Is Extra easier than Normal?

[jhun]

So for the past two years I've been playing, it's kinda weird that I don't pretty much clear the Normal Mode. And I think the only ones I've cleared so far are Ten Desires and Double Dealing Character. But, when it comes to Extra Mode, I've completed almost every game. I cleared Flandre, Ran, Mokou, Suwako, Nue, Marisa, Mamizou, and Raiko.

But I have to say I'm not good with Lunatic. Is it Normal to beat more Extra Stages than Normal Modes?

[Drake]

Considering you usually need to clear Normal to unlock Extra in the first place, yes, that is a little weird.

[Neovereign]

Perhaps it could be length. Playthroughs usually get to the 6th stage as final, but extras are oh-so very much shorter.
Some people may be better at beating a shorter session than getting comfortable into a longer one.

[Shizzo]

Perhaps it could be length. Playthroughs usually get to the 6th stage as final, but extras are oh-so very much shorter.
Some people may be better at beating a shorter session than getting comfortable into a longer one.

Think so too.  Even with the 'increased' difficulty Extra stages has, the solemn fact they're way shorter than a 6-stage playthrough means you can focus more on memorizing less patterns. 

That coupled with the fact that restarting in on an Ex Midboss isn't as stressful as doing it on, say, a stage 4, means you can persist way more until you actually succeed. 

[Chill Observer]

Extra is usually intended for people who can beat normal, in fact the unlock requirements directly state that.

It's also a singular stage and most spell cards simply rely on knowing what the gimmicks do. I suppose it is easier to learn in that fashion.

[Mikuru]

Extras certainly have a lot of gimmicky patterns, but with a few exceptions, they don't become trivial once you know the trick; they just become a lot more doable, but you still have to have the dodging skill. Normal 1ccs tend to be less demanding of skill overall, and don't really require memorisation except for some cards in the later stages.

So yes, I'm a little baffled by this topic

[Nova234]

In most cases, I've found that extra tends to land somewhere between normal and hard, but definitely tends to have much more in common with the latter. It's not a particularly useful comparison to make, though - extra is usually a rather fundamentally different style of gameplay, due to the shorter format, more gimmicky and/or memorization-oriented patterns, and the bosses being bomb-immune, among other factors.

[ILikeBulletZ]

I think Extras generally are somewhere in between Normal and Hard as well.

Let me try to make a list. Dont take it too seriously its just my opinion.

"Normal" level Extras:

PCB, IN, UFO.

"Somewhere in between Normal-Hard" level Extras:

PoFV, MoF, DDC.

"Hard" level Extras:

EoSD, LoLK.

"Lunatic" level Extras:

SA


Well... Thats how I would rank them anyway. Keep in mind the list was made with first time clears in mind only. Like I said, not supposed to be taken very seriously.

I dont think any of them can be considered easier than Normal though... I still rememeber way back in 2013, I got my PCB Easy 1cc and then attempted Extra... I kept getting killed by the opener fairies because I did not knew what streaming was at the time... Yeah... I doubt an Easy mode player will have an easy time with any of them...

[jhun]

Great, good to know that it's a matter of patience. Because whenever I attempt to play Normal Mode, I always get sleepy in around stage 4, like when the theme of PCB Stage 4 plays (that melody is making me sleep) I always get death.

And I guess it's true that Extras are short, that's why it was easy for me.

By the way, my games have already Extra Stage unlocks so that's why sometimes, I don't bother to play story stages. But meh, I'll try most of them in the future anyway. Thanks for the feedback.

[Wrathful_Scythe]

Seems I am the odd one out as I 1CC most of the games on hard but get my ass kicked on the extras.

Currently EoSD is driving me crazy. I cleared it with both Reimu und Marisa some time ago but couldn't clear it today. Patchy and the fairys before Patchy are driving me nuts. Flan is relatively easy with only 2 spellcards consistently being a problem for me. I know that you have enough bombs but I really suck at deathbombing.

[shockdude]

"Lunatic" level Extras:

SA

I beat SA Extra but have yet to beat UFO Extra or do a Lunatic 1CC, lol.

I'd rank SA as the hardest of the "Hard" Extras, but it's not Lunatic. The stage portion is pretty easy compared to that of other Extra stages, and the hardest spellcards can be tanked due to all of the extends.

[Chill Observer]

I don't even think SA and UFO extra are difficult ones. On the contrary, I find DDC and LoLK extra to be quite difficult.

[ILikeBulletZ]

Well it might be some of my bias speaking, but I will always consider SA Extra to be significantly harder than all other extras, by quite a large margin even.

Some of the stuff Koishi has; I cant see anyone in the Hard or below range being capable of doing, ESPECIALLY  Subterranean Rose , which IMO is one of the hardest spellcards in all Extras, its a MASSIVE run ender (it ended SIX of my runs by itself, this freaking pattern), and I honestly cant see how anyone that's not on Lunatic level already can deal with that insane attack (other than heavy resource tanking).

It says something that it was the one and only Extra that actually managed to make me temporally "ragequit" (Since I decided I simply wasn't ready to beat it at the moment). Of course I eventually returned to beat it later on... it took about 30  serious attempts lmao. (The average for most other extras was 5 serious attempts at most...)

By the way, this is all from a First Clear experience. I know that once you know how it actually works, its actually not that hard. Probably.

In any case I still would strongly advise NOT to do SA Extra until you feel you are at least moderately experienced and have cleared some other Extras, though.

LoLK is 2nd hardest IMO.

[Koog]

I don't even think SA and UFO extra are difficult ones. On the contrary, I find DDC and LoLK extra to be quite difficult.

It's funny bc my first Extra clear came with LoLK

[jhun]

As many people says here, SA Extra is indeed a hard one. Lol I can't even survive at Sanae at my regular runs. It makes me bomb at her so much, leaving me with nothing in case I screw up in the stage.

In my lucky runs though, I can only manage to get until Response "Youkai Polygraph". The farthest that I've reach is the survival spell (which only made me last on the first phase)

As for my LoLK Extra run, Doremy is already a hard one (seriously can't stop myself from bombing since the second and third spellcards are either fast or too much for me) and I can barely reach Hecatia. The farthest I've gone though is Junko's "Simple Danmaku for Cornering a Trapped Rat" Spell.

Anyway, is that a bad record?

Putting Extra aside, I've tried TD again in Normal, and I had a clear. But... this is as high as I can do

[dosboot]

Honestly, I was a little surprised to see a majority peg Extra stages as in between Normal and Hard.  Let me ask then: what does everyone think about the bullet density and complexity of Extra stages, ignoring the overall length of the stage?

Initially I viewed Extra Stage spell cards/attacks as being Lunatic level patterns, and certainly not close to Normal level patterns.  At some point I've started thinking that Extra patterns are probably more in between Hard and Lunatic though.

On the other hand though, I'm not too surprised to hear jhun say he has completed more Extra Stages than Normal or Hard.  Not just because they are bite sized in comparison, either.  I feel Extra stages always offer a greater rush of excitement when I'm trying to clear them.  The motivation differential is very real to me, I wonder how common that is.

[TresserT]

A lot of extra patterns are pure routing or "figure out the gimmick", and become significantly easier once you know how to deal with them. Mokou is probably the best example of that.

In the main game what you see is generally what you get; you can usually tell how a pattern works and what you have to do to beat it from the very first wave (though actually pulling it off might be more difficult). In extra, there tends to be more depth to the patterns. They're more similar to the spells in StB. How to dodge it might not be clear at first, which is why it seems Lunatic tier, but usually once you figure out the trick it becomes much easier.

I'd say Flandre, Ran, Yukari, Mokou, and Nue are all probably between Normal and Hard. Mamizou and Raiko are probably on the same tier as the Hard bosses. Koishi is between Hard and Lunatic. Hecatia is between Normal and Hard, but that's by LoLK standards which are lol. Hecatia also fluctuates wildly, with some spells being laughably easy and others being ridiculously hard. Suwako is solidly Normal tier tbh.

[Chill Observer]

Why do people keep claiming Koishi is way harder than she actually is lol

Almost everything she has can be memorized. Learn the route and capture it (almost) every time. Plus, her final is arguably the easiest extra final card out of all of them. Unlike other bosses, Koishi really doesn't have that much nasty randomness.

[TresserT]

Koishi was actually the.... maybe the third or fourth extra I beat?

But the reason I say she's high up is because she has a lot of spells that aren't those "figure out the gimmick and then it's easy" types I was just talking about. There are no tricks or routes for Id, Ego, Embers of Love, or Rorschach, you just have to be good enough to dodge them. Routing certainly makes Youkai Polygraph and Genetics easier, but routes aren't enough to beat them the way they're enough to beat Suwako or Flandre's survivals.

Her patterns aren't exactly easy to read either, the way, say, Danmaku Chimera is. Every extra boss has 1 or 2 patterns like that (Charming Siege, Froggy Braves the Wind and Rain, Apollo Reflection Mirror, as some examples) it's just the fact that Koishi has a lot. Raiko and Mamizou also have quite a few, which is why I said they were higher up.

I'm also saying this relative to their respective games. Hecatia is the hardest extra boss imo, but by LoLK standards she's not that ridiculous.

[jhun]

I don't know if I can share this here, but okay.

I now realized that Extra is indeed harder to actually play but easier to focus onto. I did a run or two in LoLK and I wasn't able to clear it maybe because I was too relaxed to play Normal, expecting it to be easy but end up dying.

Not like Normal, Extra has the adrenaline to make myself pumped at the very start. Fast bullets right from the start is quite scary, so there's no other choice but to dodge better.

The first Extra Clear came from MoF, a game I can't even go past stage 4 lol. I think I did around 100 runs and can't complete it. But one time I played, everything went fine. Surprisingly, after Native God "Seven Stones and Seven Trees", I was able to at least dodge the spellcard (with bombs of course) up to the very last, which are very new to me, but lol cleared it.

I'm sure someone here had the same experience. Like you actually overcome a spell you never practiced, and clear it in the process. I think I did the same in Flandre from Forbidden Barrage "Catadioptric" up to QED "Ripples of 495 Years". And in Ran, from Shikigami "Chen" up to the last.

Thank you for bearing with me.

[ILikeBulletZ]

Koishi also has Subterranean Rose in her arsenal, which is a Lunatic tier level spellcard on its own right (You know its that bad when you get there with full power and 2 extra lives and its perfectly possible to still lose it all to this attack, that happened to me multiple times in fact).

Also her survival is memoshit, if you dont know a route it will destroy your resources which you NEED for Sub Rose...

In fact. I believe these two spells together were a major problem  in SA extra. Survival weakened my resources, Final finished me off. Due to this, I had to more or less play the rest of the fight (which has some nasty attacks as well) almost perfectly...

I dont get why people say that final spell is easy. I rather face Q.E.D or something... Literally any other extra final spellcard is easier than Sub Rose. I cant think of anything thats harder... (Unless the final on TD Extra is harder, havent played it).

Overall. I said it before and I will say it again: as far as Extras go, SA Extra is on a tier of its own, def. A step above the rest. The actual Phantasm Stage.

[jhun]

I have to say, Koishi's smashed my motivation. Lol she might've been lurking at my subconscious.

But looking at it again, Koishi is hard af, like every single spellcard is too hard. Lol now I remember going into the survival and I lasted like until the second phase, draining all of my bombs and lives. And I've never seen Subterranean Rose in my entire life, in gameplay that is.

[Chill Observer]

There are no tricks or routes for Id, Ego, Embers of Love, or Rorschach, you just have to be good enough to dodge them. Routing certainly makes Youkai Polygraph and Genetics easier, but routes aren't enough to beat them the way they're enough to beat Suwako or Flandre's survivals.

For Id and Superego, you want to dodge the hearts at a specific height. Superego in particular is pretty much trivialized if you do it near the bottom since the gaps are quite big. There are definitely tricks to doing both of these spells which make the dodges quite basic, not really too nasty in the "random dodging" tier.

Embers of Love is actually a routable spell. Always try to stand under Koishi every odd wave she fire hearts (odd waves = aimed at you, even waves = static waves away from you).

Rorschach is the only spell that does consist of pretty hard random dodging. It is probably the hardest spell in the extra, in my opinion. You need to be able to read the waves quickly before they unfold.

Routing is most certainly enough for Youkai Polygraph, the gimmick for that one is intuitive enough to understand, just keep creating gaps. As for Genetics, dodging stuff coming from different sides of the screen can be hard to get used to, but once you realize you can do and capture the spell in a similar way each time, it really isn't as impossible as you think. It's just like how Byakuren's 4th non-spell in UFO can be routed the same way each time and requires you to circle around the screen.

As for Philosophy and Sub Rose, both spell cards are, for the most part, static. As long as you know what to do on each phase, these should not pose a problem to you.

[Drake]

The main thing with SA Extra is that it requires you to build movement skills that people only comfortable with playing Normals and some Extras up to that point have not developed much. There is quite a bit of precision and elaborate movement involved (relatively speaking) and people content with resourcing their way through the main game haven't necessarily built those skills. Once you have those skills it's probably one of the easiest Extras to NN; I think it was my first.

[ZM]

When you reach a certain point, most ExNN(N)s shouldn't really pose too much of a problem. A lot of Extra patterns tend to be trick-based; figure out the strategy and you'll rarely mess it up again. Koishi's one of the most notable examples of that. Only Rorscarch, Embers, and Genetics require dodging skill, and the latter of the three is completely routable. The only ExNN(N) that might be easier than SA's is probably PCB Extra.

As for the topic at hand, clearing Extra should take some more effort than clearing Normal, since that's to be expected. Most Extra patterns are around Hard level, so Extra and Hard are the two difficulties that usually get compared.

[Karisa]

I'd also like to add that Id/Superego can be dodged like Kaguya's third last spell. In my opinion the trick to them is realizing that they're a grid of bullets, and dodging through one lane at a time instead of trying to dodge both sides at once.

Koishi's one of the most about learning the tricks, in my opinion-- none as blatant as Mokou's laser in Honest Man's Death, but rather fitting for the theme of manipulation of the subconscious. You still need to be able to react to fast-moving bullets from all directions (Genetics) and move precisely through the grids in Philosophy/Subterranean Rose, so I wouldn't count those out at a Hard 1cc level, but that reduces her to around 4 particularly difficult patterns if I recall correctly, well on par with the rest of the Extra bosses. She doesn't have any particularly dangerous nonspells that don't have tricks to them, either.

I can't really evaluate anything from TD onward from a Hard 1cc player level, since I was already beyond that point by the time of their releases, but of the games up to that, I only found GFW and the PC-98 Extras to be more difficult than their respective Hards. In the case of LLS/MS that's more due to easy Hards than more difficult Extras, as well.