Touhou 4: Lotus Land Story

Bullet Cap

The bullet cap in LLS is not actually determined strictly by the number of bullets on the screen. It's determined by the number of specific types of bullets on the screen. There's bullets that come in two groups essentially: bullets with a sprite of 8 by 8 pixels and bullets with a sprite of 16 by 16 pixels. 8x8 bullets include pellet-bullets only. Every other bullet type is 16x16. Both of these groups have their own bullet cap. The bullet cap for 8x8 bullets is 240 and for 16x16 bullets it's 200. This means that theoretically the bullet cap is 440 bullets. This can include bullet clouds as well. This basically explains why some patterns seem to cap it's bullets much more easily than others. This is because some patterns only use one of two bullet types.

Bullet Cancels

Bullet Cancels

Bullets can be canceled by bombing, getting a score-based extend or finishing off a phase of a boss. Every bullet that gets canceled gives 1,000 points of direct score per bullet. It appears that when a bullet cancel is in effect, if any bullets are being spawned in, they cancel as soon as they appear, but they give less points. They seem to give 100 points per bullet in this situation but it's not been confirmed yet.

Boss Phase Bonus

After a phase of a midboss or boss is cleared by dealing enough damage, the player is awarded with a fixed bonus which is seperate from the cancel bonus. This is displayed by a fixed number of yellow 12,800s depending on the boss you fight. The following table displays the static bonus received for beating a phase of a boss or midboss:

Stage	Character	Phase 1	Phase 2	Phase 3	Phase 4	Phase 5	Phase 6	Phase 7	Phase 8	Phase 9	Phase 10	Phase 11
Stage 1	Bewitching Lotus Flower	64,000
Stage 1	Orange	64,000	64,000	128,000
Stage 2	Kurumi (midboss)	Varies
Stage 2	Kurumi	128,000	128,000	128,000	256,000
Stage 3	Dark Mirror	204,800
Stage 3	Elly	128,000	128,000	128,000	128,000	512,000
Stage 4	Hikariko (1)	358,400
Stage 4	Hikariko (2)	358,400
Stage 4	Reimu Hakurei	128,000	128,000	128,000	128,000	128,000	512,000
Stage 4	Marisa Kirisame	128,000	128,000	128,000	512,000
Stage 5	Yuuka Kazami	192,000	192,000	192,000	192,000	192,000	192,000	192,000	0	192,000	0	112,640
Stage 6	Yuuka Kazami	256,000	256,000	0	256,000	0	256,000	256,000	240,640
Stage EX	Mugetsu	614,400	614,400
Stage EX	Gengetsu	614,400	614,400	614,400	614,400	614,400	614,400

Cancel Bonus

Whenever you kill a midboss or finish off the boss' final pattern, a bonus is awarded based on the amount of bullets on screen when they get canceled. As one would expect, the more bullets, the higher this bonus. However it increases in some kind of exponential way. The first bullet that is canceled, gives a very low amount of score, and it exponentially increases for every bullet afterwards, until it hits a bullet value cap after a certain amount of bullets is reached. Every extra bullet that is on screen after the bullet that capped the score, will give you the same score for each one of them. The following list will show the score you get from each bullet for each difficulty:

A bullet cancel containing 72 bullets

Easy

1. 10	2. 20	3. 60	4. 130	5. 230	6. 360	7. 520
8. 710	9. 930	10. 1,180	11. 1,460	12. 1,770	13. 2,110	14. 2,480
15. 2,880	16. 3,310	17. 3,770	18. 4,260	19. 4,780	20. 5,330	21. 5,910
22. 6,520	23. 7,160	24. 7,830	25. 8,530	26. 9,260	27. 10,000	>27 10,000

Adding up the first 26 bullets adds up to 81,510. Every bullet after this will give you 10,000 points, meaning the bonus will always end in a "1,510". In theory, if you can get a bullet cancel containing the highest number of bullets possible, this would give a cancel of 4,221,510.

A bullet cancel containing 77 bullets

Normal / Hard / Lunatic

1. 10	2. 20	3. 60	4. 130	5. 230	6. 360	7. 520	8. 710	9. 930
10. 1,180	11. 1,460	12. 1,770	13. 2,110	14. 2,480	15. 2,880	16. 3,310	17. 3,770	18. 4,260
19. 4,780	20. 5,330	21. 5,910	22. 6,520	23. 7,160	24. 7,830	25. 8,530	26. 9,260	27. 10,020
28. 10,810	29. 11,630	30. 12,480	31. 13,360	32. 14,270	33. 15,210	34. 16,000	>34 16,000

Adding up the first 33 bullets adds up to 169,290. Every bullet after this will give you 16,000 points, meaning the bonus will always end in a "290". In theory, if you can get a bullet cancel containing the highest number of bullets possible, this would give a cancel of 6,681,290.

A bullet cancel containing 103 bullets

Extra

1. 10	2. 20	3. 60	4. 130	5. 230	6. 360	7. 520	8. 710
9. 930	10. 1,180	11. 1,460	12. 1,770	13. 2,110	14. 2,480	15. 2,880	16. 3,310
17. 3,770	18. 4,260	19. 4,780	20. 5,330	21. 5,910	22. 6,520	23. 7,160	24. 7,830
25. 8,530	26. 9,260	27. 10,020	28. 10,810	29. 11,630	30. 12,480	31. 13,360	32. 14,270
33. 15,210	34. 16,180	35. 17,180	36. 18,210	37. 19,270	38. 20,000	>38 20.000

Adding up the first 37 bullets adds up to 240,130. Every bullet after this will give you 20,000 points, meaning the bonus will always end in a "0,130". In theory, if you can get a bullet cancel containing the highest number of bullets possible, this would give a cancel of 8,300,130.

Boss Timers

Invisible Timers

Despite there not being any phase timers on screen when facing a boss, like there are in the Windows-era games, the timers in this game do exist. They are invisible. Every boss has a specific timer for each phase. However, Marisa is the only boss in the game that does not obey this rule. While she does have an invisible timer and multiple phases, she has only one timer. This timer lasts for the entire fight. The reason for this is because just like in Story of Eastern Wonderland, she has 2 different states she can be in. In one state she has no orbs and the other state she has one or more orbs active. Both states have their own set of attacks. For this reason it can be said that it was most likely too hard to program multiple phase timers for this boss, because Marisa can exist in more than one state. To add to this, her attack patterns never change, regardless of what phase you're on. Whenever you clear a phase, her attacks don't get interrupted either. It simply clears the screen of bullets and if she was still in the process of attacking, that attack will just keep going as if the phase didn't end. Below the timers for each boss and each phase will be given (noting that these might be 1 or 2 seconds off).

Midboss Timers

Stage	Character	Phase 1
Stage 1	Bewitching Lotus Flower	12
Stage 2	Kurumi	31
Stage 3	Dark Mirror	24
Stage 4	Hikariko (1)	37
Stage 4	Hikariko (2)	37

Stage Boss Timers

Stage	Character	Phase 1	Phase 2	Phase 3	Phase 4	Phase 5	Phase 6	Phase 7	Phase 8	Phase 9	Phase 10	Phase 11
Stage 1	Orange	32	29	12
Stage 2	Kurumi	38	38	41	14
Stage 3	Elly	33	26	23	24	Varies
Stage 4	Reimu Hakurei	26	55	40	36	42	18
Stage 4	Marisa Kirisame	Varies
Stage 5	Yuuka Kazami	23	10	23	10	23	10	18	7	18	7	18
Stage 6	Yuuka Kazami	36	87	6	60	6	60	50	45

Timeout Phases

The Extra Stage bosses in this game are the only bosses in the PC-98 era to have special timeout phases if you purposely time them down. Although similar to many EX bosses having one of these on their final attack throughout the rest of the series, Mugetsu and Gengetsu take it further. Not only do they have a timeout phase on every phase, their timeout phase patterns are pretty much designed to be impossible to dodge, as they are all blindingly fast. Presumably this was made as an intentional trap to punish the player for not shooting the boss. These two bosses will go in this seperate table to also note the timers for their timeout phases.

Stage	Character	Phase 1 (+Timeout Phase)	Phase 2 (+Timeout Phase)	Phase 3 (+Timeout Phase)	Phase 4 (+Timeout Phase)	Phase 5+6 (+Timeout Phase)
Stage EX	Mugetsu	72 (+10)	58 (+17)
Stage EX	Gengetsu	67 (+14)	62 (+15)	63 (+14)	62 (+15)	26+54 (+35)

Glitches

Elly Phase Timeout Glitch

Elly seems to be the only boss in the game to have inconsistencies with how much health she should have between phase transitions. This inconsistency occurs between clearing her phase and timing her phase out. As seen in this video, if you don't shoot Elly at all, more of her health bar will be taken away than if you cleared a phase normally. This is especially noticable at the start of the fourth phase. Supposedly by this point, if you time down her phases up to phase 4, then timing out phase 4 will cause the next timeout to do enough damage to kill Elly. Now because she dies one phase too early, the self-destruct is also not programmed correctly. If timing down all of her first 4 phases, she will self-destruct, but you will still get a bonus for a bullet cancel and get a clear bonus as if you just depleted her health bar by shooting. Normally when you time out a boss' final phase, there is no bullet clear during the boss explosion and your clear bonus is multiplied by 0. This is likely the result of Elly dying on a phase she's not supposed to, so the voided bonuses don't take effect.

	Phase 1	Phase 2	Phase 3	Phase 4	Phase 5
Shooting down
Timing out					Self-destructed

Divide Error Crash

As soon as the last orb is destroyed at the very end of certain orb-patterns, with extremely exact timing (frame 152-155 out of 160), the game will crash

There's currently two instances in which Lotus Land Story is known to crash. This can happen during the Marisa fight and it is caused by destroying the last orb during two certain bullet patterns during a specific frame window. Due to the precise timing and this problem only occuring on two patterns, this crash is very rare. The reason for the crash has to do with how Marisa is supposed to move while she's doing the equivalent attacks without her orbs active. Marisa has a braking mechanic that lets her stop moving as the non-orb attack ends. When killing the orb attack between frame 152 and 155, Marisa ends up having to brake from a standstill and the game crashes from this. More specific details about this instance of the Divide Error Crash can be found in this blog post. There is also a video of this crash. The pattern it crashes on is the second pattern where a crash is possible. The first pattern being displayed in the image.

This crash can also happen during the Kurumi fight, but only when playing on Easy. When you're on Kurumi's third phase, her attack coming from her lines (when she's firing lines both left and right at the same time) is a 3-way pattern. However, if you bring your rank down as low as possible, this same pattern turns into a 0-way pattern, causing the game to crash. There have been reports of this crash still being possible outside of Easy, but there is no confirmation about this yet.