I have never played a Touhou...

[Sapz]

Ah, fair point, I hadn't thought about that. Well, I'll rephrase the question to say modern bullet hell shmups, then.

[RNGmaster]

They are full of attacks that appear really hard but are actually pretty easy when you figure them out. You always have plenty of bombs for anything acutally difficult in the first loop.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Maybe I phrased it poorly...

[moozooh]

Gradius also happens to be one of the very few games that both don't have any bombs AND significantly reduce your power upon death. Among the whole body of shmups this is very rare. Playing it for score is also the same as playing it for survival. I don't think the gameplay really is comparable to any modern shmup.

[Erppo]

They are full of attacks that appear really hard but are actually pretty easy when you figure them out. You always have plenty of bombs for anything acutally difficult in the first loop.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Maybe I phrased it poorly...

Then I'm not seeing how your posts make any sense at all. How is that any different from Lunatic Touhou (which has way more of the actually hard bits btw)? The problem spots were originally stated as those where you couldn't easily memorize a route through.

It would help to know how much gameplay experience you actually have of Psikyo and Lunatic.

[Bananamatic]

Gradius is a cock punch after 1ccing DOJ

Also psikyo gives you 3 lives, touhou like...ten? In the former a small cockup can cost you the 1cc, in the latter you can waste 3 lives on one attack and still beat it with lives left

[Sapz]

Also psikyo gives you 3 lives, touhou like...ten? In the former a small cockup can cost you the 1cc, in the latter you can waste 3 lives on one attack and still beat it with lives left

A small cockup can cost you the run in either game, and Psikyo has less lives (though it's actually 4) because it's a very short game and very much done in an arcade style. You could easily apply what you said to Touhou to Crimzon Clover, except that it has, in general, even more lives. The amount of lives a game gives you does not dictate how difficult the game is.

What point are you actually trying to make, here?

[TrevHead (TVR)]

If you prefer I could compare it to mushihimesama (not futari) instead, which I would say has better backgrounds but generally uglier sprites.

Im not too sure what you mean, sprites are better in touhou than Mushihimesama? If so youve gotta be kidding, while I think Touhou is a OKish series I would say the ZUNs sprites is one of the worst aspects of the game, Ok the boss sprites have improved and even animate in a simple way, the stage sprites are very bad, so bad that it actually affects the gameplay due to all of them looking the same makes it harder to work out what the enemies attack patterns are.

Even if you meant it the other way in your statement and that background artwork is better in touhou, I still disagree with you, while it does look kinda pretty for what it is, all the backgrounds are just generic leaves or whatnot looped over and over. This makes the stages less interesting and allot harder to memorise since there is no landmarks to jog the memory on the fly.

Add the generic looking sprites and the looping background together and you have stages that are bland and uninteresting, kinda like an euroshmup. Touhou's only saving grace is the bullet patterns and the music as tools to memorise the game. So ill stand by my statement that Touhou its a boring experience for anyone not playing for score.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Gradius games might as well be 1 life unless you die right near the end.

They're still fun though.

[Bananamatic]

A small cockup can cost you the run in either game, and Psikyo has less lives (though it's actually 4) because it's a very short game and very much done in an arcade style. You could easily apply what you said to Touhou to Crimzon Clover, except that it has, in general, even more lives. The amount of lives a game gives you does not dictate how difficult the game is.

What point are you actually trying to make, here?

Less lives+no deathbombing=more pressure on the player
I haven't been nervous once while playing Touhou. I 1cc'd Imperishable Night after using 3 bombs on the second stage and dying two times in the third - I literally screwed up what I could and still came out with the 1cc.

Touhou in general is more relaxed, so it allows you to be at the top of your game all the time and you don't need miraculous or near flawless runs to 1cc it(just look at Dimahoo, after blowing the first chance at a 1cc I completely lost hope that I would ever reach the final boss with only 2 misses)

[moozooh]

The "Touhou gives more lives" argument should die already. It's stupid, tiresome, and proves exactly nothing.

Gradius games give infinite lives.
Progear gives infinite lives (at least on the first loop).
Ketsui gives 9 (3 + 2 score extends + 4 item extends).
Yagawa games give infinite lives (Pink Sweets actually makes it so that you can't run out of them if you fulfill certain prerequisites).
Treasure games give infinite lives.

OMG THESE GAMES MUST BE EASY RITE, THAT PINK SWEETS GAME ESPECIALLY

BUT

Could it be that you should never die in any of them, period, or use all of the existing lives for the purpose of scoring?

NO WAY CAN'T BE SO DURRRRR

THIS IS SO TOTALLY UNLIKE TOUHOU GAMES WHERE LIVES ARE COMPLETELY DISCONNECTED FROM SCORING DURRRRRRRR

[Zengeku3]

also stuff like st5 SA - you pacifist half of the stage dodging absolutely nothing and tap dodge 40% of it
and then you have cat's walk and the streaming from hell which will rape your shitter

I admit that Stage 5 in SA has some boring parts but the pattern of Cat Walk is pretty fast for its complexity and fun to dodge and the following streaming will only rape those who don't pay enough attention. What is it you desire? Fast paced stages or just fast bullets?

I for one don't really care about the bullet speed if just the pattern is challenging. What I do care about though is if the stage is taking 30 seconds to tell you that the girl had lived there forever with literally no bullets coming at you. (PCB Stage 5 - shitty stage btw. no challenge and no pace)

Scarlet Meister.

Not impossible but pretty irritating to handle due to hitboxes inconsistent with the rest of the games.

I timed it down to one second in the same replay that I timed out VoWG

Its really easy for me too. I only picked that one because Banana used to consider it luckshit.

I'd be more likely to complain about all the easy shit in the stage before I'd complain about Orin and her follow-up, anyways. The streaming part is one of the most fun sections in any of the Touhou games.

Yes. That's the one big drawback about the Touhou games. A lot of great concepts being raped by a lot of stupid ones.

Numerous extends aside, can you give me any examples of shmups where this is not the case? That seems like a pretty standard 1cc-any-game tactic.

Well you see, with the more restricted livestocks of other shmups you can only cheese the hard parts. With Touhou resources you can usually cheese not only the hard parts but also the medium parts too. UFO and EoSD since they aren't the same kind of jokes as PCB, IN or MoF with bombspamming and even SA with bombspamming.

But you are right. It is the general 1cc tactic but there is just a whole lot less problem spots in Touhou's stages. Try comparing any Touhou stage 6 to DDP Stage 6. How about Ten Desires S3 Lunatic versus Mushi Futari God Stage 3? Even with my keyboard, I wouldn't be able to figure out how to make everything simple just by seeing the stage twice.

Could it be that you should never die in any of them, period, or use all of the existing lives for the purpose of scoring?

Maybe if an interesting score system pops up some day. But honestly, dying needs to be heavily punishing to your score. If not then its not interesting at all. Its cool to need to do fancy stuff to score in a game but it looks so lame if you are constantly dying or bombing while doing it. Or trancing for that matter.

[Bananamatic]

don't forget that:

Dying in Gradius is a tragedy
You have to be really good at Progear to get more than 3 lives out of it+second loop has checkpoints
2 lives in Ketsui are second loop only
yagawa games are based around dying on purpose+you must know how to score
pink sweets infinite lives are a glitch
treasure games are artfag hipster stuff and should not be taken seriously(just as HELLSINKER)

So I say that Mountain of Faith has a ridiculously broken shot type which makes the game stupidly easy

Its really easy for me too. I only picked that one because Banana used to consider it luckshit.

I always liked VoWG
but yes I did get my first capture half asleep after I passed out in the afternoon

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Pink Sweets is definitely Yagawa's best when it comes to scoring. You still have to bomb a lot of stuff, but it heavily penalizes dying. Of course, the game is full of total memogarbage that isn't any fun to even try to figure out since there's way too much cheap stuff.

Muchi Muchi Pork is fun though since you can actually play it for survival, has challenging bosses, but the scoring system still sucks. I don't even bother with the milking and just do medalling.

And Yagawa makes some pretty fun bosses. The stages and scoring though are generally sucky. Muchi Muchi Pork, ESPGaluda II Arrange, and DFK Black Label are his only ones that have fun stages or at least ones that look fun(in the case of DFK BL).

[TrevHead (TVR)]

About the lives arguement, I agree Touhou gave out too many lives, add that to bombs and a smart player can just cheese his way through much of the hard, Thats kinda what I did playing the last stage of IN, I had spent some time playing the earlier levels for score and avoiding playing the last stage, but when I moved onto 6B I just cheesed my way though most of it, got the 1CC and lost intrest in playing the game shortly after. Crimson Clover gave out allot of extends aswell but that felt nowhere as bad as Touhou, maybe its because I rarely bomb in CC instead I hyper asmuch as I can since its so intregal to scoring and thus more extends.

Maybe its because I suck at STGs but I do like shmups that give me 2-5 extends since beating a shmup with a stock of 3 lives is generally bloody hard. (not that im saying hard is a bad thing, its just that I dont want every shmup to require over a month of in order to beat it.)

[STGnoob]

If you prefer I could compare it to mushihimesama (not futari) instead, which I would say has better backgrounds but generally uglier sprites.

Im not too sure what you mean, sprites are better in touhou than Mushihimesama? If so youve gotta be kidding, while I think Touhou is a OKish series I would say the ZUNs sprites is one of the worst aspects of the game, Ok the boss sprites have improved and even animate in a simple way, the stage sprites are very bad, so bad that it actually affects the gameplay due to all of them looking the same makes it harder to work out what the enemies attack patterns are.

Even if you meant it the other way in your statement and that background artwork is better in touhou, I still disagree with you, while it does look kinda pretty for what it is, all the backgrounds are just generic leaves or whatnot looped over and over. This makes the stages less interesting and allot harder to memorise since there is no landmarks to jog the memory on the fly.

Add the generic looking sprites and the looping background together and you have stages that are bland and uninteresting, kinda like an euroshmup. Touhou's only saving grace is the bullet patterns and the music as tools to memorise the game. So ill stand by my statement that Touhou its a boring experience for anyone not playing for score.

I was saying that I prefer the sprites in MoF vs the sprites in mushihimesama, yes. Something about the way the enemies are drawn just bugs me. They're too many different colors or something and the sprites, especially of things you've blown up, just don't look good to me. The bosses tend to look pretty good though. The touhou sprites are a lot more generic and repetitive, but they seem to be technically superior to the mushi sprites. They look cleaner and more polished. Mushi's backgrounds are clearly superior to anything touhou to my view, but MoF has the most interesting backgrounds so I've gone with that one as my example game. Mushi still has much better landscaping, regardless.

Also, can I point out that what you said in your last post was "I play crimzon clover for score" and then "I play touhou for survival"? Touhou might be boring to a (good) player who isn't playing for score, but pretty much all games are a lot easier and less interesting unless you're playing them for score. So even I play for score, even if I don't have any relevant 1ccs yet...

[ncp]

Also, can I point out that what you said in your last post was "I play crimzon clover for score" and then "I play touhou for survival"? Touhou might be boring to a (good) player who isn't playing for score, but pretty much all games are a lot easier and less interesting unless you're playing them for score. So even I play for score, even if I don't have any relevant 1ccs yet...

A lot of people, myself included, don't enjoy the scoring systems in most touhou games very much. I only enjoy scoring in MOF and Mystic Square and to a lesser extent PCB, while I enjoy most of the touhou games in a survival sense.

[STGnoob]

Most of the people who have been saying they dislike touhou in this thread also seem to be the same people who are saying that they don't play it for score. If you don't like the scoring system and prefer to play for survival, then that's fine too and there's nothing wrong with that. Personally there's no way at all I can score in PCB (I can't handle unfocused dodging in tightly confined areas), but I can try in some of the other games, MoF probably being the "easiest", since that's basically survival play and deathbombing. Touhou scoring is pretty arcane in general though and seems to require more studying than most.

It's odd though how many people there are who complain that touhou is too easy/boring and don't even try to play for score when they play every other game ever for score.

[RNGmaster]

You have to be really good at Progear to get more than 3 lives out of it+second loop has checkpoints

I got an 11 mil. score after only 3 weeks of practicing on and off. And you, the "pro", are complaining it's real hard to score. Yeah...

treasure games are artfag hipster stuff and should not be taken seriously(just as HELLSINKER)

I thought you liked Hellsinker.

[ncp]

I don't like grazing in general, as it leads to this situation where the optimal routes are absolutely ridiculous and/or impossibly hard, and there's almost always room for getting EVEN MORE retarded/impossibly hard. Some people might actually think this is a good thing, but I fucking hate it. Futari BL Original has this same problem, possibly even more so. Point blanking EVERY SINGLE ENEMY is just not even possible so you're NEVER SATISFIED WITH YOUR ROUTE. SHITSUX. I enjoy knowing I've nailed a perfect or near-perfect score on a stage like in Dodonpachi, or Ikaruga. A good middle ground (which I also enjoy) might be something like Futari maniac or god mode, wherein you you can squeeze a few more points out of your routes by cancelling a few more bullets here and there, but you can still be satisfied with a mostly-perfect stage performance.

[Bananamatic]

I 1cc'd the easy amerrykan progear once with 12m or so(which is 3 extends) and my score was the same every single run, you gotta memorize the stages to actually get the extends

and once you memorize the game you will probably get to the second loop easily
but unless you are a superplayer the second loop will steal them anyways because lol checkpoints

and once you get good enough for the second loop you will have so many lives you won't even need them

I thought you liked Hellsinker.

Just because I like HELLSINKER doesn't mean it's not pretentious artsy hipster bullshit

the scoring is so complicated it puts touhou to shame
the difficulty is nonexistant

but the presentation is amazing
the bosses are epic as hell
you have a ton of weapons and each character is completely different
and dat soundtrack

it's not supposed to be played seriously - it's basically shmup porn

[Zengeku3]

I always liked VoWG
but yes I did get my first capture half asleep after I passed out in the afternoon

I did mean her first card. The one with the lasers and the aimed amulets.

[Bananamatic]

I always liked VoWG
but yes I did get my first capture half asleep after I passed out in the afternoon

I did mean her first card. The one with the lasers and the aimed amulets.

yeah I always sucked at that one for some reason
if you want to see some real bullshit look at that hunting ritual card

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Also, can I point out that what you said in your last post was "I play crimzon clover for score" and then "I play touhou for survival"?

I play for score and the 1CC at the sametime, I wouldnt mind later returning to IN playing a higher difficulty and furthering my score

[dannnnn]

Might as well ask this here: anyone know why EoSD runs at 85fps for me? I've checked the 'Force 60 Frames' box and my monitor's refresh rate is set to 60hz. In window mode, it runs fine at 60fps, but in fullscreen it runs at 85fps which means I can't save replays. PCB runs at 60fps fullscreen, so it's just a problem with EoSD. Any ideas?

[moozooh]

You probably have 85 Hz forced for 640x480 in Windows (either through the graphics driver or an external program). EoSD will sync to it.

[dannnnn]

Sorted, cheers.

[Zengeku3]

if you want to see some real bullshit look at that hunting ritual card

How is that ever bullshit? Seriously, how? That card is lulz easy.

[Bananamatic]

it's the card in normal mode that is replaced by yamato torus in hard and lunatic

[Zengeku3]

Yeah, so? Why is it bullshit? I don't have any trouble capturing it.

[ncp]

it's like 10x harder than any of the other cards on normal

edit: and harder than the dumb card it gets replaced with on hard/lunatic