Posting to say that I had a practice run where I captured
all of Byakuren's Spell Cards, except for the last one where I clipped about 70% into it.
Let's analyze. AP is attack phase, and is much faster than writing non-spell and NS just looks plain weird. Essentially a paste from my notes. Actually, I'm paraphrasing from them because it helps me to remember then, as opposed to just copy-pasting.
UFO Byakuren Analysis (general information,
not a summary; Hard / Lunatic)
AP1: ...I trust you all know how to do this. If not then it's a matter of finding the "opening", then moving through it. Not sure if you can move through it with 100% focus though. I'd rather not take the risk. Besides, letting go of focus then reapplying periodically wouldn't hurt, right?
SC1: Really fine positioning that requires you to utilize several skills. One of them is to use diagonal dodging at the bottom of the screen. Another is to read and "avoid" the diamond bullets (hate them more than "animated bullets"). Following the "flow" of the animated bullets for the first few waves certainly helps. Sometimes though, Byakuren will just throw a wall that requires pixel perfect placement.
Picture, 2 animated bullets aligned side-by-side, circumferences touching, and try positioning yourself between that.
AP2: Streaming. Even at Lunatic, it's streaming. Stream or be boxed really. You might need to do an unfocus "leap" upon hearing the
5th set of lasers being fired (Lunatic only). Watch for clipdeaths on the aimed waves, watch for boxing yourself, etc. I have a success rate on this of about 80% per wave after practicing on it so much already.
SC2: Micromemorize. Prior to what I previously thought about the butterfly waves being aimed, it's just the other two options making stupid walls against me for staying in the middle too long. I'm calling it static now, and that's a definite. If you need to know when and where to move away from the center, then watch the showcase. If you want me to time it out to demonstrate, then that's fine too.
And so is a cat.AP3: ...is this static? Either way it's a matter of reading lines of bullets. I've found it better (should you start to feel pressured) to move to the
right side a bit.
SC3: For Hard, staying at the lower half should suffice. Read lasers, stream stars. Left-Right and stuff. Or be a bit more daring and use vertical only from shotgun-distance. For Lunatic, it's more advisable to be closer, since the stars start firing at a much higher rate, which leads to boxing a lot quicker than you think. "Shotgunning" diverts the stars away much more easily. You could pure-vertical this as well, but you'd have to be pretty close 95% of the time.
AP4: Static with aimed streams of large bullets. Learn it. Also, Byakuren has no collision box, so you could stand on top directly with no consequence. I wouldn't do that at the bottom of the screen though, considering the aimed streams and other things.
Inb4 that Japanese guy who had it running at 45 FPS and was able to pull it off and survive.SC4: Impromptu dodging for the most part when the Spell Card starts to pick up. Attempting to time this thing out won't be worth your time. From 25 seconds, it'll pick up to "full speed" and at 15 seconds, omnidirectional (that is, rings), random bullets will start to be fired.
SC5: Static. Bottom left is safest if you're going to attempt this "defensively". Note that when Byakuren is at the bottom left (and heading to top left) the "charging" effect may interfere with your dodging, so you may want to move a bit closer to the center before this happens.
SC6: Parsing amulets, what more can I say? Avoid getting boxed at the bottom. Using SanaeB's bomb (or any long bomb) may cause you more harm, since it prolongs the attack, which is an attack that intensifies over time.
While I'm at it, if you can control S6's stage portion well enough *coughsanaebcough* then you can chain together quite a number of UFOs. There's also another trick, which is taking 3 blue UFOs, summoning a UFO, destroying it, and using the flashing UFO (along with the other 2 obtained from the waves of Space Invader fairies) to summon an "additional" UFO.
Stage 4 and 6 "Mid-Bosses" (i.e.
) are static as well.
EDIT-X: typos.
Oh, and I found a MS summary of each character.
It went something like:
ReimuAttack Power: E
Speed: E
Attack Range: A
Bomb Duration: B
Bomb Power: E
Main Shot: 5-way Spread
Option Shot: Homing (really low damage)
MarisaAttack Power: A
Speed: C
Attack Range: D
Bomb Duration: D
Bomb Power: A
Main Shot: Converged 6-way (this is basically just columns)
Option Shot: Magic Missiles (high damage; high delay)
MimaAttack Power: A
Speed: A
Attack Range: E
Bomb Duration: E
Bomb Power: B
Main Shot: 4-way Spread
Option Shot: Energy Balls (fast)
YukaAttack Power: D
Speed: E
Attack Range: A
Bomb Duration: A
Bomb Power: B
Main Shot: 5-way Spread
Option Shot: Flower spread (4-way *2)
You can clearly see the imbalance :V
...goodness. That's a bit too long of a post I think.
