Does anyone have any advice regarding PoDD Reimu? She keeps killing me way more than the other bosses do. Like half the time even on stage 1. Normally I can survive decently well until stage 4 or so.
If anyone feels like watching my current best attempt (stage 7) and telling me any ways I could improve, that would be appreciated too.
I'll comment on the run first, and then talk about Reimu in particular. (And remember, these are just my own opinions on everything. I don't want it to seem like my word is law just because I've played PoDD a lot.)
Anyway, I think you spend too much time in the middle of the screen, and too far from the bottom as well. You should generally move in a sort of U shape, and there are a number of reasons for that. First, it makes it easier to misdirect the bullets. In this game, you almost always want to go completely around things. Dodging through them is a last resort, even if it's just a few bullets. Second, being at the bottom of the screen in general is advantageous. Not only does it give you more time to react to the bullets, but it makes it easier to kill things quickly. When shooting the enemies, you usually want to rush right at them, to kind of "artificially" increase your rate of fire. You of course need room to do that, so if you're already midway up the screen, you aren't going to be able to advance any further. All of these is even more important to worry about when you're using someone slow like Reimu. If you're in a bad position when a wall of bullets comes at you, you just aren't fast enough to get out of the way. (So, for example, just in the first stage against Kana, you seemed to keep returning to the center of the screen. It would be better to fall back to the bottom.)
Another thing, probably more important than what I was just saying, is that you don't seem to be using your level 4 charge to repel boss attacks. Instead you try to just kill them with charge attacks. That can be a good idea in some situations. If you're playing as Mima, for example, your charge attack is so powerful, and your own boss attack so dangerous, that you may very well just want to kill the bosses rather than reverse them. That's not the case with Reimu though. Her charge attack is awful, she's not fast enough to rush in and shotgun with it, and her boss attack is actually very safe. She not only shoots yin-yang orbs (the bane of the AI), but only one of her four attacks can be reflected, and she moves while shooting it. So really, you should always counter the enemy's boss attacks with your own whenever you have enough energy to afford it. It's one of the few that's actually more likely to help than hurt you.
And a couple more specific things:
- If you're going to be hit within the first few seconds of a match, you may as well just take the hit instead of bombing, like what happened in the first round against Reimu. Getting hit that early would only take half of a heart, or maybe a full heart, but neither of those are a big deal. The most damage you can possibly take from a single hit, no matter how late in the match, is three hearts, so if you're only missing one heart, it'll still take at least three more hits to kill you. So basically, getting hit very early is kind of like not getting hit at all.
- Try to learn Kotohime's boss attacks. Most importantly, if the bombs orbiting around her stop spinning, you know she's going to use her aimed attack, so you should try to misdirect it. (Like at 6:40, for example. You probably should have guided that into the lower right corner.)
- I think Mima's spell attacks are easier to dodge directly underneath them, rather than the opposite corner.
Now... how to deal with Reimu. She can really be a nightmare, yes. First you should know that her spell attack is a combination of static and aimed bullets, so staying still while it's fired makes it much easier. I think dodging it in the corner is ideal as it reduces the likelihood that a yin-yang orb will fall on you and also gives you the opportunity to rush up through the waves, rather than waiting for them at the bottom. (Doing that in the middle of the screen is more dangerous.) Also keep using charge attacks while you're in it, to protect yourself from fireballs. Maybe I'm beating a dead horse by saying that over and over again, but it's important.
About her boss attack, it has four patterns it can use. For the one with reflectable bullets, I generally just run to the corner and dodge it from there. The way she drops down makes it hard to stay right under her. (Though I think you can dodge it with small left-right movements in that case, kind of like that one thing Chiyuri uses.) For the attack that shoots the big yin-yang orbs, I usually try not to be directly under her. And remember that the corners are usually the safest places from the orbs since they can only get so close to the wall. The other two attacks are seemingly similar to each other but work differently. Both are completely static, though she keeps moving while she fires them. (However, since the bosses always start in the same spot and move the same way, the attacks will always be the same if it's the first thing she does, so that's something you want to be especially familiar with.) One of them shoots some three-way shots to the sides, which you can basically ignore, then shoots two waves of of five bullets each. The center bullet of each is aimed straight down, with others at fixed distances apart from it, so you can view the two waves as making some wide "lanes" angled whichever way she was moving when she fired them. The other pattern shoots some denser waves to the sides, then two walls straight down, then some more walls to the sides again. For this one, you'll probably want to macro dodge the walls, so learn the distances and time between them. If it's the first pattern she uses after appearing, there's a fairly easy way through it that places you right back under her. Almost like what you did at 9:45, but then just slip through to the right and you have a clear path to the boss.
That, and any general thing I mentioned earlier should still apply. She's probably one of the most dangerous characters in the game. If she decides to just throw everything at you at once then there's not much you can do. Her spell/EX attacks are completely overwhelming when stacked on top of other things. On the other hand, her boss attacks are very memorizable and she can be dealt with pretty easily when there aren't any other distractions.
