Touhou Fuumaroku: The Story of Eastern Wonderland
The Story of Eastern Wonderland casts the player as the Shrine Maiden Reimu Hakurei and offers three distinct attack types to choose from: a wide-range type with weak attack power, a mid-range type with moderate attack power and auto-targeting capabilities, and a narrow-range type with high attack power but lowered movement speed. The bombs also exhibit unique behavior depending on the type chosen. As the first danmaku shooting game in the Touhou Project, the Story of Eastern Wonderland introduces many features that are now hallmarks of the series as a whole: relatively small hit boxes, boss characters who are not much larger than the player character however are highly mobile, a power-up system, variable-worth point items, an unlockable Extra Stage, and a semi-complex scoring system. The game also marks the first appearance of Marisa Kirisame, who would become a major character in the series, appearing as often as Reimu Hakurei herself.
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This second game in the Touhou franchise definitely feels a lot more rewarding and challenging. And not because there's a ball flying all around the screen that you can't even control properly. Yeah, there's less levels now but at least you have 3 all new gameplay styles.
This is the game that when most people would look at, they'll immediately understand it's a Touhou game. It has a silly story, good music, interesting character designs and above all nice and fluid gameplay.
I'm definitely happy that the franchise went into this direction and this game for sure makes me want to play even more of Touhou for someone who's not even a fan (but who knows).
I thought the fact that the first boss was a literal military tank would mean the rest of the game would be fun, but no not really. None of Reimu's shottypes feel too good, and having no focus or hitbox indicator really fucks with my muscle memory. I've had many embarrassing deaths because of it...
Bosses aren't fun. For most of them, you are not getting it on your first go, they cheapshot you so much you'd think Hideki Kamiya directed it. And to add insult to injury the end of every stage before reaching the boss just has random bullets come from nowhere to follow you and keep you on your toes just when you think it's over. I'll just keep laughing at people wanting Mima to come back
(Unrelated but shoutouts to Neko Project for having some of the worst navigation on an emulator in order to set it up properly. There's so many categories that could've all been in one section)
Overall I find that this game tends to be a lot easier than other Touhou games comparatively, but again, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
The ost is good, and the gameplay is perfectly serviceable. Not a particular outlier in good gameplay when it comes to Touhou as a whole, but certainly worth playing at somepoint!