Hello everyone, I’m Cirnobyl. I’m happy
to say that after many agonizing failures
I finally managed to 1cc Touhou 12: Undefined
Fantastic Object on Lunatic, so to celebrate
I’m doing a commentary of my run.
I am playing as ReimuA, the strong but non-homing
needle shot type. Since I am attempting a
lunatic 1cc, my UFO route will consist of
grabbing as many red UFO’s as possible as
you can see, except on stage 6. The way that
the resource system in this game works is:
red UFO’s give ½ of a life, blue UFO’s
give points, and green UFO’s give 4/3 of
a bomb. Here I sometimes try to spare the
UFO fairy on the left, because the blue UFO
token is one more thing to worry about on
screen. And this UFO fairy gets the award
for the least useful enemy because she shows
up right before Nazrin’s midboss fight.
I have two reds, but I can’t spawn a UFO
during the midboss because it will fly away,
and it’s not possible to speedkill Nazrin
fast enough before the token expires. Well
without bombs at least, I’ve tried. I try
to capture Busy Rod asap in 3-4 waves so that
I am not in the rush in the following section
for UFO management.
Most midbosses drop two UFO’s upon defeat;
naturally I grab the red one. And most of
the fairies here fire aimed bullets, so I
just horseshoe around the stage while shooting
down the UFO. I also take care not to grab
the green. I think you can potentially grab
this green and combine it with the first blue
in stage 2 for extra value, but that adds
even more UFO collection burden to stage 2
so I don’t bother with it.
And here I saturate the UFO but don’t bother
shooting it down, because Nazrin will instakill
it for me using talk-no-jutsu.
Speaking of Nazrin, both of Nazrin’s nonspells
can be dodged at the bottom of the screen.
Because arrowhead bullets have small hitboxes,
you can actually squeeze through most of the
gaps, even the ones that look too small at
first glance.
Nazrin’s first spell, Gold Detector, can
be speedkilled with ReimuA with sufficiently
good tracking. I definitely recommend doing
this for survival because it skips the second
wave of lasers, and for some reason I feel
like the second wave of lasers is much deadlier
than the first. I’ve restarted more runs
than I’d like to admit because of it. I
always restart if I make a mistake in Stage
1.
Nazrin’s Pendulum spell is static, well
except for the aimed red orbs. It can be done
entirely at the bottom of the screen. Nazrin
will ramp up her rate of firing red orbs over
time, but the spell should consistently be
captured before that becomes a serious issue.
Memorization is by no means necessary, but
I think most players end up with a preferred
route just from repeated exposure. To use
a bit of slang in other words, this spell
strongly encourages you to be a chimpanzee,
rather than a gorilla.
Alright, we have a perfect run so far, did
not get cheesed by Nazrin so that’s mice.
I mean nice.
The difficulty of this game ramps up a lot
in Stage 2, enough that I need to seriously
consider bombing. Like I said before, I am
only interested in the rainbow UFO here. In
several portions of this stage, the yin-yang
orbs have a deathrattle effect, where they
release omnidirectional bullets upon death.
As a result I have to be extra conscious about
when and where to kill them. For this streaming
section, it’s hard to see the UFO fairy,
but it’s enough to remember that she enters
from the left. It’s also helpful to remember
that 4 yin-yang orbs will drop enough items
to saturate a UFO, and if things ever go south,
the safest way to prevent additional clutter
is to stop shooting, at which point the yin-yang
will simply follow you at a snail-like pace,
but otherwise present no threat. Of course
the tradeoff is that you don’t get the power
and point items they would drop. And again
the last UFO fairy here drops a token that
goes to waste because Kogasa’s midboss fight
is about to happen. How rude.
Anyways it’s time to face everyone’s favorite
heterochromic surprise-giving karakasa obake.
For this Kogasa spell, the only dangerous
scenario to watch out for is when two waves
overlap in a nasty way. If that happens, which
is infrequent, immediately find a different
opening by switching lanes.
In the section after Kogasa, I have a small
window of opportunity to safely grab the red
UFO if I preemptively kill the yin-yang orbs
that descend from the top, but it’s inconsistent
because of midboss RNG, and I unfortunately
panic, make a rushed move, and deathbomb.
It’s my first mistake of the run, and a
costly one, because I would love to have a
bomb for this spamming section, as well as
a bomb for Parasol Star Memories. Still, deathbombing
is always preferable to dying. Gotta make
sure I retrieve that hard-earned life piece.
The thing about getting a 1cc is ideally I
would happen to have bombs for spellcards
that I probably won’t capture, and happen
to run out of bombs for spellcards that I
want to challenge. The mental load of worrying
about whether to bomb generally leads to slightly
worse performance. Parasol Star Memories is
hard enough that it belongs in the former
category. With no bombs, I give my best shot
at capturing Parasol Star Memories against
all odds, which involves rapidly reading which
lanes are not being blocked. More often than
not choosing the wrong lane is a death sentence.
And I actually do pretty well, I get really
close. And I barely fail to capture it. Oh
well.
Kogasa’s second nonspell is all about tapping
left and right with a very particular rhythm.
I don’t have any advice except practice
it until it’s ingrained in your muscle memory.
Next, the rain spellcard is not too hard due
to its low hp, but it does have a tendency
to cheese me so I bomb it. Cheese is just
my umbrella term for attack patterns that
can kill me by surprise in such a way that
I cannot reliably deathbomb.
I used to dread Kogasa’s Night Carnival
spell because I had no idea how to do it,
but it has become one of my favorite spellcards
across Touhou. There were two key realizations
I needed to make. First, Kogasa shoots aimed
bullets before each wave, so making sure those
bullets do not obstruct my horizontal pathway
is important. Second, if I use the 3rd or
4th lane from the bottom, I can mostly macrododge
the amulets coming from both directions and
just occasionally micrododge a few of them.
So we capture it and we conclude stage 2 with
5 lives and 1 bomb which I certainly can’t
complain about.
Stage 3 gives me two rainbow UFO tokens at
the start. I grab this red, and save the next
one for later. When a big UFO spawns, it clears
bullets around itself, and when it is destroyed
it gives a full screen clear. It’s like
a budget bomb in some sense. I take advantage
of this mechanic to curtail the yin-yang section
before it reaches maximum density, which is
very hectic. In the next section, three UFO
fairies will fire huge waves that are roughly
aimed, so with misdirection I could avoid
getting stuck, but I fail to do so and bomb.
I should’ve gone left.
Though I really enjoy some of the unique spellcards
in this game, I find UFO collecting to be
very frustrating. Here for instance, not only
do I grab the wrong color, I also die. Then
I try to amend my mistake by grabbing a blue,
but because Ichirin has no dialog until after
this nonspell, the UFO elopes away, which
further rubs salt into my wounds. Nice deathbomb
though. Ichirin’s midboss spell is pretty
easy actually, but I’m actually so frustrated
that I just press X out of spite. This is
another poor decision for two reasons. It
prolongs the upcoming section with the fairies,
and leaves me defenseless with 0 bombs. I
get walled and die. But usually I get through
this with a UFO screen clear. To avoid being
met with a terrible fate, I recommend preemptively
shooting at least one fairy per wave.
This yin-yang section is just like the previous
one. I again attempt to curtail it using the
same strat, but die while grabbing the red,
which is not a good trade. You can start to
notice a theme here behind my causes of death.
In this fuzzy stream section, it’s possible
to circle around the screen safely, but starting
that process is the hard part. I usually just
bombspam.
With all the bombs I am using, you may be
wondering why I don’t collect greens. Well
each life comes with two bombs, but the life
still has extra value after you use all your
bombs, so each life is worth approximately
three bombs, which means spamming red gives
the most value toward survival. Before the
boss fight, Ichirin helps us reach our goal,
her power of speech unimpeachable.
So we face Youmu’s biggest fear, who is
Unzan. Why Unzan? Because the things her swords
cannot cut are next to nun. Okay let’s pretend
I didn’t say that. For the ORA ORA spell,
reading ahead saves lives, but it’s tricky
when the bullets fall at an angle and trick
me into thinking I am safe. Honestly I would
use a bomb here if I had one, but I end up
capping it. Her second nonspell is basically
free. It’s sort of like a driving test,
where I will pass as long as I stay within
my lane and the lanes don’t exactly move
very fast so it’s mostly a test of commitment.
Unzan’s hitbox’s second spell became a
lot more manageable once I realized that it
alternates between slow waves and fast waves.
Obviously fast waves are a lot harder, in
order to keep up with the fists I have to
move up unfocused, but the difficulty arises
when the bullets in my way force me to swerve
to the side on a short notice. I’m guessing
this would be easier for Marisa since she
is the fastest; sure Reimu has a smaller hitbox
but the small hitbox means very little in
front of Unzan’s gargantuan fists. This
nonspell is basically free and dying with
no bombs is only mildly bad. And for Unzan’s
final spell, the angry old man flexes his
hand-eye coordination. I usually move up to
dodge the fists, some players prefer to move
down, to each their own. Unfortunately the
lasers stay on screen a long time, and I mistime
my dodge as a result, leading to my demise.
My performance in this stage was disgraceful,
leaving me with three lives, two bombs, and
a lot of anger. I’m sure the next stage
will also leave me with a lot of anchor.
Stage 4 opens with an easy static pattern.
I grab all the power I can; many people don’t
realize this, but part of what makes Touhou
12 so hard is that power is scarce. I only
need to die three times to regress to my starting
power. It’s good to remember the colors
of UFO tokens that these yin-yang orbs drop,
which is green, blue, red, blue, as well as
their locations. I didn’t do it in this
run, but occasionally I’ve spawned a UFO
in this section and missed the red UFO token.
When the skies turn clear momentarily, that’s
a good time to deploy a UFO or two. Beware
however that a single UFO screen clear is
not enough to skip this section, it’s inadvisable
to let your guard down as you can see from
my death. I’m especially sad because I was
holding two bombs. I want to spawn another
UFO here but it’s too risky unless they
happen to approach me as they turn the right
color. Never lucky.
My strategy for Nue is to go middle, middle,
left, right. Because the game doesn’t formally
consider this a boss fight, I am able to spawn
a UFO and shoot it down. While Nue’s fairies
are not enough to saturate the UFO, it’s
still worth it since the UFO token would go
to waste otherwise. Make sure you can capture
Nue consistently, or else she will only drop
a spell instead of a 1-up. Dying here would
be a horrendous setback.
The section after Nue looks hairy, but it
is also static. Just make sure to avoid getting
dive bombed by fairies, which is slightly
harder for straight shot types like ReimuA.
The following section checks that your Z button
is working properly. That’s literally all
there is to it, just stand in the center.
The two rainbow UFO tokens here will always
be blue and green initially, but they seem
to go in random directions so be ready to
stream either way. Horseshoe turns seem to
create consistently large gaps in this stream.
From here until the end of the stage, there
are so many red UFO’s that I usually just
bombspam to ensure I can cash them in. I like
Stage 4 because it is the last stage where
I can expect to go net positive in resources.
ReimuA’s slower movement during bombs does
become a bit of a hindrance here but that’s
compensated by its raw power. And now we observe
an interesting missplay. I see that the two
UFO tokens are entangled, so I try to quickly
grab the red, but because they were near the
wall, I ended up grabbing the blue, which
costs me two life pieces. And I am out of
bombs. In hindsight, a better play would have
been to grab both of them when they were red
simultaneously.
In the boss fight against cap’n Murasa,
all 3 of her nonspells are static relative
to her position, so I try to dodge through
the same path everytime. That said, improvising
purely based on reaction is perfectly viable
here if that’s your playstyle, I just prefer
having my strats planned out.
Her first spell is free, so free in fact that
it begs the question, why is this spell even
in stage 4? Oh well I’ll take it. The only
gotcha is that Murasa moves in-between throwing
and retrieving her anchor, so its trajectory
will be slightly different on the way back,
and it also has an absolute unit of a hitbox.
I suppose it’s good to get used to it in
preparation.
I recently changed my preferred path for her
second nonspell. I used to do this one by
moving up and to the left, but this path moving
to the right is more consistent because it
can be done no-vertical.
Sinkable Vortex is Murasa’s hardest spell.
The direction of each wave follows the vector
from Murasa to myself, so I am strongly incentivized
to track her movement. And I do this successfully
for two waves, but lose my life to a stray
bullet. It’s not a big loss because I haven’t
found a good path for her third nonspell,
and I probably would’ve died and bombed
anyway if I’m being perfectly honest..
Murasa’s third spell is a awesome-looking
spellcard where each wave is conceptually
simple, but the glowing bullets obfuscate
the safespots, and I need to dodge so many
waves that I usually screw up one way or another,
for example by clipping of the water pellets
that splash out of the anchor landing zones,
or clipping against the anchor itself, or
getting walled by the glowing bullets. Unless
I press X of course.
Murasa’s final spell is a timeout that lasts
44 seconds. Unlike most timeouts in Touhou,
this one does not get much harder over time,
which can be a blessing or a curse depending
on your perspective. Murasa teleports a bit
faster with each wave but their shapes remain
constant. Get comfortable moving between the
three outer bullets and the three middle bullets
like I do here. I usually capture this one
in practice mode, then choke really hard when
the stakes are raised, sometimes losing 2
even 3 lives in succession and spelling doom
for the entire run. I think the trend is that
improvisation-heavy patterns scale poorly
under pressure for most players including
myself. On the other end of the spectrum you
have cards like Doremy’s two spinning spells,
which require precision, but almost no improv,
so they scale well under pressure. That said
I do cap it this time around.
4 lives, no bombs. Could’ve gone better,
but hey it wasn’t the train wreck or shipwreck
that stage 3 was. Realizing that a 1cc is
not out of the question, I take a much needed
deep breath, and step into Makai. Yeah I fully
expect things to go downhill from here.
For the first two fairies in Stage 5, I usually
macrododge the red wave and micrododge the
purple wave. I hold off on spawning the UFO
until the big horde of fairies arrives. Here
the UFO screen clear relieves a lot of pressure,
but if I didn’t have a UFO here, for example
if I had goofed right before Murasa, then
I would preemptively shoot down the UFO fairies
before they released their purple wave. Here
I make the mistake of letting the red UFO
token get away, but that pales in comparison
to my next mistake, which is being distracted
by that loss and dying to a static pattern
with large gaps. And In a stroke of brilliance
I go for a hat trick, and my third mistake
is not shooting this UFO quickly enough and
aggressively enough. With the chasing yin-yangs
railroading me, the UFO mockingly escapes
my clutches. Heck I should have bombed it,
at least that would’ve been better. I think
it’s debatable whether UFO or LoLK (Legacy
of Lunatic Kingdom) is the hardest Touhou
game based on attack patterns, but by a large
margin no other Touhou game makes resource
collection feel so antagonistic.
Nazrin is back, and she’s found some pagouda.
I mean pagoda. I mean pagouda if you’re
British. For Nazrin’s nonspell, I try my
best to jump into the wider triangular gaps,
though being stuck in a narrower rectangular
gap is salvageable. I always bomb Greatest
Treasure. It requires extremely intense omnidirectional
reading, especially on the red waves, and
besides I want to get value out of the UFO
fairies after Nazrin.
These UFO fairies are similar to the ones
at the start, but some of them drop blue and
green UFO tokens which I will need to watch
out for. Luckily the UFO screen clear trivializes
two waves on my behalf.
For the fireball section I just bombspam to
spawn UFO’s. I also grab a green on my way
up by accident. You can make it a bit safer
by standing close to either wall, where you
will only need to dodge one set of fairies,
but it may be hard to shoot down UFO’s this
way. I think it also helps to not be ReimuA.
We finish with three sets of chasing yin-yangs.
The last group of yin-yangs can be dodged
fairly consistently by moving unfocused across
the bottom of the screen, but I am afraid
of losing my life piece so I bomb. This is
a questionable decision because I now have
exactly 4 lives, but Shou will also drop a
life piece.
It’s Shoutime. Her first nonspell includes
two sets of yellow and one set of red lasers
on each wave. I look out for the red lasers
first, since their trajectories are the easiest
to extrapolate.
Her first spell is Radiant Treasure Gun. Not
even Kogasa is surprised that I die on the
very first wave. Yeah I always bomb this spell,
but if you must capture it avoid sticking
to the bottom of the screen unless required.
Shou’s infamous curvy lasers nonspell is
a brutal test of reaction time. I hold off
on bombing this one unless one of the three
waves looks too intimidating. Which usually
one of them always does, including this time
around, but I actually would’ve been safe.
Could’ve saved that bomb for Vajra.
Aura of Justice is easy if you ignore the
prospect of capturing it. Since I want to
replenish my power, I take some small risks
and lightly track her movement here and there.
If I had less than 2 power though, I would
probably not bother with trying to capture
this, even though that’s the situation where
the power would have the most additional utility.
As a rule of thumb, don’t stay in your current
lane if the wall ahead of you is in the bottom
quartile of the screen when the white lines
appear. With the RNG in Shou’s movement
and the constant pressure to swim up against
the current, it may not always be wise or
even possible to track her. Sometimes it just
feels like she’s leaving me behind to tour
a different continent. Still with only a few
milliseconds left on the clock I manage to
squeeze out a capture.
Her last nonspell can be easily done by spinning
counterclockwise. Shou will move in a random
direction when I am near the 11 o’clock
position. When she moves diagonally left and
upward, the pattern becomes very tight for
a second, but luckily I found that I can use
the blue light emanated by the pagoda as a
visual indicator for how close I can stick
to her. When her hp is low beware that Shou
will quickly jump to center screen for Vajra.
To avoid getting tackled I try to finish off
her hp bar at an angle, or better yet from
directly on top of her head.
Vajra is one of those spells that looked insanely
hard the first time I tried it, even on Normal.
I wouldn’t say it’s easy now, yet it’s
actually surprisingly consistent, because
my path is similar in each attempt, so the
spinning lasers jump to similar positions
in each attempt, and etc. I’ve timed it
out on occasion, but never captured it because
my power has always been too low. The third
cycle is usually where things get hectic and
the lasers start pressuring me to move very
fast, so the key is to look out ahead of time
and commit to certain gaps. Here I unfortunately
crash into a stray bullet, negating what otherwise
would have been a sweet capture.
I commit a grievous error on CC, which is
Shou’s last spell. Literally my first ever
1cc is on the line, and I could go into stage
6 with 2 lives and 1 bomb with the press of
a button which would be fantastic, but I get
greedy. I figure, surely I can just bomb reactively
if I ever need it right? With the last of
her strength, Shou strikes me down with karmic
retribution, and I go into Stage 6 with 1
life and 1 bomb. That death felt devastating.
But I must carry on.
Because of how the UFO tokens appear in Stage
6, it is more convenient to collect greens
rather than reds. Here after moving through
the rings I forget to obtain power from the
fairy on the left. With optimal collection,
I can spawn 4 green UFO’s for 5 bombs. If
I were at ½ or ¾ of a life, I could spawn
green, red, green, green instead for 1 life
and 4 bombs. Regardless, using one of those
bombs here is a good idea to ensure that I
can wrangle all the UFO tokens and at least
reach Byakuren in one piece. Space Invader
fairies do not pose a real threat until their
numbers build up. Here I body-block the green
UFO to prevent it from turning red. After
shooting down this UFO and raking in the spoils,
I will start carving out a safe zone for myself
among the fairies on the right. If I were
a score runner, I would take on the fairies
on the left for their blue UFO tokens instead,
but that would require actually being good
at Touhou. Before shooting any UFO fairy,
I always shoot down its two left companions
to ensure a safe UFO extraction.
Nice. I saturate my last UFO and bring it
down, and my score exceeds .2 billion, which
would be quite critical if I had a cryptographically
compromised computer. But my goal is a 1-continue
clear.
My strategy for Stage 6 Nue is the same as
it was in Stage 4: middle, middle, left, right,
only things go a bit faster now. She is the
one who disguised pieces of wood from Byakuren’s
ship as those pesky UFO’s. You know, Nue
is also the name of her species. That’s
like calling a human, Human. Weird. Thanks
to her though I am back at full power.
Ok, deep breath. In my mind I’m thinking
right now, I have 1 life and 5 bombs, what’s
the plan? The top 5 hardest attacks that Byakuren
has are, in descending order: Purple, Milky
Way, Devil’s Recitation, 2nd non, Superhuman.
So that’s what I’m bombing. If I had one
fewer bomb, for example if I missed a UFO
token, I would have to capture Superhuman,
which wouldn’t be too bad assuming full
power, but I’d rather not.
Byakuren’s first spell can sometimes fall
victim to RNG if the fireballs happen to line
up mercifully. But I don’t test my luck,
I use planned bomb #1.
Byakuren’s second non is in theory just
a streaming pattern, but I am not losing another
run to cheese. I use planned bomb #2.
Magic Butterfly has static butterfly bullets
and aimed lasers. I’ve memorized a route
which usually works, and has ample leeway
for the most part as you can see, but this
squeeze here is uncomfortably tight, and I
am sure there are better routes out there.
This non is surprisingly hard given that it’s
composed of straight lines. Fortunately at
full power ReimuA makes short work of it,
that’s a nice advantage to have.
Milky Way is another infamous curvy laser
pattern. On their own the curvy lasers pose
little threat, but demand too much geometric
mental labor so I use planned bomb #3 once
the stars appear.
Byakuren’s last nonspell is a go-around
pattern. Most players including myself have
a harder time dodging bullets from below than
from any other angle. When I’m dodging bullets
from above, I don’t need to look at my hitbox
directly, I can just rely on peripheral vision.
But my peripheral vision isn’t well-trained
enough at handling the underside, so the remedy
I use is to look at the bullets then trace
my eyes back to my hitbox slightly faster
than the bullets do then execute the dodge.
But honestly, any adviceI can give will probably
be inferior to you trying it out yourself.
Here I know I can end the nonspell after 2
cycles as full power ReimuA. If I had less
power, I would do another cycle for safety.
Devil’s Recitation, possibly stolen from
Shinki in Touhou 5. It starts off mellow.
Only the transparent part of the bubbles can
kill me. It starts to heat up once Byakuren’s
flowers begin firing the speedy white bullets,
and I use planned bomb #4 once the red lasers
appear, which ensures that I will not have
to dodge the last phase.
At full power, ReimuA can speedkill Superhuman
in 4 waves. It helps to not stay too close
to the bottom or to the side, but that is
moot because I unleash planned bomb #5. This
ensures that I will have one life going into
LFS, so my odds are good albeit not great.
I just need to finish her off before the next
wave. And there we go: the start of the final
spell.
For Byakuren’s final spell, I mostly stay
at the bottom of the screen until the red
phase, which is the last phase. I don’t
know if this is the easiest, but it at least
makes the practice consistent. As far as final
spells in Touhou go, LFS is somewhere in the
middle. There are two yellow waves and then
come the purple waves. Misdirecting the first
purple wave to the side seems to help with
the onset of the final phase, but I make an
embarrassing execution error on my way back.
I’m on my last leg, so I’m nervous, but
so is she. Well I don’t know if she’s
nervous but she’s certainly on her last
leg. I wanted to save two bombs for the final
phase, but better safe than sorry here. Once
Byakuren unveils the red amulets, I like to
move up a little bit, which seems to make
the gaps nicer for about 3 waves. Between
that small advantage and my final bomb, in
this run that was fraught with danger throughout,
in spite of costly failures in Stages 3, 4,
and 5, I achieve the 1cc. I’m happy that
Byakuren was able to reach nirvana, because
I nirvana see a blue UFO ever again. Thanks
for watching!
