day three of using my expensive ass new pc to do nothing but play touhou

damn this shit was fire. i absolutely LOVED the bosses in this one - while MoF's ranged from decent to frustrating, they're all more or less winners here. even though there are some insane gimmicks that are hard to deal with depending on what shot type you have, it's still a really fun time. the difficulty is pretty insane too, but they practically shower you in extra lives so it ends up balancing out.

unfortunately a lot of the shot types aren't as fun to use as the other games, and some spell cards do feel like total horseshit. but overall i had a great time with this one.

Despite being one of the hardest games in the franchise, I also found this game being one of my all time favorites.

In my opinion this game features some of the better writing in the series. like Imperishable Night, there's a character tagging along with your pc [albeit less directly here] and your dialogue reflects that. The characters play off each other well, and it makes for more entertaining interactions overall.

This games ost is one of the better ones, and the characters are great. The spellcards can be rather brutal, and patterns are quite dense.

Like Mountain of Faith, this game has a different bombing system. Rather than bombs being their own resource, they are tied to power. I find that this game is a bit less forgiving than MoF when it comes to the amount of bombs you can use, which adds to the difficulty factor. It can be easy to fall for the trap of struggling with a spell card, bombing to survive, doing less damage because you bombed, and then needing to bomb again due to pressure. Additionally, you have to be on top of collecting your life pieces, which are obtained by surviving spell cards. As long as you make sure to do so, you have a good amount of lives, however! [Though due to the overall difficulty of the game, it may be hard to keep them.]

This game is a very easy one to recommend, but make sure you already have some experience with touhou or other shmups first!

é palpável a sensação de mau humor e melancolia em tudo o que permeia esse jogo, a ambientação do jogo serem o subsolo que eventualmente chega numa cidade e aos poucos o jogo vai dando forma a iconografia infernal do jogo, tudo vira fogo até chegarmos ao centro de tudo e dar de cara com o sol - enquanto as fases vão ficando mais intensas aos olhos, as músicas carregam um ar de melancolia e calma.


os personagens de SA são as ostracizadas isolados de qualquer semblante de sociedade, banidos para viver no inferninho pessoal deles abaixo da terra, não a toa então que a dificuldade é bem maior que os outros e os padrões de tiros são caóticos e fora da casinha comparado a outros da série.


engajar com SA é uma experiência muito forte porque também é a forma mais intensa de engajar com os floreios narrativos de touhou, as peculiaridades de cada personagem e ambiente tão vazando pra todo lado de forma gritante. e o que é touhou se não ficar íntimos das personagens e suas casinhas, só que dessa vez a casa delas é um inferno.

"The gameplay theme there is 'hated danmaku for hated people'.
The game is about characters society hates, and they hate you.
Fuck you." - my friend Funbus

Touhou 10 was the series' audiovisual blossom. It was the most mystical a Touhou game ever felt, the most personality Gensokyo as an entity had ever had up to that point. Subterranean Animism had a very difficult game to follow up. Despite the odds, it delivers an incredibly meaningful addition to both Touhou's mythos and game design.

Game design wise, Touhou 11 is simply the best playing game in the series. While every game up to this point is designed well, SA is designed impeccably. The patterns get interesting early, and they stay interesting for the entire game. There is no "it gets real at Stage 4" here-- lose your focus and the game will pounce on your vulnerability like a goddamn predator. I wouldn't have it any other way. MoF can eat its heart out here.

Presentationally, this entry is almost, if it not more rich in content than its predecessor. Revolving around what is now an abandoned Hell, SA has some of the best tone setting thus far. While the soundtrack fails to compete with the juggernaut that is 10's, it's a very emotional OST. It's as if what was being used to describe Gensokyo as a world has been condensed in size to instead define Former Hell, which again, gives it incredible identity. SA also has one of the strongest cast lists in the series-- you can't go wrong with Yuugi's just toying with the protagonists (her sake NOT EVEN DROP) or Satori being a shrewd little prick who clearly loves what makes others hate her.

TH11 is awesome. When I 1CC'd this game my computer began to get very hot and it felt like Okuu was really burning me to death. This one might've always been destined to be my favorite because I somehow got the world's most awesome ludonarrative experience packaged in with the best game in the series.

Finally got my normal 1cc after what felt like an eternity

At first I didn't like this game at all for how different it felt to other touhou games I've played before, be it ennemies' attacks patterns or our own type shot...

But with time and while I was playing it, I grew to appreciate each pattern and how this game felt special among others.

However I still find that the soundtrack and visuals are inferior to to all the mainlines TH games I've played before (except 9 probably)

It was very fun, for my own mental health I'm not gonna do extra stage though

A certain VTuber, Deltarune, and my increased experience and appreciation for bullet hell/shoot 'em ups got me wanting to get into this series again. Not exactly sure if this is my favorite installment, it's one of the tougher games, but it definitely pleased me from beginning to end. Has some of my favorite tracks in the series, love Yuugi Hoshiguma and Utsuho Reiuji's designs too. Honestly glad I decided to return to this, I've been playing these games ever since I was in my teens and coming back as an adult, I'm able to recognize so much more to love than just the music, gameplay and characters. I guess I just find aspects of Touhou in its entirety to be very comforting to me and if a game can give me comfort while also providing so much more than even that, well I think that says enough about its value to me.