Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | 1cc Normal (Reimu B)

First milestone in actually getting good at these games is to unlock the Extra Stage legitimately, and I did so with Reimu's suspiciously-named weapon!
I've taken a few notes from this experience:

• I'm kinda busy with college, and received online advice to practice at least 4 hours weekly while well-rested to make it productive, and trying to no-bomb practice mode while allowing yourself to do it in actual play to cover mistakes while still having a solid foundation, and I find this to be solid advice.

• A big risk with 1cc is accumulating more mistakes as you progress, which reflects on gameplay getting less clean later on. Fortunately, the game allows you to compensate by obtaining resources early on via grazing the higher-yield attacks like Rumia, Daiyousei and Cirno's streaming lines of bullets, as well as lasers. Something I regret in this sense is not doing better at Stage 3 by graze farming the kunai fairies; could've easily snagged an extra life by doing so. Either that or I do try to graze but get the timing/spacing wrong. Patchouli also fires many lasers which are good for graze, albeit higher-risk.

• When it comes to bombs, I think that I've used about half of them correctly. As in, to correct mistakes or just getting through bad RNG. The other half was completely unnecessary. Some attacks like Patchouli's Water Sign "Princess Undine" are basically a bomb tax, so I dropped all pretense of dodging them. I certainly feel that Nether Sign "Scarlet Netherworld" is doable at my current skill level, but diagonal bullets trip me up so I just didn't take the risk.

• On the plus side, doing Maid Secret Skill "Manipulating Doll" bombless felt pretty good, and the last few seconds of Red Magic felt intense to me, easily my favorite part of the replay. Too bad I ended the fight in such an anticlimactic way... just respawning and doing the last bit of damage.

00:00 Stage 1
01:27 Rumia
03:08 Stage 2
04:47 Cirno
06:47 Stage 3
08:55 K̶u̶r̶e̶n̶a̶i̶ ̶M̶i̶s̶u̶z̶u̶ Hong Meiling
10:42 Stage 4
13:40 Patchouli Knowledge
15:32 Stage 5
17:44 Sakuya Izayoi
19:51 Stage 6
21:08 Remilia Scarlet