Touhou Koumakyou: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
Embodiment of Scarlet Devil features two playable characters to choose from, with two Spell Card types each. Reimu Hakurei can cover a wide area of the screen with weaker attacks, while Marisa Kirisame relies on her speed and power to make up for her thinner attack spread. The bombs show different behavior and damage depending on the character and type chosen. Unlike its predecessor, Mystic Square, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil comes with an "automatic item collection" feature, which allows you to collect all items on the screen by moving to the top of the screen if you are at full power, as well as a counter-bomb system, which allows you to avoid a fatal hit by using a bomb immediately. Though there are six total stages in the main game, playing on Easy will end the game after Stage 5.
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Touhou is a franchise that I've had interest in for quite some time. The characters always intrigued me and the music especially sounded great. I've dabbled in some of the games, but only casually and having my fun with them before leaving to do something else. This time however I wanted to dedicate myself to finally at least beating one (There was that one time where I got through this one on easy mode, but come on now. It's easy mode .). Well here we are. After a good amount of tries, I finally beat a Touhou game, and it may honestly be one of the most satisfying things I've done in a video game. I felt my heart beating and I was scared but with enough focus I was able to beat the last stage. But anyways that's enough of my personal experience, what about the actual game?
The game itself is probably the most iconic one in the series. It's the first Windows game which basically means it's the first modern one over the PC-98 games. It's got the most iconic set of characters too, and same goes for the music. As a shooter though, and I know I haven't played many, let alone try to beat them, but I really loved my time with this game. I love the learning curve of trying to dodge stuff that seemed impossible to do when you saw someone in a video play the game. The game progresses with a really good flow, allowing you to adapt to it's growing difficulty. The bombs can be used as screen nukes to get rid of everything for a second so you can realign your shots or save your skin from death. Just know that it's ok to use these regularly since they come as a set with every life. One flaw with this game that gets fixed later down the road (It's the next game I think), is that you can't see your hitbox. Now in order to help you dodge everything on screen, your hitbox is a very tiny circle that's at like the center of your character. As long as nothing touches that circle, then you're good. However this game unfortunately doesn't teach you that so you'll probably be panicking for a minute until you exactly understand how the hitbox works.
I just wanna say that my hands still feel shaky after beating the game and I honestly don't know what I'm doing reviewing the game NOW, but hey I guess I just had to get it off my chest. I guess if you wanna get into the series, this probably ain't the one. I've heard people say 7 and 8 are better choices, but as it's own game, this was still very enjoyable.