It was obvious there was going to be an Extra Stage, but I had initially thought the Throne Room and fighting Nitori/Flandre was that.
Touhou: Luna Nights - Playthrough
Part 6 ~ Extra Stage: The Ephemeral Castle of All-Encompassing Grace
[I've copy-pasted the video's description below the Read More]
So, what's the deal with this? It turns out all the strange things happening in Remilia's pocket universe throughout the normal game weren't merely Flandre messing with things as she was taking control: there's also a piece of Gensoukyou that was replicated in Luna Nights but shouldn't have, and now that's interfering with the real Gensoukyou, namely the barrier that separates it from the rest of the world; to complicate matters, someone else has entered Luna Nights (no, it's not Yukari, she's asleep during this entire game) to go after Remilia in an attempt to get rid of this pocket universe and the danger it poses to Gensoukyou. The Extra Stage resumes the story from the very last checkpoint in the Throne Room, right before the final boss battle against Nitori/Flandre, and then it diverges from that and takes us through this abnormal area that might start looking suspiciously familiar once we go through the white Torii portal we've unlocked at the end of the normal game.
I'm not proud of how I went through the Extra Stage in this playthrough: so many dumb mistakes, so much getting stuck and dying in one same spot repeatedly... At least I managed to somewhat gracefully survive the battle against the Extra Stage's Secret Final Boss. Now I'm realizing some weapons that I found almost useless during my playthrough could be actually great in boss fights, both against this stage's final boss and against Remilia: for any of the attacks that can be nullified by throwing knives at the bullets to destroy them, I could have used the Dagger Shield instead and it'd have been easier while spending only 25 MP instead of the Thousand Daggers' 40 MP, and that could have given me lots of Blue Graze too. Despite this, if I tried to speedrun this game (or if there's a Boss Rush after this and I have to beat it quickly in order to get a high rank on that), I'll stick with the Thousand Daggers + Snail Time combo I've been using against all bosses during the 2nd half of this game (Thousand Daggers to both attack and nullify enemy attacks, Snail Time to approach the boss herself and collect Blue Graze instead of stopping time and only getting Red Graze) simply because the Thousand Daggers is a long-range attack, isn't hard to aim (the Chainsaw is powerful but a bit too finicky for my taste), and has the most DPS in Sakuya's arsenal.
The title for this part of the playthrough comes from the title card shown upon entering this area: 玉響の博麗城 [tamayura no hakureijou], which I roughly translated as "the ephemeral castle of all-encompassing grace".
Out of the seven pillars of big cubic jewels in both the Extra Stage and the Throne Room, the one made of diamonds reminded me of the biblical Pillar of Salt: both diamonds and salt are colourless, and salt crystals are cubic (there's a cave in Germany where you can see that, and its salt crystals are pretty big as well). What was Lot's Wife doing all the way here?
Timestamps:
I spent the first few minutes collecting items. The actual Extra Stage starts at 0:05:37.-
0:18:28 - Secret Boss: ???
0:22:24 - Secret Boss defeated
(You can safely ignore everything between 0:23:55 and 1:04:49)
1:23:03 - I had to stop recording here and continue later. After that, I spent over half an hour grinding for jewels and experience.
1:55:15 - Secret Final Boss: ???
2:02:31 - Secret Final Boss defeated
2:06:31 - Credits
Credits:
Team Ladybug: developers, storywriters & music arrangers.
Vaka Game Magazine / Why So Serious: developers & publishers.
Active Gaming Media / Playism: publishers.
Jun'ya Outa, aka ZUN: original music composer and creator of the Touhou Project.
