over certain attacks. I think when I started I was almost under the impression the people who were doing stuff like that just had some almost superhuman like skills, but really even a beginner could get relatively use to it with just a bit or practice I think. Ah you're right though, all you really need to do is just play the game and pretty much all these skills you need to know will come over time, especially if you regularly do content that pushes you.

I've seen the Flandre fight before but not the stage portion, I've heard from a few people the stage bit can be pretty brutal though. This is something I struggle with in 15 as well where just getting to the boss with enough resources to properly attempt it in itself can be a challenge compared to some of the extra stages I've tried. The no bomb thing reminds me of how some attacks in the series bombs won't help at all and during rare times can actually end up feeling like they made things worse, like again in Virtue of the Wind God you're almost better off just dying than wasting a bomb. I notice extra stages tend to be very heavy on making sure you can't rely on bombs much either for most of it. That's incredibly impressive you've managed to do those though, I'd love to be able to play at that level eventually :) I suffered one of my most painful moments in this series the other week when attempting Ran myself. I got to the final spellcard with 1 extra life and 3 bombs which should have been an easy win, except when I went up to the PoC line to grab the items I slammed my character into the boss and lost my extra life (first time I've done this in about 6 months) and then immediately lost my final life 10 seconds (aka while it's still on the easy part) into the attack by a horribly dumb mistake. I've had a lot of dumb moments in this series but that one really hurt at the time and really demoralized me. Thankfully I was able to come back the next day fresh and beat it but at the time I was so incredibly angry with myself. Such is Touhou life, just to have my ego continually crushed and then rebuilt.

I'm the same way, deaths in stages 1-2 is an instant restart. I'll usually allow myself to lose a single life in 3 but I try to aim to make it to at least stage 4 before I start losing lives when I'm going for a 1cc, since as you said stage 4 is usually when the game starts picking up a fair bit. I try to avoid it as much as possible but sometimes I even find myself restarting out of pure frustration even when I'm still on track for getting a 1cc. It's just too frustrating when you have a 1cc fail at the end and you know if you didn't make some dumb mistake earlier you would have gotten it.

And yes, much better now! Pretty much fully healed at this point :) Now I just need a proper weekend to be able to sit down and do some 2hu'ing. I admit I get a bit antsy if I don't get enough time to play much for extended periods. Damn real life getting in the way of Touhou!

And thank you! I'm about 9 months into this journey so far and it's such a wonderful feeling to still be making so much progress and learning so much. It's incredibly satisfying finally being able to do some of the things that originally seemed so far beyond my skill not long ago and I can promise I won't be stopping anytime soon :)

And thank you for the conversations as well! I can't properly express how much I appreciate being able to talk so much with another person who gets that absolute love for the series and I've very much enjoyed it as well. Sorry for the long response time too, I just wanted to wait until I could sit down and write up a proper reply since its been crazy hectic lately here.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2019, 05:36:47 AM by Dreamleaf »

Lunatic_Reimu

  • No Bomb Enthusiast
Re: My first lunatic 1cc
« Reply #34 on: June 21, 2019, 12:07:20 PM »
I'll definitely check them out! As someone who's still relatively new to the genre it's surprising how versatile bullet hell gameplay can get. Like how you can get a smarter character who focuses on tricking you and mixing you up or trapping you compared to a character who relies on more overpowering or fast kind of attacks. I definitely believe the no bomb runs can take a while. It seems like it's essentially just cutting your resources down to like 1/3 or 1/4 of what you'd normally get. I think of the amount of time and practice it takes to learn the attacks well enough to do them with bombs and imagine how much more practice is required to do it with so much less. The plus side with 9 is I don't think you'll struggle much compared to the other games doing a no bomb run, I rarely used them myself well playing since it drains all your power. You know, I think I'd like 9 a lot more if it had Yukari and Alice in it lol. Eiki is admittedly pretty awesome though. I like that her extra stage is just her going around on her free time lecturing people XD

I will! I was planning on trying to patch it last weekend but I ended up being out and about for most of it so I'm going to shoot for it this upcoming weekend. If I do I might even give Touhou 2 a shot finally! I'm excited to try it out especially since you're so fond of it. I'll also definitely try to remember to try the MIDI soundtrack out at some point with it. Oh so regarding the weight thing apparently according to one of the endings in SoEW that Genji tells Reimu that her Yin-Yang orbs have 3 abilites which are: The ability to eat sweets and never get fat, the ability to have whatever scent she wants, and the ability to turn into a cat. It's one of those random obscure things that is mentioned once in the series and then never again :P Still I've heard the dumb joke made that's why her hitbox is so small and I can't help but laugh XD

You're absolutely right, I think the fact my first 1cc came from Sakuya really has endured me towards her. Her time stop powers in general really make for a fascinating fight with her too. Her fight is easily one of the most memorable in the series. I can absolutely see why Reimu means so much to you. She's been with you since the very start of this journey you've been on since you started Touhou :) Plus I feel Reimu just really represents what Touhou is all about and what makes it so great. Most of the 1ccs I work on these days I do so with Reimu because it just feels right. I completely agree on Marisa and needle Reimu, it forces you to be extra aware of where you are in relation to the boss but it's also very rewarding since bosses will just melt once you learn what you're doing.

I haven't seen Heroes yet myself! I have heard of it from friends though. I've seen everything else. Only thing is I'd recommend watching Super first instead of GT. Frankly it's more worthy of your time. Kai you could skip as well unless you want a refresher to the series, although it's admittedly pretty polished up and nice! Super is quite long, well over 100 episodes but it does have some great moments. I really liked the Beerus movie myself! He becomes a main character so if you like him you'll get to look forward to seeing a lot more of him :D And yes, Marisa's lies so much! I burst out laughing so hard in 9 when she told Eiki she never lied. You ain't fooling anyone Marisa XD Plus don't forget she's a thief too! I remember one of the games (I think Mountain of Faith) mentions in her description that her ability for casual theft is second to none XD You got to give her credit though she's a damn hard worker! Reimu is like the laid back natural genius well Marisa has no where near the natural skill but makes up for it through her willpower. I remember hearing about that with Reimu floating above existence. That ability is one of the first things I learned about Reimu and I found it fascinating that such a powerful move could come from such a seemingly simplistic and basic ability. I really need to get back to the Last Words in 8. I've only done a few of them but I had a ton of fun on the ones I saw.

I really wish I could properly explain to others just how amazing this series is, but it's tough describing it to people not familiar with bullet hells, which I get since from the outside it can be a pretty intimidating genre. Getting into the genre was like discovering a whole new world for me, I wish I could share that feeling with more people since I don't think they realize just what they're missing out on :(

This is the Arietta Incalzando album I listened to if you're interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH2V6wnSZXI I noticed there was a 15 minute video one too but I'm guessing the album one has those tracks in it as well. Nice Koishi arrange too! I've heard a couple covers/remixes and whatnot for her theme and they're usually pretty awesome. Koishi is one of the best characters in the series and it's only fitting she gets one of the more cooler tracks to go with her too. It does fit that subconscious theme she has too.

I got the Ques Q version of Reimu and Marisa which I see you have as well! They're definitely high quality figures and also so adorable ^_^ I was considering getting that Reimu preorder you're getting instead of the one I got but I figured the Ques Q Reimu would go nicely with the Marisa one I already had (and it does). I really want to get that Koishi one you have from them too, as well as Satori's eventually. Oh you got a great figure collection yourself! I'm a bit jealous XD Also grats on the first print of 14.5! That sounds like a worthy addition to your collection. I haven't seen fireworks since I started the series but I can absolutely understand why those would remind you of the series. It makes me want to see a fireworks show with touhou music, how perfect would that be?

The tooth and the pain is gone now thankfully! It's fully healed up now so now I can actually fully focus on the game besides the usual things like work day fatigue or stress. Really makes me appreciate being able to enjoy this series when I'm not in constant pain lol. Thank you!! I'm working on the Phantasm stage now. I was pretty damn busy on the weekend but I managed to get a few attempts in and I freaking love it. I feel like I'm in gaming heaven in this stage. I even managed to make it to around the 80% point with 2 lives and a few bombs, but the spellcard with Ran bouncing around utterly destroyed me due to how differently she moves in that one compared to Chen. Thankfully I saved the replay and watched it right after so now I have a better understanding of how to avoid Ran next time I make it there at least. Working on this fight is a pretty big deal for me since beating this was one of my original goals in the series and it was only a few months ago that I still thought even beating Ran was beyond what I was capable of at the time. I want to try checking out Yukari's Last Word after I beat her in PCB. I'll need to see if I even have that one unlocked yet next time I boot up the game. Yeah, I'm very much the same way where typically the first 30ish minutes is when I'm at my best, but once you die repeatedly to those sections you already know and have done many times it really does throw you off and it can sometimes be tough to get back in the flow of things. I find sometimes I can almost immediately recover from my mistake mentally but over the course of a session it can become increasingly difficult to snap back after those kind of mistakes due to the adrenaline. Sometimes it hits a point where I know I got to step back and calm down a bit but that's where the overdetermination can work against me.

Ah I love that tick-tick-tick noise get when grazing tons of bullets in those claustrophobic kind of attacks myself. There's just something oddly satisfying about it and it really does add to the feeling of immersion. You're absolutely right about the top of the screen and tbh, getting into becoming more comfortable using the entire screen really wasn't that bad, it did come pretty naturally as I pushed into content that required it more. It was mainly just getting over that initial fear. I found it really helps to become comfortable doing these things once you realize just how much control you have over certain attacks. I think when I started I was almost under the impression the people who were doing stuff like that just had some almost superhuman like skills, but really even a beginner could get relatively use to it with just a bit or practice I think. Ah you're right though, all you really need to do is just play the game and pretty much all these skills you need to know will come over time, especially if you regularly do content that pushes you.

I've seen the Flandre fight before but not the stage portion, I've heard from a few people the stage bit can be pretty brutal though. This is something I struggle with in 15 as well where just getting to the boss with enough resources to properly attempt it in itself can be a challenge compared to some of the extra stages I've tried. The no bomb thing reminds me of how some attacks in the series bombs won't help at all and during rare times can actually end up feeling like they made things worse, like again in Virtue of the Wind God you're almost better off just dying than wasting a bomb. I notice extra stages tend to be very heavy on making sure you can't rely on bombs much either for most of it. That's incredibly impressive you've managed to do those though, I'd love to be able to play at that level eventually :) I suffered one of my most painful moments in this series the other week when attempting Ran myself. I got to the final spellcard with 1 extra life and 3 bombs which should have been an easy win, except when I went up to the PoC line to grab the items I slammed my character into the boss and lost my extra life (first time I've done this in about 6 months) and then immediately lost my final life 10 seconds (aka while it's still on the easy part) into the attack by a horribly dumb mistake. I've had a lot of dumb moments in this series but that one really hurt at the time and really demoralized me. Thankfully I was able to come back the next day fresh and beat it but at the time I was so incredibly angry with myself. Such is Touhou life, just to have my ego continually crushed and then rebuilt.

I'm the same way, deaths in stages 1-2 is an instant restart. I'll usually allow myself to lose a single life in 3 but I try to aim to make it to at least stage 4 before I start losing lives when I'm going for a 1cc, since as you said stage 4 is usually when the game starts picking up a fair bit. I try to avoid it as much as possible but sometimes I even find myself restarting out of pure frustration even when I'm still on track for getting a 1cc. It's just too frustrating when you have a 1cc fail at the end and you know if you didn't make some dumb mistake earlier you would have gotten it.

And yes, much better now! Pretty much fully healed at this point :) Now I just need a proper weekend to be able to sit down and do some 2hu'ing. I admit I get a bit antsy if I don't get enough time to play much for extended periods. Damn real life getting in the way of Touhou!

And thank you! I'm about 9 months into this journey so far and it's such a wonderful feeling to still be making so much progress and learning so much. It's incredibly satisfying finally being able to do some of the things that originally seemed so far beyond my skill not long ago and I can promise I won't be stopping anytime soon :)

And thank you for the conversations as well! I can't properly express how much I appreciate being able to talk so much with another person who gets that absolute love for the series and I've very much enjoyed it as well. Sorry for the long response time too, I just wanted to wait until I could sit down and write up a proper reply since its been crazy hectic lately here.
Yes true that about the versatility of the series, which is what makes it so fun! It?s not just always doing the same thing, lots of different characters and spell cards / stages which force you to learn new ways to adapt to them! I think you?ll enjoy Seihou also, you?ll notice it?s quite different from Touhou, yet also similar in ways, Vivit is a cute loveable little android too, so don?t let not having Reimu and Marisa as playable characters ward you off! Besides, that Extra is amazing, and soooooo difficult (it?s the only thing I?ve come across in the series so far which I couldn?t No Bomb, and can?t find anyone that did on Youtube, and would love to see a run where someone managed, Reimu has this RIDICULOUSLY DIFFICULT card with red and white Yin Yang orbs and these orange bullets which I just couldn?t grasp), you get to see a really different side to Marisa and Reimu in it, especially Marisa since she gets angel wings, and also uses duplication at the end, I don?t think she ever did that in the Touhou games, so it will have some nice surprises in store for you :) Yeah the No Bomb runs really do cut your resources down to 1/3 or 1/4 as you?re saying, while I appreciate the challenge it brings with it, it?s not the lack of resources which really makes me love them though, it?s facing the spell card fully, even at it?s hardest points. Regarding what you?re saying about Touhou 9 No Bombs, well it depends, Touhou 3 without bombs was very tough at the later stages (Chiyuri and Yumemi), cause it?s very difficult surviving those fights with just your 5 hearts! Those 5 hearts go down quite quick, especially as the fight progresses more and you take more damage as everything speeds up. And also, No Bombs on Touhou 3 locks off Charge Max for you (you activate this by pressing the bomb button when you have no bombs remaining and a full charge bar). Touhou 9 looks more refined than Touhou 3 though, so I?m also thinking it wouldn?t be as difficult as Touhou 3 (and it has focus thank god). Hahaha about Eiki and her free time, something similar happens in the Touhou 4 Extra with Marisa, she just wanders around into the Extra stage just to kill time xD

Glad you finally got to experience Touhou 2 and am enjoying it! Don?t forget to try out the MIDI soundtrack! It has quite a nice arrange on certain tracks and well worth another playthrough with it! Damn, I forgot about the Touhou 2 endings, it?s been around 4 years since I played that one! Thanks for clarifying where it?s from! xD Haha good joke and reference to Touhou 2 about Reimu?s hitbox, yes Reimu?s hitbox is a tad smaller than the other characters? in the Windows games, so this joke makes sense lol.

Yes it will have an impact and make you bond with that character more, especially if you had never played a danmaku shmup before as I did and felt overwhelmed with everything around you! As I said in my previous post, Reimu saw some hardships being controlled by a newbie at shmups, let alone danmaku, but I was extremely happy when I finally cleared (no bombed) Touhou 2 (especially on Lunatic) for the first time, and she was with me throughout the whole ordeal! Oh yes true about Sakuya?s fight being memorable, everything about it is just ultra cool, the music really fits her, the time freezing, pointy knives as bullets . . . she just really fits the role of Remilia?s bodyguard and a Stage 5 boss :) Yes I too see Reimu as the icon for Touhou, it just fits as the shrine maiden ?exterminating? the youkai causing trouble. Ahh yes, while it requires more skill to work your way through the ocean of bullets to get under the boss, I appreciate needle Reimu and Marisa?s power (as you said the health bar melts), it?s like your reward for managing to work your way there :)

A friend showed me the first 5 episodes of Heroes (we were out for a pizza, but were just glued to his phone lol watching that in awe). Yeah lots of people didn?t really click with GT overall, heard lots of negativity about it, but I heard there?s a cool fight against Shenron in it that?s not worth missing out on! Z Kai is drawn differently though, so I wouldn?t mind giving that a rewatch, especially since Dragon Ball Z is just epic all-round! Thanks for the heads up about Beerus becoming a main character, makes Super sound even better! Hopefully him and Goku will get a rematch again at some point!! Yeah you just can?t go wrong with the Beerus movie, that fight is just epic in EVERY WAY: ?I will not let you destroy my WOOOOORRRRLLLLDDD!!?. Brr, gives me chills down my spine just thinking about it! Hahahaa yeah true that about Marisa, she?s your typical trouble maker, and it?s what makes her precious in her own way xD Haha didn?t know that about Marisa saying that to Eiki, definitely got something to look forward to then when I play 9! xD And yeah, completely agreed, ?you?re not fooling anyone Marisa? :P Haha yeah definitely a thief, poor Patchouli and her books lol, and who knows what else she steals that I don?t know about :P She?s such an amusing character xD Yes it definitely is fascinating as you?re saying that such a simple ability ?float? could become so powerful, makes you see what a genius ZUN really is to read into something so much and amplify such a basic ability! Ahhh the Last Words are amazing, I haven?t experienced them yet personally, but saw most of them on Youtube, and they look incredible! Touhou 8 is gonna be loads of fun!! xD

Yeah I get what you mean, all my friends and coworkers just see it as ?extra stress? rather than mega fun like we do :( Even one of my biggest friends tell me ?I want to relax and kill something in a game after work, not do something that?s more stressful than my work day!?. I really don?t get why most people see difficulty as stress, I believe a challenge is healthy and keeps you motivated, plus the sense of accomplishment and self-worth after beating these games is unrivaled by ANYTHING I have ever done in life.

Thanks for the Arietta Incalzando album link, I?ll definitely have to give that a listen (been really busy these past couple of days). Yes I quite enjoy that Koishi arrange as it sounds eerie at points which I feel really fits her. I love Koishi?s theme, it?s one of my favourites, amazing how it could go from menacing to cutesy in a heartbeat. Plus Koishi is very special to me since I told you it was the first thing I had seen about Touhou, and started playing these games cause of her fight! Check this out if you like Koishi?s theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61-RF-q7RmI It?s called Paranoia by Digital Wing. I love the slightly warped voice, and how the song starts with the DJ giving that small introduction in English, to then just getting sucked into Koishi?s theme in Japanese vocals!

Ahhh brilliant, the Ques Q Kourindou versions of Marisa and Reimu really are high quality figures! I love mine to bits, especially the Reimu one, she is just too damn adorable, and the attention to detail is astounding! (the creases in her dress, the stitching on her cute red and white shoes, her flowy hair, the small crosses on the ends of her hair bangs, real big well done to Ques Q on this one!). I?m hoping you?ve received yours by now and am happily enjoying her accompanying Marisa :) Yeah as far as scales go, that Reimu will compliment your Marisa, cause then the Reimu I have pre-ordered is huge at 43cm!! Really can?t wait for her to arrive!! She?s got such a cute face, and those beautiful long legs *rawr* ;) Ahh yes that Koishi is awesome too, almost all Ques Q figures are brilliant, I love how attentive they are to small details like a heart under her shoe for example! Haha I?ve been figure collecting for 3 years, you?ll get a collection like that in time don?t worry ;) Plus I have a VERY generous sister who while she doesn?t play Touhou, loves watching me play it and loves the characters, so she always dives in and gets me a couple of figures for birthdays and Christmas :) Plus I?ve got some of them that are dirt cheap, like the SEGA prize figures or the fuRyu ones, those only set me back like 30 Euros including shipping. The Ques Q ones then. . . go for like 150+ Euros as you already know. Doesn?t help getting slammed with an extra 20% duty/VAT from customs as well :/ The trick is to try pre-ordering when possible. If you miss the pre-order period, the prices shoot up on the second hand market then :( Ques Q have this *AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL* Yuyuko, but I could never find her anywhere for less than around 400 USD :( https://myfigurecollection.net/item/102204 I only found her cheaper used, but I?m scared she?ll come with a broken butterfly or something and I don?t want to risk that! Ahhh yes definitely about fireworks, I had read about it somewhere ages ago, and kept it in mind, and it really does fit (albeit being quite an easy and simple spell card compared to what we?re used to haha) :P Haha definitely accompanied by Touhou music, and the more colourful the better! xD

Really happy to hear that you got the tooth pain sorted out! Now yes, you can get back to focusing on your original goals without that mind-numbing pain! Touhou is tough enough as it is, last thing you need is pain to distract you :/ Ahh that?s brilliant about the Touhou 7 Phantasm, and am also glad to hear you also cleared it in the Personal Message! I know Yukari is one of your favourites, and also it being one of your original goals, so it must mean a lot to you to have that cleared! (same as it would for me once I take down Koishi, so I truly get what you mean!) Well done on also using your own replays to learn the attacks that were giving you trouble, I do that too but with recordings instead of replays. I record every gaming session I do, and when something gives me lots of trouble I just sit there and watch my recordings and study the attack to see if I could understand how it?s working, which parts of it are aimed at me, why certain bullets act the way they do, etc. It really helps! Yeah your skills will definitely shoot up in a couple of months as you?re noticing yourself! That?s why you should never feel disheartened with the series, as you?re seeing for yourself, things you thought you were incapable of suddenly became reality in just a few months! :D Really happy for you my friend, I know this fight means a lot to you! Yeah the Last Word version of Yukari?s last spell card is amazing, so many different patterns in one card! It?s a really cool spell card which will take some good practice to learn it all (plus the Last Words have to be done Perfect if I?m not mistaken so no room for error!). Yes definitely understood on the adrenaline and rage and lack of focus, I?m my own worst enemy sometimes and the damn rage I produce, and the closer I am to beating the game, the more adrenaline is pumping through me (only 1 life left against a final boss, remember no bombs to fall back on, so it?s literally do or die here!!). It is a wonderful feeling at the same time though, kinda like what Goku was going through vs Beerus in the movie, alone in space fighting against a terrifyingly strong opponent!! True that about the overdetermination working against you, it can?t be helped though, cause it?s something that we want SOOOO MUCH, so no wonder we get so fueled with adrenaline!

Ahh yes definitely, both the bullet spawning in rapid succession sound, and also the grazing sound I love, something so miniscule, but makes it so much more immersive at the same time! Glad to hear you didn?t find the transition to using more of the screen so difficult! That will really help you in certain parts on Lunatic, especially getting up closer to a boss when you see your openings to deal more damage! Yes a beginner might be able to pull off playing higher up on screen, but initial reaction of seeing all those bullets will be to stay at the bottom, especially if someone is new to bullet hell / started a new Touhou game and not knowing what to expect next. Yes definitely, that?s what makes Touhou extremely fun, you just keep playing and eventually you?ll see the solution to something that was troubling you before on your own. Like the ?green wall? in the Touhou 2 Stage 3 boss, at first I just used to get hit EVERY SINGLE TIME I get to that attack on Hard/Lunatic, one day I?m just sitting there waiting for my inevitable death, and I finally saw the gap!!! Trivialized it every time after that! xD

Yep, as I?ve mentioned before, the stage portion actually gives me more trouble than the Flandre fight! (except her final spell card QED). Lots of Flan?s attacks are easily memorizable, so once you get to grips with them you could do lots of them perfect most of the time. Ahh yeah, I get you about the getting through the stage portion with enough resources, especially on Touhou 15 which is regarded as so difficult! Yeah I understand that about the bombs not being so useful, I?ve seen vids where Flan even turns into a bat if you trying bombing against her, and she doesn?t take damage in her bat form. Why better off losing a life for Virtue of Wind God rather than bombing? (cause your power drops with each bomb used?) You stated ?That's incredibly impressive you've managed to do those though, I'd love to be able to play at that level eventually?, thanks for your compliment, I appreciate it that someone appreciates all that effort that goes into hitting these No Bomb 1ccs, well, you could play at that level whenever you want to! Remember, I had no prior experience to shmups or danmaku before, I just started off No Bombs instantly. I didn?t like the feeling of clearing everything off of the screen, and had seen someone do the Koishi fight PERFECT (my god what skill!!!), and Jaimers doing several of the games No Bombs, and as soon as I saw that these things are achievable by others, I just decided to start playing the games like that straight away. Sure it was a VERY difficult road (especially Lunatic for the first time), so don?t get me wrong, but all you need is lots of determination, patience, and practice! If anything, you?ve got an advantage over how I started, cause you?ve got almost all the games cleared on Normal I believe, and quite some Extra experience, so you?ve already experienced the story that the official games have to offer, plus also faced a variety of different spell cards :) So No Bombs might not be as far away from your reach as you?re thinking if it interests you that much. Ahhh, I could imagine crashing into the boss when going above the PoC being very frustrating, and rather than frustrating, feeling disappointed in yourself for doing such a silly mistake. Happens to the best of us mate don?t worry too much about it, we all get derp moments, thankfully you came back fresh the next day and got your clear ;) Ooooh so true about the game continuously crushing your ego. Someone in the comments on Youtube once said ?Touhou is a soul crushing game?, and I greatly agree with that statement. But we keep at it, and eventually we trump over those bosses that gave us such heartbreaking failures :)

Fully agree with this whole paragraph here. What?s worse than that though is going extremely well, and to ruin a run at Stage 5. I remember one of my attempts at Touhou 5, I lost my first life at Yumeko (the Stage 5 boss), so the run was going perfectly till that point, with a very high chance to get my 1cc, and that?s it, once I lost that life it?s like I snapped out of my zen state, and she r*ped my stock of lives. I just lost my flow completely. That is just soul-crushing and frustrating beyond belief.

Really happy to hear about the tooth pain completely healed!! So now you?re back to focusing on the actual game without any external factors in the way! :D Ahhh, real life problems, everyone has some of those, and unfortunately yes, they will get in the way of HOW WELL you play, and HOW MUCH you play. Speaking of real life problems, life had to kick me where it hurts deepest, last week I was in the middle of a gaming session, and my TV suddenly got these green and purple lines, and *boom* keeps switching on and off every 3 seconds or so :?( So I?m Touhouless currently :?( I?m getting by watching anime on my laptop (15? compared to my 46? TV, not happy!!!), and getting some more time with Touhoumon on my PSP, but I *GREATLY MISS* bullet dodging (I play on my gaming pc which is powerful enough to record gameplay also, my laptop is just a weak i3 for casual emails and day to day stuff). It?s at the TV repair guy?s at the moment, got a call from him today morning, he thinks it?s the main board, he managed to procure one and is going to try replacing it tonight, and said if it was the problem I should have it in my hands this weekend / early next week. Fingers crossed. . . . cause I?m going crazy here and life feels so empty :?( Oh, about getting antsy when not playing for a while, 100% agreed there, I?ll be at work like a bundle of nerves, constantly tapping my fingernails against the desk, and my foot rapidly on the floor, all my coworkers notice something?s up and not right. Gaming does have addictive properties, cause they make us feel good. I mean let?s face it, in real life, I?m a clerk that deals with purchasing spare parts and invoicing *yawn*, in the virtual world, I?m a magical girl with powers flying around dodging hundreds of bullets in these ultra epic fights! . . . Which would you prefer??? :P

Ahh that?s awesome, you?ve got some very nice progress in in 9 months, and there?s no shortage of things to learn, believe me, you?ll keep improving. I keep seeing growth in myself after every Touhou game I clear (most notably Touhou 3 and Seihou for me were my biggest boosters), so we?re constantly getting better and better! Especially once you start hitting more Hards and Lunatics, your skill level will shoot up too, all the Extras you?re doing (especially your 15 one) will also come into play ;)

Same here my friend, no one I know (both in real life, and online) loves this series as much as you do, so I?m also happy that I found someone to talk to that just adores everything about it as I do :) Coincidentally I was talking to my sis about our posts yesterday, and I said it?s a real damn shame we live in different countries, cause we?d be mega good friends if we could meet up! Strange how you can feel so close to someone you never met, and in such a short time period too. No worries about the delay in replying, I know these posts got quite huge in a short time span, and yes, I?d want these posts to stay fun and reply when you feel like sharing, not ?something you have to do? against your will just cause it?s been a while since you last replied.
« Last Edit: June 21, 2019, 01:26:04 PM by Lunatic_Reimu »

Re: My first lunatic 1cc
« Reply #35 on: June 25, 2019, 05:31:48 AM »
Yes true that about the versatility of the series, which is what makes it so fun! It’s not just always doing the same thing, lots of different characters and spell cards / stages which force you to learn new ways to adapt to them! I think you’ll enjoy Seihou also, you’ll notice it’s quite different from Touhou, yet also similar in ways, Vivit is a cute loveable little android too, so don’t let not having Reimu and Marisa as playable characters ward you off! Besides, that Extra is amazing, and soooooo difficult (it’s the only thing I’ve come across in the series so far which I couldn’t No Bomb, and can’t find anyone that did on Youtube, and would love to see a run where someone managed, Reimu has this RIDICULOUSLY DIFFICULT card with red and white Yin Yang orbs and these orange bullets which I just couldn’t grasp), you get to see a really different side to Marisa and Reimu in it, especially Marisa since she gets angel wings, and also uses duplication at the end, I don’t think she ever did that in the Touhou games, so it will have some nice surprises in store for you :) Yeah the No Bomb runs really do cut your resources down to 1/3 or 1/4 as you’re saying, while I appreciate the challenge it brings with it, it’s not the lack of resources which really makes me love them though, it’s facing the spell card fully, even at it’s hardest points. Regarding what you’re saying about Touhou 9 No Bombs, well it depends, Touhou 3 without bombs was very tough at the later stages (Chiyuri and Yumemi), cause it’s very difficult surviving those fights with just your 5 hearts! Those 5 hearts go down quite quick, especially as the fight progresses more and you take more damage as everything speeds up. And also, No Bombs on Touhou 3 locks off Charge Max for you (you activate this by pressing the bomb button when you have no bombs remaining and a full charge bar). Touhou 9 looks more refined than Touhou 3 though, so I’m also thinking it wouldn’t be as difficult as Touhou 3 (and it has focus thank god). Hahaha about Eiki and her free time, something similar happens in the Touhou 4 Extra with Marisa, she just wanders around into the Extra stage just to kill time xD

Glad you finally got to experience Touhou 2 and am enjoying it! Don’t forget to try out the MIDI soundtrack! It has quite a nice arrange on certain tracks and well worth another playthrough with it! Damn, I forgot about the Touhou 2 endings, it’s been around 4 years since I played that one! Thanks for clarifying where it’s from! xD Haha good joke and reference to Touhou 2 about Reimu’s hitbox, yes Reimu’s hitbox is a tad smaller than the other characters’ in the Windows games, so this joke makes sense lol.

Yes it will have an impact and make you bond with that character more, especially if you had never played a danmaku shmup before as I did and felt overwhelmed with everything around you! As I said in my previous post, Reimu saw some hardships being controlled by a newbie at shmups, let alone danmaku, but I was extremely happy when I finally cleared (no bombed) Touhou 2 (especially on Lunatic) for the first time, and she was with me throughout the whole ordeal! Oh yes true about Sakuya’s fight being memorable, everything about it is just ultra cool, the music really fits her, the time freezing, pointy knives as bullets . . . she just really fits the role of Remilia’s bodyguard and a Stage 5 boss :) Yes I too see Reimu as the icon for Touhou, it just fits as the shrine maiden ‘exterminating’ the youkai causing trouble. Ahh yes, while it requires more skill to work your way through the ocean of bullets to get under the boss, I appreciate needle Reimu and Marisa’s power (as you said the health bar melts), it’s like your reward for managing to work your way there :)

A friend showed me the first 5 episodes of Heroes (we were out for a pizza, but were just glued to his phone lol watching that in awe). Yeah lots of people didn’t really click with GT overall, heard lots of negativity about it, but I heard there’s a cool fight against Shenron in it that’s not worth missing out on! Z Kai is drawn differently though, so I wouldn’t mind giving that a rewatch, especially since Dragon Ball Z is just epic all-round! Thanks for the heads up about Beerus becoming a main character, makes Super sound even better! Hopefully him and Goku will get a rematch again at some point!! Yeah you just can’t go wrong with the Beerus movie, that fight is just epic in EVERY WAY: ‘I will not let you destroy my WOOOOORRRRLLLLDDD!!’. Brr, gives me chills down my spine just thinking about it! Hahahaa yeah true that about Marisa, she’s your typical trouble maker, and it’s what makes her precious in her own way xD Haha didn’t know that about Marisa saying that to Eiki, definitely got something to look forward to then when I play 9! xD And yeah, completely agreed, ‘you’re not fooling anyone Marisa’ :P Haha yeah definitely a thief, poor Patchouli and her books lol, and who knows what else she steals that I don’t know about :P She’s such an amusing character xD Yes it definitely is fascinating as you’re saying that such a simple ability ‘float’ could become so powerful, makes you see what a genius ZUN really is to read into something so much and amplify such a basic ability! Ahhh the Last Words are amazing, I haven’t experienced them yet personally, but saw most of them on Youtube, and they look incredible! Touhou 8 is gonna be loads of fun!! xD

Yeah I get what you mean, all my friends and coworkers just see it as ‘extra stress’ rather than mega fun like we do :( Even one of my biggest friends tell me ‘I want to relax and kill something in a game after work, not do something that’s more stressful than my work day!’. I really don’t get why most people see difficulty as stress, I believe a challenge is healthy and keeps you motivated, plus the sense of accomplishment and self-worth after beating these games is unrivaled by ANYTHING I have ever done in life.

Thanks for the Arietta Incalzando album link, I’ll definitely have to give that a listen (been really busy these past couple of days). Yes I quite enjoy that Koishi arrange as it sounds eerie at points which I feel really fits her. I love Koishi’s theme, it’s one of my favourites, amazing how it could go from menacing to cutesy in a heartbeat. Plus Koishi is very special to me since I told you it was the first thing I had seen about Touhou, and started playing these games cause of her fight! Check this out if you like Koishi’s theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61-RF-q7RmI It’s called Paranoia by Digital Wing. I love the slightly warped voice, and how the song starts with the DJ giving that small introduction in English, to then just getting sucked into Koishi’s theme in Japanese vocals!

Ahhh brilliant, the Ques Q Kourindou versions of Marisa and Reimu really are high quality figures! I love mine to bits, especially the Reimu one, she is just too damn adorable, and the attention to detail is astounding! (the creases in her dress, the stitching on her cute red and white shoes, her flowy hair, the small crosses on the ends of her hair bangs, real big well done to Ques Q on this one!). I’m hoping you’ve received yours by now and am happily enjoying her accompanying Marisa :) Yeah as far as scales go, that Reimu will compliment your Marisa, cause then the Reimu I have pre-ordered is huge at 43cm!! Really can’t wait for her to arrive!! She’s got such a cute face, and those beautiful long legs *rawr* ;) Ahh yes that Koishi is awesome too, almost all Ques Q figures are brilliant, I love how attentive they are to small details like a heart under her shoe for example! Haha I’ve been figure collecting for 3 years, you’ll get a collection like that in time don’t worry ;) Plus I have a VERY generous sister who while she doesn’t play Touhou, loves watching me play it and loves the characters, so she always dives in and gets me a couple of figures for birthdays and Christmas :) Plus I’ve got some of them that are dirt cheap, like the SEGA prize figures or the fuRyu ones, those only set me back like 30 Euros including shipping. The Ques Q ones then. . . go for like 150+ Euros as you already know. Doesn’t help getting slammed with an extra 20% duty/VAT from customs as well :/ The trick is to try pre-ordering when possible. If you miss the pre-order period, the prices shoot up on the second hand market then :( Ques Q have this *AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL* Yuyuko, but I could never find her anywhere for less than around 400 USD :( https://myfigurecollection.net/item/102204 I only found her cheaper used, but I’m scared she’ll come with a broken butterfly or something and I don’t want to risk that! Ahhh yes definitely about fireworks, I had read about it somewhere ages ago, and kept it in mind, and it really does fit (albeit being quite an easy and simple spell card compared to what we’re used to haha) :P Haha definitely accompanied by Touhou music, and the more colourful the better! xD

Really happy to hear that you got the tooth pain sorted out! Now yes, you can get back to focusing on your original goals without that mind-numbing pain! Touhou is tough enough as it is, last thing you need is pain to distract you :/ Ahh that’s brilliant about the Touhou 7 Phantasm, and am also glad to hear you also cleared it in the Personal Message! I know Yukari is one of your favourites, and also it being one of your original goals, so it must mean a lot to you to have that cleared! (same as it would for me once I take down Koishi, so I truly get what you mean!) Well done on also using your own replays to learn the attacks that were giving you trouble, I do that too but with recordings instead of replays. I record every gaming session I do, and when something gives me lots of trouble I just sit there and watch my recordings and study the attack to see if I could understand how it’s working, which parts of it are aimed at me, why certain bullets act the way they do, etc. It really helps! Yeah your skills will definitely shoot up in a couple of months as you’re noticing yourself! That’s why you should never feel disheartened with the series, as you’re seeing for yourself, things you thought you were incapable of suddenly became reality in just a few months! :D Really happy for you my friend, I know this fight means a lot to you! Yeah the Last Word version of Yukari’s last spell card is amazing, so many different patterns in one card! It’s a really cool spell card which will take some good practice to learn it all (plus the Last Words have to be done Perfect if I’m not mistaken so no room for error!). Yes definitely understood on the adrenaline and rage and lack of focus, I’m my own worst enemy sometimes and the damn rage I produce, and the closer I am to beating the game, the more adrenaline is pumping through me (only 1 life left against a final boss, remember no bombs to fall back on, so it’s literally do or die here!!). It is a wonderful feeling at the same time though, kinda like what Goku was going through vs Beerus in the movie, alone in space fighting against a terrifyingly strong opponent!! True that about the overdetermination working against you, it can’t be helped though, cause it’s something that we want SOOOO MUCH, so no wonder we get so fueled with adrenaline!

Ahh yes definitely, both the bullet spawning in rapid succession sound, and also the grazing sound I love, something so miniscule, but makes it so much more immersive at the same time! Glad to hear you didn’t find the transition to using more of the screen so difficult! That will really help you in certain parts on Lunatic, especially getting up closer to a boss when you see your openings to deal more damage! Yes a beginner might be able to pull off playing higher up on screen, but initial reaction of seeing all those bullets will be to stay at the bottom, especially if someone is new to bullet hell / started a new Touhou game and not knowing what to expect next. Yes definitely, that’s what makes Touhou extremely fun, you just keep playing and eventually you’ll see the solution to something that was troubling you before on your own. Like the ‘green wall’ in the Touhou 2 Stage 3 boss, at first I just used to get hit EVERY SINGLE TIME I get to that attack on Hard/Lunatic, one day I’m just sitting there waiting for my inevitable death, and I finally saw the gap!!! Trivialized it every time after that! xD

Yep, as I’ve mentioned before, the stage portion actually gives me more trouble than the Flandre fight! (except her final spell card QED). Lots of Flan’s attacks are easily memorizable, so once you get to grips with them you could do lots of them perfect most of the time. Ahh yeah, I get you about the getting through the stage portion with enough resources, especially on Touhou 15 which is regarded as so difficult! Yeah I understand that about the bombs not being so useful, I’ve seen vids where Flan even turns into a bat if you trying bombing against her, and she doesn’t take damage in her bat form. Why better off losing a life for Virtue of Wind God rather than bombing? (cause your power drops with each bomb used?) You stated ‘That's incredibly impressive you've managed to do those though, I'd love to be able to play at that level eventually’, thanks for your compliment, I appreciate it that someone appreciates all that effort that goes into hitting these No Bomb 1ccs, well, you could play at that level whenever you want to! Remember, I had no prior experience to shmups or danmaku before, I just started off No Bombs instantly. I didn’t like the feeling of clearing everything off of the screen, and had seen someone do the Koishi fight PERFECT (my god what skill!!!), and Jaimers doing several of the games No Bombs, and as soon as I saw that these things are achievable by others, I just decided to start playing the games like that straight away. Sure it was a VERY difficult road (especially Lunatic for the first time), so don’t get me wrong, but all you need is lots of determination, patience, and practice! If anything, you’ve got an advantage over how I started, cause you’ve got almost all the games cleared on Normal I believe, and quite some Extra experience, so you’ve already experienced the story that the official games have to offer, plus also faced a variety of different spell cards :) So No Bombs might not be as far away from your reach as you’re thinking if it interests you that much. Ahhh, I could imagine crashing into the boss when going above the PoC being very frustrating, and rather than frustrating, feeling disappointed in yourself for doing such a silly mistake. Happens to the best of us mate don’t worry too much about it, we all get derp moments, thankfully you came back fresh the next day and got your clear ;) Ooooh so true about the game continuously crushing your ego. Someone in the comments on Youtube once said ‘Touhou is a soul crushing game’, and I greatly agree with that statement. But we keep at it, and eventually we trump over those bosses that gave us such heartbreaking failures :)

Fully agree with this whole paragraph here. What’s worse than that though is going extremely well, and to ruin a run at Stage 5. I remember one of my attempts at Touhou 5, I lost my first life at Yumeko (the Stage 5 boss), so the run was going perfectly till that point, with a very high chance to get my 1cc, and that’s it, once I lost that life it’s like I snapped out of my zen state, and she r*ped my stock of lives. I just lost my flow completely. That is just soul-crushing and frustrating beyond belief.

Really happy to hear about the tooth pain completely healed!! So now you’re back to focusing on the actual game without any external factors in the way! :D Ahhh, real life problems, everyone has some of those, and unfortunately yes, they will get in the way of HOW WELL you play, and HOW MUCH you play. Speaking of real life problems, life had to kick me where it hurts deepest, last week I was in the middle of a gaming session, and my TV suddenly got these green and purple lines, and *boom* keeps switching on and off every 3 seconds or so :’( So I’m Touhouless currently :’( I’m getting by watching anime on my laptop (15” compared to my 46” TV, not happy!!!), and getting some more time with Touhoumon on my PSP, but I *GREATLY MISS* bullet dodging (I play on my gaming pc which is powerful enough to record gameplay also, my laptop is just a weak i3 for casual emails and day to day stuff). It’s at the TV repair guy’s at the moment, got a call from him today morning, he thinks it’s the main board, he managed to procure one and is going to try replacing it tonight, and said if it was the problem I should have it in my hands this weekend / early next week. Fingers crossed. . . . cause I’m going crazy here and life feels so empty :’( Oh, about getting antsy when not playing for a while, 100% agreed there, I’ll be at work like a bundle of nerves, constantly tapping my fingernails against the desk, and my foot rapidly on the floor, all my coworkers notice something’s up and not right. Gaming does have addictive properties, cause they make us feel good. I mean let’s face it, in real life, I’m a clerk that deals with purchasing spare parts and invoicing *yawn*, in the virtual world, I’m a magical girl with powers flying around dodging hundreds of bullets in these ultra epic fights! . . . Which would you prefer??? :P

Ahh that’s awesome, you’ve got some very nice progress in in 9 months, and there’s no shortage of things to learn, believe me, you’ll keep improving. I keep seeing growth in myself after every Touhou game I clear (most notably Touhou 3 and Seihou for me were my biggest boosters), so we’re constantly getting better and better! Especially once you start hitting more Hards and Lunatics, your skill level will shoot up too, all the Extras you’re doing (especially your 15 one) will also come into play ;)

Same here my friend, no one I know (both in real life, and online) loves this series as much as you do, so I’m also happy that I found someone to talk to that just adores everything about it as I do :) Coincidentally I was talking to my sis about our posts yesterday, and I said it’s a real damn shame we live in different countries, cause we’d be mega good friends if we could meet up! Strange how you can feel so close to someone you never met, and in such a short time period too. No worries about the delay in replying, I know these posts got quite huge in a short time span, and yes, I’d want these posts to stay fun and reply when you feel like sharing, not ‘something you have to do’ against your will just cause it’s been a while since you last replied.

Geez, that must be pretty ridiculous if you can't even find videos of others doing a no bomb run of it either. I certainly can't remember Marisa ever using duplication in the main series! She no doubt stole the idea from Flandre XD And angel wings? Does she not use her broom then? It'd be pretty hard to imagine Marisa flying without it lol. I'll try to squeeze in a Seihou game sometime soon here! It's tough with so many different 1ccs I'm looking at doing but it could be a nice change of pace too. And yeah, when you put it that way I can completely see the appeal to the no bomb run as someone who wants to experience Touhou as much as possible. I think I had a misconception that it was how it limited your resources even more, but now I see that when you remove them you're making it so you need to give it your absolute all to beating *every* spell card in the game. I actually tried a couple no bomb runs in PCB normal yesterday to see how it'd go. Completely removed my bomb key from my keyboard just to make sure I wouldn't accidentally slip up and hit it by mistake >.> On both attempts I managed to make it into the Youmu boss fight in stage 5 so I think even on the games I know a little better at normal difficulty it'd still take a bit of work for me to get a no bomb run but shouldn't be too far out of my comfort zone for trying to get use to it. It makes sense that I started losing lives when I did considering I'm already used to doing stages 1-3 without bombs but I haven't practiced stages 4-6 in most games much without them so I'll need to adjust to that. I'm think for PCB normal I'd be best off use using the stage practice for 4-6 to practice until I'm more comfortable in those fights without bombs before I attempt more proper 1ccs. The saddest part of no bomb runs is having to remind myself not to feel excited at seeing a bomb powerup drop on screen, but I'm guessing that will fade in time.

I'll make sure to try the midi soundtrack on my next playthrough of 2! I was hoping to work more on one of the other 2 Reimu shot types in normal this weekend but just got caught up doing several other things. I'd like to try and get them soon though well the game is still fresh in my mind. The ending I got only mentioned the scent bit so my guess is each of the 3 endings probably reveals one of the purposes of the orbs.

Those first clears are always the most satisfying and memorable. Especially if it's something that feels like a milestone like your first 1cc or the first Extra or first Lunatic 1cc. Hell, even though it was only in easy mode I still remember just how proud I felt for that first 1cc in PCB with Sakuya. During those days even easy mode felt like I was being thrown into an ocean to drown in. Thankfully I've made a bit of progress myself on my journey since then :P

Don't get me wrong with GT, it definitely has some good moments, I just feel Super goes with the story as the proper sequel to Z since it was done by the original creator so if you're planning on watching both eventually I'd go with Super first. Also you'd probably enjoy the follow up movie to the one you watched called Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F'. It's worth noting that the movies also are basically just the first few seasons in the actual Super anime just condensed down. Ahhh sorry I probably shouldn't be spoiling those kind of moments for you as they're pretty hilarious when you see them in game XD It does seem like Patchouli gets hit the hardest from Marisa's 5 finger discount. I adore Marisa but good lord do I *not* enjoy fighting her lol. She has some cool spell cards but she's also extremely proficient at making me want to put my fist through my monitor :P 8 is amazing btw, it's absolutely in my personal top 3 favorite games in the entire series. I've done about half of the Last Words so far and they're some of the coolest spell cards in the series I've seen (Kaguya's "Tree-Ocean of Hourai" is simply incredible <3).

My friends say the exact same thing  ::) The funny part is while I can't deny there is a lot of stress that comes with Touhou it can be surprisingly relaxing as well at times, especially when you really hit the flow and enter that almost zen kind of mode. It can be rare but I've had those moments where you're playing in lunatic mode or an extra and you're just so into it that even in a complex and dense spell card you can just feel completely calm, like abnormally calm and relaxed like a kind of zen state. Mind you those moments are rare and far between and I can't really control them but when they do happen my confidence and skill feel like they absolutely skyrocket. See it's stuff like this which is hard to explain to people who don't play. 100% agreed on the sense of accomplishment and self-worth you get from this being unrivaled. It's like you spend your whole life telling yourself you know what you can and can't do and this series comes along and showed me that I really had absolutely no idea of what I was capable of. I think the same goes for most people too, I think nearly anyone is capable of doing everything I've done or even that you've done as long as they have the determination. There's also something oddly addicting about challenging yourself that I can't say I ever truly felt in my life before playing Touhou but now has grown into almost an obsession too. 

Oh that's a cool Koishi cover! I didn't think I'd like the vocal touhou covers much but surprisingly enough a lot of the ones I hear is actually pretty great. Bad Apple and Little Devils Apple are both fantastic of course. I also stumbled on one for Sakuya's theme by ShibayanRecords a while back I think is all kinds of fantastic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNhw6bFVhD0 the 6 minute mark gets especially good. You know, I think Koishi is the most I've ever liked a character I've never even actually met XD I still haven't seen her in any of the games or printed works properly yet but I know a fair bit about her character just from reading on the series. Back when I started talking about Touhou to some of my other friends who knew nothing about it I'd send them Koishi's TV tropes page just to give them an idea of just how much depth there was to this series despite the more cutesy style and tone.

Yes I got my Reimu figure in finally and she couldn't be more wonderful and adorable. Definitely had to pay a pretty penny for her and Marisa but well worth it for the high quality. Actually that's only half true, well the figure was pricey itself I only had to pay 25 bucks for the Reimu one since I had enough points on the site I buy them from to cover the rest of the cost of the figure and just had to pay the S&H :) (I use Tokyo Otaku Mode because when you buy figures during their sales you get a bunch of points back that can be used as currency for future purchases) This is my current Touhou collection if you're interested in seeing! https://i.imgur.com/PXyqhzH.jpg its grown so large that I had to temporarily put the figures on the shelf with my PMMM ones lol. Once I get a few more Touhou figures (also forgot to mention I *really* want the Ques Q Alice figure too http://honya-ch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ques-q-alice-margatroid-dx-type-11.jpg Pretty sure that will be my next purchase) I'll give them their own shelf to shine on too ^_^ That is an absolutely *gorgeous* Yuyuko btw! I absolutely want it eventually but at that price point I'd definitely wait a while. It's one of the unfortunate aspects about being a late comer to the series is some of these things which came out a while ago can be quite expensive to get my hands on. Same thing with the Reimu one you're getting (1/4 scale figure, that is pretty damn big!) absolutely beautiful, I also like the playful look they went with on that one. Also that's great your sister does that for you! Mine is wonderful for letting me talk about it so much and picked up a good chunk of the games for me when she was in Japan (so much cheaper getting them over there then it is buying them here).

Thank you again! :D Yes I'm extremely pleased about beating Yukari. It's a big personal milestone for me and I'm still kind of savoring that feeling of accomplishment. I know now there's tougher things in this series then her but starting out with PCB her and the Phantasm Stage seemed like a distant dream. I really can't wait to see Yukari's Last Word but it seems like you need to unlock every other one first and I still have several others I need to unlock. There's extremely little room for error. Some seem a bit worse then others. Kaguya's took me like 70 attempts to get compared to Youmu's which somehow only took 2. Oh you use video capture software? That's perfect because that's exactly what I want to be doing. What program do you use for that? I have FRAPS but I feel that would eat up to much hard drive space. Do you need a powerful PC in order to do that? Sorry for the questions but I'd really like to be doing this too. I'd also say the comparison with Goku and Beerus is actually appropriate. One of the most important aspects to Goku's character is how he wants to keep pushing himself and challenging himself to go past his limits and this really gets explored in Super as well as you can see with the Beerus movie. As a Touhou player I feel you'll have a very unique appreciation for Goku's arc in Super. You're right about the overdetermination being something we can't fully help. I aim to remain centered while I play but when you're pouring everything you got into beating a 1cc you can't stop that adrenaline from going crazy, and tbh it's one of the things that makes this series so addictive to so I can't say I'd want to fully remove that aspect. It can make us play a bit sloppy at times but it's also part of what drives and motivates you too I feel.

I love that feeling when you've been struggling on an attack for a while and then randomly on an attempt you manage to figure out the attack. Sometimes it happens right away, sometimes I'll be on my 50th attempt on a spellcard before I manage to figure it out. Makes me wonder how many spell cards in the series I haven't even actually really figured out yet without even realizing it. Like those moments when you realize that a spellcard that looks like a random clusterf*ck is really just a concealed streaming pattern. It feels so damn good when you do figure something new like that yourself though, especially when like what you said with the 3rd boss in the 2nd game it just completely trivializes something you previously struggled with.

Oh yeah, it seems like most if not all the extra stage bosses are immune to bombs (9 being an exception), and I think in rare cases some bosses in the normal game can be too (I seem to recall Remilia going bat formed too during 1 or 2 of her attacks if you tried to bomb). Yukari takes this an extra step further as in some cases she'll even halt the timer while the bombs are active. In the case of Kanako's last spellcard part of it is yeah that it drains your power to bomb, also combined with the fact the boss immunity to damage from it lasts longer then the bomb does. If you drain yourself to 1 power during that attack you're going to be struggling a whole lot. There's actually a few spell cards in the series that will become extremely messy if you try and rely on bombs too much. Ah Jaimers, his videos heavily inspired me starting out. Seeing what an expert who actually knew the series could do... I'd love to be trying more of the no bomb runs myself, I just need to train myself to get in that mindset which will take some work and adjusting. The thing that made the Ran death so humiliating was there was nothing else on the screen, and it's not like she moved. She was just chilling in the middle of the top of the screen when I slammed myself right into her  :o Keep in mind this is after I did the first 95% of the Extra Stage extremely well too. I can laugh at it now but at the time I wanted to cry.  It's a good reminder for this series though that it's never over until it's over no matter how well you've done or how comfortable you think you are with what's to come.

Ouch, that sucks with Yumeko! That's so painful when you've been playing perfectly right up until that point :( Having to restart when literally a minute ago you were killing it. Mistakes are incredibly common but everynow and then it just has this kind of immediate snowball effect and no amount of effort will let you recover and you just end up crashing and burning. This is why Reisen is the best stage 5 boss from any of the games, because most of the time I can actually catch up on her fight if I was already doing poorly from the previous stages. She's the one stage 5 boss that has saved more 1ccs than she's ruined for me.

Oh no! I'm so sorry to hear about the TV D: The only thing that I find kind of helps me when I can't play is going for a walk, putting on some Touhou music and completely zoning out as my brain does its thing. Even then though it can't fully fill in the gap from being deprived of Touhou. Hopefully you've managed to get that fixed by now and haven't snapped in the process x.x On the plus side it's quite wonderful that first moment you can load up the game again and play properly. It absolutely is addictive! Especially MMOs or games like Touhou which is almost intended to be targetted at the obsessive crowd. I know several of my coworkers can generally tell how much Touhou I've been playing based on my mood lol. Hahahaha well I know which I'd prefer but I think I'm quite biased on that one ;) I find I have to actively go out of my way to push myself at work just to feel engaged because Touhou has accustomed me to trying to process so many things at once and anything that feels too boring it's easy to switch my brain off, although in those cases I'll usually just be thinking about Touhou anyways.

I'd say you're absolutely right. I don't feel like I've come anywhere near hitting my skillcap yet and there's never been a significant period of time yet where I didn't feel like I was still improving or learning (even if standalone sessions sometimes make me feel that way). I kind of want to do LoLK Lunatic Point Device mode for that reason as both normal and hard difficulty in that mode really impacted what I was capable and comfortable with doing. I find anything that challenges me will help me improve to some degree though, and I think the things that push you the hardest also have the most impact on your improvement because you're constantly trying to push through your limits. I've definitely learned a ton from the Extra Stages I've done in the last few months I feel is going to be extremely useful pushing more hard and lunatic 1ccs. I still need to get back to working on 15s Extra again here as well which I'd imagine will just help me improve more. You know I think I've attempted 15s Extra more times already than I had on Ran, Yukari and both my 9 Extra 1ccs all combined  :V I've heard it's supposedly much easier with Sanae and Reisen but I've come so far with Reimu it just wouldn't feel right switching at this point.

It is a shame! I'd imagine we would spend endless hours just gushing about nothing but Touhou ;) I'm so use to having to hold back around people irl too to keep from annoying them too much but if left uncontrolled I doubt I'd ever shut up about it. Aye I know what you mean, and all we really needed to know to become good friends was each others love for the series. That's the sort of genuine love that can't be faked. There's a few people who know I love this series but you're the only one I've met that truly gets to what extent and why. Even if you're far away I'm grateful to have at least one person to properly share the series with! If you ever find yourself on my side of the world though (I live in Canada, not sure if I mentioned that already) or vice versa then we can meet up for coffee and likely spend all day talking Touhou :D
« Last Edit: June 25, 2019, 05:33:48 AM by Dreamleaf »

Re: My first lunatic 1cc
« Reply #36 on: July 03, 2019, 02:10:51 PM »
Belated congrats. Kaeiduka is a weird choice for a Lunatic clear at all, let alone a first one... it's a strange game that works in strange ways. So there's a lot of respect warranted here.

Re: My first lunatic 1cc
« Reply #37 on: July 04, 2019, 05:48:58 AM »
Belated congrats. Kaeiduka is a weird choice for a Lunatic clear at all, let alone a first one... it's a strange game that works in strange ways. So there's a lot of respect warranted here.

Thank you! It certainly is a strange game and not one I would have expected to have been my first Lunatic (and Extra) clear but I found I was picking up on it significantly quicker than in the other games for some reason.

Lunatic_Reimu

  • No Bomb Enthusiast
Re: My first lunatic 1cc
« Reply #38 on: July 05, 2019, 12:22:37 PM »
Geez, that must be pretty ridiculous if you can't even find videos of others doing a no bomb run of it either. I certainly can't remember Marisa ever using duplication in the main series! She no doubt stole the idea from Flandre XD And angel wings? Does she not use her broom then? It'd be pretty hard to imagine Marisa flying without it lol. I'll try to squeeze in a Seihou game sometime soon here! It's tough with so many different 1ccs I'm looking at doing but it could be a nice change of pace too. And yeah, when you put it that way I can completely see the appeal to the no bomb run as someone who wants to experience Touhou as much as possible. I think I had a misconception that it was how it limited your resources even more, but now I see that when you remove them you're making it so you need to give it your absolute all to beating *every* spell card in the game. I actually tried a couple no bomb runs in PCB normal yesterday to see how it'd go. Completely removed my bomb key from my keyboard just to make sure I wouldn't accidentally slip up and hit it by mistake >.> On both attempts I managed to make it into the Youmu boss fight in stage 5 so I think even on the games I know a little better at normal difficulty it'd still take a bit of work for me to get a no bomb run but shouldn't be too far out of my comfort zone for trying to get use to it. It makes sense that I started losing lives when I did considering I'm already used to doing stages 1-3 without bombs but I haven't practiced stages 4-6 in most games much without them so I'll need to adjust to that. I'm think for PCB normal I'd be best off use using the stage practice for 4-6 to practice until I'm more comfortable in those fights without bombs before I attempt more proper 1ccs. The saddest part of no bomb runs is having to remind myself not to feel excited at seeing a bomb powerup drop on screen, but I'm guessing that will fade in time.

I'll make sure to try the midi soundtrack on my next playthrough of 2! I was hoping to work more on one of the other 2 Reimu shot types in normal this weekend but just got caught up doing several other things. I'd like to try and get them soon though well the game is still fresh in my mind. The ending I got only mentioned the scent bit so my guess is each of the 3 endings probably reveals one of the purposes of the orbs.

Those first clears are always the most satisfying and memorable. Especially if it's something that feels like a milestone like your first 1cc or the first Extra or first Lunatic 1cc. Hell, even though it was only in easy mode I still remember just how proud I felt for that first 1cc in PCB with Sakuya. During those days even easy mode felt like I was being thrown into an ocean to drown in. Thankfully I've made a bit of progress myself on my journey since then :P

Don't get me wrong with GT, it definitely has some good moments, I just feel Super goes with the story as the proper sequel to Z since it was done by the original creator so if you're planning on watching both eventually I'd go with Super first. Also you'd probably enjoy the follow up movie to the one you watched called Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F'. It's worth noting that the movies also are basically just the first few seasons in the actual Super anime just condensed down. Ahhh sorry I probably shouldn't be spoiling those kind of moments for you as they're pretty hilarious when you see them in game XD It does seem like Patchouli gets hit the hardest from Marisa's 5 finger discount. I adore Marisa but good lord do I *not* enjoy fighting her lol. She has some cool spell cards but she's also extremely proficient at making me want to put my fist through my monitor :P 8 is amazing btw, it's absolutely in my personal top 3 favorite games in the entire series. I've done about half of the Last Words so far and they're some of the coolest spell cards in the series I've seen (Kaguya's "Tree-Ocean of Hourai" is simply incredible <3).

My friends say the exact same thing  ::) The funny part is while I can't deny there is a lot of stress that comes with Touhou it can be surprisingly relaxing as well at times, especially when you really hit the flow and enter that almost zen kind of mode. It can be rare but I've had those moments where you're playing in lunatic mode or an extra and you're just so into it that even in a complex and dense spell card you can just feel completely calm, like abnormally calm and relaxed like a kind of zen state. Mind you those moments are rare and far between and I can't really control them but when they do happen my confidence and skill feel like they absolutely skyrocket. See it's stuff like this which is hard to explain to people who don't play. 100% agreed on the sense of accomplishment and self-worth you get from this being unrivaled. It's like you spend your whole life telling yourself you know what you can and can't do and this series comes along and showed me that I really had absolutely no idea of what I was capable of. I think the same goes for most people too, I think nearly anyone is capable of doing everything I've done or even that you've done as long as they have the determination. There's also something oddly addicting about challenging yourself that I can't say I ever truly felt in my life before playing Touhou but now has grown into almost an obsession too. 

Oh that's a cool Koishi cover! I didn't think I'd like the vocal touhou covers much but surprisingly enough a lot of the ones I hear is actually pretty great. Bad Apple and Little Devils Apple are both fantastic of course. I also stumbled on one for Sakuya's theme by ShibayanRecords a while back I think is all kinds of fantastic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNhw6bFVhD0 the 6 minute mark gets especially good. You know, I think Koishi is the most I've ever liked a character I've never even actually met XD I still haven't seen her in any of the games or printed works properly yet but I know a fair bit about her character just from reading on the series. Back when I started talking about Touhou to some of my other friends who knew nothing about it I'd send them Koishi's TV tropes page just to give them an idea of just how much depth there was to this series despite the more cutesy style and tone.

Yes I got my Reimu figure in finally and she couldn't be more wonderful and adorable. Definitely had to pay a pretty penny for her and Marisa but well worth it for the high quality. Actually that's only half true, well the figure was pricey itself I only had to pay 25 bucks for the Reimu one since I had enough points on the site I buy them from to cover the rest of the cost of the figure and just had to pay the S&H :) (I use Tokyo Otaku Mode because when you buy figures during their sales you get a bunch of points back that can be used as currency for future purchases) This is my current Touhou collection if you're interested in seeing! https://i.imgur.com/PXyqhzH.jpg its grown so large that I had to temporarily put the figures on the shelf with my PMMM ones lol. Once I get a few more Touhou figures (also forgot to mention I *really* want the Ques Q Alice figure too http://honya-ch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ques-q-alice-margatroid-dx-type-11.jpg Pretty sure that will be my next purchase) I'll give them their own shelf to shine on too ^_^ That is an absolutely *gorgeous* Yuyuko btw! I absolutely want it eventually but at that price point I'd definitely wait a while. It's one of the unfortunate aspects about being a late comer to the series is some of these things which came out a while ago can be quite expensive to get my hands on. Same thing with the Reimu one you're getting (1/4 scale figure, that is pretty damn big!) absolutely beautiful, I also like the playful look they went with on that one. Also that's great your sister does that for you! Mine is wonderful for letting me talk about it so much and picked up a good chunk of the games for me when she was in Japan (so much cheaper getting them over there then it is buying them here).

Thank you again! :D Yes I'm extremely pleased about beating Yukari. It's a big personal milestone for me and I'm still kind of savoring that feeling of accomplishment. I know now there's tougher things in this series then her but starting out with PCB her and the Phantasm Stage seemed like a distant dream. I really can't wait to see Yukari's Last Word but it seems like you need to unlock every other one first and I still have several others I need to unlock. There's extremely little room for error. Some seem a bit worse then others. Kaguya's took me like 70 attempts to get compared to Youmu's which somehow only took 2. Oh you use video capture software? That's perfect because that's exactly what I want to be doing. What program do you use for that? I have FRAPS but I feel that would eat up to much hard drive space. Do you need a powerful PC in order to do that? Sorry for the questions but I'd really like to be doing this too. I'd also say the comparison with Goku and Beerus is actually appropriate. One of the most important aspects to Goku's character is how he wants to keep pushing himself and challenging himself to go past his limits and this really gets explored in Super as well as you can see with the Beerus movie. As a Touhou player I feel you'll have a very unique appreciation for Goku's arc in Super. You're right about the overdetermination being something we can't fully help. I aim to remain centered while I play but when you're pouring everything you got into beating a 1cc you can't stop that adrenaline from going crazy, and tbh it's one of the things that makes this series so addictive to so I can't say I'd want to fully remove that aspect. It can make us play a bit sloppy at times but it's also part of what drives and motivates you too I feel.

I love that feeling when you've been struggling on an attack for a while and then randomly on an attempt you manage to figure out the attack. Sometimes it happens right away, sometimes I'll be on my 50th attempt on a spellcard before I manage to figure it out. Makes me wonder how many spell cards in the series I haven't even actually really figured out yet without even realizing it. Like those moments when you realize that a spellcard that looks like a random clusterf*ck is really just a concealed streaming pattern. It feels so damn good when you do figure something new like that yourself though, especially when like what you said with the 3rd boss in the 2nd game it just completely trivializes something you previously struggled with.

Oh yeah, it seems like most if not all the extra stage bosses are immune to bombs (9 being an exception), and I think in rare cases some bosses in the normal game can be too (I seem to recall Remilia going bat formed too during 1 or 2 of her attacks if you tried to bomb). Yukari takes this an extra step further as in some cases she'll even halt the timer while the bombs are active. In the case of Kanako's last spellcard part of it is yeah that it drains your power to bomb, also combined with the fact the boss immunity to damage from it lasts longer then the bomb does. If you drain yourself to 1 power during that attack you're going to be struggling a whole lot. There's actually a few spell cards in the series that will become extremely messy if you try and rely on bombs too much. Ah Jaimers, his videos heavily inspired me starting out. Seeing what an expert who actually knew the series could do... I'd love to be trying more of the no bomb runs myself, I just need to train myself to get in that mindset which will take some work and adjusting. The thing that made the Ran death so humiliating was there was nothing else on the screen, and it's not like she moved. She was just chilling in the middle of the top of the screen when I slammed myself right into her  :o Keep in mind this is after I did the first 95% of the Extra Stage extremely well too. I can laugh at it now but at the time I wanted to cry.  It's a good reminder for this series though that it's never over until it's over no matter how well you've done or how comfortable you think you are with what's to come.

Ouch, that sucks with Yumeko! That's so painful when you've been playing perfectly right up until that point :( Having to restart when literally a minute ago you were killing it. Mistakes are incredibly common but everynow and then it just has this kind of immediate snowball effect and no amount of effort will let you recover and you just end up crashing and burning. This is why Reisen is the best stage 5 boss from any of the games, because most of the time I can actually catch up on her fight if I was already doing poorly from the previous stages. She's the one stage 5 boss that has saved more 1ccs than she's ruined for me.

Oh no! I'm so sorry to hear about the TV D: The only thing that I find kind of helps me when I can't play is going for a walk, putting on some Touhou music and completely zoning out as my brain does its thing. Even then though it can't fully fill in the gap from being deprived of Touhou. Hopefully you've managed to get that fixed by now and haven't snapped in the process x.x On the plus side it's quite wonderful that first moment you can load up the game again and play properly. It absolutely is addictive! Especially MMOs or games like Touhou which is almost intended to be targetted at the obsessive crowd. I know several of my coworkers can generally tell how much Touhou I've been playing based on my mood lol. Hahahaha well I know which I'd prefer but I think I'm quite biased on that one ;) I find I have to actively go out of my way to push myself at work just to feel engaged because Touhou has accustomed me to trying to process so many things at once and anything that feels too boring it's easy to switch my brain off, although in those cases I'll usually just be thinking about Touhou anyways.

I'd say you're absolutely right. I don't feel like I've come anywhere near hitting my skillcap yet and there's never been a significant period of time yet where I didn't feel like I was still improving or learning (even if standalone sessions sometimes make me feel that way). I kind of want to do LoLK Lunatic Point Device mode for that reason as both normal and hard difficulty in that mode really impacted what I was capable and comfortable with doing. I find anything that challenges me will help me improve to some degree though, and I think the things that push you the hardest also have the most impact on your improvement because you're constantly trying to push through your limits. I've definitely learned a ton from the Extra Stages I've done in the last few months I feel is going to be extremely useful pushing more hard and lunatic 1ccs. I still need to get back to working on 15s Extra again here as well which I'd imagine will just help me improve more. You know I think I've attempted 15s Extra more times already than I had on Ran, Yukari and both my 9 Extra 1ccs all combined  :V I've heard it's supposedly much easier with Sanae and Reisen but I've come so far with Reimu it just wouldn't feel right switching at this point.

It is a shame! I'd imagine we would spend endless hours just gushing about nothing but Touhou ;) I'm so use to having to hold back around people irl too to keep from annoying them too much but if left uncontrolled I doubt I'd ever shut up about it. Aye I know what you mean, and all we really needed to know to become good friends was each others love for the series. That's the sort of genuine love that can't be faked. There's a few people who know I love this series but you're the only one I've met that truly gets to what extent and why. Even if you're far away I'm grateful to have at least one person to properly share the series with! If you ever find yourself on my side of the world though (I live in Canada, not sure if I mentioned that already) or vice versa then we can meet up for coffee and likely spend all day talking Touhou :D
Yes it?s quite a tough Extra, and Marisa is merciless if going no bombs, it purely is down to luck sometimes whether you?ll lose a life or not as her attacks weaken (i.e. shoot less bullets) the less orbs she has around her, so the same attack could be easy to dodge sometimes, but a complete wall another time (this attack with lots of orange bullets and blue lasers is mostly the one I?m referring to, you?ll know which one it is when you play it believe me haha). Yep I never heard of the duplication in the main series either, still is a nifty trick she picked up along the way, quite fun dodging 2 Marisa?s shooting fast pink bullets at you xD Yep, angel wings, check it out on a Seihou Extra video, no broom as far as I can tell, doesn?t look visible on the sprite :) Yeah I understand that, so many Touhou games and so many achievements to hit, but I think Seihou will be worth your while, makes for a huge change of pace too with everything being faster. Yep that?s it mainly for the No Bomb runs, I just want to experience/try dodging every attack at it?s hardest possible moment rather than bombing at the point where it gets too tough. As we?ve been saying, it?s fun learning and discovering patters in Touhou, so a No Bomb run is basically taking that element of learning to a deeper level :) Yeah, as you?re saying, you need to give it your all to master ?every spell card in the game?, well, almost every spell card, that?s what you have lives for :P The complete mastery is for those gods that hit Perfect Lunatics *bows head in respect*. I see from our PMs that you?re giving quite a good shot at the Normal No Bomb runs for PCB! Your last message said you made it to Yuyuko?s final card which is *REALLY* damn close, I hope you?re enjoying the thrill a No Bomb run gives as much as I do! xD Yes Stage Practice will definitely help, avoids lots of time wasted from having to run through stages 1 ? 3 all the time, which by that point, you?ll be doing perfect almost all the time (or losing a life during stage 3 sometimes). The Lunatic Perfect Stage Practices really help me out for when I go for the actual No Bomb runs. I remember in Seihou 1, the stage 4 boss used to r*pe me so bad (ironically enough although she?s stage 4, she?s way tougher than the stage 5 boss), after I managed to do her as a Lunatic Perfect Stage Practice, I even managed to hit her Perfect twice more while attempting a No Bomb run!! So Stage Practice really is your friend! She literally was my 1cc killer, while I don?t die at her hands, she used to take so many lives for me that it makes it ridiculously tough to finish off Vivit (the stage 6 boss), which has 3 forms to boot! Hahaha yeah, seeing a bomb pop up on screen in a No Bomb run is just a useless item I guess, don?t worry, that excitement will fade in time if you keep up with the No Bomb runs ;)

Yeah I liked the alternate MIDI soundtrack, make sure to try it out in Extra too! It?s not just for the main game! Sorry to hear about the busy weekend, more time for Touhou is always nice :?( Damn I?m completely blank about the endings mate, I only remember this stuff (the scent, not gaining weight from sweets, turn into a cat) just cause you?re mentioning it to me, it?s been about 4 years since I played Touhou 2 so I forgot this stuff, especially since I?ve only seen it a very few times when I cleared the game :( That?s why recording software is awesome, could have all of this archived to revisit when necessary or just feel like a nostalgia trip!

Yeah I agree, it could be why I hold Touhou 2 in such high regard since it?s the first actual danmaku shmup I played (Touhou 1 isn?t exactly a shmup). Haha yeah I believe you, first time I faced Lunatic I was terrified of the damn game, literally feeling claustrophobic ALL THE TIME, not comfy in the playing field. We?ve come a long way since then :) Now it?s as you?re saying, blissfully dancing in an ocean of bullets where nothing is more fun xD You?ve made *A LOT* of progress since then, give yourself some more credit ;)

Yeah I had heard that Super is the direct continuation of Z and that GT doesn?t fit in between them, which is why I was going to first watch GT, then Z Kai and Super after, so it?s like I got a refresher for Z with Kai before going into Super. Yes I also saw Resurrection F, I loved the ending, Vegeta f*cked up big time with Frieza, if it wasn?t for the gay guy that?s with Beerus (forgot his name) to rewind time, Frieza would have actually been victorious there! Ahh that?s awesome about the movies being a condensed version, so I get to see the Beerus fight again but in more length this time! xD No no, spoil away, I really don?t mind, if anything it gives me something to look forward to and keep my eyes peeled for when I start up that game :) I really don?t mind. Lol @ Marisa wanting to make you put your fist through the monitor hahaha, I completely get you, she?s so cheap sometimes. In Touhou 4 she has a random order of using her attacks, and sometimes it really works in her damn favour, like she?ll have left over bullets from her previous spell still lingering on screen, and she does this whip of stars which is quite tough to dodge when you?ve already got bullets around you from the previous attack still there :/ But it?s part of her charm I guess lol. Yes 8 really does look fantastic, both final bosses are cool, Eirin with her Hourai Elixir is extremely claustrophobic, and Kauya?s spell rush is just awesome and so colourful! Pair that with Spell Card Practice and Mokou?s really cool Extra, and 8 definitely deserves a spot as one of the tops! Damn, Tree Ocean of Hourai looks amazing! I only saw the wiki shot of it in the Touhou 8 wiki, but it does look awesome and sooooo colourful! So much amazing stuff still left in store for me to experience! xD

Ahhh yes, the zen state, few and far between as you?re saying, but when that happens, you?re like a bullet dodging machine, it?s like I?m subconsciously dodging bullets without even thinking about it, I don?t know how to properly explain it, it?s like it just comes to me, and I?m one with the game, like a damn replay instead of an actual person doing that stuff in real time. Shame it doesn?t happen as often as I?d want it to lol. Yeah, you?ve got no chance of explaining that to someone that doesn?t play Touhou, hell, I play the game and can?t even explain it properly, let alone someone that doesn?t :/ Yes I believe so too, I think anyone is capable of doing what we do in Touhou, it just takes *patience* (lots of it), and determination, and basically a will to never give up :) Definitely agreed about it becoming an obsession to challenge yourself, I was at a friend?s place last weekend, and he?s always been a PC gamer, and he just bought a PS4 Pro, and he told me he?s finding it tough to adapt to analog sticks, so I went over and showed him the ropes a bit (from my previous PS gaming years). We booted up Horizon, and goddamn, while it?s an aesthetically pleasing game, it?s just too damn easy!!! I?m used to keeping my eyes on hundreds of bullets all at the same time lol, it?s a joke being ?surrounded? by a couple of enemies jumping around me all taking their damn time to attack. So yeah, it definitely becomes an obsession and an addictive feeling, felt no self-worth AT ALL on Horizon, like I?m playing a damn kid?s game.

Glad you liked the Koishi cover :) I absolutely *LOVE* it, gets me so bouncy and hyper! I don?t think there?s ever been a time that I pressed skip when it pops up on my iPod?s shuffle. Which Bad Apple remix/arrange are you referring to? Bad Apple is an official theme in Touhou 4. Ahh Little Devil?s Apple is by Yuuhei Satellite, they?re brilliant, if I?m not mistaken they also do some of the OPs for the fanmade anime Fantasy Kaleidoscope. I checked out the Sakuya remix by ShibayanRecords you linked, and while I?m not really a fan of the first half of the song, *HOT DAMN* I just FELL IN LOVE with the 5 minute mark till the end, as you stated, it gets ESPECIALLY good there! This one is definitely going into my iPod as soon as I could use my gaming pc again (my iTunes library is on that pc and I can?t navigate without a TV :/). I?m making it a point to go listen to it at least once a day from my laptop, and I also LOVE the Sakuya pic they used in the video! Those menacing red eyes with those daggers drawn ready to be thrown. . . nice find xD Here?s an arrange of Touhou 7 Stage 2 for you, this one is by A-One. They have lots of techno/trancy/Eurobeat kind of arranges: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-yAo2BDrkU I just love her voice paired with the Stage 2 theme done techno-ized, she really could go soft during the normal verses and shift to high for the chorus which I really enjoy. Yeah TOTALLY AGREED on Koishi, she is just cool in every damn way, there?s something so appealing about her :D Hahaha she definitely is a little monster, despite the cutesy tone xD You must have scared your friends off good with her xD

Awww I?m happy to hear you finally got your Ques Q Reimu! xD She really is adorable, and the detail on her is astounding. Sh*t that?s damn good getting the figure for free with the points you racked up! I?ll definitely have to check out Tokyo Otaku Mode! I use AmiAmi and Ninoma mostly, and their point system sucks, I just get a few cents off x_X OMG those Forbidden Scrollery books are amazing, I?ve never seen them from the side, always the front cover, I just love the character illustrations on the side of them! Well done! That?s quite a nice collection you?re building up! :) I assume the other books to the left are the art books you have by Miyuki Ruria? Nice PMMM figures too btw, I was gonna start collecting anime figures also (most notably Dragon Ball and the Precures), but figured if I do that I?ll open a rabbit hole, and there?s more than enough Touhou content and merch to last me a lifetime, so, better not give more stuff for my brain to go OCD about haha :P Ahhhh yes that Ques Q Alice is wonderful, she?s definitely on my list as well, she always retails for around 250 USD wherever I see her. Make sure you get the DX version (the one you linked), there?s another version which is the same Alice but without the dolls. Granted you can buy these separately thankfully, but extra hassle to come across and find available for a good price (considering they?re just add-ons to the actual figure). Yes definitely about that Yuyuko and other merch that got released a while ago, very tough to find at a suitable price, or find at all! Some of this stuff got released in like 2011 so that?s 8 years ago so availability isn?t always guaranteed, or you?d have to pay an arm and a leg for them :?( I knoooow, that 1/4 Reimu is simply amazing, she?s gonna be the pride of my collection! September is getting closer and I?m gonna be so hyped for that one while she?s making her way from Japan to here!!!!! xD Yes she?s definitely got a face worth killing someone for! (Harsh expression I know, but I?d do anything for my Reimu lol, think yandere in anime :P). Hahaha from the sound of it we both drive our poor sisters nuts on Touhou lol xD  Ahhh she was in Japan??????? <3_<3 I?m jealous. She must have seen some very wonderful things there!

Haha happy to hear you?re still carrying your Yukari achievement with pride! Yes it definitely is a milestone, apart from being one of your starting goals, it?s also the only official Phantasm stage iirc :D Yeah getting through all the Last Words to unlock Yukari?s will take a while and lots of work, but you?ll get there eventually and savor the moment, I mean after all, it wouldn?t be Touhou if it didn?t make us suffer and work for our accomplishments would it? :P Yeah from what I?ve seen on Youtube it seems like some Last Words vary in difficulty from others. I expect most of them to be quite tough though seeing as they?re Last Words. Yep, as I told you in the PM, I use OBS Studio, I?ll post screenshots of all my settings tomorrow morning, you could use them as a starting point, then adjust where you see fit. I end up with a recording of around 18GB for an hour. File size could be *drastically* reduced if you use the Veryfast preset instead of Superfast like I do (talking maybe 8GB an hour instead of 13 - 15GB), but this will have a huge impact on your CPU, so make sure you could play the game well (i.e. check that the game isn?t stuttering and check the slowdown % at the results screen) and also that the recording doesn?t stutter. In my case, I could run Veryfast, but noticed that the recording is *very slightly* more jittery than it?s Superfast counterpart, so I went Superfast and live with the huge file sizes, stutter drives me crazy! I had tried FRAPS, didn?t really like the quality, I think you should see a definite improvement in quality with OBS. I?m not exactly sure on the requirements and how powerful a pc needs to be to record, but I?m sure that you won?t pull off 720/1080p 60fps with an i3 as I tried on a friend?s laptop and it was a complete disaster. I?ve got an i7-4790, GTX 980Ti, and 32GB RAM (I went a bit overkill on the RAM I reckon, I never see more than 20% of this being used so I think 16GB would be suitable, probably even 8GB). An i7 (or rarely some i5s) would help due to Hyperthreading, which greatly helps running two things (called threads) at once. On my GTX 980Ti, usage is only 30% while playing and recording at the same time, so you don?t need something as beefy as that I reckon to pull it off, but I?ve never tried one of the Touhou fighters, so these might push that 30% up a bit more. *Very important note*: Don?t record on the same HDD that you?re playing the game off of. Playing is a read operation, recording is a heavy write operation, you more likely than not will get stutters in either the game, or the recording if you use the same HDD. Oh, and never record onto an SSD, you?ll burn through it?s life with those constant big writes. SSDs like being read from, not written to frequently. For my set up, I?ve got 3 drives: an SSD for the OS, programs, and where the games are installed, a 7200rpm drive solely for recording, and a 7200rpm drive for storage. More info on this in tomorrow?s post! I?m alone at work on Saturdays, so I should have ample time to set up a neat post for you :) No worries about the questions btw, I?m glad to help if it could help you out :) Yes I could definitely see the relation to Goku as you?re saying, he?s one of the best fighters in the universe, so he always strives to become more and more powerful! Who knows what crazy forms he could reach now in Super! Yeah no control over the overdetermination I?m afraid, it?s just how our brain works when we?re trying to hit something that?s so important to us, I mean, it literally means the world to me, nothing is more important seriously, so of course my brain (and body) will react that way, especially at the later stages when you?re getting close to pulling it off! :) Yeah I agree, while the zen state is nice and calm and centered, I like the adrenaline rush more although it makes us play more sloppy as you stated. My legs start shaking, and my arms go numb sometimes, my breathing goes slow and heavy, and my heart feels like I?m going to have a heart attack at any moment, notably when I?m at the final boss and know I could do it!! It's things like these that make Touhou so wonderful, the immersion is totally unmatched by anything I have ever done in life before.

Yes definitely agree on that, it feels so satisfying finally figuring it out xD Indeed about the clusterf*ck being a concealed stream, one thing I learned throughout this series is if something is really giving me trouble or looking impossible, try streaming first, or even NOT MOVING as you?ll see in a part in the Touhou 2 Extra. Sometimes something is MUCH more simple than it seems, and the clusterf*ck is just there to misdirect your attention.

Ahh that?s cool about the Extra bosses being immune to bombs, I never knew that seeing as I never use them. Learn something new every day! xD Hhaahha that?s awesome about Yukari even halting the timer! She really takes it a step further! Yeah I thought that the power draining while using bombs might have something to do with Kanako?s last spell, damage out put must be miniscule if you drop the power level down to 1 :/ Yes definitely about Jaimers, when I saw that he was capable of No Bombing the games, I realized that these games are actually doable that way, so he did have quite an influence on me too. Hmm, about the Ran death, I think you were under a lot of pressure knowing that you?ve got a high chance of beating the Extra with the resources you had available, and yeah, that adrenaline takes over and makes us play sloppy sometimes or doing silly mistakes. As I said previously, don?t beat yourself too much about it, happens to the best of us ;) ?It?s never over till it?s over?, definitely so true, worst thing you could do is take it for granted and get overconfident. This also works in reverse though, getting to a final boss with just 1 life left, while it seems impossible, miracles do happen, so even there don?t give up and keep giving it your all!

Hahaha yeah, painful and sooooo frustrating, Yumeko is quite a beast, you?re in for one hell of a hard time when you do Touhou 5. . . I?d love to see her and Sakuya face off. . . both are final boss bodyguards, one uses broadswords, the other with daggers. Would be a really cool fight, but it?s just wishful thinking I reckon seeing as PC98 doesn?t get so much attention anymore :/ Yeah the snowball effect of mistakes, it?s horrible, and the rage doesn?t help at all, which is why it?s important to try staying focused and centering yourself as quick as possible so you snap back into the game, easier said than done though. Ahh, so you?re saying that Reisen is an easy stage 5 boss? That?s new, usually stage 5 bosses provide quite a challenge, but yeah it happens sometimes, as I stated in the first paragraph, the stage 5 boss in Seihou 1 is way easier than the stage 4 boss.

Aaaaannnddd finally I got my TV back late last night!!! :D Whooo this torture without Touhou finally came to an end. Been almost 3 weeks, and finally in 3 more hours I?ll get out of this prison (work) and happily be back in the Scarlet Devil Mansion :) Gonna get my a*s handed to me a couple of times after not playing for a while, but it?s still gonna be mega fun xD Didn?t get to play yesterday since the guy came really late with it (almost 9pm), but REALLY looking forward to it today! xD Hahaha I get you about your coworkers knowing how much you played by your mood. As we stated, we get a bit antsy without it xD To be expected though, its such a wonderful thing, and so much fun, and really releases those feel good chemicals inside me dodging through a hell of bullets! Haha I knew which you?d prefer about the clerk vs magical girl, just wanted to put it into perspective to really show the contrast of how dull real life is compared to the wondrous Gensokyo xD Oooh yes, I *completely* get what you mean about having to push yourself at work, it?s so mundane, easy, and repetitive, it?s literally mind-numbing, I?ll literally be operating on auto-pilot and most of the time don?t even remember that I did my work, cause I?ll just be off in my own little world while doing it without even thinking/paying attention.

In 9 months, definitely haven?t hit your skill cap yet, you?ve got way more to improve without even realizing! Another year will pass, and you?ll look back at today, and realize just how much better you got! The way you snap in and out of focus quickly, your control, the understanding of how certain attacks work, the way you read and tackle certain cards, etc. Bullet dodging is like a journey, as we said above, lots of growth for the player, and the more you go at it, the better you?ll get, but it by far isn?t a short and easy journey. Now you?re attempting some No Bomb runs too, so that will greatly push the limit that you?re used to :) Yes definitely about Touhou 15 Point Device Mode and anything you find that challenges you, once you initially get over that hump, it?s like that skill level sticks inside you then, and you become an even better player than you were a few weeks ago! Yeah with all the Extras you?ve hit, Hard should be right up your alley now, if anything, I believe Extra is harder than Hard but easier than Lunatic, so maybe Hard won?t be as troubling as it might seem with your experience now :) Damn, that seems like Touhou 15 Extra is really tough! Noooo, don?t abandon poor Reimu now that you?re so close with her! She is what Touhou is all about after all :D

Haha it truly is a shame, we talk in length over PMs and posts, let alone what we?d do actually conversing! Yep, same here about having to hold back, I start noticing that my friends are losing interest, or just not understanding what I?m saying anymore after a while, so yeah, I try keeping a lid on it, or brief at least, cause you could tell that someone just isn?t getting it anymore. Indeed, I see the same level of devotion I have inside of you, which just made us click so easily xD You look like the type that could go on about Touhou for hours non-stop, and I?m really glad we met, over something so simple like a congrats as well xD Ahhh definite meet up if we?re ever on each others side of the world! Would be my pleasure :)

Sorry for the delay in my reply btw, it?s been a really bad week, antsy starts turning into depressed after a while, paired with OCD, it?s quite easy to start getting frustrating and depressive symptoms. Thankfully with the TV back in hand, suddenly my life got full of colour again! xD As soon as I get home, I?ll jump onto Touhou 6, it?s been wayyyy too long, and I?ll prepare all the screenshots for OBS Studio :) Tomorrow morning I?ll layer it all out for you in a neat step by step post :) Take care, and happy Touhouing!! xD

Ok previewing this post, it turned out quite huge, I talk too much sometimes lol, feel free to cut corners where you deem necessary :/
« Last Edit: July 05, 2019, 09:03:12 PM by Lunatic_Reimu »

Lunatic_Reimu

  • No Bomb Enthusiast
Re: My first lunatic 1cc
« Reply #39 on: July 06, 2019, 09:45:37 AM »
As promised, here are the settings I use for OBS, I'll try walking you through it as simply as possible :)

First thing you want to do is make sure that Stereo Mix is Enabled in your pc's Sound settings to ensure you get sound in your recordings. Right-click on the Speaker icon in the Taskbar near your pc's clock, and click Recording Devices (or Sound if you're on Windows 10 and click the Recording tab in the window that opens), you should get something like this:



Right-click and make sure that Show Disabled Devices is checked, Stereo Mix will appear, right-click on it, and select Enable.

Right-click on Stereo Mix and choose Properties, a window will open, and navigate to the tab saying Advanced:



In the drop down menu, choose 2 channel, 24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality). Click OK.

We're back on the Sound Properties, click the Playback tab this time, and right-click Properties on your Speakers, click the Advanced tab. That will take you to this image:



In the drop down menu, choose 2 channel, 24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality). Click OK. This is so that you'll be hearing at the same Hz (frequency) that you'll be recording at. Press OK on this window, and OK again on the Sound Properties. Now you should have Stereo Mix enabled and set up to record at 24 bit 48000Hz. So, on we go onto the actual OBS!

Launch OBS, the first thing you'd want to do, is right-click on the Preview (that black screen), and make sure that Enable Preview is UNCHECKED:



This should make the UI less laggy and slightly less CPU usage too. Click Settings in the bottom right. You'll be taken to General settings:



IIRC I left all these at defaults, set them up like I have here. Next up, click the Stream tab on the left:



I left all these at defaults too, we're not streaming, we're recording. so this tab is useless for our needs. Next up, click Output in the left pane, at the top where it says Output Mode, set it from Simple to Advanced, you'll get something looking like this:



Notice that we're on the Streaming tab, you could just leave these on defaults, as stated above we aren't going to be streaming. Click on the Recording tab near Streaming, this is where the important settings are coming in:



Those are the settings I'm currently using, just to give you an explanation of what everything does:

In the Recording Path, set up the folder where your recordings will be saved to.

Recording format is the type of file that will be output, I go for mp4 because it is the most compatible and simplistic format for lots of devices to read, you could choose flv or mkv if you want. Note that if recording in mp4 or mkv and a power outage / BSOD happens, the whole recording is lost. If recording in flv, it will save up to that point. I find this useless for Touhou though cause you'll want a full run recorded, so I leave it on mp4 for convenience.

Check 1 audio track.

Encoder is what part of your pc you're going to be using to do the recording. x264 is your CPU, NVENC is your Nvidia GPU, and there's also QuickSync which is Intel's onboard processor. I found the best results with x264. NVENC was slightly blurry with loss of detail when compared to x264, so I'd heavily suggest x264 if your CPU could handle it.

*Very important* Leave Rescale Output UNCHECKED. We'll be doing this later in the Video tab with some extra settings don't worry.

At the bottom window where it says Rate Control, select CRF, this means Constant Rate Factor, or basically a simplified term is consistent quality.

In CRF, I have mine set to 10, but it could be a bit overkill. Here's an explanation of CRF. The LOWER you go, the BETTER the quality (more bitrate in your video). 0 is lossless (you don't want this, you'll be looking at around 5 - 6GB a minute!), 52 is the worst like these 240p crappy videos you see on Youtube. An acceptable range is starting from 15-20, and go lower if not happy with the quality. Note that file size will increase the lower you go! It's recommended to not go higher than 20.

CPU Usage Preset, this is how many CPU cycles get used on the image, or a simplified way to explain it is how much time the CPU will spend on each frame to make it look better. So the FASTER you go, the WORSE the quality is. Start off with Superfast or Veryfast. I wouldn't recommend going slower than Veryfast, this will really tax your CPU, for very little almost unnoticeable gains in quality, especially on constantly moving images like Touhou. On my pc, going from Superfast to Veryfast increases CPU usage by around 30 - 40%, so each step you go slower greatly impacts the CPU (unless you have something like a threadripper with 16+ cores). Note: you could also go Ultrafast, but this isn't recommended as it turns off some of x264's features. You'd notice a slight hit in quality being on Ultrafast, and ridiculously high file sizes (over 20GB for an hour), but very low CPU usage. If going for Veryfast, raise the CRF from 10 to 14 or 16. Since Veryfast is a slower preset than Superfast/Ultrafast, not as much bitrate is needed to make the image look the same. So the way it works is, a slower preset could afford a higher CRF number, a faster preset will need a lower CRF number so it makes up for the preset by increasing the bitrate instead.

Last thing is Profile. I have mine set to High. Important note, I'm not sure if you'd want to be showing your recordings to your sis or friends on your phone. If so, High might not work for the phone. I'd do a small 1 minute recording and copy it into the phone just to make sure that the phone could read it. If it can't, select Baseline or Main instead.

These are my settings for when I was using Veryfast as a preset in case the big file sizes of Superfast are inconvenient for you, but I found it slightly jittery for my liking which is why I went Superfast instead:



Next up, go to the Audio tab near Recording, not the Audio in the left pane:



Set the track 1 audio bitrate to 320. You could leave the others at defaults, we're only using 1 track.

Now go to the Audio tab in the left pane:



Switch Sample Rate to 48khz, this is why we set it up like that in Stereo Mix at the beginning of this post.

Next, go to the Video tab in the left pane:



Base Resolution is the game's resolution that you want to capture, so 640x480 for the old Touhous, and 1280x960 for the more recent ones from DDC upwards. 1280x720 for the later fighters from ULiL upwards.
Output Scaled Resolution is the resolution your video will be scaled up to (this is why I said to leave Rescale Output unchecked first, cause we'll do it from here instead). I have mine set to 1280x960 for the old Touhou games. Note, if you plan on uploading to Youtube, this might be troublesome because you'll get caught in their 720p bracket which is only 7,500 bitrate as opposed to their 1080p bracket which is 12,000 bitrate. You'll get some slight pixelation in scenes with lots of fast moving content. To get around this, you could go 1440x1080 so you'll fall in the 1080p bracket, but after talking with Agent of the BSoD, he recommended that it's better having the upscaled resolution at perfect integers rather than 2.25 ratio.
Downscale Filter, you'll want Lanczos for this as it provides 32 samples for scaling as opposed to the other 2 options which are 16 samples. Edges will look sharper rather than blurrier.
FPS is what FPS you want to capture at. I highly recommend 60 fps, 30 fps looks kinda stuck and jumpy.
If using Windows 7, you'd want to leave Disable Aero UNCHECKED. It helps OBS perform better, especially on Window Capture, which we'll be using for the PC98 games (don't worry, you'll still be playing them fullscreen).

Next is Hot Keys in the left pane, I left mine empty as all I do is hit Start recording from the main menu and stop the recording when I'm done, but you're free to add any if you want to for added convenience:



And finally from the settings is the Advanced pane on the left:



I left these at defaults too.

Save everything, and now we just need to set up the sources. We're almost done :)

Back at the main screen, ignore Scenes, and click the + where it says Sources, and you'll get a menu, we'll be using Game Capture for the Windows games, and Window Capture for the PC98 games if you're using T98 Next. Game Capture wouldn't work with T98, just outputs a black screen, so we'll get around that with Window Capture a bit further down. Let's do Game Capture first. Note, don't have 2 sources at the same time. Game Capture when you want to play the Windows games, Window Capture when playing PC98. You could easily delete a source by selecting it and pressing the - near the +.



After selecting Game Capture, you'll get a window, press OK, and it will lead you to this window:



All you need to do here is UNCHECK Capture Cursor and press OK. And that's it, OBS should hook to the Windows games on it's own.

So you'll end up with it looking like this:



Just hit Start Recording at the bottom right, minimize OBS, and launch the game and play :D When you quit out of the game, hit Stop Recording to save your video.

Now I'll show you how to set up the Window Capture for the PC98 games:

Launch T98 Next, and make it go into Windowed mode (press F12 and F10), leave the game running. In OBS press the + to bring up the Source Selection menu, this time choose Window Capture. Press OK, and you'll see something like this:



Make sure to UNCHECK Capture Cursor, and make sure that Window is saying Next.exe Emulation Window. You should see a small preview too to show that it hooked. Press OK, and that's it, it's hooked now, so you could launch OBS and press Start Recording, and launch T98 Next in Fullscreen, and OBS will capture it :D Note you'll need to do this every time you delete the Window Capture source and add it again (i.e. switching between playing Windows games and PC98 games), but once you hook it it will stay hooked till the next time you delete it. Make sure to do this or you'll end up with a black screen.

After hooking it and pressing OK, your main screen for OBS should look like this:



That's it, you're all set up and could start playing and recording. The next session is just some info on how to make sure everything is running well. After a recording session, click View at the top, and Stats:



That will open up this window for you:



What you need to look for here is the box I highlighted in red. Make sure that those percentages are under 1.0%, or you'll be seeing stuttering and dropped frames in your video. The stats screen should also tell you if you're getting any encoding issues. I'd recommend playing for around an hour and then check the stats. That percentage might be a bit high if you quit out of the game after 2 mins since there are 31 frames missed till OBS hooked to the game. If after around an hour of playing/recording you have a higher percentage than 1%, then something is wrong with your settings (too high a preset, too low CRF, resolution in the Video tab might need to be lower, or FPS in the Video tab).

Last thing, which shows you even more info than the Stats screen, are the log files. Play and record, then stop the recording, quit out of OBS, and launch it again, this is important so the log file gets saved and complete, not viewing the active log file from your active OBS session. At the top, click Help, Log Files, Show Log Files:



A window will open with your saved log files, you need the one BEFORE the last one as the last one is for your current OBS session. It's usually around 10 - 13 kb in size.

Around half way / 2/3's down in the log file, you'll find this info:



Your text may vary slightly depending on what errors you are encountering. The closer everything is to 0.0%, the better :) Make sure that there's nothing above 1%. As before, make sure to play for around an hour before checking a log file to let that percentage drop and steady out since it's an average, and you'll have a couple of dropped / lagged frames till OBS hooks to the game.

Final note, as I stated in the previous post, don't record on the same drive you're playing the game from, and don't record on an SSD. Oh, keep an eye on your temperatures while testing out recording, it could get quite hot in there. My CPU hits 55 - 65 degrees recording in summer. Just leave a program like Open Hardware Monitor or AIDA 64 running minimized in the background while you record and play and see what they report. Final final note, even if using x264 which is a CPU encoder, you will still see some usage on your GPU, this is normal and just how OBS works. Final final final note, Game Capture will only work if you're running the Windows games in Fullscreen. If you're using Borderless Windowed Mode or something like that you'll probably need to use Window Capture instead.

Some other notes:
-If encountering trouble, you might want to disable Core Parking, this helped greatly with OBS for me to perform better on Windows 7. I think this got fixed for Windows 10 but referencing it just in case. Set it on your High Performance Power Plan, it'll just stick to that Power Plan only, so you know you have High Performance with unparked cores when gaming and recording, and Balanced Power plan when using the pc for day to day stuff: https://coderbag.com/programming-c/disable-cpu-core-parking-utility You could check that the cores are unparked by opening Resource Monitor from your Start Menu and you'll see that all of them have some usage going on them, and none of them have 'Parked' written next to them.
-You may also want to install inSpectre and disable the Meltdown and Spectre patches. These 2 vulnerabilities were discovered last year, and the fix that Microsoft issued for them closed off sections of the CPU which impacts it on heavy work loads. Important to Run as Administrator to make changes, and to reboot your pc for the changes to take effect. You'll know they're disabled because Performance will say GOOD in green: https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/download-inspectre.html Kill the internet when you're without these patches active. A quick way to kill the net is by running this script as Admin, just run it again when you want the net active: https://www.labnol.org/software/disable-internet-connection/26235/
-Last thing, if you have a CPU with hyperthreading, do not rely on performance monitors' readings about CPU usage. Hyperthreading really confuses how these monitors could read CPU usage since hyperthreadng makes each core seem like it is 2 logical cores, so you'll be getting a false reading: http://perfdynamics.blogspot.com/2014/01/monitoring-cpu-utilization-under-hyper.html
'Very briefly, the OS is being lied to.' 'That register becomes visible to the OS when HT is enabled. However, the OS (and all the way up the food chain to whatever perf tools you are using) now thinks twice the processor capacity is available, i.e., 100% CPU at each AS port.'
After talking with someone on Guru3d and some very rare research, best way I found to calculate CPU usage on an i7 with hyperthreading is to double what the performance monitors are stating (so if they're saying 40% CPU usage, in truth that's 80% usage), but hyperthreading allows the CPU to hit a higher threshold than 100% if the workload is similar, which for OBS it is. So calculate by doubling your CPU usage, and making sure it doesn't skip 120 - 130%.

Whew, I think that just about covers everything! Really hope you could get it working and will be happy with your recordings! xD Let me know how it goes!
« Last Edit: July 06, 2019, 12:29:30 PM by Lunatic_Reimu »

Re: My first lunatic 1cc
« Reply #40 on: July 29, 2019, 01:32:59 AM »
Yes it’s quite a tough Extra, and Marisa is merciless if going no bombs, it purely is down to luck sometimes whether you’ll lose a life or not as her attacks weaken (i.e. shoot less bullets) the less orbs she has around her, so the same attack could be easy to dodge sometimes, but a complete wall another time (this attack with lots of orange bullets and blue lasers is mostly the one I’m referring to, you’ll know which one it is when you play it believe me haha). Yep I never heard of the duplication in the main series either, still is a nifty trick she picked up along the way, quite fun dodging 2 Marisa’s shooting fast pink bullets at you xD Yep, angel wings, check it out on a Seihou Extra video, no broom as far as I can tell, doesn’t look visible on the sprite :) Yeah I understand that, so many Touhou games and so many achievements to hit, but I think Seihou will be worth your while, makes for a huge change of pace too with everything being faster. Yep that’s it mainly for the No Bomb runs, I just want to experience/try dodging every attack at it’s hardest possible moment rather than bombing at the point where it gets too tough. As we’ve been saying, it’s fun learning and discovering patters in Touhou, so a No Bomb run is basically taking that element of learning to a deeper level :) Yeah, as you’re saying, you need to give it your all to master ‘every spell card in the game’, well, almost every spell card, that’s what you have lives for :P The complete mastery is for those gods that hit Perfect Lunatics *bows head in respect*. I see from our PMs that you’re giving quite a good shot at the Normal No Bomb runs for PCB! Your last message said you made it to Yuyuko’s final card which is *REALLY* damn close, I hope you’re enjoying the thrill a No Bomb run gives as much as I do! xD Yes Stage Practice will definitely help, avoids lots of time wasted from having to run through stages 1 – 3 all the time, which by that point, you’ll be doing perfect almost all the time (or losing a life during stage 3 sometimes). The Lunatic Perfect Stage Practices really help me out for when I go for the actual No Bomb runs. I remember in Seihou 1, the stage 4 boss used to r*pe me so bad (ironically enough although she’s stage 4, she’s way tougher than the stage 5 boss), after I managed to do her as a Lunatic Perfect Stage Practice, I even managed to hit her Perfect twice more while attempting a No Bomb run!! So Stage Practice really is your friend! She literally was my 1cc killer, while I don’t die at her hands, she used to take so many lives for me that it makes it ridiculously tough to finish off Vivit (the stage 6 boss), which has 3 forms to boot! Hahaha yeah, seeing a bomb pop up on screen in a No Bomb run is just a useless item I guess, don’t worry, that excitement will fade in time if you keep up with the No Bomb runs ;)

Yeah I liked the alternate MIDI soundtrack, make sure to try it out in Extra too! It’s not just for the main game! Sorry to hear about the busy weekend, more time for Touhou is always nice :’( Damn I’m completely blank about the endings mate, I only remember this stuff (the scent, not gaining weight from sweets, turn into a cat) just cause you’re mentioning it to me, it’s been about 4 years since I played Touhou 2 so I forgot this stuff, especially since I’ve only seen it a very few times when I cleared the game :( That’s why recording software is awesome, could have all of this archived to revisit when necessary or just feel like a nostalgia trip!

Yeah I agree, it could be why I hold Touhou 2 in such high regard since it’s the first actual danmaku shmup I played (Touhou 1 isn’t exactly a shmup). Haha yeah I believe you, first time I faced Lunatic I was terrified of the damn game, literally feeling claustrophobic ALL THE TIME, not comfy in the playing field. We’ve come a long way since then :) Now it’s as you’re saying, blissfully dancing in an ocean of bullets where nothing is more fun xD You’ve made *A LOT* of progress since then, give yourself some more credit ;)

Yeah I had heard that Super is the direct continuation of Z and that GT doesn’t fit in between them, which is why I was going to first watch GT, then Z Kai and Super after, so it’s like I got a refresher for Z with Kai before going into Super. Yes I also saw Resurrection F, I loved the ending, Vegeta f*cked up big time with Frieza, if it wasn’t for the gay guy that’s with Beerus (forgot his name) to rewind time, Frieza would have actually been victorious there! Ahh that’s awesome about the movies being a condensed version, so I get to see the Beerus fight again but in more length this time! xD No no, spoil away, I really don’t mind, if anything it gives me something to look forward to and keep my eyes peeled for when I start up that game :) I really don’t mind. Lol @ Marisa wanting to make you put your fist through the monitor hahaha, I completely get you, she’s so cheap sometimes. In Touhou 4 she has a random order of using her attacks, and sometimes it really works in her damn favour, like she’ll have left over bullets from her previous spell still lingering on screen, and she does this whip of stars which is quite tough to dodge when you’ve already got bullets around you from the previous attack still there :/ But it’s part of her charm I guess lol. Yes 8 really does look fantastic, both final bosses are cool, Eirin with her Hourai Elixir is extremely claustrophobic, and Kauya’s spell rush is just awesome and so colourful! Pair that with Spell Card Practice and Mokou’s really cool Extra, and 8 definitely deserves a spot as one of the tops! Damn, Tree Ocean of Hourai looks amazing! I only saw the wiki shot of it in the Touhou 8 wiki, but it does look awesome and sooooo colourful! So much amazing stuff still left in store for me to experience! xD

Ahhh yes, the zen state, few and far between as you’re saying, but when that happens, you’re like a bullet dodging machine, it’s like I’m subconsciously dodging bullets without even thinking about it, I don’t know how to properly explain it, it’s like it just comes to me, and I’m one with the game, like a damn replay instead of an actual person doing that stuff in real time. Shame it doesn’t happen as often as I’d want it to lol. Yeah, you’ve got no chance of explaining that to someone that doesn’t play Touhou, hell, I play the game and can’t even explain it properly, let alone someone that doesn’t :/ Yes I believe so too, I think anyone is capable of doing what we do in Touhou, it just takes *patience* (lots of it), and determination, and basically a will to never give up :) Definitely agreed about it becoming an obsession to challenge yourself, I was at a friend’s place last weekend, and he’s always been a PC gamer, and he just bought a PS4 Pro, and he told me he’s finding it tough to adapt to analog sticks, so I went over and showed him the ropes a bit (from my previous PS gaming years). We booted up Horizon, and goddamn, while it’s an aesthetically pleasing game, it’s just too damn easy!!! I’m used to keeping my eyes on hundreds of bullets all at the same time lol, it’s a joke being ‘surrounded’ by a couple of enemies jumping around me all taking their damn time to attack. So yeah, it definitely becomes an obsession and an addictive feeling, felt no self-worth AT ALL on Horizon, like I’m playing a damn kid’s game.

Glad you liked the Koishi cover :) I absolutely *LOVE* it, gets me so bouncy and hyper! I don’t think there’s ever been a time that I pressed skip when it pops up on my iPod’s shuffle. Which Bad Apple remix/arrange are you referring to? Bad Apple is an official theme in Touhou 4. Ahh Little Devil’s Apple is by Yuuhei Satellite, they’re brilliant, if I’m not mistaken they also do some of the OPs for the fanmade anime Fantasy Kaleidoscope. I checked out the Sakuya remix by ShibayanRecords you linked, and while I’m not really a fan of the first half of the song, *HOT DAMN* I just FELL IN LOVE with the 5 minute mark till the end, as you stated, it gets ESPECIALLY good there! This one is definitely going into my iPod as soon as I could use my gaming pc again (my iTunes library is on that pc and I can’t navigate without a TV :/). I’m making it a point to go listen to it at least once a day from my laptop, and I also LOVE the Sakuya pic they used in the video! Those menacing red eyes with those daggers drawn ready to be thrown. . . nice find xD Here’s an arrange of Touhou 7 Stage 2 for you, this one is by A-One. They have lots of techno/trancy/Eurobeat kind of arranges: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-yAo2BDrkU I just love her voice paired with the Stage 2 theme done techno-ized, she really could go soft during the normal verses and shift to high for the chorus which I really enjoy. Yeah TOTALLY AGREED on Koishi, she is just cool in every damn way, there’s something so appealing about her :D Hahaha she definitely is a little monster, despite the cutesy tone xD You must have scared your friends off good with her xD

Awww I’m happy to hear you finally got your Ques Q Reimu! xD She really is adorable, and the detail on her is astounding. Sh*t that’s damn good getting the figure for free with the points you racked up! I’ll definitely have to check out Tokyo Otaku Mode! I use AmiAmi and Ninoma mostly, and their point system sucks, I just get a few cents off x_X OMG those Forbidden Scrollery books are amazing, I’ve never seen them from the side, always the front cover, I just love the character illustrations on the side of them! Well done! That’s quite a nice collection you’re building up! :) I assume the other books to the left are the art books you have by Miyuki Ruria? Nice PMMM figures too btw, I was gonna start collecting anime figures also (most notably Dragon Ball and the Precures), but figured if I do that I’ll open a rabbit hole, and there’s more than enough Touhou content and merch to last me a lifetime, so, better not give more stuff for my brain to go OCD about haha :P Ahhhh yes that Ques Q Alice is wonderful, she’s definitely on my list as well, she always retails for around 250 USD wherever I see her. Make sure you get the DX version (the one you linked), there’s another version which is the same Alice but without the dolls. Granted you can buy these separately thankfully, but extra hassle to come across and find available for a good price (considering they’re just add-ons to the actual figure). Yes definitely about that Yuyuko and other merch that got released a while ago, very tough to find at a suitable price, or find at all! Some of this stuff got released in like 2011 so that’s 8 years ago so availability isn’t always guaranteed, or you’d have to pay an arm and a leg for them :’( I knoooow, that 1/4 Reimu is simply amazing, she’s gonna be the pride of my collection! September is getting closer and I’m gonna be so hyped for that one while she’s making her way from Japan to here!!!!! xD Yes she’s definitely got a face worth killing someone for! (Harsh expression I know, but I’d do anything for my Reimu lol, think yandere in anime :P). Hahaha from the sound of it we both drive our poor sisters nuts on Touhou lol xD  Ahhh she was in Japan??????? <3_<3 I’m jealous. She must have seen some very wonderful things there!

Haha happy to hear you’re still carrying your Yukari achievement with pride! Yes it definitely is a milestone, apart from being one of your starting goals, it’s also the only official Phantasm stage iirc :D Yeah getting through all the Last Words to unlock Yukari’s will take a while and lots of work, but you’ll get there eventually and savor the moment, I mean after all, it wouldn’t be Touhou if it didn’t make us suffer and work for our accomplishments would it? :P Yeah from what I’ve seen on Youtube it seems like some Last Words vary in difficulty from others. I expect most of them to be quite tough though seeing as they’re Last Words. Yep, as I told you in the PM, I use OBS Studio, I’ll post screenshots of all my settings tomorrow morning, you could use them as a starting point, then adjust where you see fit. I end up with a recording of around 18GB for an hour. File size could be *drastically* reduced if you use the Veryfast preset instead of Superfast like I do (talking maybe 8GB an hour instead of 13 - 15GB), but this will have a huge impact on your CPU, so make sure you could play the game well (i.e. check that the game isn’t stuttering and check the slowdown % at the results screen) and also that the recording doesn’t stutter. In my case, I could run Veryfast, but noticed that the recording is *very slightly* more jittery than it’s Superfast counterpart, so I went Superfast and live with the huge file sizes, stutter drives me crazy! I had tried FRAPS, didn’t really like the quality, I think you should see a definite improvement in quality with OBS. I’m not exactly sure on the requirements and how powerful a pc needs to be to record, but I’m sure that you won’t pull off 720/1080p 60fps with an i3 as I tried on a friend’s laptop and it was a complete disaster. I’ve got an i7-4790, GTX 980Ti, and 32GB RAM (I went a bit overkill on the RAM I reckon, I never see more than 20% of this being used so I think 16GB would be suitable, probably even 8GB). An i7 (or rarely some i5s) would help due to Hyperthreading, which greatly helps running two things (called threads) at once. On my GTX 980Ti, usage is only 30% while playing and recording at the same time, so you don’t need something as beefy as that I reckon to pull it off, but I’ve never tried one of the Touhou fighters, so these might push that 30% up a bit more. *Very important note*: Don’t record on the same HDD that you’re playing the game off of. Playing is a read operation, recording is a heavy write operation, you more likely than not will get stutters in either the game, or the recording if you use the same HDD. Oh, and never record onto an SSD, you’ll burn through it’s life with those constant big writes. SSDs like being read from, not written to frequently. For my set up, I’ve got 3 drives: an SSD for the OS, programs, and where the games are installed, a 7200rpm drive solely for recording, and a 7200rpm drive for storage. More info on this in tomorrow’s post! I’m alone at work on Saturdays, so I should have ample time to set up a neat post for you :) No worries about the questions btw, I’m glad to help if it could help you out :) Yes I could definitely see the relation to Goku as you’re saying, he’s one of the best fighters in the universe, so he always strives to become more and more powerful! Who knows what crazy forms he could reach now in Super! Yeah no control over the overdetermination I’m afraid, it’s just how our brain works when we’re trying to hit something that’s so important to us, I mean, it literally means the world to me, nothing is more important seriously, so of course my brain (and body) will react that way, especially at the later stages when you’re getting close to pulling it off! :) Yeah I agree, while the zen state is nice and calm and centered, I like the adrenaline rush more although it makes us play more sloppy as you stated. My legs start shaking, and my arms go numb sometimes, my breathing goes slow and heavy, and my heart feels like I’m going to have a heart attack at any moment, notably when I’m at the final boss and know I could do it!! It's things like these that make Touhou so wonderful, the immersion is totally unmatched by anything I have ever done in life before.

Yes definitely agree on that, it feels so satisfying finally figuring it out xD Indeed about the clusterf*ck being a concealed stream, one thing I learned throughout this series is if something is really giving me trouble or looking impossible, try streaming first, or even NOT MOVING as you’ll see in a part in the Touhou 2 Extra. Sometimes something is MUCH more simple than it seems, and the clusterf*ck is just there to misdirect your attention.

Ahh that’s cool about the Extra bosses being immune to bombs, I never knew that seeing as I never use them. Learn something new every day! xD Hhaahha that’s awesome about Yukari even halting the timer! She really takes it a step further! Yeah I thought that the power draining while using bombs might have something to do with Kanako’s last spell, damage out put must be miniscule if you drop the power level down to 1 :/ Yes definitely about Jaimers, when I saw that he was capable of No Bombing the games, I realized that these games are actually doable that way, so he did have quite an influence on me too. Hmm, about the Ran death, I think you were under a lot of pressure knowing that you’ve got a high chance of beating the Extra with the resources you had available, and yeah, that adrenaline takes over and makes us play sloppy sometimes or doing silly mistakes. As I said previously, don’t beat yourself too much about it, happens to the best of us ;) “It’s never over till it’s over’, definitely so true, worst thing you could do is take it for granted and get overconfident. This also works in reverse though, getting to a final boss with just 1 life left, while it seems impossible, miracles do happen, so even there don’t give up and keep giving it your all!

Hahaha yeah, painful and sooooo frustrating, Yumeko is quite a beast, you’re in for one hell of a hard time when you do Touhou 5. . . I’d love to see her and Sakuya face off. . . both are final boss bodyguards, one uses broadswords, the other with daggers. Would be a really cool fight, but it’s just wishful thinking I reckon seeing as PC98 doesn’t get so much attention anymore :/ Yeah the snowball effect of mistakes, it’s horrible, and the rage doesn’t help at all, which is why it’s important to try staying focused and centering yourself as quick as possible so you snap back into the game, easier said than done though. Ahh, so you’re saying that Reisen is an easy stage 5 boss? That’s new, usually stage 5 bosses provide quite a challenge, but yeah it happens sometimes, as I stated in the first paragraph, the stage 5 boss in Seihou 1 is way easier than the stage 4 boss.

Aaaaannnddd finally I got my TV back late last night!!! :D Whooo this torture without Touhou finally came to an end. Been almost 3 weeks, and finally in 3 more hours I’ll get out of this prison (work) and happily be back in the Scarlet Devil Mansion :) Gonna get my a*s handed to me a couple of times after not playing for a while, but it’s still gonna be mega fun xD Didn’t get to play yesterday since the guy came really late with it (almost 9pm), but REALLY looking forward to it today! xD Hahaha I get you about your coworkers knowing how much you played by your mood. As we stated, we get a bit antsy without it xD To be expected though, its such a wonderful thing, and so much fun, and really releases those feel good chemicals inside me dodging through a hell of bullets! Haha I knew which you’d prefer about the clerk vs magical girl, just wanted to put it into perspective to really show the contrast of how dull real life is compared to the wondrous Gensokyo xD Oooh yes, I *completely* get what you mean about having to push yourself at work, it’s so mundane, easy, and repetitive, it’s literally mind-numbing, I’ll literally be operating on auto-pilot and most of the time don’t even remember that I did my work, cause I’ll just be off in my own little world while doing it without even thinking/paying attention.

In 9 months, definitely haven’t hit your skill cap yet, you’ve got way more to improve without even realizing! Another year will pass, and you’ll look back at today, and realize just how much better you got! The way you snap in and out of focus quickly, your control, the understanding of how certain attacks work, the way you read and tackle certain cards, etc. Bullet dodging is like a journey, as we said above, lots of growth for the player, and the more you go at it, the better you’ll get, but it by far isn’t a short and easy journey. Now you’re attempting some No Bomb runs too, so that will greatly push the limit that you’re used to :) Yes definitely about Touhou 15 Point Device Mode and anything you find that challenges you, once you initially get over that hump, it’s like that skill level sticks inside you then, and you become an even better player than you were a few weeks ago! Yeah with all the Extras you’ve hit, Hard should be right up your alley now, if anything, I believe Extra is harder than Hard but easier than Lunatic, so maybe Hard won’t be as troubling as it might seem with your experience now :) Damn, that seems like Touhou 15 Extra is really tough! Noooo, don’t abandon poor Reimu now that you’re so close with her! She is what Touhou is all about after all :D

Haha it truly is a shame, we talk in length over PMs and posts, let alone what we’d do actually conversing! Yep, same here about having to hold back, I start noticing that my friends are losing interest, or just not understanding what I’m saying anymore after a while, so yeah, I try keeping a lid on it, or brief at least, cause you could tell that someone just isn’t getting it anymore. Indeed, I see the same level of devotion I have inside of you, which just made us click so easily xD You look like the type that could go on about Touhou for hours non-stop, and I’m really glad we met, over something so simple like a congrats as well xD Ahhh definite meet up if we’re ever on each others side of the world! Would be my pleasure :)

Sorry for the delay in my reply btw, it’s been a really bad week, antsy starts turning into depressed after a while, paired with OCD, it’s quite easy to start getting frustrating and depressive symptoms. Thankfully with the TV back in hand, suddenly my life got full of colour again! xD As soon as I get home, I’ll jump onto Touhou 6, it’s been wayyyy too long, and I’ll prepare all the screenshots for OBS Studio :) Tomorrow morning I’ll layer it all out for you in a neat step by step post :) Take care, and happy Touhouing!! xD

Ok previewing this post, it turned out quite huge, I talk too much sometimes lol, feel free to cut corners where you deem necessary :/

Hey so sorry again for the long response time! Got my first weekend all month where I had a chance to relax and recharge a little. I definitely trust you when you say the Seihou games are worth my time. At some point on one of my weekends here I'll sit down and give it a shot. If you don't mind me asking how do you go about getting these games? Oh yes, I definitely am loving the thrill from the no bomb runs! Even if it's just in Normal things still start to get quite tense as you get to the later stages. There's just so little room for error which means no matter how well I'm doing at any point during the run I just can't afford to make mistakes. Ahhh it doesn't seem entirely rare in Touhou for the stage 4 boss to be arguably harder than the stage 5 boss, so no surprise that's sometimes true for Seihou as well. The stage practice really does help but it's a lot more tricky trying to get those 1CCs when you need to run it alongside everything else. Spell Card Practice in 8 and some of the other games is also incredibly useful and you really notice the difference it makes in learning more efficiently since you can focus solely on what you're struggling on most without having to waste the time on the easier things. My experience with 8s Extra Stage really made it evident just what a massive difference this can make.

Speaking of which I just got my Touhou 8 Extra stage 1CC :) Only took a day from start to finish to learn too so I'd say it was relatively speaking one of the easier ones I've done so far, but I really do feel the Spell Card practice was a huge factor in this. Still it was a lot of fun and even going into the final Spell Card with 2 remaining lives and a bomb I still just barely managed to beat it. I hadn't done the later bit of the final Spell Card yet though so I was essentially flying blind. My adrenaline was through the roof in the last few seconds of the attack after using my final remaining bomb XD I think this would be a good Extra Stage to attempt to no bomb since the stage portion/mid boss are pretty easy and most of Mokou's Spell Cards can be consistently beaten once you've had a bit of practice. It's really only the last 3/4 Cards that gave me any real hassle. Quite pleased though since this will make for the 3rd game I've completed the Extra Stage for.  Unfortunately I didn't capture enough Spell Cards to get her bonus attack which I still need for two of the Last Word unlocks but I'll get that eventually.

I don't blame you for not entirely remembering the 2nd games ending with the orbs. Frankly with all the different characters/games it's hard for me to remember some things that I played even a few months ago let alone years ago. I like reading through things like the wiki and TVtropes page so you'll often find out little tidbits of random information like the orbs powers there. There's just so many little tidbits of lore in the story it can be hard to remember it all (heck, I sometimes struggle remembering all the character names still). I still need to get back to 2's Extra Stage. Main reason I got sidetracked was I wanted to record it when I did it but I noticed the recording software was struggling a slight bit more with the PC-98 games a bit more so I need to iron out the kinks with that first. I definitely got to agree it's awesome having your stuff recorded. Sometimes when I just want to unwind a bit I'll watch old replays and it can be exciting reliving some of those moments you experienced during a run.

I'll definitely give myself credit for having improved a lot. I feel 1000x more comfortable surrounded by bullets then when I first started and I can pull off moves that seemed unreal back when I started, even though at times I wish I wasn't as prone to some of the dumb mistakes I still tend to make. Those moments where I can really sit down and get a proper session going where I'm able to fully focus is where I really notice the difference in my skill level. I try not to let it go to my head too much since there's always more to learn but it is damned satisfying being able to step back and witness just how much you've grown :)

Ahhh I can see Marisa using her attacks in a random order in 4 potentially really messing me up. It makes it much tougher trying to deal with attacks when there's that RNG element since you can't ever be fully prepared for what's going to come next. Attacks that leave leftover bullets can be a bit awkward to deal with since it's sometimes easy to forget about them and become to focused on the new pattern coming out. And if by part of her charm you mean her being extremely frustrating to fight then yes I completely agree XD I could gush on quite a bit about 8, it just does everything right and so much more. I don't think any of the other games have anywhere near as much extra content as 8 does either which is a big plus in its book. I definitely think you'll enjoy it once you get to it yourself :)

I'd say that's pretty accurate about that zen state feeling almost like you're watching a replay rather than playing it in real time. It's almost as if there's a part of you that just knows you're not going to make a mistake. It's certainly something that a person needs to personally have experienced in order to really understand, but even among us hardcore players it does seem very rare and inconsistent to really enter this state. There's times where I can be playing amazingly well and crushing everything easily but even then it's not always the same as being in that zen state you know? One of the key defining things I've noticed about that state is just how ridiculously calm I feel. Ah yeah that's why I struggle to play games like the one you mentioned your friend showing you because they're more about the spectacle and at that point I'd almost rather be watching a movie. When it comes to a game I want to feel really engaged in what's going on and that just can't happen when the difficulty is putting me to sleep. It's even worse when I feel like I have to actively be handicapping myself in order to receive a challenge. Most games that do seem to require a degree of real patience are usually labeled as niche too so I don't think most games out would really be able to satisfy you. I think we're partially byproducts of the arcade style era though in which games were meant to eat up credits and thus were made to be hard and require lots of practice. I'm thankful there's still a market for those arcade style games even in our day and age :)

Ah yes Koishi has so many good covers for her theme. I'm not surprised since she's such a popular character. That one you linked is one of my favorites I've heard so far and I can tell you I added onto my phone right away and have already racked up quite a play count already ;) Opps sorry I meant the Bad Apple cover done for the stop motion music video that was popular all those years back (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lNZ_Rnr7Jc). Even back when I knew next to nothing about Touhou I still had seen the Bad Apple stop motion video and thought it was awesome. I think you're right about Yuuhei Satellite doing the opening to the fanmade anime! I was recently listening to another arrange by them done for the stage 4 theme in SA I think is pretty entrancing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kND-UIXv1sc. I'm so glad you liked the Sakuya remix :D Agreed with how much better it gets after the 5 minute mark and I admit I often skip right away to the halfway portion of the song whenever I listen to it but from that point on it becomes pure heaven to listen to. It's one of those songs I can listen to repeatedly in a row and never seem to get sick of it. That A-One arrange is another good find! I didn't use to listen to tons of the techno/trancy/Eurobeat stuff in the past but there's just something about that with Touhou music that is so good for some reason :D

These figures do get pricey but damn they really are nice quality. The unfortunate bit about sites like TOM is that once a figure runs out of stock it's hard to say whether they'll get more in eventually, so sometimes you're forced to look on ebay or Amazon which can get a bit pricey :( The Forbidden Scrollery manga is super nice! There's something about holding them too that just feels satisfying as well XD And yes! Well, some of the books on the left are Miyuki Ruria, there's also the Touhou Art Tribute books I picked up at the anime con this year which is just a collection of various artists and whatnot. I absolutely love the Miyuki Ruria ones the most though and they even have a bunch of beautiful art I've never even seen posted online before :) Yes, I know what you mean where it's hard to divert funds away from Touhou stuff, I've been learning this over the last year or so. There's times where I think "gee, I'd love to buy that Hollow Knight physical Collectors Edition" but then I have to weigh that against just buying more Touhou merch and the Touhou merch usually wins out lol :D This is why I've been able to get such a decent collection over just the course of year because its become like 90% of my entertainment fund as well. Ah yes the Alice Ques Q isn't going to be cheap but I'll still eventually get it. It's the one I wanted most originally but I'm thinking I'll probably wait until the end of the year and buy it as a Christmas gift to myself once I get my bonus at work :) I definitely want to make sure to get the dolls with it since it just wouldn't feel right without them. Just over a month now until you get your Reimu figure in!!! You must be incredibly excited for that! The postal office better make damned sure to handle that package with care. And yes I don't doubt your dedication to Reimu seeing as how she's directly connected to your love for Touhou and this series has made it clear just how deep our levels of obsession can run ;) Plus there's just something special about Reimu that is hard to place my finger on. Something that makes her a unique character in fiction imo. And yep, my sister actually went to Japan twice in a years time and I'm right there with you being jealous. I'm actually thinking of planning a trip to Japan next year if I'm able to save up the money. It's something I've wanted to do for ages now but I know it will require quite a bit of time and saving to get there.

I use to think since Yukari was the only Phantasm boss that she was probably the hardest in the series, I know that isn't exactly the case now (she seems to be ranked about mid tier difficulty as for as Extra Stage Bosses go and most people generally agree Koishi, Hecatia and Marisa are definitely tougher) but it's still definitely a milestone for me. I'm glad I can now add Mokou to the list of completed Extra Stage bosses too :) Working on unlocking on Yukari's Last word is the primary reason I decided to work on 8s extra stage this weekend since that's a requirement for unlocking some of the Last Words. Right now I have 12/17 of the cards unlocked so I'm getting closer though some of the remaining ones will be a little tougher to unlock. Out of the 12 I have unlocked so far I've managed to beat 10 of them (Just beat Remilia last night. She's always got really cool Spell Cards as well) though which I'm quite pleased about. You're definitely right, it wouldn't be Touhou if we didn't have to work and suffer for our achievements a bit XD The more we suffer the more satisfying those achievements are when you finally hit them though. Thank you again sooooooo much for all the info on OBS studio btw!!! A lot of the fine tuning with the settings I would have never figured out on my own so having your instructions was invaluable. I'm loving being able to record my content as I go and I've already gotten to archiving many of my older replays of 1CCs I have saved. In games like 8 it's way too easy to fill up all your replay slots and you don't want to get rid of stuff so not having to worry about slot space is incredibly nice, and plus now I can show some of my friends some of the stuff I've personally done :) I started throwing a few of my videos up on youtube. They're certainly not as impressive as many of the other people out there but there's something about knowing they're mine that's immensely satisfying. Yeah that adrenaline feeling is exactly what happened to me during the final Spell Card in my Mokou fight. It became a race against time during an attack I didn't know how to deal with so I knew it was going to come down to the wire. At that point you're just pouring your entire existence into the moment to get by. You're right, the sense of immersion is completely and totally unmatched for things like that. Nothing I've experienced in gaming outside this series has come anywhere close to that feeling. During those moments nothing in the world exists outside of the pattern and your brain is just 100% immersed.

Yes, that's absolutely good advice on testing out things like streaming and standing still in those absolute clusterfuck attacks. There's little tricks like that which you sort of pick up the more you play the series that help learn what is actually happening behind each Spell Card. I noticed sometimes you need to do something that is extremely counter intuitive in order to deal with a pattern so it helps to get a bit creative and try different techniques when struggling with a card because sometimes you stumble on a secret to dealing with it that trivializes the pattern. On top of what you mentioned I'll also experiment with starting positions and whereabouts I hang out on the screen since sometimes there's those sweet spots which you don't initially see. That's one thing I find kind of neat about Touhou, sometimes you don't even need to be paying attention to 99% of what's on the screen. Over time you stop trying to dodge everything and instead train your eyes in order to catch what the real threat is on the screen. Sometimes there's hundreds of bullets on the screen but realistically only several are actually a danger too you. Another trick I've picked up that helps a lot in the attacks that have multiple patterns you need to dodge at once is to find ways to break it up so you're only dodging one thing at a time. I commonly do this when you got like 3 different bullet types coming at you where you really only need to be paying attention to 1 bullet type at any given time as long as you're smart about it.

The non-Spellcards from the bosses will still take normal damage from the bombs but the main Spell Cards they'll become immune to damage when you use one, and it's not rare for them to only clear off a small portion of what's on the screen. I like it because it makes them still feel useful without making it feel like you can rely on them to cheese entire cards. You still really need to be smart and tactical about how you use them in the Extra Stage. Games like 10 and 11 you're power doubles as your bombs, and yes, it becomes brutal if you rely on them too much and drop your power low in the later stages. Even if you still technically have lots of lives you can sort of dig yourself into a hole if you drop your power down and can't effectively get caught up later. You know how long the final Spell Cards in a game can last so you can imagine trying to do that with 1 power. I think you're right where the dumb mistakes work in reverse too sometimes and you see yourself pulling off feats that seem far above when you should be capable of doing. It makes sense too with law of averages, when you run content thousands of times you're bound to see some things with stupidly low odds happen like that. That's part of what makes this so fun is you never know what will happen next.

It's a shame ZUN couldn't have brought back some of the PC-98 characters for the fighting games at least or else we could have gotten some of these face offs :( Usually my capability to snap back after a dumb mistake isn't too bad but the consecutive mistakes can really add up quickly if you don't have time to recover properly (and to be fair some Spell Cards are intentionally designed to be brutal to recover if you die in the middle of it). Consecutive early stage mistakes make me rage hard after a certain point when you feel you should have all of that on lockdown by that point. I personally find Reisen the easiest stage 5 boss in the series, I know opinions on difficulty can generally vary but I have also seen a few other people who share the opinion as well. She's more "tricky" then she is dangerous and as long as you're able to keep a cool head a lot of her attacks are pretty easy to deal with. She's the only stage 5 Touhou boss I can think of that has actually saved more 1CCs by allowing me to catch up on resources than she has ended :P

I'm so glad you managed to get your TV back! I do hope you've been enjoying your time in the Scarlet Devil Mansion these last few weeks ;) Even if the first few attempts back probably didn't last too long I'm sure they still felt magical after being gone for so long ^_^ This weekend was the first real proper sessions I've had in several weeks now myself and I can't even begin to describe what a relief it was. Compared to a couple days ago I feel as if all the stress from the last few weeks has just melted away and I just feel completely recharged and renewed. At least I can say work kept me pretty engaged the last few weeks. My supervisor was on vacation so I was left watching over several sections at once and there wasn't a single minute in a day where I wasn't doing multiple things at once. Thankfully Touhou has trained my brain to (somewhat) be able to handle keeping track of so much in a high stress situation so I was able to get through it :P From the sounds of it I might even possibly be getting a raise with how happy the boss is (Meaning I might be able to afford more Touhou merch hopefully). I'm glad work managed to keep me engaged but it still can't compare to losing yourself in Touhou and I'll take the magical girl over the work any day of the week XD

I feel as long as there's so much challenging content and as long as I'm being smart about how I practice and learn I probably won't even come close to hitting my skillcap for a number of years. Especially because I still have hardly done much in Lunatic Mode in this series outside 9 (which works differently from the other games anyways). I think as I push the Lunatic and No Bomb run stuff as well as maybe some of the more difficult Extra Stages I'll definitely still see an increase. I agree Hard Mode should be right up my current skill levels alley. I'm debating if I want to be working on the Extra Stages a bit more or try to keep some more Hard 1CCs under my belt currently. I got to admit I am having a blast working on the Extra Stages so much lately so I might try and get 1 or 2 more but I also sort of like to see what I'm in the mood for when I sit down to play for a session. I still need to get back to 15s Extra Stage X( I can be too easily sidetracked when I get working on too many things at once, especially when time is limited, which could make things difficult when I start working on some of the things that will require significant amounts of time and practice. You've no doubt noticed I can jump around between games a fair bit which can have its advantages and disadvantages. I do find certain games fit my mood way better at times compared others. I absolutely won't stop attempting the stage with Reimu just because she's harder, in fact I kind of like it this way because I feel like I'm getting more out of the stage then some people might. In general I attempt to do most content these days with Reimu first because it just feels right, like that's the way the game is built around playing in a way (not literally but just how it feels like to me). I'd like to eventually get a Lunatic as well as an Extra Stage 1CC on every game with Reimu at least once.

I could go on about Touhou for hours, days, weeks and probably months no problem XD Its literally consumed my life so you never need to worry about holding back or worry I'll lose interest I can promise you that. I'm sorry again it took so long to respond. This weekend was the first time since the start of the month I've had a chance to get in a proper session with how busy it was and I didn't want to sit down and try to write a response that was half ass or while I was struggling to stay awake. Let me know how things have been going in 6 for you since you've gotten back when you get a chance!

Oh and for OBS regarding what you said in the PM I'll grab a screenshot of the stats next time I try recording Touhou 2. I highly suspect I just need to tinker with the settings a bit to get that sweet spot but it might also have been something else my in my PC that was eating up memory at the time too. I ended up going with the Superfast option. The space isn't too bad since I can just throw the videos on an external easily and I only keep certain videos onhand.  This is one of the Last Word (Wriggle's to be specific) videos I threw up on youtube if you want to see for yourself quickly :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAuE7tPgHmc&feature=youtu.be I'll still tinker a bit with the settings to get it just right but in general I'm happy to set up recording now. I've been wanting to do so for a while so I can't thank you enough for your help :)

No worries about the posts turning out so large. It's unavoidable when discussing this series. There's just too much to discuss ;)

Happy Touhouing!
« Last Edit: July 29, 2019, 01:37:47 AM by Dreamleaf »

Lunatic_Reimu

  • No Bomb Enthusiast
Re: My first lunatic 1cc
« Reply #41 on: August 14, 2019, 11:24:14 AM »
Hey so sorry again for the long response time! Got my first weekend all month where I had a chance to relax and recharge a little. I definitely trust you when you say the Seihou games are worth my time. At some point on one of my weekends here I'll sit down and give it a shot. If you don't mind me asking how do you go about getting these games? Oh yes, I definitely am loving the thrill from the no bomb runs! Even if it's just in Normal things still start to get quite tense as you get to the later stages. There's just so little room for error which means no matter how well I'm doing at any point during the run I just can't afford to make mistakes. Ahhh it doesn't seem entirely rare in Touhou for the stage 4 boss to be arguably harder than the stage 5 boss, so no surprise that's sometimes true for Seihou as well. The stage practice really does help but it's a lot more tricky trying to get those 1CCs when you need to run it alongside everything else. Spell Card Practice in 8 and some of the other games is also incredibly useful and you really notice the difference it makes in learning more efficiently since you can focus solely on what you're struggling on most without having to waste the time on the easier things. My experience with 8s Extra Stage really made it evident just what a massive difference this can make.

Speaking of which I just got my Touhou 8 Extra stage 1CC :) Only took a day from start to finish to learn too so I'd say it was relatively speaking one of the easier ones I've done so far, but I really do feel the Spell Card practice was a huge factor in this. Still it was a lot of fun and even going into the final Spell Card with 2 remaining lives and a bomb I still just barely managed to beat it. I hadn't done the later bit of the final Spell Card yet though so I was essentially flying blind. My adrenaline was through the roof in the last few seconds of the attack after using my final remaining bomb XD I think this would be a good Extra Stage to attempt to no bomb since the stage portion/mid boss are pretty easy and most of Mokou's Spell Cards can be consistently beaten once you've had a bit of practice. It's really only the last 3/4 Cards that gave me any real hassle. Quite pleased though since this will make for the 3rd game I've completed the Extra Stage for.  Unfortunately I didn't capture enough Spell Cards to get her bonus attack which I still need for two of the Last Word unlocks but I'll get that eventually.

I don't blame you for not entirely remembering the 2nd games ending with the orbs. Frankly with all the different characters/games it's hard for me to remember some things that I played even a few months ago let alone years ago. I like reading through things like the wiki and TVtropes page so you'll often find out little tidbits of random information like the orbs powers there. There's just so many little tidbits of lore in the story it can be hard to remember it all (heck, I sometimes struggle remembering all the character names still). I still need to get back to 2's Extra Stage. Main reason I got sidetracked was I wanted to record it when I did it but I noticed the recording software was struggling a slight bit more with the PC-98 games a bit more so I need to iron out the kinks with that first. I definitely got to agree it's awesome having your stuff recorded. Sometimes when I just want to unwind a bit I'll watch old replays and it can be exciting reliving some of those moments you experienced during a run.

I'll definitely give myself credit for having improved a lot. I feel 1000x more comfortable surrounded by bullets then when I first started and I can pull off moves that seemed unreal back when I started, even though at times I wish I wasn't as prone to some of the dumb mistakes I still tend to make. Those moments where I can really sit down and get a proper session going where I'm able to fully focus is where I really notice the difference in my skill level. I try not to let it go to my head too much since there's always more to learn but it is damned satisfying being able to step back and witness just how much you've grown :)

Ahhh I can see Marisa using her attacks in a random order in 4 potentially really messing me up. It makes it much tougher trying to deal with attacks when there's that RNG element since you can't ever be fully prepared for what's going to come next. Attacks that leave leftover bullets can be a bit awkward to deal with since it's sometimes easy to forget about them and become to focused on the new pattern coming out. And if by part of her charm you mean her being extremely frustrating to fight then yes I completely agree XD I could gush on quite a bit about 8, it just does everything right and so much more. I don't think any of the other games have anywhere near as much extra content as 8 does either which is a big plus in its book. I definitely think you'll enjoy it once you get to it yourself :)

I'd say that's pretty accurate about that zen state feeling almost like you're watching a replay rather than playing it in real time. It's almost as if there's a part of you that just knows you're not going to make a mistake. It's certainly something that a person needs to personally have experienced in order to really understand, but even among us hardcore players it does seem very rare and inconsistent to really enter this state. There's times where I can be playing amazingly well and crushing everything easily but even then it's not always the same as being in that zen state you know? One of the key defining things I've noticed about that state is just how ridiculously calm I feel. Ah yeah that's why I struggle to play games like the one you mentioned your friend showing you because they're more about the spectacle and at that point I'd almost rather be watching a movie. When it comes to a game I want to feel really engaged in what's going on and that just can't happen when the difficulty is putting me to sleep. It's even worse when I feel like I have to actively be handicapping myself in order to receive a challenge. Most games that do seem to require a degree of real patience are usually labeled as niche too so I don't think most games out would really be able to satisfy you. I think we're partially byproducts of the arcade style era though in which games were meant to eat up credits and thus were made to be hard and require lots of practice. I'm thankful there's still a market for those arcade style games even in our day and age :)

Ah yes Koishi has so many good covers for her theme. I'm not surprised since she's such a popular character. That one you linked is one of my favorites I've heard so far and I can tell you I added onto my phone right away and have already racked up quite a play count already ;) Opps sorry I meant the Bad Apple cover done for the stop motion music video that was popular all those years back (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lNZ_Rnr7Jc). Even back when I knew next to nothing about Touhou I still had seen the Bad Apple stop motion video and thought it was awesome. I think you're right about Yuuhei Satellite doing the opening to the fanmade anime! I was recently listening to another arrange by them done for the stage 4 theme in SA I think is pretty entrancing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kND-UIXv1sc. I'm so glad you liked the Sakuya remix :D Agreed with how much better it gets after the 5 minute mark and I admit I often skip right away to the halfway portion of the song whenever I listen to it but from that point on it becomes pure heaven to listen to. It's one of those songs I can listen to repeatedly in a row and never seem to get sick of it. That A-One arrange is another good find! I didn't use to listen to tons of the techno/trancy/Eurobeat stuff in the past but there's just something about that with Touhou music that is so good for some reason :D

These figures do get pricey but damn they really are nice quality. The unfortunate bit about sites like TOM is that once a figure runs out of stock it's hard to say whether they'll get more in eventually, so sometimes you're forced to look on ebay or Amazon which can get a bit pricey :( The Forbidden Scrollery manga is super nice! There's something about holding them too that just feels satisfying as well XD And yes! Well, some of the books on the left are Miyuki Ruria, there's also the Touhou Art Tribute books I picked up at the anime con this year which is just a collection of various artists and whatnot. I absolutely love the Miyuki Ruria ones the most though and they even have a bunch of beautiful art I've never even seen posted online before :) Yes, I know what you mean where it's hard to divert funds away from Touhou stuff, I've been learning this over the last year or so. There's times where I think "gee, I'd love to buy that Hollow Knight physical Collectors Edition" but then I have to weigh that against just buying more Touhou merch and the Touhou merch usually wins out lol :D This is why I've been able to get such a decent collection over just the course of year because its become like 90% of my entertainment fund as well. Ah yes the Alice Ques Q isn't going to be cheap but I'll still eventually get it. It's the one I wanted most originally but I'm thinking I'll probably wait until the end of the year and buy it as a Christmas gift to myself once I get my bonus at work :) I definitely want to make sure to get the dolls with it since it just wouldn't feel right without them. Just over a month now until you get your Reimu figure in!!! You must be incredibly excited for that! The postal office better make damned sure to handle that package with care. And yes I don't doubt your dedication to Reimu seeing as how she's directly connected to your love for Touhou and this series has made it clear just how deep our levels of obsession can run ;) Plus there's just something special about Reimu that is hard to place my finger on. Something that makes her a unique character in fiction imo. And yep, my sister actually went to Japan twice in a years time and I'm right there with you being jealous. I'm actually thinking of planning a trip to Japan next year if I'm able to save up the money. It's something I've wanted to do for ages now but I know it will require quite a bit of time and saving to get there.

I use to think since Yukari was the only Phantasm boss that she was probably the hardest in the series, I know that isn't exactly the case now (she seems to be ranked about mid tier difficulty as for as Extra Stage Bosses go and most people generally agree Koishi, Hecatia and Marisa are definitely tougher) but it's still definitely a milestone for me. I'm glad I can now add Mokou to the list of completed Extra Stage bosses too :) Working on unlocking on Yukari's Last word is the primary reason I decided to work on 8s extra stage this weekend since that's a requirement for unlocking some of the Last Words. Right now I have 12/17 of the cards unlocked so I'm getting closer though some of the remaining ones will be a little tougher to unlock. Out of the 12 I have unlocked so far I've managed to beat 10 of them (Just beat Remilia last night. She's always got really cool Spell Cards as well) though which I'm quite pleased about. You're definitely right, it wouldn't be Touhou if we didn't have to work and suffer for our achievements a bit XD The more we suffer the more satisfying those achievements are when you finally hit them though. Thank you again sooooooo much for all the info on OBS studio btw!!! A lot of the fine tuning with the settings I would have never figured out on my own so having your instructions was invaluable. I'm loving being able to record my content as I go and I've already gotten to archiving many of my older replays of 1CCs I have saved. In games like 8 it's way too easy to fill up all your replay slots and you don't want to get rid of stuff so not having to worry about slot space is incredibly nice, and plus now I can show some of my friends some of the stuff I've personally done :) I started throwing a few of my videos up on youtube. They're certainly not as impressive as many of the other people out there but there's something about knowing they're mine that's immensely satisfying. Yeah that adrenaline feeling is exactly what happened to me during the final Spell Card in my Mokou fight. It became a race against time during an attack I didn't know how to deal with so I knew it was going to come down to the wire. At that point you're just pouring your entire existence into the moment to get by. You're right, the sense of immersion is completely and totally unmatched for things like that. Nothing I've experienced in gaming outside this series has come anywhere close to that feeling. During those moments nothing in the world exists outside of the pattern and your brain is just 100% immersed.

Yes, that's absolutely good advice on testing out things like streaming and standing still in those absolute clusterfuck attacks. There's little tricks like that which you sort of pick up the more you play the series that help learn what is actually happening behind each Spell Card. I noticed sometimes you need to do something that is extremely counter intuitive in order to deal with a pattern so it helps to get a bit creative and try different techniques when struggling with a card because sometimes you stumble on a secret to dealing with it that trivializes the pattern. On top of what you mentioned I'll also experiment with starting positions and whereabouts I hang out on the screen since sometimes there's those sweet spots which you don't initially see. That's one thing I find kind of neat about Touhou, sometimes you don't even need to be paying attention to 99% of what's on the screen. Over time you stop trying to dodge everything and instead train your eyes in order to catch what the real threat is on the screen. Sometimes there's hundreds of bullets on the screen but realistically only several are actually a danger too you. Another trick I've picked up that helps a lot in the attacks that have multiple patterns you need to dodge at once is to find ways to break it up so you're only dodging one thing at a time. I commonly do this when you got like 3 different bullet types coming at you where you really only need to be paying attention to 1 bullet type at any given time as long as you're smart about it.

The non-Spellcards from the bosses will still take normal damage from the bombs but the main Spell Cards they'll become immune to damage when you use one, and it's not rare for them to only clear off a small portion of what's on the screen. I like it because it makes them still feel useful without making it feel like you can rely on them to cheese entire cards. You still really need to be smart and tactical about how you use them in the Extra Stage. Games like 10 and 11 you're power doubles as your bombs, and yes, it becomes brutal if you rely on them too much and drop your power low in the later stages. Even if you still technically have lots of lives you can sort of dig yourself into a hole if you drop your power down and can't effectively get caught up later. You know how long the final Spell Cards in a game can last so you can imagine trying to do that with 1 power. I think you're right where the dumb mistakes work in reverse too sometimes and you see yourself pulling off feats that seem far above when you should be capable of doing. It makes sense too with law of averages, when you run content thousands of times you're bound to see some things with stupidly low odds happen like that. That's part of what makes this so fun is you never know what will happen next.

It's a shame ZUN couldn't have brought back some of the PC-98 characters for the fighting games at least or else we could have gotten some of these face offs :( Usually my capability to snap back after a dumb mistake isn't too bad but the consecutive mistakes can really add up quickly if you don't have time to recover properly (and to be fair some Spell Cards are intentionally designed to be brutal to recover if you die in the middle of it). Consecutive early stage mistakes make me rage hard after a certain point when you feel you should have all of that on lockdown by that point. I personally find Reisen the easiest stage 5 boss in the series, I know opinions on difficulty can generally vary but I have also seen a few other people who share the opinion as well. She's more "tricky" then she is dangerous and as long as you're able to keep a cool head a lot of her attacks are pretty easy to deal with. She's the only stage 5 Touhou boss I can think of that has actually saved more 1CCs by allowing me to catch up on resources than she has ended :P

I'm so glad you managed to get your TV back! I do hope you've been enjoying your time in the Scarlet Devil Mansion these last few weeks ;) Even if the first few attempts back probably didn't last too long I'm sure they still felt magical after being gone for so long ^_^ This weekend was the first real proper sessions I've had in several weeks now myself and I can't even begin to describe what a relief it was. Compared to a couple days ago I feel as if all the stress from the last few weeks has just melted away and I just feel completely recharged and renewed. At least I can say work kept me pretty engaged the last few weeks. My supervisor was on vacation so I was left watching over several sections at once and there wasn't a single minute in a day where I wasn't doing multiple things at once. Thankfully Touhou has trained my brain to (somewhat) be able to handle keeping track of so much in a high stress situation so I was able to get through it :P From the sounds of it I might even possibly be getting a raise with how happy the boss is (Meaning I might be able to afford more Touhou merch hopefully). I'm glad work managed to keep me engaged but it still can't compare to losing yourself in Touhou and I'll take the magical girl over the work any day of the week XD

I feel as long as there's so much challenging content and as long as I'm being smart about how I practice and learn I probably won't even come close to hitting my skillcap for a number of years. Especially because I still have hardly done much in Lunatic Mode in this series outside 9 (which works differently from the other games anyways). I think as I push the Lunatic and No Bomb run stuff as well as maybe some of the more difficult Extra Stages I'll definitely still see an increase. I agree Hard Mode should be right up my current skill levels alley. I'm debating if I want to be working on the Extra Stages a bit more or try to keep some more Hard 1CCs under my belt currently. I got to admit I am having a blast working on the Extra Stages so much lately so I might try and get 1 or 2 more but I also sort of like to see what I'm in the mood for when I sit down to play for a session. I still need to get back to 15s Extra Stage X( I can be too easily sidetracked when I get working on too many things at once, especially when time is limited, which could make things difficult when I start working on some of the things that will require significant amounts of time and practice. You've no doubt noticed I can jump around between games a fair bit which can have its advantages and disadvantages. I do find certain games fit my mood way better at times compared others. I absolutely won't stop attempting the stage with Reimu just because she's harder, in fact I kind of like it this way because I feel like I'm getting more out of the stage then some people might. In general I attempt to do most content these days with Reimu first because it just feels right, like that's the way the game is built around playing in a way (not literally but just how it feels like to me). I'd like to eventually get a Lunatic as well as an Extra Stage 1CC on every game with Reimu at least once.

I could go on about Touhou for hours, days, weeks and probably months no problem XD Its literally consumed my life so you never need to worry about holding back or worry I'll lose interest I can promise you that. I'm sorry again it took so long to respond. This weekend was the first time since the start of the month I've had a chance to get in a proper session with how busy it was and I didn't want to sit down and try to write a response that was half ass or while I was struggling to stay awake. Let me know how things have been going in 6 for you since you've gotten back when you get a chance!

Oh and for OBS regarding what you said in the PM I'll grab a screenshot of the stats next time I try recording Touhou 2. I highly suspect I just need to tinker with the settings a bit to get that sweet spot but it might also have been something else my in my PC that was eating up memory at the time too. I ended up going with the Superfast option. The space isn't too bad since I can just throw the videos on an external easily and I only keep certain videos onhand.  This is one of the Last Word (Wriggle's to be specific) videos I threw up on youtube if you want to see for yourself quickly :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAuE7tPgHmc&feature=youtu.be I'll still tinker a bit with the settings to get it just right but in general I'm happy to set up recording now. I've been wanting to do so for a while so I can't thank you enough for your help :)

No worries about the posts turning out so large. It's unavoidable when discussing this series. There's just too much to discuss ;)

Happy Touhouing!
As we said in the PMs, never worry about response time. I know how busy everyone is, and real life stuff just comes up, so it?s completely understandable :) Well, for Seihou 1 and 2, you?re going to have to download them from Moriya Shrine or some other site that hosts Touhou games just like for the PC98 games. Unfortunately the first 2 games are out of print :( Seihou 3 though could be purchased digitally (from here: http://www.dlsite.com/home/work/=/product_id/RJ101418.html) to support the developers, I think only C74 which could be patched to version 3 though, so you?ll need to get C67 with some scrounging on the net. (If anyone else is reading this and I?m mistaken please let me know, I would love to own physical copies of these games). Note that there are 3 versions of Seihou 3 which is called Banshiryuu: the C67 version, C74 version, and the most recent version called Ver. 3. While not so clear, here?s some more information about the 3 different Seihou 3 versions: https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/User_talk:Arcorann#About_Banshiryuu_versions As a note, only Seihou 1 and 2 have Touhou characters in them (Reimu and Marisa as Extra bosses in Seihou 1, and Yuuka as a playable character and opponent in Seihou 2), Seihou 3 doesn?t, but still worth a playthrough. Also don?t forget about Samidare (which has a cameo from Yuki and Mai from Touhou 5, and Gates and Vivit from Seihou as Extra bosses), and also Uwabami Breakers which is one of ZUN?s works. Torte Le Magic is another game you might want to check out, the music was made by ZUN for that one. It?s short and quite easy too so should be a quick playthrough. Ahh definitely about the No Bomb runs, as you?re saying, little room for error so can never let yourself get overconfident cause it could end up being your downfall! Really glad you?re enjoying these, and once you push yourself onto Hard, and especially Lunatic, that?s when it?ll start feeling heart-attack inducing haha xD Keep at it, you?ll get there! ;) Definitely agreed about certain cases (although rare) when the Stage 4 boss is tougher than the Stage 5 one. Honestly Patchouli is giving me a harder time than Sakuya in most of my runs in Touhou 6, although sometimes Sakuya could get nasty too, especially when she goes the opposite way of where she trapped me with her knives so I?m barely dealing any damage. Agreed also on the Stage Practice, it is very helpful, but yes, to run all the stages alongside each other is MUCH more tricky than doing them individually in Stage Practice, especially when the pressure starts building up when you see that you?ve got a good number of lives left and know that you might be able to pull off that 1cc! Yes Spell Card Practice is also a godsend from what I?ve seen, plus it?s mega fun too capturing each card (since you can?t bomb or lose a life in that mode!). I imagine you went in already half prepared for 8?s Extra from Spell Card Practice :)

That?s very good progress in just one day! Well done and keep it up! Really? It?s one of the easier ones? Mokou has a couple of attacks that look quite intimidating from what I saw of her. Really looking forward to a face off with her in the future! :) Ouch that final spell card sounds tough, must be one of the intimidating ones I mentioned :P Hahaha yeah I know what that feels like when you?re at the end and got no more resources left! It?s a wonderful feeling and soooo immersive. Definitely give that Extra a shot as a No Bombs if you?re confident about it, remember, you?ve got your lives to help you power through the final 3 ? 4 cards, so master the earlier cards to not waste resources on those, and use your lives on the remaining cards. This is how I tackled Flandre in 6, leaving my lives for her final 2 cards (QED is terrifying, starts off all slow and easy, but by the end it?s manic!). I imagine you managed to get Mokou?s bonus attack now since you unlocked Yukari?s Last Word as you said in the PM :)

Yeah, which is a real shame, cause I?d love to remember all this stuff :( Well thankfully since I?m recording now, I could revisit previous achievements and stories :D (I also record the endings, not just the gameplay) Oh yes definitely, while I never visited the TVTropes page, I use the wiki A LOT, and there is a plethora of information there that just breathes life into the whole series more! (both with more info on the characters, and also locations and simple things like objects). Hahaha once you face the bosses in Lunatic believe me you won?t be forgetting their names any time soon, especially the ones that make you curse like crazy xD Did you manage to get your recordings sorted for the PC-98 games? You said you were getting some sort of memory error if I recall correctly. Feel free to post a screenshot of it, while I never encountered it myself, maybe I?ll (or some other members) will know how to fix that. Really weird though that the Windows games record fine and you?re getting trouble on the PC98 ones :/ Yes indeed and agreed with watching your own replays. Its nice just chilling back and reliving your most prized achievements. We all know how much work goes into making them a reality :)

Agreed and definitely understandable about feeling more comfortable with several bullets around you now. You?re close to a year into bullet dodging now, so yes your confidence will definitely have shot up from way back when you would have started (and now you?re experimenting with No Bombs too, that will definitely help in growth), if anything we crave more bullets around us now xD (like Easy and Normal are too easy for me although Normal is still fun, Hard is my comfort zone, Lunatic I just adore then, it feels soooooo cool with all those bullets everywhere, but it?s very difficult to No Bomb then, and I love a challenge). Haha well we?re only human, so we tend to make mistakes, even after 5 years I still make a couple of mistakes I want to kick myself afterwards for, so I guess that never goes away lol. Yes never let it go to your head, you?ve still got Hard and Lunatic to discover properly, and believe me it?s quite a huge step. Although I hit Lunatics, I feel growth with every subsequent game I complete, so the growth just keeps on coming, and it shows that there never really is a limit to how much we could learn (unless we do Perfect Lunatics, there yes, you could let it go to your head and basically describe yourself as a walking god and not a human haha xD).

I believe she also uses her attacks in a random order in Touhou 2, so she?s quite fond of not being able to be read easily. Yep, left over bullets are annoying cause you?ll be in a mindset prepared for the next attack that?s coming, so you expect those bullets to have vanished off screen by that point. Let?s just consider it part of Marisa?s assholish charm haha ;) Hahaaha yeah agreed on her being frustrating, she?s a nightmare to face in every game I came across her except in Touhou 3, she?s one of the easiest characters to deal with there (her and Kana I feel are the easiest). While I didn?t face her in 8 yet, I saw the fight on Youtube, and it looks absolutely wonderful!! xD Ahhh another rematch with Marisa, with an arrange from her theme from Touhou 2 as well to boot! Ooooh btw, talking about Marisa, remember when I told you she uses duplication in Seihou 1, and we said she probably stole that from Flandre? Thinking more about this, I actually think she stole it from Yuuka in Touhou 4 actually. Yuuka duplicates herself too (not quadruples like Flan), and Marisa also stole Master Spark from Yuuka, so I wouldn?t be surprised that she actually picked up that ability from her. That, and the fact that Seihou 1 came out in 2000, when Touhou 6 came out in 2002 (so the devs + ZUN couldn?t have modelled her off of Flan since she had another 2 years till she came into existence). Oh yes definitely, 8 seems really well made and well thought out. The inclusion of Spell Card Practice, the Last Words, the bonus Last Spells, 2 final bosses, and the introduction of teams as well. . . sounds perfect just listing all that! Really looking forward to it too, that will keep me busy for quite a while with all it?s content!

Yes the zen state really is wonderful, VERY rare though, just too rare actually. Yes agreed, someone has to experience it to know what it feels like, someone won?t fully understand it till they actually experienced it themselves. I never got it in any other games I played, it?s like you?re in a trance or playing on auto-pilot so to speak. ?There?s times where I could be playing amazingly well and crushing everything easily but even then it?s not always the same as being in that zen state you know??, definitely understand and agree with this, the zen state is just too rare, what you?re describing now I consider a very good session when I?m purely in focus. Yes same here, ridiculously calm! In the zen state, it?s not the usual panic, claustrophobia, pressure, heart racing etc, it really is just like I?m a calm, tranquil, bullet dodging machine basically, till. . . I take that first hit, then that?s it, I?m f*cked. Just can?t get into the zen state again, and I know it?ll be a good couple of weeks till it happens again. Yeah agreed about modern games looking more like cinematic movies rather than games, I like my games looking like games, which is why I?m such a fan of retro, indie, and especially Touhou. Saying that though, there are some of these cinematic games which are nice. I just saw my sis playing through parts of Uncharted 4 recently, and it?s quite beautiful. Still no want to play it myself though :P Yeah same here about not getting engaged in a game if ?the difficulty is putting me to sleep? as you referred to it. I need to feel like my life (i.e. in the game) is at threat for me to actually get that satisfying level of immersion, which yes unfortunately, most games these days really hold your hand, which is why I appreciate the retro era like certain NES games, there was literally no hand holding whatsoever back then, and it required your utmost effort to clear most of them! Yes I?m thankful that there?s still a market for these type of arcade style games too (although niche), especially with the way gaming has mostly become with lots of multiplayer and whatnot.

Haha really glad you liked the Koishi theme I linked, I know not everyone is a fan of Eurobeat/trance/whatever genre it fits under. Ahhh ok, that Bad Apple arrange, yeah it?s quite brilliant, especially the visuals are done in quite a unique style the way they warp into each other. Yeah can?t really go wrong with Yuuhei Satellite, most of their arranges are awesome! Thanks for the Stage 4 one from Touhou 11! It?s quite cool and captures the original nicely. Here?s one for you by Yuuhei Satellite called Fingertip Chocolate, sounds very Japanesey and reflects Stage 3 in Touhou 11 quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG_jXf6nzIo It has some slight hints of dubstep in the 2nd chorus also which surprisingly enough, really fits well :) Ooooh yes, I love that Sakuya theme you linked from the 5 minute mark onwards, as you said, I mostly skip to that part instantly, it really is brilliant!! Same here about listening to it in a row! xD Yeah I love that A-One arrange, it?s perfect in every sense of the word in my opinion. Haha I listen to all genres, so it was quite easy for me to make the transition to Touhou music with Eurobeat/techno/trance/whatever mixed in.

Yeah definitely especially these figures like Ques Q, while they are pricey, the quality really is astounding. Prize figures like Sega and Furyu are nice too and easily affordable, but yeah, when compared to Ques Q?s stuff, you could easily see the difference in attention to detail. Certain Griffon figures are hit and miss, so really got to be weary of which Griffon figures you go for, although I have a couple. Yeah completely agreed, when you miss the pre-order period, it?s very rare for these online sites to restock them, which in turn, you?ll have to go for the second hand market like Ninoma and Mandarake, and the prices tend to shoot up quite a fair bit since the figure went rare then :( There were countless times when I ended up paying more than double the figure?s original cost. You might get lucky and the company makes a re-release (I got lucky on my Ques Q Koishi). Be VERY weary of eBay and Amazon. I got slammed with a fake Yukari from eBay, and the figure definitely came from Japan, thankfully I managed to get a refund for that. MyFigureCollection will greatly help in finding discrepancies in fakes. Haha yeah I understand what you mean about that nice feeling of holding the mangas and stuff, it?s kind of like a pirate when he gets his hands on his loot lol xD Oh yes definitely, you?re going to have images in artbooks which the artist will not post online, his online page will be a sample, there will be exclusive art in the artbooks! Haha glad Touhou mostly became your entertainment fund xD Always nice having more Touhou merch, there?s just sooo much xD Yeah you?re quite an Alice fan by the look of it, so treat yourself to that beautiful figure this Christmas :) I do that sometimes too where I buy a gift for myself, mostly when I would have completed the Touhou game I would be playing too as a reward for myself. Ooooh yes, I really can?t wait for that beautiful Reimu figure! Getting dead close now!! And yes, I REALLY hope the post office handles it with care. I never purchased from GoodSmile?s Online Store directly, so I?m hoping their service is good and they package it well. I use Amiami and Ninoma mostly (Ninoma to hunt down the rare, old, already released figures that I missed pre-ordering). Hahaha yeah, obsession is an understatement when it comes to Touhou lol, best description I?d say is literally life-controlling lol. Yeah totally agreed about Reimu, she really is one of a kind, and such a wonderful character, I?m glad she stands for what Touhou mostly represents :) Ahhh twice in one year to Japan? Your sis has good taste xD Haha the problem with going to Japan wouldn?t be the funds to get there, it?s the money I?d need to buy all that merch in front of me xD I?d end up having to ship the stuff to my home, cause it sure as hell won?t fit in my luggage! xD I bet I?d spend more on merch than the whole holiday lol.

Yeah that?s a common misconception I imagine, I used to think that too about the Phantasm stage. Oh yes it?s definitely a milestone, after all, it?s the only Phantasm Stage so it?s something unique! :) Well this post is about 14 days old and your PM was more recent, so glad you?ve got 15/17 Last Words done now :) And definitely agreed, Remilia is uber-cool, such a dangerous boss! I could imagine how cool her Last Word would be! True that about the suffering, while it is stressful, the sense of accomplishment is one of the best feelings I?ve ever felt in life, so it?s worth enduring with the suffering and powering through something, cause the reward after that is super-satisfying! xD No worries about the OBS recordings, that took me months of research, tinkering and experimentation to figure out properly, so I?m happy I could avoid that hassle for you :) Yeah, way too few replay slots, so that?s when recording comes in handy :) Also useful/convenient just having everything as an mp4 to show your friends rather than having to install the game and put the replay files in it to show them, so recording definitely has it?s pluses. Plus, as far as I know the replays don?t store the endings, I want those recorded also just to chill back and watch through the whole story sometimes rather than just the gameplay. Well, do what you do in life, you?ll always find someone out there that?s better than you are, but don?t let that diminish your accomplishments you?re putting up on Youtube. They?re all the results of your hard work and determination, so be proud of them :) Ahhhh that experience you had with Mokou?s final card sounds awesome, I love it when I get so immersed like that, and as you?re saying, you know it?s gonna come down to the wire! Yeah definitely, at that point, especially on the final card with no lives remaining, it?s literally a ?Goku vs Beerus in space moment?, and it truly does feel amazing and unmatched by anything else :)

Yeah you?d be amazed how some attacks/stage portions have such a simple gimmick which wouldn?t have occurred to you that it?s so simple to figure out. Yeah true that about having to do something counter intuitive to deal with certain attacks. Patchouli thought me that with her non-spells with lasers in Touhou 6 recently on Lunatic, you actually have to run INTO the laser exactly as it?s vanishing for best results, rather than away from it, especially due to the aimed red bullets at you. Annnd yes, definitely agree on starting positions, this will GREATLY help in trivializing certain cards and stage portions. Something that would become a clusterfuck becomes much easier if you?re at the correct position to start tackling it. Being higher up on the screen helps a lot too due to your damage output, some stuff you won?t manage to kill the enemies fast enough if you?re quite low (an example of this is the blue chain-bullet spewing fairies in Touhou 6 Stage 5 exactly before the Sakuya midboss, something so tough usually but gets easily trivialized if you?re around halfway up the screen to take out that first fairy in the middle), so it?s crucial to experiment and get creative as you stated :) Well done, yes, that?s exactly it, most of the bullets on screen are just there to intimidate you, in truth, only a couple are there which are REALLY a threat to you. Learning how to determine which ones is part of the fun, especially with the other point you stated where on attacks with multiple bullet types you could tackle each individually at that moment till the next bullet type comes :)

Yeah I?ve seen other people?s runs where the bombs deal quite a good amount of damage to the non-spells (especially with Sanae, it just eats through a health bar), but never took notice for the Spell Cards. That?s a very cool feature, shows that the bosses really are at their best when using their Spell Cards :) Yeah I actually prefer the bombs like in Touhou 10 or 11 where just a ring of power comes out from Reimu and it just clears off those bullets that touch with it, rather than the whole screen, makes those bombs feel more tactical and more thought has to go into where you use them. Ahh yeah, I?ve seen that where the bombs double as your power, so yes, you really need to be weary of when you use your bombs, cause if you can?t get back to full power, you?re going to have quite a hard time against the final Spell Card which already takes a while to wither down at full power, let alone at 1 power x_X. Yeah you should never give up on a run, you?d be amazed how much something could go in your favour sometimes, even if you?re just with 1 life at the final boss. That adrenaline and determination might see you through till the end of it! :D Definitely agreed about ?part of the fun is you never know what will happen next?, it really could go both ways.

Yes it really is a damn shame that the PC98 characters got cut off, there were quite a few really cool characters which would have been amazing to see a comeback from in the Windows era :( Chiyuri, Yumeko and Shinki are just a few which come to mind which are ridiculously cool. That?s quite a good mentality you?ve got that you could snap back into it quite easily even after getting hit, it really throws me off usually and could take around 30 seconds till I?m back into focus, especially yes, when you?re in the middle of a Spell Card, it could become quite a clusterfuck when you just respawned and are trying to pick up the Power items cause it could really throw off how you?re meant to play the pattern (i.e. for example if you had to stream it and you?re busy trying to collect the Power items, it?ll throw off the stream and the bullets that are aimed at you). Yeah same here, when I do half an hour of just cycling through Stage 1 ? 4 cause of dumb mistakes I really start getting pissed, but it?s part of Touhou I guess lol, and tomorrow will be a better day. I find that my overall state (i.e. how tired I am/if I slept well, busy day at work, my OCD f*cking me up constantly thinking of something I need to do while I?m trying to dodge bullets) really plays a factor in how well I play. You really need to have a focused mind to play at your best, so you could get that 100% immersion we talked about before where it?s literally just you and the game, and nothing else matters at that point. Haha good to know about Reisen, its not so common for Stage 5 bosses to be easy, especially since they?re meant to be the final boss? bodyguard so to speak. Although saying this, yes in Seihou 1, the Stage 5 boss is WAY WAYYY easier than the Stage 4 one. Same surely can?t be said about Yumeko in Touhou 5, she?s literally a relentless beast, you?ll find out when you come to play Touhou 5, it?s quite a wondrous addition to the series being one that I hold in very high regard :) Some small touches make it really cool, like Makai (the place you?re in from Stage 3 onwards in Touhou 5) catching fire in the background while you?re fighting Shinki (the final boss). Makes sense lol, all those bullets that we dodge have to go somewhere haha, and guess they?re crashing into the buildings/city lol.

Ahh yes, almost a month without the TV REALLY wasn?t nice, apart from the constant worrying that it?s unfixable and I?ll have to dish out around 1,800 Euros to buy a new one. Thankfully that?s sorted and life is falling back into the usual routine. Unfortunately haven?t gotten nowhere near as much gaming time as I would like to since I?ve gotten the TV back, just that odd session here and there, but much better than a span of weeks not playing at all. Ahh yes, I understand that relief you feel once you?re back to dodging bullets, and you can easily relate seeing as you had quite a busy month yourself with work! Ouch, sounds like it really was quite a busy month, and also loaded with responsibility too with your supervisor being away :/ Look at the bright side though, you showed you could handle the pressure and that you?re reliable when sh*t hits the fan, so yeah, that should make your bosses happier with you, especially if they are considering giving you a raise!! As you said, more Touhou merch!! Woohoo!! xD Haha yeah glad it wasn?t boring at work, but yes, magical girl over work, ANY DAY, ANY TIME, ANY PLACE!! ;)

Yeah we?ve still got quite a lot to learn mate. I?m currently trying to Perfect Stage Practice Stage 4 in Touhou 6 with all 4 characters, and I?m not gonna lie, it?s giving me quite a damn hard time, especially those books that shoot a sh*tload of green bullets early on in the stage warranting an instant restart. Then I see maulerfranco666 on Youtube do Stage 4 Perfect No Focus! Sweet Jesus, I?ve got a long way to go! Not only Perfect, but also the lack of precision in controls due to No Focus???? Yes you definitely will keep seeing your skills improve the more you focus on Lunatic, and the No Bombs also help you gain a greater mastery of most of the game since you have such little room for error :) I?ve been playing for 5 years now (although I think I don?t get close to the hours you put in per week) and keep seeing an increase in skills with every game I complete, my sis even pointed that out to me too. Touhou 3 really helped me with my skills since it?s mostly reflex based, so you can?t memorize too much stuff, and Seihou since it?s the inverse of Touhou (i.e. Touhou is mostly slow and dense, Seihou is less dense but faster). Extras are really fun with their gimmicks to figure out most Spell Cards as well :) Yeah with the Extras you?re completing, Hard should be right up your alley now, so just see what you feel like working on, I agree that it?s quite a tough choice picking between Extra and Hard, cause both are equally fun xD Yeah you seem to like jumping around a lot from one thing to another depending on mood. It has it?s advantages of keeping things fresh at least, but then yeah, things that require lots of practice will take longer that way. The more you practice the same thing, the quicker you?ll learn it and finally hit it. Well, the bright side with beating the Extra Stage with Reimu in Touhou 15 is that since it?s harder to do it with her, once you do beat it, you?ll just breeze through it with Sanae and Reisen then :D I agree that the games do feel like they?re built around Reimu as you said. Glad we share the same goal and dedication to our beloved red and white shrine maiden :)

Haha yeah I noticed, I?ve been typing this out for around 4 hours now over the span of 2 days lol (glad I get the time to do most of it at work haha xD). Same here mate, will never lose interest in this series, there?s just sooooo much left for me to see and experience! xD As I said in the PM, never worry about the delay in response time, I understand that it takes a while to type a reply like this, and that you also need to get in good gaming sessions, so, just reply when you feel like some Touhou chat :) Well in Touhou 6 so far I hit Extra No Bombs with all 4 characters (1 Reimu and 1 Marisa doing the Maze of Love at the bottom instead of running around in circles, and getting Perfect till that point since I wanted to face it at Max Rank (what?s the point of playing a Spell Card in a more challenging way if you?re not going to experience it at it?s full difficulty?)), and recently beat Lunatic No Bombs with continues to unlock Stage 6 in Stage Practice. Now I?m toiling away at Perfect Stage Practice with Reimu B (and Stage 4 with all 4 characters since Patchouli uses different Spell Cards depending on which character you?re using, so I want all those Perfect).

Yes definitely, while I never experienced the memory error myself, a screenshot might help me / other members determine what it is, always good having recording set up properly for PC98, especially since those games don?t store replays :( As I told you in the PM, that?s quite a nice capture on Wriggle?s Last Word! Keep it up! Your dedication will carry you to your goals! ;) Recording quality looks nice too from your Youtube video, and Youtube usually introduces compression, so I imagine your actual recordings on your hard drive are slightly sharper. No worries about the help with recording, it really was my pleasure to help :)

Definitely true haha, so much to gush on on Touhou xD Happy Touhouing to yourself too my good friend. Take care and best wishes :)

Re: My first lunatic 1cc
« Reply #42 on: September 15, 2019, 03:03:23 AM »
As we said in the PMs, never worry about response time. I know how busy everyone is, and real life stuff just comes up, so it?s completely understandable :) Well, for Seihou 1 and 2, you?re going to have to download them from Moriya Shrine or some other site that hosts Touhou games just like for the PC98 games. Unfortunately the first 2 games are out of print :( Seihou 3 though could be purchased digitally (from here: http://www.dlsite.com/home/work/=/product_id/RJ101418.html) to support the developers, I think only C74 which could be patched to version 3 though, so you?ll need to get C67 with some scrounging on the net. (If anyone else is reading this and I?m mistaken please let me know, I would love to own physical copies of these games). Note that there are 3 versions of Seihou 3 which is called Banshiryuu: the C67 version, C74 version, and the most recent version called Ver. 3. While not so clear, here?s some more information about the 3 different Seihou 3 versions: https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/User_talk:Arcorann#About_Banshiryuu_versions As a note, only Seihou 1 and 2 have Touhou characters in them (Reimu and Marisa as Extra bosses in Seihou 1, and Yuuka as a playable character and opponent in Seihou 2), Seihou 3 doesn?t, but still worth a playthrough. Also don?t forget about Samidare (which has a cameo from Yuki and Mai from Touhou 5, and Gates and Vivit from Seihou as Extra bosses), and also Uwabami Breakers which is one of ZUN?s works. Torte Le Magic is another game you might want to check out, the music was made by ZUN for that one. It?s short and quite easy too so should be a quick playthrough. Ahh definitely about the No Bomb runs, as you?re saying, little room for error so can never let yourself get overconfident cause it could end up being your downfall! Really glad you?re enjoying these, and once you push yourself onto Hard, and especially Lunatic, that?s when it?ll start feeling heart-attack inducing haha xD Keep at it, you?ll get there! ;) Definitely agreed about certain cases (although rare) when the Stage 4 boss is tougher than the Stage 5 one. Honestly Patchouli is giving me a harder time than Sakuya in most of my runs in Touhou 6, although sometimes Sakuya could get nasty too, especially when she goes the opposite way of where she trapped me with her knives so I?m barely dealing any damage. Agreed also on the Stage Practice, it is very helpful, but yes, to run all the stages alongside each other is MUCH more tricky than doing them individually in Stage Practice, especially when the pressure starts building up when you see that you?ve got a good number of lives left and know that you might be able to pull off that 1cc! Yes Spell Card Practice is also a godsend from what I?ve seen, plus it?s mega fun too capturing each card (since you can?t bomb or lose a life in that mode!). I imagine you went in already half prepared for 8?s Extra from Spell Card Practice :)

That?s very good progress in just one day! Well done and keep it up! Really? It?s one of the easier ones? Mokou has a couple of attacks that look quite intimidating from what I saw of her. Really looking forward to a face off with her in the future! :) Ouch that final spell card sounds tough, must be one of the intimidating ones I mentioned :P Hahaha yeah I know what that feels like when you?re at the end and got no more resources left! It?s a wonderful feeling and soooo immersive. Definitely give that Extra a shot as a No Bombs if you?re confident about it, remember, you?ve got your lives to help you power through the final 3 ? 4 cards, so master the earlier cards to not waste resources on those, and use your lives on the remaining cards. This is how I tackled Flandre in 6, leaving my lives for her final 2 cards (QED is terrifying, starts off all slow and easy, but by the end it?s manic!). I imagine you managed to get Mokou?s bonus attack now since you unlocked Yukari?s Last Word as you said in the PM :)

Yeah, which is a real shame, cause I?d love to remember all this stuff :( Well thankfully since I?m recording now, I could revisit previous achievements and stories :D (I also record the endings, not just the gameplay) Oh yes definitely, while I never visited the TVTropes page, I use the wiki A LOT, and there is a plethora of information there that just breathes life into the whole series more! (both with more info on the characters, and also locations and simple things like objects). Hahaha once you face the bosses in Lunatic believe me you won?t be forgetting their names any time soon, especially the ones that make you curse like crazy xD Did you manage to get your recordings sorted for the PC-98 games? You said you were getting some sort of memory error if I recall correctly. Feel free to post a screenshot of it, while I never encountered it myself, maybe I?ll (or some other members) will know how to fix that. Really weird though that the Windows games record fine and you?re getting trouble on the PC98 ones :/ Yes indeed and agreed with watching your own replays. Its nice just chilling back and reliving your most prized achievements. We all know how much work goes into making them a reality :)

Agreed and definitely understandable about feeling more comfortable with several bullets around you now. You?re close to a year into bullet dodging now, so yes your confidence will definitely have shot up from way back when you would have started (and now you?re experimenting with No Bombs too, that will definitely help in growth), if anything we crave more bullets around us now xD (like Easy and Normal are too easy for me although Normal is still fun, Hard is my comfort zone, Lunatic I just adore then, it feels soooooo cool with all those bullets everywhere, but it?s very difficult to No Bomb then, and I love a challenge). Haha well we?re only human, so we tend to make mistakes, even after 5 years I still make a couple of mistakes I want to kick myself afterwards for, so I guess that never goes away lol. Yes never let it go to your head, you?ve still got Hard and Lunatic to discover properly, and believe me it?s quite a huge step. Although I hit Lunatics, I feel growth with every subsequent game I complete, so the growth just keeps on coming, and it shows that there never really is a limit to how much we could learn (unless we do Perfect Lunatics, there yes, you could let it go to your head and basically describe yourself as a walking god and not a human haha xD).

I believe she also uses her attacks in a random order in Touhou 2, so she?s quite fond of not being able to be read easily. Yep, left over bullets are annoying cause you?ll be in a mindset prepared for the next attack that?s coming, so you expect those bullets to have vanished off screen by that point. Let?s just consider it part of Marisa?s assholish charm haha ;) Hahaaha yeah agreed on her being frustrating, she?s a nightmare to face in every game I came across her except in Touhou 3, she?s one of the easiest characters to deal with there (her and Kana I feel are the easiest). While I didn?t face her in 8 yet, I saw the fight on Youtube, and it looks absolutely wonderful!! xD Ahhh another rematch with Marisa, with an arrange from her theme from Touhou 2 as well to boot! Ooooh btw, talking about Marisa, remember when I told you she uses duplication in Seihou 1, and we said she probably stole that from Flandre? Thinking more about this, I actually think she stole it from Yuuka in Touhou 4 actually. Yuuka duplicates herself too (not quadruples like Flan), and Marisa also stole Master Spark from Yuuka, so I wouldn?t be surprised that she actually picked up that ability from her. That, and the fact that Seihou 1 came out in 2000, when Touhou 6 came out in 2002 (so the devs + ZUN couldn?t have modelled her off of Flan since she had another 2 years till she came into existence). Oh yes definitely, 8 seems really well made and well thought out. The inclusion of Spell Card Practice, the Last Words, the bonus Last Spells, 2 final bosses, and the introduction of teams as well. . . sounds perfect just listing all that! Really looking forward to it too, that will keep me busy for quite a while with all it?s content!

Yes the zen state really is wonderful, VERY rare though, just too rare actually. Yes agreed, someone has to experience it to know what it feels like, someone won?t fully understand it till they actually experienced it themselves. I never got it in any other games I played, it?s like you?re in a trance or playing on auto-pilot so to speak. ?There?s times where I could be playing amazingly well and crushing everything easily but even then it?s not always the same as being in that zen state you know??, definitely understand and agree with this, the zen state is just too rare, what you?re describing now I consider a very good session when I?m purely in focus. Yes same here, ridiculously calm! In the zen state, it?s not the usual panic, claustrophobia, pressure, heart racing etc, it really is just like I?m a calm, tranquil, bullet dodging machine basically, till. . . I take that first hit, then that?s it, I?m f*cked. Just can?t get into the zen state again, and I know it?ll be a good couple of weeks till it happens again. Yeah agreed about modern games looking more like cinematic movies rather than games, I like my games looking like games, which is why I?m such a fan of retro, indie, and especially Touhou. Saying that though, there are some of these cinematic games which are nice. I just saw my sis playing through parts of Uncharted 4 recently, and it?s quite beautiful. Still no want to play it myself though :P Yeah same here about not getting engaged in a game if ?the difficulty is putting me to sleep? as you referred to it. I need to feel like my life (i.e. in the game) is at threat for me to actually get that satisfying level of immersion, which yes unfortunately, most games these days really hold your hand, which is why I appreciate the retro era like certain NES games, there was literally no hand holding whatsoever back then, and it required your utmost effort to clear most of them! Yes I?m thankful that there?s still a market for these type of arcade style games too (although niche), especially with the way gaming has mostly become with lots of multiplayer and whatnot.

Haha really glad you liked the Koishi theme I linked, I know not everyone is a fan of Eurobeat/trance/whatever genre it fits under. Ahhh ok, that Bad Apple arrange, yeah it?s quite brilliant, especially the visuals are done in quite a unique style the way they warp into each other. Yeah can?t really go wrong with Yuuhei Satellite, most of their arranges are awesome! Thanks for the Stage 4 one from Touhou 11! It?s quite cool and captures the original nicely. Here?s one for you by Yuuhei Satellite called Fingertip Chocolate, sounds very Japanesey and reflects Stage 3 in Touhou 11 quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG_jXf6nzIo It has some slight hints of dubstep in the 2nd chorus also which surprisingly enough, really fits well :) Ooooh yes, I love that Sakuya theme you linked from the 5 minute mark onwards, as you said, I mostly skip to that part instantly, it really is brilliant!! Same here about listening to it in a row! xD Yeah I love that A-One arrange, it?s perfect in every sense of the word in my opinion. Haha I listen to all genres, so it was quite easy for me to make the transition to Touhou music with Eurobeat/techno/trance/whatever mixed in.

Yeah definitely especially these figures like Ques Q, while they are pricey, the quality really is astounding. Prize figures like Sega and Furyu are nice too and easily affordable, but yeah, when compared to Ques Q?s stuff, you could easily see the difference in attention to detail. Certain Griffon figures are hit and miss, so really got to be weary of which Griffon figures you go for, although I have a couple. Yeah completely agreed, when you miss the pre-order period, it?s very rare for these online sites to restock them, which in turn, you?ll have to go for the second hand market like Ninoma and Mandarake, and the prices tend to shoot up quite a fair bit since the figure went rare then :( There were countless times when I ended up paying more than double the figure?s original cost. You might get lucky and the company makes a re-release (I got lucky on my Ques Q Koishi). Be VERY weary of eBay and Amazon. I got slammed with a fake Yukari from eBay, and the figure definitely came from Japan, thankfully I managed to get a refund for that. MyFigureCollection will greatly help in finding discrepancies in fakes. Haha yeah I understand what you mean about that nice feeling of holding the mangas and stuff, it?s kind of like a pirate when he gets his hands on his loot lol xD Oh yes definitely, you?re going to have images in artbooks which the artist will not post online, his online page will be a sample, there will be exclusive art in the artbooks! Haha glad Touhou mostly became your entertainment fund xD Always nice having more Touhou merch, there?s just sooo much xD Yeah you?re quite an Alice fan by the look of it, so treat yourself to that beautiful figure this Christmas :) I do that sometimes too where I buy a gift for myself, mostly when I would have completed the Touhou game I would be playing too as a reward for myself. Ooooh yes, I really can?t wait for that beautiful Reimu figure! Getting dead close now!! And yes, I REALLY hope the post office handles it with care. I never purchased from GoodSmile?s Online Store directly, so I?m hoping their service is good and they package it well. I use Amiami and Ninoma mostly (Ninoma to hunt down the rare, old, already released figures that I missed pre-ordering). Hahaha yeah, obsession is an understatement when it comes to Touhou lol, best description I?d say is literally life-controlling lol. Yeah totally agreed about Reimu, she really is one of a kind, and such a wonderful character, I?m glad she stands for what Touhou mostly represents :) Ahhh twice in one year to Japan? Your sis has good taste xD Haha the problem with going to Japan wouldn?t be the funds to get there, it?s the money I?d need to buy all that merch in front of me xD I?d end up having to ship the stuff to my home, cause it sure as hell won?t fit in my luggage! xD I bet I?d spend more on merch than the whole holiday lol.

Yeah that?s a common misconception I imagine, I used to think that too about the Phantasm stage. Oh yes it?s definitely a milestone, after all, it?s the only Phantasm Stage so it?s something unique! :) Well this post is about 14 days old and your PM was more recent, so glad you?ve got 15/17 Last Words done now :) And definitely agreed, Remilia is uber-cool, such a dangerous boss! I could imagine how cool her Last Word would be! True that about the suffering, while it is stressful, the sense of accomplishment is one of the best feelings I?ve ever felt in life, so it?s worth enduring with the suffering and powering through something, cause the reward after that is super-satisfying! xD No worries about the OBS recordings, that took me months of research, tinkering and experimentation to figure out properly, so I?m happy I could avoid that hassle for you :) Yeah, way too few replay slots, so that?s when recording comes in handy :) Also useful/convenient just having everything as an mp4 to show your friends rather than having to install the game and put the replay files in it to show them, so recording definitely has it?s pluses. Plus, as far as I know the replays don?t store the endings, I want those recorded also just to chill back and watch through the whole story sometimes rather than just the gameplay. Well, do what you do in life, you?ll always find someone out there that?s better than you are, but don?t let that diminish your accomplishments you?re putting up on Youtube. They?re all the results of your hard work and determination, so be proud of them :) Ahhhh that experience you had with Mokou?s final card sounds awesome, I love it when I get so immersed like that, and as you?re saying, you know it?s gonna come down to the wire! Yeah definitely, at that point, especially on the final card with no lives remaining, it?s literally a ?Goku vs Beerus in space moment?, and it truly does feel amazing and unmatched by anything else :)

Yeah you?d be amazed how some attacks/stage portions have such a simple gimmick which wouldn?t have occurred to you that it?s so simple to figure out. Yeah true that about having to do something counter intuitive to deal with certain attacks. Patchouli thought me that with her non-spells with lasers in Touhou 6 recently on Lunatic, you actually have to run INTO the laser exactly as it?s vanishing for best results, rather than away from it, especially due to the aimed red bullets at you. Annnd yes, definitely agree on starting positions, this will GREATLY help in trivializing certain cards and stage portions. Something that would become a clusterfuck becomes much easier if you?re at the correct position to start tackling it. Being higher up on the screen helps a lot too due to your damage output, some stuff you won?t manage to kill the enemies fast enough if you?re quite low (an example of this is the blue chain-bullet spewing fairies in Touhou 6 Stage 5 exactly before the Sakuya midboss, something so tough usually but gets easily trivialized if you?re around halfway up the screen to take out that first fairy in the middle), so it?s crucial to experiment and get creative as you stated :) Well done, yes, that?s exactly it, most of the bullets on screen are just there to intimidate you, in truth, only a couple are there which are REALLY a threat to you. Learning how to determine which ones is part of the fun, especially with the other point you stated where on attacks with multiple bullet types you could tackle each individually at that moment till the next bullet type comes :)

Yeah I?ve seen other people?s runs where the bombs deal quite a good amount of damage to the non-spells (especially with Sanae, it just eats through a health bar), but never took notice for the Spell Cards. That?s a very cool feature, shows that the bosses really are at their best when using their Spell Cards :) Yeah I actually prefer the bombs like in Touhou 10 or 11 where just a ring of power comes out from Reimu and it just clears off those bullets that touch with it, rather than the whole screen, makes those bombs feel more tactical and more thought has to go into where you use them. Ahh yeah, I?ve seen that where the bombs double as your power, so yes, you really need to be weary of when you use your bombs, cause if you can?t get back to full power, you?re going to have quite a hard time against the final Spell Card which already takes a while to wither down at full power, let alone at 1 power x_X. Yeah you should never give up on a run, you?d be amazed how much something could go in your favour sometimes, even if you?re just with 1 life at the final boss. That adrenaline and determination might see you through till the end of it! :D Definitely agreed about ?part of the fun is you never know what will happen next?, it really could go both ways.

Yes it really is a damn shame that the PC98 characters got cut off, there were quite a few really cool characters which would have been amazing to see a comeback from in the Windows era :( Chiyuri, Yumeko and Shinki are just a few which come to mind which are ridiculously cool. That?s quite a good mentality you?ve got that you could snap back into it quite easily even after getting hit, it really throws me off usually and could take around 30 seconds till I?m back into focus, especially yes, when you?re in the middle of a Spell Card, it could become quite a clusterfuck when you just respawned and are trying to pick up the Power items cause it could really throw off how you?re meant to play the pattern (i.e. for example if you had to stream it and you?re busy trying to collect the Power items, it?ll throw off the stream and the bullets that are aimed at you). Yeah same here, when I do half an hour of just cycling through Stage 1 ? 4 cause of dumb mistakes I really start getting pissed, but it?s part of Touhou I guess lol, and tomorrow will be a better day. I find that my overall state (i.e. how tired I am/if I slept well, busy day at work, my OCD f*cking me up constantly thinking of something I need to do while I?m trying to dodge bullets) really plays a factor in how well I play. You really need to have a focused mind to play at your best, so you could get that 100% immersion we talked about before where it?s literally just you and the game, and nothing else matters at that point. Haha good to know about Reisen, its not so common for Stage 5 bosses to be easy, especially since they?re meant to be the final boss? bodyguard so to speak. Although saying this, yes in Seihou 1, the Stage 5 boss is WAY WAYYY easier than the Stage 4 one. Same surely can?t be said about Yumeko in Touhou 5, she?s literally a relentless beast, you?ll find out when you come to play Touhou 5, it?s quite a wondrous addition to the series being one that I hold in very high regard :) Some small touches make it really cool, like Makai (the place you?re in from Stage 3 onwards in Touhou 5) catching fire in the background while you?re fighting Shinki (the final boss). Makes sense lol, all those bullets that we dodge have to go somewhere haha, and guess they?re crashing into the buildings/city lol.

Ahh yes, almost a month without the TV REALLY wasn?t nice, apart from the constant worrying that it?s unfixable and I?ll have to dish out around 1,800 Euros to buy a new one. Thankfully that?s sorted and life is falling back into the usual routine. Unfortunately haven?t gotten nowhere near as much gaming time as I would like to since I?ve gotten the TV back, just that odd session here and there, but much better than a span of weeks not playing at all. Ahh yes, I understand that relief you feel once you?re back to dodging bullets, and you can easily relate seeing as you had quite a busy month yourself with work! Ouch, sounds like it really was quite a busy month, and also loaded with responsibility too with your supervisor being away :/ Look at the bright side though, you showed you could handle the pressure and that you?re reliable when sh*t hits the fan, so yeah, that should make your bosses happier with you, especially if they are considering giving you a raise!! As you said, more Touhou merch!! Woohoo!! xD Haha yeah glad it wasn?t boring at work, but yes, magical girl over work, ANY DAY, ANY TIME, ANY PLACE!! ;)

Yeah we?ve still got quite a lot to learn mate. I?m currently trying to Perfect Stage Practice Stage 4 in Touhou 6 with all 4 characters, and I?m not gonna lie, it?s giving me quite a damn hard time, especially those books that shoot a sh*tload of green bullets early on in the stage warranting an instant restart. Then I see maulerfranco666 on Youtube do Stage 4 Perfect No Focus! Sweet Jesus, I?ve got a long way to go! Not only Perfect, but also the lack of precision in controls due to No Focus???? Yes you definitely will keep seeing your skills improve the more you focus on Lunatic, and the No Bombs also help you gain a greater mastery of most of the game since you have such little room for error :) I?ve been playing for 5 years now (although I think I don?t get close to the hours you put in per week) and keep seeing an increase in skills with every game I complete, my sis even pointed that out to me too. Touhou 3 really helped me with my skills since it?s mostly reflex based, so you can?t memorize too much stuff, and Seihou since it?s the inverse of Touhou (i.e. Touhou is mostly slow and dense, Seihou is less dense but faster). Extras are really fun with their gimmicks to figure out most Spell Cards as well :) Yeah with the Extras you?re completing, Hard should be right up your alley now, so just see what you feel like working on, I agree that it?s quite a tough choice picking between Extra and Hard, cause both are equally fun xD Yeah you seem to like jumping around a lot from one thing to another depending on mood. It has it?s advantages of keeping things fresh at least, but then yeah, things that require lots of practice will take longer that way. The more you practice the same thing, the quicker you?ll learn it and finally hit it. Well, the bright side with beating the Extra Stage with Reimu in Touhou 15 is that since it?s harder to do it with her, once you do beat it, you?ll just breeze through it with Sanae and Reisen then :D I agree that the games do feel like they?re built around Reimu as you said. Glad we share the same goal and dedication to our beloved red and white shrine maiden :)

Haha yeah I noticed, I?ve been typing this out for around 4 hours now over the span of 2 days lol (glad I get the time to do most of it at work haha xD). Same here mate, will never lose interest in this series, there?s just sooooo much left for me to see and experience! xD As I said in the PM, never worry about the delay in response time, I understand that it takes a while to type a reply like this, and that you also need to get in good gaming sessions, so, just reply when you feel like some Touhou chat :) Well in Touhou 6 so far I hit Extra No Bombs with all 4 characters (1 Reimu and 1 Marisa doing the Maze of Love at the bottom instead of running around in circles, and getting Perfect till that point since I wanted to face it at Max Rank (what?s the point of playing a Spell Card in a more challenging way if you?re not going to experience it at it?s full difficulty?)), and recently beat Lunatic No Bombs with continues to unlock Stage 6 in Stage Practice. Now I?m toiling away at Perfect Stage Practice with Reimu B (and Stage 4 with all 4 characters since Patchouli uses different Spell Cards depending on which character you?re using, so I want all those Perfect).

Yes definitely, while I never experienced the memory error myself, a screenshot might help me / other members determine what it is, always good having recording set up properly for PC98, especially since those games don?t store replays :( As I told you in the PM, that?s quite a nice capture on Wriggle?s Last Word! Keep it up! Your dedication will carry you to your goals! ;) Recording quality looks nice too from your Youtube video, and Youtube usually introduces compression, so I imagine your actual recordings on your hard drive are slightly sharper. No worries about the help with recording, it really was my pleasure to help :)

Definitely true haha, so much to gush on on Touhou xD Happy Touhouing to yourself too my good friend. Take care and best wishes :)

Hey I know I should stop apologizing but I'm sorry its been so long since I responded here! Thank you again for being so understanding. I have grabbed the first Seihou game and I intend to check it out eventually here once I get some of my current Touhou projects off the list. It's a shame the first two are out of print as it'd be nice to add them to the collection eventually but I suppose it can't be helped. That's good to know about the C74! I'll try to remember that for when I do get around to trying out the 3rd game! It's a shame it doesn't have Touhou characters after 2 but if the first two are still good I'm sure the 3rd is still good in its own way too. I'll make sure to add Sumidare, Uwabami Breakers and Torte le Magic to the list to try out at some point as well :) I know for 7 and 8 I definitely found the Stage 4 bosses to be more difficult than the Stage 5 bosses and for Touhou 6 I'd say based on my limited experience I found them close to equal (I've only faced them in Normal Mode though). Ahhh Sakuya is definitely good at trapping you if you're not careful, sometimes it can be really hard to avoid too. I hate that when you get pushed to the side and just go really long periods where you can't deal any real damage. I know what you mean when you say running the stages alongside each other is a lot more tricky than spell practice. Even in doing Spell Card practice in 8 for the Extra Stage I got to a point where I could consistently do most of the Spell Cards in the practice successfully again and again, but fitting it together in the actual run was a bit more tricky. You're correct! I spent a good deal of time in the Spell Card practice in preparation which I found made a huge difference. For all but the final 3 Spell Cards I practiced until I had successfully captured each one 25 times, and for the final 3 I practiced just enough so I wouldn't be dying every few seconds. From start to finish it only took about 1 days worth of practice to beat 8s Extra Stage and only 2 more days after that to have done it with all 4 teams. If I were to do an Extra Stage no bomb run I'd imagine this would probably be the easiest one to achieve, especially if I took more time to practice the Spell Cards.

Most of Mokou's aren't too bad at all. A few that look nastier than they are (The Hanging Man is one that lucks extremely ugly but isn't *that* bad, although it does still sometimes trip me up in game). She has a couple I consistently struggle with but in general I really didn't find hers as bad as others, again though that could be largely in part be solely thanks to the Spell Card practice. She's still a really fun fight though! I still struggle with her final Spell Card but I admit I haven't practiced it tons compared to the others. Just enough that I felt I could beat the stage. I have heard some people say they feel hers is one of the easier ones but I still haven't successfully captured it myself so I can't fully comment there. I would really like to do a No Bomb run for this Extra Stage at some point, which I was tempted to do after completing the 4 teams but at the time I also wanted to finishing capturing all the Last Words. Ahh yeah I think I'm going to want all if not most of my lives for the final few Spell Cards, particularly the last 3 which still can grief me even with bombs. I do have Mokou's bonus attack unlocked! Seeing it at least once was one of the requirements to unlock one of the Last Words (I think the one for Mokou) but I still have yet to beat it.

Yes recording the gameplay as we play is good for that since we can get the whole story ended included like you mentioned. It's a shame it's not recorded with the in game replays as well and I never liked the way it usually seems to speed through the dialogue either. I'd recommend the TVTropes page if you're ever bored. It's not a bad way to find out a bunch of neat little tidbits about various characters although it will probably also spoil some stuff that happens in later titles too. Between that site and the Wiki there's certainly no shortage of lore and series info to absorb out there and I definitely agree with how it breathes so much life into the series! I doubt you do ever really forget a character once you've faced them in Lunatic Mode, especially doing No Bomb runs! XD I admit I still haven't checked to see how OBS is with Touhou 2 atm, mainly just because I've been working on various other things in the series although don't worry as I very much intend to return to this one soon! If it is still having memory issues than I'll be sure to screenshot it for you, although I'm hoping it was just a one time issue kind of thing. Funny enough I've found another game OBS seems to struggle on a fair bit for me: Touhou 15. For some reason recording in game mode won't grab the audio, recording in window mode doesn't work at all and recording the entire screen will work but only if I have everything else other than the game and OBS closed down at the time. Not sure why but I just make sure to switch to display mode for that one and thankfully works fine for the most part, although it's still quite odd. I've definitely watched quite a few of my replays quite thoroughly. It's especially nice when you have them all sorted and organized in folders and can easily access them :) I know I've put on the Last Words on a playlist and watched them all through several times now :)

I just hit my 1 year mark of playing Touhou!  :D I'm extremely pleased with the progress I've made in the last year and I'm hoping this next one is just as productive. I definitely understand the craving for more bullets that's for sure, it just doesn't feel the same when you become use to denser and more complex patterns and then go back to lower difficulties. That said this really only applies to the games I've played a significant amount of such as PCB and IN. Games like SA and UFO can still certainly provide a challenge for me! In general I'd say Hard Mode is still my comfort level, but I am starting to look more at trying to achieve some Lunatic 1ccs in the near future too as I feel that is still within my reach too (albeit it with lots of practice still). I do have a decent chunk (6 total I believe, 2 in Touhou 8, 3 in Touhou 9 and 1 in Touhou 15) of Hard 1ccs under my belt now, but still only the 1 Lunatic 1cc in 9 which is quite a bit different than the other games anyways so I still feel I have yet to truly step into Lunatic Mode properly. I find even if I'm running in Normal Mode, as long as I'm still somewhat challenged I'll grow, but not as significantly or quickly as I would in the higher difficulties like Hard and Lunatic. I really do feel like every individual 1cc has to some degree added a bit to my overall skill. I'm sure even with Perfect Lunatics you could still find new ways to push the limits if you really wanted to. The sky really is the limit depending on how far you want to push yourself :)

Yes, it does seem like Marisa's attacks in 2 come in a random order which certainly makes her difficult to read. She'd be much easier if I could predict and prepare for the attacks more but alas that would be too easy X( That's true with it just being part of her assholish charm XD She's certainly not the worst to face against in 9 either but even there she can be really nasty to face off against especially with how she can trap you and just completely flood your screen with dense patterns so quickly. I do like her fight in 8 a fair bit as well, but she has also been the end of a significant amount of 1ccs too so I still can't help but be bitter haha. I can't remember if I mentioned but her Last Word in 8 kind of messed me up too because I didn't realize starting on the right side instead of the left made such a big deal in the fight and I was getting absolutely destroyed until I decided to experiment a bit and try it from the left side. Oh that's probably true about her stealing the duplication from Yuuka instead! It's so hard to keep track of what Marisa's stolen from who :P I really hope you enjoy 8 when you get to it! I can't imagine why you wouldn't since it's easily one of the best entries in the entire series. I kind of wish all the future games had this amount of extra content but they're all great in their own ways.

I have to agree. I've only managed to get in the zen state or flow through Touhou, and even then it's *extremely* rare. I have had other really hard and engaging games have me enter states of extreme hyper focus, but not to the same way where my ego just seems to vanish and it feels like my brain is processing information on a completely different level. It really is like playing auto-pilot almost since you don't even really have to think about what you're doing. And yeah once you get hit even once you know it's over and it will likely be a long, long time before I'm back in it again. Ah yes I think I mentioned I played an indie retro style game recently called Katana Zero? Well I recently just went through it in Hard Mode with the slowmo turned off (pretty much your characters special ability to slow time down so it's kind of like doing a no bomb run) and it was ridiculously hard! I'd say probably pretty close to doing a Hard Mode 1cc in Touhou believe it or not. Your timing had to be pretty much perfect and 1 mistake and you were pretty much dead. Thankfully the combat is a bit like Touhou 15 Point Device mode so while it's extremely unforgiving you at least never lose too much progress, although some levels could literally take hundreds of attempts to get past too. Thankfully the combat had an incredibly nice flow to it and felt extremely rewarding to play so it was a lot of fun :) I don't play tons of games outside Touhou these games but it's games like this one that remind me there's still some gems out there worth trying. I'll show you a quick video just so you can get an idea of what combat looks like (this is one I recorded myself too) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnxr2eT1jow&feature=youtu.be while it's only 25 seconds long I can promise you this took a tremendous amount of attempts to finally get perfectly, especially the part near the end when the final 4 guys spawn and 2 of them have gatling guns. Some of the fights in the game even start to incorporate more bullet hell elements similar to Touhou as well which are segments I tended to pick of quickly unsurprisingly ;) The story and soundtrack were all fantastic too!

I'm certainly very picky when it comes to Eurobeat/trance and whatnot. It really depends on the individual song, but I try to be open minded to every genre since you can always find something out there that you kind of like even for styles of music you're not typically into. I think there's a lot of generic electronic music out there but the stuff that's good can sometimes be absolutely amazing. Ah I really like that track you linked for Stage 3 in Touhou 11 a lot! Yuugi was such a fun character and has a pretty cool stage theme :) I definitely need to check out more of Yuuhei Satellites stuff. I've only head a few of their tracks but I really like most of them so it would be worth it to check out more I think.

Ques Q definitely has most of my favorites that I'd consider eventually getting but it certainly will be a hassle eventually getting some of the ones that are no longer being sold directly. Ah that sucks you got a gake from Ebay, on Yukari no less :( I'm glad you managed to get a refund at least! I need to check what the signs of telling counterfits are more just to make sure I'm being careful as well, especially if I do ever end up buying from any 3rd party sellers on Ebay or Amazon. Ah yes the analogy of getting the stuff being like a pirate getting his hands on loot is quite accurate XD You're absolutely right about Alice being one of my favorites! I'd say if I absolutely had to choose a favorite character in the series (which is incredibly hard!) it'd Yukari or Alice even if it does suck we don't see much of either in the later games :( For Alice there's just something about her Stage 3 I absolutely adore and it's one of the stages that made me fall in love with the series and really started giving me an idea of what bullet hell mechanics were all about. Mm rewarding yourself for having completed another game is a good system I'd say since it provides even more incentive to succeed (not that you need it I'm sure but it's still a nice bonus). Have you gotten your Reimu figure yet? If not that must be coming up pretty soon if I remember correctly! I'd love to see a picture once you finally have her and she's all set up nicely at home :) And yes my sister really loves Japan obviously as she's now planning a 3rd trip before the end of the year! It certainly is expensive but she's lucky in that she has close friends who are willing to let her and her husband stay with them whenever they go which really cuts down on the cost. I know for myself I would walk into one of the dedicated Touhou stores and walk out completely broke >.>

Certainly agreed with how rewarding and satisfying it is. Funny enough I had a friend who started getting similar adrenaline rushes when playing Katana Zero herself and I've managed to talk her into looking into trying more Touhou because of how amazing she felt during those highs. Katana Zero was great at bringing that out but Touhou is still unmatched when it comes to that, particularly when you're doing the higher difficulty stuff you've worked on for longer periods of time. I'm really hoping she does give it a serious try because I think she'd absolutely love it if she gave it a serious chance, especially after experiencing that rush of achieving your first 1cc. Oh also I linked my friend who was interested in recording your guide to setting OBS up and they seem incredibly happy happy with it so thank you again! :) The replays not recording the endings and also skipping through dialogue usually is really the only main drawback to recording using the ingame replays. The main thing I like about recording with OBS myself is how easily I can organize all my replays. Like I have a folder for each Touhou game and then I'll set up folders for stuff like the Extra Stage or Last Words for example. It's quite satisfying to see the collection grow to I must say. Agreed on not letting others being better diminish what I've achieved, this series is more of a personal journey than anything else and I don't think I could have made it even this far if I was playing to prove myself to others, I play for myself of course and I'm still proud when I do something that takes effort even if there's someone out there who's probably done it perfectly without bombs while they're upside down underwater. I often end up choking when things come down to the wire like that, but those rare moments when you actually somehow manage to pull a rabbit out of your ass feels amazing. It really is like 'Goku versus Beerus in space' speaking of which I've been thinking about it a lot more and there's really a lot of philosophical similaries between Touhou and Dragon Ball oddly enough, I think partially due to how large of an influence the eastern philosophy is to the core of both series.

Ahh speaking of attack gimmicks I recently found one in LoLK Lunatic Mode which was absolutely hilarious to me. There's a certain way I was doing the attack which while it did work there was another *completely* different way of handling it which kind of blew me a bit when I realized it XD It makes the attack significantly easier and really simplified how to handle it to the point where it almost felt like a joke. Stuff like that in this series always make me smile and you really feel clever when you figure out a trick to an attack, although sometimes you wish you had discovered it like 50 attempts earlier lol. It sounds like Patchouli's laser card is a lot like Mokou's Hanged Man Spell Card. It's really tough to figure that out unless you get lucky because stuff like running into a laser is just so counter intuitive that it can take a while to figure out when you don't look up attacks beforehand (which I usually try and avoid). LoLK is one game where I really notice how much planning out your ending/starting positions in a pattern makes a massive difference due to how attacks blend into each other. It's really easy to think you beat one bit just for the next bit to immediately pop up and kill you. I usually do try and stay closer to the top of the screen as much as the game will allow once I've become a little more familiar with the game and I have noticed it can often make a lot of parts significantly quicker and easier than it would be if you just sat on the bottom all the time. It's quite common for me to just park myself immediately under enemy hit boxes especially when I know I can kill them before they become a threat. What you said about most of the bullets on the screen being there to intimidate you (also visual flair too I'm sure) is what I tell most people if they're ever considering trying this series. I also tell them it takes time to learn how to filter it out and start to recognize what the true threats are but like you said that's part of the fun. It's really like trying to figure out a puzzle where every attack has its own thing going on which you need to figure out, and sometimes even when you think you think you've figured it out you can still learn new secrets to dealing with it.

The effectiveness of bombs really does vary from game/character/boss to game/character/boss and yeah it's not uncommon to find stuff in the series that actively punishes you for relying on them during certain points or just makes their effectiveness massively reduced, which is good because even using bombs I wouldn't want it to feel like too much of an easy win button where you don't have to think tactically at all. Usually if I make it to at least Stage 5 I'll keep going on a 1cc even if it's going downhill, because even if you don't complete it the practice still doesn't hurt, but if I mess up too badly in Stage 3 or 4 I'll often restart (I do allow for some mistakes on them though) and if I mess up at all during Stage 1 or 2 that pretty much is an instant restart in most cases unless I'm simply practicing. It's very rare for me to turn a 1cc around if things are going poorly early on but it does happen, as I've mentioned Touhou 8 is one game where I've recovered a lot of times from being down more resources then I'd typically like early on. In games like PCB I'll still continue unless things start going extremely bad.

Sometimes it's really tough for me to recover, it really depends where it happens and how as well as my general state of mind at the time. Like if I know it's a Spell Card which gives me trouble and I can see myself getting cornered then usually I'm already preparing for the high possibility I'll soon have to recover quickly which can help. Those times which you suddenly die and you don't even really see what killed you can completely throw me off my game though and can cause me to be a bit frantic for a bit afterwords before I'm comfy again. That's one thing that can really suck I find is when you have extended periods of time where you just feel like you can't play at your best due to other factors in life and whatnot, but I guess that's part of the challenge of the series since so much of it is overcoming yourself I find. I'm really looking forward to getting to Touhou 5, if I do the PC98 games then I think it will end up being the last of the main series games I'll end up playing minus any future titles. Speaking of which I have had a chance to try out Touhou 17! I tried playing through Normal Mode once on the weekend and I came somewhat close to one shotting a 1cc but unfortunately a couple mistakes mid game made it so I was only able to make it to the final boss fight. I enjoyed it a fair bit (there's a very unique twist in Stage 5 too) although I was a bit frustrated with how light everything was. In general I don't think I've ever struggled so much in a game to be making out where the bullets actually are in the earlier/mid stages X( I'm going to have to give it a few more tries though to see how well my eyes adjust to it though. I'm also unsure how to feel about this games gimmick yet either, it certainly seems interesting but it also reminds me of UFO a bit which had a gimmick that was kind of a pain in the ass to be honest :P

 I'm hoping you've managed to get some decent sessions in the last month! In your PM you mentioned you got your perfect Stage 5 run so massive congrats on that btw! :') That's absolutely incredible man! I imagine that feels absolutely incredible to have. I think going for some of the perfect Stage runs could actually be a really fun thing to work towards and that's something I might need to consider working on in the near future. Work and social activities have still kept me quite busy lately but I've managed to sneak in the odd session here and there, although I haven't completed much of significance since I hit 17/17 on the Last Words. The only thing is I did start doing Touhou 15 in Point Device Mode on Lunatic. It's something I've been thinking about for a long time and I think this would go a long way in helping to sharpen my skills, especially with how little resources you have in it. I went through Stage 1 this weekend without too much hassle, and I intend to beat Stage 2 this upcoming weekend if all goes well. It's Stage 3 and above where I'm worried about though :P I suspect I could end up slamming my head against a brick wall a fair bit here, but then again stuff that pushes me like that is where I really see the move improvement and considering how much beating this in Normal and Hard Point Device Mode effected my skills I'm thinking this should have a significant effect too. Plus considering Touhou 15 is possibly my favorite game of all time I kind of feel like I'm finally experiencing it the way it was meant to be experienced. I like that pretty much the very first Stage 1 attacks (which I've nicknamed "sink or swim bitches") makes it absolutely clear that if you don't know exactly what you're doing you're not going anywhere XD And of course I'm playing with our lovely shrine maiden :) I admit I was a bit tempted to go with Reisen due to how well she fits into this games particular story but it just felt right to go through it the first time with Reimu, especially because I was already experienced with using her in Hard Point Device Mode.

I don't see Perfect Stage 1 or Stage 2 being too ridiculous for most the games but the later ones especially Stage 4 and higher definitely seem like they will require a ton of work! That's incredible that Maulerfranco666 got Stage 4 Perfect No Focus! Like we talked about before I don't like to compare myself to others but stuff like that definitely motivates me to want to become better myself and provides potential goals for the future once I've improved even more. I really don't get as much time as I'd like in a week often due to work and social stuff like you, especially some of the weeks this summer where it wasn't unusual for me just to get a solid hour or two in a week, although I will usually aim for more if I'm able. I haven't played tons in the last week but that's partially due to being a bit busy with Katana Zero this weekend like I mentioned earlier too. There's certain goals that I really do stick to, especially if its something that has some particular significance to me like working towards unlocking and completing all of the Last Words which definitely took more time and focus then most of the other stuff I've done in this series to date. I still have some normal 1ccs I'd like to complete but for my 2nd year with this series I'd really like to be tackling some more of the tougher challenges that will require more work. While I do jump around a lot I do try and constantly try to find things that will push my limits just a little bit more and more just so I'm always just a little bit outside my comfort zone. Right now Hard Mode is kind of like what Normal was to me around 9 months ago and Lunatic is what Hard was to me back then which makes me feel like I should hesitate to be stepping into Lunatic Mode a little bit more.

Thanks again for being so understanding. It's a lot of fun just getting to sit down when the timing is right, throw on some Touhou music and just gush Touhou for an afternoon :) I'm truly lucky to have found someone who loves the series as much as I do! I truly admire your will to experience Touhou to its fullest and it just motivates me to want to push myself even more. Just from chatting with you I feel like I can learn to appreciate other aspects of this series I never knew or thought about which I greatly appreciate. Originally I'd think about just trying to beat the game with challenges being mainly for those who have already essentially mastered it, but the more I've fallen in love with the series the more I get how you feel about just wanting to enjoy it to its fullest and I think there's something to that mentality and willingness to throw yourself into that chaos that can take you incredibly far. Grats on the Lunatic with continues too! With the Stage practice you're that much closer to the Lunatic No Bomb 1cc :)

Definitely keep me updated if you hit any other milestones! For now I'm going to keep working on Touhou 15 Lunatic Point Device Mode for the weekends when I can really focus and maybe pick back up the Extra Stage in Touhou 2 as something a bit more lighter on the weekdays. I'll definitely keep you updated on what I do :) Hope you're well and you've managed to make even more progress on 6 in the mean time!