The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

i wonder what reimu's armpits smell like

This is the most famous Touhou game, and probably the most important game in my own journey. What I mean by that is that finding this game started a more serious interest in videogaming and also exploring the medium. Before EoSD I usually just played games to kill some time and I was completely oblivious to the existence of the kinds of games I actually like most, STGs. Strictly speaking, EoSD wasn't my first STG, but it may as well have been. EoSD was a total revelation, the biggest gaming revelation of my life. ZUN's music, quirky dialogues and portraits, and above all the bullet curtains, showed me something new and wonderful to explore, and gave me exactly the kind of challenge I've unknowingly been seeking. My first goal was to 1cc Normal mode to unlock extra, so I could fight Flandre, since the whole reason I wanted to play the game was to play the extra stage that I saw on Youtube. Obviously, being a complete beginner, i was fucking awful, but after about 2 weeks I finally beat the Extra stage, and from that point onward I would spend more quality time not only with EoSD but also with other games in this series. EoSD immediately became my favorite game and remained that way until I later on started favoring some others like UFO (nowadays I prefer EoSD to UFO, though) Armed Police Batrider, and Great Fairy Wars.

It's hard to fully describe what makes the mood of the game so charming, because I don't quite get the sense that most people see what I see. I will admit that the charm has worn off a bit over the years, but I can't overlook what it felt it like in my first year of playing. The music is without a doubt my favourite of ZUN's, the soundtrack is almost exclusively genius. After all these years, I think the song closest to my heart is the credits theme, Eastern Dream. That is some "meaning of life" shit right there. When you beat the game and hear that theme, it's like it lights a fire in your heart, a feeling of pure love. EoSD is far from a perfectly made game, but despite it all, it is certainly a game that I love.

So, let's talk a bit about it more specifically. First of all, when I describe this game, I will mainly refer to the Lunatic mode, as among fans of PLAYING (not fapping to or 'lore') Touhou it is the standard mode. Why is this game special? I mean, it's not the only danmaku game out there, and compared to commercial shmups made around that time like Daioujou or Ikaruga, it might seem a bit cheap in comparison. The mood was and remains very special, but what about the gameplay? In all honesty, as much as I like EoSD, its gameplay is not for everyone, including danmaku fans. The stage portions are very simple and will feel empty and lacking to fans of CAVE's games, and the bosses have so much random dodging that it's going to put off the players that prefer to memorize and execute paths through the patterns. However, having played this game a lot, I can tell you that there is a lot to enjoy and appreciate here, if you just have the taste for it. So, the stage portions may seem lacking, but when you are playing for score they are definitely engaging enough from Stage 3 onward. My main complaint lies with stage 1 and 2, which will get old in the long run. From stage 3 onward, the combination of grazing, item collection, and the occasional resource abuse is engaging and highly difficult to optimize. The problem of being unengaging comes if you are playing for survival, in that case routing the stage portions will be simple and basically half of the game will be rather boring if you are a more experienced player. The main attraction if you are playing for survival are the bosses which are some of the more random in the series and in the genre in general, they will throw some crazy shit at you from time to time, or other times they will go easier on you. It's a dice roll.

EoSD is the 6th Touhou game, but the first windows game, it started a new era of Touhou. Not only are the patterns much tougher than Mystic Square or Lotus Land Story on Lunatic mode, but it is quite a bit deeper as well. In this game, you can play as either the shrine maiden Reimu or the ordinary magician Marisa. Aside from the speed difference, Marisa being faster, each character has two shot-types. Reimu has needles, which is the best shot-type in the game, and homing. Marisa has Christmas trees... ok, actually they're magic missiles, and lasers. Each shot-type also has an unique bomb, which is important to playing for score in EoSD, and the reason why ReimuB (Needles) has the highest scoring potential in the main game. The boss characters remain iconic after all these years, the Scarlet Devil cast is without a doubt the most famous in Touhou. The system is probably most similar to Lotus Land Story. It's fairly simple on the surface, but there are also more obscure things to the game system that you need to take advantage of to play for score. Like in earlier games, there are power and point items, and maxing out your power will cancel all the bullets on the screen, turning them into star items which are autocollected. Point items increase your points when collected up to a set maximum the higher up on the screen you collect it. If you have max power, moving near the top of the screen will autocollect all items on screen. Grazing bullets also adds to your score quite significantly in combination with the star items from bullet cancels. Every time you go near a bullet (grazing it) it adds to your graze counter for that stage, and the value you get from star items is multiplied by your graze counter. This is the most significant part of gaining points in EoSD, high graze and good cancels.

Touhou games are usually quite boss-oriented, and EoSD is no exception. Scoring well in the stage, racking up graze, will help significantly in gaining points on the bosses on every stage. The biggest cash-in bosses on Lunatic would be Meiling (stage 3) and Sakuya (stage 5). Besides grazing and just defeating the bullet patterns at the right times for the biggest cancels, there are other ways to gain more points from bosses. First, a new introduction in EoSD, the spellcard system. All bosses have regular attacks, and named attacks, referred to as spellcards. If you clear a spellcard within the time limit without dying or bombing, you get a bonus. The bonus is shrunk every second you take. These bonuses aren't very significant though, what's more important is the resource game. ReimuB is best in this area, so let's use her as an example. ReimuB's bomb isn't great for survival since it does minimal damage and doesn't last long, but as a scoring bomb it is quite perfect. There's two significant things you can do with this bomb. The first is to sit on bullet spawn-points after you've bombed. You can't graze during a bombs duration in EoSD, up until the very last second or two of invulnerability, so what you do is abuse that small time frame to graze bullets at their spawn point. There are many good places to do this. The next trick is more obscure and can probably be referred to as a glitch. When you bomb in EoSD, bullets being spawned are turned into star items which are auto-collected. I mentioned before that star items combined with a high graze means high score. Well, during the bomb period, star items have almost no value at all, so you won't really get anything from collecting them. There is a trick you can use to get some star items at their full value when bombing. You see, the star items will regain their full value at the end of the bomb's duration. What you do with ReimuB is to be quite far away from the bullet source you wish to use, and if you bomb at just the right timing, the star items spawned at the end that you suck up will have their full value. There aren't a whole lot of places where you can abuse this with big results, but this "bombing in the corner" scoreplay is very significant in the few places it can be applied. Of course, the higher graze you've accumulated, the bigger the cash in.

So in order to score in EoSD, what you have to do is graze the fuck out of all the bullets you can, collect all the point items you can, learn how to best cancel all the patterns, and survive all the bullshit thrown at you so you don't lose any of the resources you have to spend at key points. Dying with bombs means you lose all that graze or all those star items you could've gained both from suiciding and bombing. I didn't mention that, but after you die, you are also invulnerable for a couple of seconds and during that time you can rack up graze from spawn points. Lots of graze. Furthermore, after you die, you won't have max power, but if you get max power you will cancel all bullets on screen and get lots of star items. Both dying and bombing strategically is a significant chunk of the score potential, I'd say on Normal mode that a 300 mil run without dying or bombing would be about even with a 350 mil run that uses all the resources. on Lunatic, 500 mil without dying or bombing would be about even with 700 mil that uses the resources. You get the picture.

Through all this talk about scoring, I haven't talked about what's the main attraction of this game for many, many players: the bosses bullet curtains. These are unique and amazing if you just like dodging random bullets. This is a large enjoyment factor. The first two bosses, Rumia and Cirno, won't offer that much resistance in this area, but from stage 4 onward the game shows what it's really made of. The infamous green books in stage 4 are some of the toughest dodging you will find in any shmup, even the best players in the world will rarely reach a 50% clear ratio on these books. Then, you have the bosses, Patchouli, Sakuya and Remilia. They have lots of really nasty challenging attacks that can be extremely tough from time to time if you get hard RNG. This concept of random dodging is probably pretty alien to some shmup players, thinking that you can memorize it all, being aimed or static, or that randomness really just refers to some combination of different patterned things... no, that's not how randomness works in EoSD or many other Touhou games. These patterns are truly random, there is no rhyme or reason to how all the bullets move. You simply have to level up your skill as a player to get better before you can tackle something like this. Some of the meanest patterns, aside from the books (which are stupid-hard) would include Remilia's final two spellcards, Scarlet Meister and Scarlet Gensokyo, and Sakuya's final card Killing Doll. Killing Doll is a card where Sakuya throws out a bunch of knives which have an initial pattern, but then she stops time and most of the knives will randomly change which direction they're heading in. Before you're even done dodging all of them, she'll have fired another volley and stopped time again. The bosses in Touhou being little girls, are quite small and pretty hard to focus fire, so in this card you often find yourself moving away from Sakuya in order to find a dodging path that'll work, in favor of getting damage in. Remilia's last two cards are, like killing doll, crazy fun and super tough. Scarlet Meister is a vaguely patterned thing where all the actual significant bullets are nonetheless random, where you have to do lots of macro and micro dodging combinations. Then Scarlet Gensokyo is just pure sex for those that love random micro dodging and complex reading. Scarlet Gensokyo can form screen filling walls if you are really unlucky, which means you're just about forced to die unless you have near-inhuman skill or are just super lucky. Patchouli is also a fantastic boss fight, having the most spellcards of all the bosses in the main game. However, she will only pick some spells she will throw at you, depending on which character and shot type you are playing. MarisaA will get the toughest (and also most fun, I enjoy challenge!) spells. It can't be understated how awesome the bosses are in EoSD, although I enjoy the scoring, it wouldn't be anywhere near as fun to play if the bosses weren't so insanely chaotic. Again, this is on Lunatic mode, the true mode for Touhou players. The game is significantly easier on Hard mode, and on Normal mode i'd say the patterns are probably easier than what you find in most arcade STGs. There is also an Extra stage which is more patterned and gimmicky, which might be fun for a beginner, but not very engaging for a veteran and especially not if they are used to the chaos of Lunatic.

There are some things I don't like about EoSD too. The first two stages gets old pretty quickly and I do think the stage design is a bit lame, it's just that the scoring system makes up for that giving you some pretty engaging content anyways. Just not really in the first two stages. Furthermore, if you are serious about EoSD, the rather extreme amount of RNG will make consistency completely impossible. It is one of the most random shmups out there, so beware. Finally, some of the scoring strategies really just aren't my cup of tea. The grazing strategies are far better in the next Touhou game, Perfect Cherry Blossom. In EoSD, although there is good grazing content too, there is a lot of "move into this safespot" shit, super precise micro taps, and luck based grazes. What I'm missing in EoSD is more impressive SuperGrazes. What Touhou players mean by SuperGrazing is impressive looking weaving through bullets up close in a dangerous manner completely different from how it's normally dodged. In EoSD, Rather than Supergrazing, oftentimes you're doing some more like SuperSafeSpotting, or grazing that is just kind of bland. I'd say it's still an impressive and good score system with good gameplay, but far from perfect. For examples of supergrazing, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYObFRnR6fs. It's just one of those things unique to the Touhou series that makes it so damn fucking awesome. If you don't dig this shit then you're not a bro in my book. You've yet to reach enlightenment!

So after all these years, even though EoSD was the entry point for me, It's not my favourite Touhou game. I prefer the Camera games, versus games, Great Fairy Wars, and Perfect Cherry Blossom. There's still a lot to appreciate in EoSD, and I think along with PCB and Imperishable Night, it is the natural entry point to Touhou. I personally really enjoy this old "windows trilogy" and hold it in very high regard, but everyone has different opinions, there is not exactly a Touhou canon. Touhou players of all skill levels have totally different opinions about the quality of individual games, so it's just a matter of taste. If you don't like EoSD, that doesn't mean you won't like, say, MoF or PoFV. EoSD is a game that oozes of nostalgia and that can be really enjoyable, but nowadays what feels most attractive in it is not doing serious runs and playing for score, but rather booting up SpoilerAL and starting teh game at all my favorite attacks like Killing Doll or Scarlet Meister and just grinding those attacks for fun. If there is one main reason to play EoSD over and over and over, in my book, it is because some of these patterns are on a completely other level of fun from other conventional shmups. The problem is that you need to reach a certain level of skill before you can even begin to play these kinds of attacks and enjoy them, so yeah... Ganbatte your best!