Congratulations on the 125m.
In contrast, grazing Yumeko's aimed knives is more feasible on Easy. Or are you doing that on Normal too already?
As for Shinki, bombing's an interesting idea, but can you see when it'll kill you early enough to bomb? I don't recall it being necessarily obvious. Also keep in mind you're giving up 250k (500k*0.5) from the clear bonus by using one or more bombs. Anyway, what about the strategy of not risking the luckgraze, and stalling out all the other patterns' invisible timers for graze? I wonder how much that's worth-- might not be enough for 999 on Easy.
The luckgraze and the invisible timers kind of discouraged me from MS scoring after reaching the scores where graze makes a significant impact (after survival and point item collection are sufficiently optimized).
Thank you, I am pretty glad with that run but I might want to improve the 125m run in the future too, I am certain that 130m+ is possible and I do believe I am capable of getting it, but am more interested in figuring out Easy as of now.
There is literally no point in grazing the aimed (arrowheads I think? They seem to be, kunai in the second one I guess.) in Normal mode, in Easy mode there is for the first phase, you can still do the third pattern graze that I generally use in both Easy and Normal which would end up giving you about 400 graze if you do that for 6 phases I think (along with the green lasers being grazed.) There is also the semifinal graze in Easy that can be done rather close to Yumeko for a few waves, makes getting max graze kind of simple in Easy. Trying to graze the arrowheads in Normal seems way too risky and is just not worth it, since getting max graze in normal is really easy too given you do a few midboss grazes and the third pattern grazes (you can probably still abuse Yumeko's semifinal a little bit, but not as good as you can do in Easy mode because it's faster and tighter.) It is simply an unwarranted risk given you'd get 999 graze with simpler grazes regardless, the graze I found on the third pattern really makes stage 5 grazing much easier and much more feasible. Granted, my estimation of the grazing spot in my normal run got me killed the second wave I grazed this (I wasn't close enough to Yumeko, you kind of want to have Mima's head on her dress I guess, to give a good example of what should be save.) On another note, that is definitely true that I do give up 250,000k per bomb, iirc NM and NB bonus was an additional 100k score too, but iirc graze and point items were used as a multiplier together for the stage clear bonus? So I think graze is actually really important too, of course it is a matter of taking a guess (I think that atleast using 1 bomb is still fine, I did have a miss or two against the luckgraze in my Easy run.. Which is arguably worse. I'm still enormously surprised that 73m is even possible with 6 misses, even moreso since one of the misses was against the stage 5 midboss and I could not regain max dream bonus during the spam so I lost out on a ton of score there.)
Rather large elaboration on stage 5 grazing there, I feel like only the second pattern graze (thus the arrowheads) are notably scary to graze given the aimed swords.
As for stage 6, 250,000k score less might still be a pretty friendly loss to consider in contrast to what max graze would give you in the end bonus, you'd still collect point items afterwards; can still get max dream bonus, it is definitely risky as you'd have to estimate when things are going to be wrong; you've gotten to bomb. It is kind of sad that Easy mode luckgraze is literally a luckgraze, takes away the joy of grazing that pattern and makes that an intensive end to a run to do.
As far as I see the Luckgraze should be able to give enough graze regardless, but I cannot say how much it would give with bombs included, you do not really get a lot of graze from other patterns (I think about 150 graze at most if you try to graze other things too.) Making finishing it off 1 wave before the last one possibly feasible on easy, I know that if you missed two waves on normal you basically just will not get to finish the pattern off before you get 999 graze, on the other hand, you will get close to that on the final wave, so the best is to time finishing it off around exactly then and grazing the last bits in the other patterns. There is a risky graze of the petal-like opener of Shinki I found; you can graze both the danmaku circles that spawn before both Yumeko and Shinki by being close to the point of spawning; then rushing back. Should give a little bit of graze to start out with too.
I do know however that Yuki and Mai grazes on easy will not get you to 999 graze before the fight ends, consider it logical to finish off Mai at 750 graze (mainly saying this because I think that is around the end, I had around 840 graze in my run but 750 graze should be enough since I think Yuki final pattern grazes will get you max graze if you also graze her opener a bit.) timers really are an estimation issue, iirc Shinki's luckgraze is about 7 waves but I could be off there.
The reason I'd argue Yuki is better to do on Easy is because it is easier to get 999 graze against her than Mai, I think you still miss around 5 point items from the fight; the bullet clears might be a little less, I am not entirely sure of that yet so consider this to be doubtable.
I remember when I was stubborn enough to sign up in the DRC for MS Hard scoring because I was somewhat saddened by the result booked by someone else in that category a round before (invested no time in grazing, didn't really get a run finished either even though that person boasted he'd score "really high") I was somewhat experienced with MS Hard before, but hadn't learned the grazes yet or had optimal survival, I just thought that if I invested as much time as possible (I believe I played around 60 to 70 hours+) I could atleast get about 135m, I ended up getting 140m with Mima but barely before the ending of the DRC, I was already glad with that. I guess that is what got me the motivation to play MS in a manner that I don't feel too dissatisfied with silly things happening. (I had a lot of trouble learning Louise's first pattern graze for example, but once I understood it I became somewhat consistent at it, my guess is that I get it right about 65% of the attempts that get there, most restart after silliness trying to graze the midboss or Sara in stage 1.)
I was not trying to bash that person, but Mystic Square is a game I personally do like quite a bit and it just happened to sadden me a bit to see that being underplayed so I just wanted to see if I could do something, I'm willing to attempt scoring LLS's maingame at some point too. (I've already gotten stage 1 and 2 correctly as far as practice is concerned, I am more or less just busy with MS right now.)
Also it is kind of funny how I submitted more scores for this game to the MoTK scoreboard than on the Eientei scoreboard I do moderate for MS (I moderate 5 boards, LLS, MS, EoSD, IN and MoF.) I should kind of add them to that board already.
Yes, I am totally aware this post ended up losing the sight of the trees in the forest thanks to how huge this became, guess I just felt like elaborating all of this.
Edit: I just noticed I wrote my thank you in the quote, quite silly.
