@ReimuC:
Good for those short, quick dodges that you do when you're boxed. If you can manipulate the options well enough, you should be able to clear the stages quite easily. Also, ridiculous shotgun bomb.
Thing is, the faith you get from clearing Kanako's opener and her 1st (this one especially) and 3rd spells deviates in the hundreds, depending on luck. So in comparison, a loss (gain) of 100 faith during the stage isn't that significant anymore, because if you're lucky (unlucky), that faith is completely compensated (lost) in this phase anyway. And during Suwako, the deviations are even far greater.
The difference of 100 (several times over it seems) is significant, as seen with this progression from your (current) replay and coa's:
415
660;417320;424160;431500;436
000415
800;417560;424360;431750;436
560The gap slowly widens (i.e. he got better clear bonuses than you); with the final large jump being Kanako's 3rd Spell Card. I'm not sure whether that would be just luck, or there's something extra within, seeing that the "spiral" appears to be random on Kanako's 3rd Spell Card.
- His stage run is nigh flawless. I don't think I've ever had that much faith/points at the start of the boss.
- He never seems to wait for Suwako to move to the center in the zig-zag non-cards, even though this seems like a pretty important faith source to me.
- He takes his time at Rings of Death (or whatever it's called). I'm still unsure on which ring it is most ideal to clear it, but waiting never seemed to give a significant faith advantage to me.
- He missed Suwako for a bit at the card with the homing green bullets (probably lost around 100k in points).
- He missed Suwako a lot during Froggy Braves the Elements. I'd estimate this cost him around 300k in points.
- The faith-loss at Red Frog he talked about seems fairly insignificant to me.
- At Suwa War, he has about 150k more than I had, despite starting Suwako with 300k more than me and having more faith throughout the battle.
-Nigh-flawless Stage run indeed. He seems to wait a bit (longer) before deathbombing the two fairy "trio"'s. That should add about 100 Faith each time. You can see where I'm going with the small numbers.
-Not sure why he doesn't wait a bit on those phases. Maybe it's insignificant, or he forgot? I'll have to check both replays (gets boring holding ctrl down constantly, and rewatching again and again...) to see if there's an actual significant difference.
-For
"Iron Rings", it's a compromise between Spell Card Bonus and Faith. I myself don't know which ring to end it on. If you're (still) unsure, then just count the number of rings which fire before he finishes. Each ring does give a rather large (a few hundred?) amount of Faith though...
-Missing during Spell Cards happens. Significant regardless.
-Faith-loss during
"Red Frog" ranged in the few hundreds if I remember. It had something to do with the remaining bullets flying off-screen or something when it disperses.
-This last point means that he messed up during Suwako, probably during the points you raised where he missed.
Overall, it's entirely possible to beat his score again. You should focus on (even if it's luck-based or not) "maximizing" Faith before Suwako.
Let's go! HRtP Hard! Video!
...just pray that I don't die a few billion times.