Replay Advice: A Thread For Getting Advice

[Kurzov]

I've always been cautious with creating threads here on HME. This is just something that I thought of.

Welcome to the Replay Advice thread.

This thread, with the way I envisioned it, is for people to share their replays, and others can give advice on how to fix what they're making mistakes on. This may be overlapping with that Scoring thread that's pinned here.

To start, I'll upload my HSiFS Easy Cirno run. Didn't 1CC it, but I got very close!
[attach=1] (Sub-Season was Summer, score was 33,273,480 over 5 stages, HSiFS version 1.00a.)

[Mikuru]

I've only watched Stage 1, but that was enough to highlight a big problem. You're not using the point of collection. This is especially important in HSIFS, because it lets you auto-collect the season items that power up your release, and because it gives you point items at maximum value -- and score gives you more lives.

In early Touhou games, you had to stay above the point of collection until the items arrived at your sprite to get them at maximum value, but in later games (including HSIFS) that's no longer true -- you only have to touch the point of collection for a moment and then you can dart back down, if you don't feel safe staying up there.

[FamilyTeam]

I'm not a great Touhou player - very far from it. I can only 1cc Normal every once in a while at best. But I think I might be able to give a helping hand, here.

• It might be of your best interest to memorize the layout of every stage. This way, you know what's coming next and you can best prepare yourself for it, and that doesn't just mean preparing yourself to shoot the enemies. You can better position yourself to avoid a volley of fire, to begin streaming bullets, or knowing when it's safe to go and activate the POC. Speaking of that...
• Yep, you definitely should POC! If you go to the top of the screen (more or less the last fifth of the screen vertically?) all the items on the screen come flying at you with max value, which is invaluable for getting power items, season items to power up your Release and to get points so you can get lives. If this is something you might want to do often, then maybe you could try out Marisa, she's fast, strong and made for this kind of stuff. (In earlier games I'm sure her POC line was lower than other characters, I'm fairly sure this is still the case, right?)
• If you are playing with absolutely no goal in mind other than raw survival for a 1cc, then you should save up your season releases for more critical moments, like if you are cornered or overwhelmed. They work pretty well defensively.
• You should be far more free in your movement. Focus is nice but playing full Focus isn't exactly optimal. Unfocused shot is good for a lot of things, like quickly repositioning. Sometimes, it might be better to dodge a few things unfocused, too, and your unfocused shot does have its uses.

If you want more specific advice on spells or something I guess you can ask, but I think we have a thread for that already (assuming it doesn't have to be necro'd)