Touhou 5: Mystic Square/Advanced Mechanics

Bullet Cap

Similar to LLS, the bullet cap in MS 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 180 and for 16x16 bullets it's 220. This means that theoretically the bullet cap is 400 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.

Cancel Bonuses

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 10,000s depending on the boss you fight. When defeating midbosses you obtain a static amount of 12,800s instead. 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
Stage 1	Wheel Demon	64,000
Stage 1	Sara	50,000	50,000	80,000
Stage 2	Spirit Mirror	64,000	192,000
Stage 2	Louise	60,000	90,000	90,000	100,000
Stage 3	Hikariko	192,000
Stage 3	Alice	70,000	50,000	70,000	50,000	70,000	50,000	70,000	100,000
Stage 4	Louise	192,000
Stage 4	Yuki & Mai	0	0	0
Stage 4	Yuki	100,000	100,000	100,000	700,000
Stage 4	Mai	100,000	100,000	100,000	700,000
Stage 5	Ayana	384,000
Stage 5	Yumeko	100,000	100,000	100,000	100,000	100,000	650,000
Stage 6	Shinki	100,000	100,000	250,000	250,000	250,000	250,000	650,000
Stage EX	Trump King	128,000	384,000
Stage EX	Alice	200,000	200,000	200,000	200,000	200,000	200,000	200,000	200,000	2,000,000

Boss Bullet 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 96 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. 9,600	>27 9,600

Adding up the first 26 bullets adds up to 81,510. Every bullet after this will give you 9,600 points, meaning the bonus will always end in a "10". In theory, if you can get a bullet cancel containing the highest number of bullets possible, this would give a cancel of 3,671,910.

A bullet cancel containing 93 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. 12,800	>32 12,800

Adding up the first 30 bullets adds up to 126,450. Every bullet after this will give you 12,800 points, meaning the bonus will always end in a "50". In theory, if you can get a bullet cancel containing the highest number of bullets possible, this would give a cancel of 4,862,450.

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. 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	Phase 2
Stage 1	Wheel Demon	28
Stage 2	Spirit Mirror	19	14
Stage 3	Hikariko	41
Stage 4	Louise	50
Stage 5	Ayana	33

Stage Boss Timers

Stage	Character	Phase 1	Phase 2	Phase 3	Phase 4	Phase 5	Phase 6	Phase 7	Phase 8
Stage 1	Sara	46	94	23
Stage 2	Louise	62	47	50	24
Stage 3	Alice	59	12	55	12	54	12	54	19
Stage 4	Yuki & Mai	34	21	101
Stage 4	Yuki	66	93	37	47
Stage 4	Mai	151	83	168	56
Stage 5	Yumeko	48	37	102	37[1]	35	24
Stage 6	Shinki	39	43	57	53	57	53	53

Currently the Stage 1 boss timers go by the frame numbers reported by ReC98 and assume a 56.4 FPS framerate. The other timers went off of 60 FPS speed.

Glitches

Gaps in laser hitbox

A visual representation of the laser hitbox. The square shapes shown act as a "true" hitbox and stays at this angle regardless of the angle of the laser.

The laser that extends across the whole screen does not have a well-functioning hitbox. Despite how it appears, its actual hitbox is a straight line of repeating hitboxes interrupted at regular intervals by small gaps that are present regardless of the angle of the laser. These lasers are present during Sara's final attack, Yuki & Mai's second phase, and Mai's second and fourth phase.

Lingering Laser

Mai's laser from the second phase remaining active during the third phase

Normally when fighting Yuki and Mai at the same time, you will typically time out their attacks on the first two phases. If you do enough damage however, you can make these phases end early. When you end phase 2 early while Mai is firing her laser, the laser stays on screen as phase 3 starts. This laser will still have a hitbox and will not go away until either Yuki or Mai has been defeated. It is also possible to end phase 2 when the laser starts out as a thin line. When this happens, the creation of the laser attack will be interrupted, so the line will remain present but does not have a hitbox.