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Totally forgot to mention that I 1cc'd PCB on Normal with Reimu A. Her damage is nothing short of pathetic, but somehow I managed better this way.
Well, that makes the Early Windows Era all done for me, now to finally struggle my way through MoF and then SA. :I
(And beat the extra stages! Suddenly I am in love with them. Except for Honest Man's Death. I mean honestly.)

The extra stages… So far I could only try 7 and 8 (and catch Keine's “Returning Bridge Ichijo”). Quite intriguing and fun, but too hard for me as of now. Next History of Phantasm is just nuts.
I'd love to take my time to practice until I can at least see a significant part of the spellcards.

I've heard that Hollow Giant –Woo– and Fujiyama Volcano are pretty terrible spellcards as well, beware.

Woo has some kind of glitch position where all the card shots can't actually hit you if you move to a certain point, but it's dodgy.

Also, Rainbow Danmaku is ridiculous on any difficulty except easy. Thanks for getting me very very scared, Spell Practice Mode.
And lol @ Sakuya's Last Word.

Well, I drew another Marisa the other day. I think her legs are too short, but the bottom was pretty much a rush job anyway. Didn't forget the braid this time. xD"

I can practically hear the Master Spark sound

octagon wrote:The extra stages… So far I could only try 7 and 8 (and catch Keine's “Returning Bridge Ichijo”). Quite intriguing and fun, but too hard for me as of now. Next History of Phantasm is just nuts.
I'd love to take my time to practice until I can at least see a significant part of the spellcards.

I've heard that Hollow Giant –Woo– and Fujiyama Volcano are pretty terrible spellcards as well, beware.

I'm pretty much the same, although I've been playing 6 as well. Keine's 2nd is a usual catch for me and I'm getting better with her first, since it's pretty much streaming while moving around in the grid. Her 3rd is similar but hell if I'm gonna be catching that any time soon. :I

As for 7, I'm getting close to catching Red Oni Blue Oni, but the one after that blows me away every time. Good thing one bomb easily disposes of it.
Ran's first spellcard I'm catching basically every time now, since I figured out the trick. Her second is downright nasty, though, and it doesn't let up from there.

All three of Patchy's spellcards are pretty simple on a good day in 6, too. I recognise/remember Flandre's from watching YouTube runs too, so I might actually stand a reasonable chance against that one when I have the patience to put up with the stage part. :I

I should try UFO, TD and 12.3 soon, too. But I'd like to beat MoF and SA first, with continues at least (ha, fat chance, lol).

Nice Marisa there. And yay you remembered the braid this time.

Agent of Dread wrote:All three of Patchy's spellcards are pretty simple on a good day in 6, too.

Royal Flare
HOW

Agent of Dread wrote:I should try UFO, TD and 12.3 soon, too. But I'd like to beat MoF and SA first, with continues at least (ha, fat chance, lol).

Well, I can 1cc MoF on Hard and No Miss Clear SA on Normal, so it really shouldn't be that difficult. You have a ridiculous amount of bombs to use in these two; abuse the heck out of them.

Royal Flare is just kind of getting into the gaps... over and over. Not that bad at all if I'm focused.

@MoF/SA: I'm getting better at actually using my bombs, in MoF at least. SA is just evil evil evil.
Although the main problem is that you pretty much get slaughtered for even attempting to pop above the POC instead of just grabbing the tokens as they fall.

Agent of Dread wrote:Royal Flare is just kind of getting into the gaps... over and over. Not that bad at all if I'm focused.

If it was that simple I wouldn't have a 0% capture rate on that spellcard out of roughly 40 attempts.

Agent of Dread wrote:Although the main problem is that you pretty much get slaughtered for even attempting to pop above the POC instead of just grabbing the tokens as they fall.

That is true, but not a problem. In MoF bombing also activates auto collection for the duration of the bomb (just remember to go above the POC for the duration of the bomb to get full points).

In SA the solution is to graze, graze, graze and graze some more. Having a full graze meter and keeping it there will draw all items on-screen towards you at full point value.
You could also play as Reimu B (Suika), where releasing all buttons will also activate auto collection, but not at full point value. Still good to pick up the power items, but then again Reimu B's shot type sucks, so yeah.

I've been playing as Marisa A in SA and C in MoF (very handy). I still don't entirely understand this graze meter/point value thing.

@Royal Flare, I've captured it... twice out of three times? Three out of five, possibly? Maybe it's just compatibility.

Oh.
Marisa A may be Marisa's best shot type in SA (unless you're really good with Marisa B's awkward element switching), which isn't saying much because Marisa as a whole sucks pretty bad in SA, and in fact any shot type not named Reimu A or Reimu C does (again, unless you happen to be really good with Marisa B). Even Reimu C, while not terrible, is inferior to Reimu A in almost every possible way. So really, if you just want to 1cc SA anytime soon, get used to playing as Reimu A.
Just to give you an idea how awesome Reimu A in SA is, her shot strength at 4 power almost matches Marisa A's at 8, her bombs are amazing (by far the best in all of SA) and she has a really useful passive ability that can trivialize a few otherwise difficult spellcards.
On the other hand, Reimu A has to deal with the most difficult version of Satori, as, true to her theme, she gets Yukari's (!!!) spellcards. You know, Phantasm-level spellcards. Even on Normal. (To be fair, they're a bit toned down if you're playing on Easy or Normal, but if you're playing on Hard or above? Have fun.)
But if you can get past Satori, Reimu A should have little trouble with anything else SA has to offer.
Except the Extra Stage, but that one's just completely ridiculous.

Graze meter / point value in SA:
On Normal, you start out with a point item value of 50000 and a multiplier of x0.00. This multiplier temporarily increases by up to 1.00 depending on how much your communications gauge is filled (which is filled by grazing lots of bullets in short succession, or filled instantly by going above the POC), and permanently by a hundreth of the bullets you've grazed. So if you have 7224 Graze, for example, your multiplier would be between x0.72 and x1.72. At 13500 Graze (this is possible, trust me - even on Normal), it'd be between x1.35 and x2.35.
Regardless of your actual multiplier, item auto collection is active whenever your communications gauge is completely full. Then consider that the communications gauge is easier to fill the more filled it already is; in practice, this means to first fill it, you either have to graze A LOT of bullets in short succession (10+ in about a second - often possible, but not always practical) or go above the POC. To then keep it filled, you can just continue to graze bullets all the time. Roughly three Graze per second will keep it at 100%.

I thought Marisa C might be viable because of her bombs, but they seem to cost a lot even if you don't get hit anyway. And Nitori's missiles are kinda lame. Also sad that apparently even Marisa A's bombs are fairly lame, despite quite clearly being 'attack' bombs.
Guess I'll start playing as Reimu, then... :I

Marisa C's bombs are odd; they look good on paper, allowing you to "bomb" more freely without wasting as much power. In practice, however, they're terrible; not setting off the bomb ends up wasting power (as you only get 0.50 power refunded, not all of it), and the blast itself doesn't give you a single frame of invincibility. The lack of actual invincibility is extremely inconvenient in a surprisingly large number of situations, and downright deadly in those spellcards that have bullets that cannot be removed by bombs. You'll get hit, set off the bomb, and sometimes die literally the very next frame.
Also, relying on Marisa C's bombs makes you forget how to deathbomb. Really.

Marisa A's bombs are even worse, though. They do less damage than the deathwave that goes across the screen when you die, lol. Unless you're really sitting right in the enemy's face, but why the hell would you be doing that? In most spellcards, it's not even realistically possible. They give you only very little invincibility either, and wasting Power is a much more pronounced problem for Marisa A than it is for any other shot type, as Marisa A is only effective at 5 or more Power, so bombing yourself all the way down to 0 is a very good way to ensure you're not getting back up. On the other hand, if you avoid bombing and end up dying with any power left, you end up wasting free bombs.

If you really want to play as Marisa in SA, your best shot really is Marisa B; she's very awkward to use, but if you manage to get used to her, she can do almost as well as Reimu C (which is, she still gets outclassed by Reimu A, but she's pretty okay and doesn't have to deal with a ridiculous version of Satori). Her shot is almost as weak as Reimu B's (unless you manage to hit some really weird sweet spots with certain elements; this means that if you want to do maximum damage, you'll end up shooting backwards or from the side most of the time lol), but her bomb is okay (short reach for the damage, but the invincibility frames are long enough to be of use and if you do manage to actually shotgun something with it, the damage is considerable) and being able to switch the direction you're shooting in (as well as adjusting the spread) can also be pretty useful.

Ridiculous version of Satori? I was just playing as Reimu A now and I caught all her spellcards except for the last one.

At any rate, I'll probably stick with h- STAGE 5 LOL NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE

Well whatever, maybe you're just getting better than me. I can also capture all of ReimuA!Satori's spellcards by now, but I sure as hell had a lot of trouble with them when I first started playing SA as Reimu A.