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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 15, 2016 0:29:29 GMT -5
TABLE OF CONTENTS ON SPOILERS, go there to go to individual episodes to lessen the amount of screenshots to load.  So here we go! Pokemon and Touhou, Touhou and Pokemon. Some years ago a romhack of Pokemon Fire Red was made which replaced all the Pokemon sprites with Touhou. Aside from a number of other changes, it was basically still Pokemon Fire Red in story. Fast forward to about a year ago, when the creator of the romhack made this game, Gensou Ningyou Enbu, or Fantasy Puppet Dance Performance... ya know, that doesn't really roll off the keyboard so let's just call it Touhoumon. No longer a romhack, it's still a Pokemon game, but with a number of other changes to make the game less of a carbon copy of Pokemon itself. It's got its own story now, but in true Pokemon fashion you're playing as a trainer and you're off to capture mons and get them fighting. Action! Violence! Cute sprites! So, let's get this thing up and running, yeah?  It was a dark and stormy (not really) opening scene. You're woken up by a mystery lady who introduces herself as Yukari Yakumo and she begins to ask the tough questions from the get go.  Hrmm. Well, obviously I'm a dude, but the female sprite looks cuter, so let's go with that. What? You want a name as well? Lady, my mom told me not to give even fake names to strangers. Hell, even if I want to, I can't choose names to save a life. ...and I can't even make choose between default names. Damn, looks like I got to think real hard about this one... Gah!  Whew. Crisis averted. (in reality, I named her Yin. On the Touhoumon romhacks, Pokemon genders were replaced by the Yin/Yang symbols, since the Touhou cast is pretty much female)   The one-sided talk between Yin and Yukari goes on for a little bit more. She talks of the world of Gensokyo, a little area sealed away from the world where sometimes forgotten things go. Nothing too important to note, for now. Anyways, the dark goes bright, and you wake up in a bus, and exit to the entrance of the Hakurei Shrine. According to the peeps loitering around the place, the shrine itself has been deserted long ago, and there are rumors that people have been spirited away to who knows where. Some say that this place is the entrance to Gensokyo. Oh, the mystery! Our intrepid heroine has heard that name before... but really, she tends to forget conversations between mysterious ladies talking to her while she's asleep on the bus.  Meanwhile, some guy suddenly asks me on who my favorite Touhou character is. Dammit, man, I just got asked difficult questions a while ago! You can't expect me to use my brain here! Like seriously, brains? In video games? Hah! That said I considered my choice... hard to choose a favorite character from the entire series. Still, seems like I gotta pick, so I thought of the number of my favorite characters, and narrowed it down to one. I pick the character, and the guy says she's his favorite too. Creep. We go to the back of the shrine, and what's that?   Ooh, we gotta go find out! If something runs away from you, the first choice you have to choose is chase after it. That's common sense, that is. So we chase that critter through the tall grass, and soon enough it's cornered by the pond. However, before we could... honestly, what was our heroine gonna do? She chased, after that... what? Put the critter in a bag? Steal its hat? Before whatever could be done, a flash of light happens and the critter disappears Well, that was a bust. Our heroine trudges back to the way she came... but wait! What's that hiding in the tall grass?   This scene seems somewhat reminiscent of another game. Oh, what could it be? Well, instead of dawdling about memory loss and whatnot, Marisa tells us we need a puppet to fight another puppet. As our heroine is currently lacking of that, and any idea of what's going on, Marisa lends us one of hers for a fight. Cheapskate. Can't you give us something level 100? Anyways, we fight!  Aw, lookit at those sprites! So cute. Not quite sure what BP is yet, but SP is the PP of the game. Both attacks of our puppet Marisa are standard attacks. Dream type? Seems like the puppet types are pretty much the same as the ones from the romhack... and I've completely forgotten about those. Anyway, it's a back and forth of using the same attacks as each other. No healing items, so let's get that P.Tenshi fainted before our P.Marisa faints. However, before one or the other happens, the battle ends. Good thing, too. Since P.Tenshi used a defense up move and P.Marisa was getting her ass kicked.  Something's odd about P.Tenshi. It seems that she has taken an interest to our Yin! Marisa says that kind of thing has never happened before. I guess it's due to Yin's overwhelming charisma and cuteness, or it's a plot device. Take your pick. That said, Tenshi was the favorite Touhou character that I picked, so I guess that you can pick pretty much any puppet to be your starter... Anyway, Marisa tells you that there's no point in talking about things here, and go back to the Hakurei shrine to discuss what's happening. Isn't that the abandoned shrine early in the beginning? Oh, the mystery!  Girls are explaining. The green-haired girl named Sanae says that Yin has entered Gensokyo, a hidden world with a barrier that separates itself from the real world. One day the puppets just popped up and are pretty much running and playing around, doing as they please. People have begun to catch them and let them fight with other puppets, but that doesn't really explain why they're there. The human in charge of the barrier, Reimu Hakurei is currently away investigating about the puppets, so Sanae's at the shrine, babysitting the place. Marisa suggests that you stay put to be safe, but then decides to test you and the puppet who just joined you. Can't exit the room, but in the cabinet there's a rice cookie. Yay healing items!    The fight doesn't last long, and it ends up being Yin's win. Yay, XP! I also get PP... which seems to be points you can spend to increase stats to an extent and learn new skills. Interesting. From a demo I watched, it seems you can unlearn and relearn skills by using PP, so moves aren't lost forever so that's quite convenient. Well, Marisa has other stuff to do. Sanae suggests that Yin go to the human village to investigate things from there. Before you leave, she gives you sealing thread, the game's equivalent to Pokeballs. Use them on a puppet and make them faint, and you'll be able to capture them. Again, convenient. She also gives a puppet box, a place to store excess puppets, and it can be accessed via a doll. Looking around the shrine I find a blinding orb. A puppet holding it can escape from wild puppets without fail. With things at the shrine checked and looted, we head off to the village. Exploration, ho! Time to capture some puppets, and do a little leveling up.      Man, the sprites are really quite cute. Interestingly, everyone gets xp and pp, while the ones who participated in the battle get double xp. Items are sometimes dropped which seem to be stuff to be sold, so I guess that's how you get money in this game. Like I mentioned before, PP can be used to increase stats, up to a point, and learn (or unlearn) moves. Passive abilities can also be changed, though puppets only have two abilities to choose from each. Anyways, I hang around route 1 for a wee bit, capturing puppets and doing a little grinding. Haven't played Pokemon for a while now, so I'll need this a little to get used to things again. We also face our first trainer battle!   I was just passing through, dude. No eye contact and all. Oh well. Trainers don't drop cash, it seems, so you have to rely on the items drops from puppets to get money. Cheapskates. Well, a few more trainers fought and we arrive at a rest stop. For now, this concludes this Let's Play episode. See ya all laters.  |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 15, 2016 13:30:03 GMT -5
So here we are again! Time for the second installment of this little thing, and maybe this time we could reach the human village and maybe get some new puppets while we're at it. Let's Play Touhoumon, part 2: Where we realize that there was no episode title for part 1.  After a short break from the rest house, our heroine Yin continues on her walk towards the human village. Bought a few healing items from a peddler, and some sealing thread in case I want to capture more puppets. The starter puppet, Tenshi has an A+ on all her stats, which I guess is stat potential or something that affects the stats on a level up. The other puppets are slightly more dismal on those potentials, but hey, can't be helped. Chen and Daiyousei has S on their hp though, and the latter has A- on FoDef, SPAtk and Def, so she might come in handy. So begins a somewhat uneventful trek to the human village. No new puppets found, a few trainer battles and some level ups. Used to level grind a ton on Pokemon games, but for now I won't really do so to such an extent. I'll still get the puppets leveled up somewhat, but hopefully not to the point where I steamroll through the game.  That said, leveling up is a lot easier in this game compared to Pokemon. Every puppet gets XP and PP even if they don't participate, while the ones who participated get double XP. So if you'd use all the puppets in your party, everyone gets double XP. Due to that everyone leveled up quickly from the trainer battles, so grinding in the tall grass isn't really needed for now. Still, as trainers don't fork out cash from losing, you have to rely on the item drops from battles to get money in the game.  So yeah, switching puppets during trainer battles really quickens up the level up process. On the edit screen, where you can use PP to increase stats, learn moves and switch abilities there's something called style change, which I'm assuming is the level up system in this game.  Human village here we go! Just as we reach the entrance of the village, a girl runs and bumps into our heroine. She seems to be in a hurry, so she makes you move out of the way. She didn't even want a puppet battle, how odd...  Well, here we are at the human village. It's a village, and possibly there are humans living here. You never know, especially in a place like Gensokyo. The guy at the entrance calls the place nice and calm, and who are we to doubt the words of a guy loitering around? On another end of the village, a guy is standing guard because there's dangerous youkai beyond that point. So no go on that route for now, and another exit has a crashed fruit cart, so let's keep exploring the village for now.       With pretty much the entire explored, we go to the Hieda mansion to further investigate this puppet incident. Not sure about not being rude, since that Yin, she's as rude as a sailor, when they're being rude. Or something.  We meet Hieda no Akyuu, who seems to know about Yin already. Well, I guess news travels fast when many of the Touhou characters are capable of flight... Anyway, she doesn't really know a lot about the puppets aside from things we already know, and the power of puppets can only affect other puppets. She asks Yin to stay in the village for a bit, while she collects more useful info. Ah, well, I guess will just go to this village's rest house and sip tea or something. Before we leave, Akyuu warns us that there's been tricksters in the village lately, so we should be careful.  Outside, we encounter Wriggle, who's surprised at being discovered despite, you know, standing right there out in the open. She runs away, and much like how we started this adventure, we give chase! Tsk, tsk, Yin doesn't learn, does she?   Chasing Wriggle to an open field in the corner of the village, and she's got her posse with her! Oh no! One of them, Cirno, decides to fight you in a puppet battle while the others get away. What's that? Puppet Liberation Front? How suspicious. Anyway, no time for speculating as it's battle time!   Switching puppets around during the fight becomes hard to do, because damn the first puppet hit hard. Hopefully the second and last puppet from Cirno, a puppet Cirno, will be easier...     Whew, that was a close call. Puppet Cirno's frost edge did a ton of damage, knocking down three of my puppets before Daiyousei finished Cirno off with parasite. It seems that puppets that fainted still gain XP, so yeah this game is really being generous with XP here...  After the battle, Cirno lets it slip that the others are hiding in the village. She doesn't divulge any information about the Puppet Liberation Front, so it seems that our next step in this game. Sadly, for now we're stopping and we'll leave hide and seek with the Puppet Liberation Front for next time. So, see ya all laters.  |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2016 10:47:23 GMT -5
Wow, this game looks really... interesting. Wouldn't mind to try it out.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 18, 2016 20:18:14 GMT -5
So here we go, episode three up in here! We left off last time facing off Cirno, and for this one I reckon we're off to find the other Puppet Liberation Front members hiding in the village. Probably the perfect opportunity to level up my current team. After that, who knows? Maybe I'll do some exploring out the village to catch more puppets. First, a look at probably all the puppet types: -Void -Fire -Water -Nature -Earth -Steel -Wind -Electric -Light -Dark -Nether -Poison -Fighting -Illusion -Sound -Dream ...right now I got no idea, aside from some probably obvious ones, on which one is super effective against what. Let's Play Touhoumon, Part 3: Gotta Catch 'em All!  Anyways, onwards! Needed to get the puppets healed on the rest house first. The fight with Cirno quickly KOed three of my five puppets, but hopefully the other Puppet Liberation Front members won't be too hard on the group. Going back to Akyuu's mansion didn't net any new info, so I guess it's time to search the rest of the village to progress the story.    Didn't take too long as they're huddled in the southeast corner of the village. Guess we're taking them on one at a time, this time against Dai. Hey, I got a puppet of her in my party!   Aw geez, how this battle might turn out seems oddly familiar. Sukuna's Earth/Steel, and I have no idea what Cirno's frost edge is. The puppet types I listed above were taken from a nearby store that was selling puppet type boosting items, so I dunno, there might be an ice type as well. Switched to Daiyousei, who's a nature type, and frost edge isn't effective against that type. Yay. On the other hand, Daiyousei's parasite attack (nature type) is super effective against puppet Cirno, plus the attack drains hp. Handy. My Dai's also level 11, and surprisingly she's managed to level up faster than my starter, Tenshi.  Dai the trainer sends out her own Daiyousei. Unlike Pokemon, you can't switch out puppets during a trainer battle after you make the enemy trainer's puppet faint. Still, I'm a little weirded out with having three Daiyousei's present at the same time, so I switched out to Tenshi.  ...and Tenshi's type (earth) is weak against nature. Great. Tenshi also has a light attack move that proved itself not effective against nature types. Double great.  Thankfully, Chen's a wind type. Not effective against nature, but night wind is enough to seal the deal. Level ups for many! Puppets seem to level up at the same rate, and certain levels are set on when they learn new moves. Like on level upon reaching level 7 and 10 each puppets who reached those levels are now able to learn a new move. Apparently evolutions happen at level 30, and it's somewhat similar to how evolution was on the Touhoumon romhack.  Two down, three to go. There's a bunch of empty lots at the edge of the village, so I reckon the rest of the group will be waiting there. Before we head out, a quick trip to the rest house is needed, because I'm cheap and don't want to use healing items. Those rice cakes don't grow on trees, ya know!   Awww, my! There was some tall grass in the village, and I thought they were just there for the look of things. As it turns out, there's puppets in them! Time to catch some puppets, then! Seal threads have a fail chance, I just noticed.  Seems like a good catch, looking at the As and Ss. Kokoro's puppet type is void/fighting, and for a bit of Touhou information, Kokoro debuted in the fighting spinoff Hopeless Masquerade as the last boss, the third (or fourth if you count one expansion pack) of the Touhou fighting games. She also made a second appearance on the fighting game after HM. She can't express emotions, so she uses a variety of masks to do her emoting.   Moar puppets! Gotta catch 'em all, as they say. Sekibanki's from Touhou 14: Double Dealing Characters as the second stage boss. She's a rokurokubi youkai; basically her head is floating around, detached from her body. She can also multiply the heads in the game, and somehow stretch her neck which is connected to her head. Put her in the party and put Nazrin in the box. Naz's stat potential is low on all fields, while Sekibanki is somewhat better in some of them. Her puppet type is dark. Void types don't deal a lot of damage to dark, but dark is weak against light.  Keine's a steel type, which is weak to earth, and I replaced Chen because I dunno. She first appeared in Touhou 8: Imperishable night. A human teacher that turns into a were-hakutaku by night, which is a kind of mythological horned beast, as I recall. Wondering if her were-form is an evolution or a different puppet.  Kosuzu Motoori, void type. She's the main character of one of the official manga currently running, Forbidden Scrollery. She can read any type of book she encounters, in the manga.  Hieda no Akyuu, also a void type. Her first appearance is in the Touhou book Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, and has made an appearance in other works, as well as being a recurring character in Forbidden Scrollery. She's friends with Kosuzu. She can remember everything she sees/encounters, and she is reincarnated every time after dying, something like that.  With that, catching puppets is over. ...er, I didn't intend to level up that much. I thought there would be one more puppet to catch, due to Forbidden Scrollery, but after getting impatient and looking at the wiki, there isn't. Whoops. Ah well, back to chasing after the Puppet Liberation Front. Also, apparently Kokoro is the rare encounter, which is surprising since that was the first puppet I encountered by accident.  Whew, finding them took longer than expected. Wriggle this time, since she's a firefly youkai, puppet Wriggle would be poison type, I guess? Her first puppet is Daiyousei, so I have no idea what's good against nature types. Fire, probably, but I don't have any fire puppets. Fortunately, Kokoro's scatter beam has a high crit chance, so that fight ended in two turns.   Next up is Wriggle's Wriggle. As it turns out, her attack apple bomb did very well on Tenshi, and once again I'm forced to switch out a different puppet. Sukuna's out since she's the same type as Tenshi. Then Sekibanki fainted in two turns before getting to attack. Keine would probably be a bad choice as her level is low, and steel might be weak against apple bomb. So I sent out Daiyousei who's strong against Wriggle's main attack. Dai's the stage 2 midboss of Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, and so far she has proven to be quite effective at the battles with the Puppet Liberation Front.   Or so I thought. Wriggle uses dark ball instead, which isn't super effective but blinds Daiyousei, and she's also fast as Dai's knocked out on the next turn with another dark ball. Time to bet on Tenshi to win, but first I gotta heal her so I'm using Keine and Seki to serve as meat shields. Tenshi's turn came, and mud dumpling wasn't super effective... but it was enough. So I guess earth is weak to whatever Wriggle used, which is probably nature.   Took a beating, but Yin's team won in the end. Sure it was six against two, but the fact is that she won. Yin still has her perfect win record, and that's all that matters! Fainted puppets still get XP in the end, but they don't get double XP from surviving. If they level up, they get revived with a bit of HP.  Three down, two left. It's Mystia's turn to fight, and her first puppet is Wriggle, so I guess second one will be puppet Mystia, which I assume will be the first puppet of the last Puppet Liberation Front member. This time got the early lead thanks to Seki. Wriggle is still faster, but apple bomb missed twice enabling Seki to hit apparition warning (nether) and lone shadow puppet (dark, not effective). Apple bomb hit in the third, and it was a crit, but Wriggle survived and managed to crit her apparition warning for the win. I forgot to screencap it.   Next is puppet Mystia... No idea what type she is. Switched out to Kokoro since I reckoned why not? ...then Mystia's attack soprano voice is super effective. Yeesh! Seems like a running gag at this point; every puppet Yin sends out gets an ass whooping. Keine wasn't weak to soprano voice... but her attack missed. Finally, with Tenshi out to fight, she tanked soprano voice and hit two mud dumplings for the win. One more to go. I set Tenshi up first so she'll do the same thing since the first puppet is most likely Mystia.  And here we go! By process of elimination, we're fighting the boss! It's time for fight time!  Ohhhhhh, crap. All freaking five of the puppets we've faced so far, and if you've been paying attention, my track record on them so far has... well, sucked. Tenshi is the worst possible one to face Cirno, so it's time to send Dai out. Cirno used frost edge first, which wasn't effective, then after that Yin energy which was the normal type move. Dai's parasite attack is super effective, but the attack itself isn't powerful in exchange for draining HP.     Dai was up next against my Dai. Not sure what she's weak to, so I just used Dai instead of switching. By virtue of having a higher level, she wins. Mystia up next... Dai was sacrificed as switching puppets now will leave my next one open to a free hit. Dai was fast enough for an attack, but I had to choose one that's not very effective. Tenshi got fighting and it was basically the same thing as last; tank soprano voice and lay down the mud dumplings.   Wriggle up next. With her speed and apple bomb's effectiveness to Tenshi... well, Tenshi did her best. Tenshi's defensive enough to tank one super effective hit, and hit angel ladder for okay damage. Switched to Keine, and my observation was right. Tenshi and Sukuna was weak against apple bomb due to them being earth types (but also steel), while Keine's pure steel which Wriggle was weak to.  Last, Rumia... Cirno's first puppet, and I can't remember what I used against her. In the official works, Rumia generates a ball of darkness around her... so maybe light? Keine has a light type attack, let's go with that.  It's super effective/passed through the barrier! ...but the difference in level was too big, and didn't even come close to knocking off half her health.  Rumia's speed meant that Keine fell on the next turn, and I switched to... Kokoro? Oh damn, I remember void attacks don't deal a lot of damage to dark. Kokoro has the puppet default attack which is dream-type, which seems to be the normal type in the game. She managed one attack, but fell on Rumia's second hit.   Sukuna out into the field. Rumia's dark ball nearly KOed Sukuna, but thankfully I found out that steel is strong against dark, and with the damage done to Rumia by Keine and Kokoro, it was enough to finish her off! Whew, really close there. If Sukuna fell all that's left would be Sekibanki. It might be an even fight, since both are dark types.  Rumia can't believe it! Yin almost can't either, considering the beating her team took to win against all of them. If the fight with the other members didn't happen, team Yin would have lost pretty badly. Would be a complete curb stomp, if the previous encounters didn't happen since we wouldn't have a chance to get an idea of their puppet types and what's effective against them. Rumia realizes that she has to report about this and goes away. What? Why didn't Yin capture the group? Well, they were being suspicious and going off about puppet liberation and all that jazz, but they were just loitering, really. Yin pretty much picked the fight by chasing after Wriggle. Yin, you jerk. Well, that's all for today. Next time we might get something from Akyuu. For now, see ya all laters! |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 20, 2016 21:41:38 GMT -5
So here we go again, time for the fourth part of this crazy train! Though, before we begin, I got a question. Is there any way to easily screencap things? I use print screen, then paste it to paint, then crop the picture, then save it while typing out these posts and playing the game at the same time. Since this is a blind run, it somewhat really time consuming to screencap things, so it would be cool if there were easier means to do it. That said, here we go! Let's play Touhoumon, part 4: Main characters and silent protagonists. Last time, we defeated the Puppet Liberation Front's five girl team while getting somewhat really battered in the process. As I had finished up posting the previous part, I was going to go to the rest house to heal up and close the game. Then, Akyuu showed up and talks to our heroine. At that point, I was already sleepy so I didn't bother screencapping that part at all. Basically, she's surprised that Yin had managed to beat the PLF. I am, too, considering the trouble the team had beating each member. She doesn't have any new information, but he suggests going to Kourindou, a shop located in the forest of magic. As Yin has showed her puppet prowess, she'd probably have a better chance to find out anything about what's going on about this puppet incident. Akyuu also gives us the puppet book. It's a pokedex! Hooray, now we can record puppet info on all the puppets that we catch. With nothing else to do in the village, we head to the west exit and make our way to the forest of magic. Puppet catching, ho! Before that, it's a bit late, but let's take a look at the edit screen!  All puppets get PP at the end of every fight, and this is where you can spend 'em.  First, we got reinforce stats. Spending some points on a stat will increase that particular stat by one. First I thought that the stat potential affected how many points you need before that stat is raised, but it seems not to be the case. Maybe the stat potential only affects the stat boosts from level ups. I dunno. Each stat can only get a max of 64 points/PP, and the max amount of PP you can add in total is 130. Whether that cap increases later on, I have no idea. Maybe it will when we encounter the equivalent of gym battles on this game.  Next is acquire skills. You can use PP here to learn new moves. New moves will be added after leveling up the few times, and you can only use them if you use acquire skills. Like Pokemon, a puppet can only use four moves at a time, but for this game, you can forget moves, but you can learn them again by spending PP. Now, below that is acquire skill cards. I got no skill cards yet, but I assume this will be like TMs and whatnot.  Then we have ability change. Again, you use PP, this time to change the passive ability of the puppet. Below that is style change, which is this game's equivalent to evolution. None of my puppets are ready to evolve, which I think can be done only when they're level 30 or so. For now, I'll keep using acquire skills and maybe ability change, but I won't do stat raising until I hit a wall with my team or something.  Now that we got that covered, onwards to the Forest of Magic! Just as we enter Route 5, a mystery person tells us to wait.   Why, it's everyone's favorite armpit miko, the Hakurei shrine maiden, Reimu Hakurei! The main character in all games, and the one currently investigating this puppet incident on her own. She prefers going at it alone, and a human like Yin shouldn't poke her nose and investigate as well. Since Yin suffers from silent protagonist syndrome to debate about this, Reimu decides that she'll stop you with her own puppet team. It's fight time, right from the get go!   ...like, seriously? First puppet out and that one's weak to the enemy puppet's type, again? Yeesh, Yin, your choice of team lineup is problematic as always...  Well, puppet Aya seems like a wind type. In the main games, one of her themes is named "Wind God Girl" for pete's sake. I send out Tenshi who's an earth type. And surely enough, Aya's feather shot doesn't do a lot of damage. It's not "not very effective" but it's shrugged off anyway by Tenshi. On the other hand, mud dumpling didn't do anything at all. You suck as a trainer, Yin, you suck...  Out goes Tenshi and in goes Sukuna. Sukuna's earth-steel, and I just found out that wind isn't effective against steel, while steel is super effective! Yay, Yin, go redeem yourself! I also suck at taking screenshots, and half the time I fail to capture the attack when it happens.  Reimu sends out Suika next, the drunk loli-oni final boss of the first fighting game. I have no idea what her type is, but I send out Keine to test the waters. Like Sukuna, she's also steel type. ...and that proves unwise as Suika's righteous fist move nearly KOs Keine. Fighting type, maybe? I send out Sekibanki, and Suika whips out stone rain and it crits, and we're left with her close to KO. Then it becomes KO when righteous fist KOs Seki.  Urgh, so the team is getting into unsurprisingly familiar situations as the previous episode. I send out Daiyousei, and luckily her nature type is effective against Suika. Unfortunately, parasite has low damage, though the life drain is enough to keep Dai on the lead.   Then Reimu comes in. Her metal needle (steel type?) is effective against Dai, while Dai's scatter beam (void) dealt no damage. Uh oh. Reimu's faster than Dai, and instead of trying to attack or switch, I take the turn to heal up Kokoro. Gonna need to buy more healing items, as all I got left is three rice cookies. Spiral strike, a fighting move, deals little damage to Reimu, so I end up using the same tactic; let Kokoro soak up damage while I heal other puppets.   Three puppets left. At the very least, Kokoro and Dai gave enough time to get Tenshi and Sukuna healed. Both puppets are average against each other, and while Tenshi did more damage on the first hit, to my horror Reimu's metal needle had an increase attack effect, and by the third exchange Reimu won. Still, that was about enough for Sukuna to take the hit and finish off Reimu. Keine and Sukuna reach level 14, which means both learn a new move.  Reimu seems impressed enough to let Yin do her own investigating, but not that impressed. After telling us to stay out of her way, she does a Gary/Blue impression and walks away, with her theme playing in the background and all. Well, after yet another trip to the rest house, we're off to route 5! Time to nab some more puppets!    Old guys says to be careful as the path leads to stronger puppets and trainers, and Yin's like "Hah, I'm strongerer than them all, old man!" ...then the team proceeds to get quite damaged by one trainer fight, requiring a trip back to the rest house. This time, I remember to buy some healing items. There's no revive item yet, so I have to show some common sense and be careful otherwise I'll keep going back to the rest house after every trainer battle.  Still, I am curious and check out the path towards the Misty Lake first. Searching around, Yin finds one Moriya Shinsu, which revives a fainted puppet. Handy, but having just one while my team gets pretty damaged often leading to KOs makes it not too useful to use immediately until I find more. A couple of trainer battles, and some new puppets encountered and caught, and we reach the end of the road. Some strangely familiar shrubbery... I wonder what we have to do in order to pass through?  Yeah, Yin finds it rather odd, lady.  Speaking of similar faces, we encounter a trainer battle with a familiar face...   Battle wasn't anything special. Using Sekibanki against Sekibanki was a bad move, as both have the same ability; being hit with a move that's dark/nether/poison, speed increases. My Seki had all dark/nether moves, while the enemy Seki had the default dream-type move. Bad deal for me. Anyway, the battle ends, and Seki's just a normal trainer battle - one with different trainer battle music, but a normal not-really-involved-with-the-story trainer battle nonetheless.  Here we have some rather aggressive sales tactics. A little south there I found a prismatic candy, which is like a rare candy. Seems rare, and levels up a puppet. That trainer fought with two Sekibanki. Always found it odd that some NPC trainers would always have the same Pokemon for a team. Doesn't seem like a viable tactic in a path to become Pokemon master. Then again, it's not like every trainer is aiming to be a Pokemon master... Anyway, we backtrack aaaaaaaaallll the way back to the human village's rest house for some healing. We also take a quick look at some of the new puppets caught!  Tokiko. A really minor character who appeared on one official Touhou work. She doesn't have an official name even, I recall. Just book-reading youkai or something like that.  Wriggle Nightbug. Stage 1 boss of Touhou 8: Imperishable Night. Fanon often likes to portray her as a reverse trap of sorts, because of the shorts, and the somewhat boyish look compared to the rest of the Touhou cast.  Mystia Lorelei. Stage 2 boss of Touhou 8. Her gimmick in the boss fight makes a big part of the screen go dark. If she was a boss in the later stages, it'd be real hard to dodge all the bullets coming toward you.  Rumia. Stage 1 boss of Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, and the first boss ever in the series on the Windows era games. The ribbon thing is generally just expanded upon in canon. Pulled off quite well in the web series Osana Reimu in a rather heartbreaking fashion. Series is very recommended.  Rika. PC-98 character. Touhou 2, I think. I'm not too familiar with several of the characters in the PC-98 games, to be honest. Unlike the Windows era characters, the majority of the PC-98 characters don't get a lot of attention... not counting Reimu and Marisa, being main characters and all, and a small handful of others.  Back to our journey to Kourindou, we're more or less complete in the exploration of Route 5, I think. Removed Keine and Dai from the party and replaced them with Mystia and Tokiko. The former two are not really high in my favorites list, though the latter two aren't that high up either. I reckon, save from my starter, that Yin would switch her puppets around a fair bit on this journey. Should be fun. That said we encounter a new puppet to catch.  Lily White. Stage 4 mid-boss of Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom. It was a long level, and she pelted you with a ton of bullets. Had no dialogue in the game, so not a lot of characterization for her in both canon and fanon. Was also a kind-of midboss/obstacle in Touhou 9.  I decided to level up Mystia and Tokiko a bit, until they learned new moves at least. Unfortunately, that means that everyone else gets XP... so hmm, I don't want to end up where all the battles are easy because my team is overpowered. Maybe when I want to level grind specific puppets I switch the already high leveled ones with the ones I don't use in the box...  Well, seems like we're here!  ...or not, as it seems like there's some ways to go before reaching our destination. This seems like the Sekibanki trainer fight, in other words, just for XP and not really involved with the story.  In general, while trainer battles have become easier due to over leveling, it's trickier to keep puppets alive since you don't get a free turn to switch puppets when you defeat one.  And here, we are, at Kourindou! The girl Yin's talking to is giving away sweets, which heal the entire party. Thank god, since trekking back to the human village would be tedious at this point. Also, a little west where Tokiko was there's a small corner where you can get a plain doll, which can be used to escape a wild puppet battle without fail. Don't really use items like these, but I suppose if the difficulty picks up and I don't overlevel my puppets anymore it may be useful. North the candy girl is a diamond hairpin, which when held by a puppet increases void move effectiveness. Since Kokoro is a void-fighting type, I guess it'll be good on her. Also, Kokoro's animation in the game where she flaps her hands like a bird holding fans around is adorable, I must say.  And here we have a Rinnosuke, also known as Kourin. Sometimes known as fundoshi in some fanon areas. One of the few named male characters in the Touhou series who's had an appearance in the series itself. He doesn't fight though, so he's pretty much just in the print works and in the background for one of the games.   News does travel fast about our heroine, huh? Since Yin's investigating about the puppets, he figures it would be a great idea for her to have a bicycle. Neat! So early in the game, too. However, if we want it, Yin has to do him a favor. There's a girl living in the forest named Alice, he says. There's a package he has to deliver to her, and Yin looks like the quest-doing type. Most silent protagonists are, really. He'll fix up the bike for Yin to use and it'll be ready when the job is done. Furthermore, Alice seems the best person to talk to about puppets, according to Kourin, so if we're investigating them we may find a lead if we ask her. Deeper we go into the Forest of Magic... later on. For now, this episode ends. Next time, we may find new puppets to possibly use. More importantly, I gotta go figure out how to not overlevel my main puppets while training new ones. Until then. See ya all laters. |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 23, 2016 2:19:52 GMT -5
So, off we go to another episode of this game! On Touhou-related news, the 12th Touhou Popularity Poll results are out, and after a surprise loss last year, Reimu is once again at first. It's somewhat surprising to be honest that save for last year, Reimu's been in first place in the polls since the 5th popularity poll. Maybe it's main character power, I dunno, but anyways let's get started on this LP! Touhoumon, part 5: Lots of light in the dark forest. Last episode, we finally arrived at Kourindou, receiving a lead and a job at the same time. Yin has to deliver a package for one Alice Margatroid, deeper into the Forest of Magic, and in exchange for the job Kourin will give Yin a shiny new-ish bicycle. Alice should know a thing or two about the puppets as well, so it could help give us some more info on this puppet incident. First, let's take a look at what Kourin's selling. Red rings increase focus attack when held, while blue earrings increase spread attacks. Could come in handy to give a little extra oomph to attacks of my puppets. Iron clogs and heavy armor lower speed and make the puppet move last... right now, probably not good as the team still has trouble taking damage in nearly every battle. Substitute tag can make the puppet switch out on moments when they can't normally be switched out... could be a lifesaver. Cursed doll will make skills that won't hit due to type immunity will now work... not sold on that one, since if the puppet is immune to the move in the first place, then the attack would probably be ineffective in the first place. Also not sold on the large shield; reduces damage further if the attack wasn't effective, but damage is increased if the attack was super effective. Last thing I want is to be one-shot KOed by enemies. Dragon Amulet sounds good, as it prevents critical hits from happening. There are plain dolls for escaping battles, and seal threads for capturing, but no healing items. Half tempted to trek back to the human village, but right now I want to go to the forest and progress the game. Firstly, switched out some of my puppets with the ones I'm not using. Partially it's to train the low-leveled ones, but mostly it's so that the high leveled ones will not reach too high a level that the game becomes easy. This will probably bite me in the ass, seeing as I still have trouble with trainer battles, but no point in worrying about that now. Off to the forest we go!  Just as we enter the forest, we encounter a wild puppet. New battle music too. The seal thread seems real easy to use, as you can use it immediately as the battle starts and so far it has succeeded with only one failure. Not sure on how the success chance of the seal thread works, or if there would be better quality threads in the future, but for now let's just keep getting new puppets. Also, recent battles showed me that there's a time limit before the power of the seal threads run out, so it's not always 100% success. Well, after running around the tall grass for a short bit, here's what I got caught!  Stage 3(?) and EX boss of Touhou 5. Third stage boss of Touhou 7, and playable in the first two (three if you count the expansion) fighting games, as well as Touhou 8 and involved in Touhou 11. Quite a popular character, and one of the few boss characters of the PC-98 era that returned in the Windows era. Puppets with puppets, heh. A lot in fandomland portrays her as a friendless Marisa stalker, not really my favorite interpretation of her. Her puppet type is light and steel.    The three fairies of light. A trio of pranksters. They debuted in the manga Eastern and Little Nature Deity, and made appearances in Touhou 12.8: Great Fairy Wars as bosses. Sunny is light and fire type, while Luna is light in wind and Star is light and water. So far, all the puppet types in this forest has a light type. Void type puppets like Akyuu are no good with them.  My current team. Tenshi and Kokoro are the only ones left as the heavy leveled ones, just in case of trouble. The rest are about the level of the wild puppets encountered in the Forest of Magic, so onwards we go! I've searched around the tall grass for the bit, but since no new puppets are showing up, this will be the lineup for Yin's team for now. I also kept Tenshi and Kokoro since they're my faves.   Lots of fairies around the forest. The place looks a lot darker than the areas we've explored so far, and the music is a lot more quiet, but the presence of fairies and the puppets makes the place not feel dark at all.  Second trainer battle in this place. Aside from Tenshi and Kokoro, all my other puppets in the current lineup are underleveled compared to this one. Will make some fights harder, but I reckon that this is manageable enough thanks to a place that can heal the group at Kourindou's entrance. Also, tried the increase stats using Chen, and I've got to say that increasing her speed showed some results... though that didn't stop that trainer's Sunny to crit Chen and KO her.  The forest seems fairly large, though at the moment south is the only direction we can go to. In the series, the Forest of Magic is where Alice lives, and Marisa also lives there, so we might see that black and white magician hanging around in this place as well.  Rosary beads act as repel. Might come in handy later on if I don't want to level up puppets. Wish there was an item that made puppets holding them not gain any XP to prevent the strong ones from getting too strong. Due to how XP is gained in this game, it's real easy to level up puppets quickly even if you don't want them too...  Silent protagonist vs. silent trainer. Who'll speak first? Currently quite lost as the paths split up here and there. Alice is currently the puppet up front. Steel and light type. Light deals high damage to dark, and I think the other way around is also the case. Her spread attack potential is great, as well as her focus defense and spread defense. Speed potential is decent, but HP and focus attack is very low (E-). That said, if I were to use the edit feature to reinforce stats, then speed would probably be a great investment, then attack. On Pokemon games... and generally most games, I prefer going with offense most of the time anyway. Like I said before, so far the limit for reinforcing one stat is 60 PP, while the total cap per puppet is 130. Reinforcing stats seems like a good idea now, but it can't be lowered once it's been reinforced, so it's probably best to increase it slowly to see which fits best for a puppet.  After a bit of wandering around, we find a house. A nearby fairy is talking about Alice, so we might have found the right place. The replacement puppets have reached level 14 while Tenshi is close to level 20. Haven't really sent her out to fight for a while now, but since XP is given to all puppets after battle, it's hard to stop her advance. Also, confirmed thanks to Rumia that dark attacks are super effective against light. Bad deal for her because Rumia is slow, and the four types of puppets encountered in the wild in this area all have light type attacks. Anyway, examining that mushroom on the top left corner reveals a plain doll hidden in the shrooms. Further west is a different area that leads to a dead end but has an obsidian hairpin on the ground; held item that boosts dark type attacks.  Anyway, upon entering the house we find Alice, and she's quite happy that we got the package delivered. She also knows who we are thanks to the Tengu newspaper. News travels fast around here, doesn't it? The last boss, whoever that it, probably knows us already if he or she has read the newspaper... Unfortunately, she doesn't know anything about the puppets aside from what everyone else knows already. Still, it's been a long trek to the house and she lets Yin and the team rest up... what a waste, as I used some healing items before entering the place. After a bit of rest, Alice remembers that the puppets run on magic. There's a magician in a place called the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and she might have some info that could possibly shed some light on the puppets. That place is where Touhou 6 is set at. Rumia, Daiyousei, and Cirno have made appearance there, so we may encounter the Puppet Liberation Front once more.  Wherever it is, we'll be finding it out on the next episode. This feels somewhat short, but that's it for today. See ya all later! |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 24, 2016 19:49:55 GMT -5
So, the Royal Rumble is in around 2-3 hours, so let's get this episode done so I can watch the PPV on TV, and complain to the internet about it! Ha ha ha, that was a joke about complaining about wrestling on the interwebs. Let's Play Touhoumon, part 6 - 6...8...12? Last time we did an errand for Kourin which led is into the Forest of Magic to deliver a package for one Alice Margatroid. In exchange, Kourin will give us a nifty new bike to use, and according to him Alice may have some useful information about all these puppets, that being her specialty and all. Sadly, she has no new info for us, but she does give us directions on finding someone who might. It's in a place called the Scarlet Devil Mansion, located past Route 5, near the Misty Lake. Now, for a little bit of Touhou info, the Scarlet Devil Mansion is where Touhou 6 takes place, so how coincidental that this is the sixth episode of this LP! It's also the first game of the Windows era Touhou game, and in some ways is the source of the boom of many fanmade shenanigans of Touhou in general. On the 12th popularity poll I mentioned previously, three characters in the top ten debuted in that game. Also, we've already met three characters from the game itself; Rumia (first boss), Daiyousei (second stage mid-boss), and Cirno (stage 2 boss), and we might find more characters from Touhou 6 the closer we get to the mansion. That said, we'll pass by Kourindou on the way to Route 5, so we'll get our bike on the way, but before that let's explore the forest a little bit more in case we find new puppets and maybe an item or two. South of her house is a trainer with a level 14 Luna. My Rumia's no match for her, unfortunately. Dark is super effective against light, but it's the same for light against dark. Despite being level 15, Rumia's slow speed means she gets one shot KOed before she can possibly do that same. Still, it's just a one puppet trainer, and puppet Alice makes quick work in KOing Luna. Kokoro levels up to 19, and learns Salamander's Dance, fire type move that traps puppets in an attack for 4-5 turns. Probably useful against nature types. She also learns water dance; which turns the enemy puppet into a water type. Further down the trainer, there's a rice dumpling which heals 50 hp. West from the trainer is where Yin found the obsidian hairpin, which increases dark type moves when held. All that's left is North, and we find another trainer there. So far, all the trainers use puppets found in the area. Rumia's dark attacks are super effective against them, but the Rumia I got is slow, and is also vulnerable to light type moves... which I probably mentioned several times already. I could go and reinforce her stat in speed, but for most part I'm hesitant to do so as I might make a wrong choice in the long term. ...though, I'm not sure if Rumia would be part of my team for long, so why bother with not doing it? Ah well, maybe later... Anyways, past that trainer there's an antidote charm. So far, status-effect healing items aren't being sold, so this could be useful.  So far, Rumia's doing most of the battles. Want to avoid them as much as possible so my team's levels aren't too high, but if there's a battle, temp. Rumia will be the one to get the double xp.  The forest is big, and right now I'm not so sure where to go. There still might be something interesting to get around here, but as far as puppets are concerned I'm not seeing any new ones, in the grass or from the trainers. East from the pic above is an emerald hairpin... and more paths that split into two.  Fairy... Tail? Heh, anime reference. Cute. Still lost, and Rumia's almost catching up to Tenshi and Kokoro in levels. At this point I can avoid wild puppet fights, but trainers can't be run from... though I wonder if there's a point to fighting trainer battles now if my levels are high. Trainers don't give money, and only the items puppets drop are the source of money in the game. Still, I want to see everything, so fighting trainers can't be helped... Finally, a little ways east we find a ledge which jumped down from leads back to the entrance of the forest. Seeing as we haven't found the house of Marisa, the other person living inside the forest, we'll probably have more stuff to do there in the future... for now, off to Kourindou. Bike time!  We got a bike! Kourin says he wrote an explanation on how to use it... but dude, it's a bike. Yours truly doesn't know how to ride one, but I'm sure bike riding isn't exactly something you need written instruction for. Anyways, using the means of how silent protagonist communicates (charades? written notes?) Kourin finds out our intent to go to the SDM. He mentions that there's trees in the way, and we need a means to cut through them.  He had a means to cut the tree before, but he sold the item to the people at Eientei... that's the place in Touhou 8. To go there, we can ask Keine from the human village. *sigh* So much work, work, work. Looks like going to the SDM isn't as easy as expected.  There's a bunch of new items in Kourin's store as well. Jewels, which seem to raise the power of a puppet skills once. ...at those prices, it dang better well be more than once. No sale for you! ...though I did buy some more sealing thread, just in case. It's a rather long trek back to the human village, during which I forgot I had the bike in the inventory. How embarrassing. Probably not as embarrassing as completely forgetting where the school in the human village is... which took me several times circling the village, only to find out that I passed through the place multiple times already...  However, we enter the school and we find that Keine is not there. Agh. I reckon we better go to Akyuu's place to relay the lack of info we gather, but first, there's a new store in town: the tailor!  So, a while ago I had to check something in the Touhoumon wiki. With regards to style chance, it functions similarly to Pokemon's evolution... but it doesn't change the sprites. However, there's a shop in the human village that can change the looks of the puppet for a price. It's now open, and I say we change the look of a puppet or two! It costs 3k per puppet, and right now we only have enough for one... so it'll be the most likely regulars in the lineup for a long while; Tenshi or Kokoro.    A coinflip later, and Kokoro wins! We got a boring palette swap of the original sprite... or an nice alternate costume. Wonder what we'll get? With Kokoro dressed up in her festival garb, we go to the item shop to sell more junk to dress up more puppets! Yay costume changes! On the "Yellow" version of the game that was released last December, another set of costumes were added... but sadly we're playing the "Red/Blue" version of the game.  With Tenshi looking peachier now, we're off to Akyuu to see if she's got anything new.  And so it seems. Just as we enter Akyuu's office, we find Keine. We saw her early on in the second episode, and we got a puppet of her. Apparently, there's some trouble brewing over Eientei, and she's been asked to help. However, it seems like it's too much for her to handle, and she needs help on it. Fate seems to push us towards that place, as Kourin said a means to reach the SDM can be found there, so we might as well give our help to Keine, yeah? Apparently, Team Ro- I mean, the Puppet Liberation Front is causing a ruckus in Eientei, so seeing as we dealt with them a while back, we might stand to get something done about it. Also, for a bit of Touhou info again, Eientei is where Touhou 8: Imperishable Night takes place. Keine is the stage 3 and EX mid-boss there, and two from the PLF are from the game as well, Wriggle is the stage 1 boss and Mystia is the stage two boss. Seems like we'll save Touhou 6 for later, skip Touhou 7 (and 7.5), and go straight to Touhou 8. On that game, you play as two characters partnered with each other. One of the pairs is Marisa and Alice. Reimu was there as well, so we might be seeing the game heroine again sooner rather than later.  South of the village, an exit was blocked by a dude who warns that dangerous youkai live beyond that point. With Akyuu's permission, we're allowed to pass through. You'd think she'd write a letter at least. What happens if some guy lies and says he got permission? Bam, next morning he's found as leftover youkai chow. ...anyway, I decided to remove Chen, Rumia, and Alice from the team, and replace them with nothing. Now that's an idea that totally won't bite Yin in the butt. That said, I still have my high level ones in the group, and soon enough I'll catch new puppets anyway, so off we go! And so here we are at Route 3! Most likely past this is the Bamboo Forest, then further beyond is Eientei. For now, let's forget about that and search the tall grass and fill up our team!  ...Oh, dang. That's a wild puppet, and it's level already matches my Akyuu. Seems like removing 3 puppets on my team was a *great* idea.   Akyuu dealt too little damage on her. Benben has an attack that was super effective on Kokoro, and she also has apple bomb which works effectively on Tenshi. Unlike the Wriggle fight, Tenshi's a lot more tanky this time around, so defeating and catching Benben was easy after that. Even with XP being given to everyone, Kokoro and Tenshi are leveling up slowly. The trainers might have puppets on par with them, but I'll be stubborn for a bit longer and keep them off the starting position of the team for a while longer. Still surveying the tall grass, hoping to catch more puppets, so there will be XP gain imminent. Seal threads seem to last for about four turns, after that, the effect is lost, and you'll need to use another one to catch a puppet.  South of the tall grass, we encounter a dead end due to water, and a trainer fight. ...probably not a good idea, since I only got four puppets in the team. So far, all of the youkai we've met are cute girls. Expected since it's Touhou, but the monster girl fan in me is somewhat disappointed. She sends out a level 17 Kokoro... and that's the only one in her team. So okay, it doesn't seem as bad at the moment even with a small-ish team. Tried using reinforce stat on Akyuu... though her attacks seem to be quite weak in general, even though she's getting up there in level. Right now, avoiding wild puppets if I've already caught them, but will go ahead with trainer battles. I reckon that should keep my puppets relatively balanced. Now, for most part, I do this game semi-blind; don't know where to go, don't know what the enemy trainers have, and several other stuff. The only thing I look up is what puppets are available in each area, once I've visited them, so I know if I already caught everything there is to catch in the area, to speed things up a little. And now I caught every new puppet available in the area.  Kotohime. PC-98 character. A large majority of the characters in the PC-98 era don't get a lot of attention in the fandom. I've seen a lot of Touhou fanworks in various mediums... but aside from a small handful of characters from that era, I don't see a lot of PC-98 stuff. Playable in Touhou 3.  Nue Houjuu. EX boss of Touhou 12, also showed up in Double Spoiler - one of the official side games. Touhou 12's title is Unidentified Flying Object, so of course she's riding a UFO. UFOs were also a power up in Touhou 12.  Kyouko Kasodani. Stage 2 boss of Touhou 13. A mountain echo youkai. Like what the puppet book says, sings with Mystia - the official side-works states that the two have formed a band. Kinda looks like a dog, thanks to the ears, and the fandom ran with it.   Benben and Yatsuhashi Tsukumo. Sisters, kind of. Stage 4 bosses of Touhou 14. Not too high in the popularity things, perhaps because there was already a music-themed siblings some games before, plus they're kind of overshadowed by the other bosses in 14.  Kyouko, Benben and Yatsuhashi are sound types. Due to low stat potential Benben is put into the box. The Yatsuhashi I caught has great focus and spread attack potential, as well as spread defense. In Pokemon games I tend to not pay attention to EV and IV, but with the stat potentials in this game being easy to see... I can't help it. Nue is the rare puppet in the area, and she's on the team... but her stat potential is real low... urgh. She's the first electric type Yin has caught, as well. Who knows, if another Nue shows up, I might try catching it, but her appearance chance is 5%, so I doubt I'll find another one. Still, I dunno, me being weird, but now I'm thinking that my Benben puppet is being lonely because she didn't get picked to be on the team. Argh.    Thirty minutes before the Rumble. Hopefully I can reach the Bamboo Forest by then. We reach this part and there's several paths branching out. We also got this kid looking for an item she dropped, so good samaritan Yin will keep her eyes out for items... and of course, rewards! The barrel beside the house holds a Moriya shinshu/revive. East is a dead end and a trainer battle against a Chen and a Kagerou. Chen's a wind type, so Kagerou is probably the same and they're weak to electricity. North of there is where we came from, though further East is a path with two trainer battles. My gut tells me that it's the place to go to... so we'll go there for now. If we find the entrance to the bamboo forest, then we'll call it a day and finish exploring this route next time.  However, as it turns out it leads to a place that Touhou 12 is involved in. No dice, the journey continues. ...or does it?! It's been a long episode, and I gotta do some stuff and the Rumble is happening soon, so that'll be all for today. We end the episode entering Touhou 12 territory, and we might take a side trip and explore the place next episode. Until then. See ya all laters! |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 25, 2016 14:27:22 GMT -5
So last time I kind of cut things off rather abruptly as the Royal Rumble was on in like 30 minutes. I still wanted to play some more, so here's the next episode all nice and fresh! Let's play Touhoumon, part 7 - and we had lots of puppets.  Last time our goal was to go to Eientei and stop the ruckus the Puppet Liberation Front is doing there. Yin has to go to Route 3, then to the Bamboo Forest where Eientei is located. Along the way, Yin and her puppet team finds themselves sidetracked as they find the Myouren temple, a Buddhist temple that welcomes both humans and youkai. This is where the crew of Touhou 12 are located. We may see them here, but more importantly we might find new puppets in this place. Puppet catching time, ho! Girl in the top right says to watch out for the temple graveyard, as apparently it's full of visitors itching for a fight. Not sure if a graveyard is the right place to do puppet battles, but hey, when in Rome...   That Youkai on the right mentions that Hijiri is adored by her followers, though being youkai they don't really follow Buddhist teachings that much. That's canon, in the series, more or less. The interior of the temple up north is empty. There's a door at the top left and top right, but they're closed so I assume we might pay a visit to this place in the future.  Item near the bell is a Myouren tea, which heals all status ailments. Again, handy, but since no shops seem to be selling them yet, it's something that should only be used when it's really needed. Up north is a path that circles back to the courtyard, though a little further in the northwest corner is the path toward the graveyard. There's some tall grass which I intend to search for new puppets, but for now we'll keep looking at the temple grounds if there's anything else to find.  Namusan. Exactly what it says on the sign. There's a small shed there which holds a healing charm, which cures abnormal effects when held. One of the gravestones past that holds a healing item... which makes it look like Yin's stealing grave offerings... Grave robber Yin, you go girl! After that, there's nothing else aside from the graveyard, so let's take a look at that tall grass and see what they got!  Been a while since Route 1, where Nazrin puppets are common. Nazrin is the first stage boss of Touhou 12, and from the looks of it nearly all the Touhou 12 cast puppets are found in the temple grounds. Kyouko is there to, though while she's grouped together with the Touhou 12 cast, she debuted in stage 2 of Touhou 13, where stage two is set in the Myouren temple.   The seal threads aren't working as successfully as they should now. I think the success rate is somewhat tied in to the rarity of the puppets, or something. At this point I realize that I'm short on threads, and due to that I end up making Yin backtrack all the way back to the human village for more threads. On the bright side, the path from the temple to the village doesn't have tall grass that blocks the way, so you can travel all the way back by bike fairly quickly. That said, cash is somewhat in a problematic state. Since I'm avoiding wild puppet fights unless I want to catch the puppet, I'm not getting a lot of items to sell as a result. I'll have to fight more once I reach the point where cash is needed, though an alternative is to sell some of the holdable items as they fetch a fairly nice price. I could even get some more puppets to get a costume change with it. After a few fights (and a lot of escapes), Yin has found the entire set of puppets that can be caught in the Myouren Temple grounds!  Nazrin. Earth and steel type. We caught her all the way back in Route 1, but I never really mentioned her here. Stage 1 boss and Stage 5 mid-boss of Touhou 12. A mouse. She's Ratata, haha... though I recall in the old romhack she was the replacement for Ratata.  Ichirin Kumoi (and Unzan). Fighting type. Stage 3 boss of 12, as well as a playable character in HM and ULiL. Ichirin's the girl, and Unzan is the pink cloud man. Notable that Unzan is the only male character that's in the official games so far. They're a team, though Ichirin sometimes get overshadowed by the fandom as Unzan being one of the few male characters in the series with an actual role, as small as it is.  Murasa Minamitsu. Water type. Stage 4 boss of 12. One of my favorite boss fights. Lots of fun, lots of large anchors being thrown. Captain of the flying ship of the Myouren group, which became the temple itself.  Shou Toramaru. Light/Electric type. Stage 5 boss... of you guessed it, Touhou 12. Beware your hitbox against her curvy lasers of death. In general, nearly all the Stage 5 bosses in the games has a very distinct gimmick during their boss fight, and hers were curvy lasers that were tough to dodge. The fan series Touhou Tag Dream gave her a rather kinda Tiger Mask-like look. Nazrin is kind of her assistant, especially in the fandom.  Hijiri Byakuren. Fighting type. Human turned youkai/magician. Final boss of the 12th game, and became a playable character in the two fighting games released a couple of years after Touhou 12. Strength-enhancing magic is her specialty, so fandom (and the games) often portray her as physical attack oriented. Much like Nue, Hijiri is the rare puppet in the area... and again frustratingly her stat potentials are below average. I'd have no problem using her if I can't see the stat potentials... but since I can I'm tempted to try and search for another Hijiri so she can be in my team. Anyways, with all the puppets caught, we move to the graveyard for more explorin' and puppet catchin'! Also, not counting the playable characters and the stage 2 boss, Yin has caught the puppets of the Touhou 12 cast, though we're still lacking in one or two members of the Myouren Temple set.  Here we are at the temple cemetery. There are ghosts floating up and about, as you all can see for yourselves. Also, the temple grounds and the cemetery (and beyond that) is where Touhou 13 is set, so we might find a few more puppets to catch here.   Trainer puppet levels have gone as high as 18 while wild puppets in the temple and cemetery highest level is 16, I think. Most of my team is a little higher in levels, due to the amount of XP given by trainers, though right now they're still struggling somewhat.   Well, with regards to items being dropped by puppets. Most of them seem to be only vendor junk, whose sole purpose is to be sold so that you get money to buy items. One item called the magical fragment seems to hint that it has a different purpose aside from being sold, but right now I don't have any idea what it is, so I'll just hang on to those. The rarer puppets often drop better-priced items to sell, while the common puppets drop stuff like watches - not worth a lot, just enough to buy a seal thread.   Touhou NPC trainer battle time! It's Kogasa this time, the second stage boss and EX midboss of Touhou 12 - also the last of the Touhou 12 puppets we have to catch to complete the boss cast of that game. Kogasa here uses a level 17 Kyouko and a level 17 Kogasa. Just swapped out some of my team with new puppets, and the new ones are getting trashed. Even the level 22 Kokoro is having trouble winning due to the type advantage of Kogasa. Kogasa's night wind was super effective on Kokoro... then it got worse when she also had a water attack that's super effective on my level 23 Tenshi. I'm taking a lot of trips back to the human village at this point. Even though Tenshi and Kokoro are really quite high up in level to the trainer battles, and especially the wild puppets, they're still struggling after a few fights. Maybe it's time to level grind other puppets to pick up the slack, but aside from the two high-level ones I got, I want to use a team of my favorites so I'm constantly ending up switching the teams around. Still, I suppose this is more fun.  There's an item near Kogasa, a sugilite hairpin which increases the power of nether moves. Anyways, the cemetery is fairly big, and there's quite a lot of trainers. This really seems like a side-path on the way to Eientei, as the trainer levels and wild puppets are more or less the same as Route 3 that leads to the temple. Still, most of my team is getting hurt a lot, so that means that I'm going back to the human village rest house often.   The path is fairly straightforward, and soon we're lead to here. Another Touhou trainer. Yoshika, stage 3 boss of Touhou 13. She did hang out in this place during the game. Yoshika uses three Yoshikas... it's a mini-horde... still annoying as several in my team are weak to her attacks. Aside from a few types, I'm still not sure which is weak/strong against what. After this episode I may switch out Tenshi and Kokoro for a while as they're really getting high in terms of level... Past the lil' zombie girl and a little to the right, we find the entrance to a cave. It's been a fairly long episode already for me, but I reckon we might as well check the place out in case of anything interesting to find. Also, let's take a peek at the new puppets we've found.  Already mentioned before, it's Yoshika. Poison type. While she has zombie-like traits, she's more a jiangshi than a zombie.  Kogasa, and she completes the boss cast of Touhou 12. She also showed up at the mid-boss of Touhou 13's stage 3. Apparently she fought Yoshika and lost. Water/wind type.  Youmu Konpaku. Steel/nether type. Stage 5 boss and stage 6 midboss of Touhou 7. Playable in the three fighting games (7.5, 11.5, and 12.3 and that one's an expansion pack to 11.5). She also became a playable character in Touhou 13, which is why her puppet is hanging around this place. Her boss fight in the shooters kind of slowed the game time... kind of like bullet time, then speeding back up which makes her fast moving projectiles kinda hard to time the dodging.  Yuyuko Saigyouji. Nether type. Final boss of Touhou 7. Playable in the same fighting games Youmu was in. She also showed up in Touhou 13, surprisingly as the first boss of the game. Likes to eat, especially in fandom portrayals.  Mima. Nether type. Final boss of Touhou 2. PC-98 era character, though she's popular enough that fans often want her to show up in the new games. Taught Marisa magic.   Now that's done, we enter the cave. Like Pokemon caves, you can encounter puppets everywhere. There's more puppets, hurrah! Lots of puppets being caught this episode. If the cave seems too long, I'll end the episode without completing the area for now. Anyways, it's a cave. You take a look at it and you'd say "yup, that's a cave."  So far, the path is pretty straightforward and doesn't have any trainers or items to find. New battle music for the area as well.  Anyways, so far, as expected, the puppets here are all from Touhou 13. We might end up with getting the full boss cast here as well, possibly. ...surprisingly, the path is rather short, and it leads to a dead end due to a sealed door. Even more surprisingly, I encountered all the puppets available here by the time I reached the end of the path. New puppets, hooray!  Seiga Kaku. Nether type. Stage 4 boss of Touhou 13. Master/owner of Yoshika. Yoshika acts as a meat shield during the boss fight.  Soga no Tojiko. Electric type. Stage 5 midboss of Touhou 13. Odd design. She has that cliche ghost tail, but there's two of 'em. Gets summoned as an attack on Stage 6.  Mononobe no Futo. Wind/water type. Stage 5 boss of Touhou 13. Playable character in the fighting game Hopeless Masquerade (HM) and Urban Legend in Limbo (ULiL). She's short in the fighting games, so fandom portrays her as somewhat childish. A pyromaniac.  Toyosatomimi no Miko. Miko. Light/sound type. Final boss of Touhou 13. Like Futo, playable in HM and ULiL. While Hijiri and her group are more or less the Buddhist faction, Miko is the leader of the Taoist faction, with Futo, Tojiko, Seiga and Yoshika. They're rivals, in a way. She's also involved in the creation of Kokoro. Whew. We caught a lot of puppets for this episode! No story happened today, though, and hopefully we can reach Eientei by the next episode. Until then, see ya all laters. |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 26, 2016 13:25:46 GMT -5
Let's Play Touhoumon, part 8: Are we there yet?  And here we go again! Last time Yin explored everything that can be explored in the Myouren temple, or at least everything that can be explored at the moment. Past the cemetery, there was a cave that lead to a dead end, so with no where else to go in the area, we're back on track to the original goal; head to the Bamboo Forest and reach Eientei, where the Puppet Liberation Front is causing a ruckus, and stop them. Before that, a quick trip back to the human village is needed. Aside from healing up my puppets, I want to change teams around. I've caught several puppets, some of them more than once, and I want a new team as well. I might temporarily remove Tenshi and Kokoro from the team, mostly due to how they're quickly rising in levels even if they're not fighting. More importantly than that, is that the team needs to stock up on items. I take this time to grind for items. Since fought puppets can drop items to be sold, the probably best way to earn money is go to where the weak puppets are, and fight them to earn items for cash while receiving small amounts of XP. It's not the perfect plan, as puppets won't always drop items, and you still gain PP, but in right now the team almost always ends up needing healing items that having the money to buy them is more or less needed.   ...after ten battles, I get bored and decide to sell on of the usable items instead. The healing charm seems like a very useful item... but it's also worth 25k. Money now, worry later, more or less. Now, for items, the cookie heals 20 HP, while the dumpling heals 50 and the bun heals 100. The tea heals status ailments - I noted earlier that this can't be bought, so it's my mistake. I buy 20 dumplings and 10 teas, which should probably be enough. In another store, I buy 30 seal threads since I reckon I'll need more to catch more puppets in new areas. That leaves 3k, and that's enough to buy one puppet a new costume.  Tenshi and Kokoro already have their new costumes, and right now I really don't have any other puppet that I would keep in my regular team of favorites. Still, I want new costumes, so I might be wasting some cash on it, but costumes. I pick Murasa, since I suppose she's close enough in my favorites list.  Hm, the alternate color costume kinda reminds me a little like May from Guilty Gear? It's the anchor and the colors, I suppose. Still, I go with number 3, in which she trades away her anchor and sailor uniform for some snazzy pirate garb. Quite fitting for a captain of a ship.  Anyways, with that done, we head to the Bamboo Forest at last! I put Kokoro and Tenshi in the box for now. Nue currently is the highest level on the team, and she's there in case there's trouble. Now, there's 3 paths available. To the northwest leads back to the village, and northeast is to the temple. On the south there's a house with a person searching for an item she dropped, and beyond that I don't know. Southeast of the house is a dead end due to ledge shenanigans, so southwest we go to the unknown! In general, I don't really need to go around the tall grass unless I really need to. Caught all the puppets there already, though this might be problematic as most of my team is level 16, and we may encounter trainers stronger than that once we reach the bamboo forest. Well, we'll just deal with it when it happens, I suppose. Found a clarity charm which prevents confusion when worn. I'll hang on to it, since confusion is almost always an annoying status effect in pretty much every video game I've played.  Behold, my amazing MS Paint cropping skills (ha). It's a trainer battle, and it's kind of telling me to grind a little. ...nah, I'll just stick to trainer battles until it becomes desperate! That's totes a great idea. Why, what are the items Yin bought for? She'll just trek all the way back to the human village to heal up. You go, miser Rin! I also decide to switch Nue to Youmu. Youmu is at the level of some of the puppets encountered in the cemetery cave. Still, using this team makes my lineup have a grand total of having 4 nether type puppets; Mima, Yuyuko, and Seiga are pure nether types, while Youmu is nether and steel. Youmu and Seiga seem particularly handy, as the potential for their skills are quite high.  This spurs me on to get them their alt costumes. Youmu's got more swordsman-ny threads now, while playing the role of thieving, bearded, Santa is Seiga. The latter is more or less canon.  All right, after that shopping spree is done, we go back to where the last trainer we fought. As it turns out, a little ways south is the entry point to a new area! Hooray! We finally reached the forest... or so we thought.  Out of route 3, and into route four. Oh dear, seems like the path to Eientei is longer than previously thought. Ah well, more areas, more puppets! Maybe a chance to level up some puppets. Seiga has a pretty high spread attack, and the potential for that stat for her is A-. Her current attacks are also spread type, so it might be worth it to level her up just a teensy bit - that will be unavoidable anyway as there will be trainers to fight and puppets to catch. Since you still have to defeat puppets once the sealing thread is a success, you still gain XP from fighting them.  My lineup of four nethers almost cause a loss. That trainer there had a dark-type puppet. Her attacks were bad moon (dark type, super effective against light (Alice), and nether (Mima, Yuyuko, Youmu, Seiga)), and she also had heavy poison gas (poison, super effective against water types like Murasa). ...so that's 6 puppets, all of them weak to the attacks, and that trainer had two. Had to use one of the precious revive items on Alice, as the only advantage I got is that light and dark are super effective against each other. So yeah, need to get some new puppets, as the current team is seriously unbalanced against my favor. I switch out Mima with Hijiri, who's a fight type so I can at the very least have a little more variety. After that quick trip back to the village, again, we continue on and explore the tall grass.  Removed Yuyuko and put Chen in the team, and now it's time to catch more puppets. Kurumi is a dark type... and was also the two puppets used by the recent trainer who caused the mostly nether team a lot of trouble. That said, let's take a look-see at what we got now; all new puppets in the area captured. There's a Mystia around, but we already caught one.  Kurumi, dark type. From Touhou 4. One of the PC-98 games I played and finished... but don't really recall a lot about her.  Elly. Steel and wind type. Stage 3 boss of Touhou 4. Like Kurumi, don't know a whole lot about her. Notably, her stage theme was remixed and used in that Bad Apple PV.  Futatsuiwa no Mamizou. Illusion and nature type. EX boss of Touhou 13. Made appearances in later games, notably as a playable character in the fighting games Hopeless Masquerade and Urban Legend in Limbo. Also plays a role in the manga Forbidden Scrollery. With a puppet of her captured, we now have all the stage bosses in Touhou 13. In the series, she's friends with Nue. One of my favorites. At the start when you're asked on which is your favorite Touhou character which determines your starting puppet, it was either her or Tenshi.  Seija Kijin. Stage 5 boss of Touhou 14, and main character in the side game Touhou Impossible Spell Card. Was really annoying, capturing her. Also had a similarly annoying power in her boss fight. She didn't shoot out as many bullets as other stage 5 bosses, but she more or less reversed your controls, which is harsh when you're trying not to get hit. So... it's like Abra. It has an attack that blows away the puppet, ending the battle. Unlike Pokemon, you got to defeat the puppet when the sealing is success. So I'd use the seal thread - my puppet gets blown away. Seal thread success - attack doesn't finish puppet off, the seal runs out and puppet escapes after another use of seal thread. Took seal threads to finally nab one.     Continuing on, the path is somewhat straightforward. Some ledges here and there, and trainers. The new lineup is doing fine, and none of them are past level 20 yet. They probably will from all the trainer battles. The fights with trainers continue to be difficult, in any case, though some of them might be due to RNG - like the puppet I have that will be super effective against the other puppet gets hit with a crit, for example.  Following the path down Yin finds a quartz hairpin for Earth types - could be handy on Tenshi later. Also, the status effects I've encountered so far persist after battle. Poison is an odd case, as while it takes effect during battles, a poisoned puppet won't take any damage outside of battle. The path down continues east, and at the south has a dock and a trainer. The path east holds a contract thread - basically a better quality seal thread. Not sure whether that means the success rate is increased, or if the length of the seal period is longer.   After that, the path splits to a north and south direction, and we go north where there's no tall grass. We also encounter another Touhou trainer. Yay, more fighting! The battle theme for those fights uses Seiga's boss theme from the game.    Wakasagi was KOed in one hit with Mamizou's nature bomb thanks to it being super effective on her. Sekibanki was more tricky. Alice is light and steel type, but if I switch her out she'll be vulnerable to Sekibanki's dark type attacks. Then I remembered Hijiri has a light type attack of her own, so that takes care of that. Kagerou's sprite is cute. She's also wind type, which as it turns out, is great against a fighting type like Hijiri. The Sekibanki fight chipped away her health which lead to a KO. So far, low speed is a problem for lots of my puppets.  Sent out Alice, which almost turned out to be a bad move since Kagerou also has a dark type move. Thankfully, Alice's attack was more super effective. After the battle, I decide to go down the south path with all the tall grass. At the end, there's a burn charm and a ledge that circles back to where we encounter Kagerou. A trainer is encountered who uses two Youmu, a fight that lead to my team getting somewhat beaten. Hijiri's light type attack was useful on her, but the Youmu was pretty powerful requiring some switching and healing to win. And then the trainer mentions there's a rest stop ahead, huzzah!  And that, is that. It's been another long episode for me, and it's time to rest. Next time we might actually see the bamboo forest. No promises on that in case we run into a different area. See ya all laters! |
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Demented
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Winner of the Harleen F. Quinzel Legacy of Puddin Award
What am I doing here?
Posts: 16,071 
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Post by Demented on Jan 26, 2016 13:45:43 GMT -5
This game is so damn adorable.
Keep up the good work, Lord of Monster Girls.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 26, 2016 21:38:39 GMT -5
This game is so damn adorable. Keep up the good work, Lord of Monster Girls. Playing a more or less blind run of it is quite nice. I do the posts while I'm playing the game, and due to that it takes quite a while and I don't get a lot of things done. Like I'd be probably far in the game if I wasn't doing the LP, but at the same time it pretty much sets a pace where I can enjoy the game far longer as I progress little by little. Though I kind of wish that I waited for the new version to be translated instead. It's got the new Touhou characters from the two recent official games added in, new area, and some postgame content. Or new postgame content, as I think there's a postgame in this one as well. Plus, the puppets follow you in the new version like Pikachu in Pokemon Yellow. |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 27, 2016 15:03:02 GMT -5
Let's Play Touhoumon, part 9! Touhou 8: Imperishable Night Several episodes ago our heroine Yin has been asked by Keine to go to Eientei to help with a problem going on there. Coincidentally, Rinnosuke (or Kourin) from Kourindou told us that a tool to cut up small trees in our way can be found in Eientei, which Yin needs to travel to the Scarlet Devil Mansion, which Alice tells us that someone living there could help us with information regarding the puppets. So, basically, all we gotta do is to go to Eientei, save the day(?), then mosey on to the SDM to get to the bottom of this puppet mystery. Since then, Yin has taken her sweet time not really doing any of those things, choosing the path of wandering to locations not on the way to Eientei and catching all the new and cute puppets she encounters. Still, we gotta progress the story, and right now she'll try her best to find the dang bamboo forest leading to Eientei and get things done.  Last time, we ended the episode on a rest house in Route 4. The perfect place for a bit of R&R, as the trek to the human village at this point is rather long, and going to heal at the village rest house because Yin is being a real miser with the items has been rather tedious. The place has an item store covering the basic healing items, and a peddler that's selling some new items. Contract threads, the better and more expensive version of seal threads, and talismans, which repels weak wild puppets for far longer than rosary beads. More importantly, he's also selling skill cards. They're the TMs of this game, and while I got a little interested in seeing what they are, it seems all the guy is selling right now is barrier type moves. Meh, with it costing 15k per card, I'm not buying for now. Outside there's a few more areas to cover, and the item lying next to the rest house is a rice dumpling.  Following the path east... well now, that's a lot of bamboo. This is just a wild hunch, but I think we found the Scarlet Devil Mansion! I mean, uh, bamboo forest. Finally. Still, there's a few more spots in Route 4 to explore, so let's just walk around and see if there's anything worthwhile to find. Mainly it'll probably be trainer battles and items, since Yin has caught all the new puppets in the area.  Just realized that Santa Seiga has a fake beard to complete her costume. Anyways, puppet team right now is either level 19 or 20. Most of the puppets in the team started at level 14-16 when they were caught, and they more or less leveled up from trainer battles, while wild puppets were only fought if they were to be caught. There's been a lot of trainer battles, though the level gain is faster than I expected. Ah well, can't be helped. They're not yet at the level of Tenshi and Kokoro, who are both close to level 25.  The area itself seems a lot larger than expected. For most part I'm not finding any items, only trainers. Some of the items are of course hidden, but aside from a few lucky finds I'm not really sure where exactly they're hidden. Hopefully there's an item finder type item to be found soon, so I can nab some possibly rare items. We also find a couple of PLF members hanging about, though they're NPC fairies this time instead of Touhou cast.  After dealing with that PLF duo, a little past them is skill card 20 - clearing mist. Focus attack and steel type where damage increases if the opponent puppet has a greater cost than the puppet using the move. So basically it deals greater damage if the puppet being fought is rarer than you're own. Hmm, in any case, I just find out why the skill cards being sold are so expensive: they can be used an infinite number of times. Something to take note on, I suppose, since if I find skill cards in the future that's not so useful, Yin will be able to sell them for a fair amount of cash. That said, it seems that everything there is to explore in Route 4 has been explored, so we're off to the bamboo forest! ...but first, Yin's got some cash on hand, so let's get some costumes! Most of my current team would end up being replaced, but who cares? More costumes! After a trip to the store, Yin sells enough for only one costume, and we go with Mamizou!  The alternate costume is her human disguise in Forbidden Scrollery. It's basically just her minus her big fluffy Tanuki tail. I like it, though her MiB costume in ULiL would have been nice as well - though it would have been impossible since I think this game was released before ULiL. Anyways, after the a couple of episodes not reaching the place, we finally enter the bamboo forest - also known as the Bamboo Forest of the Lost. Now I wonder why they call it that? This area is where Stage 4 and the EX stage of Touhou 8: Imperishable Night is set. Later on this was also the place where Stage 3 of Touhou 14 is set, and it's got a snazzy remix of the stage theme for this area. (note: maybe in my next post I'll link up all the BGM the game has so far. All of it are remixes of Touhou themes.)  We bump into a rabbit girl on the way, or technically she bumped into us. After finding out that Keine sent us, she says that she'll go ahead and tell the peeps at Eientei that Yin is coming... so, yeah. She's not gonna lead us toward the place, so we'll have to make do with finding our way there. Why can she go through all that bamboo while Yin has to trudge through roads? Injustice, I tells ya.  On the next screen, we encounter another rabbit youkai, offering us a hint on where to find Eientei via the tried and tested Pokemon trainer way; fight first, hint later. One quick fight later, she mentions the number of bamboo shoots being a hint... shoot, this is a maze? Oh no, Yin's greatest weakness! Ah well, there's some tall grass, and judging from the NPCs, it looks like it's puppet wabbit season!  Though, despite saying that, our first puppet encounter is someone we already encountered as a trainer recently. Makes sense, as Kagerou is the third stage boss in Touhou 14, which I mentioned earlier that Stage 3 is set in this forest. Wild puppet battle music is the same music used in wild puppet encounters in the Forest of Magic. As for Kagerou... might add her on the team. As I'm avoiding the puppets I caught, an item I found from the start of the game, the blinding orb, has been very useful. It pretty much guarantees that one can escape from wild puppets, so it makes sure I don't get any unwanted XP from wild puppet fights... though that also means that Yin is constantly struggling due to lack of money. Still, as I'm encountering Kagerou a ton right now, it all works out. After a lot of puppet Kagerou encounters, we finally complete the puppets in the area!  Tewi Inaba. Void type. Stage 5 midboss of Touhou 8, also playable in Touhou 9 and made appearances in other spinoff games and manga. A lucky white rabbit youkai, and also a prankster. Fanon often has her pranking a certain other rabbit...  Reisen Udongein Inaba. Illusion type. Stage 5 boss in Touhou 8, playable in Touhou 9 and the second fighting game and its expansion pack, in the spinoff game Shoot the Bullet, and recently made a return to playable status in Touhou 15. Also made appearances in some spinoff manga, and is the main character in the semi-canon Inaba of the Moon manga. A rabbit from the moon, not related to Tewi. Target of Tewi's pranks, often in fanon. The ears are not detachable in canon... or is it? At this point, I wanna note that there are four fighting games - technically five if you count the expansion pack for the second fighting game.  Fujiwara no Mokou. Fire type. EX Boss of Touhou 8, and became a playable character in the fourth fighting game. She has a very snazzy remix of her boss theme on that game. Human turned immortal. One of my favorites. Friends with Keine.  Kagerou Imaizumi. Dark and wind type. Kinda a werewolf. Stage 3 boss of Touhou 14. Apparently gets very hairy during the full moon. Her sprite looks cool and cute at the same time. Removed Alice and Youmu from the team and switched them out with Kagerou and Mokou. Kagerou seems rather dubious though... her stats for spread attacks are high, but all of her attack moves is focus type, and her focus attack is quite low. Mokou's sprite when hit has her cowering with a rather silly look which really looks amusing to how her sprite is looking cool when it's standing/attacking.  Anyways, apparently the way to Eientei is from counting the number of bamboo shoots. ...I have no idea what that means. Going the wrong direction takes you back to the first part of the maze, while heading west in that place leads to back to the path to route 4. I'm not sure how the bamboo shoots relate to the path to Eientei. Going south from the first section places Yin in a new area. More bamboo shoots, and still more I have no idea where to go. So, basically, let's do this the logical way; guess until we find a clue. Basically I'm just trying out what works. If the screen changes, I make note of the direction I took. Basically trial and error at this point. The wild puppets in the area seem to be the same, and no trainers in the area, so Yin's avoiding the tall grass as she stumbles her way towards Eientei.  ...going up, then down, then down, then left leads me here with a trainer encounter. Seems like we're going the right way now! The trainer didn't have anything useful to say, so we continue on this trial and error of hell.   Hmmm. After the previous trainer, left again, then right leads to yet another trainer. And behold Mokou looking uncool as she gets hit. From there, up leads to yet another trainer... all these trainers mean we're going in the right place, right? Right again leads to another trainer battle. All these battles makes Murasa reach level 24. The rest, aside from Mokou and Kagerou, is at level 23. Can't be helped with so many trainers being fought. Still having a hard time, though.  After that trainer, up and down leads us... here? Hrmm, two small trees block the path. We need to get to Eientei in order to get something to cut small trees up. Looks like we took a wrong turn. Argh. Looks like we'll have to re do the maze again. For now, I noted the path down on paper since this could be somewhere to go to later. Going back up where we came from returns us to the first area. A quick trip back to route 4's rest house is needed, as the trainer battles have put the hurt on the team - and I already used up several healing items during the fights. Don't want to run out of them now.  Going back to trial and error, at first I tried to follow the path from where I found the blocked off area, and I think I made a mistake in directions somewhere in the middle and find myself here. Doesn't look like Eientei, since that place in the official games if huge. Maybe they downsized? The tall grass here seems to have the same puppets as the rest of the forest so far. I think I have an idea of who lives here, but there's no one home. Still, Yin decides to practice the honored tradition of RPGs, rummaging through the house like your standard kleptomaniac hero and finds a fuji rice cookie in one of the cabinets. Now, back to searching... So... after more tries: down, up, down, left twice, right, up, right, up... going down from this point leads us to where the blocked off area is. Instead of down, go up, then down, then up... and finally...  Good lord, at long last! Huzzah, and hooray! May I never have to go through another maze ever again, ever ever ever. Reisen is happy to see us too, and hurries ahead to inform her master. Eientei in the games is the residence of Tewi, Udonge and her two masters. Tewi's not so sure about us, and she decides to see if we're strong. Fight time! Music is the battle music from the other Touhou trainers.  Tewi has two Tewis and one Udonge. Udonge's the main damage dealer, while I took advantages of Tewi being a void type. Her void type attacks have no effect on illusion types like Mamizou - though illusion moves also deal no damage to void types. It works out quite well, as Mamizou has different type moves, while Tewi only has void type attacks. Have to switch her out against Udonge, as illusion types are super effective against other illusion types. Little by little, I'm getting used to remembering which type is good against other types.  After the battle, Tewi says we can go in now... but I notice that patch of grass lying in the corner. After a few tries in checking, I find new puppets! Didn't take long, as the wild puppets are Tewi and Udonge, and two new puppets to the collection.  Eirin Yagokoro. Water and poison type. One of the final bosses in Touhou 8. Mad scienti... I mean, doctor. Fighting her in the game leads to the normal ending of Touhou 8. I always forget these days about her bow. Usually doesn't have it with her in her other canon and fanon materials these days, it seems. Her doctor aspect is more focused on. Showed up in other side works, and is the creator of the immortality elixir that turned Kaguya and Mokou eternal.  Kaguya Houraisan. Light type. Other final boss of Touhou 8. Fighter her means leads to the true ending of that game. Often portrayed as a NEET in fandom. Showed in in other side stuff, and is the rival of Mokou. In the Touhou games, the battles are non-lethal, though in the case of Mokou and Kaguya they kill each other... though since they're both immortal, death doesn't stick. Them killing each other used to be mainly about a grudge, though lately it's more or less because they're bored, it seems.  Finally, we're inside Eientei. There's a flourite in one of the rooms, which increases the length of protection moves in battle. Eh, seems like this'll fund item supplies for Yin. There's also a Myouren tea and a healing Chirei bun in the northeast corner of the building. There's a corridor blocked off by two rabbits, and one of them mentions that Eirin is at the west end of the place. West we go, I guess.  We meet Eirin... and as luck would have had it, she decides to test us. Come on, Tewi wasn't enough? I didn't even get to heal that much yet! Hijiri is even KOed here! Well, no matter. Reisen U has a level 20 Tewi and a level 22 Udonge. Not that bad, really. With Tewi, I use Mamizou for a relatively quick squash thanks to Tewi still having only void type attacks. With Reisen I bit the bullet and used illusion against illusion. Reisen was faster, however. First exchange couldn't finish either one off, and the second wave Reisen KOed Mamizou due to speed difference. Still, Mamizou's hit was enough to lower Reisen's HP so that my Mokou could finish her off.  After the battle, Eirin is convinced and tells us about the problems going on in Eientei. Apparently, the princess Kaguya has been fighting with a certain someone again lately. Due to her being busy with the patients, Eirin is unable to settle the problem and she's looking for a strong trainer to act as a mediator between the two. I was mistaken that this was a problem caused by the PLF, but no matter. We're going to the place where the two rabbits were blocking the corridor, and Reisen asks if we need healing. Well, after a quick rest, let's take a peek at what's up and settle this incident.  So, the plan is this. Eirin takes on Kaguya while Yin deals with Mokou. Different battle music as the fight starts, looks like we've got a boss battl-  Ohhhhhhhhh, crap. Good lord, looks like I'm really underleveled here. Keine's a steel type, so fighting or fire works best. My Mokou is level 20, so I think I'll go with Hijiri and make use of her fighting type attacks. Hijiri's helm splitter is super effective, but due to level difference I'm losing out in the exchange even against the normal damage attacks of Keine. Mokou would be used if things were desperate, so I healed Hijiri and continued to fight with the winning hit against Keine. Then Mokou sends out... Futo?  Well, the two kinda became friends in Urban Legend in Limbo. I was expecting another Keine. Man, first I assumed it was Kaguya I was fighting, now I make another wrong guess. I can't remember Futo's type... but then I realize I posted here on one of the previous episodes. Wind and water type... come to think of it, I'm surprised Futo's that type, as her special attack in the fighting games is fire... though I suppose that's something for evolutions. Plus, she does have a boat she uses for attacks in the official games. Anyway, water and wind are both weak to electricity... Nue would have been useful, but water is also weak against poison, and Santa Seiga has a poison move. Heavy poison gas doesn't do a lot of damage, though, and it once again becomes a battle using items. Running out fast! I half regret avoiding wild puppet battles at this point. I completely forgot to take a screenshot of that part due to panic - Seiga fainted as Futo's bubble orb scored a crit. Thankfully, Mamizou makes a save as bubble orb isn't effective against her.  And here's the last one. Haha... level 30... oh damn. Still, I have one last gamble. I heal Mamizou... which proved ineffective as Mokou's fire wall is super effective and KOs our tanuki in one hit. Nonetheless, even if I'm surprised by Futo's types, I can't be wrong on Mokou. I know her type in this game, and in the official games it's blatantly obvious that she only uses one sole element to gimmick her attacks. Fire. Lots and lots of fire. I got Murasa, who's got lots and lots of water - plus a water attack that preempts other attacks. Still, if Murasa loses I'm done. Got no revive items, as I ended up wasting them in other battles. Well, I use the fast water attack, and it does some damage...  Oh, damn. I switch Murasa to Hijiri, who gets KOed immediately. Then Kagerou, who I use to take the KO hit while I heal Murasa. With Kagerou out, that leaves Murasa and Mokou. I try using Mokou in case she can at least do one hit... nope. Out of items, all puppets except Murasa are down. Instead of using the water move that always hits first, I use the slower water ball. ...Mokou hits first, almost finishing Murasa, then Murasa uses water ball... which crits... and KOs Mokou... ...YES! Mentally I'm Santino parading his invisible trumpet around. I'm Daniel Bryan winning it all at Wrestlemania (minus the followup with Kane weeks later). Whew, that was seriously a close call there, ain't it? With the battle won, the puppets drop three watches. One watch costs 200 cash. This is the equivalent of a gym boss, I suppose, and I get so little cash...  After the battle, Mokou has calmed down and praises Yin and her team for their skills. She even invites us to her house in the forest. Meanwhile, Kaguya is a bit unhappy with not being able to fight Mokou, but Eirin has done enough to pacify her at least. Eirin herself is thankful, and for the reward, Yin asks for the tool for cutting the trees. We get the Woodcutter Doll! Seems like an item, and not a HM, so no need to use it on puppets, I think. Now at this point, I think it's enough to end the episode... ...but I was feeling curious so I decide to take a peek at that blocked path from the forest first. Using the woodcutter doll we can now pass through! We do reach a dead end, but there's an item on the grass that's skill card 69 "Squall". Switches out enemy puppets, if it's wild puppets then the battle ends. Meh. Still, getting to the item made me realize something; new puppets. So, a little walk through the tall grass later, and Yin has caught more puppets!    Watatsuki no Yorihime, Watatsuki no Toyohime, and Gyokuto. All three debuted in the manga Touhou Bougetsushou. The Watatsuki sisters are the former masters of Udonge. The two are former pupils of Eirin as well. Quickly summarizing things, Eirin made the immortality elixir that caused her and Kaguya to be banished from the moon. Udonge followed her new master Eirin. Anyways, the Watatsukis in their debut garnered a bit of unpopularity because they beat a lot of the characters from the original game easily. One of the fannames for them were "moonbitches". Nowadays, I don't think they're that unpopular... anyway, as for Gyokuto, she could either be one of the background moon rabbits in said manga, but she could also be Reisen II (or Rei'Sen). She more or less served under the Watatsukis, named Reisen II as more or less a replacement for Reisen Udonge. And that, is that for now. We've more or less completed the area in the bamboo forest, hooray! We might pay Mokou a visit in the next episode before heading out to the SDM. Until then, see ya all laters. |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 28, 2016 8:04:27 GMT -5
SEMI KINDA IMPORTANT POST: Now that we're almost ten episodes in this LP, I think the amount of screencaps posted has reached a ridiculous amount. I suppose it's kinda hard to scroll down when you've got hundreds of pics loading. Now, every episode will probably have the same amount of pics, but for convenience I'm adding at the very top of the very first post links to each individual episode. Kinda like a table of contents, so if you click on that link you'll be able to load only the post of one episode, which should lessen the amount of pics that has to load. And just so I can remember it, here's more or less each type and what they're good/weak at. Dream type. Don't think any puppet has this type, but this type serves as the default attacks: Yin energy for focus attack (physical), Yang energy for spread attack (special). Void type. Probably the normal type of the game. Not very effective against light and dark, and has no effect on illusion. Fire type. It's fire. Not effective against fire, water, and earth. Super effective against nature and steel. Water. Like fire type... it's water. Cirno's frost edge is a water type, so I guess water and ice are combined. Not effective on water, nature, and sound. Super effective against earth and water. Nature type. Pretty much grass type, I suppose. Weak against fire, nature, wind, and poison. Strong against water and earth. Earth type. Rock/ground. Tenshi's earth type. Weak against nature and fighting and has no effect on wind types. Effective on fire, steel, electric and poison. Steel type. It's steel. Not effective against fire and water, and other steel types. Super effective against nature, wind, and dark types. Wind type. Flying type. Not effective against steel and electric. Super effective against poison, fighting, and sound. Electric type. It's Pikachu's type. Not effective against nature, electric, and light. No effect on earth type. Super effective against fire and wind. Light type. Light (holy?). Not effective against fire, water, light, and illusion. Super effective against dark and nether. Dark type. Not holy? Not effective against dark, fighting, and illusion. Super effective against void, light, and nether. Nether. Ghost type, probably. Not effective against light, and super effective against other nether types. Poison. Poisonous. Not effective against earth, nether, and poison. No effect on steel. Super effective on nature and water. Fighting. Not effective against wind, poison, and illusion. No effect against nether. Super effective on earth, steel, and dark. Illusion. Psychic type, probably? No effect against void. Not effective on steel and nether. Super effective against light and other illusion types. Sound. Not effective against wind, light, and sound. Super effective against fighting and illusion. And that's that, I think. Not exactly sure if I copied it correctly, but I suppose the only way to find out if I did is if I use this post as reference during battles. They added another type on the expansion game, but alas, it's not available on the game I'm playing. Also, here's a random assortment of the BGM from the game. All the music in the game are remixes of the official Touhou BGM. Music when fighting most of the Puppet Liberation Front members. Stage 1 boss theme of Touhou Great Fairy Wars: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LscHLif4qnMUsed when you fight PLF leader Rumia. Final boss theme of Great Fairy Wars: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdKlWhfsYDsUsed when fighting most Touhou trainers. Seiga's boss theme in Touhou 13: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaoHZIW3MfABoss battle music when Mokou was fought. Utsuho's theme in Touhou 11: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcTvAvoOF78BGM when you fought Reimu. Reimu's theme in Seihou: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOhZLOTAfEI |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 28, 2016 14:38:13 GMT -5
Well, last time, we fought a boss. Mokou's 3 puppet party very nearly handed Yin her first defeat, if not from a lucky crit from Murasa... so I guess that means we can afford to grind levels just a little bit. Like, I dunno, Mokou's team has two level 27s and one level 30, at a time when Yin's strongest puppet is level 25. I reckon aiming for level 33 for all party members will be suitable enough for the SDM. Still, I won't spend my time grinding levels to that point for this episode. I'll just take on wild puppet battles when I encounter them - that should also help with money earning, at least. With that said, let's get episode 10 up and running! Let's Play Touhoumon, part 10 Last time we finally reached Eientei, and after helping Eirin calm down Mokou and Kaguya via puppet battles, we get rewarded with the woodcutter doll! You don't need to use it on a puppet, and having it in your inventory is enough to cut down small trees - which we need to do in order to reach the Scarlet Devil Mansion. It's our next stop in this journey, but first we got some things to do! In the areas Yin has already visited, there may be other small trees to cut down, and it may lead us to some interesting new places. First things first, Mokou. Yin found her house in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost while wandering around. It was empty before, but with Mokou's defeat against Yin's team, she gives us an invitation to visit sometime... so off we go for a quick visit to see if there's anything interesting to find there.  Down, up, down, left, left, right, up, then finally left. I didn't get to note down the correct path to find her house yesterday, so I had to figure it all out again. Unfortunately, upon entering her home, Yin finds the house still empty. Alas, all that time wandering in the forest for nothing. Oh well, maybe later in the story we'll catch her inside her home. With that done, we heal at Eientei and after that let's pay the human village a visit to report to Keine and Akyuu. It's on the way toward the SDM anyway. Upon reaching the entrance to the bamboo forest, we meet a familiar face.  P.S. I can't find the pre-battle themes, as well as most of the BGMs of the various areas in the game. Only the battle themes are available on youtube, so have the original theme instead here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dJA_YLSPz0)Entering the scene to one of her boss themes, it's Marisa! Oh god, don't tell me you want a puppet battle... after Mokou, I'm feeling real wary about my chances here! *sigh* Of course she wants a puppet battle. After hearing that Yin took on Keine's request to help the folks at Eientei out, Marisa wants to see how strong the team has become. It's fight time!  This game does not want me to relax at all, huh... So, while the team is healed, it looks like Marisa's team is far stronger than Mokou's by level. Worse, Yin has run out of healing items. Still, on the bright side of things, Yin's team has Hijiri as the puppet in the front lines, and Marisa sends out Alice. Alice is steel and light type, and light is weak against fighting types like Hijiri. Alice is faster, however, and steel needle almost takes out half of Hijiri's hit points. In return, Hijiri uses rush attack, which functions like fury attack - it can hit up to five times, all of them super effective. First time it hit 3 times, and the second exchange it hit twice which was enough to take down Alice. Marisa sends out Patchouli next, and Hijiri's almost down. Patchouli is probably faster, so I use Hijiri's racing shadows; functions like quick attack, but weak and in return Patchouli knocks out Hijiri.  Murasa is sent out. In the games, Patchouli wields multiple elements, so I have no idea how that translates to puppet types. Murasa hits first with water ball doing okay damage... but Patchy returns fire with energy bolt, an electric attack and Murasa's weakness. Patchy is probably not an electric type since water ball did normal damage. Luckily, Murasa takes the hit and survives, and does water ball again to get Patchy's hit points close to KO. Another energy bolt takes Murasa down, but Seiga has enough speed and her attack does enough damage to get the win. Two down, one to go! Completing the magician trio... of course, it's puppet Marisa!  Seiga's pretty fast, but Marisa gets to attack first... and its a light type attack that's super effective. Unlike Murasa, Seiga doesn't have the defense to tank the hit, and she gets KOed before she can attack. Still, light type, probably... I hope I'm right and send out Mamizou. And I am! YEAH! YES! YES! YES! Marisa's attacks are light type and don't do a lot of damage to illusion type Mamizou, and in turn Mami's illusion bullet is super effective! After another exchange, the battle has been settled. I get three magical fragments (total cost 600 cash) for my troubles. Yeesh, very lucky that Mamizou is around. Without her, the level difference would have squashed the rest of my team to oblivion. The streak lives on! You sure did, Marisa. Marisa then asks what's Yin gonna do next, and upon hearing that we're going to the SDM, Marisa mentions that she'll go on ahead to get stronger the next time she faces Yin. Next time? Please don't, Yin already has her guts in a knot after the recent battle... Anyways, she also tells Yin to go to Keine's school, since you've did a favor for the teacher and all.  After she leaves, it's time for Yin to head on out as well. That rabbit on the top-right isn't Tewi, but another rabbit from Eientei who will lead you straight to the place when asked. There she will also lead you out if you want to. We're doing neither, as we're off to the rest house and will probably get some new (and some old) puppets into the team.  Removed Hijiri, Seiga, and Kagerou from the team and replaced them with Yorihime, Gyokuto, and returned Kokoko to regular use. I'll use Tenshi in the probably near future. At the peddler, sold a burn charm for 10k. Apparently the skill cards can't be sold, so I went to sell some junk and discovered that the puppets in the Marisa fight didn't drop magical fragments, but magic crystals. No use for anything, but is priced at 10k each. SCORE! Gonna buy a lot of needed items... and of course, costumes! After stocking up on a ton of items, I'm left with 9k in the wallet... so three costumes for three puppets!    Gyokuto/Reisen 2's alt color gives her hair color like Undonge, while her alt costume is a moon rabbit soldier uniform like deal. Yorihime's alt color gives her the same color scheme as her sister, and she's sporting fancy shrine maiden-ish duds on her alt costume. Nothing much to say about Mokou's alt color, but her alt color is most likely how she'd look like before becoming immortal. Rather plain compared to the other two, but still pretty cute. That said, once Yin gets more funds, she'll get costumes to all the puppets she has - even the ones not being used.  And with that shopping spree done, we go to Keine's school and let her know that we've done her request at Eientei. For our troubles, she rewards us with skill card 78: continue. It heals HP to full and cures status effects, but puppet is put into stop status for two turns. Seems kinda handy... but I wonder if using the heal charm will fix stop status. Can't find out now, as I already sold the thing. Oh well. Our aim now is to go to the SDM... but honestly there's not a lot of time for me left for this episode, so let's explore the previously gone to areas and see if there's anything new. I passed by the Myouren temple before heading to the village, but there's nothing new there. Let's try the Hakurei shrine. If I recall, the mountain area in the shrine's backyard has tall grass that you couldn't get to during the start because Yin wanted to go to the human village first back then.  On route 1, there's also a blocked off path, but it's a fragile rock. Looks like another area to be visited in the future...  Back at the Hakurei shrine, I didn't mention it before but there's a large turtle swimming in the small pool in the shrine. Again, we can't access this, until the future where Yin has a means to cross water (a swimming doll?). Sanae doesn't have any new stuff to say, so that's a bust. Regarding the Sanae, she belongs in a different shrine, one which we may go to later. In this game she's babysitting Reimu's shrine while Reimu is currently investigating the incident. Anyway, off we go to the backyard!  Ummm, so that's that. A large oni is sleeping. Best not to wake her. Yin then goes all the way to the Forest of Magic and finds... well, nothing. Alas, the episode for today is short. I have a hunch that the trek to the SDM is fairly long, so I'll have to end things today and continue tomorrow. This was pretty much a one battle episode, when all's said and done. Still, it was one that was another close call. Until then, see ya all laters! |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 29, 2016 14:28:35 GMT -5
Here we go! Just a reminded, as we haven't even reached page two of this thread, there will be a lot more screenshots posted per episode. Due to that, I've posted links of each episode as individual posts, to make it easier to load each episode. Let's play Touhoumon, part 11: Almost there... almost. Anyways, here we are! The previous episode was rather short, and the really only important thing that happened was Marisa showing up at the entrance of the bamboo forest to challenge Yin to a rather tense puppet battle. After that, Yin and co. wandered around the already explored areas to see if there's new places to access, or if there was anything we missed. Keine rewarded us for our work with a new skill card, and we discover that the backyard of the Hakurei shrine is blocked off by a rather large, and sleeping oni. After that, Yin ended up in the Forest of Magic once more. There was nothing new in the places she had already explored... but she discovers a path that leads to the southern edge of the forest. This place didn't require the woodcutter doll to access, so this is probably just an area we missed. Makes sense, as the forest is quite huge and there's a ton of paths leading to who knows where. Still, aside from one trainer, there's nothing else to see there, as the path leading deeper to the south of the forest is blocked off by water. We'll most likely be back here later on, once we get a means to cross water.  Looking at that trainer's Cirno, and then at the level of our Kokoro, it definitely looks like this place was meant to be found at the time when Yin first entered the Forest of Magic. Oh well. The fairy trainer mentions that there's really not a lot regarding the Puppet Liberation Front, and she pretty much treats the organization as some sort of game. Which makes sense, as in the official sources pretty much most fairies have childlike behaviors, and most of the PLF members we've encountered so far are fairies. Past the fairy is a dead end with an opal hairpin lying on the ground. The tall grass in this area also has puppets we've already seen, and with all areas in the forest so far explored (I think), we now take the trek back to Route 5 and finally begin the journey to the Scarlet Devil Mansion.  After getting lost in the forest for a bit, Yin heads straight to the area in Route 5 that was blocked off by small trees. Past this point is the Misty Lake and the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and who knows what else and what new puppets we'll encounter. The two locations is where most of Touhou 6 takes place. The SDM itself is the abode of two vampires... so, I'm guessing we'll encounter some dark types later on. Light type moves work great on dark, but it goes both ways... Tenshi and Hijiri could be great fits for that possible scenario, as they have light type moves but are not light type.   Still at route 5, the tall grass past the trees reveals new puppets to catch. It's Rinnosuke! Probably the only male puppet around, though Unzan, the pink cloud Ichirin rides is also a male. The other puppets in the area are ones Yin has already caught, like Rumia. Still, after the close calls fighting Mokou and Marisa, I think it's time to start fighting wild puppet battles a wee bit more. Yorihime is steel and light type, and if she's gonna fight dark types, she'll have to level up a bit so her speed will give her the advantage.  Also, after some consideration, I remove Murasa from the team and put Tenshi back on. Just because. I wanna use my starter for decent chunks of the game, and it's been a while since we saw ol' Tenko and her giant peach. But first - new costumes!  Sold a few items, and I wanted to give a random puppet a costume just because. In the end I picked Mystia; that alternate costume of hers is canon, I recall. In one of the side works, mentioned that Mystia and Kyouko formed a punk band, and this is more or less their stage get-up. I'll get Kyouko's alt costume next time, I suppose. With that done, Tenshi is placed on the team and we continue on! Right now, using the puppet levels of the Mokou and Marisa fights for reference, I got about three or four in my team severely underleveled. The new trainers in Route 5 are about level 20 so far, but I reckon they'll get much stronger fast before we reach the SDM. It's the perfect time to train the team, so we'll have slightly less trouble in boss battles later. Perfect time to catch new puppets, and maybe gain a bit of cash in the process. I reckon for this area I should boost Gyokuto and Yorihime to level 22 or 23. That should be good and trainer battles the rest of the way should about cover it, probably. I wanna level up, but not too high. The area where wild Rinnosukes seems like a fine place to grind, as he drops gold dust which sells for 500 cash. Several fights later, the lowest leveled puppet Yorihime is now level 23, while her underling Reisen 2 is a level higher than her. Reisen 2 learned Destruction, and somewhat powerful void type move that has a 30% chance to make the opponent to flinch, while Mokou learned fire wall, which caused a lot of trouble for my puppets during the Mokou fight. Apparently the effect of the attack disables the held items of puppets. As for Yorihime, she needs one more level to learn her next move. Also, from all that time spent grinding, we've caught all the new puppets in the area.  Orange. First boss of Touhou 4. Not a lot to say about her. Basically a mook among bosses. Kinda resembles the Stage 3 boss of Touhou 6.  Rinnosuke Morichika. Nicknamed Kourin by Marisa. One of the few male characters who has an on-screen appearance in the Touhou stuff. Main character of the side work Curiosities in Lotus Asia. Half-human, half-youkai. The other puppets in the area are Tokiko, Mystia, and Rumia - we already caught them and I don't think I'll get extras. After a rather long training session, Yin's back to going through Route 5 toward the Misty Lake.  Well, from the looks of it the team now is much better equipped to take on the trainers in this area. It might change later on, but for now I think there would be no need to fight wild puppets unless I wanna catch 'em. There's probably a lot more trainer battles later on, and they should increase the levels of my team further, anyway.  North is where we need to go, and to the right is a path and some ledges that will eventually lead back to the pic above. There might be a hidden item in that area, but I don't wanna spend time searching through every tall grass tile. Going north immediately leads us to the next screen - seems like we've reached the first checkpoint of our destination.  The Misty Lake. It's a body of water, and there's a lot of mist. There's a sign up north that points toward a variety of locations. Now, our main goal is the SDM, but after all that time spent training, I have doubts that we'll reach the destination for this episode. Alas, I don't have much time to do this LP at the moment, but at the very least we'll check out one of the other areas to see if they've got anything interesting we can access in this stage of the game.  Heading east, the path soon leads northwards, and a small path in the east again is blocked off by rocks. There's a lot of NPCs in the area, and so far I've managed to avoid trainer battles as I quickly scout the area to see if there's anything else to take note off. Still, some tall grass can't be avoided, so I quickly hurry and nab some of them for Yin's puppet collection.  Well, good to know that the trainers remain as challenging as ever. So far, those Kurumi puppets always cause a lot of trouble for my team... Sadly, the place is huge, and I haven't even begun to explore when I realize that I'm almost out of time. Alas, another short episode, but by tomorrow I'm nearly super sure that the entire lake area, or at least the areas that can be explored, will be done by then. Until next time, see ya all laters! |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jan 31, 2016 12:01:41 GMT -5
Woo! Time for episode 12. Last time I had to do a second short episode in a row due to things. Today... well, I'm hoping for a longer episode, so let's get things started! Episode 12: The long (really long) road to the Scarlet Devil Mansion Previously, due to having the woodcutter doll in possession, we were able to cut through the small trees in Route 5 and access the Misty Lake which we need to pass through in order to get to the Scarlet Devil Mansion. One reason why I stopped the episode is due to the area looking rather large, and after the level grinding I did then made me think that there won't be enough time to explore the place. That said, I did some exploring in the tall grass and caught a trio of puppets.  Cirno. Water type. Stage 2 boss of Touhou 6. Often considered dumb, especially by the fandom, though that really helped her gain quite a bit of popularity. Became a playable character in the expansion pack of the second fighting game, and later on became the main character in her own game.  Sometimes referred to as China by the fandom, Hong Meiling. Fighting type. Stage 3 boss of Touhou 6. Made several other appearances, most notable as a playable character in the first fighting game, in which she was kinda a hidden character. The game makers probably didn't have time to balance her, as she was kinda really weak in that game. She'd later appear on the expansion pack of the second fighting game, in which she became a lot more usable. Gate guard of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Apparently quite good at martial arts, though that fact is not as useful in a game that primarily focuses on long-ranged combat - even the fighting games for most part.  Wakasagihime. Waggysaggy~ Water type. Stage 1 boss of Touhou 14. A mermaid that was encountered on stage 1. She and Kagerou are members of the Youkai Grassroots Network, though so far they're the only two named as members.  Now that we've done mentioning the new acquisitions... you're probably wondering why Yin is back at Eientei... well, the game crashed and I had to do everything all over again, attempting to play the game exactly like how played with, down to making sure I had the same puppets in exactly the same level as I had played until the crash... ...naw, just kidding. The thing is I wanted Meiling and Waggysaggy on my team, and an Eirin as well. As it turns out, the tall grass to Eientei is the perfect spot to level up puppets to level 24. That's due to puppet costs; puppets with high cost means that they take longer to level up, but at the same time wild puppets of high cost give more XP. Kaguya and Eirin puppets are high cost, which would usually mean they're an uncommon/rare encounter, but they show up fairly regularly in the tall grass in the area. Udonge puppets have decent cost, so they're good for level ups as well.  As a result, I managed to give my current team a decent amount of training prior to starting making a post for this episode. With training done, I can focus on exploring, trainer battles, and catching new puppets without doing level grinding for quite a while. During that time, Meiling learned dragon meteor, a super powerful attack... though kinda super hard to use as its low priority (most likely the last to attack) and won't work if Meiling is hit. Aside from that, she's got decent focus attacks of three different types; earth, void, and fighting. Eirin has one water attacks and two poison attacks. All her attacks are spread type, and she also has the void type spread attack random fire, which can hit 2-5 times per use. Its usefulness is somewhat mixed as void type isn't super effective against anything.  Anyways, new dialogue in Eientei, and that piqued my curiosity enough to check inside the place. As it turns out, Kaguya's itching for a fight as well!  Music being used is the standard Touhou trainer team, not the boss fight music used by Mokou. It seems like Kaguya has a capable team, and one puppet more than Mokou's. Still, that level grinding we've done isn't for show, and we're much more ready to take Kaguya on compared to Mokou and Marisa. Tewi's on first, but like always, Tewi's void type moves have no effect on Mamizou, and Mamizou's illusion type attacks has no effect on Tewi. However, Mamizou has one nature type attack: apple bomb, and that pretty much makes her dominate the first fight.  Kaguya brings out the big guns next as the next puppet in her team is a level 30 Eirin. Being a poison type, and earth type like Tenshi... which will work well if not for the fact that Eirin's also water type, which is Tenshi's weakness. I go with a safer choice and bring out Meiling, as she has an earth type move. ...not a good move, as Eirin uses heavy poison gas which does high damage on Meiling. The next turn, Meiling is too slow to attack and she gets hit by the same move again, causing a KO. I risk it and send out Tenshi and it almost became a bad move. Eirin's bubble orb almost caused a KO, and Tenshi gets lucky with her attack: spirit stone jig, and earth type move that like rush attack and random fire, can hit between 2-5 times, except that it's an Earth type move. Hit five times and thanks to it being super effective KOs Eirin in one go.  Next up is a level 26 Udonge. Not too bad, especially after Eirin. I take this time to heal Tenshi with a Chirei meat bun, which heals for 100 hit points. If Yorihime was purely steel type, she'd have an advantage over Reisen as illusion moves is not good against steel. However, it's effective against light types, which neutralizes the defense boost Yorihime will get against illusion moves. It's a small risk, but I let Tenshi take the hits and return with some of her own. Mainly spirit stone jig, first time hitting three times with one crit, and the second time hitting twice for the KO. One more left!  Whew, I was dreading that Kaguya's Kaguya will be higher leveled than her Eirin. She's... light type, I think. Would be great if I had a dark type puppet for that, but I have something that works just as well. Mamizou to the rescue! Kaguya has tri-effect, a powerful void-type move (which Mamizou is immune to). Mamizou is also a nature type as well alongside illusion... and light type attacks aren't effective against both types. Mamizou takes no damage as Kaguya tries to spam void moves against the tanuki to no avail, and soon victory is decided!  Maybe it's due to the level grind, or just being lucky with having the right team, but the battle is much easier compared to the Mokou and Marisa fights. Mamizou was the key against fighting Tewi and Kaguya, while Tenshi tanked hard enough to finish off Udonge and Eirin. If she wasn't able to take down Tenshi in one hit, or if Tenshi couldn't have done the same, the battle could have probably turned out differently.  Since we're in the area, let's pay a visit to Mokou and see if she's around - and she is. Before I went there, I took Waggysaggy out of the box and placed her on the team. For now, at least, say goodbye to Mamizou, who has been a super useful ally in the team. As for Mokou, she wants a rematch and Yin doesn't object. Silent protagonist syndrome strikes again, giving Yin no chance to refuse.  Normal Touhou trainer music this time. Seems like it's the same team, albeit leveled up a wee bit more. Kokoro was in front, and I'm not sure why I chose Eirin. Water does okay damage to Keine, but poison does nothing. Realizing the error of my ways I switch out to Yorihime. Steel type attacks don't work well against other steel types, so while I can't use half of Yorihime's moveset Keine's attacks won't do much damage either. At the same time, light type attacks work normally, so I spam them until Keine falls. Ray Dance does double damage, I think, if there are weather effects. I like Yorihime's attack animation.  Hmm, instead of Futo we got Kagerou. Not a good opponent choice for Yori, as dark and light work well against each other. Still, it works out, due to a weakness I remember about Kagerou: her stats are centered around high spread attacks, yet all her moves are focus type. Due to that, Kagerou hits a super effective attack that couldn't KO Yori, while in turn she gets hit by a super effective light type attack. Didn't have time to take a screenshot of Yori attacking, and now we're left with Mokou who is the highest puppet we've faced so far at level 32.  Yin sends out Waggysaggy, despite the level difference, it's a water type versus a fire type - it should work out! And it does, Mokou, despite her speed, does little damage to the little mermaid. Mokou uses a fighting type move instead, and looking at the screenshot I realize that a second helm splitter will KO Waggysaggy. I switch to Meiling this time and finish her off with stone rain - earth being super effective against fire.  No one is KO on my team. A bit battered, but this turned out a lot better than last time! Aside from winning some cheap stuff to sell, there's nothing else to do, so we go back to our original goal of going to the SDM. Of course, since Yin's gonna pass by the human village, it's costumes time! Costumes for all!  Since Mystia was the previous one who got a costume, I suppose it's only fair for her fellow band member Kyouko to get one as well. She gets similar attire as Mystia due to that.  Eirin's alt color makes her look more nurse-like, while the alt costume makes her more scientist-like. The alt costume also has a slight change in the attack animation: instead of shooting with her bow, she throws pills instead.  Also, just something I noticed a while back. If Mamizou with her human disguise alt costume is hit, the illusion fades and you can see her tanuki ears and tail that's normally seen in her normal costume.  Waggysaggy with a more western-styled costume. Not sure if that's actually good for swimming, though then again a kimono isn't either.  With regards to her normal clothes, fanartists either have the pants on, or have no pants to show some legs. In the fighting games, she does have them, I personally I prefer it that way. Still, her alt costume looks rather cute anyway. Nothing else to do in the village, nothing new at the Myouren temple, door at the cave in the cemetery is still locked... with nothing else to be checked, it's time to go back to the Misty Lake.  Past the entrance and just a little bit east from the pic, there's a contract thread that's lying there in the tall grass. Last time we went here Yin explored the path east, so for now let's go west and see where that takes us. The sign says that heading west will lead us to the Genbu Ravine. The SDM is located north, so we'd probably have to go around the lake by heading east or west. From that NPC in the left, there's a path down that's all tall grass, while continuing east avoids the tall grass but has a decent number of trainers waiting.  After facing off with a several Touhou trainers with pretty strong teams, the rest of the NPCs being encountered is a little lacking in challenge. I reckon things should begin to get more challenging once more when we reach the SDM, but for now Yin and her team can relatively relax and get easy XP.  Past that second trainer we fought is a sapphire hairpin, perfect for either Waggysaggy or Eirin, and the tall grass path meets up with the path we took. Heading past the bridge, we see someone swimming in the water. Yin kinda waits for a while there, since she doesn't have a means to move in the water and the person in the water was too far to talk to for some time.  As it turns out, it's someone who we have a puppet of in our team. Not surprisingly, it's another trainer battle! It's a battle against puppets that were the first three bosses in Touhou 14. Kagerou (stage 3), Sekibanki (stage 2) and Waggysaggy (stage 1), and none of them are in the level of Mokou/Kaguya's puppets, so no trouble here. Yorihime would probably have been enough to take on all 3, but I kinda wanted some of the other team to gain a bit more XP in the end.  After the fight, there's a path splits in three ways; the one in the east is the one where Yin came from, then there's a path west that eventually leads north, and a path in the south. South I reckon leads to the Genbu Ravine. New area, possible chance of new puppets... yeah, let's go there first.  Instead of leading to the ravine, we find ourselves instead in Route 5. I guess Genbu Ravine is a little farther away than I thought. So a little further down we encounter a trainer - nothing special, but after the battle Kokoro reaches level 30, and a new thing happens.  Style change. Pretty much like Pokemon's evolution... though the puppets don't get new sprites - that's what the tailor is for. Like assigning new moves and reinforcing stats, this can be accessed in edit in the puppets screen of the menu.  Now, normal is the default styles that all puppets start off with. Once a puppet reaches level 30, they can choose between two different styles, and all in all there are four styles available, if I recall; power, defense, speed and assist. Which style you choose will give the puppet a boost in all stats, though particularly focused in some of them; like how power Kokoro obviously gets a much bigger boost in focus and spread attack, while defense style has a more noticeable boost in hit points and spread defense. Style change can also alter puppet types, like how puppet Kokoro who's originally void and fighting type becomes void and light type upon switching to power style. Finally depending on the style chosen, the moves they'll learn later on would be different. I reckon that a good defense is a great offense, so let's go with power style! Go smash that opponent in the face, Kokoro, before they can do the same to you! Also, you cannot switch styles or go back to normal, so choose carefully! Furthermore, upon style change, she has a new ability to choose (Infinite Changes which removes Moody), as well as learning three new moves: strike shot (quick attack that's fighting type), spring first (same as strike shot, but wind type), and 4 gods' assistance, which changes depending on terrain effects.  We continue on down Route 5 towards possibly the Genbu Ravine. One trainer battle later, and it's Tenshi's turn to style change. Take note on the second pic, on the top right left Kokoro it now says power instead of normal. Looking back at the Mokou and Kaguya fights, their main puppets were level 30 and 32, but still normal style - I'm somewhat thankful for that because I'm not sure my puppet team could handle the big stat boosts that style change would have given. Defense style is tempting, but went with power style once more. In general, it seems like most of the team is ready to jump to level 30 soon, especially with all these trainer battles. I may change up the teams again later, when the current team has style changed.  More trainers fought. No real chance to avoid them, and the path to probably the ravine is relatively straightforward. Past some tall grass is a new skill card; number 28, thieving wind. Wind type. If the enemy puppet has a held item, the move takes it and the puppet who used the move gets to use it. None of my puppets can learn it.  More trainers to fight. Real easy now, though at least I don't have to make trips to faraway rest houses to heal. The tall grass path has a dead end with a hidden item: sun fruit jam, which fully heals hit points. Neat. Usually I'm no good at finding hidden items, but at least on that spot it was somewhat obvious to guess that there would be something hidden. Past the trainer the patch continues west... and there's a ledge that leads back to the main area of Route 5... and I accidentally went past the ledge. Urgh.  At the very least we can go back to the human village. It's time for Tenshi and Kokoro to take a short rest, and get some new puppets to train. Kokoro and Tenshi are back in the box, and in their place is Toyohime and Ichirin. ...and, I got a few items to sell, so let's get at least one costume!  Ichirin and a bigger Unzan in the alt costume. Interestingly, due to that they also have different attack and got hit animations. Anyway, we go back to the area in route 5 and continue exploring. The path becomes a little less straightforward from here on out, it seems, with a lot more tall grass to go through. One path leads to a dead end with a well. Can't climb down the well, but the bucket has a contract thread to take. After some more navigating, we come across another dead end, with a courage charm on the floor. Courage charms automatically heal the weakness status effect when held. Since we're on that subject, here are the various status effects and what they do. For starters, it seems that there are two status slots, so I'm assuming that a puppet can only suffer from two status effects at most. Poison: well, pretty much like any poison status effect. Does damage each turn in battle, but it doesn't do any damage when moving around. It can turn into heavy poison, if hit with another poison attack, which takes up two status slots. Some attacks cause heavy poison from the get go. Heavy poison increases in damage the longer the puppet is fighting. Poison and steel types are immune. Burn: like poison. Can turn into heavy burn which has similar effects to heavy poison. Fire types are immune. Stopped: puppet can't do anything for 2-4 turns. Pretty dangerous, I'd say, since the puppet will be a sitting duck unless to use a lot of items or switch them out. Two slots. Darkness: Halves focus attack. One slot. Fear: Halves spread attack. One slot. Paralysis: Halves speed stat, electric types immune. Doesn't seem to paralyze puppets/waste a turn. One slot. Weakness: disables healing abilities of puppets, but you can still heal via items. All the status effects above remain after battle unless you use Myouren tea or some other status effect healing skill. There's also temporary effects like confusion (chance for puppet to do nothing, but they won't hurt themselves), flinch (cancels attack), and stance break (cannot avoid attacks). Anyway, after some exploring, it turns out that this leads to a dead end. Well, darn. Still, for this episode, we're a little side-tracked, and we'll aim to find Genbu Ravine, and see if there's anything of interest there. It would be quicker to backtrack to the ledge that leads to the main area of Route 5, and then go back to the Misty Lake from there.  We're back to where Waggysaggy is swimming around. We went south last time, so we head west where the path splits to further west or a bridge north. I wanted to go west... but as you can see the game doesn't want us to reach that area yet. I'm suspecting it's the Genbu Ravine, and we're not allowed to go there until the story tells us so. Going north we reach an intersection that joins the western and eastern path together, with the way up north probably leading to the SDM. Well, for now let's check the east path and see if it does lead back to the entrance. After we complete this area Yin will step into the north path and the episode will probably end on that point.  More trainer battles. Toyohime is an earth type, but is also a water type. She won't have problems taking Waggysaggy's water attacks... but if she faces off against a nature type then she's doomed, as both water and earth are weak against nature. Still, she's not good against Waggysaggy either. She has water dance, which changes the enemy into a water type, then a water and earth type attack which is ineffective, and the default dream type attack that doesn't do much damage... Switched her with Ichirin to win the fight... forgetting the fact that Waggysaggy has a sound type move that's powerful against fighting types like Ichirin. No real danger since I got four in my team that can curbstomp the current competition.  Past that old man trainer, the path continues east, and there's also a path up north with a decent amount of trainers and NPC. As it turns out, Cirno's frost edge can inflict stop, and Meiling would have fainted despite the level difference if Yin didn't intervene with a healing item. Quite the nasty side effect, it is...  Well, the rest of the NPCs up north are just NPCs, and north leads to some ledges which are basically a dead end for Yin at this point. Heading back east, another trainer is encountered. Easy battles at this point. I kinda want to switch the whole team to increase the challenge, but at the same time I'd rather not as I might end up with another situation similar to the first Mokou and second Marisa fight.  Past a bridge, there be a ghost. On the previous episode, I saw this ghost while scouting around the lake, so this path we're going in should lead back to the entrance to the lake. That ghost keeps claiming he's human after the fight... maybe he doesn't realize he's dead yet. Rather morbid. There are youkai in this place after all, and in the series youkai still do go after humans once in a while.  Going north, more trainers, more easy wins. It's easy for my strong puppets, at least. Ichirin's fainted, and Toyohime is struggling against most of the puppets in the area. Anyways, this place is really quite large. Past the trainer, we reach another spot where the path splits into two other possible directions. North there's a light charm which can auto-heal darkness. East is a dead end... it's all tall grass, and I don't wanna check tiles one at a time to see if there's any hidden items. We go back to where the ghost trainer that was encountered and continue south.  Fairy at the bottom left is just a NPC, and east from there leads to a path blocked by rocks. Going south leads to two trainers, and just a little further south is the entrance of the lake! Hooray, we've more or less explored the entirety of the Misty Lake. Due to the last trainer battles, Meiling and Waggysaggy reached level 30 and is now ready for style change. Meiling could choose between either speed or defense style, and both have rather interesting style changes. On speed, focus attack is increased quite a bit as well as a big boost in speed, and far better spread defense than defense style. Defense style adds earth type alongside fighting, and focus defense is really high which should make her a good tank for focus attacks. Focus attack increases a little, but not as much speed style. On the other hand, spread attack is actually lowered. Probably not a problem as Meiling's moves are focus attack oriented. I go with speed as that's usually a stat that causes me trouble. She also learns a new move; aura drain which heals hp by half of the damage inflicted. Seems super useful as the attack power of it is fairly high. Removed meteor impact, which is twice stronger than aura drain, but the conditions for making the attack hit is problematic. Waggysaggy could choose between power and speed, and I went with the latter. There's still an attack boost on speed style, and she also gains the sound type. Whether having two types will be handy for her, or add more weaknesses, remains to be seen. Still, speed Waggysaggy has an extra benefit. On the passive abilities, she has two choices. One is fog traveler, which doubles speed on fog weather. Doesn't seem handy anymore since she gets a speed boost on speed form. The other ability that can be picked by normal and power Waggysaggy is surging spirit: which increases water type move power when at 1/3rd health. Speed Waggysaggy doesn't have that, and instead has Force of Nature. Normally, nature type moves are super effective against water - this ability however nullifies nature type attacks, where instead of doing double damage it becomes no damage and increases the spread attack Waggysaggy when hit by nature moves. Quite a bargain! With everything covered, let's head to where the SDM probably is by process of elimination.  Going north in this three-way path, we immediately encounter a scene. It's the SDM! And, we notice Marisa sneaking in before us. From the looks of it, Marisa breaking in through the front was rather easy considering a certain gate guard is sleeping on the job. It's been a long episode, yet somehow Yin managed to reach the SDM despite the length it took to do so. For now, we go at it like Meiling and take a break for this episode. Until next time, see ya all laters! |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 2, 2016 14:25:46 GMT -5
Here we go! Did some things offscreen, mainly leveling up Yorihime and Eirin to level 30 so they could get style change for both of them.  Interestingly, speed style for Yorihime offers a larger increase in focus attack than power style. Speed style also changes her type into steel and electricity from steel and light, and this has some rather distinct changes for what she can fight; normal and power style has steel and light, and looking at the type chart there are a total of 7 types that won't be very effective against her, and one type she's immune to (poison), while there are four types that are super effective against her. The change from steel and light to steel and electric type makes it so that only four types now won't do much damage, and she still remains immune to poison. On top off that, she becomes weak to only three types instead of four, but in the case of earth types Yorihime will become super weak against it, as steel and electric are both weak against earth. With that in mind, I went with the presumably safe route of choosing power style for her instead of speed. Power style gives less focus attack than speed style, yeah, but it's not that bad, and she also gets a decent stat boost in speed anyway.  Eirin can choose between assist and power style. First time finding assist style on a puppet. Power style has better stat increases for the focus and spread stats, while assist gives better hit points and speed. Going with assist style for Eirin, since defense-wise I feel that replacing water type with steel will just mainly make her immune to poison, plus the fact that like speed Yorihime earth types will do massive damage on her. Now that we've got 4 style-changed puppets on the party... and 2 on the box... let's change up the active roster again! The SDM stands before us, and right now I don't wanna enter the place steamrolling through it with a powerful team. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there are trainers in the SDM with style changed puppets... if it is, well, more challenges for Yin to overcome! I spent a bit of time training them all up, and here's the initial lineup for SDM!  Ichirin's close to level 30, and she'll be the heavy hitter in case there's a strong trainer to fight. Shou I picked since she's light and electric type, and I reckon considering the place that there'd be light types to fight, and her ability nullifies light type damage as well as give her an attack boost if hit by one. Sekibanki I mainly chose because I wanted her on the team, while Keine I picked because she has light type attacks despite being just a steel type. Kagerou's an interesting case. She has the same high potential for focus and spread attacks, though looking at her current stats her spread attack is increasing much faster. The odd thing is that despite that, all the attacks she's learned are all focus type, and despite her stat potential her focus attack is pretty poor. I'm thinking that once she reaches the level for style change she'll unlock stronger spread type moves, so I'll try to keep her until that. Yoshika's got pretty focus and spread attack stats... and really high hp compared to the team. On the other hand, I've caught a few Yoshikas and they seem to have one thing in common, which is a rather terrible spread defense. Even against spread attacks of a type she's not weak against, they do quite a bit of damage on her. She has the ability where any void-type attack she has becomes nether-type, and at the same time getting a power-boost to those attacks... which makes it somewhat interesting, as her only void type attack lowers the opponent's focus defense, and the attack itself has high base damage. On the other hand, upon using said attack Yoshika gets KOed instantly, so it's pretty much a desperation attack, and super powerful against nether types. And that's the team. Of course, with a new team, and cash gotten from training them... yeah, it's costume time for them!  Some cooler battle armor like costume for Shou.  Head but no body for the usual costume, and it's the other way around for Sekibanki's alternate costume.  Hm. Keine's alternate color scheme gives her the same color scheme as her EX form, minus the horns. Was expecting her EX form to be the alternate costume, so I guess that one will be a different puppet, I guess.  Little red riding wolf. Funny that we're going to the Scarlet Devil Mansion, a home of vampires, with a werewolf.  And finally, a more jiangshi-like costume for Yoshika. With all of that done, let's finally get this episode up and running! Episode 13 - wow, that was a rather long intro for this episode!  On the previous episode Yin has finally reached the gate of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. She sees Marisa sneaking in from the front gate, and we also see a certain gate guard whose puppet we already caught. Now, the fandom really likes portraying Meiling as sleeping on the job (and subsequently getting punished for it), and this game is no different. Talking to her once confirms this, and you can pretty much enter the mansion and she won't bat (or open) an eyelid. Heck, if you go west outside the gate you can find skill card 45: Lazy Mist; water type, spread attack. 80 base damage, 30% chance to cause weakness on the opponent. Could be useful on Waggysaggy, but she's not on the team at the moment.  Speak to Meiling a second time, however...  Yin's first trainer battle for a while now! Not really a hard battle, since Meiling only has two puppets with her. Cirno is weak against poison (Yoshika with slime ball), while Meiling being a fighting type is weak against wind (Kagerou with wintry wind). Cirno's frost edge could have caused some trouble, as she managed to put Keine in stopped status, and as it turns out that status effect won't go away even after battle. For Kagerou, while wintry wind is super effective, her low focus attack didn't make it a one-hit KO. Anyways, with Meiling beaten, Yin is free to go inside the SDM.  Inside, Yin is greeted by the mistress of the SDM; Remilia, a vampire. It seems she's been expecting us, though Yin silently manages to convey that she's here to go to the library in the mansion. Still, Remilia invites us to seek her out once we finish our business in the library - if Yin can manage to reach her room, that is. She leaves, entering a door that's locked to us and now we're free to explore the mansion itself.  A little east and down the stairs leads to a storage room with a fairy maid NPC who's looking for more helpers to be hired in the mansion. In the official series, Remilia hires fairies to be maids in the mansion... though being fairies they're more prone to play around and not do actual work, leaving the SDM with a grand total of three people actually working as servants (and one of them tends to sleep during work hours). Skill card 66 (Confinement, no damage/paralyzes opponent), and an oath thread (stronger than contract thread) can be found in this room.  Going back up to ground floor level, further east there's a stairs leading upwards, but the fairy maid there won't let us through. Going west leads to a similar layout; stairs at the far west has another fairy made preventing passage upstairs, which leaves us to go to the stairs down. Down there is a door that leads to a library, and inside we meet a certain black-and-white witch once again.  There's no battle with her this time. As it turns out she's also looking into the puppet incident and is currently searching for them. She asks us to be quiet about her, as there might be trouble. More or less, Marisa often... borrows books from the library, in a borrow-them-until-I-die sense. Well, she's human, while the inhabitants of the mansion are a lot more long-lived, so it's certainly borrowing from her perspective. Though to reflect this in the game, puppet Marisa does have an ability where she steals held items upon attacking - and this happened when Yin fought her for the second time. We leave the thieving Marisa alone. She's blocking the path beyond her, so all Yin can do is explore the other areas of the library. So far, no trainers or wild puppets encountered. The bookshelves can't be interacted with, but just in case I check on all of them in case there's an item hidden there. Yin circles the library, going down on some stairs until she reaches the bottom of the library where someone sees Yin and the team.  Eye contact wasn't even made. Yin thinks you interrupted yourself from reading, Koa.  Not really important, but Koa doesn't get the Touhou trainer music and only has the generic NPC trainer music playing for her. Tokiko was an easy win; one electric type spark cross from Shou and a wind type like Tokiko is knocked out. Next up is Daiyousei, and take a look at Yoshika's hit points. She got hit by a nature type move, which isn't effective against Yoshika, but due to it being a spread attack it still dealt that much damage on her. Yoshika's slime ball did great damage and poison, but a second hit from Dai and Yoshika is KOed as well. Sekibanki then finished Dai off with her new move, ignorant darkness. It's another fury swipes type attack, this time it's dark type. Puppet Koa is the last one on Koakuma's team. A rather easy battle, as Keine is the perfect choice for dark types, it seems. I've mentioned multiple times already how both light and dark are effective against each other. Shou being light and electric would be a good choice, but if her light type attack doesn't KO Koa in one shot, then she'll be in for a world of hurt in return. On the other hand, Keine is pure steel type. Dark isn't super effective, but at the same time Keine can hit hard against dark types due to having light type moves. Her ability is also handy; if she's hit by spread attacks, there's a chance of causing the weakness status on opponents.  Upon winning this battle, Ichirin levels up and becomes eligible for style change. Power or defense style, and I think I'll go with defense style for her. Her stats are rather solid whichever way I go... though speed is much lower than normal style and spread defense is somewhat lower than what power style offers. Still, gaining electric type to go with fighting seems like a net gain for her, defense-wise. If I'm correct, this only makes her weak to only one type. She also learns life burst, a fighting type move that will always hit for good damage. I think it's good: the damage rating for yang-energy, the default move of focus-attack oriented puppets, is 55, and life burst is 80. It has low priority, so the enemy will hit first... but considering her speed anyway Ichirin will hit last most of the time anyway. Better than trump card, a void type attack with a damage rating of 140... but will only work if the other three moves can't be used anymore. Anyways, Shou and Yoshika is KOed, so it's another trip back to the human village. It's somewhat tedious that there's no revive item being sold yet. The SDM is far away and unless there's a place in the mansion where the team can heal it'll be long trips back to the rest house when something goes bad for the team.  Deeper into the library we meet another person. Patchouli Knowledge, freeloader/librarian of the SDM. She's the one Alice wanted us to talk to about the puppets. As it turns out, the entire thing is another bust. While Alice noted that the puppets move through magic, it's not Patchouli's work - though she mentions that even if she knows anything she's not telling. I guess that's that...  Of course, there's a matter of Yin being a suspicious person trespassing in a private library. Fight time! Well, if Patchouli does know anything but doesn't want to tell, there's this method of information gathering... Anyway, she's got a two-puppet team. Her Alice is an easy fight, as Shou already has an earth type move to take down Alice's steel and light type. Patchouli, on the other hand, won't be so easy. Her attacks are made up of multiple types... on the Marisa fight she had a fire, water, and electric type attack, and one void-type move... so I have no idea what her weakness is. I took a wild guess and used Sekibanki, as it turns out Patchouli's weak against dark type. A rather easy fight, all in all. Basically, this is pretty much the second Marisa fight, without a Marisa puppet as the last opponent. After the fight, she more or less reaffirms that she doesn't have anything to do with the puppets. Still, she mentions that we should go meet up with Remilia now. There's a door to the library that should lead us to her, and as a bonus, Patchouli can heal Yin's puppet team. Hooray for that! If you talk to Marisa, she'll more or less confirm that what Patchouli said about not being involved in the puppet incident is true. There's no books about the puppets to steal, according to Marisa. Due to that, Marisa leaves, and the area she was blocking can be accessed, though it can also be accessed via the area past Patchouli. There's also a puppet box near Patchy, so that's convenient.  So we now go to the room that Yin can now access. There are NPC trainers lying in wait - as well as wild puppets! Hooray for that, hooray for collecting new puppets! As for the trainers, they seem to be a few levels higher than the ones encountered in the Misty Lake, so I gotta be prepared in case the boss fight for this area is super tough. The wild puppets are around level 21-23, so if I suddenly find one I want, then training them shouldn't be too hard. As luck would have had it, I encounter a rare puppet on the third encounter.  Trainer battle. Adverse spirit is the attack Yoshika has I mentioned. However, due to that puppet not having Yoshika's ability, it remains a void move that's not effective to light types, so it does little damage to show. Like a Voltorb self-destructing and doing no real damage...  Oh god, we're in a maze. My greatest enemy. It's a huge place, and both wild puppets and trainers are numerous. While you can heal up by going back to the library and talking to Patchouli, unlike the bamboo forest there's no easy and quick exit. If not for numerous items Yin bought, things could have turned rather ugly... That said, Sekibanki reaches level 30. Power or assist type available. Assist type makes her dark and nether type, while power type makes her stay dark type only. Went with the latter as the focus attack boost from assist is too low; none at all to be exact. She also gains an interesting ability; her old ability gives her a speed boost if hit by a dark, nether, or poison move. New ability makes her void type attacks into light type. Since Seki's a dark type, this gives her an interesting edge against fellow dark types.  Here I continue to get lost in these maze-like corridors. I feel a further "oh crap" feeling as this maze is apparently multiple rooms big. On the bright side, I caught a super rare puppet from getting lost in the corridors. Keine also reaches level 30 for skill change. Defense or power form is available; Power form seems to switch things up. Normal Keine's stats leaned towards focus attack, while power style turns the focus on spread attack, not to mention that power style adds light to her type. Steel and light... like Yorihime. Defense style on the other hand provides more to focus attack and defense, keeps her steel type only... and provides a unique ability for her; hakutaku form. When hp is below 50%, Keine transforms. So with that in mind, I go with defense style. And with getting the super rare puppet, Yin now has all the puppets available in this mansion! This also completes the Touhou 6 boss cast.  Koakuma. Goes Koa~ Koa~ like a Pokemon. Not really. Stage 4 midboss. Not really her name, she's basically an unnamed character without a sprite or any real info about her. Still, Touhou 6 has a ton of fanart, and she does have a lot of them. Has made some cameo appearances in some official Touhou manga. Probably Patchouli's assistant.  Patchouli Knowledge. Goes Mukyuu like a Pokemon. Again, a lie... though she said it once, and the fandom rolled with it. Stage 4 boss, appeared in two fighting games as a playable character.  Sakuya Izayoi. PAD chief. Dio Brando. Has the knives, has the time-stop abilities, has a special in the fighting games called The World. Stage 5 boss, playable in Touhou 7, 8, 9, and two fighting games. Made a return to playable status on Touhou 14.  Remilia Scarlet. Uu~ is her Pokemon cry. Lies. Stage 6 boss, playable with Sakuya at Touhou 8, also in two fighting games. Still haven't beaten her without continues.  Flandre Scarlet. Her music is the McRoll'd. Heh. EX boss of the game. My first exposure to the series is her theme... remixed into the McRoll'd.  For now, this is it. Looks like it's gonna be a long maze, and we'll tackle that on the next episode. Until then, see ya all laters! |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 3, 2016 11:52:03 GMT -5
So yeah, it's time for another episode! Episode 14 - I apologize for getting stuck in one area for about 60% of the episode/End of Touhou 6 Well, last time we beat Patchouli in a rather easy fight. It was somewhat like the second Marisa fight, only without a level 30 Marisa puppet to fight against, with Yin's team far stronger than before. Patchouli doesn't have any useful leads on the puppet incident, which means that our business with the SDM has concluded. On the other hand, we've been invited by the mistress of the mansion to come and meet with her, so that's one more thing we gotta do before exiting the premises.  Currently, we're back at the library to heal up the puppets. The wild puppets aren't too hard to fight now, and so are the trainers encountered as long as I don't do anything stupid, but finding Remilia is becoming rather complex due to the maze-like corridors beyond the library. I could just run away from the wild puppet fights, but I get the feeling that I should take on the fights when I encounter them, otherwise I might end up in another close call. Patchouli wasn't a boss fight, and I reckon we'll encounter the boss once Yin navigates her way out of the corridors. Also, Patchouli can heal puppets when asked, but at the same time puppets are automatically healed if you access the puppet box. The Flandre I caught looks very promising; usually the rare puppets I catch end up with lousy stat potentials, but the Flan puppet has three stats that's rated A, one stat rated B, and one stat rated S. Only speed is low with a rating of C. As for other puppets, Yoshika, Kagerou, and Shou are close to style change. Keeping Yoshika alive is somewhat troublesome, as the lil' zombie is really weak against spread attacks. Her hit points is already as high as my style changed puppets, but considering that nearly all the puppets in the SDM use spread attacks, she goes down in a few hits.  And this is defense Keine's ability; were-hakutaku form. Changed sprite and animations for cosmetic changes, and her type changes from pure steel to steel and fighting type, as well as some stat boosts. It'll only be activated at half-health, so using it is somewhat risky.  Right, then. The previous episode ended here, in the maze-like corridors of the SDM, accessed after beating Patchouli. What else can I say? It's a maze, with lots of wild puppet encounters, and Yin is currently lost. I reckon this is a good time to train up the puppets. Even if everyone gets XP from battles, they don't seem to level up as quickly anymore, so I suppose that's good. Shou has also reached level 30. I'll just post about the style changes later on, probably at the end of the episode, or I'll mention some important changes about them during fights. The entire team has all style changed at this point.  Continuing on, Yin finds two passages, one in the northwest and the other in the southeast. Good news is that they don't lead to more maze rooms. Bad news is that entering one warps Yin to the other... so I'm still pretty much stuck in one room.  Still, I notice something off. A window? In these corridors? Real odd. Yin notices too, and not seen in the screenshot is a girl running past in a corridor offscreen (it's Flandre, and not a puppet Flandre). The chase is on! Not sure if this is the right path, but since something happened, it should at least progress things, right?  Right now I'm not sure if I explored this area of the maze before, if I missed it, or if it opened up when Flan passed through. I'm really not good with mazes. Going near the pot in the southwest corner opens another scene with Flandre showing up and running towards the east passage. The pot itself has no items.  Encountering more trainers now, so I'm probably exploring new areas in the maze. Kagerou style changed to power. Speed was the other choice, but power fixed one problem Kagerou had. During normal style, her stat growth for spread attack power was far larger than focus attack power. This would be nice if not for the fact that Kagerou only has focus attack power moves in normal style. Power style fixes that by making her focus attack power become higher than spread attack. She also learns the move changeling; dark type, 70 power. Hits enemy and escapes; if its a wild puppet, then the battle ends, but if its a trainer fight Kagerou switches out. Handy for hit and run attacks, I suppose.  Defense style for Yoshika. Power style was the other choice, but power style didn't really give a big power boost, so went with defense. With this style, her all focus attack moveset becomes useless as her decent focus attack power is actually lowered by the style change. Instead, spread attack goes up... though she only has two spread attacks at the moment. One nether type from style change, and a water type from a skill card. Yoshika at normal style only has poison as her type, but nether is added by going with defense style. Her ability also halves damage from light and dark type attacks.  As for Shou, her style change is more basic compared to the two. Went with power type which just increases her stats more than normal style. Speed Shou may have offered an interesting change; she becomes light and earth instead of light and electric, and her focus attack power becomes higher than spread attack. Could be interesting, but her potential for focus attack is lower than her spread attack potential, so it's a no deal.  More areas in the maze are opened up. Yin comes across a door... but it's locked. Flan passes by, away from Yin's reach, and so the chase continues. Flandre is Remilia's younger sister. Both are vampires, though despite their age they still act like children. Flan's more dangerous, though. Due to that, Flan puppets are rarer to encounter than Remila. I think I only encountered Flan twice since exploring this maze. Three times. The game must've heard me typing the above statement, as puppet Flan was encountered for a third time just moments after typing the stuff above this. At this point I'm getting somewhat tired of the mansion corridors. Like... it's not un-fun, but doing an episode of this where Yin stumbles about the same area, backtracking from one area in the maze to another... I reckon it won't be too interesting an episode. While wandering in one of the new areas of the maze, I find skill card 34: break shot. Focus attack, fighting type, power 70. It breaks opponents field protect and barrier. Seems useful. A little further in the maze and Yin seems to find herself in a different section of the maze. There's an item in the floor just lying there: the scimitar charm which increases crit rate when held. Anyway, this path leads to another new area and I'm feeling somewhat hopeful that we're near the end of this maze.  Wonderful. Another puzzle to solve. Right now I'm really wishing that I bought some of those wild puppet repel items to make this easier on me as Yin guesses her way through the doors. Not exactly sure which door to take, and a wrong door will lead Yin to a door in the southeast.  Middle door, right door, then left door leads me to this place. The pots may have been a clue on where to go, but really I have no idea and simply used good ol' trial and error to find the right path. Item past that trainer is an oath thread, which is the third type of seal thread found. Seal thread first, then contract thread, then the oath thread as the currently highest level thread for catching puppets.  Anyways, central path leads to that, while the path on the right leads to a dead end. Left path leads to this room, with skill card 27 lying on the floor, which has changeling which Kagerou already has. Yoshika can learn the skill (but not useful since her power lies in spread attacks now).  There's a bedroom past skill card 27, and you can heal there by resting on the bed. Awfully trusting of Yin. I mean, just outside there are wild puppets running around, doing the things wild puppets do, and somehow she can take a nap despite that. Anyways, we take the door on the right and see what lies beyond.  Well, from the looks of it, we've reached the upper levels of the mansion. And thankfully, and finally there's no wild puppet encounters on this level. I suppose part of the tedium for this whole area for me, that aside from the rather large maze, was the encounter rate. The room with the pots and three doors were particularly frustrating as it felt like every five steps a Koa or Patchy puppet would show up. At this point they're more nuisances than anything.  The stairs lead back to the entrance hall of the mansion. The fairy maids that were blocking passage are gone now. Tempted to zip back to town and buy a few rosary beads or talismans to repel wild puppets, but eh... I'll do it once I finish up here. Also, most of the rooms here are populated by fairy maids. None of them seem to be trainers looking for a fight, and in one of the maid rooms Yin found a relief charm which heals the fear status effect when held, and one paste of the fog which heals 200 hp. Another room has an amber hairpin; boosts fighting type moves, and perfect for Ichirin who only has fighting type moves being used at the moment.  Apparently, the door beyond is Remilia's room. Yin tries to go in, and the chief maid of the mansion finally shows up! Sakuya, being the loyal mad that she is, won't let Yin through. Yin, being the silent protagonist that she is, doesn't take no for an answer as she pushes forward with a fight!  Fight time! ...well, this seems easy. I have to note that the music isn't playing the boss music of the game, so that means we haven't fought the strongest in this place yet. Meiling is taken down easily; Kagerou uses changeling to do damage and switch with Keine, and Meiling does no damage as she tries using dragon meteor. That attack is super powerful... but it will only hit if Meiling wasn't hit during that turn. Changeling hit, so it failed, and the next turn Keine used light javelin for the KO.  Ruukoto is even easier. So far, all the Ruukoto using trainers use adverse reaction. First it lowers the defense of the opponent, then does a powerful attack... and the user gets KOed in the process. It's void-type, so if I were to use an illusion type no damage will be dealt. Since I lack an illusion type in my team at the moment, Yoshika is used instead, and void attacks don't do a lot of damage to her.  And finally, it's puppet Sakuya on the field. Speed style Sakuya, to be exact. The first style changed puppet Yin will be facing. Intimidating, but not so much when Yin's entire team is already style changed, and a few levels higher to boot. Still, not a squash match. Tried using Sekibanki and found out that dark and light type moves won't be effective. I finish the battle with Ichirin. Don't really know what speed Sakuya is weak against, but Ichirin's focus attack prowess deals enough damage for a win. After the fight, Sakuya finds out that Remilia did invite Yin to visit. Embarrassed, Sakuya uses her time stop abilities to run away. Alas, miscommunication is the source of many conflicts. After going back to the room where the team can rest up, Yin heads to Remi's room for a chat with her.  Firstly, no, I did not enjoy that maze that much. Lower the encounter rate a little bit and I may like it more. Secondly, that escalated quickly. Yin doesn't fight on first dates, ya know. Thirdly: BRING IT ON! Boss music is playing. Let's get it on!  Now we're talking! My puppet team has leveled up a fair bit, but level wise Remi's first puppet, power style Sakuya, is a little higher level than all of them. As you can see, the battle is off to a great start as Sakuya one-hit KOs Kagerou before the little red riding wolf can get an attack in. She used overtake strike, which if I recall is a fighting type move... so I send out Keine to deal with her. Somehow, it worked quite well. At the first exchange of blows Sakuya dealt more damage than Keine, and worryingly she was faster. Second exchange of attacks was the same... Keine was near death and Sakuya was as well. However, Keine's ability kicked in as she shifts to were-hakutaku form. I heal Keine a little, just enough to give her some extra health while not giving enough to revert back to normal Keine... and Sakuya missed! Next turn I find out that hakutaku form also gives a speed bonus to Keine as she hit first to take the win.  Speed Flandre up next. Flan's a level lower than power Sakuya, but I'm still wary. She's probably weak against light, and Keine has a light type attack, but that Flan is speed style, and I'm not sure that Keine in her hakutaku form will be fast enough to hit first... and as you can see, she wasn't. Two down on my side, four left. Well, if it can't be won with speed, we go with defense as defense style Ichirin is sent to fight! It works out well, as Flan's star flare doesn't do enough damage, while Ichirin uses a fighting type move that's super effective against Flandre. Two down, one to go!  ...hoo boy. I was hoping for a challenge, and looks like I got it. Sekibanki and Ichirin is level 35, and power Remilia is five levels higher. Normal style Remilia is dark and wind type, and I'm not sure if that's the same for a power style Remi. I test the waters out by making Ichirin do a fighting type quick attack, and she deals low damage for a crit, while Remi takes Ichirin down easily. Hmm, I'm gonna guess that power Remi is the same type as normal Remi - and the KO attack she did on Ichirin was a wind type, which means that she'll be weak against earth and light type attacks. That means it's SHOU TIME (pun intended)! Shou has earth and light type attacks... all I can hope for is that she hits first... Went with light type, as Remilia is a vampire after all... and Remi hits first. Shou wasn't able to Shou her moves...  Still, I send out my trump card! Sekibanki! Her costume has no head! Dark type! She won't fall easily if Remi uses a dark type attack, but that's not her trump card. I mentioned before about Seki's ability, yeah? Any void type she uses becomes light type and receives a 30% power boost... furthermore, her only void-type attack is retaliation, which doubles in power if a puppet in my team gets KOed in the previous turn. Feel it, Remilia! The power that Shou wanted to SHOU! Remi hits first and almost KOs Sekibanki, but she manages to hang in there and use retaliation... aaaaaaaaaand for the win, the attack is super effective! The win streak of team Yin continues! Man, nearly the entire current team was set up on my current whims at the time, and somehow it managed to build up to this. Power Remilia is freaking strong, taking out two puppets and nearly taking Sekibanki down as well. Since Remilia has some spread attacks, Yoshika wouldn't have a chance to win. Anyway, even when KO, puppets will still get XP if they were not KO at the start of the match (though they won't get double XP). If a battle starts and they're KOed before the battle, then they won't get XP. Furthermore, if they level up, they'll revive with a bit of hp regained.  Half the time that'd be a bluff, but I reckon much like Mokou we'll have a rematch later on, and Remilia will probably have a stronger team by then. So some Touhou tidbits time; Remilia's power is that she can manipulate fate... and honestly not a lot of info is there to elaborate on what it actually does. Still, kind of predicting the future and hinting to Yin what she should do next is a rather nice interpretation of her fate manipulating powers... Like, seeing what may happen in the future, and then telling the person about what lies ahead in the future... that's kinda manipulating fate, or somesuch.  Anyways, it seems like our next target is the mountains. Probably the Youkai Mountain, where Sanae lives (though she's shrine-sitting for the Hakurei shrine at the moment). We'll begin the journey next episode! Until then, see ya all laters! |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 4, 2016 16:21:25 GMT -5
So, a little bit of offscreen training happened.  I wanted to test out the SDM puppets as I wanted some of them to be in my team line-up once Yin continues on with the story, so I did a little bit of training on the maze corridors. By far, Flan has the best stats out of all of them, and really I'm super lucky that the first Flandre Yin captured has such high stat potentials. Most of her moves are spread attack, but even her focus is growing at a pretty good rate. Maybe when she reaches style change one of the possibly styles will focus on attack. Won't be a bad choice considering her ability, as focus attack gets raised by 6 levels if she gets hit with a crit. She also has an interesting type, as it's both light and dark type so she won't have any problems fighting either type as light and dark will only do normal damage on her. If she has a weakness, I suppose its her rather low hit points and defense for both types of attacks despite her potential for it.  So far, this is my current lineup now... or at least after I exit the SDM. Might not be a good idea to switch teams immediately, since a situation might happen similar to defeating Mokou at Eientei where Marisa showed up for a fight. Once I reach the safety of the human village I should be in the clear to switch to this team. Murasa has also leveled up enough for style change, and its a rather tough choice. Stat-wise, power offers a little bit more focus attack, spread defense, and speed, but the increases given for defense style isn't bad either, and it makes her a tank for focus attacks due to the big increase on focus defense. She seems to lose her ability which turns void type attacks to water... but since she doesn't have a void attack in her arsenal it won't be such a big loss. Defense-type it is! She also gets nether type added alongside water from choosing defense. She learns waterfall drop for her new move; normal water attack, no secondary effects, but decent power of 100. With those changes in mind, it's time to start episode 15! Episode 15 - Swimming with kappas. Remilia's puppet team has been defeated after another hard fought battle. It's somewhat jarring to see that the bosses get such a big jump in levels compared to the majority of the trainers you face beforehand. It pretty much makes it hard to gauge what's the right level to have your puppets at. Won't do any good if the team is too weak, but it won't be fun if the team is too strong. Anyway, Remi advises Yin to go to the Youkai Mountain next in her rather aimless quest of investigating the puppet incident. It's been a while, and while we're probably not halfway through the game all Yin and her team has done is go from one place to another, not being able to gather much information about the puppets.  Talking to Remilia won't make her ask for a rematch, but she offers you the chance to rename puppets in your team. Not really interesting for me, so Yin will pass. You can go to the next room and you'll be in Remilia's room. Note the coffin lying on top of the bed. How redundant. The item lying on the table is the fate thread, and according to its description it can capture any puppet, so I guess this is the master ball of the game. So far, I can still manage with second-level contract threads, but I suppose the fate thread will come in handy.  Double checking the wild puppet free area of the mansion, and aside from Sakuya in the kitchen too busy for a rematch, there's nothing else to do. That's Yin's signal to leave all the red-ness of the Scarlet Devil Mansion and head out back into the human village to probably talk to Akyuu for directions. If an event at the human village happens, I might drop by this place in case something new shows up.  Adieu, Scarlet Devil Mansion. Let's both pray that the next area won't be another maze.  Aha! I knew it! Just as we exit the premises, one crow tengu named Aya Shameimaru zips towards us. She's the one writing news about Yin and forwarding them to most of the peeps we've encountered so far. At the moment I'm wondering if I correctly switched my team back in case of a fight. She brings news of the Puppet Liberation Front, and how they've managed to capture the hideout of the Kappas. Coincidentally, in the official games and all associated canon, the Kappas are somewhere around the base of the Youkai Mountain. It's a mountain of youkai after all - it'd be rather daft if there are no youkais in the mountain and all that... though it's odd as the PLF (or at least the ones we've met) are composed of fairies and some low-level youkai, while the kappas in official works are rather more tech-savvy than most residents of Gensokyo. Anyway, breaking off that pondering for a bit... Aya directs us to go to the Genbu Ravine. It's the place where a mysterious force prevents Yin from entering. From there Yin can find her way to the Kappa Hideout. And with that, Aya leaves the scene, presumably to do more journalist-y things. No battle... whew. My team was the new line-up and it would be trouble if Aya had a team on the level of Remilia. I guess that's where Yin is headed to. Before that, onwards! to the human village! and other places that might hold something new! If there's nothing interesting, I won't post anything about the areas and head for the ravine.  At the human village, I first decide to let Yin sell off the loot from the puppet fights, and oh my look at that price! Vintage wine is dropped by Sakuya and Remilia puppets, grimoires are dropped by Patchoulis, and gold dust from Koas. So much cash! So many items to buy! MORE COSTUMES! Restrain yourself, me. Let that wait until later. Explore areas first, costumes later... In case you're wondering, the handheld console is the item Yin has at the very start of the game. It has no purpose aside from being used as cash at the start, since you start out penniless in Gensokyo. Annoyingly, the shop in the human village doesn't sell contract threads, so I have to go to the entrance of the Bamboo Forest of the Lost to get some.  Hey, it's Udonge! Well, she's just there selling people medicine. Nothing of consequence for Yin and company. She does do the medicine selling thing in canon - though I wonder if the alt costume of her puppet is her rather dashing medicine seller outfit in Forbidden Scrollery. Akyuu is still at her home, and talking to her gives you a little bit of info on kappa technology, namely that they have optic camo... which is canon. Been a long time since I played Touhou 10, but I'm about 70% sure on the camouflage. Keine has nothing new to say, and the rest of the village has been explored. Nothing else new, though I found a rice cookie on a pot. Joy of joys, it's the item I sorely need right now... Eh, human village is check, now it's time for other places.  At the Hakurei shrine, I forgot about this spot behind the house, which contains a Hakurei shinsu. The Moriya shinsu revives puppet to half health, while the Hakurei version restores KOed puppets to full health. Sanae doesn't have anything new to say, and the large oni is still blocking the path to the Hakurei mountain. Off to the next area. Nothing new at the Myouren temple. Apparently the door in the cave that's located in the temple cemetery can't be accessed in the vanilla game. You'll need the expansion pack in order to go inside. Anyways, at Eientei, Udonge isn't there since she's at the human village, while Tewi is nowhere to be seen. Eirin takes over healing duties, while Kaguya and Mokou aren't looking for rematches.  Not really a bust, as I needed to stock up on items on the Route 4 rest house. Healing items, and contract threads, plus talismans to repel wild puppets. I'm somewhat interested in buying skill card 65, though. It uses a random skill available in the current moveset, but this can only be used if the puppet is stopped. One of the skill cards I learn is continue, which fully heals hp but puts the puppet in stop condition, and most puppets can learn that skill. So I sell the scimitar charm. It increases the chance of critical hits, but only in a pinch. The requirement to increase the rate of crits is a bit too steep for me... I sell some of the healing charms as well. Nothing really new at Kourindou, and while you can talk to Alice so you can tell her that the Scarlet Devil Mansion isn't the cause of the puppets, you won't get anything out of it. Now, one last thing before we head to the ravine: more costumes. After selling some items and buying lots of items, Yin has enough cash to get five costumes... so let's get the five puppets we caught in the SDM corridors!  Koa's alt color with the blond hair and red dress makes her kinda look like Flan. Alt costume seems to be a somewhat fanservicey office lady getup.  Patchouli with a dress suited for outdoor reading, I guess. In the canon stuff, Patchy has acquired a lot of knowledge of magic from reading in the library all the time. Because of being a magician/youkai, she stayed in SDM's library for a long time that she has health problems preventing her from making use of a lot of the magic she learned. If I remember, her story mode in the first or second fighting game has her stay in the library area for the entire game.  Sakuya with her winter maid clothes which she wore in Touhou 7. Kind of plain since it looks like her normal outfit, and in comparison to the alternate costumes of everyone else.  Going gothic lolita with her alt costume, I guess? Remilia's animation when hit is canon, as that's how she blocks attacks in the fighting games.  A dress for Flan as well. She's 5 years younger than Remi, who if I recall is about 500 years old being a vampire and all. Remilia locked Flan up for centuries due to her powers, which didn't help the little sister on things like socializing and self-control. Well, that's done. We're off to the Genbu Ravine!  And as it turns out, the mysterious force pushing us back from the ravine was a kappa with her optical camouflage. Looks like its fight time!  Not a hard battle. The puppets of the kappa is stronger than the NPC trainers so far, but that's not saying much. Flan is enough to the first one down, and I switch over to Eirin to fight Nitori. Kappas seem like water types, so poison works best since I don't have electricity... but apparently they're also steel type so they're immune. Whoops. Still, random fire hits for the max 5 times and KOs Nitori easily. With the battle won, we're free to pass through into the Genbu Ravine.  New area! More trainers! More puppets to catch! I wanna train Flan quickly to get her to style change, and hopefully it'll boost either her hit points or defense just a little, as it's somewhat lacking. Defense-wise, she's not as bad as Yoshika, but her HP is pretty low and as you can see it doesn't take much to KO her. She does have pretty high attack damage for both focus and spread - though she only has one focus attack available for use. Well, Flandre reached level 30 in no time, and Yin has managed to catch new puppets in the area as well.  Firstly, Flandre. Power or speed style is available for her, and both let her keep the same ability she has. Speed style boosts both focus and spread power, and slightly more hit points and more speed. Power raises her spread attack much higher and gives her some more focus defense so she can type moves that use focus power, but her hit points don't get a bigger boost compared to speed and her type becomes fire and dark instead of light and dark. That said, I think power type suits her more, since her spread attacks get a big boost. There's some risks on both styles, but in the end I think I'll go with power style for her. Speed would be great, but Flan's speed potential is the only low one she has, so that could be problematic later on if I keep using her. She learns flashover, a fire type spread attack that has a chance to burn opponents. Now, for the puppets that's been caught.  Komachi Onozuka. Debuted in Touhou 9, as a boss/opponent and playable character in the same game, and also playable in the second fighting game. Has a nice boat. Water and nether type, though my guess is that once she style changes one of those types will become steel.  Nitori Kawashiro. Self-destruct switches are the grand dream. Debuted in Touhou 10 as the Stage 3 boss, was one of the people Marisa could choose in Touhou 11, and a playable character in the third and fourth fighting game, plus made some appearances in some of the manga. At first, game 10 made her look very friendly, but shy, though later appearances made her be a little more jerk-like. Water and steel type.  Iku Nagae. Debuted in Touhou 10.5 and 12.3 (the second fighting game and its expansion pack), where she was the second-to-last boss of 10.5 for most storylines. That scarf/cloth thing she has can turn into a drill. Seriously. Electric type. She was pretty slow in the fighting games, and her puppet is slow to reflect that. With the puppets caught, I go back to SDM for a quick rest for the team, as it's faster to go to heal there than go back to the human village. Later on I might change one or two from my current team and add in either Komachi or Iku, or both.  Anyway, back to the Genbu Ravine. You start east, and if you head west then south there will be a path that leads to the Forest of Magic. However, there's a pool of water blocking the way, and no tall grass nearby, so there's nothing to find there.  Mostly Kappa trainers encountered so far. Surprisingly, it's a male... come to think of it, most of the youkai trainers that Yin has encountered are female, which more or less reflects the lack of named male characters that showed up in Touhou works. Anyway, the battles aren't too hard, but Flan is a bad choice against Nitori as Flandre is weak against steel. Come to think of it, Tenshi is weak against water as well... whoops.  So far, the kappa doesn't seem to be worried despite the PLF taking over their hideout. The ravine looks somewhat long, but the path seems to be straightforward at the moment, so it's easy enough to bike through. Kind of avoiding puppet fights for now... though that's probably not the best idea in the long term. Again, I suppose it's more fun that way.  Soon enough the path into the ravine leads into a cave, with a few more new puppets to catch, as well as some already caught. Rumia is one of the puppets in the area already caught before. Amusingly, she was more or less Zubat in the romhack game, and she's more or less a Zubat here as well. On the path above the ghost, is skill card 74. Shark trade, which switches the held item of the puppet with the item of the opponent. So far, wild puppets and trainer puppets don't have any items to hold... I think, so skills like these seem to be more useful in online battles. I also just realized something. Not sure if this is an exploit, but if you make a puppet forget a move, and then make them re-learn the move, the SP of said move will be back to full, which could be handy on low SP moves. It does cost PP to learn the moves again, so it's not like you can fully recover the SP of every move all the time. Also, the cave floor doesn't seem to have a crazy encounter rate at the SDM. In the corridor maze, every five steps there seemed to be yet another encounter with a wild puppet. Made it easy to train, but it was tedious as heck to find the next area. Furthermore, I realized that while Flan is weak against Nitori's steel-type moves, Nitori is in turn weak to Flan's fire-type move. As long as Flan hits first she'll win out because of her high spread power.  At the end of the cave, a kappa is seeking out help to stop the PLF who had taken over their hideout. She'll ask if Yin wants to help, and if she accepts she'll be lead into the hideout. Seems like a new town, so Yin will probably explore the place for a bit. You can talk to the kappa again if you want to go back to the cave, but I reckon that's not needed for now. Also, there were only two new puppets in the cave. There were three puppets in the cave that were caught in other areas.  Hina Kagiyama. Goddess of Misfortune. Stage 2 boss of Touhou 10. Spins around. Poison and nether type.  Kisume. Bucket. Stage 1 mid-boss of Touhou 11. Often portrayed as shy/timid, but on one official print work it was mentioned that she will try to kill humans. Well, she is a youkai after all. Dark and fire type. Back to the hideout. There's a telescope lying on the floor near where we start off. When held, increases accuracy of a move if it hits after the foe, so probably handy if the puppet holding it is slower.  Exploring the houses in the area seems to be impossible at the moment. PLF members are blocking the doors, and some of them are trainers who'll fight Yin with puppets. Guess Yin and the team will have to beat one of them to get the password, most likely. The puppets of the PLF members are close to level 30, but so far no non-Touhou NPC character has style changed puppets yet. I guess we'll encounter them soon in other areas, but for now my style changed team has the distinct advantage.  PLF members get their own battle theme while the higher members of the team, like Rumia way back, also has their own boss theme. So far, most of the puppets the PLF has are the low-cost puppets in the game. On one hand, that doesn't mean they're easy, like the first encounters with the PLF early on in the game, or if you're facing those puppets with a type disadvantage. On the other hand, they give out less xp, so my puppets are growing slowly. Like take that Wriggle fight for example. It gave around 500 xp for the one who participated, while the wild puppet Sakuyas and Patchoulis in the SDM who are about 5 or more levels lower give about 300 XP for the puppet who fought in the battle.  Every building in town is blocked off my PLF members. The ones not standing behind a door are trainers, and I guess the ones guarding the doors aren't. Anyways, we reach the outer edge of the town and encounter this scene. The three fairies of light; Sunny, Lunar, and Star who Yin caught puppets of in the Forest of Magic. Not sure if they're PLF members, but they're currently bothering Nitori for some optical camouflage... so they can prank people (and play hide and seek).  Yin the hostage, huh... Anyway, battle is using the PLF boss theme, which I kinda like more than the standard boss battle theme of the game that played when Yin fought Mokou and Remilia. Both themes are remixes of the boss themes from the official games, though I prefer the original version of the normal boss theme. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjz1_AmkBAAwww.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy_-7OXophY Hmm. Before this, the largest team I faced was Rumia in the village who had a team of 5 puppets, so this is the first time Yin is facing off against a full team. Well, the three fairies of light is sending out puppet versions of themselves. Sunny is light and fire, while Luna is light and wind, and Star is light and water... so that means Flan and dark-type attacks work well, but will be vulnerable if her opponent is faster than she is. Flan easily defeats the level 28 Sunny and out comes... a level 35 Star in power style. Well, looks like my team doesn't have the level advantage for this fight; though overall the team probably is. Flan makes her attack, and as it turns out, enemy puppets are holding items, because Flan's panic call can steal held items. However, while it's super effective, it doesn't KO Star, who returns fire which KOs Flan. See what I told ya? Flan's strong, but fragile... especially to moves super effective against her.  Worse yet, I realize I didn't heal my team after fighting all the other trainers in the hideout. Eirin evens the score with a dose of heavy poison gas, super effective against a water type like Star. A level 35 speed Luna is out next, and she seems to have an ability that immediately creates a weather effect. Don't really know how weather and terrain work, so I'll just ignore that... Eirin is at a disadvantage, though. Her water attacks wasn't effective... so I'm assuming speed Luna has a different combinations of types compared to normal Luna since water moves should have done normal damage. I decide to be prudent and use items to heal Eirin.  One more dose of heavy poison gas and speed Luna is down for the count. Out comes a normal, level 28 Star... so whew, a breather. Just to be safe I let Eirin tank hits as I heal up the entire team just in case. From the looks of it, the enemy team only has the fairies of light puppets, 3 of them level 28, 3 of them style-changed at level 35. Yin has beaten two of the style-changed puppets, so the last one should be a level 35 Sunny. Like power-style Star, the level 28 one is easily beaten by Eirin's poison attacks. Next up is a level 28 Luna. I decide to get the entire team out so they'll all get double XP, and I even revived Flan which is a rather large waste of a precious revive item. Ah well. Flan easily curbstomps Luna... and out comes the last one, a level 35 power-style Sunny.  After her previous defeat against power-style Star, I don't risk Flan and send out Kokoro instead. Good thing, too, as Kokoro got hit by a light-type attack meant for Flan, which is not every effective for Kokoro. On the other hand, Kokoro's moveset doesn't deal a lot of damage to Sunny. Once again, Eirin makes the save. Choosing assist style for Eirin gave her a large HP boost, and Sunny's light-type moves are also ineffective against her, so she's able to tank hits as she hits Sunny with more poison gas. Then I remember that Eirin has water moves and she finishes off Sunny with that. And so the battle is won. Not an easy fight, but not hard. The presence of Flan and Eirin helped a lot, as well as the healing items. Gotta be more careful next time and make sure my puppets are healed before fighting bosses.  The three fairies of light and their PLF posse retreat, and the day is saved. Nitori is thankful and wants to give a reward to Yin as she invites Yin to her home. What that reward is... who knows? We'll all find out in the next episode! Until then, see ya all later! |
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Feb 5, 2016 12:52:42 GMT -5
Episode 16: Nice Boat  Previously, Yin and her team caught word that the Puppet Liberation Front had taken over the kappa hideout in the Genbu Ravine, located at the base of the Youkai Mountain. Being the silent protagonist that she is, Yin does what silent heroines do and saves the day. One kappa named Nitori is impressed and appreciative, and she invites Yin to her home for a reward.  Woo! We got a boat! Man, seems like most of Gensokyo is opened up with this item, I feel. It's no kappa tech optical camouflage, but I'm sure Yin can find a use for it. I know I'll be exploring the heck out nearly every area Yin has been to before, for all the possible items and puppets that lurk in the areas previously inaccessible by water.  Nitori suggests going to the top of the Youkai Mountain where the Moriya shrine is. Seems like a good place to go to as any on Yin's rather aimless investigation, yeah? First things first though: exploring everywhere else! Starting with the kappa hideout, as the PLF ran away after defeating the three fairies of light.  Fun fact: in Japanese folklore the shirokodama is a ball that kappas take from humans, through the ass. Kappas want cucumbers as well as precious ass balls. Yuck.  Well, with the town free from the PLF, Yin is free to explore the area, and do things like barge in on the kappa homes and take stuff that's lying there. Skill card 22 is a wind type move that forces the battle to end or make the puppet who used it switch out. Yin can do some idle chitchat with all the other kappa, and thankfully talk doesn't involve mystical ass balls or anything of the sort, just a little background info about this and that. The town also has a rest area and a store; the former the team needs, and the latter not really at the moment. With all the houses in the area raided by Yin, she now sets off to try her shiny new tool.  Whee. Yin can go down waterfalls on the boat, but not go back up. In the middle of the town is a small island with a house, and one of the pots outside it hides a sun fruit jam. The guy inside has no interest in puppets, and since there's nothing else inside, Yin goes back on the boat and continues her exploration. Just close to Nitori's house is another sun fruit jam that can only be accessed via boat, and finally in the southwest of the town there's a small house to enter. The pot outside holds a Hakurei shinsu to replace the one Yin used to revive Flan during the previous boss fight.  Inside the store room is a small bit. If the puppet holding it gets hit by a low power skill, the opponent will also take damage. Interesting. Could be handy on a defense-style puppet, or puppets like assist-style Eirin who has lots of hit points. That more or less completes Yin's search in the hideout. There were no inaccessible areas in the hideout, so Yin probably won't come back here, unless the story hints that we should come back.  Back at the cave, the pool heading south most likely leads to the other side of the ravine, going deeper into the mountain. Since that's probably the main quest, we'll avoid that for now as Yin makes her way to explore every other area.  Outside the cave, Yin can use the boat to reach the other side of the ravine faster than going in the cave route, probably. Whatever it is, our aim is elsewhere for now. Last episode we found a route that leads to the Forest of Magic, though it's blocked out by water, so I reckon that's the first place Yin will check out with her new mode of transportation.  The pools of water that the boat can access doesn't have any wild puppet encounters, so unless there are areas that do have wild puppets in the water, Yin won't need to wade around every body of water in an attempt to find new puppets.  Anyways, we seem to be on the probably north side of the forest, and its a new area. The first time we entered the forest it was probably the central area or east side, I reckon, and there's areas on the south side previously inaccessible due to water, so order of business for this area is Yin making her way down and seeing what's there. Trainers and wild puppets here are stronger than the ones in the area where Alice resides, but not a problem for my team. I Yin will explore this area for a bit and see if there's any new puppets to catch.  Interesting. Hidden items block movement, like this mushroom powder hidden in this patch of shrooms. Anyway, I realize that the current team is already quite strong, so I reckon it's time for a small switcharound and remove some in the current and add some different puppets again. Some of the new puppets have new moves: Flan has soul eat, nether type, 60 damage, and has a 10% chance to increase all stats, but low SP. Eirin has poisonous spiral, poison-type, 40 damage, but greatly reduces spread defense, so repeated use will keep on doing more and more damage. Tenshi gets cross drive, fighting type, 100 damage, but lowers Tenshi's speed upon use. So far, found some mundane items in the forest, and skill card 30: unfettered soul. Nether type, focus attack, damage 55, but damage doubles if the puppet using it isn't holding an item. Yin takes a quick trip all the way to the SDM - from this area in the forest of magic, it's far faster to get there than the kappa hideout. And in the fourth pic above is the new lineup. Flan and Eirin stay for now as the muscle of the team. Mamizou and Patchouli make a return to duty (though in Patchy's case she was only used while I trained Flan), while Komachi and Iku are newcomers to the team. In general, I'm just basing teams on what I want, and there's no real strategic significance to it. With nothing new in the SDM, we now return back to the Forest of Magic. Yin can take to boat to explore the Misty Lake, but I reckon that'll be done later. Forest first.  The trainers and wild puppets in the forest are slightly higher in level than the new additions to the team, and I'm somewhat tempted to get the puppets trained down in SDM because the XP gain will be better due to the Patchouli, Sakuya, Remilia, and Flan puppets giving out more XP. Still, no point in that, I reckon, as the forest is fairly large and I got a ton of exploring to do in other areas before journeying to the youkai mountain. Anyway, those mud tiles in the forest prevent bike use, and aside from that it doesn't do anything else so it's just a little tedium to get Yin to use her feet. Skill card 14 contains voice of famine. Nature type, focus power, damage 95. It has a chance to weaken opponents. If I recall, the weakness status effect prevents puppets from healing themselves with skills, though healing items can still work. None on Yin's current team is using it. I recall mentioning it before, but skill cards can be used infinitely which is convenient. Training is slow going as the forest doesn't have a lot of strong puppets to give lots of XP. Furthermore, the new additions aren't well suited against the puppet types in the area for most part. I can simply use Flan and Eirin to bulldoze their way, but like I said, XP gain is slow, doubly so if the puppets don't get the double XP from participating. If I let them participate they get damaged quite quickly, and I end up using too many items to heal them up, making training at the SDM more tempting since the room where I can encounter wild puppets and the room where I can heal is just next to each other. So I succumb to temptation and train the puppets. Hey, I can't help it, a level 22 Sakuya gives more XP than a level 26 Sunny/Luna/Star! Still, I grew tired of running around that place. Each new addition to the team gets a level up, and I leave the place and go back to the forest. It's enough to get Mamizou a style change, though.  Defense style offers better hit points and focus defense, as well as a boost in spread attack. Power style on the other hand has better speed and focus attack and changes type from illusion and nature to illusion and earth. It's got an interesting ability, though it seems to be more suited for online play if all it does is make Mamizou look like the previous puppet used. Anyway, power style is the way to go, as her focus attack potential is much better than her spread attack. Mamizou learns sand cloud from changing into power style. This gives her moveset four different types for fighting, giving her some versatility though it's somewhat weakened as most of them are relatively low in damage scale at 60 on all moves. For the record, the default attack of most puppets, yin/yang energy, has a damage power of 55. Patchouli also has several moves available that are different types, but she's a lot stronger because those moves have more damage power.  Okay, back at the forest this time, fighting against trainers showing off puppets that I haven't seen yet... Notice anything odd about the second and third picture? That's Mamizou using her new ability. Aside from copying Komachi's sprite, she also copies the text that shows Komachi's level, but not her HP and status effect. Kinda neat, though I still feel that this is more useful in online play than going against a computer who probably knows it's a trick.  Yin comes across a house while still on the side of the forest that can be entered through the genbu ravine. In the games, there are two characters who live in the Forest of Magic. One is Alice Margatroid, whom we already met, and the other we already met as well: Marisa Kirisame.  The house is empty, but slightly disorganized. Apparently judging from Alice in Touhou 8, Marisa's house is a far bigger mess than portrayed here. Apparently Yin and the team can also rest in the bed, which makes me feel quite foolish to waste items and go the SDM to heal up. Aside from that, Marisa isn't home and there's nothing of value to take so this place is just a rest stop at the moment. Man, I really feel foolish for not finding this place earlier, as I wasted quite a bit of items and time, and this is just a little south of a trainer I fought the first time Yin came to this side of the forest.  After fighting a lot of low-xp yielding puppets, Patchouli reaches level 30. Power or defense style available, and both styles completely change her puppet type. She starts off with only void type as normal style, but changes to fire and water with power, and wind and electricity as defense. Defense style gives out more hit points, and better focus defense, as well as a respectable boost in speed. On the other hand, power style raises both her spread attack and defense but leaves her focus defense very low. Hit points are below 100, and after some thinking I reckon I'll go with power style. Patchy's always been a squishy wizard in canon, anyway. She gains moon's protection from the style change - which raises spread attack and defense on use. Kinda wanted an offensive move... ah well. Can't help but wonder what move she'd have gotten if I chose defense style.  Well, from this section of the forest of magic, I found two paths to different areas. Going southeast leads to one area, and going south and near the center will lead to a bridge leading to the south. Not sure whether those two areas will lead to sections already visited by Yin, but there's only one way to find out. Still, exploring in the same area, Yin uses the boat near the bridge and follows the water west, and she finds a small patch of land that has an awakening charm, which cures the stop condition for a puppet holding it. Might be handy if the puppet has the move continue, as it'll full heal the puppet and cure the stop effect the move has.  However, still in the same area, Yin has found a path westward and she encounteres a new area! Man, the boat really opened up new places for Yin. Since the Youkai Mountain is the goal, I think this area is optional/somewhere to go to later in the game once the story unfolds a bit more. For now, let's check the place out.  The red flowers are tall grass in this area, which so far have puppets that's been caught already. Amusingly, there are male and female ghost NPCs, I noticed. That one is a female as you can see with the lipstick and all. Anyways, Flan's ability has been trigged, and as you can see it gives her a massive boost in focus attack - which is a shame as her focus attack is quite strong by default, but she only has one focus oriented move to use: panic call.  Past that ghost trainer is a pool leading east to a dead-end with skill card 57 lying there. Love or pain, nether type spread move, damage 65, which doubles if opponent has a status effect. Only Eirin can learn it in the current party. Anyways, this is a big place as well. At this rate, the next episode might still be about exploring the other areas rather than going to Youkai Mountain... From all the battles though, Komachi and Iku has reached level 30 for style change.  Iku has either power or speed to choose from. Somewhat a no-brainer for me as I chose power style. The Iku puppet I have has low speed stat potential, so no point in choosing an incompatible style. She learns paralyzing wave from style change, which paralyzes and confuses the opponent for no damage. What interests me though is thunder. Normal Iku already has this move from the start, but can't be learned yet due to the PP cost. It doesn't have a damage score, and it only has one SP so it's pretty much just a one-time use until Iku is fully healed...  Komachi I'm not sure whether to have her go assist style or power style. Assist has okay focus attack, and better spread defense and speed, while power style has way better focus attack. I flip a coin and end up choosing power style. She loses her nether type and gains steel type instead. Komachi learns waterfall drop, focus attack water-type with 100 damage and no secondary effects. Due to her ability, tiger rush and aqua cutter get a boost in damage, which is nice as those two function as quick attacks.  NPC trainers don't style change their puppets even when at level 30. I've encountered trainers with style-changed puppets, so I guess they wait a level or two before style change. Odd, but it does give my style-changed puppets an advantage.  For now, this place seems more or less like a place that lies between the Forest of Magic and another area. I think I've caught all the puppets I can find here, and most of the trainers have been fought. Found a third prismatic candy - it's rare candy, and I reckon it's better used once my puppets are really high in level. Anyways, I find a house in this place. If I recall my canon, Nazrin has a house in the area or somewhere close by. The barrel outside the house has a Hakurei shinsu to take.  The house is empty, so this is a place I'll probably have to get back to later on. Going back to the road and heading west leaves the Road of Reconsideration and into Muenzuka. ...Yin is really far from the Youkai Mountain at this point. I reckon I'll see what's accessible in the area, and end the episode, continuing exploration on the next one.  Following the road, Yin eventually finds a clear hairpin... I really need to give my puppets items to hold to give them an extra edge. Haven't used stat reinforcing yet, though. South of the road the area continues, and there's a vintage wine lying by the wayside. Hooray, money! Further down is a Dust SPStone... Holding it will increase the duration of sandstorm if the puppet has the move to do it. Eh, don't have any puppets like that. There's also a dusk spstone, and a halo spstone, and also a silence spstone... generally, there seems to be lots of items in the area just lying around. If I recall, in canon this place has a lot of items from the outside world. One reason why Nazrin lives near the place, and Rinnosuke sometimes goes here for items in his store. Something like that, I'm not 100% sure. Past that big tree is skill card 63. Nature barrier, which negates the damage of the opponent. The place with skill card 63 is the end of the road for Muenzuka. The area is fairly small, and there are no trainers to fight. There were some puppets to catch (which were frustratingly hard to encounter as the Rinnosuke puppets here are seemingly super common). Well, here are the puppets I caught in the three different areas Yin explored this episode.  Ellen. Illusion type. Playable/opponent in Touhou 3. Not much to say about her. The PC-98 era of Touhou, especially the first three games don't really get a lot of mention in canon (aside from the characters who migrated to the Windows era Touhou). Found in the Forest of Magic.  Yukari Yakumo. Gap hag. Eternally 17 years old, har har. More or less the other being who maintains the barrier of Gensokyo, the other being the Hakureis (who at the moment is just Reimu). Debuted in Touhou 7 as the Phantasm stage boss, which is unlocked after beating the EX stage. Showed up in the first two fighting games, was Reimu's partner in Touhou 8, and made other appaerances in the games and other side works. Illusion and void type, which is an interesting combination. She's immune to void and illusion, the latter of which is usually weak to other illusion types but due to having void type makes her immune to illusion instead. Most of the other types do normal damage, and her only weakness is sound type. Found in Muenzuka.  Renko Usami. A college student from the outside world. Debuted in the album/story Ghostly Field Club. Void type. Not a person living in Gensokyo, just a relatively normal human. Found in Muenzuka.  Maribel Hearn. Another college student, and a friend of Renko. Debuted the same time Renko did. Also a void type. Aside from the similar looks, some speculate that her and Yukari are connected in some way. Found in Muenzuka.  Medicine Melancholy. Debuted in Touhou 9 as playable and an opponent in the game. Poison and nature type. Found in the Road of Reconsideration.  Eiki Shiki Yamaxanadu. Debuted in Touhou 9 as playable and the last boss. Boss of Komachi. Judge in the afterlife. Light and fighting type. Can be found in the Road of Reconsideration and Muenzuka. Somehow harder to find than Yukari in Muenzuka, as Eiki is less rare than her yet I encountered Yukari around 6 times.  And that's it for today! Until next time, then. See ya all laters! |
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