RQ: Perfect Cherry Blossom- Help me understand the BASICS

For posting and requesting strategic gameplay tips on shmups!
Post Reply
User avatar
bostongeorge
Posts: 71
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:18 pm

RQ: Perfect Cherry Blossom- Help me understand the BASICS

Post by bostongeorge »

Couple of questions:

1. Supernatural Border- It says this when I collect 50,000 cherry, right? It seems like when this happens I can hit the bomb button and it doesn't really use a bomb? What does this mean? What is the function.

2. Spell card- how do I collect them? What do they do?

3. Are there times when I'm supposed to stop shooting and just dodge/graze? I see a timer counting down during bosses sometimes. Is this related?

Thanks to anyone who can help. This is my first Touhou game and I really like it. I've been playing 2 days and I can only get to Lvl. 3 on 1 credit but I think I could get better with practice and, of course, knowing the basic gameplay mechanics would help.


Oh well, I'm gonna go play Triggerheart on my DC for awhile and wait for some replies before I play any more Perfect Cherry...
User avatar
BulletMagnet
Posts: 13888
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2005 4:05 am
Location: Wherever.
Contact:

Post by BulletMagnet »

Take a look around here for most any info you need on Touhou games, PCB included.
User avatar
Shion
Posts: 228
Joined: Wed Sep 05, 2007 8:28 pm
Location: Netherlands

Re: RQ: Perfect Cherry Blossom- Help me understand the BASIC

Post by Shion »

bostongeorge wrote:Couple of questions:

1. Supernatural Border- It says this when I collect 50,000 cherry, right? It seems like when this happens I can hit the bomb button and it doesn't really use a bomb? What does this mean? What is the function.
When you collect 50,000 cherry, you basically get a "shield" which will last a few seconds (until the cherry counter has run down to zero), or until you get hit or use a bomb. Using a bomb in this mode will suck up all enemy bullets into cherry points, and it won't cost you a bomb. If you get hit is has a similar effect, thus shielding you from damage. However, for scoring it's often beneficial to maintain the border and try to graze bullets. You can take some risks, since the border acts like a shield :)
bostongeorge wrote: 2. Spell card- how do I collect them? What do they do?

You collect them by killing off the phase of the boss using it. If you don't bomb, use a border, or die, that is. So basically, survive with only shooting and dodging. If you capture one, you get big points, and all future pink cherry items are worth a 100 more cherry points. This stacks, so having captured i.e. 6 spell cards, makes the items worth 1600 cherry (1000+cards captured * 100).
bostongeorge wrote: 3. Are there times when I'm supposed to stop shooting and just dodge/graze? I see a timer counting down during bosses sometimes. Is this related?
It's best for scoring if you don't shoot while in a supernatural border. This is because cherry won't increase while in a border, while shooting without a border does. There are usually 2 counters at the top of the screen. The normal counter displays how many seconds you have left to destroy that particular phase. Normally it's not hard to make this. The counter displayed next to a spell card shows how many bonus points capturing the card will give you. Sometimes it's beneficial to kill off a spell card asap, but sometimes it's better to survive long and graze more.
moozooh
Posts: 3722
Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 11:23 pm
Location: moscow/russia
Contact:

Post by moozooh »

PCB's scoring is actually very complex, so I suggest starting with three things:

1) surviving without overusing bombs;
2) collecting items;
3) capturing spellcards.

After you learn to do that, there's the next level:

4) outlasting supernatural borders without bursting them;
5) shooting unfocused 95% of the time;
6) collecting items at maximum value (at point of autocollection or during a supernatural border).

The rest will come to you eventually after you feel confident enough in these six steps. Because apparently, there exist many situations where you get a better net result from seemingly illogical actions. But they will be apparent enough after you fully understand the basics.
Image
Matskat wrote:This neighborhood USED to be nice...until that family of emulators moved in across the street....
Post Reply