Alright alright so I just came from beating the game for the first time and I just decided to write a review for it already, not even time to get thoughts together. So let's just go ahead already.

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.

Stage 1 music didn't have to go so hard, though. But seriously, I was really excited to finally get to the Windows games, and perhaps my expectations were a bit too high, because while I do really enjoy this game, a prettier coat of paint isn't gonna gaslight me into preferring this over something like LLS (my beloved). Plus, while I am not letting this issue affect my rating, I'd like to mention the headache this game brought on to me:

So, it was my first run, and I got about halfway through Stage 3, when suddenly, my left arrow key stopped working. Granted, this seems to be a common issue with a lot of Touhou games and I have experienced it a few times in the older games as well, but I could usually fix it relatively quickly. This time, nothing I did worked. I restarted the game, my PC, updated my drivers, cleaned the socket for the key, and still no dice. This is a problem that also persisted outside of the game, though. I was starting to think the switch died or something, but every once in a while, it would decide to work again for a bit, and then die again. After not touching it for a few hours, I came back. and everything was working normally. I got to the final boss aaaaaand... the key stopped working again.

I was able to brute force my way to victory with the harder to use num pad, but I guess my point is: If it turns out that I need to replace my keyboard, it'd be kind of funny to say it was because of Touhou.

Getting the normal 1CC on this was the moment that truly had me sold on bullet hells I think, since I can't really remember the last time I felt such a strong emotional response to succeeding at something in a game, or such nervousness when things began to look bleak. This game also really amps up how cool a lot of these bullet patterns look, with some especially interesting mechanics that offer a variety of challenges both purely reflex based and ones that focus more on pattern recognition. An absolute blast, only got mad occasionally :)

The impact of this game is unmeasurable. Before I knew what Touhou even was, I already had listened to most of this game’s music. Eventually I figured out what it was, and became interested in the series. I always wanted to try them out, which I did. I played Lunar Nights and adored it. I then played Ultimate Vitality of Imagination (A Touhou game I see literally no one talk about, but it is criminally underrated.) And now, I finally got around to playing a mainline entry, and there was no better place to start than Embodiment of a Scarlet Devil. Did it live up to all the hype? After playing it... yeah, no shit it does.

I mean, this is THE Touhou game. Almost all the characters introduced here and the music are iconic. Of course, this game is fantastic.

Touhou Embodiment of a Scarlet Devil follows Reimu Hakurei, a shrine maiden, attempting to figure out who is behind the weird mist in the air. So she travels around trying to find the culprit, who they discover is living in the Scarlet Devil Mansion. The story barely matters, if I am being honest. It’s cool that it’s there though.

The game is separated into 6 stages, 5 if you’re playing on easy. In each stage, you survive an endless barrage of bullets being shot at you by enemies and bosses. You start with 3 HP and 3 bombs you can use to clear out the screen if you’re in a situation where you’re about to get hit or want to skip past a tough section of the stage. You also have the opportunity to increase your character’s power by collecting red Power items. Power is really useful since it lets you do more damage, which in turn, means you'll spend less time on a tough attack. There are also blue point items that increase your score when they’re collected. Depending on your score, you get HP bonuses so even if you’re not aiming for a high score, you should try to get as many of them as you can. HP is a rare and limited resource and I’ll take any I can possibly get.

By holding shift, you can slow down, allowing you to pull off precise maneuvers to dodge attacks that get thrown at you. One thing I’m not a fan of is that at least for this game, you can’t see your hitbox when you’re slowing down. Your hitbox is a tiny little circle in the center of your player character. So you don’t get hurt if a bullet touches you, only if it touches the hitbox. This allows you to graze past bullets, and you get bonus points for doing it successfully. The problem is that you can’t see it, making it harder to dodge attacks. I got used to it since I had played another Touhou game before, so I had a rough idea of where the hitbox was, but it still felt odd that it was completely invisible. I understand why this game is known for not being accessible to newcomers because nothing in the game tells you about the small hitbox. So you’re kinda screwed if you didn’t know about it beforehand.

When it comes to the bosses, they’re all great. Each of them has unique attack patterns that are very exhilarating to survive against. It takes a lot of time and patience. You will die a lot, and the game’s still hard even on Normal, which is the difficulty setting I went with. So, if you plan to give this game a shot, expect to replay the same stages multiple times. I did not mind it since they were a blast to get through. With every attempt, I would do them slightly better. I felt like I was always improving, which made the grind less annoying. I will say that some attacks felt a bit unfair to dodge, although that might be because of the whole hitbox issue.

And of course, I can’t forget what Touhou is most known for: it’s music! I listened to the game’s soundtrack before I played through it. All of it is fantastic. My favorite track in the game is easily the extra stage theme. It makes grinding through that level not as bad as it could’ve been.

Overall despite the hitbox issue, I had a great time with Touhou 6! I’m excited to try out the other mainline games eventually. Highly recommend checking it out, just be prepared for a very challenging experience.

Another great game from Zun, yet a bit worse than the last and definitely not the game you should begin with for this series.

I feel like I'm repeating myself here but yes, this game has a great OST (which imo is kinda worse than the last games' as well), silly characters and a nice, fluid gameplay with 2 completely different characters and movesets and all that. But in my opinion it fails when bringing completely new things to the table. Like the bosses now have a timer which, if it runs out, brings you to their next phase regardless of if you even scratched them or not. This, of course, doesn't give you any points, so there's almost no reason to do this. It could only really happen if you just don't want to shoot.
I know this may just be me being bad but sometimes there was so much stuff on the screen I could barely see where to go. And this is coming from Touhou 5 which had a level with a blue background and blue bullets. There also seemed to be moments where, unless you're on some kinda ultra instinct type beat, you won't be able to dodge anything unless you use a bomb. And the level 5 boss was genuinely harder than the Final Boss.

But it's still an alright game so if you like Touhou you should play this game (which you probably did already but who knows). But if this is your first Touhou game I wouldn't recommend it.