1) Scoring. When I've reached her last halforb, I've had 34m score....and I see this cool dude having 78m there, which would give me 2 more lives.
What do you do to score that high so I can actually 1cc it?
Higher score generally requires much more dangerous play. The quickest way to get your score up is to kill as many things onscreen as quickly as possible. Kill one fairy in a chain and set off a combo; kill fairies near bullets so the bullets get cancelled out; clear bullets with level 2 attacks, etc. Basically, spamming and such is the best way to score, but it'll become much more dangerous. The more bullets you cancel out at once, the more come back at you later.
Once fairy deaths start to give off yellow text, you've reached maximum kill value. At that point, if you want to keep them at max value,
never stop killing.It's basically a decision between safety and score, like in all the other games :V
2) Girls you get to fight. Are they fixed for each touhou or random? I DON'T want to fight Medicine again. EVER. It's like forcing StB camera charge. Which I DON'T WANT TO PLAY AGAIN.
EVER.
seriously.
It's random to a small degree.
-Stage 1 is either Cirno or Mystia (if you are playing as one of those, your Stage 1 will be the other, or Lyrica)
-Stages 2-3 can be Lyrica, Tei, or the Stage 1 boss you didn't fight.
-Stages 4-5 are usually either Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya, Youmu, or Reisen.
-Stage 6 is always the same, but it varies between opponent. For example, Reisen will
always fight Sakuya in Stage 6. Yuka will
always fight Reimu. The character you fight here will never be in Stages 1-5.
-Stage 7 is always Medicine or Aya. Who you face depends on who you're using.
---Reimu, Marisa, Youmu, Cirno, Lyrica, Yuka, and Shikieki fight Aya.
---Sakuya, Reisen, Mystia, Tei, Aya fight Medicine.
---Medicine and Komachi, for some reason, fight Yuka.
-Stage 8 is always Komachi, except Komachi herself, who fights Reimu (although Cirno, Lyrica, and Mystia fight Yuka for some reason...).
-Stage 9 is, obviously, always Shikieki :V
There are occasional exceptions to the above, usually having to do with some plot-related drivel. Reisen always fights Tei at Stage 3, for example.
3) Sakuya. Is she controlled by Shiki AI or something? I ALWAYS lose her first round in the worst way possible and she takes 1 hit at most before I die.
It depends on what Stage you're on. Stage 6 AI is about 23720148721034 times harder than Stages 1-5, but Sakuya is the worst difficulty spike. Reisen's scenario makes me want to cry, since you go through Sakuya, then Medicine, then Komachi,
then Shiki.
4) Is there a tier list? For now, I just take whatever girl doesn't have clear next to her name and attempt with her.
Apparently Medicine trips up the AI even more than me a few minutes ago(2 deaths, then a close win) and Aya kind of breaks it too.
The AI is programmed to dodge at the last possible frame it's possible to dodge bullets. Since Medicine slows down the AI, the timing is thrown off, hence why she's such a gamebreaker. With Aya, her bullets are just so god damned fast that the AI can't get out of the way in time.
As for a tier list, I've often wondered this myself. A lot of characters have one good thing, and then a lot of little bad things. For example, Reisen has a terrible L1 attack and laughable EX attacks (seriously, sit still and wait for one to come at you. It will detonate and the explosion
will not touch you.), but she has, in my opinion, one of the best spirit-activating fields in the game. Cirno has a pathetic field, bad attacks, but she spawns EX attacks faster than other characters.
A quick tier list I made in six seconds :V
Top TierAya
Medicine
High TierShikieki
Komachi
Tei
Reimu
Mid-TierSakuya
Marisa
Reisen
Cirno
I-don't-play-them-enough-to-know-for-sure-but-they're-probably-shit TierEveryone else besides Youmu
Garbage TierYoumu
5) Strategy....is there something more to it than "smash the shoot button, dodge crap, charge a lv2 when walled, repeat"?
Generally, there are two major strategies:
---Scoring: In which you spam attacks and never let up on the shooting. This fills up the screen with white bullets
very very quickly, so you have to be extra careful.
---Survival: In which you go at a normal pace, but occasionally stop shooting. Stop shooting anywhere from thirty seconds to a minute. You'll be amazed at how quickly your screen empties of bullets.
Hope this helped :V
