Flight of the Bamboo Cutter ~ Lunatic Princess
How do replacement conscripts end up so overpowered, even outdoing Byakuren of the last hour?
How do they emerge victorious from the grinder, leave behind nothing but Sleep Staves, charges fired?
Yo, turns out @Rye_on_Speed didn’t check twice, an immortal, eternal and immune to RNG’s blights
Physic, Sleep, Silence, name it, she’ll do it, that map’s due to give; everyone give it up for Tezuka’s favorite Lunar fugitive!
KAGUYA
She's taking your lads by the twelve, pay up or she dwells, your choice man--
For those not in the know: Touhou Emblem 1 has this neat…dare I say, funny little feature that Rye implemented post-launch.
Replacement characters, they are; units that are acquired after a certain number of units die in the run during certain chapters.
These replacements vary from usefulness; for example, Eirin, joining in the same chapter as our titular KAGUYA, comes with middling stats despite her great weapon ranks and staff access; Shizuha, known mostly for her comically high HP and various changes throughout Rye’s many iterations of THE1, is ultimately just a mediocre Bishop who have above-average enemy phase ability; these two are just brief examples to name a few.
Kaguya, on the other hand, stands out amidst the rabble and riffraff without even lifting a finger.
Joining at the end of Chapter 14 if 12 or more units have died, she comes with a great Magic base stat, reasonable bulk, Renewal, prepromote status (which means she doesn’t use up a 10k gold Master Seal), wonderful weapon ranks, 12 whole chapters’ worth of use; I could go on. But I think I’ll let her growths speak for me instead.
100% Magic Growth. On a prepromote who can use powerful staves such as Physic and Sleep at base, thus making her EXP gain a non-issue. You will easily rake up those 8 levels even if you don’t let her see a single combat – and while this is powerful in just about any ROMhack, there’s something particularly unique about Touhou Emblem 1 that makes her stand out even more than the competition.
the economy’s broken lmao
750 gold sleep staves after bargain (which only costs 10k gold in the form of a recruitable character that comes with her own Master Seal, this screenshot is from a draft where I didn’t get to field said character), by the time that you probably have up to 100k gold saved up – hell, even 50k.
I don’t think I need to explain just how I ended up using her in all of my playthroughs of this game.
KAGUYA
And she's never gonna stop, look, two--no, ten have dropped, her Sleeps' all spent, onto the next ten, she's
There won’t be any screenshots here, because – there’s. there’s no need to. By the time you get to the Sleep Staff Shop chapter, you’ve already amassed at least half a dozen of competent users; Kaguya standing as top dog among the bunch. If you don’t eliminate whatever stands in your advance with Nosferatu!Hina and/or Nosferatu!Marisa, you’re already neutralizing them with your array of tactical homing sedatives.
However I feel like I should probably mention that while a very large cast of potential Sleep Staffers require 10k investment in Master Seals, exp that can’t even guarantee them those sacred magic levels; Kaguya casually comes in with a perfect growth rate and refuses to fall off. Eight levels are comically easy to farm on a staff unit; and frankly even at base she’s already relevant for either chip damage, 11-range physics or just serving as a side tank thanks to her Renewal and surprisingly viable bulk.
Even when endgame comes and Byakuren arrives, she still stands her own ground; while she may lack a prf or other stats necessary to deal with Yukari or other such threats…you still need to remember that she’s a staffbot. A (very likely to have 30 magic) staffbot who can use Warp and Rescue. Even if she doesn’t drop ten men with Sleep, she can just as easily warp a roided Marisa into range to obliterate and survive any potential threat with the overwhelming might of 28 magic 32 speed Nosferatu.
All this is to say:
KAGUYA
Watch her break wide open, render broken, make nerfs roll in, she's
Honestly the entire review was done by Chapter 2 but I do just want to mention that due to my… Honestly quite persistent use and glazing of Kaguya she ended up getting slashes to her staff rank when Rye was still working on THE1 Redux lmao
KAGUYA
She’s outta staves, how tricky–
KAGUYA
–just like that, there’s fifty.
Of Sleeps. And so the princess sweeps…
We rendezvous with Byakuren, sell off all of her gifts.
We can end this skit with just this, call all this a day, but… for this to be peak, there is someone else we seek…
You mean—
A Maiden's Illusory Funeral ~ Necro-Fantasy
YAKUMO
Ran, your jagen, a staffbot on horseback with stats and growths that never run short, I mean-
A jagen staffbot who joins at Chapter 1, bearing a Light Brand and a Heal Staff. You will switch her to Marisa’s Fire tome at your earliest convenience and save that Light Brand for special occasions; keep her on magic, since physical is mostly a meme with her. Thanks to her wonderful bases and reasonable growths alongside her ability to use staff to keep up her EXP gain even when she’s not serving as the party’s main tank outside of Suika, she keeps up without difficulty in the earlier chapters and if you invest the one Dracoshield the game gives you into her — she keeps up and remains relevant all the way until Endgame.
YAKUMO
Ran, you're gonna have to use her later or now, what's she gonna do on the bench, break down?
i don’t have anything else for this all i had to say for her was in the first segment
however i must commit to the bit of this and so let me remind you that ran made it into the state of the1 meme as seen below
YAKUMO
No one has more resilience or matches her perfect attendance and brilliance!
I don’t know what to tell you. This segment is here so I can mirror the structure of the Kaguya glaze, but I’ve already done all the contextual establishment that is necessary for you to understand that Touhou Emblem 1 is a comically easy experience, and that’s all because of the oversights and tools that @Rye_on_Speed put into the player’s hands as he threw shit to the wall and watched them stick. She’s a Seth. Not just a Seth, a magic Seth with staff utility and mounted rescue utility and Canto and I. Can. Keep. On. Going.
But all good things must come to an end. Fortunately, Ran isn’t good; she’s perfect.
At least until the Yuuka writeup gets done, but that’s for another time wwwww
YAKUMO
You wanna make this post real peak?
YAKUMO
You take Ran off bench seat.
Yeah, get ya Ran off bench seat.
You know you gotta get ya Ran off bench seat.
I mean you gotta put some thought into each play made but it’ll all end in checkmate when Ran is off that bench seat.
Yakumo Ran, my beloved.
Chen’s out waiting in the fields for you.
If you join us right now, together we can turn the tide.
Oh, Yakumo Ran, my beloved.
I have staffbots that will yield to you.
If we manage to get you back
It’ll be solved just like Fluid Sac
The world, will never be the same,