Hardest Touhou Game - "But that's only my opinion"

[Lisanius]

I mean, the title almost single-handedly explains this one, but that's only my opinion.

So, the aim of this thread game I suppose is, to simply name which Touhou game you have found the hardest in your time of playing Touhou. But, to add a bit more to the replies, name what you found hard about this game compared to the others. What stood out to you. What really made you say "Wow this is hard-".
And if you want to keep the joke going, end the post by saying "But that's only my opinion." If anyone actually continues a "But that's only my opinion." thread, then kudos to you my friend, because you are awesome.

So, to recap the rules one more time, for those who don't like reading paragraphs:

Rules

• Name the hardest Touhou game (But that's only my opinion)
• Continue to say what you found that made this game harder (But that's only my opinion)

Optional Rule:
Add "But that's only my opinion" at the end.

Annnnd to start us off here, I shall name the game I've found the hardest and why:

I was going to say that Double Dealing Character was the one I found the hardest, but thinking this over, I actually have reached Stage 6 without continues, so I suppose I didn't find it that hard as such.
So, instead, going for the Touhou game I have made least progress in: Touhou Project - Subterranean Animism.
Why do I find this game hard? Well, I actually find that the difficulty spike in this game started off with it's standards already pretty high. I can only barely make it pass Yuugi with a life to spare. And those lasers are a nightmare.
But that's only my opinion.
(Your turn, friends)

[TresserT]

I'd have to say Story of Eastern Wonderland.

Not being able to see your hitbox, not being able to focus, bullet hitboxes being decieving, having to mash the shot key for max damage- the game is just riddled with fake difficulty. The bombs suck, so you can't even bomb spam to get through the game. And finally, it has the whole PC-98 random attack order thing, so unlike UFO you can't even memorize patterns to know when you have to bomb.

Of course, you know, that's just my opinion.

[Omegahugger]

And if you want to keep the joke going, end the post by saying "But that's only my opinion."

I'm not sure I understand this.... What's the "joke"? Isn't everything anyone posts in a thread like this an opinion to begin with? I don't really see how this is different from a "ITT we discuss which game we found the hardest" thread, but you did go through that semi-lengthy explanation so I'm under the impression I'm not getting the point..... =P

Anyway. I'm going to have to say SA, personally. Some of the shot types are a real pain to work with (Aya's omfg-way-too-fast unfocused/not shooting speed, Alice's focus-to-spread dolls, Suika's weak-and-slow homing shot..... Does anyone regularly play someone other than Reimu A?) and some of the later stages have pretty tough patterns to survive through (ohai stage 5L). I also find Utsuho to be one of the most annoying last bosses because of her massive fireballs - you can't fall back on a lot of the usual dodging techniques you'd use with several of her spellcards. It's also the last integer game I 1cc'ed before I could 1cc them all and one of the only games where I haven't beaten the extra stage. This game just has... you know..... "that" kind of feel for me.

LLS is a close second. But SA is a LOT more recent and ZUN has had plenty of time to fine-tune the game. LLS's artificial difficulty can be forgiven because artificial difficulty was common back when it was released and ZUN was still working out the playing style of Touhou (the previous game was a breakout clone, for crying out loud! =) )

I'm also giving GFW an honorable mention. It's short (which is part of the reason why I'm not picking it) but what's there is plenty to deal with..... especially that absurd extra stage. I'm lucky if I can even reach

Spoiler:

Marisa

, let alone survive past her first couple of spellcards.

[Sakurei]

This thread is nonsense, but that is only my opinion.

PoDD is the hardest game for lunatic survival. If you think otherwise, you're wrong, pretty much. Even Yumemi, who is the easiest character is about as difficult as UFO lunatic, where everyone goes "impossiburu". PoDD is just too random and most of its RNG is made to completely shit on you.

For scoring, anything PCB is likely the most difficult game. Border timings are sometimes precise, and unfocused grazing is usually not everyone's forte. It certainly wasn't mine. I also feel that it is the most complicated system and hardest to get into.

Again, this thread is ridiculous, but that is only my opinion.

[ARF]

I'd say Impossible Spell Card is the hardest game, as the title suggests, but look at 6-7 scoring for example, you need to move in perfectly octagonal circles for 70 seconds while dodging literally improbable photos at the same time. To quote some IRC logs which were discussing this level the other day:

[06:48:35] <anon1> There's a 40% chance that a spellcard in ISC gives you an impossible pattern, you have to survive 16 patterns. You can fail 4 times
[06:48:40] <anon1> What is the probability to succeed
[06:53:19] <anon2> okay you actually have a 0.0027% chance
[06:53:42] <anon2> it's still basically impossible
[06:54:14] <anon1> Someone wins in lottery every week
[06:54:14] <anon2> well, you expect it to work like one in 36000 attempts
[06:54:34] <anon2> which isn't an unreasonabe number of credits for one spellcard over a few years or so
[06:54:56] <anon2> takes like a year at 100 credits per day

And I've gotten a run which only gets one instance of bad RNG. Literally the hardest thing in 2hu.

But that's just facts backed by empirical evidence and mathematical formulas!

[TresserT]

I'd say Impossible Spell Card is the hardest game, as the title suggests, but look at 6-7 scoring for example, you need to move in perfectly octagonal circles for 70 seconds while dodging literally improbable photos at the same time. To quote some IRC logs which were discussing this level the other day:And I've gotten a run which only gets one instance of bad RNG. Literally the hardest thing in 2hu.

But that's just facts backed by empirical evidence and mathematical formulas!

I'm really curious as to where you got those numbers. How did you calculate that 0.0027%? Can you apply the formula to other games, like PoDD?

[Failure McFailFace]

UFO and SA are the hardest for me.

UFO because al of the bullets tend to be spread out in random directions, and SA because no life stock.

[ARF]

I'm really curious as to where you got those numbers. How did you calculate that 0.0027%? Can you apply the formula to other games, like PoDD?

idk how they came up with the numbers, those people are like computer scientists and math professors or something, probably 10 times smarter than normal humans. I suppose you could apply something like that on, say Yumemi's different boss attacks, like, she uses cloud of death 1 out of 5 times and you have 2 bombs and can survive 4 hits (?) and so forth... but it seems like there would be a lot more to take into consideration with PoDD, really! Maybe that actually means that PoDD is harder than ISC since you need to think about more stuff at once!? I guess this comes down to opinions in the end anyway.

[Serela]

UFO and SA are the hardest for me.

This. UFO is IMO the most well made game in the series (ZUN's art is actually quite lovely in this game without any excuses needed for 'it's stylistic!', and all the spellcards are really interesting and cool, all the shot types are pretty and fun), except for the one part where... it's CRAAAZY hard. Normal might be fine for a normal, but Hard mode is similar to every other game in the series on Lunatic mode, and Lunatic is a bucket of "how the fuck could you do this consistently?". ZUN's idea of 'balance' in this game is giving you potential for a godly amount of resources via ufos so that you can bomb almost every spellcard, as far as I can tell.

And then SA is augh >:C I can't even reach stage 5 on lunatic, much less beat it. And I beat every other game in the series on Lunatic other than these two. (I stopped seriously playing by the time 10D came out tho so later games excused) Not quite related to the difficulty but I wish the shot types were a little better balanced against eachother in that game; ReimuA's damage is on a whole other level from every other shot, and she has an amazing ability and one of the best bombs too. All the other shots are balanced compared to eachother but then WTH ReimuA. ReimuB barely even has any homing to speak of and MarisaC is just another forward focus, but the damage is incomparable!

Also, I was interested to see LLS ranked as someone's hardest, because I actually thought it to be the easiest in the entire series, for me. Granted, that's when ranking based on their Lunatic modes <.<;

(And PoDD is hands down insane on Lunatic, I don't even, but it's a little different.)

[Agent17]

UFO and DDC are one of the hardest for me but the amount of lifes you can get in it balances it, but that's only my opinion.

[pokemon123]

This. UFO is IMO the most well made game in the series (ZUN's art is actually quite lovely in this game without any excuses needed for 'it's stylistic!', and all the spellcards are really interesting and cool, all the shot types are pretty and fun), except for the one part where... it's CRAAAZY hard. Normal might be fine for a normal, but Hard mode is similar to every other game in the series on Lunatic mode, and Lunatic is a bucket of "how the fuck could you do this consistently?". ZUN's idea of 'balance' in this game is giving you potential for a godly amount of resources via ufos so that you can bomb almost every spellcard, as far as I can tell.

ur wrong
(yeah i'm sorry I really don't like UFO)


hardest for me is probably UFO. I suck at getting UFO's so it makes it way harder for me to get resources. Also I just suck at the patterns alot especially since they tend to be more reflex based. I am starting to get better at them after playing other shmups so that's good I guess.

[Omegahugger]

Also, I was interested to see LLS ranked as someone's hardest

Oops, my bad. I meant to say SoEW. LLS is pretty easy, even the extra stage isn't a very big deal for me (and that's saying something!). SoEW on the other hand is a different story altogether lol =)

[Hearts Shadow]

I think mine would be ISC, SA being second.  My main problem with ISC really is that you don't get the items back fast enough, and I'm not good with lasers so this can go VERY badly.  SA is simply not very predictable, the other games are a lot easier to memorize.  UFO would be up there, but you can get too many lives too fast and I'm really able to get them quickly.
Of course, this is just my opinion (just as almost everything else on these forums are the poster's opinion) and i haven't played the PC-98 games, emulator wouldn't work properly    :V

[Arcorann]

idk how they came up with the numbers, those people are like computer scientists and math professors or something, probably 10 times smarter than normal humans. I suppose you could apply something like that on, say Yumemi's different boss attacks, like, she uses cloud of death 1 out of 5 times and you have 2 bombs and can survive 4 hits (?) and so forth... but it seems like there would be a lot more to take into consideration with PoDD, really! Maybe that actually means that PoDD is harder than ISC since you need to think about more stuff at once!? I guess this comes down to opinions in the end anyway.

I'm also interested in where those numbers come from, because if there is a probability 0.4 of being hit on a given wave then the chance of taking at most four hits in 16 waves is about 1 in 6. Is there something missing?

[ふねん1]

This thread's gimmick is silly.

But that's only my opinion.

The game that gave me the most trouble was UFO. The UFO system doesn't fit that well with survival play IMO, especially since UFO's danmaku patterns are only surpassed in difficulty by DDC's (but it's much easier to get resources in the latter). Honorable mention to EoSD because the rank system just gets out of control at times.

[Jaimers]

Scarlet Meister.

[Tsuken Yasashi]

I hear them UFOs were hard, and decided to try it.

Couldn't pass 4th stage on normal mode :c

[Ozzter]

Am I weird if I say I didn't find UFO to be that hard :V

SA is hardest for me, but that's kind of a common opinion that I've seen, so I'll go ahead and list what I think is the second hardest for me. ( Going off of the order I was able to 1cc each game... ) I actually had alot of trouble with TD... it probably has to do with a combination of low lives and the fact that I hear alot of people say it's easy, so it probably caused me to be more careless. It ended up being the second to last game to 1cc...

But, ah, I only can do normal, and I know certain games get much harder quicker than others, like UFO. The only one I've nearly 1cc'd on hard and lunatic is EoSD ( Yeah I don't know why I was practicing Lunatic before hard )

_{Also I don't get the joke}

[Uruwi]

Of those I played, SA is definitely the hardest and the most frustrating. You can try a hundred times, and one time luck out on both Yuugi and Satori and lose only two lives total on the first four stages, but Orin.

But that's just my opinion.

[Serela]

But, ah, I only can do normal, and I know certain games get much harder quicker than others, like UFO. The only one I've nearly 1cc'd on hard and lunatic is EoSD ( Yeah I don't know why I was practicing Lunatic before hard )

UFO seems about average on Normal (SA is the one that's still hard on all difficulties for sure x.x) but UFO Hard is a -massive- jump up, it's like any other game on Lunatic.

[Jaimers]

_{Also I don't get the joke}

.

[Darkness1]

I have to say GFW and PoDD. Sure, I suck at their  gimmicks, but they're still the only touhou games which makes me go "wtf" and brutally destroys me in its hilarious pellet-storms, even on normal mode.
Same may apply to PoFV in a smaller degree, but that's just my o-

[LunaWillow]

GFW. Because it gets ridiculously hard very fast.
Seriously, this game overshadows main Touhou in every way! I don't care you can freeze bullets. When you have ice-breaking lasers and unfreezable fireballs all over the screen...
Also PoDD. I 1cc'd it after many, many tries. Only to find out I was playing on easy.
And it's all because screen does not clear when you charge...
From main games, UFO. Because Murasa.

[TTBD]

GFW. Because it gets ridiculously hard very fast.
Seriously, this game overshadows main Touhou in every way! I don't care you can freeze bullets. When you have ice-breaking lasers and unfreezable fireballs all over the screen...
Also PoDD. I 1cc'd it after many, many tries. Only to find out I was playing on easy.
And it's all because screen does not clear when you charge...
From main games, UFO. Because Murasa.

I agree with ALL of these. I had trouble with these the most. I also had trouble with SA (Yuugi, Avalanche on Mt. Ooe is evil).