Seihou - Banshiryuu C67 - Easy 1cc - 206,254,030 (WR)
9Date: 21 October 2019
This run was streamed live on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/501256710
I made the starting digit 1 higher :)
As it turns out, there was still a lot left to optimise in my route. The most striking discovery was how worthwhile it actually was to bomb VIVIT. I discovered that it's all about positioning and the fact that she has three distinct hitboxes (two of them are her options); positioning yourself exactly in between will deal a lot of damage, and thus give a high damage bonus. Stage 4 is now the most "resource dumpy" stage instead of Stage 5, which does still take the second place in that. I also optimised Stage 5 itself, where I deal more damage to the Perfect Laser iterations (the one with orange bullets that you do 6 times), as well as Stage 1 and 2, where I found that leaving the boss's healthbar empty on their last non will make them repeat their previous SE and then also proceed to their final SE (with the healthbar any higher, they will go offscreen and skip their final SE). It's somewhat precise but obviously worth it.
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. Unfocus shots are always forward focus, while focus shots automatically aim at enemies; focusing also increases your grazebox size and indicates it with a black circle.
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 for items, Stage 6 has a single bomb to get into a safespot, and stages 4 and 5 require lots of bombs and suicides, mostly on the boss fights; they are the main "resouce dumps" of the game; Stage 6 is entered at 0/1 as a result (you finish Lagunas with 0/0, but he awards an extra bomb for beating him). The reason the bomb distribution is this way is that VIVIT and Lagunas have several hitboxes, which means bombs will deal very high damage to them. Yuuta also has several hitboxes, but since you can stay under him well, his patterns are not worth bombing.
The run went quite solid up to and including Stage 5. On Stage 6 I unfortunately got hit a couple times, and the hit on Yuitia's third pattern cost an entire million; I would likely have hit 208m if I executed Stage 6 properly. The hit on the penultimate pattern was significant as well; the midboss one didn't matter much other than throwing me off-route (the bomb is meant to be used on the turret safespot, but since I died before that, I didn't have to suicide for it, which I'd have to do as a last resort with an empty bomb stock).
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 3:11 Yuuta Kirishima 5:49
Stage 3 7:59 The Tri-Stars 10:12
Stage 4 11:17 VIVIT-r 12:05
Stage 5 14:04 Lagunas 15:45
Stage 6 20:41 Yuitia 22:03
Thanks for watching!