Yes and no - the conditions and activation have only been recently understood (first use only, can activate with several different gadgets and not just hoop) but this was first shown in a roughly decade old yosuke77 TAS in a way that wasn't even closer to RTA viable.

Reimu and Sanae have homing (and Sanae has spread) which helps a lot on stage sections, especially Stage 5. Marisa and Reisen really struggle there. Even in Stage 4, Sanae makes things a lot easier than Reimu. Sanae and Reisen have bombs that can easily be used to get a lot of graze, while Sanae and Marisa have bombs that can easily be used to clear the screen of everything. Since you get lives in this game by shooting down enough enemies and grazing enough bullets in a section, Sanae is good at both parts. In exchange, she has the worst single target DPS of the cast and by extension, typically the worst performance on every boss: but this doesn't actually make a big difference for most patterns. And for a 1cc, this is more easily solved with a bomb anyway. But even more importantly: I just like the playstyle of Sanae in general. Since she's a good pick in a vacuum, I went with her. Some would say Reisen is better for a 1cc (each bomb can tank 3 hits) but I disagree.

Both of those were entirely luck + a bit of awareness to recognize that the only way out was through. There was really nothing to lose in the attempt. As for stage 4 compared to other stages, I think a lot of the patterns end up requiring the same approach between difficulties in a way that other stages don't, so the relative difficulty is much lower. Stage 3 in particular has some serious challenges on lunatic to the point where I think I'd call it the second hardest stage - no way around Doremy nons and chapter 3 took me more tries than everything except PDH.

Thanks! Though these games are much more approachable than you might think - you don't need to pay attention to the entire screen, for instance, and instead just what's around your character (or slightly more advanced, where the bullets that *will be* near your character soon). Hidden Star in Four Seasons is also a bit heavy on visual overload due to the season items, that are easy to mix up with bullets, and extra stages are somewhere between Normal and Hard difficulty - there's another difficulty lower (and higher) than those for the main game. When I started I was frequently getting overwhelmed on even easy mode, and over time I've gotten pretty comfortable with most lunatics. This is definitely a genre where first impressions can be deceiving - no harm in giving it a shot right? :)

19"26.81

Can I? Yes. Will I? No, the TW graphics are much easier on my eyes especially when ice is involved.

@@Ihavenoname248 but the MS graphics are the best