Touhou Draft - Yet Again.

[Sifer]

Thanks for the criticism Bal!

I will look at mine and the others and apply those tips to my future replays.

Edited September 16, 2014 by Sifer

[Kay]

Thanks for the advice, zak!

[Balcerzak]

How does scoring work in the next game?

Okay, I'm somewhat lateish on posting this, but there's still time before your replays and you got some cursory answers in the FFTF chat thread, so I don't feel too guilty. The short version is "It's complicated, but not dying or bombing and staying unfocused will increase your score exponentially".

The long version is this game is all about manipulating your Cherry. You know how in the last game point items were the bulk of your total score, and they had a fixed value (modified by where you collected on the screen ofc.) In this game the maximum value of point items is variable, and tied to the current level of your Cherry meter (unless your cherry meter is below 50000, in which case they use that value). So while collecting point items is still top dog, as far as the overall contribution to your score goes (having a sky-high Cherry is useless if you don't bank in on it, after all), what really separates the wheat from the chaff in terms of a good high-scoring run will be related to how well the Cherry management is handled. Also worth noting, is that unlike last game, the dropoff for missing the POC is much more drastic. Just shy of the POC you're only going to get at maximum about 1/5 of your Cherry Value + 40000 points for any given point item. If it's down at the bottom of the screen, just about 1/5 of your Cherry value.

[spoiler=images of point item decay in action]

171310/5+40000 = 74262, approx what you see here

303930/5+40000 = 100786, approx what you see here

If this wasn't complicated enough, there's another level of complexity to the Cherry system. You cannot increase your Cherry indefinitely, it is capped to a maximum value, although this value can, with effort, be raised. You'll probably hit Cherry Max at some point in Stage 2, if you're doing everything correctly. So before we talk about how to raise your Cherry Max, we'll first talk about how you can bring your current Cherry level up to meet this value.

How you increase your cherry is, for the most part, relatively straightforward. Shooting unfocused increases your Cherry by about 10/shot vs popcorn enemies, shooting focused increases your cherry by 0/shot vs popcorn enemies. (Caveat: Marisa's Illusion Lasers seem to grant way more Cherry than usual this way. Clearing the first wave of fairies on stage 1 saw her net like 390 Cherry, compared to the usually 120-140 Cherry). Against things that take longer to kill (e.g. bosses) it's harder to get direct evidence, but it seems to be something like if you're gaining 1000 Cherry/second unfocused, you probably get only 100 Cherry/second focused. I might record one of my replays and try actually timing these numbers, but treat it as a general rule of thumb and you can't go that wrong. Defeating Cirno and midboss Chen yield 10000 Cherry (this is above and beyond the Cherry earned from the star items resulting from bullet cancel. All other bosses only give star item Cherry. Each star item is worth 20 cherry.) The other way of increasing your Cherry, and frankly the most efficient way, it to collect Cherry items. Cherry items come in two flavors, big pink square items, and tiny sliver petal items. I believe the tiny petals give you 30 Cherry all the time regardless of anything. With that said, you'll only ever see the tiny petal items in two instances in the game. Instance one, you've just broken your Border, clearing all bullets on the screen and replacing them with petal items. Instance two, you are currently squaring off against Resurrection Butterfly and Yuyuko is shedding. The far more common of the Cherry items is the regular sized pink square item, which is worth 1000 Cherry flat, plus a 100 per captured spellcard bonus, meaning that in stage 6 you can be collecting those bad boys for something ridiculous like 3000 Cherry a pop if you played your cards right.

Okay, that's all well and good, you say, but it's pointless right? Once I reach the Cherry Max, there's no point collecting more Cherry. WRONG. When you're at Cherry Max, collecting Cherry Items is worth 50000 (at POC, and diminishing returns below it like a point item). Further, whenever you bomb or die you lose Cherry. This value depends on your character, and maybe even your shot type, and it is somewhat hard to get decent empirical testing due to items autocollecting or cherry gained from firing during a bomb. However, I ran some tests on Normal Stage 1 and it seems that Reimu's Cherry value is reduced to ~85% of it's pre-bomb value after a bomb, Sakura's Cherry goes down to ~75% of previous, and Marisa's goes down to ~65%. Upon a death Reimu and Marisa lose 50% of their Cherry, while Sakura is set at ~67% of her prior value. Cherry loss due to death appears to be capped to a maximum value of 60000 for Sakura and 100000 for Marisa and Reimu. So, provided you're not capable of performing a perfect run, you're going to need to get your Cherry value back up to its maximum at some point during the run.

Not only that, but as mentioned, the Cherry Max cap can be increased. This is done exclusively through the Border mechanic. When you're filling up your Cherry, you'll see numbers increasing atop your current Cherry, up to the point where it hits 50000. At that point the numbers turn red, you're surrounded by a Border, and the numbers will count down. While you have a Border around you, every graze you make while unfocused will add 80 to Cherry Max, and every graze you make while focused will add 30. If you survive till the end without breaking the border, you will add a flat 10000 to Cherry Max in addition to giving you a score bonus equal to your current Cherry * 10. (N.B. After a Border has successfully run to completion there are a few frames of invincibility you can exploit. Getting hit with a bullet will not kill you, and it will not ruin any Spellcard bonus you are in the middle of trying to capture. This is unreliable to the extreme, but situationally useful.) A Border will break if you collide with a bullet, or if you attempt to bomb (it will not take a bomb away from your stock). When the Border breaks, it turns all bullets on-screen into Cherry Petal items. Border Grazes and Border Bonuses are the only way to increase Cherry Max.

[spoiler=breaking a border, see the little petal items]

In addition to being vital to increasing your Cherry Max, Grazing is useful for much the same reasons as it was in Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil, although the formulae have been tweaked some. Each bullet grazed will add a flat 2000 to your score (this is not added in a lump sum, but rather ramps up over about 0.5 seconds). It doesn't matter whether you're focused or unfocused here, it's 2000 regardless. Your Graze count is also permanently incremented, and this has other, more significant effect on your score.

For instance, Graze has the direct impact on how much a Star Item will be worth in points. Just like in Scarlet Devil, Star Items are created when bullets are canceled by: defeating an enemy's (non)card, defeating certain enemies (stage 4 fairies come to mind), bombing. As mentioned previously, Star Items provide minimal cherry, at 20 per item. Star Items also provide score according to the formula 300 + 10*floor(graze/40). The Wiki claims that, like in Scarlet Devil, Star Items created from bombs are treated differently, but I have proof to the contrary, at least for Sakuya B. (For reference the wiki claims bomb items are only a flat 100 points period and a flat 5 Cherry. Do not trust this.) On Stage 6 defeating Yuyuko's (non)spells will produce modified Cherry Items instead of Star Items during the bullet cancel. These modified Cherry Items look like the standard big Cherry Items, but only provide 100 Cherry, and increase your score by the same amount they would have had they been Star Items.

[spoiler=example star item points pictures, plus proof bomb star items are just normal star items]

1297/40*10+300 = 620 as pictured

1808/40*10+300 = 750 as pictured

Unlike in Scarlet Devil, point items will only ever give you 10 points. They won't increase in value... for the simple reason that once you're at full power, they cease to exist. Any Power Items on-screen are turned into Cherry Items, and things that would ordinarily drop a Power Item will now drop a Cherry Item.

Bullet Bonus appears to be generated very similarly to Scarlet Devil, each bullet is worth 2000 + 20 * bullet number beyond the first bullet cancelled. It's hard to tell, though, as they're not generally lined up on top of each other so tracking them down is difficult. It might be 10 * number of canceled, or something...

Spellcard Bonuses are a little more complicated, in that not only do they decrease at a fixed rate from their base value, but their value can actually be increased. I'm having some trouble verifying the exact formula given, but the wiki claims that each graze performed during a Spellcard will increase the Spellcard bonus by floor(Cherry/1500)*20+2500. The base points for spellcards are: 2200000 for Lingering Cold, 2400000 for Other Letty spells, 2600000 for stage 2 spells, 3000000 for stage 3 spells, 3500000 for stage 4 spells, 4000000 for stage 5 spells, 5000000 for stage 6 spells (except 3000000 for Resurrection Butterfly).

Finally, the Clear Bonuses. Unlike in Scarlet Devil they aren't multiplicative with Point Items gathered, the only multiplications are Difficulty or Initial Resource adjustment penalties. The Bonus is Stage * 1000000 + Point Items (collected current stage only) * 50000 + Graze (collected current stage only) * 500 + Cherry Max * 10. The Game Clear Bonus adds 20000000 for each extra life in stock and 4000000 for each bomb in stock.

Soooo, long story short? My personal opinion is:

Point Items > Current Cherry == Lives/Bombs in Stock > Cherry Max/Unbroken Borders > Spellcard Bonus > Bullet Bonus > non-Bordered non-Spellcard Grazes.

As always, I welcome anyone more experienced to come weigh in and set the record straight if I've flubbed up somewhere.

[Scarlet]

The Cherry gain for shooting enemies and the Cherry penalty for bombing/dying definitely depends on your character and shot type.

Cherry gain:

ReimuA: Bad

ReimuB: Great

MarisaA: Amazing

MarisaB: Decent

SakuyaA: Terrible

SakuyaB: Good

Cherry loss when bombing:

ReimuA: 19.95% unfocused, 21.75% focused

ReimuB: 16.8% unfocused, 16.625% focused

MarisaA: 30.0% unfocused, 32.5% focused

MarisaB: 34.5% unfocused, 40.8% focused

SakuyaA: 28.0% unfocused, 28.75% focused

SakuyaB: 25.6% unfocused, 28.5% focused

(As a rule of thumb, with the exception of ReimuB, bombing focused will cost you slightly more Cherry, but also invoke a different bomb that usually gives you slightly more invincibility frames.

These penalties are reduced by 50% on Hard and by 75% on Lunatic. If your name isn't Reimu, these values are so absurdly huge that a bomb can and often will actually cost you more Cherry than simply dying would have. Bombing twice in a row usually kills your score completely dead.)

Cherry loss when dying:

Reimu: 50%, capped at 100k

Marisa: 50%, capped at 100k

Sakuya: 33%, capped at 60k

[Balcerzak]

these values are so absurdly huge that a bomb can and often will actually cost you more Cherry than simply dying would have.

Can confirm :(

		PfctSq	death	death	PfctSq	PfctSq	death	PrvtSq	PrvtSq	death	death	PrvtSq	PrvtSq	death	PrvtSq	death	death	PrvtSq	death	PrvtSq	PrvtSq
Cherry Before	303930	236090	315070	257180	331290	309530	252390	325060	300600	318720	258720	232830	352020	398690	420470	363710	305970	294830	294040	362050
Cherry After	226010	176090	255070	213990	264910	249530	196920	246280	240630	258720	185780	174170	292070	306240	360470	303710	225500	234840	230790	299350
Percent Left	74.36%	74.59%	80.96%	83.21%	79.96%	80.62%	78.02%	75.76%	80.05%	81.17%	71.81%	74.81%	82.97%	76.81%	85.73%	83.50%	73.70%	79.65%	78.49%	82.68%
Raw Cherry Loss	77920	60000	60000	43190	66380	60000	55470	78780	59970	60000	72940	58660	59950	92450	60000	60000	80470	59990	63250	62700

Also, it's good to see the solid numbers more or less backing up my rough estimates.

That all being said...

I really ought to stress that considering Lives are 20 mil each, even if you lose an extra 30k Cherry from bombing you're still coming out ahead, as that would need to affect something like 600 point items worth of collections to offset.

Actually, let's even do the following thought experiment: Your Max Cherry is 400000 (twice its starting value at the beginning of the game, a modest goal). During Butterfly Resurrection Yuyuko drops 10 point items every wave and there are (I believe) 9 waves of drops. Out of the 90 possible, lets say you can expect to collect 75 of them, and they're all collected at their full value (unlikely assumption, you're not going to have Border up 100% of the time, and I highly doubt you're dodging this spell above the POC line... although that would be awesome as fuck to see.) That would be 30 mil points. Let's say though that you suck really badly at this spell, and need to bomb 4 times to survive it as Sakuya. Ignoring the fact that Yuyuko also drops Cherry items to help pad out the cost, and ignoring the fact that not all 75 point items are going to be collected at the lowest value of 400000*(.715)^4 = 104540, let's just assume they are. The net loss in score from point items is 75 * (400000-104540) = 22.2 mil, roughly. That's just slightly over the cost of not bombing at all but dying because you were trying to greed your way through it.

...Now obviously not bombing is way better, as not only do you get the higher point values but also the spellcard bonus and everything else good that comes of being perfect. Even still, with our set of assumptions stacking the deck against you (weeell, except for the fairly conservative Cherry Max value I guess... For a Cherry Max of 500k it increases to a 27.7 mil deficit, for 600k a 33.2 mil one).

Long story short. Lives are cash money, yo. This actually kind of blew my mind as I was working it out just now, and I feel bad for not attempting to focus on quality deathbombing in this game.

[Scarlet]

I really ought to stress that considering Lives are 20 mil each, even if you lose an extra 30k Cherry from bombing you're still coming out ahead, as that would need to affect something like 600 point items worth of collections to offset.

While this is true for the average player, one thing to keep in mind is that you can get more lives throughout one run of the game than the cap (8) allows you to hold. Extends gained when you already have 8 lives in stock are converted to bombs, which are worth "only" 4 million points.

If you die at some point midway through the game (Stage 4 or 5 most notably, which also contain by far the largest amount of point items), you can simply regain that lost life later and, in theory, still finish with 8 lives in stock for the 160 million point bonus, making the Cherry loss much more important in comparison, especially when a lot of point items are coming up (again, Stage 4 and 5 both have tons).

[Balcerzak]

Quite so. Extends are at 50, 125, 200, 300, 450, 800, 1000, 1200, 1400, etc. It should be consistently manageable to attain 1200, while so far 1400 has been completely out of my reach. There are also the extra lives dropped by Alice and by Youmu. That's what, ten lives gained, plus the 2 in-stock you start with being 12 lives in-stock, vs a display limit of 8? There's pretty comfortably room for 4 deaths completely penalty-free (as adjudicated by the final score lives-bonus).

That said, I doubt anyone playing is at the level where they can slog through the ~32 minute marathon and only lose four lives. EoSD was only ~24 minutes, and is usually said to have easier bullet patterns than PCB (unless memory fails me), and I'm pretty sure all of us died more than four times in that.

So with that in mind, I also remembered something I wanted to comment on earlier, but was having trouble formulating the right way to explain it. Since you don't lose all of your Cherry instantaneously upon bombing (it rather decreases at a value over time, akin to a spellcard bonus), if you are near or can quickly cross the POC and there's going to be massive amounts of point items you will fail to collect (due to not having prepared a border ahead of time) (e.g. Stage 5 opener, Stage 6 opener, Stage 5 Youmu's end of stage bullet-spam honorguard) it can still be worth it to bomb for collection, as you'll be getting them all at near your Max Cherry rather than at the bomb penalty level, and then you'll have time to try to bring your Cherry level back up during the boss's (non)cards (or just relatively emptier sections of stage) before they drop their point items. This is to be sure very situational and relies heavily on judgement calls, and you probably won't know if you're making the right decision or not until after watching the replay, because let's face it, heat of the moment. Even so, missing out on tons of point items because they're falling off the screen simply to preserve your cherry rating also has the side effect of making those higher-level extends harder to reach. I will more than often err on the side of "fuck it, I'm bombing for points, even in PCB, this feels wrong but I'm doing it". Then again, I have been known to consistently make poor decisions, so... take this with a grain of salt.

[Scarlet]

Quite so. Extends are at 50, 125, 200, 300, 450, 800, 1000, 1200, 1400, etc. It should be consistently manageable to attain 1200, while so far 1400 has been completely out of my reach. There are also the extra lives dropped by Alice and by Youmu. That's what, ten lives gained, plus the 2 in-stock you start with being 12 lives in-stock, vs a display limit of 8? There's pretty comfortably room for 4 deaths completely penalty-free (as adjudicated by the final score lives-bonus).

As far as I'm concerned, 1200 already requires either some pretty good planning or lucky timing on borders; I usually only hit 1000 at some point during the Yuyuko fight.

Since you don't lose all of your Cherry instantaneously upon bombing (it rather decreases at a value over time, akin to a spellcard bonus),

Are you sure this isn't just a visual effect? I never really paid attention to this, but if that were true, that would indeed be interesting... ...mostly just for Reimu, though.

[Balcerzak]

As far as I'm concerned, 1200 already requires either some pretty good planning or lucky timing on borders; I usually only hit 1000 at some point during the Yuyuko fight.

Are you sure this isn't just a visual effect? I never really paid attention to this, but if that were true, that would indeed be interesting... ...mostly just for Reimu, though.

Hmm... I'll maybe review a few replays now that you bring it up, you might be right on that 1000 is more reasonable/reachable without a healthy dose of planning, luck, or willingness to bomb for point items.

As far as the slow decay on the bomb...

I started in the upper right at Cherry Max, and moved sort of counterclockwise around. You can track the yellow numbers after-images of the point items and it should verify the theory, though I guess it's possible that is also a display bug (in addition and complementary to it counting down on the lower left) but trying to watch the actual score counter increment itself is never something I look forward to. But the yellow text clearly shows it counting down from 300500 to 285310 etc. (You can also see the just-below POC value of ~100080 chilling there too.)

[Scarlet]

Okay, that's proof enough that you're right as far as I'm concerned. Nice find!

[Wen Yang]

Because I will be out of town for work right around the time this round is supposed to end, PCB round is hereby extended by 24 hours.

New Deadline: September 23rd, 12:00 PM GMT+7, or approximately 28 hours from now.

[Emeraldfox]

http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=34661

Iunno, if I keep this up this could only be a placeholder, or not. But yes, this is indeed my entry.

[Sifer]

http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=34663

didn't play much at all. exams and projects.

[Wen Yang]

Well, everyone submitted their entries, so I hereby declare the round closed!

1. Balcerzak - 20 points http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=34596

2. Kay - 17 points http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=34609

3. Akinaoki - 9 points http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=34621

4. Wen Yang - 6 points http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=34662

5. Emeraldfox - 3 points http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=34661

6. Sifer - 0 points http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=34663

Deadline for round 3, IN, is at September 30th, 12:00 PM GMT+7

[Autumn]

3rd and I didnt even try for PCB (Screw Reimu :'D **was practising for IN the whole time)

[Balcerzak]

Sifer, did you upload the wrong replay? That was an amazing Extra run, but...

[Scarlet]

1 billion points in Extra wtf

[Balcerzak]

My run, youtube version

My commentary on other people's runs:

[spoiler=Emerald Tips/Criticisms]

Sloppy form on the initial waves, while you manage to collect all the drops, you're often scooping the point items from just before they fall off, rather than at their max value. I think this is due to your rush to kill the fairies as soon as they spawn, rather than waiting for them to fly down into the center area a bit more. In the rest of the pre-Cirno section of the stage you do pretty decent on collection, although you miss at least 3 cherry items, and don't kill any of the cherry fairies in the final wave, which is going to set you back quite a bit. Still, because of your shot type, you're starting the Cirno fight at 24k Cherry+, which is good, but then you proceed to do pretty much the entire Cirno fight focused, which is bad. That kills your chance for a 2nd half of the stage border, meaning your first border will be during Letty. Still, pretty decent item collection despite the lack of border or full power, and you arrive at the boss with 119 power and 33 point items. You could ideally be full power here, and about 40 point items, but you're not far off from this mark. Again, you do the boss fight focused, which especially for these easy early bosses, is a easy way to nerf your potential to raise your cherry max, or really just your score in general. Up and until the point when you start losing lives I'm going to keep giving scoring tips, but then I'll try to shift to survival ones.

Anyway, you start out stage 2 at a meagre 95k Cherry. You could easily have 60k more, again due to the focused/unfocused effect. That's 60k less on just about every point item you collect, a HUGE effect, up and until you ram against Cherrymax. Running straight into a spawning fairy was an unfortunate combination of greed and imperfect awareness. A little more practice and familiarity with the stage will reduce these deaths (but they'll still show up to thwart you every so often). You recover well enough though, and get your second border, but there are no bullets anywhere to be grazed here, so the timing is quite bad. If possible you should have delayed it a bit for one of the waves of long blue bullet spitting fairies. You make it to mid-Chen with 19kCherry+/104kCherry/220kCherrymax and 56 point items. That means you collected 20 point items in the first half of the stage, which is pretty much ideal, but your cherry score is just in the tank (thanks to the early death and improper focus). Ouch. You should be hitting CherryMax at about this point. Whether you take Phoenix Egg focused or unfocused is a judgement call. If you're able to summon and finish a border before you clear the spellcard, you should do it, so you can get whatever juicy cherry+ would be lost when you likely capram at 50k from her 10k bonus and the star items. If not, it's better just to take it focused to avoid any silly slip-ups, imo. If you had taken the noncard unfocused you probably could have done the former, but as it is, the latter was the better way to go. During the 2nd half of the stage you collect 30 point items, which is about perfect pace, actually. Your POC technique is pretty good overall, as I noted in the Scarlet Devil write-up. You earn your 4th border at the start of Pentagram flight. Personally, I prefer to get one for the easier streaming during the following spellcard to pick up on nice graze, rather than the riskier grazing during a spellcard, but that might just be me. You handle the card with no trouble though and finally hit CherryMax. Following that you make very quick work of everything else Chen has to throw at you. Great job here (though you could still probably take some more parts unfocused, or doing a sort of focus/unfocus back-and-forth toggle when you need to make more precise movements).

You get a great Border post-first Alice in stage 3, which is where I like to get it for easier collection (though it might not be ideally placed for grazing). Unfortunately in 2nd Alice you run right into a bullet. It's usually an easy section, so I don't blame you for not bombing, or being prepared to deathbomb. Shit just happens sometimes. Your point item collection to this point is perfectly par, at 23 items, and thanks to your massive cherry gain shot type, you can get another border for this section of stage, even without having fought Alice2 unfocused. You have a little trouble killing the big fairies in time, and that makes you miss almost the whole last wave of little fairies, putting your point collection for that part of the stage at 57, whereas I managed 86, so a pretty big loss there. Aside from not having summoned an extra border in stage 1, like I mentioned, your Cherry Max is keeping pace, just 10k behind where mine was though, so very well played as far as that goes. Generally I like to try to summon a Border during Dutch Dolls, to help collect the drops when you pop the dolls familiars, but you weren't able to do so. That said, you shot type is so narrow, you seem to collect most of the ones that fall. I don't think breaking the border you get in the next non-spell was a good idea. You were already at CherryMax, and weren't really in any threat. Foggy London Dolls is honestly Alice's hardest spell, imo. You should just bomb it if you can't handle it reliably. Especially as Marisa, who has so few bombs that losing any to a death with unspent bombs is like getting kicked in the crotch. Not to mention, her bombs are so powerful they'll essentially skip the whole card. Instead you died twice to this spell. That's really probably a run killer. Shanghai dolls were handled just fine though.

You make next to no use of the border at the start of stage 4 for grazing. Those early bullets are actually pretty easy to graze with a little practice. Just, for future reference. You handle the aimed blue bullet fairies just fine, and get a convenient border for the 5-way shot fairies, though after it wears off you wait longer than I would have to bomb and race for the POC, still not a bad effort. You take a pretty uneven approach to handling the deathspinners, and I think it actually kills you twice. Stage practice this, it will help immeasurably. You leave a lot of them unkilled, and you bomb at a questionable time, imo. This section of stage sapped way too many resources. You made it to Lily White with 149 point items collected so far during the stage, that's about 35 less than I managed, in no small part due to letting so many spinners go unkilled, and just the opportunity costs from dying. Still, that's a pretty solid amout, thanks to a good border timing and some solid POC work. You lose quite a few point items from the second 5-prong fairy wave, but manage to get at least half of them I think, better than nothing. You safety-bomb in the waves of aimed bluebullet spam from the big fairies, I think simple streaming would have worked, though you might not have been able to kill or collect as much with as little spread as your shot type has. Unfortunately you die on the redbullet spam as you were out of bombs, so being able to stream these is still a skill you should work on. The bomb-fairy at the end unfortunately kills you as well, but at least you get revenge and she doesn't time out. Sadly the border you pick up here is perhaps the worst timed border ever. Your point item collection for the second half of stage 4 was only 176, which is about 100 below where you'd want it to be, but since you're struggling to survive it's perfectly acceptable. (Seriously though, Stage 4 is the bulk of all point items in game, you can nab 500 alone here with a little effort. That's almost twice the amount of point items you can get in any other stage, I think.) I have no advice for the keyboardist's opening nonspell, as I'm not really good at it either, but you shouldn't have died with 3 bombs in stock on your last life. Still, an overall good effort, even if you choked hard, like you admit.

[spoiler=Wen Yang Tips/Criticisms]

Immediate first problem is you're too busy dancing during the boring stage start and you accidentally most of the first wave while focused, losing some cherry. Your collection is weak here as well, as the homing shots seem to kill a lot of enemies in inopportune patterns. I swear you must have let 10k worth of cherry items drop and it made me so sad. You reach Cirno with 33 power, 10 points, and ~15k Cherry. That's subpar in all categories, about 10 missing power, almost 10k cherry, and a maybe a couple point items. You also fight her focused the whole time, ensuring you won't get a border during the stage section. Your collection improves a bit during the second half, but you still only end up with 102 power 25 points, easily fifteen below where you could be in each category. You get your first border during her final nonspell, but don't really graze much with it. Like Emerald, you take the whole fight focused, and this hurts you even worth than him. You come into stage 2 with 77k Cherry, as opposed to where you should be, nearly twice that value. You're also not even full power yet, which will hurt.

Your stage 2 first half border comes at an OK time, right at the blue bullet screenfill before Chen, but you don't really graze it much, if at all, so that's kind of a waste there. You collected 19 point items in the first half of the stage, which is actually pretty close to ideal, though, so good work there. Your Cherry+ was low enough that even with the Chen bonus to Cherry+ you don't get a border, so that puts you a little further behind on that front. When you do hit the mark to summon it, it's a great time, with the lined blue bullets coming out, but you don't end up streaming them, which is a lost opportunity. You also have let a few more point items drop than you'd like in the second half of the stage, collecting only about 22 of the ~30 available. You take the Chen fight extremely safe, staying focused the whole time, and close to the bottom. For Immortal Sage's Rumbling actually, the bottom isn't really the safest place to be, so you end up bombing that one, which beats dying to it, but will end up hurting later on. The timing of the bomb finishing her means there's no safe time to collect her point items, and you'll miss out on some bonus cherry on every cherry item. :( Better than dying though, I guess.

Your CherryMax at the start of stage 3 is only 230k, easily 20-30k below where it could be by this point. Just, putting out there some reference points. You suffer an unfortunate death to first Alice appearance right near the end. I'm not sure just what went wrong, if you thought she was going to die and didn't dodge, or just miscalculated your position, but that sucked a lot. Still, you can recover from it. Unfortunately, despite simply picking up the large point item from ending her and the large point item from your corpse to get back to full power, you bomb for collection, which as I mentioned in the Scarlet Devil write-up is a terrible thing to do, especially when you're still working on simple survival of the game, and not even high-scoring it. Please, you've got to work on fixing this habit. I'll keep bringing it up every time until you get better. You get a post-Alice Border though, making that section of stage relatively painfree and brainless, so good timing on that, imo. You handled second Alice like a champ, but weren't anywhere near a border for that section, so you safety bombed for survival and collection, which wasn't terrible and got you enough where you should have got a border soon after, but you neglected the cherry item drops, making your life much more difficult than it needed to be, and ultimately ending up in what seemed to be a greed death right before final Alice. Which you promptly followed up by a rage bomb. What a waste. :( Your item collection also suffered in the 2nd half stage segment, as you were unable to kill a majority of the final wave fairies as well as some of the other ones, due partly to the death. You got about 30 less than you could have, I think. You panick bomb in French Dolls, after the close call had already passed even I think. French Dolls is one of her easiest spells too, so that's unfortunate. You get a border just after Dutch Dolls, which is where you'd rather have had it probably, like I mentioned earlier for collecting the doll drops. I'm actually very impressed with your capture of London Dolls, in my opinion easily her hardest spell. You also handle Shanghai with ease, so good work there.

You don't even attempt to graze the bullets in the opening here, even when you've got a border up, which makes me a little sad, but I guess better safe than sorry. It should be easy though, so give it a few tries in practice mode. Homing shot allows for some pretty easy clear of this stage, though when you reach the 5 prong fairies it occasionally gets confused and goes for the wrong target. You end up bombing for points here, which wouldn't be bad except that you still need to get a 1cc, so you should save those resources for things that are going to kill you. You handle the death spinners pretty decently, for the most part, even grazing the red ones when you got a border. Good work! Unfortunately in a greed to get to the POC you run into one of the bullets left by the "weeping willow" types. You then revenge bomb, and then bomb again during the final waves of the mixed type spinners, which is a terrible waste of resources. Being at less than full power for a few waves won't kill you, and in fact the bullet clear from achieving full power can be a vital tool in working towards high scores, and the fact that you've always paired it with a bomb bullet clear is essentially wasting this free other means of gaining points. Anyway you get to Lily White with 397 point items total, meaning your stage 4 net so far is 203, which is stellar, I only managed 185. Sadly, you die and revenge bomb to a stray diamond bullet from Lily. You manage to proc a Border immediately after killing her, granting you the safest bomb collection ever, without having to worry about running into the death spinners or their kamikaze leavings. You don't really graze with it, but I guess that can be forgiven. You bomb for collection on the final waves, which again is really questionable, you shouldn't be doing that until you can full clear the game reliably, imo. You let almost all of the point items from the 2nd wave of the 5 prong fairies fall, which is really rough and should be avoided if you can, and then you die and revenge bomb near the end, which should be avoided even more. You have great streaming technique in the aimed blue bullet spam section, and even get a convenient border to autocollect for you. I think you successfully deathbomb during the final redbullet wave, or just wisely preventative bomb, so kudos there. Unfortunately you time everything wrong as far as killing the bomb fairy, meaning you're out a net of 2 bombs, 1 for the bomb you used and 1 for the bomb that didn't drop because you didn't kill it. Sad news indeed. You collect another ~200 point items in the second half of stage 4, which is good, but could still be massively improved (by about another 90 point items or so). You die to Violin-chan's opener, which I haven't practiced, so I'm not really qualified to give tips on. The revenge bomb is, as always, a waste. You greed rit into her hitbox trying to collect her drops though, which is always embarrassing, and you waste more resources with another revenge bomb, that doesn't even chip away at her health I don't think, because timing. Ouch. You also bomb this spell a second time for safety, and ten die near the end of it and ragebomb it again. 3 times bombing in one non-spell absolutely tanks your Cherry, killing the run essentially, and is just resources you can't afford to expend. Practice this more. I was in a similar boat against trumpet's opening nonspell, until I practiced, practiced, practiced. They can be overcome! You were doing a decent job streaming Phantom Dining, but messed up restreaming and broke a border. Then you waited too long and ran into one of the green herding bullets, ending the run. The Prismrivers claim another victim, RIP.

[spoiler=Akinaoki Tips/Criticisms]

Your strategy for the first four waves was a little unique, but it mostly worked, your rhythm was a little off for collection afterward but you still managed 34 power, 11 points, and ~20k Cherry+ by Cirno. Ideally you'd not have dropped as many Cherry items, but that just means it's going to be harder to get that border. Still, I'm happy you took Cirno on unfocused, as that should help you quite a lot... Except your handling of the post-Cirno stage 1 was atrocious. You didn't kill at least two of the large fairies, which are guaranteed Large power drops (plus a handleful of small power and other items) and you just let things fall left and right. You get to Letty with 45k Cherry+, which is good, but with only 78 power and 25 points. That's about 40-50 power below where you should be, and means you'll still be woefully low on power by stage 2 start. You're also around 15 point items down from where you'd like to be. You get your first border during Lingering Cold, which isn't the best spell for grazing. On the plus side, you seem to be using a mix of both unfocused shot as well as the standard "focus for bosses" mentality, so that is a huge positive on your end, and if you keep it up will only serve to aid you in scoring higher.

You start stage 2 at 100k Cherry, so far better than everyone, though Emerald's 95k is close, and due pretty much wholly to the superior gain his shot-type provides. Despite your dismal starting power, you manage pretty solid collection, and a bunch of big power drops get you up to speed pretty quickly as far as that goes. You get your border in time for the blue bulletspam wave right before Chen, but don't graze it much, it's kind of dangerous to do without breaking, I admit, which is why I prefer the streamable lines of blue bullets myself. You've collected 18 point items in the first half of stage 2, which considering your disadvantage due to power, pretty damn good work. You take Chen in that mix of focus and non-focus which grants you enough Cherry+ to get the border right after beating her, putting you ahead of Wen, who had similar timing on the pre-Chen border. You don't graze much with it, which is a bit of a shame. You reach CherryMax before Chen battle even starts, good, and you collect 28 point items in the 2nd half of the stage, again very good and close to par. I continue to be pleased everytime I see you fight unfocused, though sadly it's not quite enough to get you that border during the 2nd nonspell, it comes just as Sage's Rumbling starts up. You shouldn't need to bomb the rumbling, so work on reading the patterns better, and I find hugging high on the sides helps me personally. Also, as far as bombs go, your Duplex Barrier sucks compared to Evil Sealing Circle, imo, both in terms of dealing damage to the boss and clearing bullets. Maybe it would be okay for shotgunning, but you use it so far away that I don't think it even tickled her. I don't envy trying to chase round Chen with such a narrow shot type, but being forced to break out another Duplex Barrier on her final spell is very unfortunate. Also, again with the inferior bomb, imo. Not capturing these cards is going to suck, as far as less cherry per item in the future, but staying alive is worth it, so it's all a balancing act.

You start stage 3 with 240k CherryMax, which is about 10-20k behind where you could be, but not bad in the scheme of things. Given your skill, you probably could have hit first Alice a lot more unfocused, which should have let you get a border immediately after beating her, which I find helps a lot with the stage section. You manage to do reasonable, still getting about 21 of the ~25 or so point items possible I think. Though getting the border just as Alice 2 shows up is kind of troll. The 2nd half stage was going pretty decently until you worked yourself into a corner and had to Duplex Barrier out of it. A shame as you had just worked back up to CherryMax, lol. You end up only killing about 1/3 of the final wave of fairies, but I blame narrow shot type for that. Still 63 out of ~85 point items in the 2nd half is better than all your competition so far for collection. The border in French Dolls wasn't the best timing, but you get a few good graze out of it. You capture both it and Dutch Dolls without any problems whatsoever, good work. You probably could have unfocused some on her 3rd nonspell to be honest, though, it's pretty tame, imo. Still you get a border for Foggy London Dolls this way, which is a nice safety buffer for the spell, so maybe this was planned. You do end up breaking the border to reset the bullet-spam level to a workable level, and make it through without bombing or dying, so I'd rate that a pretty excellent use of a border, as far as a survival run goes. Shanghai doesn't give you any problems and we're off to stage 4. Excellent Alice fight all told, 46 point items collected (standard + Dutch Dolls) I did barely better, at 49, and I had the benefit of a border in Dutch Dolls.

The stage 4 opening seems to have caught you unprepared, and you're forced to blow your final bomb to stay alive. That's worse than my so far standard "try to learn to graze this section" in terms of severity. But you make it out unharmed, and being Reimu are almost right back to CherryMax afterward, lol. The second set of blue aimed fairies end up trapping you though, and you suffer your first miss of the run. I think just a few rounds of stage practice on this level would really go miles as far as figuring out how to try to deal with them. This unfortunately puts you in a tough spot when it comes to the 5-prong fairies, as you're not at full power and thus can't reliably clear and collect. In fact, you're forced into a pickle and have to Duplex Barrier your way out. (Again, Evil Sealing Barrier would probably have been better.) Aside from that you make it out unscathed, but almost all of those point items went to waste. :( You did very impressive work streaming the death spinners, though my route would have been different. You get a Barrier during the "weeping willow" pattern but don't really graze with it, opting instead to detonate it and clear the field. Probably a wise choice as you were stuck in that corner with nowhere to go. In contrast to your previous performance you do a terrible job of handling the mixed spinners, and have to Duplex Barrier your way to safety. All told your firsth-half Stage 4 collection rate needs improvement, you got about 118 point items out of at least 185. Your Lily White clear was pretty slow, as she forced you to the side pretty quickly and your shot type is hella narrow. This means you miss out on a few waves of extra deathspinners and the potential for more point drops, iirc. Still, you clear her successfully without expending any resoures, which is stellar. You're forced to bomb for collection though when the spinners wall you off from the POC, but that's not the worst that could happen, as the bomb pays for itself by grabbing Lily's. You also net a Border out of it, which should help a lot for the coming spinners. You end up breaking the border, which could maybe have been avoided, but it clears up the field and brings you to Cherry Max, so it's not a total waste. You get another border in time for the 2nd set of 5 prong fairies, and boy is it handy, lasting damn near to the end of them and netting you hundreds of thousands of points you probably would have dropped. You weren't in position to stream the aimed blue bullet barrage fairies, and were forced to blow an Evil Sealing Circle. Could have been worse I guess. You get caught and die in the red bullet barrage though, so these patterns defintiely deserve some practice from you. You should be able to handle them without expending resources. You accidentally run into one of the bullets from the final bomb-fairy, but manage to deathbomb and come out not so worse for wear. Not ideal, but still, fancy reflexes and nice save. Your rate of collection for the 2nd half of stage 4 was 243 point items, a huge leap forward over the first half, although you still missed about 40-50 possible I think. You get a border right at the start of Violin-chan's first nonspell and successfully exploit the extra invincibility frames after it gives you the Border Bonus. Huzzah! Sadly the crossing patterns of her second nonspell claim your life. You lost three unspent bombs here, which is a huge blow. Personally I would never have focused fire at Trumpet-chan, but your run, your call. You deathbomb during Phantom Dining to make it out alive, so maybe you need to pay a little closer attention to your streaming here. You make it through the nonspell fine, but Hino Phantasm pulls out all the cockblocks, and you Duplex Barrier it (again, I question the bomb choice). You get a deathbomb Evil Sealing Circle off at the end though, which finishes that catastrophe. Prism Concerto catches you offguard though without any bombs left to protect youself and kills you. I think you forgot you weren't at full power, because you tried autocollecting instead of nabbing the large power icons on the way up the side, which really sucks. The border duing Concerto Grosso was useful, as breaking it bought you some extra breathing room. You still needed a deathbomb at the end however, so a little extra practice on that spell couldn't hurt. Sometimes it just seems to come down to RNG though... *shrug*

Stage 5 you're starting with CherryMax of 305k, your frequent breaking barriers for free bombs is starting to tell here, as you could be another 60k or more on there. Still, you've got 4 stocked lives and 2 bombs, so that's not a bad place to be for a survival run. You're at 619/800 for the next, so on the home stretch to the 200 per life grants. If you play things right you should get one in Stage 5 and one in Stage 6. Unfortunately, you've again forgotten you're not at full power, and biff some autocollection. Oops! You get to full power, and were close to grabbing a barrier for the large spam section, but didn't quite make it so you Duplex Barrier it. Very understandable choice. Sadly the barrier you do earn pops as soon as your bomb invincibility runs out. Your autocollection techniche suffers considerably, but I have to assume you're concerned about depleting resources and taking things safely. A good call, in the end I think, considering you can't quite get the 1cc just yet. The final 3 fairies before Youmu should not nee to be bombed, they can be handled incredibly easy. The first one comes early and can be killed before she fires, the next two come in a pair. Focus fire one down before it shoots, and then just rush over to the vertical line of bullets in the center and run up it, the other bullets will head away from that and you should have a clear path. Blowing your final bomb (for this life) on something simple like this hurts your chances against Youmu. You get to the midboss with 136 point items collected so far in stage, about 30 under par, like I mentioned before with the uncertain POC problems. You do great against Youmu's first nonspell, and get a border right at the start of Ghost Sword, which you do a great job of clearing. Your lack of bomb or border during the final spam wave only hurts your collection, you manage to survive and thread the needle. Excellent! ...Unfortunately you start too far forward, and Youmu's first bullets spawn right into you. :( You have to bomb this first nonspell twice in addition, which is a really fierce hit to your resources. Again, I'd have suggested the Evil Sealing Circle variants, for wider clear and actual boss damage. You might have been able to get by with only one bomb if you'd been able to position yourself under Youmu better and your narrow shot type had actually been hitting her. You were doing pretty great against Hell Sword, but you end up safety bombing it at the end, then still dying (shouldn't have Duplexed :o). You don't quite set your positions correctly for her butterfly pattern nonspells, and the lines of knives come out in a wrong way, forcing you to bomb to clear the field or risk some even more dangerous dodging than is usually required. Not sure how to advise you on that not happening. You bomb Brute Sword twice, first and third waves I think? You really need to work on that spell, it shouldn't be that hard. You get trolled by an unhelpful border timing at the start of Human Sword, but manage to pull off a nice capture regardless. An early death to Heaven Sword kind of sucks. If only you'd had a bomb. :( You end up bombing it twice more, which I can understand. It's an incredibly evil spellcard. It's just sad what that does to your Cherry though.

Stage 6 start: 35kCherry+/55kCherry/335kCherryMax. Ouch. 810/1000 for extends, and 3 lives stocked and 1 bomb. Could be worse, but could be a lot better. You avoid the early large power drops, presumably to time the Full Power bullet clear to the densest bullet spam. Overall a pretty good idea, as you still manage to easily get the Cherry for the border to nab that sweet sweet 132 point items, bringing you to 3/4 the way to that extend. You don't take any chances and bomb Youmu's final crosshatched nonspell, I don't blame you. That does see you dying to Ageless Obsession though, which is kind of a dicey spellcard in general for me. Not being at full power means you get power items spawning though instead of point items, making that extend harder to get to. :( Dying to Yuyuko's opener with 4 bombs in stock was agonizing to watch, I'm not going to lie. There are no words. Practice, my friend. Or just bomb the fuck out of everything at this point, you're Reimu, you already have practically 0 cherry, just try to reach the next extend and perhaps the finish. I'm so sad. You do take this advice and judiciously bomb the nonspell, and Lost Soul Village and the next nonspell. Word of advice actually. For any (non)spell when Yuyuko has her large fan over the top of the backdrop, you'll actually damage her (albeit at a reduced rate) no matter where you're firing. So you might consider just streaming straight from lower left/right to the opposite corner rather than starting at the center and getting quickly driven to one corner or having to try to navigate restreaming above/through the purple bullets. A death and a bomb to Dead Butterfly, a pretty notoriously difficult spellcard, imo. Not much you could really do there I don't think. Good dodging and weaving during the knife nonspell, but then you are way too nervous and jerky in Swallowtail Butterfly and end up dying before you can use your bombs. So close, yet so far. Even though you won't get it done in time for the draft, I'm sure you can get a 1cc (if you haven't already). Keep at it!

[spoiler=Kay Tips/Criticisms]

Initial collection could use a lot of polish, you drop a ton of cherry items as well as a few point/power. Honest, considering you can reliably 1cc easy, I would recommend blowing an early bomb here, just to ensure you can get a pre-Letty Border, Full power if not before Letty then during Letty, and don't drop any point items you don't have to. It's early enough in the game the cherry penalty is negligible, and you're Sakuya, so you have bombs coming out your ears. Also, please fight easy (mid)bosses unfocused for Cherry gain. (Though, I guess with the wild spread of Sakuya A, maybe that's not feasible without timing Cirno out? I'll have to check.) Your post-Cirno collection is decent, given no Border. You arrive at Letty with 33k Cherry+, 118 power, 31 point items collected. So only a small handful of each missed here and there.

Stage 2 starts with 75k Cherry, which is pretty abyssmal, tbh. Your pre-Chen collection was great, though your border timing was a little unfortunate. The Chen fight should have had more unfocused fighting so you could at least get another border after you finished her off. I guess the ~1 wave delay wasn't terrible though, and you actually went ahead and grazed a bunch of bullets, so good work there! You reach CherryMax right as you hit boss Chen, which is I guess OK. Your item collection in 2nd half of stage 2 was damn near perfect as well, so great work there. You missed an easy chance to autocollect after Pentagram Flight, which you should really start getting in the habit of doing. Excellent streaming for graze in 2nd nonspell, though sadly no border for it. Very solid handling of Sages Rumbling, though agains a missed autocollect afterward. Border during her final spell isn't the worst timing I guess, but I'd prefer more borders sooner, so... Just generally more unfocused fighting. The unfocused grazing you did with the border there did make me proud though.

Fine handling of first two Alices, and you got a border for the last stage segment, not too shabby. Sakuya A's spread really puts in work on the small fairies, though the larger more dangerous fairies aren't handled as easily, leaving autocollection a little dangerous. You get killed by greed here as you run into a fairy. :( All in all your collection in the 2nd half of the stage suffers quite a bit, and you miss out on ~30 point items or so. You get a lovely border for Dutch Dolls though and just generally tear apart that spell unfocused like a champ, great work! You don't even need the border in London dolls, and Shanghai doesn't scare you either. Alice easy is pretty easy it seems. You got 54 point items during the actual Alice fight, which is pretty great, and better than what I managed.

Stage 4 start your CherryMax is 275k, about 20 or so behind where it could be, but not bad. You don't really stream the opener of small bullets, but they're at the point where they're not really that dense and it might actually be harder to do so than in Normal. Your homing shot just tears apart the stage enemies here, but that means you don't get much/any cherry, and you also drop most of the point items from the 5 prong fairies, which isn't good. I highly disagree with your method of handling the deathspinners, as all of those escaping points is kind of painful to watch go. Not to mention you get beaned by a green arrow bullet right at the end. :( Lily White isn't very threatening here, though you do need to bomb to collect her loot because you weren't at full power and kind of got walled off from the POC. Not killing the deathspinners when you had an autocollect border up was so many points you didn't get, and a lot of lost graze opportunity (although you did graze the green bullets at least). You only collected 66 point items in the first half of stage 4, which is honestly terrible. So much room for improvement in your score right there. Over 100 items dropped already in the stage. You end up needing to bomb your way out of spinner city as well, as some of the second half spinners fire whether or not they die. A lot more missed potential in point item drops during the 2nd wave of 5 prong fairies. You do pretty decent streaming and collecting the aimed bullet barrage fairies though and the bomb fairy doesn't give you any trouble. Overall collection for the 2nd half of stage 4 was 169 point items, which, while better than first half, is still far short of the ~300 possible. You don't have the best technique for Trumpet-chan's opener, but Easy is forgiving enough that you can get away with it. Her second nonspell was a nonissue, and you focus the sister that I like to focus, so I commend your good taste there. Sadly you didn't leave yourself enough streaming room and had to safety bomb right before capturing it. Violin-chan herself though gave you no problem with neither her nonspell nor her spell. The trio's final tag team attacks weren't any issue either it seems.

Your stage 5 opener border was perhaps a tad bit early, but close to the timing you'd want. Some of the rest of the POC work was a tad sloppy, and the handling of the final three fairies could have been improved, but on the whole everything was very smooth. 152 items collected in first half of stage 5 doesn't miss too many of them. You deathbomb Youmu's opener, so could probably use a little more practice on the pattern, but again, Sakuya has bombs to spare. Ghost Sword is captured without issue, but you drop most of the point items in the short 2nd half of the stage. Youmu's opener sees another bomb from you, so this is definitely a weak spot of yours that you should work on before moving to normal or optimizing for further points. You should pay closer attention to when your knives stop homing on enemies, like at the start of Hell Sword, that's wasted opportunity to do damage. You don't quite get the autocollect afterward, but that might have cut it awfully close to Youmu's next nonspell bullets, so I guess it's okay. There's no such excuse when you fail to collect the drops after Brute Sword though, just go to the opposite side of Youmu if you're afraid of running into her hitbox. Human Sword was an easy capture for you as well. Heaven's Sword was so much less dense it was kind of surprising to me, good work capturing it regardless though!

Stage 6 sees you at 0Cherry+/283kCherry/359k CherryMax. I'm sure there's another easy 40k CherryMax in there you could squeeze out. What's most impressive to me though are the seven lives in stock. I was seriously wondering "damn, is she gonna full stock clear this? *low whistle*" Very impressive work, even if Yuyuko does end up claiming her share of those. 721 point items is very low for this point in the game, however, and that's easily where most of your improvement can be made, imo. The terrible Cherry+ here means you're not going to get a border for the stage 6 opener, which sucks majorly, so you'll have to bomb it if you want that massive amount of point items... or apparently the majority of them will autocollect when Youmu shows up... which won't give you their full value as you're below POC, but they still count toward your extend. You panic bomb the end of Youmu's grid nonspell again (gave you troubles in every showing, it did) which leads you to not capture Youmu's last spellcard, due to the bomb running into that health bar. An unfortunate death to Yuyuko's first nonspell, which should just be some basic dodging. I don't know if I can think of any good tips here. Lost Soul's Village was an easy captured and you did fine work on the 2nd nonspell. You captured Deadly Dance as well, which is amazing, that spell always gives me trouble. The knives nonspell forced a bomb out of you, and it honestly should be a pretty easy nonspell if you stay in the center, either down low or up high, situation depending. Ghost Butterfly was standard stuff, but the following streaming nonspell killed you. I honestly find this nonspell harder on Easy than Normal myself, as it doesn't have the additional bullets that help to guide you a little better, imo. Hirokawa draws out another bomb, but it's a traditional tricky in execution, though easy in theory spell. You try for a capture of Perfect Blossom, but honestly you should have just bombed, imo. You don't make that mistake in the second half though, bombing two times when you felt threatened, a fine use of resources given how many points lives in stock are worth and how much cherry is thrown at you to offset the cost of bombing. Pretty decent attempt at Resurrection, although you end up flubbing and dying at about the 30s mark. What really killed you though was the death right at the end, as that bullet cancel from dying overrode the bullet cancel from spellcard end, losing you out on a ton of cherry and a final border, not to mention the points from the lives in stock. :( All in all, work on Yuyuko's last two spells more, and you could have easily gotten a huge boost in score. Work on stage 4 point collection and the same comment applies. You have plenty of room for optimization, but honestly, I'd be excited to see how you fare on Normal as well!

Okay, in your defense, I just tried a run of Sakuya A, her damage is godawful unfocused, no wonder she's a terrible shot-type for scoring. Holy crap am I glad you sniped her from me before I had the chance to fall into that pit trap.

Sifer's commentary will come when I see a Marisa A normal game attempt.

[Sifer]

nvm.

Edited September 24, 2014 by Sifer

[Wen Yang]

23 hours and 15 minutes to the deadline. Still missing four entries.

[Wen Yang]

And... Time is up. I am greatly disappointed at you people.

1. Balcerzak - 20 points http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=34704

2. Wen Yang - 12 points http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=34773

Everyone else - No replay submitted. 0 points.

Deadline for the 4th Game, MoF, will be at 7th October 2014, 12:00 PM GMT+7.

All Right, had a chat with Scarlet earlier.

Some things of note:

- Deadline for IN round is EXTENDED by 48 hours. New Deadline is October 2nd, 12:00 PM GMT+7

- You are now free to choose whatever difficulty you wish to play the game on.

Do not disappoint me again by pulling another disappearing act.

Edited September 30, 2014 by Wen Yang

[Autumn]

Kopf, I was busy submitting my uni applications that is due today. so can I still submit my IN replay, I've got it here.

[Autumn]

http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=34774

[Balcerzak]

I'm personally fine if people want to submit late replays, but they should probably be tiered amongst themselves, and appended to the bottom of the order to be fair to those who were on time. It's up to Wen in the end, though, I suppose.

[Emeraldfox]

http://replays.gensokyo.org/download.php?id=34776

So you meant the 29th in EST timezones.