Imperishable Night extra adventures

Originally I had planned to write up a post when I had reached a score of 3 billion for Imperishable Night extra. However, as the plan of simply getting 3 billion have gone out of the window, I will write something up now, mostly about what will happen with the category and such.

What do I mean by saying that the plans for 3b have been thrown out of the window? Well, I don't mean that I'll quit. I couldn't quit if I wanted to knowing that I have some really shitty things in my personal best. What I mean is that I won't be shooting for just 3b, but rather to beat ASL, which means 3.1b. Now, ASL's run has been the world record for over five years - and for a good reason, I might add. It's a very strong run with few actual mistakes. Add to that that only two different people have achieved a score of 3 billion (to my knowledge) and one can maybe see why it's been a world record for so long. "But then," you might wonder. "Why are you trying to beat it? Are you crazy?" In short, yes, I am. The long version of that is that while his run is strong, it's still old. New, better strategies have been found and his grazing isn't unbeatable either. Which is funny because that's a part of why his run is so strong. With the exception of Honest Man's death, I haven't seen someone graze better in a run. It doesn't even matter which attack. He has strong grazing on all of the ones you milk. But as I practiced, and practiced and practiced some more, I noticed that his gains aren't super amazing. And that everyone else just didn't have a good strategy for grazing or just simply weren't good at it. ASL's time-gains on the big spell cards are as followed:

Ichijo: 7,400;

First nonspell: 3800;

Xu-fu: 13,600;

Honest Man's Death: 16,200;

Hourai Doll: 10800;

Imperishable Shooting (not really that big, but I'll list it anyway): 3600

Out of those gains, Xu-fu is most likely the strongest followed by Hourai Doll; and Imperishable Shooting the weakest, followed by Honest Man's Death. And to me, it's understandable why those two in particular were the weakest spells. Gaining time on Honest Man's Death is dependent on how high you are on the screen, but this naturally makes the attack also quite a bit harder, in a different way than it does for Ichijo or Xu-fu. Once you've set yourself on a height, you can't back out and go lower, while on other attacks, you can go a bit slower and less risky if you feel that it's needed at that moment. And Imperishable Shooting should be obvious to anyone who's ever had a good run near the end. He was obviously shaky, and did not want to take unnecessary risks. Even if ASL had done a 40 million Imperishable Shooting capture (which is roughly 4400 time), he would have gotten around 10 million more than he did. Not a very worthwhile risk on a run that would beat the world record by almost 100 million at the time. Some of you reading this may be thinking to themselves now: "Well, by how much can you beat his time-gains, or the score overall?" And sure, I'll touch on that now. Let's start with the specific time-gains; I'll go by my best performance in practice, which obviously means that it's unlikely that I'll match that in a run. Imperishable Shooting in particular is questionable, so I will add a number for each spell which I think is realistic for me to get in any given run.

Ichijo: 8,100 (7,600-7,700 in a run);

First Non-spell: I don't really know, actually. I never saved a replay with a good first non, but I should be able to gain around 3,500, which admittedly is less than ASL, so I have to work on it;

Xu-fu: 14,300 (13,600; I should be able to match ASL, maybe slightly worse, but I'll make it up!)

Honest Man's Death: 18,000 (Anything from 17,000 to 19,000, really. My height is slightly different every time, but virtually never so low that I get below 17,000. 18,900 is the highest I've seen, but should also be doable for me with some luck. Maybe I'm being optimistic here though. Even with a mid 17,000 it's most probably my biggest improvement over the world record still.)

Hourai Doll: ~12,300 (11,500+, Hourai Doll is a bit difficult to tell because at this point in the fight, Mokou has spawned over 1,400 familiars during the course of the fight. If I go by the formula 0 < a <= 4 familiars: 16 * a + 6 * a * a + 2 * b, I should gain something over 2,800 time during the cancel of the attack. "a" being the familars on the screen and "b" being the familiars that have been spawned during the fight overall. I am not sure this is 100% accurate though; maybe I am overestimating the cancel here)

Imperishable Shooting: 4,500 (4,000-4,200. It is not unrealistic for me to get a 40 million Imperishable Shooting, which again, would be 4,400 time. But I think once I am in a run, being shaky and all, that I would not dare go for it. 40m needs solid character control, and some more risky grazing which I am not too sure I could do being undoubtedly shaky at that point in the run, so I'll opt for something less extreme)

And do keep in mind that every bit of time gained over the world record also means more graze, as well as some more score in the end-bonus. Beating ASL by 300 time on everything would add up quite nicely. Another thing to know is that while we're pretty even on most other spells, I have better strategies on at least three of them. Those are Flying Phoenix, Woo and Fujiyama Volcano. The time-gains aren't very big (100, 200 and ~300 respectively in that order), but still worth nothing, especially since I also kill Flying Phoenix and Fujiyama Vulcano faster, thus losing less spell card value. There is a bit more to it for Fujiyama Vulcano, too. My bullet cancel is larger as well by a few millions. To me it seems silly to say this myself, but at this level I plan to play at, a few millions is significant enough to go for it. There are other attacks where I have the potential to gain time or score on ASL, such as Flaw of Forgiving Shrine or Phoenix Tail. With some luck, you can cancel with more familiars, but it's not worth it waiting for it, since you would lose too much spell card value. It's also risky on Phoenix Tail, since it's easily possible to get hit. So I'll leave those up to luck.

Now for the things I am worse at and that I urgently need to improve. I already established my weakness on Mokou's first non-spell, I'm also really bad at the last non-spell. As it stands, I bomb it at least once every time, which is over 10 million points every time I face it. I can not allow that. The other thing I am much, much inferior with is the stage portion. It may seem obvious that if my boss fight is much stronger that my stage has to be worse, but it's just that I am a lot worse than I really should be. Out of the top five runs, my stage portion is the worst by a bit, and by far if we leave out AM's run. It is not only bad generally, but I'm very inconsistent in getting even acceptable cancels. And my stage cancels are also the reason why at first I wrote off the chance of beating ASL and settled for just 3 billion. But people rooting for me set ablaze a new flame and I want to at least try to do my best and not be lazy with the stage portion. First, I have to see what I am doing wrong fundamentally. It's not a matter of execution right now. It's a matter of understanding how to reach the numbers I currently need  and only then does it become a matter of executing it. How consistent I will be at the end of the day, I can't tell. I don't even really know if I'll actually find out how anytime soon.

I talked about what I am better at (Mokou's fight) and what I am worse at (the stage portion, 2 of the non-spells), but assuming I break even on the stage, by how much can I beat ASL? I didn't do the hard math, and doing it would actually take quite some time I am not willing to invest for something as silly as that. I can give an educated guess though, but I'm not sure how accurate it will be. Parts of it might end up being nonsense, I will admit, but here goes: Imperishable Shooting alone has room for improvement by 10 million, and assuming that I got 1000 time more on Honest Man's Death, that is roughly another 5 million. If we say 1000 more time on Hourai Doll as well, that would again add about 5 million. Those three improvements alone would gain roughly 2800 time which would be added in the end-game bonus (which is time x 1000), so again, another 2,8 million. Overall, I believe I can potentially save up to 35 million, if I broke even entering Mokou (and the stage portion can be actually improved by ~1500 extra time, which is about 2 million just from Mokou's items + end-game bonus, albeit this implies an absolutely, astonishingly good stage portion and Keine fight). In a game like Imperishable Night, that isn't a lot, but if I improved it by only half of that, it would me a tremendous success to me, so I'll definitely try my best.

Future adventures

I have written and entry on Perfect Cherry Blossom easy and how I do not wish to spend all that much time on it. But then what? That is what this entry is all about and I personally assume that those future plans will keep me busy for at least a year, likely longer. But what exactly are the categories afterwards? Well:

After I quit PCB easy mode, my plan was to wrap up extra mode. I have been playing Imperishable Night extra on and off quite a bit which my personal best standing at 2.73 billion and it is probably my strongest IN score. My goal for this one is 3 billion. That is a score I believe myself to be capable of, especially once I have practiced some of Mokou's attacks more. My current personal best has every supergraze in it aside from "Honest Man's Death", which I have already learned. Although the long downtime will force me to relearn it, probably. I actually expect this to take several months, to be frank. IN extra is an intuitive category to me, but still quite difficult and to reach my goal, I can't fail any attacks, bar perhaps bombing the last nonspell, not that I want to bomb it, but it's very stressful to dodge it, especially on a good run.

Note that at this point in time I quit PCB easy earlier than I anticipated, and after I finish up extra, I'll see if I want to play PCB again or not. Perhaps I'll improve it, but probably not.

The next category I will play is IN normal. It's a category I have played before and it's a category I never planned to take a break from, but things happened. This will probably take up most of the time, since my goal for it is very very high. In fact, I was thinking that for as long as I still enjoy the category, I might try to best st's run (4,412,460,930). Now, those of you familiar with the run will know that this is crazytalk. However, me even seriously trying is simply a maybe. I only want to pursue the score for as long as I enjoy it and won't push myself any further than that. Right now I can't tell for how long I will be able to retain the enjoyment I had from playing IN normal, but I assume that it will last for quite some time, as it is my favorite category to this day.

After normal mode is yet another Imperishable Night category. My easy mode score is in serious need of an improvement as well. Right now it's at pretty much 3 billion flat, but I would like to raise it by maybe 200 million points. The world record for this category is at 3.3 billion, but I don't think I want to go for that score. Not only is easy mode a bit duller than normal mode, but the run is likely more optimized than the one for normal mode too and 3.2 billion is a respectable score in itself, I think. Easy mode was my first category I have scored more seriously, so once I get back to it, it may be going to be slightly nostalgic. I do look forward to it.

After the Imperishable Night marathon I will try Ten Desires. It is the only Youmu game left that I have not yet tried and the plan is to score my first hard mode. It is another game I have no experience with, and I don't have a concrete goal for this yet (it won't be too high, I don't think). I did get some advice from someone who's played the game before, so maybe it won't be as much of a steep entry as it was with Perfect Cherry Blossom.

Another thing I will want to add in here is that at any moment in time I could start playing Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream again. Never was PoDD scoring planned, but always did it happen. It's nothing I plan to play, but it happens when I feel like it. So amidst all that, I might also be playing some of that.

Those are my plans for now. I've said in the beginning that I will likely be stuck on all of this for a year, but it's probably going to take much much longer to work out all of this. And whether I actually have the patience for all of the goals is uncertain. Personally, I hope I do, alas experience has shown that my patience oftentimes runs thin.

Perfect Cherry Blossom adventures

I have now spent some time on Perfect Cherry Blossom easy and there are several things I want to say about the category:

When I started out, I jokingly said I wanted a score of 1.8 billion. I didn't know what that score needed, how well I'd need to play and just went by percentages of the world record. My personal best at the time of that announcement was 1.1 billion, I believe and so naturally, I was justly told that my standards are too high. And I have to agree. 1.8 billion is too high of a score considering the time I am willing to spend on this category. The reason that I am not willing to spend that much time on the category is that it's far too technical for me. I am not the kind of player that is able to plan out a route that maximizes score as well as your knowledge of the game would allow. I am not the kind of player that is able to accurately calculate how much a certain graze would give, whether that one border would be worth more than two smaller ones that are farther apart and whatnot. I am the kind of player that watches a planned out replay and practices what the replay shows. If the things the replay does are intuitive, then I have fewer problems copying it than most people would have. However, a lot of things in PCB are not intuitive. What I mean are not the grazes; most of those are natural motions to me, but parts of Cherry+ control is not. I will take stage two as an example here:

When I started out to play PCB, I looked at the world record like I always do and saw it gets five borders in stage two. When I tried to copy what the world record did, I was left flabbergasting at what the hell was happening. I was short Cherry+ here and there and I didn't know why or how the fucking bomb worked. It took me the longest time to fix my stage two to what it roughly should be. I had similar issues in stage four and I worked those out too. What I did not manage to work out were stage three and five. The world record gets a border more on each stage. In stage three I don't even know how he gets the sufficient Cherry+ so I am forced to assume it's black magic. And while I know why in stage five, I absolutely can't replicate that. I tried to, but I did not manage once, and came to the conclusion that the extra border was not worth it and since it was a small border, so I didn't care much.

But on the other hand there were very few grazes I struggled to learn. The ones I found really difficult were Letty's "Flower Wither Away" spellcard and the "Funeral Concert" spell from the Prismrivers. Those are the things I thought were really hard to get down. Everything else I learned relatively quickly, because those tricks are, for the most part, intuitive grazes. Now, I'm not claiming to be doing any of them optimally. I realize myself while playing that I am missing a lot of graze everywhere, but that is something that comes with more practice on those attacks.

I know I am complaining, whining even, and I do realize that part of it is that I have absolutely no experience with PCB prior to starting this category. However, it doesn't change my dislike for purely technical techniques in this game. PCB is a fantastic game to play for score, mesmerizing even (particular the very optimized runs are), but unfortunately not entirely my cup of tea. I like the grazing - Reflowering for example is a lot of fun - I enjoy the bosses, but I do not enjoy the management of your Cherry+.

Now, I have talked about bad things in Perfect Cherry Blossom. Let me also mention the good things. I mentioned that I enjoy the grazing, which I do. There is a large variety of different types. There are of course your typical streaming grazes, which is not surprising, but there are many beautiful attacks in the game too: "Funeral Concert" is a great attack. It's a special type of circle grazing, which is always fun. I like it so much it fact, that I played the Prismrivers many times and am fairly consistent on all their attacks at this point (while hopelessly inconsistent in some other parts of the game, most notably stage two). Stage four is probably my most played stage in the game. I also greatly enjoy post Lily white, although I can't exactly explain why. "Ghost Butterfly" on easy mode is a thing of absolute beauty. The motion itself, to go back into the spawnpoint of the butterflies, is not very difficult (hug the bottom, time it right and voilà), but that doesn't take away any of its beauty. Playing around with it in practice mode, trying to maximize the graze is just a ton of fun. And then there is of course the spell I already mentioned. Reflowering has to be my favorite spellcard in the game and is probably also one of my favorite spells in the series at this point. I have always liked "Saigyouji Flawless Nirvana" in Imperishable Night, but being able to graze Reflowering just makes it that much better. What I really enjoy about this spell - as well as the others I have mentioned - is that they are very active. You don't just tap in a single direction or bomb for the graze like you would in Subterranean Animism. Instead, you are forced to work for your graze and the increased spellvalue and potential CherryMax. For the whole duration of the spells, you will be working for your score and that, my good fellows, is beautiful.

 After all this, I would like to add my new, actual goal for this category, roughly anyway. 1.8 billion was a much too big time investment and I am actually not sure if I could reach that score with my route as it currently is. What I do know is, however, that my route can reach 1.7 billion, which is also what I would like to have at this point. I won't scoff at a high 1.6 run, but I would really like to get a clean run with 1.7 as the end result. So in the very end, this run is going to be so very much like many other runs of mine. Decent, but nothing stellar, unfortunately.

Summeradventures

I will say this in advance: I have no idea how blogging works. 

I believe this summer is going to be crucial to me as a Youmu-player. Not because of an impeding improvement, but because in the current state of things, it's very demotivating to play. Back at home in Austria, I have my very big screen that gets filled out by the game(s) perfectly. I don't know how big it actually is, but it should be around 75cm diagonally, possibly more. It makes seeing bullets and gaps easy on the eyes and actually allows me to read things I shouldn't be able to (HMD supergraze being a fantastic example for this). On the other hand, the screen I have for the summer is only around two-thirds as big and has awful dimensions for Touhou games - the screen doesn't get filled out and I have those disgusting black bars left and right of the game. It makes playing frustrating because I am performing like a dumbass that's new to everything. Where I want to go with this is that it's possible for me, during this summer, that I will not play, slowly recline and then just suddenly don't ever play again. To me, the possibility of "unintentionally" quitting Youmu-games is very real.

What I wanted to play was PoDD, but that is not going well at all. I've forgotten how to dodge, to make it short. I've stopped being able to sustain myself for the duration of a whole round while using level two spells. This might be attributable due to rust, since I haven't played the game for three months, but it doesn't feel like rust, but more like me just being really really bad. I'll continue to play PoDD, see if I can get used to the derpy screen in IN and pray I can get used to things. I would really like to not take a 2 1/2 month break for IN, but I don't know if I can help it. We'll see about that.

So to summarize: My potential summeradventures are going to be Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream lunatic in the quest for the phantasmal 120m and Imperishable Night Extra for 3b. But only if things go well. If I can get past this summer without quitting, I can always more or less easily continue playing on my big Computer screen in Austria. I think I can get the latter before the year ends, the former is much more luck dependent, so it's much harder to say when I'll reach it, but I hope it won't elude me as 100m did for me for the longest time, which it probably will, seeing how it requires even more luck. Or skill. I am the luckiest player around, but I'm not skillful enough per se for it. Improvements have to be made before I can realistically PB in PoDD, but it will happen if I keep playing.