If this game represets your introduction to the Touhou series keep in mind there are easier Touhou games that can help familiarize yourself with the gameplay and refine your skills. Although Embodiment of Scarlet Devil is the sixth game in the series, it often ranks up there as one of the more difficult Touhou games. Those who are frustrated with EOSD may want to consider playing the next game in the series, Perfect Cherry Blossom or the 10th game, Mountain of Faith (IMHO the easiest in the series).
That being said there are a few general tips you can use to help improve your chances to complete a 1cc EOSD game. First, make sure you max out the number of starting lives to 5 and the bombs to 3 before you begin. Touhou purists will probably take offense to this but if you're a casual player, you'll need those lives. While your bonus score will suffer a large penalty...the lives are worth it.
Next, you must understand the gameplay. The Touhou Wiki has an excellent site outlining the gameplay mechanics. Generally, you want to collect as many power-ups as possible in stage 1 and 2 with the goal of obtaining max power either at the end of stage 2 or at the beginnning of stage 3. Max power allows you to autocollect items, and this is important because the blue point items give you more points if you are closer to the top of the screen when you collect them. And points are important as extra lives are given out a 10, 20, 30, and 50 million points,
In terms of character selection, the walkthrough is geared toward the use of either Reimu or Marissa. Beginners might want to stick with Marissa-B though. While her shot type is not as powerful as Marissa-A, the Master Spark more than makes up for this deficiency. Using a Master Spark will literally allow you to blow through any spell card or regular boss attack. Furthermore, the long duration of the Master Spark can easily allow you to blow through multiple enemy waves in a stage. And the cherry on this cake is that the Master Spark also translates into extra bonus points. Due to the long duration of the bomb, and that every on-screen bullet yields a star bonus item when a bomb is activated, you can easily have up to 5-10% of your points coming from the Master Spark alone.
Really try to avoid 'panic bombing', or using a bomb when there is no need to do so. Those bombs, and lives come in very useful in stage 5 and stage 6. However, if you know you have a problem spot in a stage, or a spell card that gives you a lot of trouble it's better to bomb than to risk losing a life.
Note you can't count on your reflexes to always save you and on some attacks in the later stages, reflexes are simply too slow. This is due to a time delay between the time information is received by the eyes to your brain processing and reacting to this information. By the time this process is complete, a bullet or an enemy may be on top of your character. Quite simply you must know, recognize, and understand enemy and boss patterns to have a good chance at completing this game on one continue. But feel free to blow through the game on all three continues in order to unlock the practice stages.
Along the same lines, practice doesn't make perfect. Good practice makes perfect. Don't expect to get any better at a Touhou game if you mindlessly repeat and practice the same stage over and over. You have to know where, when, and how you are making mistakes and correct them. Since Zun didn't include the option to record replays with a practice stage in EOSD (this feature was introduced in Perfect Cherry Blossom), obtain screen capture software like Fraps to record your practice sessions. And then review them to see where you made your mistakes. You'll find this method will drastically improve your Touhou skills.
Nobody said any of the Touhou games were easy, and if you're truly frustrated, try playing Hard or even Lunatic modes for a change of pace. You'll probably find them near to impossible and perhaps gain a more positive outlook regarding the Normal mode afterword. It is possible to beat this game without continuing, many people have done it, and this walkthrough and guide aims to help you achieve that goal. Good luck!
