Hopeless Masquerade was released at Reitaisai (the annual Touhou convention in Tokyo) this weekend, along with the demo for Touhou 14. Touhou 14 brings back a familiar character as the first mid-boss:
Also, I beat Mokou. It was the first extra stage I unlocked, but it took the longest of the three I’ve cleared. Although once I started trying her again after beating Suwako, it really only took a few days. It definitely gave me more trouble before, so I guess that means I’ve improved. I’m still not optimistic about taking on Flandre, though.
I think I’m just worse at Flandre’s attacks, and at EoSD in general. For some reason I was never able to get quite as comfortable with it or start to learn her attacks as well as the others I’ve tried. It has been a while since I’ve played her, though, so maybe it will go better next time I try. For some reason there were some of Mokou’s spells I could never quite get before that clicked better when I started trying her again recently, so who knows.
Some people find Flandre easier. I think it comes down a lot to play style, what you’re good at/comfortable with, and what you’ve practiced/learned. I think one thing that makes EoSD harder for me is that I like to use homing shot types, but I find the homing types in PCB/IN/MoF to be a lot better than in EoSD. I use Marisa more in EoSD, but I’m not good at aiming/staying under the boss (especially without the boss indicator at the bottom of the screen).
Yeah, good work as always. The hair and bows/talismans especially look great.
I’ve been trying Flandre some more. The good thing is that her nonspells are not bad at all. I think the last one is the only one that gives me much trouble. Way easier than Mokou’s and I think easier than Ran’s/Yukari’s (probably Suwako’s too, but I don’t really remember them that well other than her slalom attack that Sanae borrowed). Some of her spell cards aren’t that bad either, especially once you learn them. You just get so few resources, though, and the stage is tricky to get through without losing any lives. I can sometimes capture Patchouli’s first and last spell, but all three still need bombs quite a bit of the time, so that doesn’t help with resources.
Still no luck with Flandre. I’ve reached her final spell once, but usually I don’t get close. There’s just not enough room for mistakes for me to get through it. I might move on and try another one of the games before trying to beat Flandre again. Also, it’s actually the second-to-last non-spell that gives me trouble–I had forgotten about her last one because I usually don’t get to it and because it’s not that bad.
On a more positive note, I took a break from Flandre for a while to play Imperishable Night some more, and I had my best Extra run the other day against Mokou:
The Ran hat looks really good. You’re quite good at that crafty stuff.
Lunatic difficulty is crazy. Even using continues, I can’t get close to the end. I’ve been playing since before this thread was created, and I just now got my first hard 1cc (did that tonight on PCB, starting with 5 lives).
Learning to bomb effectively was probably the biggest factor in clearing the games for me, maybe even more than actually learning to dodge stuff. It helped a lot when I stopped trying to only bomb as a reaction and started planning out ahead of time where I was most likely to need bombs. It also helps to bomb as soon as you feel trapped or lose control when you might instinctively want to wait until you get hit to see if you can pull out of it.
I like Renko a lot, but I don’t really have any pictures of her. I need to try to find some sometime.
Bombing strategy can be even more important in Imperishable Night, but it can also be less important. Since death-bombing is a lot more reliable, it’s easier to try to rely on it. It costs 2 bombs, though, so relying on it too much can eat through your resources too quickly. Getting bombs off when they only use one bomb can make a big difference in having enough left at the end of the game, and planning out when you are most likely to need them can help a lot in that regard. At the same time, if you can capture enough of the spell cards to not need to bomb through that much, you can rely on the death bomb/Last Spell system more heavily, and planning a strategy for bombing becomes less important than other games. Also, if you are going specifically for Spell Card captures, it helps to have the Last Spell system to rely on so you can wait until you are sure you are going to get hit to bomb. Basically, you’re more likely to get a reaction bomb off in time in IN, but you’re also more likely to run out of resources if you try to rely on that.
I think this is the clearest official image I’ve seen of the seals on Ran’s hat (from Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red):
Which, unfortunately, isn’t that clear. If you can read kanji, it might have something legible written on them, but I have no idea if that is the case or not. It doesn’t look like that image is trying particularly hard to match the markings from her official PCB portrait (this one looks more like vertical calligraphy than on the PCB portrait), so I’m not sure that there even are any specific official markings for them. I think Silent Sinner in Blue just draws them as plain rectangles, but I’ll see if I can find any more detailed panels that would show them. There doesn’t appear to be any particular consistency to the markings in the fan art I have saved of her either (I know that doesn’t help copy it when you can’t obscure the details like in a drawing–sorry).
Yeah I’d forgotten how many bombs you can get in that game and just how easily I seem to get “trapped”. I should play it more to train my skills. I am noticeably worse at IN then EotSD so it’s sort of nice that I can get more of a challenge early on but it’s also a little disheartening. =/
It’s no problem I had a bit of a feeling that the Official markings were sort of vague but it just feels strange adding scribbles. I’ll have to experiment on paper or something first 'cause I don’t want to waste fabric. I might just look at some kanji for inspiration if I can’t find anything official.
Here are the Ran fan arts I posted that got eaten by the database corruption this morning. This is the best unofficial image I could find in terms of showing how the artist interpreted Ran’s charms:
And then a few others from the same artist that show at least some of how they drew the kanji/markings:
There was also this papercraft which took a different interpretation that you can see pretty clearly if you download the template (the こちら link at the end of the post). I don’t think this one is as interesting as midori’s interpretation, but it’s an alternative that should be pretty easy to see/copy:
