#screenshot from the touhou wiki

[evilisk-played]

Labyrinthine December Part 19: I Clean Out Floor 26... and Yuuka

I hate that all of the guides I checked for fighting Yuuka said she’d be easy 

So I explored Floor 26, then ran into "Shikieiki Yamaxanadu" (aren't early translations of Touhou just *silly*?). I tried her fight but Shiki has no chill and seems able to *check notes* do 90k damage on one character with one of her skills. Rather than try and take something like that head on, I decided to grind since I was at a new floor anyway.

So on managing this floor's mobs: I found a pretty good party with Yukari, Mystia, Renko and Chen. Chen exists as a fast attacker than can also snipe Famous Strategists. Renko is there for Galaxy Stop. Mystia is there for her two PAR AOE's (the first one is NTR based, and is good for certain enemies, the other one is non-elemental). And then Yukari is there to use her cheat spell (if the enemy's not too tough, though, she'll go for Shikigami attack).

The strategy is basically:

1. Chen gets the first turn and snipes Famous Strategist 2. Renko gets next turn, uses Galaxy Stop 3. Mystia gets next turn. Choose one of her PAR AOE’s for this. If you’re fighting a Heal Rabbit or one of those Butterfly recolours, use the non-elemental AOE for more damage. If it’s anything else, use the NTR one. 4. Chen usually gets another turn. Use whatever attack you want. 5. Yukari gets the next turn. Use Spiriting Away so you can have Mystia and Chen finish them off. If there’s only one enemy though, you can use Shikigami attack to save yourself some MP.

It's a very, very streamlined strategy.

= = =

Anyway after enough grinding, I decided to go back and finally fight Yuuka. If nothing else, I’d at least have several levels over my last attempt. The fight... still ended up being long and hard but she *finally* went down.

The final party ended up being:

Eirin, Flandre, Alice, Meiling Kaguya, Yuugi, Aya, Nitori Yukari, Reimu, Minoriko, Ran (FRONT ROW)

Despite there being a lot of familiar names, this party was not at all like how I usually build parties. In normal bosses, my strategy is always to build up a strong front row with lots of throwaway attackers. In this fight, I had to build up a core part of attackers, with lots of support to back them up. So rather than “Reimu and Meiling are not allowed to die”, it was “Alice, Yuugi and Flandre are not allowed to die”.

Here were the roles I had for everyone:

Meiling / Eirin: both of these were picks for first slot tank. I was honestly surprised how good they were as tanks. Characters like Patchouli, Iku and Yuyuko (who are my actual MND tanks) didn’t work nearly as well. 

Ran, Kaguya, Yukari, Reimu: all four were on buffing duty. Don’t really need to explain what any of these characters do, though I only used Kaguya’s Stone Bowl as a buff for herself (otherwise, I was using her for the extra turn effect)

Reimu, Minoriko, Eirin, Meiling: yeah, I went with four healers for this one. I usually don’t like to have this many healers, but Yuuka is a serious problem sometimes, between her volleys of Flower Shot or Magic Drain. 

Nitori, Aya: both of these were my backup attackers and dedicated switchers. Despite their similar roles, my usage of each was a bit different (Aya couldn’t stay out ever, while Nitori could work as a makeshift tank in some situations).

Kaguya, Yukari: they both give extra turns. I intended to just bring Yukari at first, but Kaguya ended up being more reliable for the actual attacking part of the battle, while Yukari was good for getting out of sticky situations.

Now for the three main attackers: Alice, Yuugi and Flandre. Alice was my only regular attacker, as she was the only FIR attacker I had with decent enough stats to take punishment from Yuuka (also I want to point out the irony of this considering the weird relationship between Alice and Yuuka). Despite being a tank, Yuugi was honestly more of a Patchouli style nuke that I always had to bring in and out. Flandre was there entirely to close off the fight. I had her buffed up to 90K attack (with the help of Gurthang, Magic Sword Chaos and Cestus). Wiki says you need about 3 million to close off Yuuka’s final phase and Flandre, with 90k attack, is capable of almost 2 million damage. Anyway...

There are basically three phases to this fight. 

First Phase Yuuka

Yuuka is at her most random in this fight. She has two low delay attacks, Flower Shot and Magic Drain, and in my experience, Yuuka tends to do “volleys” of these attacks before going for bigger ones (sort of like Orin using Cat Step in her fight, except not as guaranteed).

Her bigger attacks include Sakura Blizzard (a row attack), Arrow Rain (a physical group attack), Overgrowth (hard-hitting group attack) and a single target NTR attack. Overgrowth is the most dangerous of these attacks, and it can be devastating if Yuuka follows up her volleys with these attacks. The good news about these attacks is that they don’t fully party wipe by themselves (so long as your party is buffed and healed up). They also set Yuuka’s delay back by a lot (especially Overgrowth). 

The bad news Yuuka’s Flower Shot volleys will soften up your characters so that they *do* die when these bigger attacks are used. This habit of Yuuka’s is why I needed a lot of backup support characters, as sometimes you don’t have an option but to switch out to a character so they can survive. 

I’m not sure how long this Phase goes for (because Labyrinth of Touhou loves not giving you information like “how much health does a boss have left”) but after a certain damage threshold, you will eventually reach second phase.

Second Phase Yuuka

After some HP threshold is reached, two more abilities in Yuuka’s arsenal will be unlocked. Both of these are group, NTR nukes, though Reflowering Gensokyo is the most dangerous one as it also acts a heal for Yuuka. The way this fight works, it’s actually possible for Yuuka to heal back to the first phase (and the heal isn’t insignificant either, it heals for roughly 1 million HP). There’s not much to say, as it’s First Phase Yuuka, but with the chance of either nuking your party, or nuking your part while also healing herself back to Phase 1

Yuuka’s ability to prolong the fight is one reason she’s quite frustrating...

Third Phase Yuuka

But just going in guns blazing isn’t a good idea either! In her third phase, after another HP threshold is reached Yuuka will suddenly Focus and begin charging up her Master Spark. And if she gets it off you *will* die (I know, because in one attempt, I had a full party, full buffed... and they all got overkilled by a stupid amount of damage). You can easily get screwed over if you focus too much on bypassing her heals, because the only way out of this Flytrap is to break through her final wall of 3 million HP, and if you’ve wasted all your buffed attacks on getting to that point, well...

It’s kind of ingenious, the way you need to balance being phase 2 and phase 3. I ended up really lucky; as you can see in the screenshot, my final front row was all my fire attackers. Having Aya around (with her speed fully buffed) ended up allowing me to field all my FIR attackers + Kaguya (who I used to get Yuugi one extra attack off). ...God, this fight really went down to the wire; I actually wasn’t sure I’d done enough damage when Flandre went out and used Laveatein. 

Aaanyway... Yuuka’s down... and now also part of my party, which is great! I’ve been reading up on her and she seems amazing. Low delay attack? Check. Tank with support and group healing capabilities? Check. OG Master Spark capable of hitting multiple enemies? 

Check.

I honestly can’t wait to unleash Dual Master Sparks on Shiki.

[translationandbetrayals]

A compressive guide of Touhou Project! Part 1 – What is Touhou?

Do you recognize these characters? From left to right they are Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame. From what anime are they from? Well... From no one, but they have a couple of animes.

These were pretty commons questions when I started in this fandom 9 years ago. So, if you didn’t know these answers, you are in the right place.

Today we’re going to make a beginner friendly guide about one of my favorite games of all times! Touhou Project. So, first thing first.

What is Touhou?

Well, it’s a video game, but not just that. But we are going to get to that point soon. Being specific, Touhou is a series of a Japanese Shoot ‘em up game (Being even more specific, is in the category of the Bullet Hell type) where you take control of one of the main characters to resolve the incident that is presented in every instalment. Simple stuff, right? It is developed by Team Shanghai Alice who is composed by the one man-army himself Jun'ya Ōta (Yeah… He is the only member of his team…), also more known as his pseudonym ZUN.

ZUN the man behind the series

Shoot ‘em what!? Bullet Hell? What is a bullet hell?

Shoot em’ up is a subgenre of video games where you usually have your character/spaceship shooting to many enemies in the screen while dodging its attacks. Things like Space Invaders, Gradius, Aerofighters and many others. In summary you just shoot thing up.

Screenshot of Aerofighters II

Bullet Hell in the other hand we can call it a sub-subgenre of the Shoot em’ up, and is all about dodging the enemy’s attacks, you got a curtain of bullet coming at you and intricate patterns of attacks where you really need to focus in your movement to dodge every single one of the bullets in the screen while trying to keep destroying the hordes of enemies that appear during the game. The Japanese term for this concept is Danmaku.

Pretty neat isn’t it? Good luck in avoiding being hit by those.

I got that… But why is so good?

There are many points to talk about this, so I’m going to point out the most important things about them.

Characters: Every single one of the characters that appear in the game is particularly memorable. Most of the time they are bishoujo versions of diverse monsters, spirits and demons of the Japanese folklore (the so called yōkai), and some other monsters from others culture as well. They have their own backstory usually explained in a little dialogue before each boss fight, they have their own musical theme and even some bosses become playable in later games too. All in all, this make every single character of the cast to be enjoyable and memorable, even the ones that appear just once in the game!

And this is something pretty hard to achieve from the point of view of a video game developer, how can you make that the player remember every single one of the characters of the game, and over 180 characters across all the games of the series? Well, ZUN can do it.

Hong Meiling is like Bobba Fett in Star Wars, she appears just one time in a game and her popularity grow immense! She started appearing in later games too.

Mythology: As I said before, ZUN transform myths and youkais from the Japanese culture to bishoujo characters for his game, so here we have an amalgam of the Japanese and other countries folklore and ZUN’s own story. So, there is a lot of room to cultural and historical references in the game, and of course some others pop cultural references that the developer isn’t afraid to show.

Remilia Scarlet is a Vampire and the final boss of the 6th release of the game in 2002. As you can see, ZUN didn't draw that well, but he has been improving.

ZUN isn't ashamed to put some references from Jojo neither. (Sure, this scene is from the anime adaptation of 2012, but is a reference to the manga of 1987)

Music: This is probably one of the strongest points in the series. The creator himself has stated in multiple times that he first composes a musical theme and then he creates a character or a stage to fit in that melody. In the end, we have a game with an excellent soundtrack aside with musical themes that fit with every single character. This will help us greatly to remember the characters from Touhou.

The Community: I’m not going to say something like “This is the best videogame community that have ever existed” because, as we know, every single fan-communities have some cancer in it. And Touhou is no exception to this. BUT what I can ensure, is that Touhou community is one of the largest and more active communities of all times. You don’t believe me? Oh… You should.

I still have that torrent to download almost 2 Terabytes (2048 Gigabytes) of arranges covers of the music of Touhou. We’re not talking about just a couple of fan covers that some fan makes to upload to his YouTube channel about video game covers. We’re talking about Bands that born only with the intension to create covers of his favorite music from this game. We’re talking about bands and circles that periodically release new albums to sell it to the indie (or so called doujin) market in Japan in massive events like Comiket or Reitaisai. And this is ONLY the music, you can find a complete world in fan-created mangas (Doujinshi) and fangames. We can have an entire post only for this topic (and is, exactly what I’m going to do) so let’s just end with: ZUN really likes the fan creations of his own game and he have no problems with them being commercialized.

The Comiket has been held in Tokyo Big Sight since 1996. May be you recognize this building from some anime like Steins;Gates or Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon.

Woah… That’s impressive, but the game looks hard as hell... Why should I play it?

You should try it because, as a game Touhou is a pretty fun game. Have a simple and intuitive gameplay of the Shoot ‘em up, just pick the upgrades in the screen and keep destroying things with your bullets for 6 stages. Remember, if you’re in danger just drop one bomb and with a spectacular and flashy light show all your problems are gone! Also, the game has tons of different characters across all the games, for a mere probability issue, you will like at least one of them. Haha.  And of course, you will not be disappointed with the gorgeous soundtrack of any of the games.

About the difficult… Yeah… It will take you some practice to beat the game, but I guess that is part of the joy of the game. I have absolutely no shame to admit that I play the game in Easy Mode until I can finally beat it, because the first dozen of tries I made in Normal Mode when I just picked up the game, I couldn’t pass the level 3. It’s was a matter of time till I finally even beat the Extra Stage (A bonus stage with the hardest boss in the game). So, just don’t give up and keep trying!

Don't listen/read to them.

You convinced me… How can I play it?

This is the best part, Touhou is finally in Steam! You can play right now for free the Demo of the last game here! Touhou 17 ~ Wily Beast and Weakest Creature. (Link!) The complete game should be release in August of this year for around 15 dollars (In Chile, the price is around 6400 Pesos). Or you could try the other release in Steam, Touhou 16 ~ Hidden Star in Four Seasons (Link!).

And don’t worry about the number 16 or 17, you don’t really need to play any other game of the series to have a good time with this new release. As I said before, most of the time the story of every game is basically the same. There is an incident on the village -> Our Heroines go to beat the hell of the evil girls -> They solve the problem and drink some sake to celebrate. The story is spiced up with a lot of cultural reference, interesting characters, mythology and a huge etc. There is a whole wiki dedicated to it. Check it out If you like the stories that Touhou has to offer. You will find a lot of information about your favorites characters there!

I don’t really like this genre… I don’t really think this is for me…

SAY NO MORE, there is a lot (A LOT) of fangames and other more things about Touhou than… Touhou itself, is such an irony. So, I’m going to point out some of my favorite fan games that have another type of gameplay but with the thematic of Touhou. Unfortunately, some of them aren’t in Steam, so Google will be your friend.

MegaMari: If Megaman is your thing, you should definitely try this out. It will be a good challenge.

TouhouVania I & II: Well, The official names are Koumajou Densetsu - Scarlet Symphony and Koumajou Densetsu 2 - Stranger's Requiem. As the name suggest, they’re a mix of the classic Castlevania and Touhou, where you can see a marvelous gothic version of the characters. These are my personal favorite Touhou Fangames of all the times.

Touhou Puppet Dance Performance: This is a Pokemon-like fangame. One of the best versions of this type of RPG.

Touhoumon: There’s a lot of Pokemon ROM Hacks of Touhou out there. You will find most of them by this name.

Touhou 12.3 and Touhou 15.5: What are these names? Oh… Yeah… I forgot to mention that Touhou have a couple of officials Spins-off. 12.3 and 15.5 are the official Fighting games of the series. They are pretty good, and Touhou 15.5 is in Steam too! (Link!)

Touhou Luna Nights: A Metroidvania type where you explore the map and search for upgrades to your character in order to access to the other areas of the game. It’s in Steam! (Link!)

Touhou Rhythm Carnival! Kurenai: A collection of rhythm mini games like Rhythm Heaven series.

Today you can find in Steam and in the Nintendo Switch eShop a bunch of others fangames too, so It’s worth to check them out.

Well this was a hell of a post, and as I said, in the next part we’re going to talk more about the diverse non-game fan-related media that Touhou have. So, I leave you with a couple of memes of ZUN for the tradition.

This was literally the first image that appeared me when I searched ZUN in Google.

Fun fact: ZUN is a beer lover. (He makes the games while is drunk. No joke)

And finally, a photo of ZUN and his wife <3. (I have no idea who is the lady in the left though…)

See you in the next dream…

Enrique Valdés