Cosmic

VERY nice, possibly my favorite anime I've ever watched. How far in are you? Personally, I've been getting back into Fairy Tail lately, I'm around the Oracion Seis arc, really liking it so far. Also started reading Naruto recently, if that counts (I've heard the anime adaptation apparently isn't very good, and a friend of mine had plenty of manga volumes for me to borrow).

As great as an in-person one sounds, I don't really tend to go to conventions at all, so I'd likely only join one personally if it was held online, and even then it's unlikely. It's a really cool idea, though, and I hope it takes off in one way or another.

This is true, regardless of how you feel about UFO in practice (and it seems like I'm actually in the minority with liking how it plays), it at the very least tried something new, which is commendable. This is fair, I personally like the SA system quite a bit and find score lives a little boring but I can see the appeal of both. Personally, I don't usually care that much about how I'm going about getting extra lives (UFO and DDC have my favorite takes on it, though), as for me it's more about how often I'm getting them in relation to the game's difficulty. Something like UFO, where you're constantly gaining and losing lives, is much more fun to me than, say, Ten Desires, where the actual bullet patterns are relatively easy, but extra lives are made more scarce. True, there's a lot I'd like to say about UM but I'll get to say all of it eventually once I get to actually covering that game in one of these posts, so I don't feel particularly inclined to do it now. Personally I disagree, I actually like how difficult they are to play around in this game. The way WBaWC handled it was also great, don't get me wrong, but I do very slightly prefer UFO's use of the mechanic for how it demands a bit more of the player than that game. I can absolutely see how someone wouldn't like the way UFOs work in this game, but I think outright saying ZUN did a "bad job" implementing them is a bit much.

I think this is an interesting comparison. To me, SA and UFO have always seemed similarly difficult, but for different reasons; SA is simply a difficult and punishing bullet hell, while UFO is at a similar level of raw difficulty in its patterns, but exchange for a more forgiving bomb system, expects the player to master its very specific mechanics and to use them to their full advantage. While I personally love UFO, I can recognize that your enjoyment of the game is largely dependant on if you like its core mechanic or not, so I can see why someone looking for a "difficult Touhou game" would prefer SA. I think both types of challenge have their merits, though. Oh yeah this is literally just bad, I am the world's biggest UFO gameplay simp but I won't even attempt to defend this. It ends up working like this in a few other games after UFO too, and I hate it every time it's done. This is also true, I loved how creative SA was with its shot types and it's a shame we haven't gotten anything like it since. I can see where you're coming from, but I still think the UFO system works well in this game for how it incentivizes the player to move quickly. I do agree that SA's system of extra lives was great, though, even if it would have been nice if capturing spellcards got you more than just a fifth of a life. It is kind of a shame that they never brought the SA extra life system back, aside from the Dragon Pipe card in UM, which was a really nice addition.

You're right about the soundtrack, aside from Fires of Hokkai I didn't have much to say about it but it's all consistently great, and I agree with everything else here too. It's a shame you didn't enjoy the gameplay, though, and since it's one of the most fun games in the entire series for me, I'm curious about what exactly didn't click for you with it.

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.

I haven't played as Reimu/Yukari that much, so I can't comment on the quality of the writing there, but I agree that the Marisa/Alice writing is great, I love their dynamic. Especially the part in stage 2 where Alice is trying to explain to Marisa that caves don't have floors like video game dungeons (how do they know what a video game dungeon is lmao) and Parsee just appears out of nowhere and goes "you are now on floor B666", it's great.

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.

I get what you're saying, to some extent, it's just that none of this really changes my mind. When I beat MoF using continues for the first time, it still felt like I'd accomplished something, which isn't something I can really say about any other game in the series. Being 100% honest, I somehow managed to not notice the option on the menu of every game since TD to retry individual stages, so the knowledge that that exists does actually help, but I do still kinda prefer the MoF system. I don't think either one is "better" than the other, though, it's purely a personal preference for me.

Yeah, this is fair, I can see where you're coming from. Admittedly the system does annoy me way more in SA, and it never bothers me that much in MoF, so it's not the worst change. My issue with it is honestly with how it lays the groundwork for the SA bomb system already (doesn't help that SA is already one of the hardest games in the series as is). Eh, this is fair, I guess. I don't really agree at all, since I'd still rather be required to have the skill to beat a stage before moving onto the next, but I can see where you're coming from. Alright, but this is exactly the issue I have with them. With how the current continue system works, you're given a choice between a playthrough where you have so many lives that deaths barely feel like they matter, and for some insane reason you can't see how many continues you have left, so you can't even quantify what you've lost with a death, and just outright going for a 1cc, which is a fun challenge once you're better at the game, but still not one to expect a new player to go for. With the MoF/SA/UFO continue system, it turns just beating the game in and of itself into an actual challenge, even with continues, which I enjoy a lot more than continue runs being nothing more than an easy baby practice run of the game so you can eventually take on the "real" challenge of playing the game without them. Not to mention that I just find getting booted out of a game once you die enough times to be an inherently annoying mechanic, regardless of genre (unless I'm imposing it on myself through deciding to do a 1cc run, in which case I actually quite like it for some reason). I will agree that this is just annoying with no possible benefits though, I do not like the way practice mode works in these games. What exactly is the point of practicing a stage I've already beaten?

Moving on from what most consider "early Windows" Touhou, we have Mountain of Faith! After PoFV, Mountain of Faith was intended to be a kind of "soft reboot" for the Touhou series, keeping the same characters and continuity from before but going back to the very basics of what the series was to build up something new and different from that point, especially in the gameplay department. For the first time since EoSD, the game features Reimu and Marisa as the only two playable characters, each having three shot types, which unless I'm mistaken, is the highest number of shot types a single playable character has ever had in the series. Reimu's are generally fairly simple and easy to get the hang of, with her classic homing and forward focus shot types, and a third new type focusing on wide area coverage which as far as I'm aware has never reappeared since, but Marisa's are really weird and gimmicky, to varying results. her first one has a trail of orbs that follow her around and fire their own bullets, freezing in place relative to Marisa's position during focus, and her third has these strange magic circle thingies that shoot out blue fire and stay in the same position whenever you focus, flying back to Marisa once you unfocus. Her second is comparatively simple, playing similarly to previous Marisa shot types, but there's a glitch where if you're between 3.05 and 3.95 power, it deals 10 times the damage it's meant to, allowing you to beat every boss in the game in seconds. This glitch becomes significantly easier to abuse thanks to a new, and to be honest, really annoying change Mountain of Faith makes to the way bombs work; now, instead of having a separate, dedicated meter for bomb use, every bomb used consumes one full level of power, and they become unusable below 1.00 power. I'll be honest, this change is literally just annoying, without any possible benefits, and I don't understand what ZUN was thinking when he made it work like this. Thankfully, it's not nearly as bad here as it is in the next game, but I still hate it here. "Hmm yes, I would like to use a bomb when I think I might die if I don't, oh oops I don't deal any damage anymore" what on earth was this man thinking. Additionally, bombs themselves have also been nerfed; now, instead of each shot type having a unique bomb, they all just make a big circle fly out in front of the player that deletes bullets, and gets bigger the more power you have when you use it. Functionally, this isn't that different to how bombs are in the rest of the series, they're kind of just a thing you throw out when you're in trouble so you don't die, but I don't care, I like having multiple unique bomb types and I wish this game also had those. Despite my issues with the game's implementation of bombs, I actually think this game plays really well. There are no real gimmicks to speak of here, aside from the faith system which only impacts scoring, and the game has some overall really solid level and boss design. There's not really a whole lot to say here, it's just a generally solidly designed bullet hell. The environments here also look really nice; the previous games have definitely had good environment designs before (PCB's fifth stage and IN's fourth/sixth both particularly stand out to me), but there's a real sense of consistency here, both in terms of the quality of the environments and the general vibe that they go for. Stage 4's waterfall is a particularly great one, the enemies popping out from behind the water being a really nice detail, and Stage 6's pillars overlooking the lake is the perfect backdrop for a battle against the final boss, but my favorite stage here is easily Stage 3. I don't know, I just love the reveal of the river at the beginning combined with Gensokyo the Gods Loved playing in the background, it's a great combination. Speaking of which, the soundtrack here is great, as is to be expected by this point. There's the previously mentioned Gensokyo the Gods Loved, one which I really like and which definitely deserves its spot as a uniquely iconic song to the series, but it's far from the only great one here. Fall of Fall and A God that Loves People both also have a great sense of atmosphere to them, and Cemetery of Onbashira also does a great job at hyping you up for the final battle, contrasted immediately by the sense of overwhelming power and "oh fuck, I've just challenged an actual god to a fight" carried by Suwa Foughten Field. Also, Tomorrow Will Be Special, Yesterday Was Not and Faith is for the Transient People are just generally bangers. I don't have much to say about those ones, they just go really hard, and that first one with the comically long name in particular is by far my favorite song in this game. Anyway, onto the story, which I'm just realizing it's quite unusual for me not to have covered by now. This game also suffers somewhat from the Perfect Cherry Blossom issue of not really conveying its story through the in-game dialogue all that well, but from what I can gather, the Moriya Shrine, dedicated to the worship of the gods Kanako Yasaka and Suwako Moriya, is losing faith in the outside world, so Kanako transports it into Gensokyo on the top of the Youkai Mountain in hopes of gaining more faith there, annoying the local youkai and prompting Reimu to go and investigate. Six stages later, she reaches Kanako, who tries to persuade her to convert her own shrine to Kanako-ism, but Reimu refuses, choosing to keep her shrine true to itself as opposed to casting aside its previous god in exchange for the added faith and donations that Kanako promises her, and the two fight each other. After this, Reimu wins, and the local mountain youkai come to accept Kanako and Suwako as new local gods in exchange for Kanako not being as annoying about it as before. Later on, Reimu visits the Moriya shrine again, and Suwako shows up, apparently disappointed that she didn't get a chance to fight her like Sanae and Kanako did, so they fight too. Also Marisa is there and you can play as her instead if you want, but this is one of the few games where the story feels uniquely tailored to Reimu specifically and works way better if you pick her, so I've decided to just ignore Marisa's presence entirely. Despite this game being more than a little cryptic as to what exactly is going on in the early stages, I actually quite like this story. Kanako works really well here, being someone who's just annoying and pompous enough to work as a villain while not being so up her own ass as to be completely unable to get along with the locals, and like I previously mentioned, the story here feels uniquely tailored to Reimu specifically as a main character, something which is surprisingly rare in this series and which I really enjoy. A large part of why Reimu works as a main character is her versatility and how you can drop her into just about any incident and have her presence make sense, but it's still nice to occasionally get a story that's just as much about her as it is the shiny new villain ZUN's decided to introduce. It's a shame Marisa doesn't work nearly as well in this game's story, though, but I suppose it was an inevitable trade-off, so I'm willing to accept it here. The game's other characters are also quite good. Stage 4 features best girl Aya as a boss fight, which is always welcome, but the new characters have a lot to offer as well, although in my opinion they're not as good as some of the previous casts. There's the previously mentioned Kanako, who's great, but Hina and Suwako are also characters I really like, Hina being a "misfortune god" and yet also one of the most genuinely nice characters in the series, and Suwako just generally being a silly and enjoyable character to watch. Nitori is also introduced in this game, and while she doesn't really do anything for me here specifically, I quite like her in everything else she's in, so that's cool. This game also introduces Green Reimu, also known as Sanae Kochiya, priestess of the Moriya Shrine, and... I'll be honest, she's one of the few characters in this series I actively dislike. I can't think of a single trait I associate with her aside from being from the outside world originally, a concept which is done significantly better by Sumireko later on in the series and which is barely a factor in her more recent portrayals, and yet for some unfathomable reason ZUN insists on shoving her into every game he can possibly find an excuse to make her be playable in. She doesn't bother me at all in MoF specifically, and there's nothing I inherently dislike about her as a character, but at this point, I'm really just sick of her. Oh, this game also introduces Minoriko and Shizuha Aki. I have nothing to say about them, other than that they sure are characters who exist. Overall, while I do definitely have my issues with this game, its overall solid design and excellent music and environments still make it one I frequently enjoy coming back to, and even if in practice a lot of its changes feel bizarre and unwelcome, I can at the very least respect ZUN for making a genuine attempt at something new with this one. EDIT: Fuck I forgot to mention, this game also changes how continues work. This time, you have infinite continues, but whenever you use one, you go back to the start of the stage. Personally I actually really like this, continues always kinda feel like cheating to me in the other games, until you use up too many and the game goes "nah fuck you you're not allowed to play anymore", I much prefer having to be skilled enough to beat a level without them to clear it but in exchange being allowed to retry as many times as I want.

While I put the series of posts I was just doing on hold for a while, since I can't decide if I want to cover Shoot the Bullet next or skip straight to Mountain of Faith, I figured I'd make this post asking people what fanon versions of characters they actually enjoy, keeping in mind that when I say "fanon" I mean character interpretations with little to no actual basis in established canon that get widely picked up and spread among fans. While in my experience, most people who are in a position to be aware of it when a version of a character is just pure fanon generally don't like these interpretations, myself mostly included (fanon Alice my beloathed), I do have a handful I actually quite like, in particular the popular interpretation of Flandre as an unhinged psychopath who can and will kill anyone and everyone in sight. I'm aware this version of her is far from how she is in canon, and I can admit that canon Flandre is definitely a much more nuanced and probably "better" character, but I don't know, I still like fanon Flandre too, I think the evil psychotic little girl is funny. Do you have any popular fanon versions of characters you like, or do you just hate all of them?

Yeah, same. It's the only game in the series where I'm willing to play it on easy mode, since that makes the gameplay feel just kinda whatever as opposed to actively infuriating, and I'm not really here for the gameplay to begin with. Anything else I'll play on normal or harder, but this one in particular I'll make an exception for. I just want to see the character interactions and endings, I really don't care for whatever else it's trying to do.

Moving on from Imperishable Night, the next game on the list, Phantasmagoria of Flower View, is a bit of a weird one, in that I love almost everything about it except having to actually play it. Like Touhou 3, Phantasmagoria of Dimensional Dream, PoFV takes on a 1-vs-1 gameplay format, with player 1 on the left side of the screen, and player 2 on the right, with the goal being to simply last longer than your opponent. By pressing Z, you can fire an uncharged shot, but by holding it, you can charge your shot by up to 4 levels. A level 1 charged shot is simply either a wider spread or more concentrated fire depending on the character, levels 2 and 3 clear out all bullets near the user and send a few extra bullets over to the opponent's side (the specific pattern is character-dependant), and a level 4 charged shot clears out all bullets on your side of the screen and sends a clone of the user over to the opponent's side, forcing them to engage in a boss battle against them. This boss battle event also sometimes just triggers by itself, though, and I haven't quite figured out what causes this. By default, you only have access to a level 1 charged shot, but by defeating enemies, a gauge that's split up into 4 bars fills up at the bottom of the screen; level 2 shots consume 2 bars of the gauge, level 3 takes 3, and level 4 takes 4. Level 1 charged shots don't cost anything to use, though. Now, I've never played the multiplayer for this game, which to its credit actually sounds like a fun time, but the singleplayer gameplay is, to be honest, quite bad. The main issue is that, while you can use charged shots to interfere with your opponent, there's no 100% guaranteed way to actually hit them, and you have no way of setting up any kind of aiming, so you have to be completely reliant on the AI making a mistake in order to be able to proceed. This means that, in practice, you're not actually fighting an AI-controlled character as much as you are surviving an inconsistent, poorly-organized mess of bullets until an invisible, randomly-decided time limit ends, which leads to PoFV quickly starting to feel like nothing more than a less fun version of normal Touhou. I can see what the aim was for this game, but the execution on a gameplay level just isn't there in the singleplayer. One aspect of this game I absolutely love, on the other hand, is the characterization. This game features 14 playable characters, the highest number in any Touhou game at the time until Scarlet Weather Rhapsody's 15 and still the highest number in any mainline game to this day (until Touhou 19 releases, anyway), and while I haven't played as all of them, from what I've seen, their characterization is excellent, even if there are some quite frankly bizarre inclusions here (why is Mystia in this game). For newcomers, we have Aya, Medicine, Komachi and Eiki, and aside from Medicine, I really like all of them, Aya and Komachi especially being some of my favorite characters in the series. Yuuka also returns from the PC-98 games, although this time she's much less one-dimensionally evil than her PC-98 counterpart. Don't interpret this as meaning I don't like PC-98 Yuuka, mind you, she is very much the fun kind of one-dimensional evil and I like her a lot, but I think this is an interesting progression for her character. Here, she's much calmer than before, seeking to just mess around with the other characters a little as opposed to beating them half to death, and is generally someone it's possible to get along with... until you damage her sunflower field, that is, in which case her violent side from before will come back in full force. My personal theory about this Yuuka is that in between the PC-98 games and this one, she decided to grow the sunflower field herself as a means to help herself calm down and become a bit less neurotic, which allows her to have semi-normal interactions with people usually, but also results in her becoming instantly enraged the moment anyone dares try to damage it. Returning characters are all written really well here too. Cirno in particular is finally able to grow from the disappointing non-character she was in EoSD to the lovable "strongest" idiot ice fairy most people are familiar with today, and while not everyone gets the same level of added characterization as her, they all feel like characters in their own right, and as someone who finds the large, varied cast of characters to be one of the main appeals of this series, it's really nice getting to see so many of them get a chance to just do stuff and be themselves in this game. I glossed over the newcomers earlier, but they're mostly all great too. Medicine is just eh for me, but even she actually has a defined character with personality traits to point to; she's not boring because she's not a character, she's boring because she isn't one that appeals to me, and unlike every other time I've called someone boring in one of these posts, I could actually see someone disagreeing with me on her. Aya, on the other hand, is my favorite character in the series, and feels almost like she was made to appeal to me specifically. I always love characters whose whole thing is being able to go really fast, so I was going to like her regardless, but even putting that aside, she's just a genuinely fun character to watch, being 100% neutral in basically every conflict and motivated exclusively by what would be the best story for her newspaper, leading to various moments of her just being a general annoyance for the other cast in the best way possible. Eiki and Komachi are also great, and I enjoy their dynamic a lot. Eiki is the Yama, the one responsible for judging people who've died and deciding if they get to go to Heaven or Hell, and as a result, has a tendency of intensely lecturing the living about the morality of their actions. She often comes across as an annoyance who never shuts up to anyone who encounters her, but at her core, she's a genuinely good person who just doesn't want to be forced to send those around her to Hell; she's a character who's easily and undebateably a "good person" who's motivated purely by helping others, but is still flawed not just in spite of that but as a direct result of it, which is a surprisingly rare and interesting thing to see. Komachi, on the other hand, kind of just doesn't want to work. She's this series' "not-Charon" character who ferries the souls of the recently deceased over to Hell, but has a tendency to slack off, leading to her being consistently berated by Eiki. Aside from just being a generally entertaining character, she's also the first penultimate boss character in the Windows series who distinctly doesn't fit into the trope of the dedicated servant to the final boss. Her loyalty isn't to Eiki as an individual, it's to the Yama and her job as a Shinigami, and even that loyalty is questionable; if Eiki was somehow overthrown and her position was taken by someone else, Komachi probably wouldn't go that out of her way to help Eiki and would likely just continue as she had before, something which can't be said of Sakuya, Youmu or Reisen. I don't inherently dislike any of those characters, mind you, it's just nice to have some variety. It might seem strange that I've just written 3 paragraphs about just the characters, but they're a large part of what I like about this game, so I felt it was deserved. Anyway, onto the actual story. Basically, some kind of unspecified event has happened in the outside world, causing dead souls to flood into Gensokyo at an unprecedented rate; this incident also happens to coincide with Komachi not really feeling like working on that particular day, so the souls end up possessing various flowers around Gensokyo, causing an unusually large amount of them to bloom, something which whoever the player chooses to play as immediately goes out to investigate. After a bit of running around, they run into Komachi, beat her up for being lazy, and then are confronted by Eiki. There's a quick battle with her, and then the game ends, and you get to see your character's ending, which focuses on a different aspect of the story depending on who you choose. It's fairly simple, and I don't have much to say about it, but it works, and it doesn't have any obvious flaws, so I like it. It's really here more to give an excuse for gameplay and character interaction than anything, and that's something it does a good job at. I will say that I really like the character endings, though, the ones I've seen (Cirno/Reisen/Aya/Komachi/Yuuka) are all great. Lastly, the soundtrack; unlike the last two games, I really don't have a whole lot to say about this one, it's just a generally pretty good soundtrack. It is mostly remixes, which is understandable, but the handful of new songs added to the game are all really good, and have a very particular feel to them which I quite enjoy, even if there are none which stand out enough to me for me to mention them individually. Also, while I'm here, I'd like to mention before ending this post that I actually really like this game's art style. Most ZUN art is pretty hit or miss for me, and I generally prefer the newer stuff, so it's surprising to me that I like the way the character art looks for this game as much as I do. It's not perfect, mind you, I loathe Reisen's portrait in particular here (although that could be partially down to the fact this game is responsible for getting rid of her cool black coat), but most of it is really nice, I like it. So, that's PoFV! This one is a bit weird, and my thoughts on it are a bit mixed, but in spite of the fact I don't enjoy playing it, I actually quite like it for what it does with the various characters of the series, and for the fact that it introduces two of my favorites in Aya and Komachi. Overall, very strange game, but a good one nonetheless, I approve.

I'm aware of what she does, I just wasn't quite sure how to describe "the bullets become transparent for a bit and then you can move through them, while they're transparent they usually move in a direction for a bit before going back to normal". Yeah this is true, I really like her in this game. I always just took it as "white rabbits with red eyes look kinda creepy, hey what if we gave the eyes special powers".

IMPERISHABLE NIGHT IS SO PEAK AAAAAAA- Ok, calming down for a moment, I really like this game. I'm not sure if I'd call it my favorite game in the series, but it's by far my favorite of the early Windows games. Apparently, ZUN's plan was to end the series here, and given that this feels like a culmination of everything Windows Touhou has been up until this point, it's easy to see why he would choose this as an ending point. The game features 8 playable characters, split up into 4 teams of 2, and follows whichever team the player selects on a mission to find out what's going on with that strange fake moon in the sky; the playable teams are Reimu/Yukari, Marisa/Alice, Sakuya/Remilia, and Youmu/Yuyuko. But, how does it play? Well, that's kind of a hard question to answer, as this game features various bizarre gimmicks which it never makes any attempt to explain, but which only impact your score and nothing else, and as a result, can largely be ignored. I didn't actually understand how these gimmicks worked until I did some research for this post and was fully able to enjoy the game without them, and I can't imagine my newfound knowledge having any impact on future playthroughs, so I'm just going to speed through them. Time orbs! These are a thing you collect by doing Things™, and if you get enough, time doesn't advance as much once you clear a stage (the less time has advanced by the end of the game, the more you score). There's also a human/youkai gauge in the bottom left, which is influenced by a thing I'll go over later, and if it's below -80% or above 80%, collecting time orbs becomes easier. Additionally, if you collect enough time orbs by the end of a stage, the boss will activate their Last Word, an extra-powerful spellcard which you get one chance to dodge, and can't use bombs during. If you get hit, you don't lose any lives, and the Last Word simply ends and you move onto the next stage. These are kind of cool, admittedly. Beyond that, there is one new feature to this game which actually does impact the way you'll play it, and that's the team system. As mentioned earlier, you're technically playing as a team of two characters, and this manifests as your human character (Reimu/Marisa/Sakuya/Youmu) being used while you're unfocused, and switching out to the youkai character (Yukari/Alice/Remilia/Yuyuko) once you start holding the focus button. In the moment, this doesn't feel that different from how focused/unfocused shot types usually work, but depending on which character you're using, the gauge at the bottom left from earlier will move more towards either the human or youkai side, and the attention to detail with how each shot type corresponds to the character's personality is particularly nice. Reimu's homing shot fits her nicely as a no-nonsense youkai exterminator, while Yukari mostly just sits back and has Ran do all the work for her, and Marisa's (relatively) wide angle, lagging secondary shots and fast movement encourages the player to move as fast as possible and blow up everything in sight, a playstyle which suits her nicely and contrasts Alice's much more controlled, forward-facing laser shot. Additionally, Youmu's admittedly poor area coverage is balanced by her having potentially the most damaging shot type in the game, allowing her to easily cut through everything in front of her, while Yuyuko's beautiful yet dangerous all the same wide spread shot covers almost the entire screen, delivering an indiscriminate death to all of her enemies. I can't quite work out what Sakuya or Remilia's shot types have to do with their characters, though, those two are kind of the exception here. Your bombs will also be different depending on which character you're currently using, although with the exception of Youmu's straight slash being very effective during boss fights but largely not worth using anywhere else, this doesn't impact how you play the game too much. This game is also by far the hardest of the early Windows games, making it the first of many I'll be forced to admit that I've never been able to 1cc on normal, but it's also notable for being particularly creative with its bullet patterns at times. For one, there are now these strange glowy things I can't seem to find a name for anywhere which disappear when you switch to the youkai character but shoot bullets and can be destroyed by the human character, adding an extra layer of depth to many bosses' spellcards, as you need to decide between going straight for the boss but having to survive a much harder attack, or targeting the glowy things and lengthening the amount of time you spend on the spellcard but making it easier to survive. The balance between which of these options is better or worse varies between spellcards, too, ensuring that you consistently need to weigh up the options each time. Additionally, individual bosses also get quite creative here, in particular Mystia, who can darken the screen and make you unable to see far-away bullets, and Reisen, who does something very strange which I'm not quite sure how to describe but which is nonetheless really cool and makes her one of my favorite bosses to fight in the series. Other bosses in the game also vary the types of attacks they use greatly, ensuring a sense of variety between fights, and this type of creativity isn't 100% unique to Imperishable Night, but I felt it was worth calling attention to nonetheless. Additionally, this game's character writing is also excellent. Reimu being very tired but begrudgingly having to put up with Yukari's Yukari-ing anyway, Remilia being basically a child who's just here because she felt like it and Sakuya having to spend the whole game babysitting her while still sincerely caring about her, and Yuyuko just being consistently very very strange, much to Youmu's confusion, are all great dynamics, but my favorite pair by far here is Marisa and Alice. I love their dynamic of Marisa wanting to just go full unga bunga mode and blow up everything in front of her and Alice trying to be the responsible one and actually proceed with some amount of logic, while at the end of the day, they're still both friends who care about each other a lot, it's great. They're also the only pair in the game where both characters are on roughly equal standing with each other, which also gives their interactions a unique feel when compared to the rest of the game's cast, the others being teams of master/servant, master/servant, and whatever Reimu and Yukari's relationship is. That's not to say any of the other pairs aren't great too, though, I love all of them. The interactions with either Reimu or Marisa in stage 4 are also great, although I kind of wish there had been alternate Sakuya or Youmu fights during that stage for the other two teams, even if I understand why that wasn't done. Speaking of which, that whole fight is really great, it reminds me a lot of the Reimu/Marisa fight in LLS, only way cooler because of the banger chase sequence that happens halfway through. The new characters are a bit more of a mixed bag for me, though. I quite like Keine and especially Kaguya, and Tewi is just a mid-stage boss with no actual dialogue here, but I like her later PoFV characterization, but beyond that, I don't have any characters here I'm all that fond of. Wriggle is just annoying, Mystia is barely a character, and Reisen here is just the same "stage 5 boss who's a dedicated servant to the stage 6 boss" trope we got in the last two games, without anything to really distinguish her from Sakuya or Youmu. I'm not super familiar with her characterization in other media, so maybe she's more interesting elsewhere, but she seems to be a very popular character, and I can't for the life of me understand why. The black coat thingy she has here does look really cool, though, I wish ZUN would let her wear it again. Eirin is also kind of just a whatever character for me, although I do really like the moment at the beginning of Final A where she explains exactly how she's successfully trapped the main characters, that was cool. Overall, this game's cast doesn't do nearly as much for me as PCB's, and while they are "better" than EoSD's in the sense that they actually have some amount of personality in their dialogue, EoSD still has a lot of characters like Cirno, Meiling or Remilia who would go on to be much more well-written than their first appearances, and who are more likeable to me than anyone introduced in Imperishable Night (ignoring Kaguya). Actually, while re-reading this, I'm noticing that I somehow managed to forget that Mokou, one of my favorite characters in the series, was introduced in this game, so I'm just going to add this little bit at the end to say that Mokou is great and I love her, 10/10 character. Lastly, I want to talk about the soundtrack. As you can generally expect from this series, the soundtrack is fantastic, and while there isn't any one song that jumps out at me as exceptionally outstanding like Border of Life did in Perfect Cherry Blossom, there's still a lot here to love, and the entire soundtrack has this really distinct vibe to it which I can't quite describe, but which sounds unlike anything else in the entire series. For specific examples, Illusionary Night immediately does a great job of establishing this game's whole feel and tone right out of the gate, and Deaf to All but the Song is this game's resident "goes far too hard for how early in the game it plays", and while I don't have a lot to say about Plain Asia, it's another one I really like. Maiden's Capriccio and Love-Colored Master Spark are also both great at selling that feeling of a battle between old rivals, and Cinderella Cage fits the feeling of finally having reached the source of the incident perfectly. Lunatic Eyes ~ Invisible Full Moon, on the other hand, isn't one I'd ever go out of my way to listen to, and to be honest I'm not a huge fan of it by itself, but I will admit that it works really well as a battle theme for Reisen, having a waving, uncertain quality to it, as if you can't quite understand what it is you're even fighting. Also... Voyage 1969. I really love Voyage 1969. I'm not sure how to describe why exactly, I just like it a lot. Overall, Imperishable Night is a great game, one of my favorites in the series, and while it does have things I don't really like all that much, like the bizarre time orb system or the 50/50 new characters, it definitely delivers on being a fun, engaging bullet hell with varied boss patterns, a banger soundtrack, and a wide variety of great returning characters, which is really what I, and I'd imagine most of you, are fans of this series in the first place for. This game, to me, more than possibly anything else in the series, embodies what Touhou is, and that's why I love it so much.

That is true, although I feel like the subsequent games are all pretty good at establishing what's going on. In HSiFS and UM, the seasons incident and card market respectively are both clearly established very early on, and in WBaWC, you don't really get the full picture of what's going on until the end, but it's very much done intentionally here due to how the story actually works, as opposed to just being an issue of poor communication, and you're still never reliant on external materials to figure anything out with.

Interesting stuff, I like it! Although, it does highlight one of my main issues with early Touhou writing, that being ZUN's inability to convey the story of the games through the actual in-game cutscenes and dialogue alone, and reliance on external text files to have any clue what's going on. This hasn't been an issue for a while, DDC was entirely comprehensible without external resources and the same largely goes for everything since, but it does get annoying when you try to play the games that came before it. Ooh, I like that. It'd certainly explain why she's suddenly become much more mature and responsible since Mystic Square, and it gives her an extra amount of character depth beyond just "I am a different person now". It would be weird for someone like Mima to not survive that if the four you mentioned could, but if I remember correctly, ZUN said everything from PC-98 Touhou not contradicted by Windows is canon, so who knows, maybe she's still out there somewhere. Probably not in any context that means she'll show up (Mima copium is a dangerous drug and I don't want to get started on it), but she's probably just floating around Makai or something like that, that seems like a place she'd like.

Yeah this is true, I never liked that they changed it.

I actually didn't know this, that's good to know

Last time, we talked about the first Touhou game on Windows, so now, it's time to talk about the first good Touhou game on Windows! In a way, Perfect Cherry Blossom is like what would happen if you fixed everything that was wrong with Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, and then added a handful of new quality of life changes in while you were at it. For example, for the first time in the series, when you hold shift to focus, you can now see your exact hurtbox, which is a huge help in some of the more tightly-packed spellcards later in the game, and there's also an indicator at the bottom of the screen labelled "ENEMY" during boss fights that shows you the boss' horizontal position. Everyone always talks about the visible hurtbox as a great addition that makes the games that don't have it much harder to go back to in hindsight, but I honestly find the enemy indicator to be more helpful in most situations; both are very much welcome additions, though. Additionally, if you gather enough cherry items and defeat enough enemies, you'll activate a "Supernatural Border", a temporary shield which clears out all on-screen bullets once you get hit, or if you try to use a bomb. This does kind of just make the game a bit easier, and as the player there aren't many interesting ways to interact with it as a mechanic, but it did help me 1cc this game as Sakuya, so I'm still thankful that it's here. A way to turn it off admittedly might have been nice, though. Remember how I said EoSD had like 3 good songs? Yeah, no, ZUN is back to composing peak again, this game's soundtrack is way better. Right off the bat, Deep Mountain and Crystallized Silver are two instantly memorable songs, both from just the first stage, and the soundtrack is consistently great after that point too. Diao Ye Zong excellently captures Chen's playful nature, with a subtle hint that there might be more to her as well, and Doll Judgement takes a while to get going, but once it does, it becomes a contender for one of my favorite songs in the game (at least if we ignore one particular song which I'll go over later). Mystic Oriental Dream is another great one that gives the Netherworld a truly otherworldly feeling, as well as this sense of a "peaceful, yet dangerous" place that fits the area perfectly, and Necrofantasia feels to me like the perfect kind of theme for someone as hard to reach as Yukari, even if I've never actually gotten far enough to fight her myself. It's also just generally a banger, although that applies to most of the game's soundtrack. Ok, so now feels like a good time to mention that if you've never played Perfect Cherry Blossom, you should go back and do that right now, and make sure to fully finish the main game. It doesn't matter if it's a 1cc or not, just go do that right now. I get that there's an inherent assumption in these posts that I'm going to spoil things, and the possibility that anyone reading this has never played PCB is unlikely to say the least, not to mention that the game's nearly 20 years old by now, but even still, I think what I'm about to go over is something worth including this warning for anyway, as it won't hit nearly as hard if you're aware of it in advance, and the feeling you get from it when it happens for the first time is unlike anything else in the series. Ok, have you done that? Promise? Good. Yuyuko's final spell might actually be one of my favorite moments in the entire series. You manage to defeat her, just like you would any other boss, and by all means, the game should end now. But then, it just... doesn't. You wait there for a few seconds, not really knowing what's going on, and then some kind of bizarre quote fades in on the screen, and then that godforsaken piano starts up, and suddenly Yuyuko is back now??? Shit shit fuck fuck what do I do why is she here aaaaAAAAAA- ok, assuming you know what I'm referring to, you don't need me to explain any more, but the feeling you get from seeing her suddenly come back for one last-ditch effort to stop you in your tracks is unlike anything else this series has to offer, and Border of Life is the PERFECT song to accompany it with. If anything here had been at all misplaced, this moment wouldn't hit nearly as hard, but the moment of anticipation and not quite knowing what's going on at the start, followed by an ominous piano theme suddenly starting up, and then Yuyuko herself appearing is all timed to perfection, and I think Border of Life is the main reason this works so well. After the starting piano, it quickly changes into something that sounds panicked, yet all the same triumphant, as if to express this feeling of not quite knowing what's going on, or how or why it's happening, but that all the same, you're almost there, and that whatever this is, if you can overcome it, you've won. It's not a song that I ever go out of my way to listen to, but all the same, I can acknowledge it as one of the best in the series for the way it manages to perfectly turn the moment where it plays into something truly special. Now, for the story. Now, I can't actually beat Ran, and this is one of those games where the extra stage adds a lot of extra context to the story that wasn't there before (as opposed to EoSD's which was largely entirely irrelevant to the wider story), so I've largely had to just piece together what happened in this game by absorbing information about it through the internet, so to be honest, I'm not 100% sure what actually happened in this game, but I'll try my best to summarize it. On a basic level, it's fairly straightforward - someone has been absorbing Gensokyo's Spring, leading to an extended Winter, so either Reimu, Marisa, or Sakuya, in her first appearance as a playable character, has to find out who did this and put a stop to their plans. Eventually, it turns out to have been Yuyuko Saigyouji, the head of the Hakugyokurou Shrine in the Netherworld, who wanted to make the Saigyou Ayakashi cherry tree bloom. Shortly after discovering this, the heroine defeats her, and returns Spring to Gensokyo. But, how was Yuyuko able to interfere with Gensokyo so easily from the Netherworld, and why was she so obsessed with the Saigyou Ayakashi? This is where it gets a bit strange, although that could just be me having not finished the extra or phantasm stages (this game has two extra stages, by the way). As far as I can tell, Yuyuko is the spirit of a woman who committed suicide underneath the Saigyou Ayakashi, and once it fully blooms, it'll start to draw more humans toward itself and make them kill themselves too. It's never explained why exactly Yuyuko wants to make it bloom, but the implication seems to be that she's unaware of what it does, or the fact that she killed herself underneath it, and is just drawn to it by her subconscious. Anyway, for some reason, Yukari then shows up and decides to mess with the border between Gensokyo and the Netherworld, allowing Yuyuko to collect Gensokyo's Spring, and then once the incident ends, she forgets to make it go back to normal, prompting the heroine to go and fight her to make her restore it. Why Yukari wanted to go along with Yuyuko's plan in the first place I have no idea, but oh well. Basically, this game's story is confusing, and trying to make myself understand it by looking it up online was a mistake. I have heard that apparently even if you play the extra and phantasm stages, a lot of this information is really poorly communicated anyway, which honestly wouldn't surprise me, but I have no room to say for sure if this is the case or not. Anyway, lastly, the characters! These are also much better than EoSD's cast, although they're not perfect. Their personalities, for the most part, are actually conveyed in their dialogue again, which leads to them feeling like actual characters as opposed to EoSD's faceless obstacles that were carried by their much better portrayals in later games, and the difference is obvious immediately. Alice is back from Mystic Square, although aside from the blonde hair and her use of dolls, she's basically a different character here. As opposed to Mystic Square Alice, who I can only describe as an annoying child, PCB Alice is actually sincerely polite and helpful to the main cast, and yet for some reason gets ignored anyway, leaving her completely baffled in the process, an interaction which plays out in several different ways but is consistently at least somewhat amusing each time. Chen and Youmu are also great new additions, Chen being a hyperactive zoop zoop cat child with no real idea of what's going on (just like me fr), and Youmu being somewhat similar to Sakuya in that they're both serious, diligent characters who you fight on stage 5 and who are both dedicated to serving the stage 6 boss they work for, but Youmu still having enough of a personality of her own to make her feel distinct - I particularly enjoyed the moment in stage 6 where she practically begged the main character not to go on, as she had gone from wanting to drive them out to just being afraid for their safety now that the possibility of them actually reaching Yuyuko and being killed as a result had become all the more likely to her. Yukari I also quite like in her future portrayals, although I can't say how much of what I like about her is present here due to my previously mentioned inability to reach her. The rest of the characters are a bit of a mixed bag. Letty is boring, but gets away with it due to being a stage 1 boss and having a banger theme, and the Prismriver sisters never really did anything for me either, although the fact that their designs mirror the main 3 characters is a nice detail. Yuyuko herself, on the other hand, is a character I still haven't quite made my mind up on yet. She doesn't grab my attention quite as much as Chen/Alice/Youmu/Yukari, and for the most part I'm not particularly fussed either way about her, but she's still at times a likeable character, and she still manages to show enough personality here that I'd still put her well above the EoSD cast. Overall, PCB is another great game in the series, and for me represents the point where ZUN really started to find his footing with the Windows games. It's not my favorite Windows game by any means, or even my favorite of its time, but it's still a really fun, enjoyable experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed going back to it for this post.

Wouldn't surprise me, the music in PCB is great so I figured it was something like that. This is true! However there are countless characters later on in the series who can do this as well as having actual expressive dialogue, so I still count this as a point against EoSD. Sounds interesting, I'll be sure to give it a look later!

Ooo, sounds interesting. Personally, I really enjoyed Mother 3 (although I never finished it for some reason) but couldn't stand playing Earthbound, so I'd be interested to see if I enjoy this one or not.

Oh there are absolutely some great remixes out there, Hisoutensoku's version of Magic Library especially is one of my favorite songs in the entire series, and if we're including doujin music, then Demetori's version of Septette for the Dead Princess is another great one, even if I do like most of their stuff to begin with. This is true, I do definitely think there are characters here who get better as the series goes on, they're just not very interesting in EoSD itself. This is also true actually, when I first played LLS one of my first thoughts was "hey, wait a second, this feels an awful lot like EoSD". The only difference is that Yuuka is a way better villain than Remilia I would have assumed it was either Imperishable Night or Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, although I'm not sure what exactly I'm basing that on.