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GRAGAGAGAGA I LOVE UFO I LOVE UFO- As you can tell, I really like this game, and while it's not my absolute favorite in the series, it does come close, so I'm probably just going to spend this entire post gushing about how great it is. Starting with the gameplay, Undefined Fantastic Object finally gets rid of the godawful power bomb system introduced in MoF and returns to having a dedicated bomb gauge, as well as introducing a new UFO system, where certain enemies will drop colored UFOs that fly around on the screen for a while, and can be picked up by touching them. When you pick up a UFO, it's added to your collection at the bottom left corner of the screen, with a maximum of three slots to keep them in, and if you can get three UFOs all in the same color, a giant one will appear at the top of the screen, remaining there for exactly ten seconds. This big UFO will consume any power and point items dropped by enemies, and once it's consumed enough, it'll drop a resource of some kind (a fifth of an extra life if it's red, a bomb if it's green, and points if it's blue), and will also drop the same kind of resource if the player can shoot it down in time. Alright, here's why this mechanic absolutely slaps and I love it. It mainly comes down to the extra depth it adds to the game, as well as the extremely fast pace it creates; most UFOs change color every few seconds, going from red to blue to green and then back to red, so if a UFO is of the color you want, you need to get to it quickly, incentivizing the player to zoom across the entire screen at all times. Additionally, there's also a nice sense of player freedom in which UFOs you want to go for; I usually just go for the red ones, since I like having the game be extra challenging with a lot of chances to mess up as opposed to being easier but with more punishment for when you do get hit, but if you'd rather stockpile bombs, or go for a high score, you can do that as well. Admittedly, I do think the blue UFOs just giving you points was a missed opportunity, as high score only means anything to a select few players as opposed to lives and bombs which are going to be useful no matter who you are, but I'm not really sure what else they could have been, so it's not a huge issue. Mainline Touhou, for me, is at its most enjoyable when it's encouraging you to move fast, and giving you a lot of opportunities to grab extra lives (but still expecting you to go out of your way for them, as opposed to in some games where they're just a thing that happens) in exchange for extra-challenging bullet hell, and thanks to the UFO system, this game is the absolute peak of that. I think on a pure gameplay level, this is my absolute favorite game in the entire series, even if there is one game in particular that I haven't gotten to yet which just barely ranks higher than it for me overall. Anyway, moving on from gameplay, the story of the game revolves around the expedition by Murasa, Shou, Nazrin and Ichirin into Makai to free Byakuren Hijiri, a Buddhist nun who was sealed away by humans a thousand years ago for her kindness towards youkai, the previously mentioned four all being youkai she helped at some point; aside from Nazrin, she was just sent by the god Bishamonten to help Shou specifically. Noticing the youkai's strange flying ship in the sky, the player's chosen character, either Reimu, Marisa, or in her first playable appearance, Sanae, decides to go and give it a look, for one reason or another. Some stuff happens, and eventually, the main character ends up freeing Byakuren by themselves, and after this, Byakuren is allowed to return to Gensokyo alongside the youkai who went to save her after all this time, and creates the Myouren Buddhist temple. After the events of the main game, though, Reimu/Marisa/Sanae are still curious about just what those UFO things that seemed to be everywhere were, so they investigate and find that they were actually fragments of a flying vault that were disguised as UFOs by Nue Houjuu, a youkai who was sealed underground but later released thanks to Okuu's actions in Subterranean Animism (loving the continuity between games here), and then decided to get a little silly just for the fun of it and make everyone think the fragments of the flying vault were UFOs. I personally quite like this story. Having covered each mainline game one by one through this series, I've noticed that this seems to be the point where Touhou stories start to have a little more to them than before, with a few more characters actually getting to do things that are directly relevant to the story in some way; EoSD had 1, Remilia, PCB and IN had 2 each, Yuyuko/Yukari and Eirin/Kaguya, PoFV had 2, Komachi and Eiki, and MoF/SA had 1 each, Kanako and Utsuho. UFO, by comparison, has 4, those being Nazrin (found the jewelled pagoda necessary to free Byakuren), Murasa (captain of the flying ship that sailed into Makai), Shou (brought the jewelled pagoda into Makai) and Nue (disguised pieces of the flying vault as UFOs); you can argue it actually has 5 if you count Byakuren, given that she's the whole reason anything here is even happening and creates the Myouren Temple at the end of the game, but during the main story she doesn't directly do anything by herself, so I didn't include her in the list. Regardless of if you count her or not, my point is that this is the first time more than 2 characters have had a direct role in the events of the game beyond simply helping someone else do stuff, like Sakuya or Reisen in previous games. Despite the game's relatively simple story, this still helps it feel like it has a bit more going on than previous games, a trend that continues to varying extents throughout future games, which I enjoy a lot. It's not particularly exceptional, but it's still on the upper end of Touhou stories for me, something which is definitely helped by its excellent cast of characters. I'm actually not sure which Touhou game has my favorite cast of characters, but this is definitely one I'd consider if I had to make that choice. Everyone here (except Ichirin) appeals to me on some level; Nazrin is admittedly a little carried by NYN memes for me, but I like her design, Kogasa is funny, Murasa and Shou just generally have really cool designs and I enjoy their vibes a lot, Byakuren is just eh here but I like her a lot in AoCF (I do love how she has a direct reference to one of Shinki's spellcards here though, that was a pleasant surprise when I first fought her), and Nue's design combined with her really just being a silly little gremlin creature who enjoys getting up to mischief makes her my favorite of this game's cast. Admittedly, I do kind of despise Ichirin, but that's more because she doesn't do anything for me personally and I'm annoyed she got the character slot in the more recent trilogy of fighting games instead of literally anyone else from this game, as opposed to it being down to any actually unlikeable traits she has herself, so I won't pretend she's poorly written or at all unlikeable by herself. While there's not a single character here that I'd personally consider a series favorite, or even a top 10, I like nearly everyone here enough that it's one of the most consistent casts in the series for me, and I don't think the fact there's only one single character introduced here that I don't actively enjoy to some extent is something that can be applied to any other game in the series, so credit where credit is due. This game also managed to give Sanae a personality, something which from what I've seen no other game in the series has managed to do, so I can appreciate its character writing for that as well. Lastly, I want to briefly talk about the game's soundtrack, or more accurately, one song in particular. The whole soundtrack is great, don't get me wrong (Captain Murasa is especially a banger), but there's not much I have to say about most of it... except for Fires of Hokkai. After the extremely chaotic but enjoyable stage 5, and the similarly hectic battle with Shou, stage 6 is comparatively easy, representing a slightly bizarre sense of calm as you finally reach the place where Byakuren has been sealed away for all this time, and Fires of Hokkai does an excellent job at enhancing the vibe stage 6 goes for, so I feel like that one in particular is worth mentioning by itself. Come to think of it, the dynamic between stage 5 and 6 here kind of reminds me of Mystic Square's fifth and sixth stages, which makes me wonder if it was partially an intentional reference to that game or if it's just a coincidence, but given the previously mentioned Shinki spellcard reference, I lean towards thinking it's the former. Overall, Undefined Fantastic Object is a great and extremely fun game, being by far my favorite of the second Windows era, and it's one of the ones I come back to the most of any game in this series. I honestly can't think of a single thing I don't like about it, which isn't something I can say of most of this series, and I think it's definitely worth playing if you somehow haven't already.

Next on the list is Subterranean Animism, which was a weird one for me to cover, because at first, I didn't really have a whole lot to say about it. The characters are all decently likeable to some extent, although Yuugi and Okuu are the only ones that really stand out to me (even if I can appreciate the amount of depth ZUN gave Parsee for a stage 2 boss), the soundtrack is consistent bangers all around (Last Remote my beloved), the story is perfectly serviceable (although the fact that it's a direct continuation from Mountain of Faith is a really nice touch), and it's just a generally pretty solid game that I enjoy a lot. But, there are two things I think are especially worth noting about it, so I've decided to break away from the usual format of these posts to just talk about those aspects in particular. First of all, this game has my favorite implementation of shot types in the entire series. Like the previous game, Reimu and Marisa are the only playable characters, and each has three shot types, but each shot takes on the form of a support character who's helping you out from a distance (Yukari/Suika/Aya for Reimu, and Patchouli/Alice/Nitori for Marisa), and can see everything that you see as well as being able to talk with you and the boss, with this being possible in-universe due to varying different things depending on the character but usually boiling down to Yukari getting up to some shenanigans behind the scenes. I love this for a variety of reasons, but my main one is really just that it's a fun excuse to bring back previous characters and allow them to be actually relevant to the story in ways that they wouldn't normally have any reason to be (hooray for Patchouli getting to do stuff despite never going outside), and as someone who's mostly here because of the large cast of characters, it's just great getting to see them all interact. The two pairings that stood out to me the most in this regard were Reimu/Aya, more just for the fact that Aya is my favorite character in the series than anything, and Marisa/Alice, being a nice evolution of their Imperishable Night dynamic and having them be a little more on the same page than before, while still retaining the element of Alice trying to be rational and Marisa wanting to just go full unga mode that makes them so enjoyable as a pair to me. All of the support characters are written excellently, though, and it's by far my favorite aspect of this game. Additionally, the shot types themselves all work in really weird and unique ways. Suika and Yukari's shot types are fairly standard, being mostly just Reimu's usual homing shot and forward shot respectively, but even they have their own added gimmicks, with Suika being able to autocollect every item on the screen by fully releasing all buttons, and Yukari being able to wrap around to the other side of the screen if you're at the edge. The other shot types, though, are a bit more strange; Reimu's third support character, Aya, has a shot that aims in the opposite direction to the one you just moved in (for example, aiming directly forwards if you move back), being fixed to aiming in one direction while focus is held, and if she stops shooting, she can move extremely quickly. Despite this being seen as the hardest Reimu shot to use, it's the one I used when I first played the game because Aya + I like fast movement in any game genre, so it's the one I'm most used to, and partially as a result of this, my favorite. Now, for Marisa's shot types, all of which are a bit strange to some extent. Nitori's is probably the simplest, being Marisa's slow magic missile shot type she has in most games, but it also has a weird quirk where instead of just using a bomb, pressing X instead creates a camouflage shield around Marisa; if she gets hit while it's out, it clears out nearby bullets and she loses it without losing a life, but if she can last for long enough with it out, she gets the power she spent to use it back. Alice's shot type also has a fun way of utilizing bombs, where instead of the maximum amount of power being 4 like every other shot, it's 8, with each added level of power adding another doll to your side that fires a consistent laser beam, and since this game uses the power bomb system established in Mountain of Faith, each bomb is contextualised as you sending out one of the dolls to briefly fire an extra powerful beam and clear out nearby bullets for a few seconds before it disappears, which I think is a fun little extra touch. The dolls also do this weird thing where the unfocused shot is the one that fully focuses your power forwards, while the focused shot type is the one with the wide spread, which feels really weird, but I haven't played using this shot type enough to know if I like it or not. Meanwhile, Patchouli has possibly the strangest shot type in the game, or any other mainline bullet hell, for that matter. If you press shift and Z at the same time, you can cycle through shooting with the Fire, Water, Wood, Metal and Earth elements, each one shooting in a different direction (fire is directly forward, water is a wide spread, wood shoots diagonally left and right, metal shoots directly left and right, and earth shoots behind you). This is actually really fun in my opinion, and it's by far my favorite of Marisa's shot types, even if Metal and Earth are, from what I've played, largely useless outside of specifically Parsee's "Grandpa Hanasaka, Jealousy of the Kind and Lovely" spellcard, which is also by far my least favorite spellcard in the series unless I'm using either the Patchouli or Aya shot types. It's far from the hardest, but it's definitely the one that annoys me the most, and I can't stand having to put up with it, so Patchouli giving me a way to largely get around the thing that makes it so annoying to deal with is appreciated. That aside, it is just a generally really fun shot type to use, and it can be fun to experiment with which elements are best used in which situations. However, it does also bring me onto one thing I like a lot less about this game, that being the power bomb system, as well as just how bombs work in this game in general. Like in Mountain of Faith, instead of having a dedicated meter for bombs, each bomb use consumes a full level of power, but unlike Mountain of Faith, this game is exceptionally difficult. While I'd argue multiple harder games have been released in the series since, at the time, this was by far the hardest game in the series, so having bomb use heavily impact your ability to deal damage is much more of an issue here than in MoF. Additionally, a lot of the bombs here are just... kinda bad? Nitori's is really good, and probably the only one in the series that actively benefits from the power bomb system, becoming a much more interesting risk/reward system of putting up the camouflage for better defence but losing some damage in the process as opposed to just having it on 24/7 like you would if it existed anywhere else in the series, but the rest are just... eh. Alice's is alright, it's not nearly as good as most bombs in the series but I think it's justified by the fact that you get twice the bomb capacity as any other shot type with her, and Yukari and Aya's are decently useful screen-clearing tools, but my god, Suika and Patchouli's have to be the worst bombs in the series. They both clear out an incredibly small radius around the player, and only last a couple seconds, meaning that it's not uncommon to end up using two on a single spellcard, halving your ability to deal damage in the process. Alice also occasionally ends up using two, but at least there it's made more tolerable by her higher capacity and ability to actually damage bosses with her bombs, these two just have no excuse, and more often than not, using a bomb as Suika or Patchouli can actually be detrimental to your success, and it's best to just outright avoid using bombs entirely with them. It feels like ZUN saw that bomb spam was an issue in the older games, so he ended up overcorrecting way too hard and this was the end result, I don't like it at all. So, those are my thoughts on Subterranean Animism. I'm aware this post was a bit different to the usual formula I've established by now, but even though I do like it quite a bit, I really just don't have much to say about the rest of this game, so instead I wanted to focus in on just the bits that really stood out to me, for one reason or another.