Touhou Accomplishments 14 - Easy Mode Edition

[Naut]

Previous thread.

Let's see how well you've been doing in the lovely world of Touhou lately.

[_jade]

I wasn't playing :p

[Zengeku]

This post is fucking amazing.

--- Or rather, I wanna be able to track what's going on in this thread and I don't have any notable accomplishments.
Or well, I've gotten more consistent with King Kraken Strike. However, I am not satisfied before having 95% consistency. And the latest runs have had me capture KKS more than the third one which is nice.

[MMX]

Hell yeah. First SA normal 1CC It took me about 37 tries from the first time i've touched the game yesterday. This run is pretty horrible, go laugh at me  :]

And now i might do the same thing i did when i first played MoF - practice the stuff (mostly Orin and Okuu) and do a better run. And clear TD lunatic wich i was so close to >_<

[Zengeku]

Hmm... you got close to clearing TD lunatic and got your first SA Normal clear just now?  :wat:

Was that TD run credit feeding or something. Or is the game really just that easy?  :V Congrats on it either way. SA is probably the hardest Normal mode. At least it is according to my memory.

[MMX]

Hmm... you got close to clearing TD lunatic and got your first SA Normal clear just now?  :wat:

Was that TD run credit feeding or something. Or is the game really just that easy?  :V Congrats on it either way. SA is probably the hardest Normal mode. At least it is according to my memory.

Thanks.
Well, it's only a day since i've tried SA first time. Yeah, it may sound ridiculous but since i've started playing touhou i'm on my shedule for the games. So SA time has come. And i'm playing TD for several months, and yeah i find it easier than any other touhou before. It's the only game i could play on lunatic and be able to clear it :V

SA is the hardest normal? Not UFO?

[Raikaria]

While the run itself wasn't worth saving...

I timed out Fantasy Seal -Blink- with the Scarlet Team.

Considering between Reimu's movement and Sakuya's damage it's literally impossible to cap it with them... yeah :V

[Yukari-Chan]

Oh, I didn't know the previous thread got locked until now, so,

Founded a way to beat Oni God," Blue Oni, Red Oni" with Sakuya\ReimuA. Just stream left and right instead of top and bottom. Saves you the effort of losing lives.

[Zengeku]

SA is the hardest normal? Not UFO?

Well, its obviously a subjective thing but I remember SA being pretty damn intimidating back in the day because of its more dense bullet patterns. There is also the thing about UFO allowing you to hoard resources like no other game in the series. Still though, they are pretty even and I remember Flying Fantastica to be quite a thing even on Normal mode. That's at least what I can read by going through my old posts.

Really though, I remember SA to be really cliphappy to that kind of inexperienced player i were back then.

[BT]

SA Normal is definitely harder. I remember beating UFO in three or four days, since, like Zengeku mentioned, you farm plenty of resources on Normal, and you can pretty much bomb through stages 5 and 6. SA Normal took me at least a month and a half to clear.

[BT]

In other news... Wild Deserted Island timeout. In 4 attempts.

Uh, 'kay...

[Chalros22]

Founded a way to beat Oni God," Blue Oni, Red Oni" with Sakuya\ReimuA. Just stream left and right instead of top and bottom. Saves you the effort of losing lives.

I usually do it that way, though I start at the top and stream the first wave down, then left/right for the other waves. Only way I can do it consistently.

[Serela]

For the UFO versus SA discussion; I personally felt that UFO normal is, well, normal-y, while SA's normal  is pretty scary for a Normal.

Of course, then you go to Hard mode on UFO and it's like you're playing lunatic on any other game, except with a crapload of resources. The difficulty jump between UFO normal and hard is huge.

[I have no name]

For the UFO versus SA discussion; I personally felt that UFO normal is, well, normal-y, while SA's normal  is pretty scary for a Normal.

Of course, then you go to Hard mode on UFO and it's like you're playing lunatic on any other game, except with a crapload of resources. The difficulty jump between UFO normal and hard is huge.

UFO normal is harder than SA normal.
I beat Utsuho my first time getting to her, Byakuren took a half dozen or more fights with her to clear.

[chirpy13]

I only really found SA hard because of the resource system.  Not only are you punished for losing lives when you die, but you're punished further by not getting any extends either.  As far as the actual patterns go, I don't find them much worse than any other normal mode.  UFO on the other hand throws resources everywhere whether you're awesome or terrible and manages to be quite tough even with a bajillion lives.  For difficulty to clear I'd still put UFO higher, but SA was quite troublesome too until I got the first chunk of the game down and could no miss or 1 miss up to Orin.

[Zengeku]

I only really found SA hard because of the resource system.  Not only are you punished for losing lives when you die, but you're punished further by not getting any extends either. 

I never really quite understood the logic behind that argument. You get a life piece if you beat an attack without dying and at a few other areas. If you fail to no-miss that attack then you'll lose out on 1/5th of a life. That means that you'll need to die once at 10 different attacks in order to miss out on two lives. You still get a boat load of them.

[K.B.]

You also get 2.25 power back each time you die and .5 power with each spell kill.  The game essentially rewards you for bombing your way through bosses.

It only took me a few hours to 1cc SA normal, whereas it took multiple sessions for me to do the same for UFO, and I had several months more shmupping experience for UFO than I did for SA.  Of course, I was cheesing my way through them; I couldn't rightly say which is more difficult if you were actually trying to dodge things.  Plus, in order to fairly compare difficulties, you have to know the games very well, and I'm betting that a lot of people didn't have more than passable competency when they got normal clears (I'm sure I didn't, anyway).  So even a subjective comparison could be tricky.

For hard, though, I recently did a bombspam comparison of the two games and SA was slightly easier.  There's more to learn in UFO's stages and there're more opportunities to die on them because of the ufo mechanic (even after learning the stages), but overall the difficulties are fairly close.  For the curious: SA, UFO.  I'm discontented about a lot of things in those runs, but I think they get the point across.  Details are in the replay descriptions.

Saves you the effort of losing lives.

Hahaha... I love this phrasing.  I'm using this in the future.


I'll list a few things to be on-topic.  Over the past couple months...
SA hard: first 1cc, all shot types 1cc-ed.
UFO hard: same.
UFO hard: 3b0d Byakuren, topped off with my first cap of Flying Fantastica.  Bombed Air Scroll because I hate glowing bullets, the last non because I'm lazy, and Purple shit because purple shit.
PoFV lunatic: 8/14 characters 1cc-ed.  Got a legit clear with Yuuka(~) a few hours ago, which made me ecstatic.  By legit, I mean that the AI ran into bullets each time in the final match (which ran 2:58), never getting trapped.  I figure that if I can survive a hotdog onslaught with her, I can do it with anyone.  At least with anyone who isn't named Sakuya (or possibly Komachi).

[XephyrEnigma]

I never really quite understood the logic behind that argument. You get a life piece if you beat an attack without dying and at a few other areas. If you fail to no-miss that attack then you'll lose out on 1/5th of a life. That means that you'll need to die once at 10 different attacks in order to miss out on two lives. You still get a boat load of them.

Last I checked, you only don't get the fragment if you die, ergo, you just lost a life, and now you're not even getting a piece of an extra one, so now you're out 1 1/5 instead of just one, which is just... yeah.

[chirpy13]

If you fail to no-miss that attack then you'll lose out on 1/5th of a life. That means that you'll need to die once at 10 different attacks in order to miss out on two lives. You still get a boat load of them.

Well when you put it like that, I guess you're right.

[ふねん1]

I never really quite understood the logic behind that argument. You get a life piece if you beat an attack without dying and at a few other areas. If you fail to no-miss that attack then you'll lose out on 1/5th of a life. That means that you'll need to die once at 10 different attacks in order to miss out on two lives. You still get a boat load of them.

You kinda have the math backwards. When you die on a section that gives up a life-piece, you not only lose the life from dying, but the lost life-piece means you automatically miss out on at least one Extend somewhere in the game (there are exactly 50 life-pieces in SA). In terms of getting hit by stuff, 4/5 of a life is equivalent to 0/5 in practice - the fragments are really only useful when you collect 5 of them, which is the only time you get the Extend. So it really only takes dying on or timing out six attacks with life-pieces to miss two Extends. Continuously dying on these attacks adds up faster than you think.

You also get 2.25 power back each time you die and .5 power with each spell kill.  The game essentially rewards you for bombing your way through bosses.

I'll add that if you have either 3 or 4 lives and die, you'll get 3.20 Power back, and of course a Full Power when brought down to your last life. For the most part bosses do give up 0.5 Power per card, though their finals tend to give 0.4, and Utsuho, final boss that she is, gives more (0.75, 0.75, 1.00, and 2.00 if I recall). I'd have to disagree with SA rewarding bombing though. You did bring up the Power drops before, but outside of Utsuho it takes at least two cards to regain one bomb. Most shot types are a bit too weak for liberal bombing to be feasible, and if they get brought down to sufficiently low Power they won't kill any attacks before they time out (thus gaining no Power at all). That's not to say strategic bombing doesn't work anymore of course, just that some thought still has to go into it.

I can't really comment much on the SA Normal vs. UFO Normal debate since I first went through each of them at vastly different times. 1cc'ing SA Normal was one of the first things I ever did with a bullet hell game, getting it less than two weeks after I started playing Touhou. I remember UFO Normal still taking several tries to 1cc, though I was a bit better by the time I first tried that one.

[Zil]

Jumping into this thread because I have to be in it.

You also get 2.25 power back each time you die and .5 power with each spell kill.  The game essentially rewards you for bombing your way through bosses.

Yeah, the game is very lose with bombs, and you shouldn't be missing out on life fragments seeing as you can't even die enough times to miss more than two lives anyway, and missing those two lives is innevitable unless you kick the game's ass. SA Normal is still harder than UFO though.

I'd have to disagree with SA rewarding bombing though. You did bring up the Power drops before, but outside of Utsuho it takes at least two cards to regain one bomb.

But it should only take one bomb per spell until you reach stage 5, and since two spells give you one bomb, it's really like one bomb per two spells. Not to mention if you're capturing anything at all you'll be replenishing your bomb stock as fast as you deplete it. It doesn't quite "reward" bombing of course, but you can get away with bombing almost everything and still get back to full power by just passing a few parts through honest dodging. Most games give you three bombs per life, but in SA you've got 5 or 6 or more even.

[ARF]

Basically there are some really easy to learn tricks that trivializes a few late game attacks which makes SA easy to 1cc on all difficulties if you also know when to strategically bomb. Learning these will happen naturally if you watch all the current WR replays of SA multiple times  :V

UFO is just way harder on all levels.

[Yukari-Chan]

Well let me sum up the conclusion of which is harder, SA or UFO.

SA: Hard because of Utsuho's Giant Balls, Orin and her stage, and a Satori copying all your partner's attacks, a frickin' jealous woman, Suika's drunk sister, mindfucking Sister
UFO: Surpise from Kogasa, Mighty Ass anchors, Curvy Lasers of doom, Nue Orb, Flying Fantastica, another Kogasa surprise, the 2nd place Flandre(Nue).

Yup. In my view, that's all there is too me that's hard. So UFO is harder *shot*

EDIT: I cannot believe you are arguing about which is harder. Their both hard at many levels.

[Vibri]

I find UFO's danmaku harder overall on Normal, resources notwithstanding. It's different from person to person though, and it's kinda only relevant to players who haven't 1cced both. Both games can give you a lot of bombs and lives if you know what you're doing, but if you can't clear them to begin with you probably don't.

Here's a list. Hopefully by the next thread I'll only have one thing left to do at most.
PC98 stuff: Can't get gamepad to work properly in emulator :<
EoSD: All difficulties cleared
PCB: All difficulties cleared
IN: All difficulties cleared, missing a fair number of last words and a couple normal spellcards
PoFV: All difficulties cleared
MoF: All difficulties cleared
SA: All but Lunatic cleared
UFO: All but Lunatic cleared
GFW: All but Lunatic B/C and Extra cleared (looool :< )
TD: All but Lunatic cleared, haven't touched spell practice at all
StB/DS: uhh I should probably play these sometime

Only thing I don't think is possible for me right now is UFO. Gotta get better.

[K.B.]

I should have said "at least 2.25 power" earlier.  I didn't know about the different amounts of power given by Okuu, though; I wasn't paying close enough attention.  My bad on both counts.

I'll defer to Catfish on knowledge since I haven't watched WR runs on SA.  But a quick note on what I do know and can explain:

Orin

...is a perfect example of why the game is easy when you learn to stop dodging and love the bombspam.

Her first and second nons are relatively easy, but the first two spells and the third non are a little tricky.  If you start with 4 power, use one bomb on each spell and two on the third non, you end with 1.0 power and an extra life.  Keeping with bombspam, you'll bomb and die to her next card then bomb her last card.  Your power is now at 2.25 (2.25 - 1 + .5 + .5), which you can easily get back up to 4 over the next stage, but more importantly you have 1/5 of a life more than when you started against Orin.

Satori and Okuu are the only ones where you (probably and definitely, respectively) won't come out ahead if you bomb everything difficult, and stage five (and maybe four if you start out at near-zero power) is the only stage where you should die.  Stages one-three and six you should end with more power than what you started with.  You still have to learn the stages and the boss-attacks, of course, but once you do you can bomb the tricky stuff, clear the game with minimal (non-streaming) dodging, and wonder why you ever thought it was difficult, let alone impossible.  Or that's what I was left with, anyway.  Also, again, this is only for hard; I can't talk to other difficulty levels.

[Yukari-Chan]

Here's your answer to Stage 5:
Use ReimuA and cheat with fucking borders
That always solves my problem.

[Esper]

I just acted like a crazy man recording Touhou 7's Extra Stage, and I nearly made my grandfather deaf due to yelling "UNACCEPTABLE!" next to him when he walked by. You get to see me freaking out and yelling at Alice on the demo screen tomorrow.

As for actual accomplishment, I actually pulled off a Red Oni Blue Oni deathbomb CORRECTLY. (That card is the only card I cannot deathbomb at all. I don't have any explanation as to why.)

[Yukari-Chan]

I just acted like a crazy man recording Touhou 7's Extra Stage, and I nearly made my grandfather deaf due to yelling "UNACCEPTABLE!" next to him when he walked by. You get to see me freaking out and yelling at Alice on the demo screen tomorrow.

As for actual accomplishment, I actually pulled off a Red Oni Blue Oni deathbomb CORRECTLY. (That card is the only card I cannot deathbomb at all. I don't have any explanation as to why.)

Which Character your using. If it's not Sakuya\ReimuA then, cannot help you with Oni God. I managed to 1cc PCB Extra with ALMOST all PCB Characters. If you want, I'll tell you what I secrets I used.

[Byaaakuren]

As for actual accomplishment, I actually pulled off a Red Oni Blue Oni deathbomb CORRECTLY. (That card is the only card I cannot deathbomb at all. I don't have any explanation as to why.)

Why not learn how to capture it?

[Esper]

Why not learn how to capture it?

Except that I've captured it tons of times but it's not a foolproof method. Going left and right in that card's for faggots gay people idiots, but then again so is going up and down. The fact that I pulled a deathbomb off correctly and called it an accomplishment is because my not-foolproof-at-fucking-all method is somewhat prone to failure and I am never able to deathbomb it. When I fail, I always fucking lose a life. ALWAYS.