Replay on YT: TBA • Replay to download: TBA
I find it extremely fitting that the first of the games that I finished in this challenge would be the one that served as my introduction to Touhou (and the Japanese doujin gamedev scene in general). It also makes sense - manhours-wise, Perfect Cherry Blossom is the one game in the series that I put the most effort into playing. And to be clear - this wasn't my first normal 1cc ever, but it was a damn satisfying one and also was done in a better style than the previous ones, which I'm not going to elaborate further on.
The character I completed the run with was a pretty obvious choice I think for someone who's not too good at shooting games - ReimuA has a big advantage that only SakuyaA shares, which is homing attacks. This allows the player to concentrate more on dodging denser barrages of bullets while guaranteeing that at least a little bit is going to actually hit the mobs or the boss. Contrast this with especially Marisa, who regardless of having a pretty powerful skillset regarding DPS, has to pretty much constantly hang around directly under whatever target is needed to being shot at to be effective, rendering some spell cards dangerously close to timing out without careful consideration of planning re: position at all times. And even outside of boss battles, the homing attacks help a lot with clearing sections dense with mobs with ease (I'm loooking at you, stage 4).