Well.... this was QUITE the stage. I... don't even really know what to say. The amount of time and energy that went into this, into practicing some of its patterns hundreds of times was completely unheard of for a stage of this length.

The stage is cool, very varied with a lot to do. I quite enjoyed solidifying my knowledge of it, which made grinding a bit more tolerable. Midboss was giving me some issues at first, namely on spell 2 but I got over it.

Then Mokou appears and basically just makes NNers cry over and over. The girl has no mercy in her whatsoever. Ignoring THAT pattern, she is like the most backloaded boss I've ever played, with trouble spots being stuff like 5th non, 6th non, 6th spell, 7th non, 7th spell and IS, with the rest definitely being possible to die to themselves.

And then there's the 8th non, likely the most frustrating pattern I have ever, EVER come across in a Touhou game. I don't have much patience for patterns that even after a whole lot of practice, feel like mostly hoping it doesn't decide to critroll you (because believe me, this one has variance too) but remembering how long the journey back is is just infuriating! It's a very nice pattern to randomly practice, but it's just so unbelievably out of place here.

Imperishable Shooting was also a very worrying pattern, with those dense waves causing a lot of issues on the awkward angles you have to pass through. Thankfully, I learned this strat, where you misdirect a decent amount to the opposite side and can use only vertical movement to pass through the last rice bullets. It's a huge help and made this part dare I say consistent.

As for the run itself, I had soooo many scary moments that didn't need to be there. It's not normally this bad, but I even said on 2nd spell I couldn't even be mad if it fails after that sorry route performance. 8th non was pretty nice, 7th spell was straight up terrifying and the last part of IS was very nice and didn't force me to move at all. Yes I was really nervous enough that that could kill me.

So... it's not necessarily the hardest thing I've done so far, but this is like the most anti-unovi stage I've played. I'm not too great at staying cool under pressure in general, even less playing such terrifying patterns that far in. I know some won't have that hard a time with this stage since it's not THAT ridiculous, so long as you sink some attempts into 8th non and maybe IS, but that's my entire problem.

Still, it is done. Mokou can bully no more! Now, time to head into the mines.. (no that's not Minecraft)

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