WARNING: This will probably be long and ramble-y.
As a scorer for Ten Desires, it kind of saddens me that the game doesn't have as much competition as others. This isn't too surprising however, looking at how the scoring mechanics actually work, but I feel that some people may be missing some good points of the game which make it rather enjoyable to play. Literally minutes ago after completing my first run of the game in a month or so and posting a screenshot to Twitter, Sapz messaged me via IRC saying "Man you really like 10D :V" - and the conversation that followed sparked the idea for this thread.
[2013-05-13 21:59:27] <Sapz> I'm really surprised how few people have picked it up
[2013-05-13 21:59:38] <Shimatora> How so?
[2013-05-13 21:59:41] <Sapz> I mean okay I understand not liking it as much as the others
[2013-05-13 21:59:56] <Sapz> But it being a Touhou game I would expect to see a lot of scores regardless :v
[2013-05-13 22:02:02] <Sapz> Well I guess there's not that few
[2013-05-13 22:02:20] <Sapz> I think Hard mode is just usually the least popular difficulty :V
[2013-05-13 22:02:51] <Sapz> The small amount of Lunatic scores is very surprising though
[2013-05-13 22:03:56] <Shimatora> I could write a whole blog post on why I enjoy scoring on this game, and those who haven't given it a try might not like it :V
[2013-05-13 22:04:06] <Shimatora> and why those*
[2013-05-13 22:04:23] <Sapz> Might like it*? :V
[2013-05-13 22:04:37] <Shimatora> Well, that and why people don't like it at a glance
[2013-05-13 22:04:43] <Sapz> Ah
[2013-05-13 22:04:51] <Shimatora> It's deceivingly simple
[2013-05-13 22:04:58] <Shimatora> Well, every game is at "higher" levels of play
[2013-05-13 22:05:03] <Shimatora> But this more-so
[2013-05-13 22:05:17] <Shimatora> People see it as "spend the whole game invincible with bombs and hypers lol no thx"
[2013-05-13 22:05:45] <Shimatora> While a lot of the game does consist of that, there's actual, real planning that goes behind the routes to gain spirit and where to use trance / die / bomb etc
[2013-05-13 22:05:49] <Shimatora> Which cards to shotgun
[2013-05-13 22:05:51] <Shimatora> Which cards not to
[2013-05-13 22:05:58] <Shimatora> It's much like Cherry in PCB
[2013-05-13 22:06:08] <Shimatora> Anyone could go through and bomb randomly and trance
[2013-05-13 22:06:23] <Shimatora> I can almost guarantee they wont beat any of my easy / normal scores
[2013-05-13 22:06:41] <Sapz> Mmm
[2013-05-13 22:07:19] <Sapz> Well hey, you could always start a thread about it :V
So here I am, if anything, to try and show people why I enjoy scoring in this game. And why some people may enjoy it too.
I'd like to start off saying that: Yes, this game is most likely the easiest game to just jump into and score. At "lower levels" of scoring, you could easily get 500m-600m from playing Easy, or 1.1b for Normal. With basic knowledge going in, I feel like you could come out with similar scores - just bombing and trancing the bosses is probably enough to do this. I feel that this could be one of the reasons why people don't like the game, at a glance it's super easy. You spend the whole time invincible through bombing + trancing. While this is the case for a lot of the game, at "higher" levels of play, there is an awful lot of planning that has to go into getting any sort of good score out of the lower difficulties. (With me being a primarily Easy / Normal scorer.)
First of all, I'd like to describe some things I had in mind while planning my routes.
Throughout the game, there are some spellcards and normals which can be easily shotgunned to milk for spirit for your trance meter and for points. You need to stay near the boss, within the life ring, and continuously shooting to get the most points and spirit out of her as possible. There are also sections of invincibility for the bosses after an attack and spellcards / normals that are not quite as easy to shotgun, for these I needed to plan accordingly to try and get as much spirit out of it as I possibly could without risking myself too much.
In addition to this, there's also the matter of getting enough lives and bombs to spend during boss battles, as these are usually the most profitable place to use them. Bombing increases the amount of spirits you gain drastically, so for the cards in which you can't shotgun, you might as well bomb them for that extra spirit gain! Otherwise you're just plain missing out on PIV or trance meter. Planning trances on the stages / midbosses / boss fights are needed to get that extra life / bomb where you need it in order to squeeze that little bit extra spirit out of the bosses.
Even a slight change in route early on can alter your
entire full game route. One miss bomb / trance / death can cost you an entire run once you've pushed your score high enough. I do know that this is something that happens in any game with scoring ever, but in this you'll miss out on vital areas that you need to bomb / trance, in stages for instance, where you'll be missing out on a load of PIV, score and trance meter if you don't.
ZUN has made a completely different scoring system with this game - he said he was going to make it more friendly for new players, and he did. I don't think this means that those of us with moderate or even close to expert skills in Touhou or shmups in general should use this as a reason not to play it. If you are looking for a game where challenge mainly stems from dodging extremely hard bullet patterns and gaining score from collecting point items above the POC + capturing spellcards, this game probably isn't for you.
For me, what makes the game enjoyable is having to shotgun bosses, being right in their face while they're shooting bullets. Having to plan where and how to use my bombs in order to maximise spirit gain and, effectively, increase my score. Miss timing anything in this game can spell game over for my current route - which I have stolen a few things from replays, but not very much I don't think. This is a key point for me - there is complete and utter freedom of how to use your resources. If you wanted, you could choose not to bomb a certain card or midboss or enemy, you could choose to trance elsewhere - doing anything small like this will change the game entirely. And you'll still get a relatively good score. The scoring in this game can be applied how you want, you don't
have to do it in a certain place to gain enough PIV to get anywhere near to a good score, like UFO for instance, where not grazing Ichirin does huge damage to PIV.
This is what makes scoring fun for me in this game. I can make my own route and see results - I can see my score getting closer and closer to those world records, closer to the number 1 spots on the high score boards (which are STILL held by Heartbeam, I'll get there one day. :v)
I hope that some players might consider giving TD a go, but I'd love to hear from those who still don't like it. What makes the game so unenjoyable? Am I
really that weird? :V