edit: 1cc'd this one again this week and wanted to update my thoughts. not that anything's changed for anything but the better. honest to god not just a perfect game but one of my favorite games ever made. i think it stands as THE benchmark by which every arcade shooter should be measured - gripping gameplay, gorgeous and restrained, heartfelt visuals and soundtrack, legendary boss battles that paint stories in the shape of danmaku, and an earnestly somber and bittersweet story that stands as the only one in its genre that has ever moved me like this. flawless game, and zun's masterpiece as far as i've played. <3

unbelievable how much of an improvement this is on every touhou game prior. i was told the jump between embodiment of scarlet devil and this game was big, and i suppose i wasn't ready for how tremendous a leap that was. i'll say it - as of right now, this is my favorite arcade-style video game i've EVER played and one of the most rewarding playthroughs i've ever experienced of a game of this type. i wasn't expecting to enjoy and crave the difficulty present here the way that i did, and i certainly didn't expect a surprisingly moving, quietly somber story like the one present in perfect cherry blossom.

this game flows with the delicacy of the wind; the deft moment in which a haiku lingers. breezy, chilly and brisk is the name of touhou 07's game, and the presentation here is beyond marvelous. i see elements of games like kirby's dream land 3 all over this game's aesthetic, colored-pencil like backgrounds and character sprites with a surprisingly acoustic and wind section-heavy ensemble in zun's arrangements. when the intensity ramps up as the climb whisks reimu, marisa and sakuya up from the snowfall and cheeky eastern villages into the sky and beneath the youkai's solemn cherry oak, the music follows suit; songs of dread, songs of triumph, it's all here. the setpieces and deliberate pacing of stages 4 and 6 are an absolute marvel within the medium and genuinely stopped me in my tracks with my prior expectations.

even the boss battles themselves are now pure spectacles - zun has somehow found a way to tell you all of a character's personality through their bullet patterns. it's astounding what characterization this gives bosses like chen, the prismriver sisters, and youmu. not to mention the... legitimate gutpunch of a plot reveal waiting at the absolute end of it all.

another breeze blows blossoms of scarlet and rose through the air. another crisis averted. another soul laid to rest. man. this is the one that elevates touhou to real masterpiece territory.

There's not a lot of difference in the gameplay of Touhou 6-8, and the existing differences ultimately feel a bit inconsequential. One that does make a big change for someone like me who is bad at games, however, is that after EoSD ZUN realized to stop being a dick and quit walling the final stage away on easy mode, so it makes 7 and 8 as a whole a lot more enjoyable I would say. It was some months ago now, but I still well remember being pretty fucking pressed about losing my last continues to Remilia like three times before completing EoSD, and I'm glad I don't have to relive that shit to get a full taste of the story.

Oddly enough though, despite incredible annoyance, EoSD is probably my favorite of these three. Could it be that getting dicked down by EoSD and having to start over many times gave it more room to settle in, and that's why it's my preferred of the three? There's a non-zero chance I suppose, but I'm leaning on no mainly due to my general playstyle in other older games involving plenty of savestating, and I do have some higher rated games that I breezed through in this manner, such as Pulseman.

It must be that the cast and soundtrack are at their apex there in my opinion (the Scarlet Devil Mansion gang is all insane goofballs and I love them). PCB here falls a little short in comparison in these regards, although it does feature Yuyuko and Yukari as great standout characters. Maybe it and Imperishable Night will both need some time to grow, but they're still very solid as is.

Now that I've played the first eight games except the third one, I would definitely recommend to look after these three rather than the PC98 games. The latter are total bullshit to get your hands on to begin with, but they're just not as remarkable anyway. As for which specific one you should play first out of those...maybe this one? This or Imperishable Night, probably. They're much more manageable than previous outings.

Great game. Easier than 6, but has a lot of QoL. Music's great, we love the characters. All this shit rules. It's 2hu baby.

What's really funny is that while this game starts developing a lot of the world and characters of the series, most of that happens in supplemental writing. Just playing this game, the plot is mostly goofy nonsense. The Queen of ghosts, Yuyuko, is stealing the spring in order to make a cherry tree bloom just for funsies and you beat her up to stop her so that winter ends. In the extra levels, you find out that she had the help of a powerful youkai that can manipulate borders, Yakari, and you beat her up to so that she'll fix it. She kind of doesn't. Gensokyo is a sealed-off region of Japan where all the supernatural things go, and Yukari isn't developed beyond the idea that she's maybe responsible for missing children getting sucked in periodically.

In reality, there's a whole bunch of backstory here. Yuyuko wanted to make the cherry tree bloom so that she could find out who was buried under it. This is just totally unresolved in the game, but it's actually her own body, buried there beneath the tree after her suicide to seal it away because it was a dangerous youkai that killed people. Did ZUN have any of that in mind when he made the game? I have no clue! There's enough to suggest that he might have, and just figured that a shmup wasn't a good medium to tell that story.

Yukari is like, one of the most powerful characters in the setting(This is also the game that introduces the idea that the combat in-game is more like a competition designed to allow humans to be able to win than actual combat) who helped create Gensokyo itself. She's usually depicted as being very invested in keeping things running and tends to be the one to figure out a plan that resolves a lot of the plots of future games. In this one she's a dipshit who sleeps all day, has a pet fox, and quite possibly tears holes in the barrier just for a laugh. Honestly, goals. I also want to sleep and hug a fox. I cannot imagine that ZUN had any idea what he was going to do with this character when he made this game.

It's interesting to look back on this and think about current Touhou writing and how its developed over the years. The games have always felt like a half-finished thought, and I mean that in a good way, but we hadn't really reached the "themes" level yet. Still, nothing really quite captures what I love about the series like the juxtoposition between Yuyuko's personality and motivations being 'whatever' and the haunting nobility of her theme song, Border of Life. Is grace a thing of high-minded purpose, or is an ageless, tragic existence in itself a thing of terrible beauty, no matter how few fucks you give?

perfect cherry blossom é tão acima de embodiment of scarlet devil esteticamente e em termos de gameplay que parece até que a série passou um reboot de novo. o stage 4 é tão impressionante na maneira que ele eleva a dificuldade do jogo que eu fiquei boquiaberta na primeira vez que eu joguei. e depois disso, o texto começa a ficar tão melancólico e poético que não tinha chance nenhuma dele não começar a morar no meu coração. que excelente jogo. eu quero jogar ele pra sempre. eu acabei de perceber que a capa desse jogo é literalmente a bandeira bissexual. happy pride

My eyes are way too weary and my consciousness has drifted far too apart for me to care about my brain repressing the oh-so-famous embarrassing memories of my life.
As the images get exponentially faster, there's one that pops up every 6 months or so to crush any bit of effort I put into sleeping : my thirteen-year-old ass watching Touhou videos for hours because "it's pretty".

This is a checkmate to my younger self, and more importantly, an apology to all Touhou players for putting this away for so long.

I want to lose myself in waves upon waves of colors, let my mind bend at blossoms of bullets and stare for hours at the thousands of lights dancing toward me.
This is not just "pretty" and hypnotic, this is beyond beautiful.

You remember that one part, shortly after beating Yuyuko's last spell card? As you sit there, reflecting on your journey, the horrors of Stage 4, Youmu's wild ride, and Yuyuko's tough as nails spellcards, some weird poem shows up:

"Remembering the melancholy of human existence
Even ghosts stray from the path of righteousness"

And then BAM, guess who's back, ready for more? Motherfucking Yuyuko, cutting through your reprieve with one last desperate stand: 66 seconds of WAVE after WAVE of beautiful danmaku. With no recourse, you hold on for dear life, dodging on pure adrenaline-fueled instinct, so as to justify the efforts and prayers of the last 30 minutes; all against the backdrop of the absolutely JAMMING remix of Border of Life.

Yeah, I fucking felt that.