So how is UFO's reception?

[Zengar Zombolt]

I find it easier to dodge the large blue bullets than the parasols, but maybe that's just me.

Most likely because the point of the parasols is to flank you. Since you use forward shooting types, then most surely some of them escape you, and there's no spread at all to do anything.

[Slaves]

Most likely because the point of the parasols is to flank you. Since you use forward shooting types, then most surely some of them escape you, and there's no spread at all to do anything.

considering you're doing considerable damage, just follow Kogasa and don't worry about the Parasols unless one is coming at you. most of the time, though, it ends before that happens(although, i'm using Reimu A, Sanae A/Marisa A might not be as fortunate)

[Zengar Zombolt]

Marisa A might not be as fortunate

Exactly.
You have to pray to have enough power so you can destroy them when they're already on to me. That's personal experience, tho. Most likely there's a way to bypass them, or something.

[Tengukami]

Those parasols vanish with shotgunning if you're on full power. The rest is just simple side-to-side dodging.

[nintendonut888]

Yeah, the first spell card's not a problem below lunatic. Sadly on lunatic I wouldn't say it's exaggeration to call it hardest spell card in the series material. The one big difference is that the gaps between the blue bullets Kogasa shoots become almost nonexistent, making it hard to keep yourself centered, often trapping you by in them with the parasol blue bullets, and not having any room to keep from getting slammed in the side by parasols. I can get down the movements to beat this card to a point, but after that...

[Tengukami]

Oh, Lunatic Mode? Yeah, never mind then.

[LHCling]

4 sets of spirals per "wave".

[nintendonut888]

18/60

?! Tell me how you did so, or even better, show a video.

[stargroup]

Hey, jerkface. If you want to yell at people, at least use punctuation and capitalization. Carry on.

You are right. I should use proper English rules from now on.

pffft fuck that


anyways, conceptually, the train doesn't work on bullet hells because of the way the bullets spread. it creates and uneven distribution on screen which doesn't make sense considering the object of a bullet hell game: to dodge bullets. instead of dodging bullets, you find yourself just strategically moving into open areas. places that aren't open are complete bs to dodge, creating an extreme spectrum in difficulty. you can calculate the density of bullets and consider the speed in comparison to other spell cards around that point and it just simply doesn't fit. direction is also horrible. train moves downward and bullets come out in diagonals. if you draw it out geometrically, it occupies very awkward areas on screen. if you do some analysis you'll find a trend of movement patterns in the best spell cards and stages, and this one is almost completely opposite.

in addition, zun gets lazy when he realizes he can't increase the difficulty on higher levels. so what does he do? he adds RANDOM bullets. the horizontal cards in hard and lunatic and the chains of red things shooting out directly from kogasa, none of these make sense in terms of the spell card, and none of these focus on the theme: the train. it is blatantly obvious he believed had no choice but to add these things in order to balance the difficulty if he wanted to use the train concept. but instead of trying to incorporate different movement styles on the trains, he decides to keep their position and add random shit.

this makes the spell card horribly planned out, generic, and plain stupid. I don't care how easy or difficult it is (I capture this consistently btw), it's a stupid card. an amateur could make better designs

and this disappoints me because touhou has the best bullet hell patterns in history, and suddenly you have this bs move

it's analogous to generic music. sure, the public/majority likes it and sees them as a great songs, but music experts know they are easily made and simply very bland. this spell card may seem cool due to its unique characteristics, but actually plays horribly


and there ya go. I had to spell it out for everyone. I don't know why everyone agrees with me after the demo release, but as soon as the full version comes out no one seems to see my way anymore. THE CARD DIDN'T CHANGE SO WHY SHOULD OPINIONS CHANGE

it's like you guys are brainwashed by bandwagon or something. I bet if the first post in this thread stated that UFO was absolutely horrible more of you guys would be agreeing with him.


though I did play 4-6 today. and I have to say, on normal, some of it is pretty bs. what the hell is with zun and curving lasers. curving lasers and cheap. at least mof was completely playable :/

[Sen]

Yeah, the first spell card's not a problem below lunatic. Sadly on lunatic I wouldn't say it's exaggeration to call it hardest spell card in the series material. The one big difference is that the gaps between the blue bullets Kogasa shoots become almost nonexistent, making it hard to keep yourself centered, often trapping you by in them with the parasol blue bullets, and not having any room to keep from getting slammed in the side by parasols. I can get down the movements to beat this card to a point, but after that...

Oh, you're talking about Lunatic.

Yeah I have no clue how you're supposed to do her card on Lunatic ;_;

instead of dodging bullets, you find yourself just strategically moving into open areas

...that's what dodging is.

[Hououin Kyouma]

Hey, jerkface. If you want to yell at people, at least use punctuation and capitalization. Carry on.

You are right. I should use proper English rules from now on.

pffft fuck that


anyways, conceptually, the train doesn't work on bullet hells because of the way the bullets spread. it creates and uneven distribution on screen which doesn't make sense considering the object of a bullet hell game: to dodge bullets. instead of dodging bullets, you find yourself just strategically moving into open areas. places that aren't open are complete bs to dodge, creating an extreme spectrum in difficulty. you can calculate the density of bullets and consider the speed in comparison to other spell cards around that point and it just simply doesn't fit. direction is also horrible. train moves downward and bullets come out in diagonals. if you draw it out geometrically, it occupies very awkward areas on screen. if you do some analysis you'll find a trend of movement patterns in the best spell cards and stages, and this one is almost completely opposite.

in addition, zun gets lazy when he realizes he can't increase the difficulty on higher levels. so what does he do? he adds RANDOM bullets. the horizontal cards in hard and lunatic and the chains of red things shooting out directly from kogasa, none of these make sense in terms of the spell card, and none of these focus on the theme: the train. it is blatantly obvious he believed had no choice but to add these things in order to balance the difficulty if he wanted to use the train concept. but instead of trying to incorporate different movement styles on the trains, he decides to keep their position and add random shit.

this makes the spell card horribly planned out, generic, and plain stupid. I don't care how easy or difficult it is (I capture this consistently btw), it's a stupid card. an amateur could make better designs

and this disappoints me because touhou has the best bullet hell patterns in history, and suddenly you have this bs move

it's analogous to generic music. sure, the public/majority likes it and sees them as a great songs, but music experts know they are easily made and simply very bland. this spell card may seem cool due to its unique characteristics, but actually plays horribly


and there ya go. I had to spell it out for everyone. I don't know why everyone agrees with me after the demo release, but as soon as the full version comes out no one seems to see my way anymore. THE CARD DIDN'T CHANGE SO WHY SHOULD OPINIONS CHANGE

it's like you guys are brainwashed by bandwagon or something. I bet if the first post in this thread stated that UFO was absolutely horrible more of you guys would be agreeing with him.


though I did play 4-6 today. and I have to say, on normal, some of it is pretty bs. what the hell is with zun and curving lasers. curving lasers and cheap. at least mof was completely playable :/

Yo gonna geto bannedo by Letty. Have a nice trip~

[Cadmas]

I'm sure anyone could venture to call the game bad if they nitpick ever little spell card.
Heck it works for any game. If you can't do better than you have nothing worth hearing.

[Letty Whiterock]

You are right. I should use proper English rules from now on.

pffft fuck that

I don't give a damn what anyone thinks about UFO in this thread, but the moment you think that basically telling me to fuck is a good idea is the last moment you get to post. Congratulations, fucker. Fly on back to FFR and your fruity little blog.

[nintendonut888]

It's not "brainwashed by the masses" (as a strong advocate for PC-98 and who actively resists the majority of fanon, I HOPE that's not it), it's that once the full version came out, I came back, a bit better of a player than when I played the demo, and went "huh, this isn't as bad as I remember."

And I think the spell card is genius now. Screw design, if it's fun it's fun (the only reason why Suwako's fight works).

Another thing: You just basically went "lol no u" to one of the more irritable mods of this forum. See ya around.

Ninja'd by said mod. Yeah. :V

[♛ Apher-Forte]

I don't have to suggest to you that factor in any card above hard difficulty and ONE SPELLCARD from Kogasa don't mean your opinion WORTH ANYTHING MUCH.

and certainly doesn't give you the right to be an ass.

Of course, what you say has a little point as well, as I am a progressive player who moves from easy to normal to hard, which is the hardest I ever go in just about any game except PCB; I realized Kogasa and Ichirin certainly has harder spellcards than any 2-3 stage bosses, contrary to that setting, I find stage 4 to be abysmally hard compared with any games before it.

Even SA has a slightly easier stage 4 with slow moving bullets, but UFO carries a remarkably wholsomely randomized bullet that comes in walls of spraying flowers. That itself, on easy and normal alike, makes it near impossible for me to challenge without losing a life.

I have yet to complain however, about it, because if a game does not have difficulty, surely one won't play it.
You logic in this case about mathemathical precision is flawed, do you really think a drunkard, a simple homestay one man army of a programmer really give any deep thought into the mathemathical precision of a design of ONE spellcard?

Come to think of it, if that was the case, there certainly is a lot of other spellcards for you to rage on.

AND those are genuinely hard to, what about Byakuren's 2nd, Shou's 3rd? any and all of Nue's?

You'd have better reason if you don't call those concepts of absolute WTF.,

Tell me, what possible mathemathical precision can you grab from Nue's last rainbow UFO card?

[constellation]

oops that was a mod? :x

my apologies if I had known I surely wouldn't have said that

my fault

you can tell I don't come here often enough to know who everyone is


or what color mods are T__T

[Letty Whiterock]

oops that was a mod? :x

my apologies if I had known I surely wouldn't have said that

my fault

you can tell I don't come here often enough to know who everyone is

or what color mods are T__T

You should show the same level of respect to other posters as you would the authority figures here. Sucks that you didn't realize who you were dealing with, but you made your bed. You lie in it. If you want to appeal, drop me a line. We'll talk.

[Jana]

Heh. I actually just got back the Shrine Maiden from some e-drama in which the exact same "sheeple" argument was used. Difference is that we have good moderators here.

On topic: Yeah, Train Card is easier on Normal than Easy, but it's still a fun challenge. Isn't that what Touhou should be about anyway? People should have fun playing the games, and enjoying the fandom.

[LHCling]

or even better, show a video.

There's no guarantee that the video will help though. Either way, a showcase showing Spell Card captures of the Lunatic types.

I will say that for Kogasa's second Spell Card (i.e. First Boss Spell Card) that it's a very boss-movement dependent Spell Card. In a bit more detail, if Kogasa moves the wrong way (and UFO uses the random movement sequence unlike Touhou 7-11), then you either get lol-walled, or end up stalling out the Spell Card for a bit longer which subsequently increases the risk of failure (as you will see within the video). The other two Boss Spell Cards also have a randomization factor.

But enough of a rant about the Spell Cards, I'll show that they're entirely possible. Yeah, I cropped them from separate runs, so the score fluctuates a fair bit. Usually, I would capture 2-3 Spell Cards in a run.

_{Fun fact: it doesn't matter whether I use SanaeB or not, my capture rate for all the Spell Cards is relatively consistent across the all shot types... except for ReimuB; taking longer means that I die eventually...}

EDIT: Typo fix. Goddammit spellchecker.

EDIT 2: Behold! My awesome dodge for Kogasa's Mid-Boss Spell Card!

[Milkyway64]

Wow. This topic got interesting.

I do have to add that Byuraken is possibly the hardest Normal boss in the series IMO. I can't cap, well, anything. Except for maybe the second spellcard (the one that seems like something Yuyuko would do)

That's not necessarily bad, though. Final bosses SHOULD be challenging.

[Hawk]

http://replays.gensokyou.org/download.php?id=4445

This won't be that useful with SanaeB or MarisaA, since it will likely get you killed, but it's still interesting to note.

After the fourth swing, move down a bit just in case.

[cleartailcat]

I suck at STG's but I only play Lunatic mode. Being the masochitisc touhou-player that I am, spellcard difficulty doesn't concern me much. I like UFO, it has pretty new patterns.

[nintendonut888]

Thanks Baity, but Sanae B is a different story from Reimu A, being that she has RANGE and can take out more parasols.

[LHCling]

http://replays.gensokyou.org/download.php?id=4445

This won't be that useful with SanaeB or MarisaA, since it will likely get you killed, but it's still interesting to note.

After the fourth swing, move down a bit just in case.

Drat, still need to get the full version  :V

...I'm curious to what you did in there now.

Thanks Baity, but Sanae B is a different story from Reimu A, being that she has RANGE and can take out more parasols.

3 attempts. Not my first capture with ReimuA, but still. You can see that it's 3 attempts because I continued on the stage twice. Funny how I'm trying to demonstrate things using the Trial still. Stupid delay in arrival. Oh, enough of a rant here too, "protip" and a mediocre analysis to go with said "protip" in video description, so that'll give you an incentive to actually watch the video, which isn't that long since it's only one Spell card.

I'm still trying to work out how to use a forward type, and survive with Kogasa moving *in the other direction*.

EDIT: Yeah, I'm relying on a 50% luck on making me survive this Spell Card.

[Hawk]

http://replays.gensokyou.org/download.php?id=4445

This won't be that useful with SanaeB or MarisaA, since it will likely get you killed, but it's still interesting to note.

After the fourth swing, move down a bit just in case.

Drat, still need to get the full version  :V

...I'm curious to what you did in there now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROUkfSq1p7U

Oh geez it had been a long time since I'd uploaded something to Youtube.  With the amount of trouble that was, I should've just made a replay in the demo.  Oh well.

Don't be fooled, you actually have a lot of room there.  The edge case is when she moves left continually.  It's still doable, but you might have to wait until the last second to let a parasol fly by.

[?q]

ZUN really should fix that bullet delay bug some year to prevent that kind of thing...

[LHCling]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROUkfSq1p7U

I had a feeling that you used a blind spot (not to be confused with "safe spot"). Heavily implied that you used a blind spot after saying:

After the fourth swing, move down a bit just in case.

Much like how for Yamame's second AP (that's Attack Phase, commonly referred to as a "non-spell" by Westerners), you move up a bit just in case when you use the respective blind spot.

It's about as cheap as moving into the safe spot of "BoWaP", really.

ZUN really should fix that bullet delay bug some year to prevent that kind of thing...

He should reintroduce the "You're too close to me, take this!" back to some of the bosses; I agree.
Another Fun Fact: Assuming that you don't shotgun, SanaeB takes a rather hefty amount of time on Nazrin's last Spell Card. Even ReimuA beats SanaeB in that regard. So yeah, sub-par vs. bosses, but does awesome on the stages. If you count shotgun into this, as well as a full-movement speed bomb, you'll see why I (and many other high-tier Japanese players, among others) say that SanaeB is best overall.
Expect me to review UFO as a whole within 24 hours I hope.

[Zengar Zombolt]

He should reintroduce the "You're too close to me, take this!" back to some of the bosses; I agree.

So it wasn't just my imagination! Yay!

[nintendonut888]

http://replays.gensokyou.org/download.php?id=4445

This won't be that useful with SanaeB or MarisaA, since it will likely get you killed, but it's still interesting to note.

After the fourth swing, move down a bit just in case.

Drat, still need to get the full version  :V

...I'm curious to what you did in there now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROUkfSq1p7U

Oh geez it had been a long time since I'd uploaded something to Youtube.  With the amount of trouble that was, I should've just made a replay in the demo.  Oh well.

Don't be fooled, you actually have a lot of room there.  The edge case is when she moves left continually.  It's still doable, but you might have to wait until the last second to let a parasol fly by.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFF I should have known there was something like this. Memo to self: Tell Ruro that a safespot in one of Kogasa's attacks involves moving onto her legs. :V I'm glad it's one of those safespots that doesn't ruin the fight though; those really annoy me because it's impossible to do EX Keine's first spell card/Ageless Obsession normally once you know they exist.

It's about as cheap as moving into the safe spot of "BoWaP", really.

I've used that safespot in both of my SA lunatic 1ccs. >_> I REALLY hate BoWaP because no matter how much I fight it or try to memorize it, it clips me.

[?q]

He should reintroduce the "You're too close to me, take this!" back to some of the bosses; I agree.

That too.  That made Imperishable Night even more fun to mess with.

I thought SanaeB was best because her bomb let you ubergraze?
Personally from a survival PoV I hate SanaeB.