User:Crazy4pokemon

A Word of Warning

This guide is not designed to "solve" Requiem -- no methods currently exist to trivialize the pattern. This guide instead aims to point out some key elements that will make reading and surviving the pattern more intuitive. Even armed with this knowledge, it may still take hundreds if not thousands of attempts to reach a degree of competency; do not be discouraged. While the guide is written with SakuyaB in mind, she performs the worst on Requiem, and as such the strategies will apply to all other shot-types.

Understanding Requiem

Pattern Design

Yatsuhashi has a predetermined movement pattern on Requiem. She starts on the far right side of the screen, slowly moves to the far left side, stops briefly, and slowly returns to the right side. After Yatsuhashi reaches her original position, she stops before the cycle repeats.

Requiem uses only two types of bullets: notes and mentos. The mentos are the easier to understand of the two -- whenever Yatsuhashi stops on one end of the screen (excluding her initial position), she will fire a fan of 6 aimed mentos at the player (they are technically aimed around the player, but this is not relevant). The note bullets comprise the overwhelming majority of what makes Requiem so difficult. At the beginning of the spell, note bullets will move upward from the bottom of the screen on the far left and right sides. The density of note bullets on the left side is significantly greater than that of the right side. For the remainder of the guide, the wave that begins on the left will be called the "big wave," and the wave on the right will be called the "little wave."

The note bullets individually can only be described as "erratic." Their velocity changes sporadically, they constantly curve in bizarre and unpredictable directions, and they can even turn sharply enough to move back downward toward the player. Given these bullets' eccentricity, adequately describing their behavior is far beyond the guide's scope. The most important details to note from this description are that they move upward and can curve downward. These returning bullets will be called "leftover" bullets.

Player Positioning

After the start of the spell, in nearly every situation, the player should only move vertically within the middle third of the screen. Any higher, and one risks running directly into Yatsuhashi, and any lower places the player too close to the spawning bullets to respond in time. Horizontally, the player should try (within reason) to follow under Yatsuhashi when she moves; despite the apparent risks, damage is more important than safety. At the beginning of the spell, the player should stand on the 2nd teal strip from the right edge on the HUD, shown in the image below.

The starting position for Requiem.

Shortly after Yatsuhashi begins her charge-up effect, move up-left towards the vertical middle third of the screen. From here, you are now in a position to dodge the pattern.

Dodging Requiem

This part of the guide will likely be the most useful but will be nebulous at best. Too many variables come into play to describe one concrete strategy, and describing the myriad of possible situations is simply impossible. Instead, here are some essential components:

Height

As mentioned in the Player Positioning section, your height should be somewhere in the range of the middle third of the playfield. If anything, you'll want to be slightly higher to give yourself time to respond to bizarre bullet behavior, but this runs the risk of playing too high and being blocked off by Yatsuhashi herself. To mitigate this, dodges through big waves should usually be done in a downward direction, cutting through the bullets, before returning to a stable height. An important clarification to make is that this downward motion should be done once you are in a position to do the motion. You may see in the demonstration videos that the player often moves up before they move down. It's easier to be a little bit inside of the wave before moving down, as that cuts down on the number of bullets you end up needing to move through.

When moving downward, be mindful not only of the gap but of the bullets below and next to the gap. These bullets can easily close in on you at any moment, so accounting for this even before you make the dodge is vital. Although playing aggressively is good, don't rush to move back up, since leftover bullets can be nearly anywhere. Analyze the situation, and make your way back up if the coast is clear. If not, there are backup strategies to use. This will be covered in more detail in a later section.

Big Waves

The big waves are the hardest things to dodge in Requiem bar none. The big wave will start on the left and move back and forth on the playfield. Since you are starting on the right, you will need to cross the wave on your way to the left. At the start of the spell, while following Yatsuhashi as best as possible, keep your eyes peeled for any very obvious gaps in the big wave. These appear semi-frequently and should be taken advantage of. If you're more than halfway across the screen when you see one of these gaps, move to take it. You don't know if an easy opportunity will come up again, and you won't lose as much damage as you'd expect by rushing ahead. If no easy gaps appear, you have two options: take it slow, or risk it all. The latter is preferable, since taking it slow often results in needing to rely on a backup strategy (which will be covered later). Even when playing aggressively, use your intuition - a huge gap may not be present, but a group of notes may separate from one another and create a downward gap for you to squeeze through, or a gap might appear a bit higher up. Practice looking for these types of situations so that you recognize them as quickly as possible. This is the most important skill to train when learning Requiem. When combined with leftover bullets, this becomes significantly harder to manage, but the core idea remains the same.

Little Waves

The little waves are usually trivial in comparison to the big waves. Not much needs to be said about them, as they lack the density to be much of a threat unless they overlap with the big waves. The only area where the big and little waves overlap is in the middle of the playfield. If you are in the middle of the playfield when they overlap, you have done one of two things: you moved too slowly, or you are using a backup strategy. The former has an obvious fix: move faster. The latter will be covered shortly.

Leftover Bullets

As much of a pain as big waves are, the leftover bullets take the cake in sheer unpredictability. The amount of leftover bullets can vary dramatically between each attempt and can appear anywhere onscreen (they rarely appear at the very bottom, but you shouldn't be down there anyway). Counterintuitively, focusing on their trajectory is more harm than good, as it takes too much focus away from getting through the big waves. You can temporarily focus on them if the big wave is still far away, but don't let them distract you for too long.

Mentos

Although the mentos are arguably the simplest part of the spell, they can ruin a good attempt if mishandled. Yatsuhashi will fire these mentos at the same point each time, so learning the exact timing of her firing them is necessary. On the first wave, when there are the least leftover bullets, it is usually ideal to misdirect these mentos to the wall rather than towards the opposite end of the playfield. Due to how slow the mentos are, they can easily block potential gaps in big waves, as well as catch you off guard if you're too focused on the fast, erratic note bullets. On waves after the first, misdirection is still a good idea, but it can be much harder to do so.

Forming a "Route"

With these basics covered, it's now time to delve into how to put everything together. Start on the HUD position mentioned above, and move with Yatsuhashi to the left. Cross through the big wave, misdirect the mentos, and loop back through the little wave. If possible, keep yourself under Yatsuhashi while she's stationary, but prioritize getting through the little wave before doing this. Yatsuhashi will begin to move right, and you should follow. Cross through the big wave again, misdirect the mentos if possible, and loop through the small wave as before. By this point, the leftover bullets will be in full swing and you've entered the hardest part of the spell. Repeat the same process as the first wave, go through the big wave, and if your damage is sufficient, you will capture the spell before you need to cross through the big wave a fourth time. Learn how much damage you should expect for this speedkill, as if you do need to cross a fourth time, you should be aware well in advance.

8 Minutes of Requiem Examples (DEATHS INCLUDED)

The types of misses that result from this route tend to be one of five (slightly similar) cases: You move too slowly and get overwhelmed by overlapping waves, you misjudge an overlap of note bullets, you cannot maneuver around a leftover bullet and get hit, you fail to misdirect the mentos and are hit later on as a result, or you simply make a silly mistake.

Backup Strategies

The majority of the time, sticking to the route described above will work fine. If you happen to hesitate and can't cross a big wave in time, there are a couple of things you can do. One backup strategy is to move in the opposite direction, cross through the overlap in the middle, and then cross the big wave at some later point. Another is to go to the same overlap and move downward through it to avoid the extra step of going through the big wave separately. Both of these do work, but neither is entirely safe or optimal.

An example of a backup strategy - move downward through the overlap until the wave is safer to cross