Seihou - Banshiryuu C67 - Easy 1cc - 193,423,440
7UPDATE: new PB: 206,254,030 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-xKFTUhNP8
Date: 23 December 2017
Only published it now because back then I was still expecting I would beat it, but then I started to score TD instead.
Ever since my last score run I uploaded of this game, which is very long ago at this point, I've still been playing this game quite a bit. Morth briefly played the game as well and discovered a much better route than what I was using in the past, and my new findings all build upon his base route. My PB was only 150m before he played, and 170m and up since then. I gradually discovered new strategies over time and improved my scoring potential by a whole lot; I went back to the game for several periods of time and spent significant hours practicing the stages and getting new PBs, until eventually I realised that 200m was going to be possible. After this run, however, I started to score TD instead since I couldn't stop my own curiosity. I still hope to get 200m eventually; I love this game and couldn't do it enough justice. It's really hard but not impossible; my sum of bests at this point is 203,748,950, higher than my sum of bests at the time of recording this run and it just barely allows 200m with a strong run. One of the earlier findings also included that Easy is the best difficulty for scoring, as there are less bullets blocking you from shotgunning enemies or damaging bosses, and higher difficulties do not award higher bonuses for anything.
I play with maximum starting lives for historical reasons (read: I was a scrub), and since it gives more score than without and I am also the only active scorer of this game, I have decided to keep doing it, since there is no established community that says defaults should be used for scoring, like with Touhou.
Scoring stage portions is mainly about item collection; the point item value increases step-wise from 100 to 51,200, also changing their sprites with each increase, and they're collected automatically when an enemy is killed at point blank range. This means that the routing is largely about shotgunning enemies, using bombs to do so if needed. Bombs, as well as shooting focused, will spawn items from enemies below your position; in Stage 2, you bomb at the top of the screen for this reason.
To score bosses, you want to deal as much damage as possible to their named attacks, called SEs, basically the equivalent of Touhou spell cards except they are all timeouts. Hirano has the most powerful shot, her unfocused shot that spams arrows, as well as the most powerful bomb (if used on top of an enemy or boss), making her score the highest of all shots. On bosses you want to use the arrows as much as you can, so you want to be under the boss as much as you can, using bombs to make that possible if necessary. Something quite interesting about this game and how each stage sees vastly different resource usage: Stage 1 is NMNB'd (no bombs or deaths), stages 2 and 3 see a few bombs, stage 4 and 6 have almost no resource usage (1 miss 1 bomb and 1 bomb respectively), and stage 5 requires lots of bombs and suicides, being the main "resouce dump" of the game; Stage 6 is entered at 0/1 as a result.
Stage 1 and 4 were the best in this run, both actually being PBs, although the rest was also generally fine. Unfortunately I got hit on the Stage 6 midboss, which forced me to suicide before Yuitia's safespot attack instead of being able to use my remaining bomb to get in; the run would probably have been at least 195m if I could do my Stage 6 route as planned.
If you have any questions about this game, the strategy used in this run or the score system in general, ask away! :)
More insight: https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Banshiryuu/Gameplay
Stage 1 0:05 Erich 1:33
Stage 2 3:08 Yuuta Kirishima 5:30
Stage 3 7:29 The Tri-Stars 9:32
Stage 4 10:24 VIVIT-r 11:12
Stage 5 13:10 Lagunas 14:51
Stage 6 19:13 Yuitia 20:28
Thanks for watching!