Daily Touhou Best Topic Round 2 Part 3

[Seppo Hovi]

PCB 4

[Sakurei]

UFO stage 5. easy as that. the beginning with the big fairies and popcorn fairies is fairly cool, the streaming section are hilriously bad, but that's what they've always been. nazrin is probably the one best midboss in the entire series (arguably) and post nazrin is awesome stuff to dodge.

[Makedounia]

MoF stage 5 or PCB stage 5

[Yatakarasu]

SA stage 5, UFO stage 4, or MoF stage 5

[Aromeia]

I'd have to go with PCB Phantasm stage.

[ARF]

MoF stage 1, SA stage 1 or UFO stage 4.

[nicholashin]

MoF Stage 5 for its somewhat unique stage pattern

[Limian]

MoF stage 5 or PCB stage 5

These, along with SA stage 4 (and maybe PCB 4) were what I was thinking as well. All fun to play and great music, and PCB 5 gets the bonus of being fairly short as well.

There's also something pleasant about cancelling bullets and collecting heaps of point items in IN 3, but it's not as good as these.

[Star King]

They're all terrible EoSD Extra. And I'm surprising myself by saying this because it has always annoyed me. But in the end, that's a good thing. Are we supposed to disregard midboss too BTW?

EoSD Stage 4 books is the best single part of a stage though.

[Zengeku]

I'm thinking Stage 4 in UFO. It's almost exclusively about dodging and it can be quite fun especially in the bit near the end. It's about as good as it gets for Touhou. There are other fun stages out there like SA Stage 4 and PCB Stage 3 but they unfortunately have that 'becomes piss-easy when you learn them' quality to them. They are still fun though.

[Bang Jan]

MSD stage 5, no contest whatsoever. :V

[チソウ タイゼン]

These replies have left me curious. What is it exactly about some of these that earn merit, really?

My answer on a purely pattern-based level would probably be PCB's stage 5. The stuff you're expected to do in that stage is fuck-all insane (Lunatic level, I mean) to me, which is why I find it more fun, than, say, grindy and repetitive (PCB 4 / EoSD 4) or boring and simple (IN 6 / MoF 6) or just like, one thing (TD 6 / PCB 6)

Speaking of which, I'm noticing a distinct lack of TD in this thread :getdown:

[RNG]

SA Stage 4 for the green amulet streaming section.

TD Stage 5. Real good ambience.

[Zengeku]

TD Stage 5. Real good ambience.

I like that stage too. For the glorious 5 seconds that it lasts  :V

[RNG]

Well when you're dodging what appears to be VoWG with less lenient hitboxes at the end, you can't focus much on the ambience, but you get my point.

[Yatakarasu]

Speaking of which, I'm noticing a distinct lack of TD in this thread :getdown:

Well, if i had to pick a TD stage, I'd pick stage 1. The music and visuals are very nice for a stage 1. It is a bit to long for my taste though.

[Reiko]

SA stage 4.
Because good music, a bit of streaming, a bit of dodging, and quite enjoyable overall.

[Sakurei]

hey, those five seconds of TD stage 5 are actually pretty darn awesome.

also thumbs up for star king :V just saying.

[Tsym]

UFO stage 4. I love that really odd feeling of seeing a whole bunch of sky and open space for the first 3 levels, then suddenly you're inside a freaking boat and the music starts and it's so... alien from what you were used to in the first 3 stages. It's pretty much a completely different instrument set (or whatever you call it). It's a wonderfully placed and paced stage, and the fact the music syncs up with the entire stage is just plain awesome. Not to mention that the music is catchy as hell, and the danmaku is just so freaking fun to dodge if you so choose. It's also the only stage in the game where you can literally SPAM UFOs if you get the path down. It almost seems like there's never a point in the stage (save for Nue) when you can't spam UFOs, and if you don't spam them, then the stage becomes fun as hell random dodging. No memorization crap. It's just you, your eyes, your fingers, and tons of fun.

[Validon98]

Stage 4 in most games is pretty good (except for the unfair streaming in MoF's Stage 4), but I guess I'd have to go with SA's. Weaving between the amulets is a pretty good challenge of how good you are at streaming in an environment as well as a test of how good you are at switching between unfocused and focused when necessary. And it's a godsend after the horror that is Stage 3. Those damn lasers...

[Goldom]

I love SA stage 4 on normal, especially the laser patterns and sitting inside them for hundreds of graze (that lovely clicking...). I don't like it so much on hard though, their pattern isn't nearly as nice.

I also really like PCB 4, just to be a contrarian. I guess if I just wanted to practice the boss I'd get sick of its length, but it's so perfectly timed to the music, it's a nice experience on its own.

[Bang Jan]

How come no-one except me chose MSD stage 5?

[Zengeku]

I would agree with you on that BangJan but I don't think that the question involved fan-games too.

[Byronyello]

TD Stage 5... or PCB Stage 4. Both of their atmospheres are really well developed, even if PCB Stage 4 was pretty long. Both characterise the place you are in/at, which is really quite nice given that the amount of explanatory dialogue on where we are going is pretty much non-existant.

[Jaimers]

PoDD stage 8  BV

[redlakitu]

May I? Here's something I'm rather curious about.

Name a theme that you used to dislike, but changed your mind later on

For me, the best candidate is Tewi's theme from Phantasmagoria of Flower View, Lord Usa's Elemental Flag. After nearly two years of barely acknowledging its existence, I gave it a random listen a few weeks ago and suddenly found it almost as catchy as U.N. Owen Was Her.

[I have no name]

Gensoyko Millenium~ History of the Moon.  Was not a fan at first, now I think it's awesome.
Suwa Foughten Field has also risen a lot, as has much of the UFO soundtrack, but I have to give the biggest one to Eirin's theme.

[RNG]

Hall of Dreams' Great Mausoleum and The Legend of the Great Gods. I hated, hated Legend of the Great Gods when I first saw a video of it, and used it as more proof that TD was evidence of ZUN not giving a fuck and duping people out of their money. His synthesizer work is really great though, especially in the combined version.

[Limian]

I don't think I have ever seriously disliked a theme (and much less later liked it), but I know I didn't care much about Hartmann's Youkai Girl, History of the Moon, Higan Retour, Reach for the Moon, Tomorrow Will Be Special and a load of others. Particularly the first three are among my favourites now.

Also Magus Night and Spring Lane, although they've risen rather recently (and aren't in my top spots yet) so I can't say much about them.

I guess THE top spot would be Higan Retour because I didn't remember about it at all for the longest time or something?

[Yatakarasu]

I can't think of a theme that I've ever outright hated. However, I didn't really like Orin's theme when I first heard it. Pretty much was like, "I like all SA songs...except for Orin's theme." (I think that's because I love her stage theme so much) But, it has grown on me over the months, and now I like it just as much as the other SA themes.