This was the first Touhou I played, so there's still a bit of sentimentality there. After playing most of the series, this one kinda gets lost in the middle. It's just more Touhou.

Ten Desires is unremarkable aside from its new character designs. It's easy, though I still think Imperishable Night is easier overall because you get so many more resources that you can just bomb half the game, but TD has by far the easiest bullet patterns in the series. The stages are barren and uninteresting compared to the frantic stages of 12 (thanks to the UFO mechanic). The music is low-key compared to most other Touhou games, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The title screen and Stage 5 themes are standouts. Also... why did it take so long to put Spell Practice back... only to be removed again in 14-16.

Pretty good game, but a step back from 12 and 11.

Why does this website have two entries for Ten Desires?
Anyway,

I quite like this game actually. I know some people are not a fan, and I can completely understand where they're coming from. But I adore the trance mechanic and just the overall pacing/feeling of the game. Frankly if given the choice I'd take the trance mechanic over the UFO mechanic every single time it's not even close.

The shot types are fun, and music is good, and the spell cards are neat. In particular, Seigas little gimmick with Yoshika stands out to me. But I also quite like Kyouko's bullet gimmick as well.

This game is very tight with resources though, and many find it unforgiving. You're just not really allowed any unneeded deaths like you are in other games. Though, you can still manage with one or two, just don't be reckless.

Overall, I consider it a good experience. Not worth skipping, but not a game I'd specifically recommend either.

i was getting my ass thoroughly beat by the sudden jump in difficulty in subterranean animism (really fun game though) so i figured i'd jump in and clear this one since it's of the era and i'd heard it was easy. and... easy, it definitely was. 1cc'd this on hard without too much headache over the course of two days of practice, which is really fast for me at a new touhou. i wouldn't call ten desires bad per se, but it's definitely my least favorite windows-era mainline touhou. honestly, i'd put it under one or two of the pc-98 games, too. i guess this one felt the least... fun or memorable to me? the designs and plot in this one felt very so-so in comparison to mountain of faith or what i've seen of animism and ufo. the soundtrack was one of the lesser ones too, with only the stage 6 boss' theme really sticking out to me. the game feels SUPER balanced towards reimu and sanae, but i will say youmu's gimmick is cool if impractical. worst aspect of this game is the spirit gauge, though. easily the most disruptive and redundant of all the gimmicks i've seen, and that INCLUDES the ufos, which i like more than most people. resources being limited drives little incentive to points beyond bragging rights. still, this is a windows-era touhou - they're good games pretty much by default. i still enjoyed this enough to 1cc and extra stage clear, but i don't really see myself coming back to this one all that much.

Wow, I rated this game lower than UFO and POFV. Which is kinda crazy, as I think this is the easiest game in this series. Seriously, I beat it on my first run, and even captured 90% of the final boss's spell cards. I find the plot nice, still like the chain of consequences MoF created, and the OST is really lovely in stages. Boss music is eh for the most part, Seiga and Mamizou have real bangers compared to everyone else

The gameplay is at fault for why I didn't like this game. Sure, it's super easy, but this game has so many weird design choices that just brings it down for me. Trance mode, the main gimmick of the game, is so bizarrely handled. You have to collect spirits that enemies drop, which stay in place and mostly stay at the top of the screen, making it somewhat dangerous to go fetch them should an enemy pull a gotcha!. Charge your meter to the max and then release to be invulnerable of 10 seconds and deal more damage. Cool right? I just don't understand why it needs to be charged to the max, when dying uses up what you have accumulated as some sort of dying breath attack. Why not use it at command, if dying is gonna basically do that? Easy to abuse? Maybe, but I just find that weird personally.

Then comes the resources. They are also spirits, and still use the piece system. Being in Trance mode doubles how much a spirit is worth, which is cool. What I find weird is how lives were handled. Getting a life from pieces increases the amount of pieces you need for the next one by 3. Ok, sounds like something to prevent abuse. What I don't understand is why bomb pieces don't do the same, or better yet, why the heck does the threshold stay after you die? You could have 2 lives left and the next life requires 18 pieces to get.

It's crazy how a game this easy in a notoriously difficult genre is this unlikable to play to me.

This one is definitely a special game in the series, frankly speaking the atmosphere of this game felt like a breath of fresh air after the two epic and very intense last 2 games, I'm grateful for that.

The game felt more slow-paced, with less bullet density, as for patterns I think it was so-so overall but there were still some very interesting one, 4th stage boss' Seiga is amazing and Futo's lastcard felt like it came out of Shoot the bullet/Double Spoiler, loved it.

I'm not fond of this game's mechanics, it felt too similar to UFO while not being as dynamic. The fact that the ovnis bounce around make it possible to pick each of them well with good timing and preparation, it became a little game inside its own game to pick as much ufos as possible while still dodging bullets. On the other hand the divine spirits never move and just stay there for some time then disappear, I think it's a bit boring and they make the screen less clear to see.

As for the music it's definitely more calm and a bit less memorable than the previous games but I still liked it, notably
4th stage and miko's theme.

Overall Touhou Ten Desires felt like a transitional, more laid-back game between 2 era of Touhou and I can't wait to see what the next ones will be like.

Underwhelming music for a Touhou game and the scoring system is pretty strange but weirdly fun.
Stages are devoid of enemies, probably the most barren game in the series.

Going for Lunatic 1CC in this one didn't completely suck.

The extra stage is absolutely miserable though.

not the strongest touhou game for me, but not the weakest either. mechanically, the gathering spirits mechanic is almost something and i don't mind how punishing it is to get hit when you consider the relative ease of the danmaku, but the requirement to obtain exponentially more life pieces to get extra lives feels really really bad, as does having optimal resource collection be connected to smart use of the trance meter.

that being said, the music here is some of the strongest in touhou imo (faves include Legend of the Great Gods, Shoutoku Legend~ True Administrator, Let’s Live in a Lovely Cemetery and Old Yuanxian), and there are so many great girls here (Miko, Seiga Kaku, Yoshika Miyako, etc). there are some especially fun spell cards as well, such as Saint Girl "Oomonoimi's Banquet", Hermit Sign "Taoist of the Land of the Rising Sun", and Path Sign "Tao Fetal Movement".

TLDR- Quirky fun, a rather awkward entry though, being the bridge between the difficult hell that is SA and UFO to the new generation

Ten Desires fits into the category of “awkward” of Touhou mainline games. Awkward is a complement however. Coming off the heels of the experimental and incredibly difficult Undefined Fantastic Object and Subterranean Animism, Ten Desires looks to take a step back in bullet density and scale of the former games, even stated as so by ZUN in the omake.txt of this game. To understand this game you the former two games need to be taken into account, SA and UFO were a continuation of the vastly significant increase in story focus that MoF provided. However I think the series got a bit lost in the progression of those two games. I love SA and UFO a ton don’t get me wrong but something feels off about them in the scale of the series, classically described as “the two weird and EXTREMELY hard games in the 2nd Windows era” I think those two entries lost a bit of what made Touhou what it is, losing some intangible sense of identity the series had was lost to the new focus on world building. Every effort in Ten Desires reflects an effort to “humble” the track of the series in a sense, bring it back down to the magic that Touhou 6-8 were, with less scale and less drastic gameplay qualities. These humblings work in its favor though and it becomes a forgotten diamond right in the middle of the series.


The scaling of this game is most apparent in its characters deliberately being focused on. UFO had great characterization on a personal scale, but Ten Desires excels in relationships, as well as getting great personalization too. This game from the offset was made with the idea of being a scaling back of the series and you see that with the first boss, Yuyuko returning from her final boss status from Perfect Cherry Blossom. Immediately this shows that familiarity will be a huge part in this game. Yuyuko returning was such a great move to for the first boss of the game, most first bosses are forgotten in the long run anyways so making the least important boss slot an important character in the past that is relevant to the current plot a decision that gives a lot of bang for your buck storytelling wise. I’ll jump to stage 3 (stage 2 does really feel like where the game starts with the boss being a character that doesn’t play a huge role in the story, still love Kyouko tho <3) where Kogasa from UFO shows up again, playing into the familiarity theme again. The stage 3 boss Yoshika goes down and then you meet her again with her master on the stage 4 boss Seiga, who adds to the familiarity again. You already have fought Yoshika once at this point, so you know her patterns to an extent, this constant reiteration from attacks past like Yuyuko attacking on a scaled down version from PCB, fighting Kogasa one game retired from her home game, fighting Yoshika with Seiga; all of these call back and reused characters and attacks make the characters in this game feel interconnected the best in the series (maybe 18 is vying for that now but we’ll see). This interconnectedness gives a piece of that magic back that was lost in SA and UFO, while those games have good characterization, the characters themselves don’t feel connected, despite having a deeper lore connection than the Ten Desires cast. But the effort put into reiteration and characters interacting in the ways they do in this game makes the characters feel incredibly genuine, especially for a series such as this one. Jumping to Miko, she too has this theme of interconnectedness by attacking with Soga and Futo for a spell, making it feel like you're taking down a clan rather than one person doing wrong as is often the case in this series. All of this leads to an incredible cast, not one carried by strong personalities or cool stories or designs, but one that's strength is bonds, which is an incredibly unique take on the characters in this story.

The gameplay also humbles itself in Ten Desires too, less bullets and easier patterns. That isn’t to say this game is easy or anything, I actually found it surprisingly difficult. This game finds its difficulty not from tough patterns but from punishing mistakes, with one of the lowest amount of extra lives given in the series. But this more punishing system is complemented beautifully with the new “trance” mechanic, making you invincible for a period of time and giving you different sub effects based on the character you chose. This mechanic gives you an incredibly powerful mode that might be unmatched in usefulness in the series, so it balances out the punishing nature of the extra lives in the game. Pattern wise, it’s a pretty average affair, nothing too crazy (Outside of Mamizou but extra bosses always get crazy things). The most interesting thing in this game pattern wise in my opinion is stage patterns, some get ridiculously hard at times (end of stage 4 and stage 5) and a lot of routing is required to learn when to trance for a good amount of bomb pickups. This game has a lot of stage focus, which is fine just something interesting as UFO had a lot of that too, but again, scaled down in this game. The AWFUL continue system used in SA and UFO are finally gone, replaced with the more traditional credit system which is far superior in my opinion. As for shot types, Reimu is your standard fare, small hitbox and good stages. Marisa I believe is underrated, with a very powerful trance, but is hindered by difficult stages. Sanae is nerfed to hell from her glory in UFO, and a ton of shotgunning is required to make her decent. Youmu is here for the first time, introducing a charge character. She's really hit or miss imo, it’s a neat addition but execution of her is extremely difficult and she feels terrible to play without full power. Maybe she’d be better if her hitbox actually did get smaller when charging as said in game but alas ZUN coding prevented it. The gameplay of this game is fun however, with it being as punishing as it is, you end up going on long streaks of fighting through attacks that are very doable and it leads to great back and forths, it feels like the energy of an extra stage the entire game.

Aesthetically, this game is also toned down in most facets from the grand scales of the sunsets over Hokkai and Hell. The one knock I do have on this game is the environments are rather boring, stage 5 being the only one to stand out to me. The music in this game is also equally as subdued but it works in the favor of the game. The more subtle environments lend themselves to the more low key music in the game. The fastest and most exciting song in Ten Desires, Desire Drive, is still rather calm and more whimsical than anything for this series, ESPECIALLY for some of the music put out by the series. Graphically, ZUN art is whatever to make fun of, but bullet clarity is great throughout, which is always a plus.

This game is humble, and I think the series needed it to be honest, ending the 2nd windows generation on an increasingly epic in scale games would eventually make this series a contest to top the last and that's exactly the last thing I think it needs, the series has never been afraid to calm itself, (Look at this game after 11 and 12, 16 after the wackiness that was 15, 9 being a completely different game after 8). All of these examples show ZUNs skill as a designer to adjust his craft. His adjustment led to this great but humble game, this game feels incredibly genuine and was the beer cracked to settle down the 2nd window generation before the craziness of touhou 14-18 was unleashed.

Touhou macro-level plots are generally at their best when they're just weird meditations on things instead of actually attempting to have stakes, and Ten Desires is definitely one of those. The whole thing is mostly a setup for the next fighting game, setting up a Taoist faction in the setting and the idea that they might want a full scale religious war with the Buddhists from UFO.

Touhou was always about myths, folklore, and their place in the modern world, but Ten Desires specifically looks at historical figures by having the antagonist be Prince Shotoku, a very well-known figure, and then having him actually be completely different from the legends in ways that maybe accidentally feel like wild conspiracy theories. Secretly Taoist. Secretly in league with her enemies. Secretly an anime lady with headphones and not the mustached guy on the currency.

Frankly, as a North American colonizer, all the closest legendary historical figures are extremely recent, so there's less of the whole "might not have actually existed" going on, but you don't have to look far to find the mythologizing of real people. How many shitty copy paste stories about Albert Einstein owning liberal teachers have you seen? I love what Miko adds to the flavor of the Touhou setting and I love her stupid hair.

Oh yeah the game? The shooting? It's a really easy one designed for new people to have an easy time getting into it. The special mechanic isn't super exciting but it can be kind of fun to power up and shoot a bunch of bullets. I like this one.