Game:

Touhou LostWord (2020)

Duration: 4:24

147 views

11

Music: Judgement Star
Arrange/Guitarist: minami from IOSYS
From: 東方 Faithful Star

Disclaimer: This is my personal break-down on characters based on information gathered from other players (Yomui, sadly, has retired as of now) and my own experience. This is not a strict guide, and should be taken as yet another insight and suggestion.

A re-analysis of the Oracle, whom I had analised once.

Kochiya Sanae the Oracle, first appeared in B3 - Code of the End, is one of the six protagonists and also one of the first Ultra Festivals of Hifuu LostWord. Along with her sisters-in-arms, she is classified as a Technician, namely a Generalist Technician who is good at multiple roles without a specialisation. However, the Oracle is generally conceived by the playerbase to be a lacklustre unit compared to her B3 peers, mainly due to her health recovery oriented playstyle along with a focus on CRIT buffs. Despite that, with good planning and understanding, the Oracle can still shine brightly as a guest star to cast judgement upon her enemy, both in casual farming and CQs.

For normal fights, the Oracle is best against enemies who are weak to Star, seeing how her kits are built around this element along with Wood. What makes her shine is the fact that she can get her damage up and ready within one turn, a feat that is possible due to her mid-load spell cards, allowing her to get up to 5 layers of bullets within the first turn. Not to mention, she has a plethora of Slice bullets, which profit greatly from Agility stat, allowing her to make the most use out of the Witch of Scarlet Dream (for multiple-turn battles) or Undercover Reporter (for the best Agility and Yang ATK Stats). These factors, combined with her CRIT Accuracy buffs from her 1st skill and her grazes, her decent built-in CRIT rate (12%-15% compared to the normal value of 5% on many units), and a one turn Yang ATK up from her 3rd skill, could let her finish the opponents in a highly damaging, albeit sometimes inconsistent due to being CRIT-based, move. Other than that, she is mediocre when it comes to story card farming although this fact applies to her peers. That being said, for events, her damage potential is good enough for the Oracle to charge in, nuke everything down to the atom, and return with the spoils.

When it comes to CQs, what the Oracle brings into the frey is a plethora of Wood and Star breaks with a focus on the latter. In total, across her 4 spell cards, she has a 12 Star breaks in total, making her deceptively good against those who are weak to the aforementioned element aside from the Star EX, ironically (will be discussed in the comment section). Her healing capacity also allows the Oracle to quickly patch her team up after taking stray shots, a scenario that happens more regularly now thanks to the 1st turn Graze lock on the newer challenges. Her spells debuff CRIT DEF or CRIT Evasion, allowing her allies, especially those with a plethora of killer tags, to crank up the damage potential to eleven, a feat that is also made possible thanks to the Oracle’s high agility stat, allowing her to make the first move most of the time assuming the squad has no priority moves (Quick) and the same bullet hierarchy. Finally, while her 1st and 3rd spells’ last layer has Freeze break, allowing her to take advantage of this anomaly when the chance comes.

Still, the Oracle has the same problem with Reisen the Peacekeeper and Sakuya the Hunter; namely, the inability to keep her Yang ATK buff up. This factor is the critical shortcoming of Sanae, although it does mean that she will profit more from having a Yang ATK buffer fighting along her side. On the other hand, as the Oracle is majorly about slamming CRIT DEF/ACC debuffing on her adversaries, she can also take advantage of allies’ CRIT buffs which, combined with her innately decent CRIT rate, allows herself to dish out even more damage. She falls to the niche category with the Peacekeeper although her healing potential saves her somewhat.

As the final note, while it is true that the Oracle struggles a lot more compared to her sisters-in-arms: her damage output is inconsistent due to the lack of a long-lasting Yang ATK buff and a bias toward CRIT, her defensive capability is mediocre due to the reactive nature of healing (meaning you only heal after taking damage instead proactively preventing it), her lack of decent Killer tags (only against Gods and Lunarians which are in the lesser end of the spectrum), and her inability to farm story stages, she has the potential to shine in undesirable circumstances, thus fitting her now sealed ability to create miracles under the most dire situation.

Recommend Story Cards:

For active effect: Witch of Scarlet Dreams, Ordinary Magician (Spell cards), Secret Sealing Club Girls (Last Word).

For stats: Prioritise cards with Yang ATK and Agility such as Witch of Scarlet Dreams (for active plays), Undercover Reporter or Secret Sealing Club Girls (for for stat).

Other Statistics