Touhou FDF: Extra Stage [1st Clear]
3My first clear of this rather notorious Extra Stage. While this (somehow) managed to clear, and overall I am quite happy with it, I also cant help but feel it is a bit of a hollow victory...
Now this is certainly quite the Extra we have got here. This madness is the extra with the 2nd highest number of attempts for me so far, only beaten by SA Extra. How do I know this? Well I just take a look at each of the EX Bosses number of attempts in their first respective spellcards history.
Koishi First Spellcard history is: "05/29"
FDF!Flandre First Spellcard history is: "08/19"
This means, I got to Koishi 29 times and I failed to defeat her 28 of these times (lol), I got to Flandre 19 times total and I died to her 18 times.
So, does this mean Koishi/SA Extra is harder than this? Well... I honestly dont think so. If I have to be honest. I think this Extra is sligthly harder than that of SA. Not by much though, just sligthly overall harder due to some factors I am going to discuss right now while talking about FDF Extra.
The short version of it? THE STAGE PORTION. FDF Extra Stage Portion is WAAY harder, and more important to memo/execute well, than that of any of the official Extra Stages.
There, I said it. Get good at the stage portion, so that you will have enough resources to tank thorough Flandre, and thats about it. Now of course the other Extra Stage portions matter, too, but this one matters even MORE. Trust me, those additional resources help a ton.
Once you do that, then Flandre herself is certainly still a scary opponent, but because of the massive amount resources you have entering her fight from a good stage portion, there should not be much dodging involved in her fight. Want proof? This entire video shows that pretty well (AND I even screwed up the Stage portion a couple of times. I am positive you can get to Flandre with even more resources than that).
And this is also part of why I think this is a hollow victory: I did not capture a single Spellcard of Flandre. I did not capture a SINGLE Spellcard of Flandre.
A. SINGLE. CAPTURE. NONE. NADA. ZERO.
While its true that I won (For some reason. I dont understand why in other runs in which I actually capped multiple things somehow died earlier), and I DID do pretty good resource managment, that kinda left a sour taste in my mouth. I know I can capture most of her stuff by now (Obviously not all of them perfectly in a row, but at least I can cap about 3-4 an attempt), so, what the heck? Its kinda nonsense... in a way I am surprised this somehow cleared despiste me being so bad at the entire Flandre fight. oh well. I guess if anything, it proves how easy she is to just bomb spam xD.
I left more in-depth thoughts about this Extra below in the comments.