Hard spellcards that make you think "how was that hard"

[Ghaleon]

Ok coming up with a title for what I want is really hard, shoot me >=P.

Anyway, in the past, there have been several spellcards that for some reason or another, I could just NEVER beat, they were stupid hard for me. They weren't neccesarily spellcards that are SUPPOSED to be crazy hard (like lunatic scarlet meister, or whatever), but are just cards that, might as well have been lunatic scarlet meister, and you would have had roughly the same chance of actually succeeding (which is about 0%). I'm curious to know what all of your shameful stories are in regards to this.

Also feel free to put in the names of any spellcards that used to be easy for you, that are now wtfhard.


For me:
hard cards turned easy:
Hong's Selaginella 9 (hard). I could never beat this on hard, I even spellcapped hard scarlet gensokyo and scarlet meister before I could cap this. Now it's a joke.. Oddly enough, I capped lunatic's version on my first (and second, and 3rd, then I stopped counting) try.

Hong's Colorful Sign "Colorful Light Chaotic Dance" : This one would always get me, now it's like her easiest card, durr.

Sakuya's Illusional Misdirection: I don't even know why this was hard. Now I kill myself by beating it too early and screwing myself with the trash afterwards.

Remi's Dark Sign "Scarlet Netherworld" ...Ok it's not easy sitll. But I have a better chance of capping scarlet gensokyo on lunatic, than I do capping this on normal, no I'm not exagerating. WTF

Remi's God Art "Vampire Illusion": Seems so easy now, just stay put, and move up thru gaps before they become walls, then go back down, simple.

Moon Sign "Silent Selene": easy
Five Elements Sign "Philosopher's Stone": also easy,

Noisy Funeral "Stygian Riverside: Just seems like streaming almost now.
Deva God Sword "Components of Konpaku": I don't even know why this was hard, it's like her easiest card!

Kaggy: Divine Treasure "Hourai Jewel -Dreamlike Paradise/rainbow danmaku": Ok I didn't know it was simple streaming, now I do, now it's easy.

Nitori: Kappa "Monster Cucumber": Truth is, I still suck at this one, badly.
         Kappa "Exteeeending Aaaaarm" : Yup, suck at t his one too.

Native God "Seven Stones and Seven Trees": I have no idea why I found this so hard before...

______________________________________________________________________________________

Easy cards that I now suddenly suck at!:
Aya: Crossroad Sign "Saruta Cross" I dunno, I always derp up and do something stupid now.
Bad Luck Sign "Biorhythm of the Apotropaic God" : I never got killed by tihs ever, now I screw it up somehow every time, wtf.

ALL of Keine's extra stage cards. I never ever got owned by them, now I can't cap ANY of them. ARGH!
Illusion Ghost "Jack the Ludo Bile": Sakuya's easiest spellcard is now her hardest for me for some reason. Now I always smack into her non-knife bullets for some reason. Like they are so friggin' huge, and I actually FAIL TO SEE THEM as I look for the knife opening.

[Serela]

Eternal Meek on Lunatic. Used to be impossible for me on Normal when I first started, now the Lunatic one is just plain fun and I usually cap it~<3

[Helion]

Cirno shotgun, Bad luck charm "broken charm of protection".

[Drake]

Eternal Meek Lunatic is easier than Normal. You can't nab the safespot on Normal :3

[Serela]

Eternal Meek Lunatic is easier than Normal. You can't nab the safespot on Normal :3

Safespots are for wimps >:

[Azinth]

Safespots are for wimps >:

Or scorerunners. :V


I once thought that Princess Tenko was the most brutal bullet pattern I would ever face and couldn't imagine anything possibly being harder.  Ah, good times~

[Sapz]

Total Purification. This is still the hardest card in IN for me. :V

[Alfred F. Jones]

Everything in StB except for level 10 and Seamless Ceiling. I look back on those and I go "... oh how did I find that hard, ever?"

On the other side of the spectrum, I used to be able to cap Illusionary Dominance no problem, but now I can't last more than a few seconds against it.

[Iryan]

When I had just been playing for a couple of weeks and was proud to have unlocked MoF extra stage, it took me ~ 30 tries on that card to realize one can misdirect the bubble cluster during Party Start.

It went from "almost impossible" to "man is this easy..."  :V

[Turtlesaur]

Hollow Giant "Woo" turned from a 1/35 chainbombing run killer to a 18/59 fairly consistent capture with no change in strategy.

[Zetzumarshen]

safespot

Oh yes, risking 8 lives for 10k grazes on Ichirin's opener is not that great. Or when you deliberately reduced your life into 2 when entering stage 6 EoSD.
...
It is just like bombing the hard part, please spare me

OT :
- Everything Yuyuko throws at you except Resurrection Butterfly.
- Virtue of Wind God. When you played a certain spellcard for +100 hours you will know everything about that card.
- Misdirection. After watching some replays, I magically know the route and how the kunai will behave.

That's all for now I think.

 

[Bananamatic]

Rainbow Wind Chime. Normal.

Also Misdirection. Normal. When I already 1cc'd Hard.

[theshirn]

Fujiyama Volcano.  Used to shred me.  Used to.

[nintendonut888]

Scarlet Gensokyo. I'm not saying it's easy, but back in the day I was so scared shitless by it I held my breath every time the bubble bullets passed me by.

[Lord Scalgon]

Madly Dance on Medoteko Lunatic.  It's very intimidating at first, but if you know what you're doing, it's a complete joke.  As of now, I have a 5 in 1 capture ratio in that spell card.

Really, once that spell card begins, from the center, move slightly to the left or right so the boss will position to that area.  Center positioning will make this card hard in my opinion.

[jc_foster]

Letty's Undulation Ray. I used to freak out because of the wtfcurvylasers behind the bullets .....

Spoiler:

.... then I realized the card is static. -.-

[arcs]

Kokkuri-san's Contract. The bullets don't move particularly fast, the gaps are fairly sizeable, yet I still manage to frequently ram something for no apparent reason. :L

In contrast, I've never really had trouble with Embers of Love, despite hearing tales of people being cornered/general doom.

And lastly, Halo "Karakasa Surprising Flash" (aka Kogasa's swirly Extra lasers) went from being painful to relatively straightforward - partly due to the whole move-with-the-lasers technique. I even managed to capture it once when the controls bugged, causing me to move up unless I was pressing down. No replay unfortunately - I lost the game of roulette, the constantly moving cursor landed on Quit when I tried to save it. :V

[Garlyle]

Kogasa's second spellcard on Extra made me freak the hell out the first time I saw it.  ...It has since become EZ Modo, surprisingly.

Also Saruta Cross (Aya's first card in MoF).  I don't know why, but on Normal I always ended up having to bomb this.  I moved onto Hard seriously with MarisaA, and I've got a 100% capture ratio after about 7 fights.  100% on a Hard card on a stage 4 boss.  What the HELL.

[Heartbeam]

China's last two spells on Normal were expected bombs during the 1CC attempts and even a long while after that.  And then after finally getting over them for good with an expectant capture rate they still left a bad taste in memory...not really so these days.  Excellent fun.

Red Oni Blue Oni.  Back in the days of much trial and error I eventually had it planned to bomb that spell during every single attempt for the first Extra clear.  The history is crippled pretty badly at a 21/90 for Reimu B.

80% Reflowering stayed with a poor record for a long time until it was at 1/38 and I thought, "Okay, I want to get this spell down."  Didn't help for all those full runs where I sure as hell wasn't going to try capturing it unless that was the intent from the start.  29/83 now, so it's just okay but it did beat out the capture history for 10% Reflowering.

Similarly, Deadly Dance -Demon World-, Butterfly Delusion and Asura Sword Lunatic were 1/xx for a while until effort was put forth to examine them.

I haven't gotten over Aya's first spell on Normal yet.

[Azure Lazuline]

Hourai Doll. It used to be horrible and frustrating, but now I think it's one of the funnest spellcards ever. I still die on it a lot, but it's from random errors and clipdeaths rather than just not knowing what's going on.

[Sen]

Basically any time I go back down to Normal mode now, after getting used to Hard Mode. Exceptions are Illusionary Dominance (Aya's MoF survival), Flying Fantastica, and everything Murasa has.

Special mention to Yukari's Last Word from IN. I suppose it's kind of unfair, since I never went for a "normal" capture of the card, and instead went for a no-focus supergraze run from the very start, but my history on that card is 1/451 with the Scarlet Team, after which the history made me cry and I switched to Sakuya Solo (her history for that card is 1/45 :V). Nowadays I try it and it's incredibly easy, albeit very dull to play.

[?q]

At first I thought this topic was about cards that shouldn't be hard, but are.  I was about to talk about Hydro Camouflage and Broken Amulet.  Party Start is another card in that category, although it's much more painful because IT NEVER ENDS AND IT'S TERRIBLY DESIGNED

Everything in StB except for level 10 and Seamless Ceiling. I look back on those and I go "... oh how did I find that hard, ever?"

Also, this.  Albeit with a couple more exceptions (i.e. 9-1, SUPERMAN, Flandre's idiotic cards)

[Serela]

Party Start is another card in that category, although it's much more painful because IT NEVER ENDS AND IT'S TERRIBLY DESIGNED

Move to the side of the screen along with the blue lasers to misdirect bubble bullets, move back into the center to dodge them. Bingo, Party Start trivialized :3

Although, it might help to also look at a video or replay since I realize it might not be incredibly easy to understand what I mean. But with a video+replay AND what I said, you should understand how to do the spellcard correctly.

[Formless God]

(protip : go above Suwacko)

- Elegant Sign "Spring Kyoto Dolls" : I'm scared of how easily I could capture this now.
- Stygian Riverside : See above.
- Rumbling Jikoku-ten (Chen's last spell card in Extra ?) : Again.
- Kokkuri-san's Contract and Boundary of Human and Youkai : I used to lose six to seven lives on those two (joke runs, of course).
- BoLaD : ... WHAT.

- Lady Ohgane's Fire and Trauma in Glimmering Depths : Not very consistently though.
- Secretly Inherited Art of Danmaku : I've done it at 75 fps. Twice :V
- Take-Minakata's Invocation.
- Mad Dance on Medoteko : Took quite a while to realize the strategy, but I can hardly see myself failing this again.
- Divining Husk : Highest capture rate out of all of Kanako's spell cards :V
- Kanako's last spell card in Extra.

- Flying Insect's Nest.
- BoWaP and Ten Evil Stars : That safespot ... that safespot.
- Hell's Tokamak.
- Danmaku Paranoia, Release of the Id and Super-Ego : I used to fail these as hard as I failed Kokkuri-san and BoHaY.

- Busy Rod.
- Aura of Justice.
- Superhuman "Byakuren Hijiri".
- Karakasa Surprise Slash.
- Rainbow UFO Invasion of Raep :V
- Grudge Bow.

There's also a few spells that went from loleasy to "how was that EASY ?"
- Mesh of Light and Darkness.
- Yasaka's Divine Wind.
- Sinkable Vortex.
- Complete Clarification.
- Guerrilla Typhoon ... sort of.

[Krimmydoodle]

If you -really- want to trivialize Party Start, sit above Suwako while she's talking to you.  I don't know at what moment during the cutscene it occurs, but the laser component of the card is actually aimed at your position at some point before the fight.  If you're above her at the right time, all of the lasers will be aimed up, and you don't even have to dodge them.

For more fun, stand to her side instead.  Then the card goes from trivial to impossible.

... goddamnit Suwakodamnit Formless God

[Sen]

For more fun, stand to her side instead.  Then the card goes from trivial to impossible.

What? I just tried that, captured it on my first try doing that. It almost makes it easier.

[Krimmydoodle]

Hm, could have sworn it was really, really stupid that way.  Then again, the last time I tried that was a looooong time ago.

I'd check it again for myself, but I reformatted my comp yesterday and haven't put Touhou on it yet.

[Drake]

The aim lock happens a few frames after the dialogue finishes.

SSU didn't do it right. What happens is that the lasers wall you into the side, where the mess of everything else totally mauls you. There's pretty much no escape.

[Zetzumarshen]

I really hope that Byakuren's cards can be listed here. 

[Lybydose]

First Pyramid.  This card is soooo easy.
Native God "Long-Arm and Long-Leg" used to be the hardest card EVER
Same with Seven Stones and Seven Trees
Trauma in the Glimmering Depths used to be an auto bomb because I had no idea what the hell was going on.  It's now the easiest card in MoF.
Possessed by Phoenix used to be all kinds of impossible for me.
"End of Imperishable Night -Dead of Night-" went 1/52 trying to capture this to unlock last words.  A couple weeks later I discovered I could capture this and the Lunatic version pretty much 100%.

...and then there are cards that went from loleasy to HOW DID I EVER CAPTURE THIS.

Like Native God "The Red Frog in the Fourth Year of the Houei Era."  The first time I captured this I was like "oh this is actually really easy" and then I pretty much captured it on every run.  Then suddenly one day I was terrible at this card and now I rarely capture it.
Scarlet Destiny - captured this on the 2nd try ever, having never seen it before. I haven't captured it since.
Medicine Sign "Galaxy in a Pot" - I figured out a way to capture this 100% of the time.  I don't remember what it was.