Official Rate the Shot Types Thread: Week #11 - PoFV p1

ReimuA: 9/10 - Greatest choice for survival play. Her strong shot can demolish just about any enemy in a short while and she can also take down spell cards quite quickly which is something to be appreciated in a game like this. Her only real drawback is her crappy bomb which slows her down. A thing that is quite annoying to have to deal with when trying to summon UFOs.

ReimuB: 7/10 - The homing is fairly good and on fights like Shou she can really come in handy. She is one of the lowest scoring shots in the game though, which i expect is due to her not having any real benefits for scoreplay but I don't know the specifics, I don't use her much and I don't care to find out more about her, at least not for now. I'll let her sit with a reasonable score because she's at least okay in survival play.

MarisaA: 5/10 - Her piercing laser and her large grazebox makes her an ideal shot for scoring as she is very good at killing things even though a UFO may be in the way. However I find using her to be annoying because her options are glowy sprites that makes it insufferably annoying to play any attack with bright glowing bullets in them, which is somethign UFO unfortunately is quite fond of.

MarisaB: 7/10 - She comes with the same advantages of being Marisa as mentioned above but rather than being equipped with a shot that produces blue balls in your face whenever focused, we get the ability to shotgun things and a bomb that most scrubs probably hate. There's a handful of reasons why this bomb is better than Master Spark though. One, it doesn't slow you down and two, its damage output is really low. The low damage output means that you can summon a UFO, then drop the bomb to kill all the enemies while still having the UFO survive if it was at full health when you bombed. That's pretty handy and makes her a workable alternative to SanaeB. The reason scrubs hate her is because the bombs invincibility time wears off quickly and so you might find yourself dying due to getting hit by something while you think you're still invulnerable. Why people that bad at the games play anyone but the best shots though... idk.

SanaeA: 7/10 - Practically ReimuB. She's homing in a way and she scores roughly the same. Not much to say.

SanaeB: 10/10 - Easily the best shot in UFO. She has excellent range and decent damage at whatever is right in front of her. She is good for everything. LNB, your average scrub 1cc or scoreplay. Her bomb is super good in that it gives you a good period of time to set yourself up for a UFO summon (that you can strategically by hugging the UFO piece until the explosion triggers to avoid having the bomb take down the UFO. She currently has the overall WR beating out MarisaA by just about a million points.

She is also the girl that I am hoping to eventually use to make my strides towards some UFO score runs.

I can only really rate the Sanae shots accurately, I only use Sanae while playing UFO.

Reimu A: 8/10 She seems strong. Forward focus is nice.

Reimu B: 7/10 Weaker Sanae A. Oh well.

Marisa A: 8/10 Lasers rule in UFO. Marisa cons drag her down.

Marisa B: 5/10 Weak spread, can do decent shotgun damage but outclassed by Sanae B.

Sanae A: 7.5/10 Strong homing shot, good bomb, KANAKO-SAMA INSPIRED Solid but not the best.

Sanae B 9.5/10 Practically faultless, only lacking Reimu perks. Hits hard, great spread, etc.

ReimuA - 8.5/10
She's strong and as usual, small hitbox. The hitbox really makes a difference in this game I find as well. It just feels like she can get away with so much more shit than the other shots can.

ReimuB - 7/10
Homing, and not a weak-ass one this time. She can actually kill things (wow!). She's pretty good on some sections where it can be normally pretty difficult to stay under the boss (eg. Ichirin's first two spells, Vajra, Murasa's third spell) and her damage isn't that terrible overall. She's pretty okay overall.

MarisaA - 10/10
Heaven is here inside my soul! You got to believe it!

MarisaB - 10/10
Bring it on down! Can't stop this feelin!

SanaeA - 5/10
Anyone else feeling the SanaeA meh?

SanaeB - 9.5/10
Great shot type, bomb is great for both grazing and rekking bosses, spread rips through stages, power is great when you can get close. Main gripe about her is that her focus shot only spreads at 4.00 power. Also she's not nearly as slick and cool as Marisa. I mean yeah Sanae's great and all, but once you see shin werk that Marisa grazebox you'll never look at UFO the same way again.

That's fine, but I'd really like for ratings to contain all six shots for consistency when I calculate the averages.

Good to hear!

Reimu-A - 7/10 - Nice solid shot type. Not too fond of the bomb- it makes me feel like I've completely lost control.

Reimu-B - 8/10 - Another nice solid shot type. Useful for clearing the map or when you don't want to pay attention to the boss. Nice mobile bomb type.

Sanae-A - 4/10 - Feels a little weak compared to Reimu-B. There doesn't appear to be a real use to going unfocused. The bomb feels weird... A snake background and nothing else? Just feels off to me.

Sanae-B - 8/10 - A really powerful shot type for both bosses and clearing screens. Nice bomb IMO. This feels like the best shot type for people who never die... But it feels bad for people who die a lot. Its effectiveness really seems to scale down at low power.

Um, I think you meant MarisaA here, not MarisaB...

Anyhow, my ratings:

ReimuA: 8.5/10
Hits really hard. That's... pretty much all she has going for her, but it's amazing enough, really. Lack of spread or piercing can make stage sections a little annoying for her, but she destroys bosses really nicely. Her bomb hits hard, but its lack of mobility can be quite frustrating. I also find her annoying to use in the Ex stage, with Nue's UFO spells and all being quite troublesome for her. Smaller hitbox is nice, though in my experience, I find that hitbox size isn't really a very big deal in UFO when it comes to survival.

ReimuB: 6.5/10
While not as good as MoF ReimuA, she's still really good for a homing Reimu shot. Unfortunately though, homing can be pretty annoying in UFO, since it restricts your control over where the shots can be directed to. Like watching your homing shots go everywhere except where you want them to be while your precious UFO carrying enormous quantities of items just flies away~

MarisaA: 9/10
Piercing may not be that special in previous games, but it's amazing in UFO. Lots of stage sections involve large clusters of enemies in which piercing is very effective at taking down. More importantly, lasers help a lot in ensuring that you can take down a UFO exactly when you want to take it down, which is extremely convenient. She still has great damage output against bosses too, beaten only by ReimuA. And she has a great time with Nue because she has no qualms about hitting Nue and a bunch of UFOs at the same time, thanks to piercing. Master Spark also has great power and range, but the lack of mobility (like ReimuA) really hurts. Also, it can take quite a while to get accustomed to those glowing options well enough to not let them mess with your visual ability to watch for glowing bullets. Still my favorite UFO shot.

MarisaB: 3/10
I don't really care about score, so I find this shot to be just awful. Her damage output is really weak so she has a hard time killing even generics (except popcorn fairies). Back shot is useless except for very specific situations like Vajra, where it still doesn't hit too hard. She has a hard time killing UFOs, which is really troublesome. Even her bomb is really weak and has very short invincibility. Maybe she's good for scoring, but she's utter crap as far as survival is concerned.

SanaeA: 7.5/10
Again, homing shots are annoying in UFO due to how it limits your control over UFOs. SanaeA's version is easier to manage than ReimuB's though, and she does hit harder. Her bomb is pretty solid too, providing her with mobility and sufficient invincibility in addition to decent damage output. Quite a solid shot type, but she still doesn't hit hard enough to wreck bosses.

SanaeB: 8.5/10
Best Bomb in Touhou history. Ever. Yes, I know PCB Non-Directional Laser can hit harder, but SanaeB's bomb provides a really long period of invincibility while granting undeterred mobility. This is especially amazing when you factor in that her unfocused shot is a spread shot, and therefore dishes out amazing damage at shotgun range, making her bomb overpowered as hell. It's not just her bomb that makes her amazing. Spread is very nice for stages and splash damage is actually useful in a Touhou game, for once. Her focused shot, while it can't compete with ReimuA and MarisaA, is still quite solid... at Level 4. Lv3 SanaeB's long-ranged focused shot is as strong as Lv1 ReimuA and Lv2 MarisaA, which is especially frustrating because UFO takes away a stupidly huge -1 Power upon death. So if you find yourself dying a lot, especially during bosses, SanaeB becomes a real pain to use. At least she can bombskip the best. Also, I tend to have a hard time destroying UFOs with SanaeB, again mostly because her long-range shots don't hit hard enough. Still an excellent shot type and I can see why it's hyped so much.

[Note: When I play Touhou, I generally find myself dying often with bombs remaining, especially in UFO where greed deaths are prevalent. As such, my UFO runs generally focus on red UFOs as opposed to green UFOs. This may have influenced my opinion of some shot types.]

I forgot to mention that SanaeB's damage output really blows when she's below 4 power, but I wanted to give out a 10 for a while and she's the chosen one! Bring it on down! Can't stop this feeling!
(Really, some of ya'll have to use ReimuA and MarisaA, too. They're just as good, if not better, than SanaeB in quite a few regards. I'm just biased toward my waifu.)

*clears throat*
Anyway, TD time.

Reimu 8/10: Pretty solid all around. Her homing is great on stages and her needles are powerful against bosses. Her trance is pretty useful because it auto collects all spirits. Her damage per second is rather low though, and she doesn't score as high as Youmu can, but she's still a well rounded shot.

Marisa 7/10: Very strong trance. Good power. But she seems like a dumbed down Reimu for survival purposes. Not even any stronger than Reimu, bigger hitbox. Though she's good at scoring. (Also her replays desync)

Sanny 3/10: Useless shot. Her power is pathetic. She can't even finish off Yoshika's final spell card on Lunatic. Her bomb sucks. Her trance is weak and even though she fills up faster it doesn't really do her any good on scoring due to how bad the DPS is. There's nothing mighty about this character, as Zengeku says in his drunken TD let's play. She even scores the lowest, despite ZUN trying to make this shot geared towards trance usage.

Youmu 8/10: Best scorer in this entire game. Her slash can trivialize stages for the most part. This shot is kinda hard to work with though with the charge mechanics. Used for experts only!