Touhou Project

[CRBWildcat]

Nah; that's the second from the last, actually (it's a pain, too, but not as bad as the final one). The last one has her shooting gi-normous lasers at you when her health gets low enough (until then, she just spams smaller beams and uses a rotating laser attack); when there's two of them on-screen at the same time, it's difficult to find time to fire back.

EDIT: Actually, the final card does cause the ground to rise, to the point where the battle finishes up in space. My bad.

[Crescent Pulsar R]

Space is always the final frontier. ;p

I still haven't gotten around to setting up my gamepad for the game. I keep getting distracted and whatnot. ;/

[Crescent Pulsar R]

Y_Y

Man... I made it to Utsuho. Final spell card. One life left. No bombs left. Dodging like mad and witnessing a miracle every other second I'm still alive. My low attack power, in an agonizingly slow fashion, whittles Utsuho's life away. And then... What's this? Signs of dying?

@_@

Hooray! At last! Now I can finally rela--

*Gets hit by bullet and dies while Utsuho's still going through her death throes*

...

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF--!!

...

Y_Y

[CRBWildcat]

One of these days, I'll have to start playing that game just to witness that particular card for myself.

Granted it'll probably frustrate me to no end, but "bad with the good" and all that.

[Crescent Pulsar R]

It's harder than it looks. At least to me, it does. A cluster of small bullets coming at you from the front, medium-sized ones fairly separated coming from the rear, and moving against the force pulling you in. And it just gets faster (and worse, of course) as her health drops. Though I also had trouble with the spell card that puts you between two giant bullets of death and dodging a maelstrom of smaller ones coming out of them, having to dodge from the front and rear while trying to see where Utsuho is hiding so you can shoot her.

[Drawde]

Though I also had trouble with the spell card that puts you between two giant bullets of death and dodging a maelstrom of smaller ones coming out of them, having to dodge from the front and rear while trying to see where Utsuho is hiding so you can shoot her.

That's why there's an indicator at the bottom of the screen that shows where the boss is vertically. So that if you can't see the boss, or are just concentrating on dodging at the bottom of the screen, you can still line up under her and shoot.

Also, how do you use any form of joystick with this game, if possible? It's got to be easier to control than the keyboard.

[Crescent Pulsar R]

I can't look down at the indicator when I have to focus on surviving this. XD And it's hard to see it peripherally because it seems to have a tendency of being dull instead of staying lit up. (It seems easier to see in the video since the screen is smaller than what it is when I play the game.)

Joystick? Probably getting one that has a USB connection. I use a Logitech gamepad (and lately a PS3 controller) to play these, though I prefer using the D-pad to the analog stick and it doesn't work unless I use JoyToKey (which assigns keyboard keys to the gamepad buttons). Otherwise, a lot of the latest games have an option where, if you have a gamepad plugged in, you can simply press the gamepad buttons to choose which does what in the game (that's what I did with the PS3 controller, since I didn't need to use JoyToKey).

[CRBWildcat]

I've just about had it with the vertical scrollers, so I'm taking another break from them. I haven't been winning even when I'm at the top of my game, but this is just ridiculous:

EoSD. Cirno. I'd just used a bomb to clear away most of the bullets on the screen. Now, this is the spellcard where they appear, freeze solid for a while, and then drift about every which way. After I'd used said bomb and everything was settled, there were still a few stationary bullets on the screen. There was nothing keeping me from staying away from them altogether.

Instead, I flew diagonally right into one. You know you're lousy at Touhou when you get blasted on a mostly empty screen by a bullet that's not even moving.

GRAAAAHHHHHH!

[Crescent Pulsar R]

Seeing as you got past Yuyuko, I don't really think that that's being the top of your game. Though it's not like I don't hit bullets in some stupid way from time to time, either. Sometimes we just act too fast for it to be a wise move. Like being too close to Kogasa when she does this, because the "rain drop" bullets can appear right next to you and moving around much is a bad idea.

[CRBWildcat]

When I got past Yuyuko, though, I was just doing Easy Mode. I wanted to see the good endings for both of the games that I'd been playing recently, so I'd been trying to stick it out on Normal.

[Crescent Pulsar R]

But easy mode on PCB is different, though, since it's equatable to normal mode in some of the other games. (For IN, easy mode actually feels like it's easy.) It probably seems a bit easier than EoSD because you can actually see the hit box. And I reckon it depends on the player, since I find the Prismriver sisters more difficult than Sakuya. Just by a bit, though.

[CRBWildcat]

I have to disagree with you on that first part. If PCB's Easy Mode was equatable to Normal Modes elsewhere, then Alice and the Prismrivers should've been harder to beat. As it is, Alice's entire stage was a cakewalk, and while Stage 4's nowhere near as easy, I haven't yet seen what makes the Sisters such pains in the neck.

[Crescent Pulsar R]

Because they can be pains in the neck? ;p I find them harder than the boss that comes after them, Youmu. Mainly, I have trouble with the first attack they do together, and the one where the notes float around and turn into bullets. In the end, though, you can't call Yuyuko easy by any stretch. Even if the rest were easy enough to save up the lives and bombs needed for her (which is what you have to do for the last boss in each of these games, anyway), how many bombs and lives does it take compared to the last boss of the other games on easy?

I'm getting distracted by Growlanser right now, but... Hopefully I'll put in some time for EoSD so I can beat it. I play these games very sporadically, which doesn't help my ability to best them. ;/

[CRBWildcat]

Even if the rest were easy enough to save up the lives and bombs needed for her (which is what you have to do for the last boss in each of these games, anyway), how many bombs and lives does it take compared to the last boss of the other games on easy?

Dunno. Depends on how often my tendency to panic kicks in. The higher the meter, the more likely it is that I go straight for the bomb bays or the Escape key (works on a scale of 1-10):

EoSD: 8 (on Normal; not available on Easy)
PCB: 5
IN: 6 (drops to 4 during the final boss's survival cards)
PoFV: 7
MoF: 8
SA: Unknown
UFO: Unknown
TD: Haven't yet played

As to why PCB's meter is so low, I realized while I was watching that video of Stage 6 that half of Yuyuko's spell cards didn't require me to just bomb my way to victory. Terror and adrenalin more or less kept me from straightening out my thoughts.

[Crescent Pulsar R]

IN and TD's easy is, well, pretty easy. I could probably get through them without using a single bomb. (Well, I did with TD, but I haven't gotten back around to IN since I opened up the extra stage to try.) I couldn't tell you my rate of bombing for MoF and SA because I try not to bomb at all, seeing as the bomb in those games subtract from your attack power.

What I need to do is actually continue so I can at least clear the sixth stage of some of these games, 'cause then I'd be able to practice the stage or the spell cards. <_<;