Going through (almost) every Touhou game in release order #2 - Lotus Land Story

[Cosmic]

Ok, hear me out here. Why did I jump straight from Highly Responsive to Prayers to Lotus Land Story? Well, to be quite honest, I despise playing Story of Eastern Wonderland to the point where I don't even have the will to get past stage 3, but want to be able to say something of actual value in these posts, so I'm skipping it so I don't have to play more of it to form more of a coherent opinion, and while Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream seems potentially interesting, Neko Project refuses to run it for me specifically for some reason, so for now, Lotus Land Story it is (although, if you want to know my impression of PoDD despite the fact I've never played it, I think the story and characters seem really cool, and some of the music is pretty good (especially Sailor of Time)).

This is a weird one for me, as when I can get it to work, it's a genuinely fun and enjoyable game, but for some reason, Neko Project refuses to smoothly run this one in particular for me, except for the one single time when it ran without any lag whatsoever, so it's rare that I get to enjoy it. That being said, when it does work, it's actually a genuinely fun time, and one I'd wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who can figure out how to make it run smoothly. The game itself is a fairly solid bullet hell, without anything exceptionally good or bad gameplay-wise that's worth mentioning, although it is noteworthy for being the origin point of a lot of future staples of the series, such as the focus button, counter-bombing, and Marisa as the secondary main character. Additionally, I also noticed how... weirdly easy it was. I managed to 1cc the game as Reimu on normal mode on my first try, and for context, the only Windows-era Touhou games I've been able to 1cc are EoSD and PCB, where I turned the starting lives all the way up, and MoF, which is a game I specifically went out of my way to practice at so I could 1cc it, so this isn't something I would normally be able to do. Whether that's good or bad is up to you, but I felt it was worth mentioning.

Anyway, yippee woohoo story! There are youkai getting funky in Gensokyo, Reimu and Marisa go to a big lake in the mountains, and then they go under the lake into a wacky new world that has a big mansion in it. Fairly standard Touhou stuff, really, and nearly identical to SoEW's story, except better by virtue of the fact something is actually accomplished by the end, and also the fact that it's not SoEW. That being said, despite its simplicity, there are still a lot of things here I genuinely enjoy. Stuff like Elly having to reluctantly admit she let the other character get past her too regardless of who you're playing as is pretty funny to me, and the lead-up to Reimu and Marisa's fight as well as the whole chase sequence with Yuuka in stage 6 are both genuinely cool moments that make this game feel much more enjoyable to me. Its story is simple, yes, but that doesn't mean there's not a lot here to like. Oh, and this game introduces Yuuka. I really like Yuuka. That is all.

Also, the soundtrack! I haven't listened to all of PoDD's soundtrack, so I don't know how much of this applies there, but LLS really feels like the point where ZUN truly got the hang of using the PC-98 to create music, and there's a lot of songs here I really like. Bad Apple is an obvious one, but Decoration Battle goes unreasonably hard for a stage 1 boss theme, and Sleeping Terror and Faint Dream ~ Inanimate Dream are both great themes for Yuuka, even if I do slightly prefer Sleeping Terror. Vessel of Stars ~ Casket of Star is also another fantastic theme from this game, and possibly my favorite piece of music in the whole thing, and while it is a little hard to listen to this game's version of Maiden's Capriccio now without comparing it to its other (in my opinion) more enjoyable versions from future games, there's a reason it's been brought back as many times as it has, even if I do slightly prefer Vessel of Stars over it.

I'd like to balance this post out a bit by mentioning something I don't like about this game, but honestly, nothing comes to mind for me. There's the lag, I guess, but that feels more like an issue on my end than something that would have been present on the original hardware, and that aside, I really can't think of anything I don't like here. Overall, Lotus Land Story is a great game in my opinion, and definitely worth checking out if you can get it to run smoothly. I have no idea what I did on the one singular occasion where it ran perfectly for me without any issues, but if anyone has any advice, do please let me know, I'd love to play more of this game, including the extra stage, which I've never actually gotten a chance to touch.

[sodaodaoda]

How about trying out T98-Next? That's the PC98 emulator that I have been using ever since I first got into Touhou and it's smooth as hell, not to mention that it doesn't have audio problems like Neko 2

[Cosmic]

2 minutes ago, sodaodaoda said:

How about trying out T98-Next? That's the PC98 emulator that I have been using ever since I first got into Touhou and it's smooth as hell, not to mention that it doesn't have audio problems like Neko 2

I've never heard of that one, I'll give it a look! Who knows, maybe I'll even be able to get it to run PoDD as well.

[Deiffu]

LLS is my favorite pc98 game, music just slaps and gameplay is spot on. Also i didn't have any trouble with lag so propably something on your part.

[Flame Sniper]

Emulating PC98 is pretty tricky, here's the setup i made to get 4 and 5 running smoothly: 
First, im running Neko Project II Kai, using Retroarch from Flathub (a linux appstore, the Windows version should work just as well).

Open the game you want with the core, then press F1. Go to "Core options" (I'm using Spanish, might use different words in yours), increase RAM size to 120MB, use CPU Base Clock at 2.45576MHz, CPU Feature at Intel 80386 and put CPU Clock Multiplier at 24. 
With these, you should get good fps even in the most complex attacks (the ZunSoft logo playing without issues is your main indicator everything works fine) 

Also, im using a version of the games that has an English translation i got from Internet Archive 
https://archive.org/details/ritokatsugathpc98 

[Gri]

LLS is definitely one of the easier Touhou game. I only struggled with Lunatic. It is a good game though for those who prefer more simple Touhou. The mechanics are simple (no UFO, aggressive grazing, aggressive POC).

It was cool playing LLS to discover the game that solidified the basics of every Touhou game that came after it: Reimu and Marisa being the main characters, Reimu having homing shot and being more beginner friendly (you just have to focus on defense), Marisa having powerfull piercing lasers but more for advanced player (you have to aim at the enemy), death-bomb giving you a "mercy" delay before killing you (while you can death-bomb on purpose, the delay is so small that this delay is mostly to avoid situation where you think "what the hell! I bombed!" like in SoEW where you get hit while pressing the bomb key). If I remember right, this is also where Graze is introduced, along with Focus to make dodging much natural (no need to do micro-taps on the keyboard).

All in all, I recommend to anyone whose looking to see where it all began.

EDIT:

Forgot about the soundtrack: This is where Zun also started syncing the music to the stage, which is really great as it make both the music and the game more enjoyable and memorable. My favorite tracks are all in the Stage 4 (the stage theme and both boss themes)

Edited May 8, 2023 by Gri