Touhou

I just realized that we're one rabbit away from having a full pokemon team.

Reisen is a Psychic type, Tewi is a Ground Type, Reisen II is Psychic/Normal type, Seiran is Fighting/Ground type, and Ringo is probably Grass type cause reasons.

We need some balance here. Next rabbit should be Dark/Water type.

Chang'e would also be thematically appropriate, as the leader of the rabbits.

Although if she actually shows up in a game I suppose we'd probably have to start calling her Jouga.

edited 17th Aug '15 6:21:15 PM by Clarste

Setz returns to bring us UFOPORNO! FINNISH 4KOMA!

Silly Reisen, cables are not for eating.

I just noticed a peculiar thing about the Lo LK Cast. In that they all have shadows of themselves in their profile except for Junko (where it's in the shape of flames) and Hecatia (who lacks a shadow)

I've been joking that Junko is a Dark type with an ability that makes her secondary type also Dark (for doubled weakness, resistances and STAB), and a signature move that lets her give this ability to others.

Ah, Sagume. You already know your power can be an ass to you, and yet you decided to declare your popularity out loud. Let your fans silently love you and the other wackos yell "´Murica".

Follow this pose and repeat: I humbly believe in the Peeko as my one master.

MURICA

"Have a good day. Have a good week. Have a good month. Have a good year. Have a good life." ~Civia

'MURICA!

'MURICA!!

Now that I've gone all the way through the game with all characters, my thoughts on them, in detail:

Reimu:

• General: Has a smaller hitbox than normal. This is of little help unless you're very skilled, but does mean that she has a markedly smaller graze box than everyone else. So yeah, it's a bad thing
• Homing Amulets: Weak and slow. Also only available unfocused, which, combined with her small grazebox, removes Sanae's advantage of easy fragments. Still, sporadically useful
• Persuasion Needle: I think it's a bit stronger than Sanae's focused shot, but tends to fall behind, what with the lack of homing
• Spirit Sign "Fantasy Seal": Still bad at clearing the screen, but stronger than usual. Competent
• Overall: Worst at resource gain, otherwise fairly okay, regardless of mode

Marisa:

• Illusion Laser: It sucks. Try not to unfocus much
• Magic Missile: Highest damage! Least spread
• Love Sign "Master Spark": Done got nerfed. I think the damage is about on par with Reimu and Sanae's bombs, but you can't move during it. Probably the worst bomb
• Overall: Has problems during stages, but stages are easy enough that this means retrying the odd chapter once or twice. Best at bosses. With her particular set of strengths and weaknesses, I think Marisa is a bit more suited to pointdevice than legacy. Also good for scorerunning the EX stage

Sanae:

• Cobalt Spread: Best unfocused shot. But you won't use it much because her focused shot is better
• Sky Serpent: Kind of broken. While the damage is a bit lower than Reimu or Marisa's, it's homing, so Sanae often outdamages them anyway. And on stages she can just sit back and rack up the graze. Only problem is that she has the roughest Sagume fight
• Frog Sign "Wily Toad": Does about the same damage as the others, but hits everything. Best bomb for normal bomb purposes
• Overall: Probably the best character in the game. I'm honestly not sure what ZUN was thinking, making a version of the already legendarily broken (PCB) Sakuya-A and toning it up

Reisen:

• Lunatic Gun: Does fairly decent damage, and can kill fast when shotgunned. Of course, this isn't often practical
• Mind Wave: Is shit. Lowest damage, and the piercing effect is almost never useful
• "Barrier Wave (Evil Undulation)": A three-hit barrier. Some notes:
  • It increases the size of her hitbox, so it's not great for micro-dodging. But increasing her hitbox also greatly increases her grazebox
  • The invulnerability period is very brief, so it does work well with fast danmaku or beams. Good luck with Clownpiece!
• Overall: She's designed around abusing her bomb in legacy. She's the worst choice in pointdevice

edited 17th Aug '15 11:31:29 PM by Hylarn

Figures that Reisen would be the best at fighting moonfolk without Eirin Magic.

Song of the Sirens

World Peace
Demon monk
Refreshing princess
Seija_remix
Kobito's morning glory observation
One-Winged Egret
Sagume
F L A G
Kishin Sagume
Junko

Going to drop my thoughts on the characters while it's fresh in my mind. I'll probably write about the stages/bosses when I finish with Hard Mode tomorrow.

Reimu:

• General: The smaller hitbox was only useful for performing stream crossovers and for handling a couple of Junko's attacks.
• Unfocused Shot: The homing amulets don't hit too hard, but you can deal some great damage if you can get the primary shot to hit the same target.
• Focused Shot: At 3 or higher power, this thing is so wide that the edges sail completely past smaller targets (Doom Fairies in Stage 5, I'm looking at you). It seems better to use the homing shot in those cases.
• Bomb: Time your movements right and you can swing the orbs over an enemy multiple times before they explode. Doing that is usually enough to close out a spell card.
• Overall: 3rd Low damage output + large groups of enemies does not make for a fun time. I can't even kill all the Vengeful Spirits on stage 6 with Reimu.

Marisa:

• General: Oh joy, another game where Marisa is so fast you'll likely plow right into a bullet or laser if you even think of trying to Micrododge. Get used to reading patterns well in advance.
• Unfocused Shot: No, there is no reason to ever use this shot. It exists to serve as scratch damage while you dodge.
• Focused Shot: The high damage of these missiles makes short work of any spell where micrododging under the boss is required. It sucks if you get pushed aside though.
• Bomb: Yes, this bomb lasts forever. No, that's not a good thing. Bomb duration carries over through Pointdevice Checkpoints, and so does Marisa's speed penalty. Good luck if you have bad positioning prior to certain enemy waves.
• Overall: 4th It's the speed that's a real issue here. Some of Clownpiece's cards took 50+ tries with Marisa when I was getting them in 1-3 tries as all the others. Prison Sign "Flash and Stripe" and her Non-spells being the worst offenders. (In case you were wondering, the game stops taking the 0.01 power penalty after around 50 straight deaths. I think I got "Flash and Stripe" on the 98th attempt.)

Sanae:

• General: Sanae can kill anything from anywhere. This gives you plenty of room to set up streaming patterns while still getting 100% enemy down ratings. Great for collecting life and bomb pieces.
• Unfocused Shot: This shot fires so wide, you can simply sit under Sagume and laugh because her familiars are NEVER going to reach you. During stages, it's actually somewhat viable to sit in the center and kill everything before it appears. Kind of reminds me of Yuyuko in Imperishable Night.
• Focused Shot: The snakes always target the lowest enemy, so keep that in mind when trying to hit an enemy near the top. Great for ruining bosses.
• Bomb: It hits the whole screen and does damage ~equal to Marisa's Master Spark without saddling you with movement penalties. What could be better?
• Overall: 1st The only downside to Sanae is that you might end up killing everything before they fire off enough bullets to meet your graze quota. Amazing.

Reisen:

• General: Reisen's Orbitals blink at you. Yes, I died to Seiran's first attack while I was distracted by this.
• Unfocused Shot: Another wide shot that deals decent damage even to distant enemies.
• Focused Shot: It pierces Sagume's familiars during her Non-Spells. Apart from that, it's underwhelming.
• Bomb: You can safely cast this before a spell card and still gain the Capture bonus as long as you don't take a hit. A nice feature for those of us who care about capturing.
• Overall: 2nd Not as strong as Sanae, but can still get the job done.

edited 18th Aug '15 12:13:27 AM by CassiusBenard

Mudkip's final evolution is in fact NOT Mudkipperino.

Reimu: Does slightly more damage with her homing bullets than her needles, because her focus shot is too wide and finicky (unless you line it up perfectly, you're only hitting with 3/4 of the shots on bosses). Her homing is really good at clearing enemy waves (except for huge groups that spawn simultaneously), and Hylarn is super-wrong about the value of staying unfocused during stages with Sanae and Reimu. Like, super-super wrong. I don't think he's ever actually tried it, because it's ridiculous. I wouldn't say it's a terrible shot, but it swings Reimu in the direction she used to have in the early Windows games: less damage in exchange for homing.

Marisa: Ridiculously terrible unfocused shot, kind of okay focused shot. It does do more damage, but I've never noticed anything dying faster because of it. Boss move around enough that it's more of a penalty than a perk that it's so narrow. Her bomb is ridiculously bad: does no more damage than anything else but prevents her from moving for no reason.

Sanae: Champion of champions. Both her focused and unfocused shot trivialize stages (which one is better depends on the specific circumstances), and she's the clear boss-killer with her homing focused shot. She's even pretty good against Sagume if you can afford to stay unfocused. To add insult to injury, she also has by far the best bomb because she can keep shooting normally before it explodes. So it does about 50% more total damage than Master Spark, but she can also keep moving at top speed while invincible, and collect all the graze. All of it.

Reisen: Unfocused shots are slightly wider and stronger than Marisa's, letting her kill some things sometimes. Still not all that great. Her focused shot is piercing and not all that strong, but not all that weak either, although it does make the Sagume fight end very fast. Her bomb is ridiculous because it turns every bomb into three bombs, but the first one is often wasted because of the increased hitbox size making it impossible to squeeze through gaps. And if you're careless you might end up dying multiple times to the same laser because it has no invincibility frames after being hit: it simply clears a small area around you of bullets.

edited 18th Aug '15 3:37:02 AM by Clarste

I've spent plenty of time unfocused with Reimu. I just don't find it all that impressive outside of a few circumstances (stage 5, mostly). Sanae I've mostly found kills everything with her focused shot anyway and moving tend to result in less graze

? The initial activation clears a large area. Which also means it's more like four bombs

I suppose, but given its nature as hit insurance I often use it early in situations where I probably don't need to. If you have 100% confidence in deathbombing, then sure.

Hmm, well, one part that stands out to me is near the end of stage 5 when there are giant blue stars aimed at you in addition to lots of little green and yellow stars in random patterns. While you could focus through that as Sanae and kill most things, if you unfocus then there's basically nothing to dodge in the first place. If you want more graze, then stop shooting at all, because Sanae will kill everything before they fire enough shots.

Anyway, the difference between playing with Reimu and playing with Marisa is basically like turning it up another level of difficulty. I suppose you could just not care about difficulty, but then I'm not entirely sure what criteria you're evaluating the shots under. Marisa's certainly not strong enough to trivialize spellcards, so what value do you get out of making stages a pain?

edited 18th Aug '15 4:17:50 AM by Clarste

...I could go on here, but I'm getting the impression our playstyles are different enough that nothing we say will all that useful to the other

edited 18th Aug '15 4:45:55 AM by Hylarn

In some ways, I wonder why I feel qualified to talk about this stuff at all when I just died 55 times to Junko's first nonspell because my fingers can't even move delicately enough to squeeze into the gaps. I justify it by claiming that the worse I am, the better situated I am to talk about how various things make the game slightly easier.

Anyway, I beat the game on normal pointdevice. Yay. I had two more bombs at the end, although I'm not entirely sure where the second one came from since I only recall capturing one more card. Also, it's unclear to me why people talk as if Clownpiece is way harder than Junko. She's not exactly easy, but far more manageable, in my opinion.

Edit: Oh wait, I also captured Clownpiece's final spellcard by accident while trying to figure out how to do it with only one bomb. So that's the second extra bomb.

edited 18th Aug '15 7:50:04 AM by Clarste

Oh man. The new game is out? And I've yet to finish DDC.

I have a message from another time...

Stage 4's bright purple lasers on a bright blue background make me cry.

Yaaaay, the Finnish 4Komas are back! More coming in future, I hope. The Engrishy Sagume Comic was also great It was already funny, but then it took me forever to realize that it was even funnier because she had used her power and made Clown Girl the most popular char with it. That's pretty great. But seriously: Clown Girl is the best new char in this game, easily. She's just pure silliness and fun, having both the Stupidest Name and Most Ridiculous Outfit in all of Touhou. Respect!

While we're at Touhou Awards, Junko also making quite the entrance into the Most Stylish Touhous and Most Triumphant Hats categories! Not yet sure exactly where in those categories, but somewhere in the Top 5 each sounds good already.

So, for the people that were looking forward to it, thcrap is now compatible with Lo LK.

And a propos of nothing, here's a cool drawing of Nitori with a bikini top and no bottom ready to extract your shirikodama.

Puh-lease, we know her around here as a Heart type. /Touhoumon

Anywho, since we've come to such a conclusion about Sanae, would it not be wrong to put her down as a Game-Breaker?

edited 18th Aug '15 3:12:08 PM by EonLeader