An interesting take on the formula from the second game, yet a bit lackluster in the long run.

Compared to the second game this game takes a formula of some kind of versus battle where your character is on the left with the opposing character on the right and you fight each other trying to fill each other's screen with the most amount of bullets possible. Whoever loses all their HP first, makes the other character win. It's an interesting idea but that's all there really is to it. Not to mention that the game is quite easy since you regain all your HP and bombs after you finish the level and in general the game is just far more forgiving. You can also play this game in multiplayer and that'd probably be pretty fun.
This game also focuses much more on the story, so to speak. There's a lot more dialogue this time around and the endings are actually quite different now since there are also multiplae characters you can play as, all having different speed and projectiles. The music is fine and the visuals aren't bad but they're not as good as second or even first game.

Overall, I still think this is a bit better than the first game but quite a bit worse than the second.

This doesn't have the novelty of being the first Touhou game or the first Touhou shmup, as the prior two PC-98 entries do, but it does have the prestige of being way better than either of them. It's not incredible, I doubt I'll ever like any of these games as much as I do the Windows ones, but all the charm of the series is there. The visuals and audio are still good, but this game shifts the gameplay style again pretty drastically. it's not as out there as The Highly Responsive to Prayers, but its weird Touhou-meets-tetris-multiplayer gameplay is still very fun. Afaik the ninth game uses this style as well but I've never played it. Compared to just Touhou 1 and 2, Phantasmagoria of Dim Dream is easier, faster, simpler, and just flat-out more fun than either of them. I barely died across multiple playthroughs but it never felt like a problem with the game's design. I'd like to see something like this with more fleshed-out gameplay and online play, it's very fun even in this simple form.

This game is really sick actually, wasn't really expecting another switch-up to the formula, and one that goes into a style that I haven't really seen many other games attempting (I will play Twinkle Star Sprites eventually). There's a really great sense of ramping intensity to the game loop, with this wonderful little dynamic of having to balance between timing for the optimal combos and madly dashing to just clear the screen of potential threats, with the game leaning into this really strongly by the end, where there's so much going on that it's almost not worth trying to time things correctly because you'll still get some good combos regardless. Even fighting against the AI feels like a great time, being a very hectic and unpredictable mad dash with a sense of give and take constantly pushing itself forth, especially prominent on the last few stages. Thought I wasn't really going to vibe with this one much, and in all honesty I think it has a similar problem to Touhou 2 where it's in desperate need of some visual clarity at points, but despite that, this is definitely my favourite one so far by quite a decent margin, it's just fun!

I thought we were done with the touhou games made before Zun figured out what Touhou was going to be but lo and behold, touhou 3 is a weird split-screen vs shmup with mechanics reminiscent of puzzle game vs modes. Not a bad idea but the firing method absolutely kills it. Remember where you could just fire your bullets and it leveled up as you picked up stuff? Not anymore! Now you have to hold down the button and sometimes it doesn't go further than the second level and sometimes it goes to four and sometimes inbetween and sometimes it continually fires and sometimes it just doesn't for no discernable reason. It's abysmal.

Touhou 3 continues the early trend of ZUN trying out new things for each game, and while the VS. format is a novel concept and is executed decently enough, I got sufficiently attached to the previous game that I was hoping for more of that. This format also lends itself to a much easier game overall; save for the final boss, which had a sizeable difficulty spike that ruined my initial 1cc run dream. I'll probably go back and try this out with a friend at some point, but it's fun enough as a single player experience, regardless.

The third entry in the touhou series was originally going to be a horizontal shmup funnily enough, but I guess ZUN changed his mind after playing Twinkle Star Sprites and instead made a vs shmup very much in its style. I've come to like this style of shmup quite a lot recently. The snowballing chaos and dynamism of vs shmup gameplay makes it stay fresh where many other shmups naturally become stale. Plagiarised assets aside, PoDD still feels like a unique and fun entry in the prolific Touhou series, also imo even though the first two touhous did still have decent soundtracks, this is where ZUN really started to enter his element in terms of consistently pumping out banger OSTs.

Tetris Touhou?!

The third mainline entry in the Touhou franchise and you can tell the creator wasn't really sure what to make with the franchise, but it seems he finally settled on shmups and not breakout or whatever Touhou 1 was supposed to be.
This Touhou game is most likely the most underrated one out of the PC-98 pentalogy, unlike the first two which are really forgettable for the better or worse. In this game, you can select from a dozen or so character to play but obviously, I picked Reimu, the whole game is separated into two screens like a puzzle game you play with a friend or an AI like Tetris or Panic Bomber. Your goal is to destroy as many enemies with a combo as possible on your screen to fill your attack bar to make a mean attack that will go to the enemy's screen and you need to repeat that process till he dies.
It's pretty easy and fun! I hope we get something else like this online or something.

Should you play this game? Definitely, but I heard Touhou 9 was the same thing but better so you should check out that one first I guess.