Daily Touhou Best Topic Round 2 Part 3

[K.B.]

Voile arrangement in Soku.

But SWR for best overall soundtrack.  I especially like how U2A was able to pack so much variety into the conversation themes while retaining essentially the same melody for most/all of them.  Excellent choice and use of instrument samples.

[Random]

Broken Moon, of course.

[Star King]

Demystify Feast

[Zetzumarshen]

萃夢想

[Kliff]

Haven't been in this for so long, but I'll answer the latest two right away:

Future Goals

I'd love to say I'm satisfied, I really would, but... I'm not.  I completed a Normal sweep of all the mainline games, yes, but there's one game I haven't 1CC'd yet.  My immediate goals are two-fold - a Normal 1CC of The Great Fairy Wars, and a Capture of Profound Danmaku Bounded Field.  Once there, I can continue working on my Hard sweep - I still have, what... 5 of the mainline games to clear on Hard, as well as the Fighters and GFW.

Favorite Fighter Theme

This is just a bit tricky.  Opinions on this change and all, but, currently, Oni's Island in the Fairyland.

[Suwakos Hat]

Either SWR Doll Maker of Bucuresti or UNL Tomorrow is Feast, Yesterday was Not.

[Piranha]

My goals are clearing all the windows games on Normal with all shottypes as well as the Extra stages at least with one shottype. Then maybe trying some Last Spells or starting with Hard.

Favorite themes from the fighters are Dance of Witches/Bhava-Agra/Unfound Adventure for the games respectively. Honorary mention to The Ground's Color Is Yellow and Memory of Forgathering Dream.

[Esper]

What is your favorite song from Highly Responsive to Prayers (Touhou 1)?

Nobody EVER pays attention to HRtP and I think that's bullshit because in a series that is strictly shootemups (Besides TasoFro's games), a Volley-shooter game was special.

My favorites are The Positive and Negative (ShinGyoku's theme) and Let's All Die Together (Sariel's final theme).

[Elysia]

^lol, a question 2 minutes after the last post.

Eternal Shrine Maiden.

[Suwakos Hat]

Eternal Shrine Maiden

[Zil]

Magic Mirror, easily.

[Thanuris]

Swordsman of a Distant Star or Eternal Shrine Maiden

[Paper Conan]

Swordsman of a Distant Star so much.

Eternal Shrine Maiden is also really good. Hard decisions.  :derp:

[chirpy13]

Angel's Legend.  Though it also reminds me of the billions of times I died against YuugenMagan.  HRtP is hard.

[Chuckolator]

+ -

[ふねん1]

Now, Until the Moment You Die.

I haven't really listened to all the songs from HRtP, but this one grew on me quickly when I first heard it.

[DeltaSierra4]

Magic Mirror.

Dunno why but I found myself humming this tune every time after I play the game.
Yeah let's all give some love to HRtP.

[8lue Wizard]

Voices Swordsman of a Distant Star. Because Winn. 'Nuff said.

That aside, I actually don't even recognize most of these tracks. Eternal Shrine Maiden sounds oddly familiar, though I can't say why. The wiki assures me it hasn't appeared in any other games, which I would otherwise be inclined to believe. Especially since this version doesn't measure up to what I remember of it. A lot of the themes are very busy, often unnecessarily so. To me, Sacred Lot stands out as pretty much the only track with enough energy to justify being as busy as it is, and in terms of melody, Blade of Banishment is the catchiest.

Still, I think the only thing that could possibly top EWI Distant Star would be EWI Complete Darkness. (Which I'm not likely to get, since he already did Reincarnation. =/ )

[BT]

Bleh. A lot of these songs sound feel extremely similar if not identical because ZUN took 5 games to start expanding on his composition skills. I suppose it makes picking a favorite quite a bit easier.

That would be Sariel's themes. Eternal Shrine Maiden is way too repetitive at times, like many others.

Swordsman of a Distant Star is a huge no. The opening makes it impossible to listen to the song because you're all in a hurry to OH GOD I HAVE TO FORGET THIS TUNE WITH SOMETHING ELSE NOW.

[K.B.]

Heart of Fire.

A lot of these songs sound feel extremely similar if not identical because ZUN took 5 games to start expanding on his composition skills.

I'd agree with either 'feel' or 'sound' - they're both good descriptors - but I think that's largely due to the limitations of the PC-98 sound chip.  ZUN was evidently working with the oldest one, which only gave three FM channels plus a noise channel, and that obviously ties the hands of a composer/mixer with regard to both timbres and layers.  That's not to say that ZUN hasn't honed his skills over nearly two decades of composing (for Touhou at least), but at the same time I can hear a lot of melodic variety in PoDD's soundtrack*... at least once I got past the 'this all sounds like the same bleeps and bloops' stage of initial listening.

I can hear some similarities within HRTP's soundtrack - "Magic Mirror" and "The Legend of Cage" share what later became the most recognizable portion of "Capriccio" (although sharing phrases between stage and boss sections of a level is a normal tactic as it somewhat unites that level's music), "Angel's Legend" and "Now, Until the Moment you Die" both borrow from Castlevania's "Heart of Fire", and there are surely a couple/few more that I didn't catch on first listen - but I never felt like I was listening to the same track.  That is: it seemed to me that each track largely had its own distinct character.  Or, at least, it didn't seem that ZUN was borrowing from himself more than he usually does.

*the only PC-98 soundtrack that I'm familiar with.

[BT]

I know they're not identical, but they're similar enough to bother me.

Obviously most of the tracks have something defining them. Despite this, they fall in the same very narrow category or genre or whatever (terms, man) and give off the same feel. So although I'm listening to different things, I subconsciously feel like I'm listening to one huge track that isn't even interesting.

[Zil]

I found myself humming along to most of them back when I played through the game, and never really thought they sounded too similar to each other. I'm going from my impression of them while playing the game though, which may be different from just hearing them outside it.

[BT]

Nah, I'm just going to assume it's my own defect.

[Esper]

Alright now, I've got the flu but I woke up at an opportune time to make the next question.

Which game has the best scoring system?

What I mean by this is which game has the most fun scoring system. (Duh)

My pick is Mountain of Faith because it doesn't even alter gameplay that much.

[Random]

UFO.

[Thanuris]

Mountain of Faith

[Zil]

Phantasmagoria games. PoDD is a bit better than PoFV. The photography games and GFW can also be fun. Everything else makes me cringe.

I just noticed that this is pretty much how I would rate the games in general. :V

[ARF]

I enjoy pretending to play for score in SA. However, UFO objectively has the best system. It's both resources and score in one system, forces you to do stuff to actually get anything from the game. Super frustrating and hilarious when you pick the wrong colors, they end up escaping and so forth. Just a brilliant system, I hope it returns some day. The theoretically best score system would be one which incorporates all the previous scoring systems at the same time, with several different multipliers overlapping, making your high score far exceed the number of atoms in the known universe.

[K.B.]

PoDD's?  Really?  Sustaining chains is largely based upon the sequence of enemy formations, which is random and unpredictable.  You can increase your chances of sustaining chains by having good timing with your charge attacks, but otherwise it's luckshit.  So the largest portion of your score is non-trivially luckshit-based.

Unless I'm missing something here.  I am relatively green to PoDD.


If I liked scoring I'd say MoF's because it's brutal.  But I hate scoring and prefer to accidentally get points while going balls to the wall.  So PoFV's.

[Chuckolator]

SA, grazing is fun and alternate autocollecting is a godsend.