Play a bunch of different games before trying a 1cc Normal on one, or the other way around?

[Meneluma]

What do you think?
Just beat UFO on Normal with continues and had a few okayish 1cc runs that reached stage 5 boss-stage 6, I heard that it wouldn't be the most advisable game for a first 1cc by a long shot, but then I wasn't actually comparing them by difficulty when making my first pick.

Should I try to hack away at UFO for full closure or try out some other games before going for 1cc on anything?

[Groen90]

I would start with EoSD if I were you, just because it's the first of the windows games and it has no gimmick like the ufos, special character abilities or other mechanics unique to other games, and you can focus on shooting and dodging without thinking about other stuff.

[Valkoria]

A lot of people would agree with UFO is one of the top 2 hardest games to 1cc, so its entirely up to you. Imo I'd just play all of them in order and 1cc them all if you like the series.

[Meneluma]

Originally posted by Sicris:

Actually UFO is pretty easy to 1cc as long as you farm a ton of 1ups within the first 3 levels. You can pretty much max out the counter by stage 3. And you can constant bomb stage 4 without much worry as it's stupidly easy to get more lives there which yields even more bombs.

It's not the easiest to 1cc, not even close; but it's definitely no where near as hard as people say it is. It is only hard if you don't max out your lives by stage 3, then it's almost on par with SA. But if you do max out your lives by stage 3 then PCB, SA, LoLK, IN, SoEW, and even EoSD I would consider harder.

Resetting to more of less take no damage one the first two stages was pretty much my whole first part of the plan from when I tried to 1cc just to have more lives at the final spell card on the last boss. Yes, I hate that attack so much I actually thought 1cc was a better plan because there is no spell practice. While now I guess 1cc is just an optional option now.

I tend to get the life bar to 4 stars after stage 1 and about 6 on stage 2. (Using only two bombs to avoid risks on some of the spells the second boss has to reset less)
Stage 3 is where I really start to see the possibility of maxing out on health, but don't try to do it often, stage 4 seems like a better spot for that. On stage three the optimal UFO route I had involved quickly catching a bunch of reds and filling it up very fast before the boss shows up killing it via the dialogue box. Not trying that much especially if I had to reset the first stages a bunch.

I'd really like to hear your idea of when switching to green UFOs is viable, I only really do that only on stage 6 because there is one free green one at the start, and having three bombs is my only chance at getting to the last spell card unharmed because the nonspells are rather hard along with the star spell.

Edit. Oh yeah and I'm playing Reimu B mostly, not sure how that adds up to difficulty. I see the potential in Marisa A with infinite pierce, good damage and relatively good manual tracking for the bosses by unfocusing when out of reach focused, though her bomb sucks for non stationary bosses and her high movement speed tends to get me killed trying to on and off the focus. Plus being rather bad if one half of the screen gets flooded with bullets and you get stuck not clearning that.
Marisa B seems awful with how there are about 4 attacks total that have you behind a boss.
I don't get how Sanae B is so universally loved by eveyone on the internet, the DPS for bosses seems bad given half of the toads don't focus at full power and they don't aim that well, especially bad in sections like the one after the stage 3 mid-boss where I focus on killing those big fairies as soon as they spawn. The toads prove quite hard to aim for quick kills there. And for her "insta-skip bomb" I don't see it being that much more damaging compared to Fantasy Seal if you go point blank during the invincibility to minimize amulet travel time.
Am I playing her wrong?

[Meneluma]

Originally posted by Sicris:

Wow That is a bit to much to process so I'll respond to what stands out.

Yeah, sorry maybe that was a bit too much detail.
I already have practice unlocked for everything Easy/Normal for Reimu B on my own save, but thanks for the boss rush suggestion, I should try to clear that before trying a proper 1cc, and it is handy given you cut right to the bosses for practice too.
It is weird you mention needing lots of bombs for Murasa's survival, it really stacks up only at the end where you only need one really... I guess I'm too used to a small hitbox to find Murasa not that bad overall.

I won't abandon the idea of UFO 1cc, but I think I should stock up on a few other games too since I won't have internet for a month or two moving out, I'll take your offer on Double Spoiler just to learn not to suck on that spell.

But I'm open for other suggestions, mostly interested in the least RNG nonsense, mechanically interesting ones (lots of great unique spellcards/fun gimmicks). I guess that is how I jumped into UFO first not reading into difficulty precautions and the like.

Don't mention SA though, I've heard things about it, scary things, while I enjoy hard games, and beat them to some extent, I don't have the aptitude for them, so I have to resort to determination to get through also taking like 3x longer than other people. UFO will keep me busy on that front for a while.

Edit. Cleared a 1cc Normal UFO boss rush somehow, even though the boss rush gives a harder final boss with being far less generous with extra lives.
Maybe I should stop resetting the first three stages of a Normal 1cc run so much...

[Repugnant Human]

Originally posted by Wishmaker_Latias:

Don't mention SA though, I've heard things about it, scary things, while I enjoy hard games, and beat them to some extent, I don't have the aptitude for them, so I have to resort to determination to get through also taking like 3x longer than other people.

It's not that hard, at least not unfairly hard, everything is well balanced. Hey, moreover, I'd easily name Rin the best boss of the entire series! Great spellcards and plotwise very solid character.
I'm even still salty to get playable certain overused person instead of her in TD.

[Meneluma]

Originally posted by Accingite vos:

It's not that hard, at least not unfairly hard, everything is well balanced. Hey, moreover, I'd easily name Rin the best boss of the entire series! Great spellcards and plotwise very solid character.
I'm even still salty to get playable certain overused person instead of her in TD.

From what I heard LoLK-hard for all the wrong reasons, SA-hard for all the right reasons
But then again when it came down to people picking out the single hardest one SA pretty much always gets mentioned, both for 1cc and the EX stage.

Anyway I finally did UFO 1cc and it took like 80 hours adding a few from a different computer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_iPo57fPus
Thanks for the boss rush suggestion, doing that first was good for morale.
Though the final attack can still go to hell though...

I guess ignoring SA it can't go worse from there. (Ok, I still have the EX stage to deal with, but I reached the midboss and saw what I'll be dealing with, I'd rather play a few other games first before commiting possibly another 80 hours to beat that one stage)

[ChurchGorilla]

Will anyone ever beat Gengetu Rape Time legit ?

[Meneluma]

Originally posted by Sicris:

Originally posted by Wishmaker_Latias:

From what I heard LoLK-hard for all the wrong reasons,

ZUN pretty much said "I wanna be the guy" was part of the inspiration for making the game that way. He also said he will probably never do it again.

I don't get how someone would settle for anything less than checkpoints if it is really like I wanna be the fangame.
My experience with those types of games is killing the final boss, looking at the death counter, seeing 12k-18k deaths, saying "what an experience" and not playing it again.

Originally posted by Sicris:

Hate to break it to you but most people won't count that as a 1cc run cuz you used the mod that showed the actual bullet sizes. I mean yea you can always turn the mod off and It'll appear normal on the replay but generally it's not accepted as a 1cc normal run cuz it's technically easier.

If this is one's as bad as modded in extra lives then the validity of everyone's recording from a replay comes into question, since unlike most other mods, this one doesn't break the replay if you view without it.
It is really easy to be dishonest with this, while I'd point out even if I used clear tape on my monitor to beat an invisible maze where you are on a time limit if it is incorporated into a normal run.
I know speedrunning communities are very picky about how your recording should be with controller cams and even input logs. So naturally the only way to be 100% sure someone doesn't use any mods would be to have a no cuts recording title screen-ending cutscene instead of a replay.
Anyway I'll try not using that starting the next game, even though my first impression that grazing is just a means to say that "the hitboxes aren't bullcrap, it is a game mechanic" still stays.
But really, is there a list of what is allowed and what is not? Increased transparency for season items is HSiFS sounds like it should also be up there. Because from what I've gathered from the demo, the BG is somewhere on the level of multicolored vomit being splattered on a marble floor and even more pick up items coming at you in a giant cloud to hide bullets in.

Rule of thumb to go by for 1ccing this game in particular. If you even have a 50% chance of dying on a spell card on stage 4 and up, bomb it. Don't even try to capture it just bomb it. It's not worth the risk. Only capture cards that you have a 80% chance of success and up with. For everything else in between, bomb it anyway if you can spare it; which in this game you usually can if you stockpiled them in the early levels.

My bomb route is rather interesting, too bad annotations are no longer possible to add.

It went the extra mile of safety bombing omen of purple clouds (My capture rate for it is decent enough since capturing that was part of my continues strategy) Normally I rely on having three bombs which go for Star Maelstrom and the two non spells near it, and when I have just two I try to capture SM because if I didn't have a bomb for the next non spell I'd be dead anyway. Overall I don't care about bombs getting deeper into the fight because they start to turn useless(even though death defying by bombing did give me the run) and having lives is more important than bombs for the final attack.
With Murasa being rather easy I only try to bomb the vortex, and the first anchor if I can spare it. Sinker ghost is not that terrible, I captured it a few times on my other computer, but dying once or bombing isn't the end of the word either.
Shou I bombed a lot anyway, and a bomb won't spare me from doing the second non spell like it does with the third, I even bomb the mid boss spell and the final swarm of enemies before the boss usually. That is why both pagoda have a similar cap rate in spite of the first one being easy.

Edit.
I tried it without any patches not launching THCRAP whatsoever and got to the final spell card(~23% HP left) overall being a rather I'll just see what the hitboxes look like run with lots of mistakes all over the shop.
I wouldn't say the bigger looking bullets are that much harder, Heavenly Net Sandbag is even more stupid than it used to be, not a problem since I bomb it anyway,
Devil's Recitation will be much harder to capture though.
But overall I think I can do it since it is hardly different for the most part.
In the end it comes down to not being chewed up by the final attack, which doesn't change one bit.

[Meneluma]

Originally posted by Sicris:

The universally agreed upon requirements by everyone is pretty much no using tools that affect gameplay, the framerate drop can't be below 2% in the replay, and you must complete stage 6 (if you get cut off at stage 5 in LLS or IN then it's not a 1cc run), and you can't use a continue. Increasing the amount of starting lives in the options menu for the earlier games is also considered a no-no.

The framerate drop can't be below 2%? On a 60 fps game that would mean 57 in not allowed and 58 is a gray area. Dialogue popup+ boss stylishly entering the screen usually brings it down to 58 from what I remember.
Anyway, I've done another UFO run running the game through the original launcher without any alterations and translations.
I tried capturing the run as I did it instead of a replay, but a full run even reduced to 480p still managed to be a bit over 2GB meaning it didn't save, so I had to record the replay in two parts. Still uploads slow as hell though. Should be up at some point for me to link it.
Unless using xbox controllers is another unwritten no-no, at which point I give up.

Seriously I love touhou. But the games are soooo broken. There's the Marisa/Alice glitch in Imperishable Night, there's the winter subweapon stack glitch in Hidden Star, the list goes on and on. Anything associated with Marisa is bound to be broken, it's practically a tradition at this point.

When I read broken I thought of it like infinite season reuses, which were sort of advertised in the tutorial messages as proof of skill, at least it is sort of known in a way. The DPS on that other Marisa bug though, like what, why, what sorcery is that(oh wait, it is Marisa, don't answer) reading through UFO patch notes I noticed that far lesser things were patched, how did that slide?

DDC bug collection, I'd rather not watch, I was going to try it next, best not to get tempted by cheese.

[ChurchGorilla]

Originally posted by Sicris:

I tried to find a video of the Marisa/Alice DPS bug from Imperishable Night but couldn't find one.

Got ya covered
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eeud2HOUnk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6inJbYdcDg

[Meneluma]

Originally posted by Sicris:

Point Device Mode is with checkpoints. You have zero lives and every time you die you go back to the last checkpoint with slightly less power than before. It's part of the reason replays are not saved and why it's the "training wheels" mode. Legacy Mode plays like other touhou games.

Assuming the checkpoints remain passed even if you close the game I wouldn't say point device sounds that bad, even if you play on higher difficulties, not having to redo stages 1-5 just to have another shot at 6 if you quit without finishing it.
Something the IWBT fangames at least do right not giving you limited lives and continues unlike most games seeking to be hard.

Originally posted by Sicris:

You are better off recording the replay, it's what most people do. Capturing it live may make the framerate drop more on some PC's. What are you using Fraps? If you have an Nvidia card try shadowplay instead. or hell use the new video capture feature in windows 10. Both take up less HDD space than Fraps.

OBS Studio, I like that, and I just noticed that my chosen length to quality ratio wasn't the max for length. Shadowplay doesn't support that much games really, it literally did not detect a single one for me, because really I play all of the current gen big titles on a PS4. And what's left here are a bunch of old low spec games and weird ones you can't find anywhere else.

You can use a 360 controller. No idea why you would want to as the game is much harder that way but you can use it.

Doing spirals is easier on a controller, I honestly expected more spells like Most Valuable Vajra, I even don't mind the disorienting spinning after Super Hexagon and all of its attempts to make you sick. I actually quite liked the lasers too, and if there's something that people don't seem to like in UFO, it is the lasers, but the lasers are easy to read :(
I remember trying Undertale with a keyboard and it feeling rather weird, the keyboard actually was more useful for the non-standard bullet hell parts like the ones with platforming, but moving around freely was a pain. Since touhou has no stupid gimmicks on that level for the most part, it seems wiser to use a controller(plus I've sank over 90 hours into it already)

Marisa/Alice DPS bug from Imperishable Night

Why is that one broken then, based on the first vid it looks like some buff spell can be stacked to infinity, but reading the descrpition of the cannon doesn't mention anything of the sort.

Either way this finally uploaded meaning this time I'm done for real, and even though the upload took an eternity, the quality seems to have tanked harder than I intended it to for some reason, probably would be better record individual levels in higher quality for next time and edit around some more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xrrOpL4wRM

I wouldn't recommend DDC next honestly. It's my personal opinion but I find it to be the 2nd weakest "main" game in the entire series (weakest for me being SoEW, also not counting spinoffs). I like it, but I love almost every other game way more. Of course opinions will vary, it may end up being your favorite game. I'm sure it's someone's favorite.

Well you should explain why you dislike it, or not like it as much, because if I'd take everyone's word on what not to play, that would pretty much write off about half of the mainline games at this point.
The first five get ignored for being that old you need an emulator to play(with the first ones having a layer of jank on top)
PoFV getting slack for RNG.
LoTK for being I Wanna be the Shrine Maiden
SA for being trauma for life
HSiFS having overall dislikes for various reasons, just browse the forum. (The choice of background style and colours was a bad first impession for me, but I'd probably get over that after a while, just that the effects have a pretty high bar to reach with how cool stage 3 of UFO was flying around the outer hull of the ship seeing it in different angles, and that local eclipse durning Nazrin's midboss phase, just lovely)
Probably add a few other games based on the completely subjective notion of the plot/characters suck
Yeah the list is long, ask someone else and you'll get told that anything with "gameplay gimmicks" sucks too.

[ChurchGorilla]

Originally posted by Wishmaker_Latias:

Something the IWBT fangames at least do right not giving you limited lives and continues unlike most games seeking to be hard.

IWBT may give you infinite health but you need it since the game is absolute trial and error. Touhou game on the other hand are theoriatically beatable on the first try (and considering that they're pretty easy compared to other bullet hells I wouldn't be surprised if some Cave players did nail it on their first try)

Originally posted by Wishmaker_Latias:

Why is that one broken then, based on the first vid it looks like some buff spell can be stacked to infinity, but reading the descrpition of the cannon doesn't mention anything of the sort.

Malice cannon is a bug due to quickly switching between focused and unfocused mode and thus massively amplifiyng the damage. It isn't as brutal as the 3.0-3.95 glitch but it's still ridiculous.

Originally posted by Wishmaker_Latias:

I actually quite liked the lasers too, and if there's something that people don't seem to like in UFO, it is the lasers, but the lasers are easy to read

Normal lasers aren't too bad but the worst ones are curved lasers. Prismriver sisters with Sakuya is absolute hell because of that.

Originally posted by Wishmaker_Latias:

Yeah the list is long, ask someone else and you'll get told that anything with "gameplay gimmicks" sucks too.

It's actually the gimmicks that make the games pretty unique and fun (besides the music, boss design, lore and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ yet somehow lovely art) but they get pretty shoddy in future installments.
Have you tried the photo games ? They're arguably the most solid games of the entire series.

[Meneluma]

Originally posted by GMGMaker:

IWBT may give you infinite health but you need it since the game is absolute trial and error. Touhou game on the other hand are theoriatically beatable on the first try (and considering that they're pretty easy compared to other bullet hells I wouldn't be surprised if some Cave players did nail it on their first try)

Part of why mentioned infinite lives being good because I recently had a little trouble with Eryi's Action EX mode, normally it is a platformer, but the last two bosses in EX are bullet hell.
The bullet hell isn't the most difficult, the person who said I'll have no troubles with touhou after I beat that should have had their head checked.
But the catch is that in EX mode you're given just 30 lives and you die in one hit to everything,
So to have a few attempts at the last bosses, you have to clear nine stages first, and you get as many lives you have remaining to do the two bullet hell bosses, and if you run out of lives, you have to spend 40 minutes getting back there. And the patterns do take a lot of lives getting used to.

Functionally touhou games work a little like that, I didn't very much like the idea of having to to stages 1-5 again just practice the boss of stage 6 because there is no spell practice and it does not unlock level practice until you actually clear that stage.
And if you fail to beat the boss in a few hours and have to turn off your computer you have to redo 1-5 again to practice some more.
For a moment i actually thought pointdevice mode would be a nice refresher where I don't have to retread old ground when not doing 1cc, if the checkpoints are permanent, but then I realized a game with spell practice would be about as nice too.

Have you tried the photo games ? They're arguably the most solid games of the entire series.

I didn't. So far I just played UFO and the demo for HSiFS(which I enjoyed and will get it sometime later to support the dev regardless if anyone barges in and calls it crap)
So I'm pretty open for suggestions on what to play next. (Since the UFO EX stage can wait a bit because I don't hate myself that much to do it without taking a little break first)

[ChurchGorilla]

In the older titles you can use mods to simulate spell practice but generally you can spam bombs freely on stage 5 and 6 as all of the games are pretty generous with bombs.

Also you really should play Shoot the Bullet. Really freaking great game with unique spell patterns (my personal favorite being the Meiling's close up shotgun blast spellcard

[Meneluma]

Originally posted by GMGMaker:

Also you really should play Shoot the Bullet. Really freaking great game with unique spell patterns (my personal favorite being the Meiling's close up shotgun blast spellcard

It seems like an interesting thing to play on the side, judging that it works differently than the standard 6+1 stage formula. At least I hope it is suitable as a side activity, if you are done with a certain scene, does that mean you are done and won't be forced to redo it again if you don't want?

As for the main focus I'm deciding between EoSD(the high praise I keep hearing) and Fairy Wars (It just sounds fun, and nothing else was really suggested for that matter)

Originally posted by Sicris:

Oh I never said I disliked it or that it's not worth playing. I just would not pick it first because it's lackluster compared to the rest of the series. I honestly would play touhou 1, 3-13, 15,16 over it. I find it too gimmicky if that makes any sence. All the spellcards rely on gimmicks and most of the difficulty is from the gimmicks themselves rather than the patterns (hitbox/bullet changing size, controls getting flipped, etc, etc.)

Yeah, I'll ignore for now then, sounds like I'll have the same issue like I had with Undertale's gimmicks. Thanks for the tip.

The quality problem is because of the way you uploaded it.

So record at least in 720p to keep the original framefrate and not lose quality, gotcha.

I'll be honest with you it took me over a year to beat the game. Most of that time was spent playing it like every other touhou game which doesn't work due to the scarcity of lives in the later levels. However when I came up with this method and put it into practice it took me only a few attempts. UFO really isn't as hard to 1cc as people make it out to be, they are just playing it ineffectively.

(Doubt I'm the first to think of doing it this way but I did come up with it on my own without the help of the internet.)

Scarcity of lives for the final stage is very noticeable, which is why my original intent to do 1cc was to actually have enough lives to beat the game, but then I realized the unlock criteria for EX so had to do it anyway.

And it is hard to compare times in that format, it took me 4 weeks time overall to do it. But with total time spent playing ReimuB being about 82 hours(45 just to beat the game normally) The seven hours total playing other characters didn't really help much.

From what I understand why people rate UFO as hard are:
-Lasers (I'd argue this one)
-UFOs (*Silent approval*)
-No easy to unlock practice without modding the game(Yes, totally this, after seeing the amount of stars Nue has I'm positive I'll need to go for some skip options to practice those spells)