Holy. How. What? WHAT?
I DID IT?The last few days have been really frustrating for me, at least in regards to this stage. I mean, yeah, sure, I cleared Mamizou, Mokou AND Yukari in such short notice, but this one was always a brick wall. That is, until I reached Genetics. And died four times. And then again, and I died three times and then two to the survival card. From then it only went downhill and I couldn't even get to Genetics anymore - I started getting stupid deaths on non-spells (the two red ones at the beginning are especially notorious), the reverse release of the ID spell which I suddenly got bad at, and then it even got to dying twice during the stage or dying on Danmaku Paranoia of all things.
I was really going to concede defeat. The stage wasn't overwhelming, but I realized why it is arguably the hardest Extra stage of them all - you're never safe. Only two cards did I capture consistently: her first, and Youkai Polygraph. You are ALWAYS prone to dying at any second of the fight. You can ruin your run at any given moment. Therefore, you have to be in top form. For the entire fight. Unless you're crazy good. With that realization, I was about to go back to trying to 1cc games on Hard, leaving Koishi and my all Extras in the series clear achievement to a later date.
Then I decided, since I'm stubborn like that, to have one more run before lunch. I decided that I had one shot - if I get to Koishi, no matter what happens, a game over and I'm taking a break. Of course, this would also mean a break from the stage for a long, long time. Considering how I hyped this one, simple attempt, I was nervous as fuck. This usually results in a bunch of mistakes, but I was so nervous that I made some extreme precise(/lucky!) dodges on Sanae's second and third cards, and perfected the stage. Whatever, this has happened before.
I then proceed to nervously capture every single non-spell and spell up to the one before Embers of Love, in which I do exceptionally well. Then came Embers of Love in which I still don't believe the extremely risky capture I had achieved.
Then, 2D Genetics. Considering that my average is, at the very least, 3 or 4 deaths, and that I was fairly consistent throughout the spell (again, compared to how I usually do), I was very, very satisfied with how I did.
Then I proceed to almost capture the survival card. At this point I had no idea what was going on.
Before this, I had only reached the survival card three times. I got a game over on it, three times. Two runs lost their final life, one run lost two final lives. This time, I had 3 lives. I exited with 2. (effectively 4, effectively 3)
Then, one more death to Subterranean Rose. I was bound to get at least one death as a result of my being nervous, I guess.
I proceed to bomb when needed until it's over. I clear the stage with one excess life. At this point I was celebrating with Suwako during the end sequence. I was... overjoyed.
I could not have wished for a better run for my final extra clear. That's it,
all extra stages clear, I'm done!!!
Time for Hard 1ccs, then...Edit: Did a little backtracking to make a list.
17/8/11 - Started playing.
19/9/11 - First 1cc on Normal. (EoSD)
20/10/11 - All games 1cc'd on Normal. (TD)
9/11/11 - First Extra clear. (MoF)
24/12/11 - All Extra clear. (SA)
