Well, Dodonpachi rank doesn't make all that difference, IIRC. Also I noticed that max rank EoSD on some things really likes to screw you over pretty bad. Not everything, but a few of Patchouli's cards, and I think one of China's. I also think Remilia to be hellish on max rank.
In short: I like that the game increases the challenge if I'm breezing through it, but I don't like things becoming nigh-impossible, that's adjusting too far.
DDP's rank is very subtle because it increases slowly over the course of the entire game. If you're not that great at DDP you probably won't notice it at all; however, if you no-death up to say, Stage 5 or 6 and then die, the difference is pretty noticable. Keeps things a challenge for the players trying to keep their max bomb multiplier all the way into the second loop (which is necessary for the really high scores). As for EoSD's rank, yeah, it's a pretty significant difference. Personally, I'd prefer it to be a little more subtle, but everything is still perfectly doable at high rank. Also, as far as I'm aware, not all of Remilia's spell cards are affected by rank - pretty sure her first two are and her final two (the ones significantly harder than the others) aren't. I don't think Vampire Illusion is affected but if it is it still ends up playing out around the same way regardless of what rank it's at, so. :V
It makes a huge difference if you're playing SanaeB or MarisA, which happen to be my 2 most played shot types. Each lost power is the game makes things way worse.
What's in your hand? Back at me. I have it! It's a death with that power loss you hate.
Look again. The power loss is now
completely insignificant!
In all seriousness, please,
please give the
shot analysis a look over before spouting this kind of stuff. For MarisaA, dying and hitting 3.00 power will bring you to just under 95% power, and dying again to bring you to 2.00 power will still leave you at about 90%. The power losses for SanaeB are even more insignificant; at focused range (where you'll be spending most of your boss fights), 3.00 power is a little over 95% of the damage of 4.00 power, while 2.00 is a little over 90%. The only times it'll make any kind of significant difference is if you're abusing the spread shot on the stages and completely neglecting your base shot where most of the damage actually comes from (which is pretty much doing it wrong) or if you're using the focused/unfocused shotgun on bosses, and if this happens the chances are you've bombed anyway and would destroy the boss' health bar regardless of how much damage your shot is doing since SanaeB's bomb is what it is. :V
Rank is one of those ideas that sounds good but is pretty much always terrible.
Want to know a game with a good rank system? Deathsmiles. If you suck, you can pick level 1. If you're decent, level 2. If you're good level 3. For Black Label, level 999.
No, no, you're getting mixed up. That is something different; it's an option you pick at the beginning of each level, and it's called 'difficulty'.
Here's one of many possible examples of why rank in Touhou is garbage. Mercury Poison. At max rank, this thing is easy. At low rank, it's a clusterfuck.
Yeah, that's fair enough. ZUN didn't exactly get it perfect by any means. :V
Oh, and Battle Garegga is stupid anyway. Suiciding should never have to be part of your survival strategy. How the hell does that make sense? Encouraging suiciding in any way in a game is just dumb.
Pssh, Garegga is an excellent game. Its system is incredibly unconventional, but it works very well in the game's context and has a lot of depth to it - the entire game is built around the rank, and everything you may choose to do affects it in some form, including shooting, collecting items, destroying things, not dying, etc., so it's very cerebral and you have to plan your actions out well. It seems odd at first, but it's a very well designed game. Mind telling me why it doesn't work instead of just labelling it garbage without backing your point up? It's not Touhou, it isn't meant to be a survival game; it's a scoring game, and the survival is secondary to that since you get an extend for every million points you earn.
No mention of Mokou's "flying cards of extremely fast death" nonspell? I know you can just bomb-spam it and that extra stage gives you too many resources so it's not a problem, but I've honestly never seen anyone capture it before. It always seemed out-of-place in that battle.
Also, rank system: I'm going to have to agree that it's a good idea with bad execution. Everything else I want to say has already been said, though. I dislike fast bullets in general (like BoWaP and such), but in most cases, I know that's a problem with me not being able to dodge rather than the actual attacks.
I wouldn't call Mokou's rings of death attack unfair or bullshit by any means, it's perfectly doable given the requisite amount of skill; having said that, I agree that it's pretty stupidly placed in my opinion since it's far harder than pretty much anything else she'll throw at you. It seems more like a challenging Lunatic attack than something that belongs in Extra. :V
