Touhou 14.3: Impossible Spell Card - All Scenes Cleared Without Items
8Every scene in Impossible Spell Card cleared without using any items.
Day 1: 0:15 Day 6: 18:29
Day 2: 2:37 Day 7: 23:37
Day 3: 5:56 Day 8: 28:45
Day 4: 10:12 Day 9: 33:49
Day 5: 13:39 Day 10: 38:12
Here's a neat little side-game in the Touhou series. Similar to Shoot the Bullet and Double Spoiler, Impossible Spell Card is a more puzzle-based danmaku game where every attack is divided into "scenes", letting you face them one at a time. However, ISC sticks a bit more closely to the standard shoot-em-up formula in that the goal is to shoot down the bosses you face (with one survival card mixed in), rather than taking enough pictures of the bosses like in StB and DS.
The premise of ISC is that after the events of Double Dealing Character, everyone else in Gensokyo wants to capture the amanojaku Seija Kijin, and they're willing to break the Spell Card rules to get it done. Seija, of course, is willing to cheat right back and has a number of items she can use to survive these "impossible" attacks. But as you may have guessed from the title of this video, I won't be using items at all - instead, I'm playing this exactly like I would one of the main-series games and just dodging everything with nothing but my own skill. You'll quickly find that the vast majority of the attacks in this game are nowhere near as impossible as advertised - only Scenes 5-2, 10-4, and 10-7 really come close to that standard, but even they can be cleared with enough effort.
One thing I should note is that even though these are all "no-item clears", there are three items in the game with effects that are always active when used as sub-weapons, yet they won't count against a scene being considered as cleared without items. However, only one of them is actually useful: the Cursed Decoy Doll, which doubles your firepower and gives your shots a little more spread. It might not seem so impactful at first, as you can only hit 5 of your 8 streams at most when shotgunning a boss from below. But this sub-weapon truly shines when you use a technique called "head-sitting" - literally sitting on a boss' head to get all 8 streams hitting. This trick lets you deal huge amounts of damage when you can pull it off, and it's absolutely key to surviving some of this game's hardest scenes. The other two sub-weapons like this are extremely situational at best and completely useless at worst. The Tengu's Toy Camera increases your movement speed, but it's only really useful on a couple attacks and you can survive those without it anyway. The Bloodthirsty Yin-Yang Orb is even worse. This item is supposed to give you an even smaller hitbox, but despite your hitbox indeed looking smaller in-game, this feature is bugged and the game only treats your hitbox as being smaller when detecting collisions with lasers, not bullets. Once you unlock sub-weapons on Day 6, you should pretty much stick with only the Cursed Decoy Doll.
Originally, I didn't have plans to make this video. I first completed this challenge back in 2015, but I only recorded replays of 8 scenes, mostly including the hardest ones in the game. And after spending so much time grinding those 3 nearly impossible attacks I mentioned above, I wasn't really in the mood to go back and make replays of the rest. However, recently a content creator named Spaztique released a draft for the latest chapter of a comic he's making, "Wrath of the Amanojaku", which is based on the events of DDC and ISC. The latest update has the story move into the ISC side of things, and it really got me back in the mood for this game. So with this extra motivation, I went back and made replays for all the scenes I was missing in one day. Don't let the name scare you - ISC is far from "impossible", and I highly recommend you give this game a shot if you're looking for a fun way to improve your skills, and maybe give yourself some perspective when dealing with hard attacks elsewhere in the series.
Other Videos By Funen1
Other Statistics
Impossible Spell Card Statistics For Funen1
Currently, Funen1 has 242 views for Impossible Spell Card across 1 video. Less than an hour worth of Impossible Spell Card videos were uploaded to his channel, or 5.41% of the total watchable video on Funen1's YouTube channel.