Game:

Labyrinth of Touhou 2 (2013)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 5:28

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2

Koishi can be a decent group attacker in this fight, though she requires a bit of luck. It's not her EVA-specific gimmick, even though she can use that gimmick now. It's the resistances of the three bosses. Koishi really needs TRR and SIL to be inflicted for her Bedside Ancestors skill to do big damage, and both ailments are tough to inflict even with Reisen's help.

While the attack significantly hurts Shou even without the full effects, it's less effective on the other two (especially Byakuren, who is extremely tanky) so TRR and SIL are necessary for at least removing Shou and Nazrin.

Unfortunately, Koishi can't do much to Shadow Byakuren. Byakuren not only has high resistances and MYS affinity but also has a ton of HP, and Koishi doesn't have enough juice/MP to kill Byakuren without a long MP break. I ended up bringing in Suwako specifically to deal with Byakuren. I tried other Plus Disk attackers but Byakuren's good resistances, raw tankiness and self-buffing cause Futo and Kokoro to do graze damage. They don't do 0 damage but they're not in Suwako's (unoptimized) damage range of 1M+

If you copy this party, I suggest not enabling Koishi's Super Responsive Senses. You can keep the other skills that increase her EVA, but SRS (which gives her ATB when she dodges) is more annoying than helpful since she can easily skip ahead of Sanae or Mystia (causing her to wear out her buffs / get her turn too early).

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I haven't really had a chance to talk about Koishi until now, but... personally? I've never liked Koishi's gimmick. Labyrinth of Touhou 1 conditioned me into not liking EVA (because LOT1 didn't have EVA. All attacks in LOT1 just had 100% accuracy), so you can guess how I feel about a gimmick designed with EVA in mind.

Besides some bosses completely nullifying the gimmick (by having high ACC or undodgable attacks), I just don't think Koishi gets anything useful off a dodge/earlier turn. Like she technically does get two rewards: the first reward is "Koishi not dying" and the other is "she gets her turn faster off a successful dodge". But the first reward isn't that great, because you if you want a character to not die, you can just leave them in the back.

As for the second reward, the extra turns are underwhelming because of Koishi's passives and skills. If she had a self-buffing skill (like Chen, Kasen or Reisen), better passives (like Majesty) or more utility (besides her situational heal/buff/debuff remover) I would understand. But Koishi doesn't have any of those. She's a pure attacker whose gimmick can mess up your turn order. I guess you can play her as a high EVA attacker, but at that point I would rather play Alice (she also has reasonably high EVA but with legitimately good passives).

I will admit that late Plus Disk is a lot more accommodating to Koishi's playstyle. The unique Holy Blessing Subclass seems like a perfect add-on, giving Koishi auto-buffs whenever it's her turn while also providing HP regen (useful if Koishi has bad luck with dodges) and MP regen (helps with Koishi's annoying MP issues). Awakening only strengthens her gimmick; Awakened Koishi can get full turns after any successful dodge while Awakened Mystia's Tunnel Vision skill makes a full EVA party build valid since it causes any dodge to have EVA.

While those sound useful, Awakening Koishi also gets "Extra Attack but with even worse RNG" while the Proof of Kinship skill that is available on her synergy partners, is conspicuously absent on her. It's very weird, especially since Awakening doesn't make Earth Spirits Palace into a more valid synergy. It would have been really nice to see Utsuho and Ring get something like Awakening Suwako's HP/resistance booster, but nope. ESP is still super awkward even with Awakening.

Koishi could just be a really late bloomer, but personally, I'm not that optimistic.

BTW Koishi has actually been confirmed for LOT3. I hope she gets a considerable revamp in that game, because I dislike her current incarnation in LOT2.

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Anyway, that's all the LOT2 uploads I had queued up. I haven't really played past Futo (I have too many other commitments atm). I'll continue deeper into LOT2 eventually, because I want to complete a second, full playthrough before LOT3 comes out (which is supposed to be releasing next year).

In the meantime, I'll be uploading some non-LOT2 videos I've had in my upload backlog.

Music is Hyper ViiZionZ's arrange of "Hartman's Youkai Girl" from Touhou 11

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