Another Extra stage down. This one is among the harder Extra stages to get a flawless survival clear on, about the same difficulty as EoSD ExNN and UFO ExNNN. I've played this Extra stage a couple of times, but I haven't tried to actually grind it for a clear until two days ago. I've made very quick progress on the first day, getting a 3MNB clear and then a 2MNB clear only a couple of hours after I've started my grind. On day two, my progress didn't go as smoothly as I hoped it would, getting 6 fails at Mamizou Danmaku in Ten Transformations on ExNNN pace and one 1MNB run that had a fail at Full Moon Pompokolin, the final spell card of the fight, across a nearly 5 hour long stream and 2 more hours of playing off-stream. I felt really tired and defeated afterwards, so I decided to call it a day. On day 3 however, I managed to get the ExNNN clear on my very first attempt of the day, which made me feel quite happy.
As for the Extra stage itself, the stage section is really consistent, except that Nue trows in some random patterns that can be really awkward to dodge, but she wasn't that big of an obstacle for me. Mamizou, despite how frustrating it was for me to fight her during my attempts, is actually a really cool boss. All of her spell cards have an interesting gimmick to them and kept me on my toes, even the easier ones like Sithx Duel. Some of her attacks are very unpredictable and quite difficult to dodge reliably, like Fourth Duel, Fith Duel, Seventh Duel and Mamizou Danmaku in Ten Transformations, which can be frustrating, but that's also what makes them super satisfying to pull off in a run. Combine that with an unique-sounding and upbeat theme and you have a high-intensity and exhilerating bossfight that really made me feel like I was about to get caught in a stampede at any moment, one that is among my favorites in the Touhou series.
Overall, this is a great Extra stage. I loved playing through it, despite how frustrating the grind was, and I'm glad that I finally got around to get an ExNNN clear on it. I would recommend attempting to clear it if you have some experience with Touhou games beyond getting a Normal 1cc, since it's not a beginner friendly Extra stage, due to the difficulty of the patterns and fairly scarce resources throughout the run.
Also I managed to pull off the most insane dodge I've ever did in a run at 8:40, like WTF was that lmao
