Here's my Touhou story, from around August to today:
I got interested in Touhou around August, when I was recommended the song Septette for the Dead Princess. Cue musical explosion. About a month later, I got Imperishable Night.
After much failure, I finally managed to 1CC Imperishable Night around late November, doing the Stage 4B and Stage 6A route. After this, I got Mountain of Faith, mistakenly (at the time) believing that it was the next easiest game. The same person who recommended Septette to me suggested Perfect Cherry Blossom instead, but I found this one just as hard.
The next couple of months, I skipped around, and eventually got SA and TD as well, spending a lot of time trying to master TD with no luck. A while later, I turned back to MoF, which I found much easier. After miraculously reaching the final stage on Normal with little practice, I decided to defeat the game. About a week later, I managed it.
This left me with a couple more months of skipping from game to game, and I eventually tried every game in the series from 6 to 15. I even managed to defeat LoLK on Easy in pointdevice, a feat I was particularly proud of. I tried my hand at TD again, but once again, no luck. I went into a small Touhou lull around March-April, but eventually decided to come back.
Once again, the Final Stage Phenomena hit me, this time on PCB. I mastered that game within a week, and got another 1CC under my belt. This was around 2 weeks ago. Someone online recommended I give LoLK Normal Pointdevice a whirl- which I proceeded to defeat within two days, on my first try. After that, just for fun, I cleared Stage 6B of IN on Normal with little to no practice, just for completion's sake.
With two spontaneous victories leaving me in shock, I was once again adrift in the sea of Touhou, wondering which game to attempt next. DDC finally appeared to me, two days ago, as the next easiest option, with Sakuya A being particularly useful. To my own surprise, with less than two days of practice, I defeated Shimyoumaru- albeit with no lives and a bomb left.
At this point, I've 1CC'd 5 out of the 9 standard windows Touhou shmups. (EoSD to LoLK, with PoFV being an exception as it's not a standard shmup.)
So... where should I head next now? I'm so used to it taking months to beat a game that the last two weeks bringing me 3 Normal 1CC's is still leaving me surprised. Here's what I think about the remaining games:
EoSD: Pretty simple with a focus on dodging and not gimmicks, being probably the most educational but still a difficult option
SA: I've practiced this game a surprising amount, and I still struggle to reach past Stage 4 on Normal. The main barrier in my way is picking a shot type- they're all so useful!
UFO: Hella hard, I'm pretty bad at managing multiple things at once, so a gimmick-intense game such as this, coupled with genuine difficulty, is probably the worst option for me right now
TD: I know this particularly well from getting it early on in my Touhou career, so this is the likeliest option, except...
HSiFS: Another option is for me to practice the demo to perfection, making clearing the whole game a lot easier once it comes out. I'm particularly interested in the fact that scoring = lives, so learning scoring techniques would be an asset to the practice. The release system is also really cool, being a nice blend of UFO and DDC's gimmicks.
Suggestions would be useful!
