Game:

Labyrinth of Touhou 2 (2013)

Duration: 15:14

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Unlike the other videos, I won't be doing a guide for this description. One reason is that this boss is mechanically dense, so I can't fit everything into YT's word count anyway. The other reason is that I mostly want to talk about my specific party setup.

But to begin, I'll mention how good Awakened Reimu is here. Here's what she adds to this fight:
-She increases the speed of your front row with Fantasy Seal -Blink-
-She can keep the Left Arm locked down with upgraded Yin Yang Orb
-She can reduce taken SPI damage with Armored Yin-Yang Orb passive. Very helpful if you choose to attack Murakumo while his counter is infused with SPI element

You can increase her usefulness even further by giving her the Dragon God Subclass. Now your stay out Reimu can also:
-Auto recover all frontliners HP by 4%
-Auto buff all frontliners stats by 4%
-Auto recover 1 MP for all frontliners
-Reduce all damage by 10%

Holy Blessing Sanae was the second most important character. Anyone familiar with this fight knows you NEED an MP-empty tank in the leftmost slot (if you don't know, Murakumo will always use his MP draining, self-heal attack on the leftmost slot whenever he's on the sixth turn of his loop. He will heal 1% for every 1 MP drained). You'd think Sanae would be a bad option, since she has an auto MP recover skill with Awakening, and Reimu's Subclass will also be generating extra MP for her, but that's what Holy Blessing is for.

HB has a unique skill called "World-Shaking Military Rule". As a buffing skill, it's very useful, though I'm not actually using it for the buffs, even if they don't hurt to have. What's more useful is the high cost of using it: 10MP. Why is this good? It lets Sanae control her MP flow by giving her an option to dump excess MP. Sanae can still play support at 0 MP due to her low cost skills + auto MP regen. But because Sanae's spells are so cheap, her MP regen can go out of control. WSMR stops Sanae's MP regen from becoming a liability.

Dragon God Reimu and Holy Blessing Sanae really simplified the fight for my party. While I did lose Sanae due to a miscalculation (that I'll expain soon), those two alone make it really easy to focus on playing offense. Speaking of which, I played this fight, attacking Murakumo with his SPI counter up, because it's much simpler. Armless Murakumo's counter is less dangerous but it's PHYS element meant I needed a separate attacker, with high PHYS affinity, if I wanted to hit him safely. Since Reimu can already reduce SPI damage, this made more sense.

As for the rest of the party:

-Most of my party was its usual self. Herbalist Chen, Enchanter Ran, Strategist Aya, Strategist Miko, Healer Kasen and Transcendent Kanako. I used Elementalist Yukari but it was unnecessary.

-Suwako was deadweight for this fight. While the Right Arm was weak to NTR, it's DEF was too high to pierce. I subbed her as Hexer so I could use her debuffing skills, but I had to Reincarnate her, otherwise she'd trigger counter with her high ATK / MAG. It wasn't worth the hassle tbh.

-Despite not changing class, Miko had a more active attacking role due to the Right Arm's low MND stat. I eventually realized I could use her to debuff Murakumo without the hassle of switching to Suwako.

-Kasen was my backup for Reimu. She can manhandle the Left Arm (she has a PAR skill too, and can hit its DRK weakness if necessary). I eventually remembered that she could debuff Murakumo's MND too, though I forgot to NOT use Kasen AFTER Miko for debuffing, resulting in me losing Sanae.

-Herbalist Renko was added for Right Arm tanking. If I started the fight with Miko in Slot 1, she'd have almost no HP by the time we started attacking Murakumo (due to the Right Arm's HP draining skills). She eased Miko's burden. I also gave her Herbalist since Murakumo has Time-Space Warp and I couldn't risk having no Chen / no Boost because of bad RNG.

-Transcendent Eirin was an extra tank / support. I used Transcendent because of the damage reduction (and because I don't use the generic healing skill for the Healer Subclass anyway). She was for emergency overhealing on Miko or Renko.

This fight didn't seem too bad, but I also lucked out with my party. Overall, not a fan of this fight. Part of it is the unnecessary randomness (why can this boss use Black Universe and Time-Space Warp), it's mostly length (the Arm respawning gimmick massively drags out this fight)

I will say: while Time-Space Warp was a nuisance, it ironically taught me the "swap Kanako into Slot 1 and tank Right Arm's first attack for easy Desperation" strategy. It taught me this when, during a practice run, it randomly shuffled Kanako into Slot 1 with Time Space Warp. Note that this happened on Murakumo's very first turn. I guess I should thank RNGsus for that?

Music is "Endless Fate" from Fantastic Danmaku Festival

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