Scarlet

... ... ... ...well, okay, now I feel like the world's biggest idiot. xD In that case I take it back, I guess Extra is technically possible without releases. Although spending releases on Danmaku Dupion is still basically a free ~10k Point Item value, so eh, I guess there's that at least. xD

No, I was referring to a couple of Okina's spellcards, most notably Danmaku Dupion. ...besides, using a bomb instead arguably misses the point. A release is definitely the lesser evil, especially considering it doesn't invalidate the spellcard bonus. :P

The thing is that while the main game works fine without releases (in theory, anyway), I'm pretty sure the Extra Stage isn't actually possible without releases.

HSiFS Lunatic: where you can spend a level 1 season release to get a level 2 season back lol Also I 1cc'd it, I guess, although I'm honestly not sure whether it's because I portrayed some amount of skill at the game or whether it's just because Season Release is so absurdly broken. xD

Six bombs? Ouch. I think I used two in my Hard 1cc, mostly because I tend to be a little too aggressive with the Autumn release. That's pretty much the easiest part of the stage, so I'm afraid there's not much of a trick to it. You might simply need more practice. Being able to stream aimed bullets while dodging static ones, ideally while also being able to turn around if needed, is a pretty important skill for the higher difficulties of Touhou in general, so practicing that will come in handy not only in HSiFS. What I don't like about UFO Stage 4 is that you cannot bomb Nue if you want the 1up, but can easily get walled if you don't. I guess I should actually try Summer and Winter at some point, haha. Another glitch concerning lasers? ZUN plz. I guess some things never change. :V

EoSD and MoF work on a similar principle, actually; the main difference is that both EoSD and MoF never give you more than 4 Extends for your score no matter how well you do, whereas HSiFS is willing to give you up to 8. EoSD also doesn't allow you to simply erase 70% of all bullets coming your way, haha. But yeah. The season release is about as spammable as bombs in MoF are - except HSiFS actually encourages you to as that's where the majority of your score comes from, heh. I really don't understand what the fuss about Stage 4 is all about. Even on Hard it's just basic streaming with some stray bullets thrown in, like pretty much any other Stage 4. One of the greater fairies even gives you a free bomb!

Good god, HSiFS Hard is a huge spike compared to Normal. It's almost like going from UFO Normal to UFO Lunatic. ...until you realize that Season Release allows you to simply erase virtually all bullets coming your way, so it's actually still very managable, haha. In fact, considering there are a lot more bullets to cancel, you can actually spam Release much more on Hard than you can on Normal. It's actually kinda funny how I 1cc'd Hard with lives to spare even though it felt like I was hardly even trying to actually dodge any of the boss patterns. xD Do you ever even need more than one gauge? :V ...does the strength of the options really matter if you hardly ever even have more than one? xD Aye, I agree it's a pretty easy game overall. The patterns are surprisingly straightforward (on Normal, anyway), the usual stage 4 difficulty spike is strangely absent, and you get an absolutely ungodly amount of resources if you're even half-decent at scoring. I'm pretty sure it's possible to bomb literally every spellcard in the game and still 1cc with a comfortable amount of lives to spare, haha. I'm still using Windows 7, so I'm afraid I know little about Windows 10, but... I vaguely recall reading somewhere that Windows 10 had issues running a wide variety of games in fullscreen. Have you tried going windowed mode?

So I finally got around to playing HSiFS... After the complete and utter trainwreck that was LoLK, I was genuinely surprised to find that HSiFS is back to having a very reasonable and comfortable level of difficulty, to the point I managed to 1cc Normal completely blind on my first try despite getting what is probably the worst score in the history of the universe (~70 million points). After I got the hang of how scoring in this game works, I managed ~180 million on my second run, although I imagine that's probably still a contender for the world's worst score. Nonetheless, so far I'm having a decent time with it. ...two things, though: - Is it just me, or are the boss timers crazy strict this time around? I was timing out nonspells left and right without meaning to. - Is there literally any reason to ever pick any sub-season other than Autumn? I tried Spring once and it cut my score in half while also making me deal with a much nastier final spellcard.

Oh, we're doing Touhousorter again? Well, I suppose it's been almost exactly a year since I did my last list, so I might as well join in~ EDIT: Here's a direct link to the image, as the forums software refuses to properly display it... Touhousorter Result That's not what your username says. :V

Huh, how so? The last one is definitely tough if you don't abuse the safespot, but the one prior to that is just basic horizontal streaming, even on Lunatic. Just stay away from the left and right edges of the screen and the lasers might as well not be there. Honestly, if you have the Power to spare, I'd just bomb Cat's Walk to oblivion, personally. Screw that card. As for Needle Mountain, that one definitely used to give me trouble, but it becomes much more managable once you realize that the flame circles are aimed (one directly at you, all others relative to it). Simply move a set distance each time Rin summons a new set and you can pretty much just ignore them.

I'd argue she's better than Reimu in PCB (especially MarisaA), although probably still worse than Sakuya. Only having two bombs per life seems like a huge detriment at first, but is compensated for by her insanely fast Cherry gain (which provides a lot of free barriers) and extremely high firepower in general. While I haven't played those two as much, I also found Marisa a lot more effective than Reimu in both LLS and MS, where Reimu's "I have homing shots!" means very little when literally every shot type, including Marisa's, has insanely massive spread anyway. There's a lot of problems with that, the most obvious one being that unless you plan all of your bombs and deaths in advance, you can't guarantee you'll actually have enough power available to bomb with at any given moment, especially if you can't guarantee that you consistently manage to pick up all Power items. Getting hit by something unexpected can also force an unplanned deathbomb (or death), throwing off your planning even more. And then there's the problem that you may very well find you simply don't have enough bombs to work with to bomb everything you might need bombed, especially since any given pattern usually requires at least two bombs to fully skip, sometimes even three (Hell And Heaven Meltdown says hi). And that's assuming you have no trouble with the stages themselves. There's nothing wrong with planned bombs for a spellcard you're certain you can't capture - I've given that advice myself in the past. But to do that for a full run once again requires that you already be very familiar with the game, and by extension pretty good. You can't really expect that from someone who has trouble 1ccing the game in the first place, especially when the bombs of the shot type you're using are a royal pain in the ass to actually set up. Having to practically be on top of a target that might move at any moment in a game where contact damage instantly kills you is not exactly very encouraging, especially since you can easily just waste your bomb altogether by bombing too early, before the boss armor wears off. Or you bomb too late and simply get shot in the face. You really need to stop measuring these things by your own standards. You're on a completely different level at this point, and frankly, it's actually pretty discouraging to constantly hear you go on about how easy everything supposedly is when that's simply not true for the vast majority of players. We don't exactly have a lot of NMNB Lunatic players here.

Going pointblank with bombs is not only very dangerous in most circumstances, it also means that you need to have planned that bomb in advance. If you use MarisaA's bomb reactively like people usually do, it deals virtually no damage whatsoever, clears barely any bullets and grants only very few invincibility frames. There's also the problem that while MarisaA gains a bit more power from small [P] (0.08 instead of 0.05), the same doesn't apply to big [P]s. If you ever dip down to <4 Power, you'll have a hard time recovering, especially during boss fights. Unlike other shot types, not even dying grants you any reasonable amount of power, as MarisaA at 2 or 3 Power is simply pathetic. I guess she's a bit better in Extra where you can reasonably expect each death to put you on your last life, thus granting you a Full Power item everytime you die, but like I said before, she's simply not viable for a normal player. She only becomes "viable" if you're already good enough at the game to 1cc it in your sleep. Remember that that doesn't apply to everyone here, nor even to the majority of Touhou players in general. Yeah. Like I said, her utility lies in hitting arbitrary sweet spots in really awkward angles. That's, uh... great? And to do anything resembling actual damage with MarisaB's bomb, you have to pop it right on top of your target's face, just like MarisaA's. Besides, if I want to hit a boss (or any other enemy) from really awkward angles, I could just pick ReimuC instead and be much better off in every way. Reimu even has a smaller hitbox (which admittedly is actually annoying in Stage 3 and 4 if you're trying to graze the lasers, but is a boon if you're just trying to survive). I agree, MarisaC is pretty nice for Extra. Being able to shield yourself without triggering Koishi's invincibility takes a lot of pressure off your shoulders.

Not necessarily She does have the only thing resembling some sort of homing shot in this game

To be fair, ReimuB at least has a helpful passive, and her bomb actually becomes decently strong on Hard/Lunatic As for ReimuC, while the bomb is fantastic, I still think the shot type itself is great, too It could do with slightly better damage output, but then again, literally every shot type other than ReimuA has that issue

Yeah, I share the sentiment Marisa A would probably be viable outside of NMNB runs if she simply gained more than the usual lol2 Power after dying Marisa B would probably be viable if her shots did anything resembling damage outside of hitting completely arbitrary sweet spots on the most impractical angles in existence Marisa C would definitely be viable if her rockets actually did decent damage