first 1cc (normal): august 2023
first 1cc (hard): august 2023
first extra stage clear: may 2024

that gap probably says a lot. mystic square’s extra stage is like a friend you can only tolerate in small doses. you love them, truly, but their energy, their intensity, whatever it is, quickly puts you at your limit. so rather than beat my head against the wall, i chipped away slowly, bit by bit.

mystic square is often cited as the first ‘real’ touhou, or at least the crystallisation of the series’ core. stages more closely resemble the windows games in their pacing, flow, and approach to pattern recognition. it does include some since-deprecated elements: faster danmaku, some overtly unfair patterns, and a slight incongruity between objects and background visuals, but it is otherwise the pinnacle of the pc-98 era, a strong yet breezy (by touhou standards) challenge and, for my money, the best in the series. i am a simple person with simple tastes; i do not require many verbs beyond ‘shoot’ and ‘dodge’. core gimmicks introduced in later entries don’t do much for me, and if we’re taking that route i want ikaruga levels of elegance. beyond its gameplay, mystic square’s audiovisual qualities stand above its predecessors and shine against those of the windows era. even without prior pc-98 exposure, the system evokes a strong sense of false nostalgia, essentially a mandela effect. it feels hard to top. all said, though, there remains an uneasy tension: its randomness.

before continuing, let’s talk a bit (a lot) about our attitudes to randomness. pull up a chair, weary traveller. it’s warm by the fire.

the trajectory of single player videogames, and particularly action games, has shown an overt effort to cement determinism not as best practice, but the only practice. rng is rarely a significant factor in the core loop of modern games, instead relegated to adding flavour (crit rates) or bloat (loot tables). this is ostensibly for the sake of fairness. videogames are amongst our most conservative mediums, after all, and there is money to be made. why force players to be good at a game when they could instead FEEL like they’re good at a game? for their part, the gamers have also spoken: no longer do they wish to endure the fluctuations in difficulty and pattern recognition they associate with a virtual dice roll. the people want rote learning. to eliminate randomness is to eliminate cheap deaths and cheating videogames.

this is not new, of course. we have bemoaned games’ randomness throughout their existence. it is natural that their design will react against that of their forebears. more recently, though, we can observe an accelerationist trend, which i would pin on the preponderance of two phenomena: speedrunning and esports. strangely, it is the former which has had an outsized influence (at least on developers), despite greater popularity of the latter. over the past fifteen or so years we have been infected with these cultures’ preferences and attitudes to gameplay. speedrunning has become the primary lens through which we consider high-level play; its impact on design has been huge, grounding notions of reliability, measurement, and replication more firmly within the vernacular. it’s no coincidence that these all ideally rely on a deterministic game state. but this influence has been as detrimental as it has been enriching. no doubt it will continue for a good while, until the pendulum inevitably swings back.

a basis in planning, memorisation, and execution can serve many games well, but in our efforts to gradually eliminate randomness as a core part of gameplay, we lose more than we think. so what is lost, specifically? in most cases it is the direct opposite of the above: reaction, improvisation, and adaptability. these are crucial for any game liker who wishes to experience a fuller breadth of play, yet this skill set has been eroded as we reduce games to a set of replicable inputs and outputs. mario maker, by necessity a largely deterministic system, provides a great example: players happy to grind out a kaizo hellscape item abuse gauntlet for twenty hours will just as easily balk at the sight of a hammer bro in a standard level. the hammers fall, the bro bounces. a pattern is discernible but contains fluctuations. the player cannot jump over, so they wait for the bro to jump; it seems to occur once every three to five seconds. doubt has already set in. through sheer nerves they hesitate, making their move a half-second too late. the once-hardened gamer assumes the fetal position. we hear a faint cry on the wind: ‘that’s buuuulshit’.

yes, we have countless examples of randomness gone too far, of dubious implementations, and of course this has influenced its negative perception. modern games don’t help the cause: when they do impact moment-to-moment gameplay, their rng elements are often half-baked annoyances that only get a pass thanks to their place on the periphery, ever present but held back from significant interference. we briefly grumble but accept them nonetheless. but to discard randomness entirely strips away, to channel todd ‘mister cheater’ rogers, the human element. larger degrees of randomness, more strongly integrated with a core gameplay loop, can offer a sensation that determinism can never evoke, so long as they are handled with care and consideration. there is a lot of good to be said for the successful execution of our best laid plans, yet we must also keep our arms open to other experiences. there is beauty to be found in an unrecognisable, unpredictable screen. those willing meet it with grace and humility will be rewarded.

so, having established my feelings on randomness, let’s move on…

there’s no way around it: mystic square’s extra stage is the worst of all worlds. deterministic patterns, ramped up by a factor of eighty million or so versus the main game, intermingle with rng-based sprays of fire and brimstone. this is not an either/or proposition, they occur in tandem. just to rub it in, this stage is long as hell. surviving for so long, only to die instantly to one of the boss’ stray bullets is worse than real, physical pain. high expectations are fine, but such focus on both reaction and execution, at least given this stage’s intensity, pushes us to our limits. beyond testing our skill in parsing both deterministic and random factors, it will lean on our patience, tolerance, and resolve. this is generally not the case with the extra stages from EoSD onwards. while those are much, much harder, they afford us greater opportunities to accumulate knowledge, to slowly improve. this is not to say this stage is unreasonable (though it almost certainly is), just that it provides a valuable case study on the limits of fairness, in going too far with randomness, even for those whose hearts are open to improvisation. as it turns out, a pill flung at terminal velocity in a random direction is not the easiest one to swallow.

after so much waffling, i realise i’ve dug myself into a bit of a hole. not a big one… more like a small ditch. i never even planned to write about this game, i just wanted a lens through which to talk about rng. and to be clear, i don’t even hate the stage! it builds upon an already excellent main game and cranks both the ‘pleasure’ and ‘pain’ dials up a few million notches. it contains the best track in the game, and one of ZUN’s best overall. the backgrounds rock, and contain more vivid detail than those prior. bullet patterns are legitimately interesting once you see through their deception. it tested my limits over and over, yet somehow did not break them. beating this was every bit as much a relief as it was an achievement. if you are a normal person with an interest in dodging bullets, then don’t be put off. give mystic square a spin. you’ll do great, so long as you’re willing to meet it on its own terms.

the one that called me a "human failure" after I beat it with a bad ending (seriously, what was with ZUN and being savage back then?)

anyways, this was a good way to end off the PC-98 era, even though the enemy bullets blending in with the backgrounds is an issue that still remains

also gotta love how I died at the very beginning of shinki's fight because of a bug