Touhou Mystic Square: Hard Mode 1CC (Yuuka)
26I haven't played one of the PC-98 games in forever! I decided to download the emulator again, and play my 2nd favorite PC-98 game. (1st is LLS)
I played this game as Yuuka because, well. She's Yuuka. She's actually kind of bad in this game... While she can deal lots of damage close up, she does poor damage otherwise, and her speed is detrimental to the game's resource system. In this game, there's no auto-collect section on the screen, so you must fly around the screen to collect point items, which fall very fast and have small hitboxes compared to the windows games. This is bad for Yuuka because she has the slowest speed in the game, so she's not so good at collecting point items. The only good thing about Yuuka is that her shot type covers nearly the entire screen, which is extremely useful for stages, ESPECIALLY stage 5... At least until the boss.
Stage 1 is just flying around the screen collecting point items and filling your dream gauge. Sara is the 2nd easiest stage 1 boss in the entire series too, the absolute easiest being Orange from Lotus Land Story (PC-98 had really weak stage 1 bosses!!)
Stage 2 is a complete item festival, all the "shards" falling from the top of the screen drop lots and lots of items, and a lot of the enemies aren't very dangerous. The midboss drops a bomb too! Yay! Louise is a pretty easy stage 2 boss, but her semi-final attack is unusually dangerous... She fires a quick wave of lasers that can catch you off guard if you're shooting at her from a bad angle. She'll also sweep you to the side of the screen with her red bullet waves, which will make you fly right into a laser.
Stage 3 is booooooooring. Just a bunch of slow moving enemies, nothing special. Alice is a pretty fun boss fight though, the dolls die really easily when you're playing as Yuuka. Her mirror attack is also a great opportunity to deal damage, since the mirror shield takes a few seconds to activate. And if you simply don't shoot, the entire attack is simple streaming. Just watch out for Alice's opening attack, a tiny white bullet flying at Mach speed can hit you if you're unlucky
Stage 4 is probably the worst stage in Touhou history. Not for it's difficulty, it's actually really easy. It's the visibility that's absolute garbage. I have no idea what ZUN was thinking, making the background light blue, and having light blue bullets fly around the screen. Yuki and Mai are easy stage 4 bosses if you don't get too aggressive. But this stage 4 fight is unique. Depending on who you deal more damage to, you'll get to fight the remaining girl as a "mini-boss". You'll almost certainly want to kill Yuki first, Mai's boss fight is way easier than Yuki's.
Stage 5 is just "Random bullshit, go!". Fairies will just shoot random crap at you throughout the stage, spawning everywhere. This stage is a piece of cake for Reimu and Yuuka, but hell for Marisa and Mima. However, Yumeko's boss fight is hell for EVERYONE. She's even harder than the final boss! In fact, she's the most unfair stage 5 boss in the entire series. At least with bosses like Clownpiece and Shou, you can memorize strategies for their attacks... Yumeko just goes apeshit on you. Good luck. (Her final attack is extremely anticlimactic though...)
Stage 6 just gives you items. The fairies aren't dangerous unless you do something really stupid. Shinki is a tough final boss, but honestly... She's much easier than Yumeko. If anything, Yumeko should be the god of Makai. Her boss fight is mostly just "dodge the thing". She has two REALLY difficult attacks though... Her homing cheeto laser attack, and her one attack that Byakuren stole in Touhou 12. I don't know a strategy for either of those attacks. I just spammed bombs the whole time. Did I mention that the bombs suck in this game, by the way?
In conclusion... My eyes really hurt right now. The PC-98 games hurt to play... I'm going to go take a hot shower and put cucumbers on my eyes or something. Whatever makes your eyes stop feeling like they're going to pop out of your skull.