東方怪綺談 ～ Mystic Square

[Karisa]

About the stage 4 enemies, I'm not entirely sure which ones you're talking about. The hardest part of that stage, to me, is where three columns of enemies drop down, some stopping, shooting waves of kunai, while others just rush straight down, alternating between the middle and edges, and the last wave has them come from underneath you. That part is really hard with Reimu since she can't really kill the enemies quickly enough. Ideally what I'd do (with Mima, for instance) is stand midway up the screen, under the column that stops to shoot kunai, and stream down slowly (to avoid the pellets coming from the side enemies) while dodging the kunai from above. With Reimu what I did was basically use a bunch of bombs. Since I'd normally have perfected (or nearly perfected) up to that point, I could even part with two or three bombs there and still survive.

It was this, and the last few with the dream items. I just bombed them.

Also I finally got that Reimu 1cc. No deaths up to late stage 4, but I know I could have finished the game without dying as much. Well, whatever, it's a 1cc that reaches my target of 130m. Time to work on Marisa's I guess. And Yuuka's (I did some searching and I guess that's the more accurate spelling) because then it'll be the only one I need to clear this game with all shot types on all difficulties.

Lunatic - Reimu
Karisa - 130,391,510 - C - Replay

[Zil]

Lunatic - Reimu
Zil - 129,742,130 - C - Screenshot

Oh, so close. Cleared 0/0 again. I tried to supergraze Yumeko's semifinal thing. It's not overly difficult, but with those stage 6 items on the line I don't think it's worth it unless you're really going all out. It's still ridiculous to die so many times and I could improve it easily, but I'll just move on to the other shots for now. Maybe try to improve this after a break from Reimu's slowness.

And I wasn't able to record this one (not that I would have uploaded it anyway). It started making the game very uncooperative if I tried to record. Hopefully it'll fix (or un-fix?) itself soon, since I'd like to at least get a Mima run up.

edit:

Lunatic - Reimu
Zil - 133,985,520 - C - Screenshot

Okay, I ended up redoing it again. Here's the other result screen. Finished with one extra life.

Also, nevermind what I said about those stage four enemies. If you're right underneath them, you can destroy them before they shoot, even with Reimu. That gets rid of the first wave easily, though you have to rush to neutralize the others like that.

And I found what was up with the recording business. I had Fraps set to record 30fps, but it needs to be 25 for Anex86.

Lunatic - Reimu
Zil - 141,065,080 - C - Screenshot

Better, but not good enough. I like Reimu on Lunatic mode. I'll upload this run if I don't get a better one.

-

Lunatic - Marisa
Zil - 121,118,730 - C - Screenshot

The other screen, for comparison purposes. The Mai fight was a disaster in this run. The whole stage, really.

I found Marisa much harder to use on this difficulty. You can't use her speed to chase after items as much when the screen is so full of bullets. Reimu's shots actually help keep the screen clear, which is more helpful than speed in a couple places, notably the end of stage 5. I actually had a pretty good Yumeko fight, but the stage itself beat me up this time. I've yet to reach stage 6 with any shred of a dream bonus.

Also, yet another thing to say about those stage 4 enemies. When shotgunning the first ones that appear, Marisa seems to do more damage if you're a bit to the side of them, rather than dead on. I think. It helps kill them before they shoot.

-

Lunatic - Yuuka
Zil - 123,103,180 - C - Replay

The hilarity of beating my Marisa score with Yuuka. I nearly got into stage 6 at dream max, but died to one of Yumeko's horizontal swords. I think I perfected Shinki aside from one death. She caught me as I was running up to safespot the cheeto lasers. I'm not sure if I want to upload this run, or actually try to improve it. Somehow Yuuka was more fun to use than Marisa.

edit: added video of Shinki battle.

[Karisa]

I found Marisa much harder to use on this difficulty. You can't use her speed to chase after items as much when the screen is so full of bullets. Reimu's shots actually help keep the screen clear, which is more helpful than speed in a couple places, notably the end of stage 5.

I've noticed too. At least I can successfully change directions during Yumeko's slower 3-way phases like 80% of the time with Marisa instead of 20%.

And here's something where I probably would have scored higher than my Reimu score if I hadn't died with bombs remaining 2-3 times during Yumeko, resulting in a game over when I died trying to reach the cheeto lasers safespot. Regardless, it's somehow higher than your Marisa 1cc, so I'll post it.

Lunatic - Marisa
Karisa - 122,385,970 - 6 - Screen1 Screen2

[Zil]

Lunatic - Marisa
Zil - 145,110,450 - C - Screen1 Screen2

Score progression

Died twice to Yumeko, but never bombed, so that was nasty. A death to Alice, a death to Mai, and a death to Shinki's phase just before the cheetos. One bomb in stage 3, one in stage 4 (hard to avoid), and I think the other two were used on Shinki. So really it could have been only one or two deaths if I'd used bombs better. One death in almost every stage is very annoying.

And no recording for this one. I had another good run going earlier but my computer vomited all over it in stage 4, so I decided to stop recording for the next few runs, then got this. I'll try some more Reimu runs tonight and if I don't beat my current score, I'll upload the one I have. I think I'm done with Yuuka and Marisa for now. I'll start Mima either tonight or tomorrow, depending on how Reimu goes.

[Karisa]

So it seems I was right. As I thought, your dodging ability is helping you score much higher than I do on Lunatic. I'm still trying to 1cc with Marisa. I'll probably just go with my first Lunatic 1ccs for all the characters except Mima for now.

I was losing so many runs to deaths on the first two stages that I decided to go improve my Normal score to a letter score, to see how much I'd improved from the other difficulties. Stage 5 was a disaster, and so was Shinki, but it's still improved, and might have been higher than my Mima score if it weren't for all those deaths.

Normal - Marisa
Karisa - 105,722,950 - C - Screen1 Screen2

[Zil]

Lunatic - Reimu
Zil - 153,914,430 - C - Replay

I think, if I'm playing really well, I could no-miss the whole the game. Literally every death in this run was extremely stupid. I definitely have a better chance at that with Mima than I do with Reimu, though.

I wonder when this scoreboard will be updated. It's been quite a while.

-

Lunatic - Mima
Zil - 147,222,730 - C - Screenshot

Terrible. This kind of performance would have gotten me around 110 million as any other character.

Lunatic - Mima
Zil - 162,423,680 - C - Replay

Well then. A "G score." I was wondering if I could reach 160mil with Mima, and I guess it's fairly realistic. I think I could maybe reach 170, or even 180 with a really good run.

And it does seem that I've finally overtaken your scores in Lunatic mode, Karisa. My advice, if you keep getting killed in the first two stages, is to be less aggressive, even if it hurts your score. Just prioritize not getting hit, and try to do well later. Doing lots of runs with bad beginnings is probably a better use of time, since you get more shots at doing well in the later stages, which is far more important than anything that happens in the early game. Also be liberal with your bombs during boss battles. The damage to the dream gauge is surprisingly minimal, and it's so much better than dying.

[Karisa]

That's not the problem. If I don't shoot as many enemies, there get to be more of those randomly fired aimed bullets, and those early-stage deaths are mainly caused by those aimed bullets being fired so close that I don't react to them in time. Well, that, or being surprised by one of those lines of fast large red bullets from the stage 2 midboss.

That's not counting intentional restarts in the first few seconds that I do on any difficulty to make sure I collect enough 51200-value point items to fill the dream gauge before the swarm of ghosts near the end of the stage.

[Zil]

Well, by being less aggressive, I meant staying lower, not shooting less enemies. That's assuming you are, in fact, moving up to get the items with Marisa and Yuuka, and getting hit in the process. I figure you're less likely to get caught off guard if you're near the bottom. Mima is usually better off at the bottom anyway, I think, so it's a lot easier with her. Whatever the case, good luck.

Extra - Reimu
Zil - 160,921,050 - C - Screenshot

Extra isn't so hard, really. It's all about learning how much health each phase has, then killing them at the perfect times. It's just a very fun stage, altogether. This run had two deaths. I'm submitting it now since it beats Pdee's Yuuka, but I'll probably try to redo it without dying.

Extra - Reimu
Zil - 178,875,140 - C - Screen1 Screen2

I forgot to get the cool screenshot with the clear bonus. I believe it was 307 point items this time. Still one death, to Alice's very first pattern, but I didn't restart since I somehow got 99 items from the stage, which is excellent compared to what I was normally getting. I'll probably move on to the other shots now.

Extra - Marisa
Zil - 156,641,500 - C - Screenshot

Marisa is annoying to use. She's basically a weaker Mima in every way. What's very obnoxious, however, is how the missiles can mess up you timing for the bullet cancels. You shoot when you want the phase to end, it survives, then the missiles hit a second later, ending it at the wrong time.

Extra - Yuuka
Zil - 158,692,480 - C - Screen1 Screen2

And oddly enough, Yuuka is actually kind of fun. A bomb to the to card soldiers seems almost unavoidable, but she can somewhat make up for that by killing the midboss faster than anyone else. This run involved yet another death to the purple lasers (could've easily moved over a bit, just didn't think I had to), and I messed up the timing for the second green phase.

Extra - Mima
Zil - 181,041,770 - C - Screen1 Screen2

By no means am I finished with this. It's only my first run that made it to Alice. I'm posting it because it is, somehow, just barely better then the Reimu score. That's really weird since not only did I finish with 330-ish point items (much better than Reimu's 307) but I had no deaths as well, while Reimu died to Alice's first phase. The midboss bullet bonus was over 2m. I don't remember what Reimu got there but it couldn't have been much higher than 3m.

So where did I go wrong? Surely my Mima score should be more than ~2mil ahead of the Reimu one. The only things I can think of that would have gone differently would be the (minimal?) amount of points you get for each canelled bullet, or something about the value of bombed items from the second and fourth phases. I suppose it's time to start recording these so I can analyze them. I'd have recorded this one had I known I would do so well on my first try.

[touhoumaniac]

Lunatic - Reimu
Zil - 153,914,430 - C - Replay

That 2nd stage final boss first pattern grazing was scary. I remember practicing grazing the red bullets on normal. I concluded it was far too risky for me.

Also i liked various being above boss(or sub-boss) strategies.

[Zil]

Thanks. What's nice about that supergraze is that it's actually easier to get 999 graze on higher difficulties. Since you get more graze from each wave, you don't have graze all of the red ones so closely, and you can play it safe for most of them.

Extra - Mima
Zil - 187,978,310 - C - Screenshot

And here's an improvement for my Extra Mima score. I mostly spent today experimenting with getting optimal bullet cancels though. I wrote some big thing about it, but I think it would be crazy to put it all here, so here's a link to it on my tumblr, if anyone wants to read it.

Extra - Mima
Zil - 199,286,370 - C - Screenshot

The fruits of my efforts! Not much longer now. Just ten items or so.

[Karisa]

Wow, that's a lot of detail about Alice. This should be useful whenever I seriously get into MS Extra scoring (which I think I'll do before Lunatic, but I haven't really had the time). Thanks for writing that out.

It may be worth noting that the 4 point items to recover your dream bonus are for Mima. I'm pretty sure the dream gauge penalty for bombing depends on your character's bomb length, and Mima has the shortest bomb.

I think the penalty is also halved when a boss is present, which means bombing for 6+ point items wouldn't necessarily be worth it on the stage portion.

[Zil]

Alright, I modified it a bit to say that it was referring to Mima, and bombs used on the boss.

And about bombing in the stage, I think it may be worth bombing towards the end. If you don't manage to kill the fairies quickly enough, they start covering the screen with bullets and it becomes much harder to actually collect the items they drop. If you bomb you'll get whatever items where falling that you would have missed, and the dream gauge is refilled almost instantly thanks to the presence of those invincible cards. Then you can run back up above the cards and resume killing the fairies before they shoot and collecting the items more easily. I'll have to try it a bit more. Even if you only end up collecting a few more items at 400k, that's still a better use for it than after Alice's second purple phase.

edit: Progress is slow. Item collection in the stage is almost pure luck. Second phase items are luck. The emulator's cooperation is luck. I keep getting J scores. The stage is fortunately fun enough to keep playing.

Extra - Mima
Zil - 199,829,790 - C - Replay

Oh, by the way. I was looking through the thread and saw this:

Extra - Mima
Pdee - 179,618,340 - C - Replay

Average item collection on stage, along with a death. Could have better item collection, in particular when Alice transitions into her first lightning attack; the bomb was poorly timed as well. I see potential for around 185-190mil with this pattern.

[Karisa]

I think Pdee's score may have been deliberately left out due to 10% slowdown. Nereid included my Mima Lunatic score with 6% slowdown anyway, but someone else was updating this when that run was posted.

Oh, and my best Extra Mima score is now like 141m or something. Still trying to learn the stage well enough, which I didn't do when I was trying to learn all the other Extras except SoEW (didn't put that much effort into TD or GFW yet though) due to recording slowdown and the possibility of getting an unexpected unrecorded perfect. I'm not quite consistent at Alice's 6th pattern (I know what to do there, just need practice), I tend to have to bomb the last few rows of card enemies before the midboss, and I can't seem to follow Alice's final pattern when it gets extremely fast (fastest bullets you're forced to dodge through in the series? anything comparable I can think of is either aimed or something like Devil's Recitation that you're supposed to avoid entirely) causing me to end up spamming bombs (usually takes 3) for the last few pixels of health.

[Zil]

An important thing to note when using Mima is that she seems to do more damage when she's not directly under the target, in case you hadn't noticed already, since you hit with the shots from one of her familiars as well. It's very helpful for killing the columns of cards more quickly. If you're bombing the last row of them before the midboss, it might be a good idea to bomb right before the row is revealed, so you only take out the side columns. Then the when the last row descends onto the screen your dream gauge will refill instantly, and it should probably be easy to get their items without the side enemies complicating it. Also, I used to have a lot of trouble with Alice's last attack myself, though thankfully it's pretty easy for me now. Her hardest attack for me is definitely the sixth.

Extra - Yuuka
Zil - 167,776,830 - C - Screen1 Screen2

I figured I'd improve my Yuuka score before calling it quits, since I'm now much better at ending the phases at the right times. The deaths were to the second phase (yuck) and the sixth. The bombs were mostly for items, though one was to the cards. As Yuuka, I've never managed to survive that part before the midboss without bombing.

[Karisa]

Easy - Reimu
Karisa - 72,624,190 - C - Replay

The power of Yumeko grazing. I used the music to determine when to end her 2nd phase, shooting a bit early to be safe just in case her 1st ends earlier than usual. I think reaching 999 should be doable by farming some graze off the aimed bullets in her 3rd and 5th phases, but I haven't yet learned how long those take to time out.

Also somewhat improved Reimu stage 3 route.

And I just noticed this in the first post:

• Make sure to use default starting settings - that's 3 lives and 2 bombs, and slow mode off.

Lunatic - Reimu A
Spaz - 5,000,000 - 4

It should say 3 bombs, and the sample should probably have a shot type that's actually valid for this game.

Edit:
To anyone looking for an updated first post, this HTML file should work for now.

This includes a recheck of everything on the first page of the thread, since most of the 2009 screenshots and same-difficulty different-character lower scores were not included.

[Zil]

I'll just mention, for maxing the graze counter in stage 5, that the phase with the aimed green needles lasts 10 waves, I believe. I once went through and timed out a few of the more graze-able attacks in the game, just to see how long they last. (For instance, each of Alice's phases shoots 23 waves, I think. I didn't check for the first since that one's probably too risky anyway.) Maxing the graze in stage 5 would be pretty huge, yeah, I never bothered risking it.

And you reminded me of a text file I made to keep track of PoDD scores, though I included every score I could find in existence, not just MotK ones. But yeah, it would be nice to see these updated (and organized a bit better, for the PC-98 games.) I asked about doing it myself a while ago but it seems like Sapz doesn't want me to.

[ark]

Updated.

To anyone looking for an updated first post, this HTML file should work for now.

Thanks. In the future it would be super super helpful if you used bbcode instead of html for this, because that's what I enter. I managed to make it work by the magic of regular expressions, though.

[Karisa]

The fake post (HTML copied from a post preview actually) was just to make it look good, since I wasn't sure if it'd be updated anytime soon. I've been keeping track of the BBcode (HRtP, SoEW, LLS, MS) and actually sent it in a PM to Sapz a few hours ago.

[Karisa]

Normal - Mima
Karisa - 118,156,540 - C - Replay

I wasn't satisfied with my best Normal score having skipped the Louise supergraze, so here's an improvement.

It could be better though. 3 bombs, 1 death to the luckgraze. I also missed grazing a few waves on the luckgraze and finished it off at only 500 graze because I was concerned about timing it out, which cost around 2 million.

[Sapz]

Update checkpoint.

[Karisa]

Extra - Yuka
Karisa - 128,188,430 - C - Replay

Decent enough by my current MS Extra survival standards, at least with Yuka. I missed a lot of point items from not noticing I was out of bombs at Alice's 4th phase (and dying when I tried to bomb), though.

Extra - Marisa
Karisa - 140,799,560 - C - Replay

This was going pretty well until I died to Alice's 7th phase. Though I'm not sure if my dream bonus was high enough after her 6th phase to affect the point items from her 8th phase either way. Then I overshot her 8th phase and couldn't collect all the point items, not that it really mattered (the correct time to stop is when her life bar is about halfway though the "B" in "Bomb", but I guess I'm not used to Marisa's damage rate).

Extra - Reimu
Karisa - 130,369,710 - C - Screen1 Screen2

Pretty much the same as the Marisa run, though with Reimu's lower speed.

Extra - Mima
Karisa - 163,385,750 - C - Replay

Surprisingly good survival here. Of course then I died soon after I realized I hadn't died yet.

[Sapz]

Update checkpoint.

[Karisa]

Normal - Reimu
Karisa - 107,903,760 - C - 0.02% - Replay Screen2

[Sapz]

Operation September Update:

Your mission starts now.
Are you ready?

[Zil]

Extra - Mima
Zil - 203,557,580 - C - Replay - Screenshot

I'll get the video up soon, etc.

[Sapz]

Checkpoint.

[Zil]

So it was terrible really. Redoing it later for sure.

Well it's about time, eh?

Hard - Mima
Zil - 152,455,380 - C - Screenshot

The three bombs were to Yumeko. The death was on Shinki's third phase. Alas, I didn't catch the clear bonus / item count. I do have this thing though.

If I do any more runs in this game, I'll probably try to stream them.

[Zil]

Normal - Mima
Zil - 121,533,510 - C - Part1 Part2

Pardon the insanity on the right side of the video. I also got 79m on Easy but the recording won't show up. If it's not there tomorrow I'll just post the score with a screenshot.

[Zil]

Easy - Mima
Zil - 79,992,120 - C - Screenshot

I didn't take any better screenshot since I was expecting to have a recording, but that's failed somehow. I never died and used 1 bomb on Yumeko's semifinal phase. A sword was coming at me and instead of just moving up or down I ran directly away from it all the way to the edge of the screen and then bombed. Also collected 600 items exactly.

[Zil]

Easy - Reimu
Zil - 73,893,590 - C - Screen1 Screen2

Easy - Marisa
Zil - 72,999,090 - C - Screen1 Screen2