Cosmic

EoSD Stage 4 had the weird book things, so there's that. Overall, you're right, though, enemy design variety is a nice thing to have, and the lack of it in Windows games does feel strange. I do actually think some of the more gimmicky bullet patterns in Windows games go a long way to make their fights feel unique, though. Stuff like Seija reversing the screen in DDC, Kyouko reflecting her bullets off surfaces in TD or whatever Reisen had going on in IN all goes a long way to making those fights feel memorable to me, and there's a few more examples I could choose from. I do kind of wish the Windows games did that kind of thing more, though, it always feels really fun whenever it does happen. This is fair too, methods of getting extra lives in Windows games can vary on if they're any good or not, and I agree that point tiles are one of the better ways to go about it. I do like the way UFO does it, though, that felt really fun and interesting to me.

And now, we've made it to the first of the Windows Touhou games! ...Yep, this sure is the first Touhou game on Windows alright. I don't know if this is going to seem like stating the obvious or is going to make everyone on this forum hate me, but I honestly find this game to be pretty overhyped in a lot of areas. To start with, the story - Remilia has covered Gensokyo in a thick red mist so that she as a vampire can go outside in the day, and Reimu and Marisa head out to stop her, battling various members of the Scarlet Devil Mansion staff (as well as two entirely unrelated youkai) along the way. It's fairly basic, but it gets the job done, no issues here. Now, this is the part I think I'll lose a lot of you at; I do not think this game has very good characters. Alright, hear me out here, there are characters introduced in this game who I like. I've mentioned Cirno before as one I particularly enjoy, and Sakuya and Patchouli are another two I quite like (Patchouli admittedly more for the fact I think the "big floating magic circle" type of magic she uses is really cool than anything), but I don't think any of their best qualities are really there in their EoSD characterization. Cirno is a complete and utter non-character here compared to what she would go on to become from PoFV onwards, and most of the other characters are just kinda there as well, not really getting to express much of a personality. If you told me to name a single character trait Remilia has after I played EoSD without showing me anything else from the series, I really don't think I could. It's a shame, too, because Mystic Square and to a small extent Lotus Land Story were both able to do a good amount for their new characters with roughly the same amount of lines as the EoSD cast, so having virtually everyone here be carried by their portrayals in future games is a shame. Beyond that, I feel like this game's soundtrack is also somewhat of a downgrade from the last two PC-98 games, although it could just be that I don't like most of the instruments used in this game. It makes sense, given that ZUN was just now getting used to using anything other than FM Synthesis to compose music, but of this game's soundtrack, Voile, the Magic Library, Lunar Clock ~ Luna Dial, and Septette for the Dead Princess are the only three songs that really stick out to me, with the rest ranging from alright to barely listenable for me, and even of the ones I just listed, Luna Dial is the only one I'd put on the same level as the best of Lotus Land Story or Mystic Square's soundtracks. This soundtrack isn't bad, mostly, I just find it extremely forgettable when compared to what came before or after it. Despite everything I've just said, there are some things I actually do like here! First of all, I feel like this is the point where ZUN became really willing to experiment with the bullet patterns. We'd seen a lot of variety beforehand in Mystic Square, sure (Mai's spinning laser wheel thingy continues to be one of my favorite bullet patterns in the series), but this game feels like it really goes out of its way to experiment and display its characters' abilities through gameplay, in moments like Cirno freezing her bullets still and having them move in a different direction when they're un-frozen, or Sakuya being able to stop time, place bullets on the screen, and resume time, having them all start moving at once. I really love stuff like this, so it's a pleasant surprise to see it being done this early in the series. Additionally, the character art, although objectively quite bad, still has a certain charm for me that I really enjoy, even if Meiling does look a bit like she'll eat me alive. Overall, while EoSD is responsible for the start of the Windows Touhou continuity, it's definitely a game that I respect more than I actually enjoy it. I have this idea in my head of it being one that everyone really likes, but come to think of it, I don't actually know what the general fandom perception of it is these days, so it'll be interesting to see if I get burnt at the stake for this post or if it gets met with a slightly underwhelming sense of "well, yeah, obviously".

Such as? I'm curious as to what specifically you like about them compared to the Windows games.

Not sure, I've never actually had to apply the English patch myself. All I know is that thcrap (Touhou community-reliant auto patcher) is good for getting it set up, so you might want to look into that.

Ah, fair. Fortunately Touhou is a decently easy series to get into relatively speaking, as you can start with basically anything other than SA/UFO/TD/LoLK and be mostly fine (and TD should be fine too if you don't care about story). Also, I'd strongly recommend figuring out how to get the Steam games patched, it can be annoying but a large part of why I love WBaWC so much is for its story and characters (even if the first 3 stages are kinda mid in that regard for me), so it'd be a shame to see that get overlooked entirely. And hey, if you can't figure it out, there's no shame in just downloading them off here too, you already paid for them after all.

Eagle is fun, but I slightly prefer using the wolf spirit. Also, I get not being able to get past stage 3, but trust me, it's 100% worth it, WBaWC is potentially my favorite mainline game in the entire series and it's almost entirely down to stages 4/5/6 (as well as the extra stage). Oh, and I have a question, are you playing the games with the English patch, or just playing them in Japanese and using the wiki to get an idea of the story?

Well, here we are, the last of the PC-98 games! I really love this one. In a way, Mystic Square, also known as "Shinki gets her home trashed by random strangers through no fault of her own", kind of feels like a culmination of everything the PC-98 games have been so far. It plays similarly to Lotus Land Story, which although I haven't played PoDD, I'm going to assume is the best of the previous PC-98 games gameplay-wise, and adds Mima and Yuuka as playable characters, each with their own distinct shot types and endings. Additionally, it's also a fair bit harder than LLS was - not as hard as most of the Windows games, mind you, but hard enough that my inclusion of the fact I managed to 1cc it as Mima on normal in this post is purely here for me to brag about being able to do that, as opposed to an attempt to demonstrate the game's lack of difficulty. Anyway, onto the game's story. Basically, demons from Makai have opened up a kind of tourist agency and are flooding into Gensokyo in unprecedented numbers, prompting either Reimu, Marisa, Yuuka or Mima to head into Makai to try and sort the situation out. Structurally, it is very similar to SoEW and LLS' stories of "strange new world causes incident, main character go in new world to solve incident", but the added dimension of the Makai incident being caused by a tourist agency of all things as well as the expanded roster adding extra dimensions to the story still makes this my favorite of the PC-98 stories. As you might have guessed, this game's story also doesn't take itself too seriously, leading to, in my opinion, potentially the funniest game in the series. Reimu and Marisa's stories mostly take themselves seriously, but Mima and Yuuka's might as well be glorified shitposts, and I kind of love them for it. Mima is just an absolute menace of a character who just wanders around Makai mercilessly bullying anyone she comes across, and when she's asked why she did all this by Shinki at the end of the game, she just says it was to "let off some steam" (thanks to this game I am now firmly a part of the "bring Mima back for Windows Touhou" crowd). The game also features a running joke where she'll consistently tell obvious lies and have them be followed by "(lie)" at the end of her sentences, which should not be as funny to me as it is, but oh well. Similarly, Yuuka is also mostly just here because getting to fight strong people sounds fun to her, and like Mima, is a pure demon with no regard for anyone's life but her own, with this game being where her infamous "genocide is just a game, after all" line comes from. Pretty much every encounter in Yuuka's story can be summarized as some unfortunate soul running into her, being either scared, confused or both by her intense bloodlust, and immediately getting curbstomped shortly after. My opinion that this game is one of the funniest in the series is largely carried by the fact that I find these types of characters really funny for some reason, so if you don't also find them funny then you probably won't enjoy a lot of this game's humor, but I still enjoy this game's writing a lot. Humor aside, the game's also just filled with tons of really cool set pieces that do a great job at conveying the tone and feel of their particular areas through visuals and gameplay. Stage 2's whole flying stars effect does an excellent job at making you feel like you're flying through another world, and is perhaps the single most visually impressive thing in any PC-98 Touhou game, and the rapid onslaught of enemies in Stage 5 excellently conveys the feeling that this entire world has suddenly come together all at once in a single combined effort to stop you from getting any further, contrasting excellently with Stage 6 being mostly barren, being potentially the easiest stage in the game aside from the first and using a single unmoving background, as if at this point Shinki is just throwing whatever she has left at you to get you to just go away already, but by now, you've already burnt through all of her most powerful forces. Additionally, I also just... really like a lot of this game's characters. This technically marks Alice's first appearance in a Touhou game, although she's very different in both design and personality (honestly I think I prefer Windows Alice), but aside from her, Louise's interactions with the main cast are all just generally really funny for one reason or another, Yuki and Mai's whole dynamic is really interesting to me, and still in my opinion the most well-executed version of the "fighting two bosses at once" concept the Windows games would go on to try out a handful of times, and although she's far from the best character in the game, Yumeko is basically a trial version of Sakuya, which at least makes her somewhat interesting to me. Also, Shinki did nothing wrong and deserved better, justice for Shinki. Moving on from the writing, I think it's worth noting that this is by far the most visually impressive of the PC-98 games, and it's clear that ZUN really wanted to push the engine to its limits with this game. The previously mentioned Stage 2 in particular has a really cool effect going on, and Alice's background in the extra stage is also particularly notable in this regard, but this added level of visual polish extends to most aspects of the game. Additionally, the soundtrack, like in LLS, still holds up excellently, and I'd put both games' soundtracks on a similar level of high regard, actually being more enjoyable to me than some Windows games (although I would rank this game very slightly higher than LLS). Grimoire of Alice is an overall great song, and potentially my favorite thing to come out of any PC-98 Touhou soundtrack, but it's far from the only banger this game has to offer, with End of the World ~ World's End, Legendary Illusion ~ Infinite Being, Crimson Maiden ~ Crimson Dead, and Last Judgement all being similarly excellent examples of why I believe this to be the best PC-98 Touhou game soundtrack overall. The Stage 3 theme is also another great one, perhaps my favorite in the game if we ignore Grimoire of Alice, although I have no idea why ZUN thought calling it "Romantic Children" was even close to a good idea. Overall, Mystic Square is an excellent game that still holds up perfectly to this day, and a great way to cap off the PC-98 Touhou era. Additionally, although I'm still largely convinced the LLS lag issue I had was purely something on my end, it's worth noting that this game for some reason runs perfectly fine for me, as does everything else in this series. It's not particularly relevant to the rest of this post, but it did feel worth mentioning, so I tacked it on at the end here. Anyway, Mystic Square absolutely slaps, go play it right now if you haven't already.

Based WBaWC enjoyer, welcome :D

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.

Late response but this sounds ominous, very curious as to how bad it could be now

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.

A lot of recommendations here, most of which I've never heard of but am definitely willing to give a look, but there is one in particular I'd like to ask about: I actually tried playing that one a while ago, but I remember having difficulties getting it to run. I don't remember what the issue was specifically, but are there any particularly common issues regarding the game that I'm not aware of?

Fairly straightforward, really. I'm in the mood to play an RPG with some Touhou characters and wanted to know what you guys would recommend. Ideally I'd like something with a large cast of characters, and who I actually get to see interact with each other, but feel free to suggest anything you think is good.

As the title suggests, I've decided to do a little thing on here every so often where I talk about every official Touhou game I can be bothered to say anything about in order of release, starting, of course, with Embodiment of Scarlet De- I mean Highly Responsive to Prayers! Man this game is weird idk how I feel about it I have no idea what the general fandom consensus on this game is, so I have no idea if this will be met with a "yeah obviously" or a "how dare you", but this game is... strange, and I don't know if I like it or not. I think I do? I probably do. Anyway, on the one hand, when it's at its best, it can be surprisingly fun and enjoyable to play, and even this early on there were still a handful of bangers in the soundtrack (Magic Mirror my beloved), but on the other, there are lots of moments in this game where you're stuck batting the yin-yang orb around for what feels like forever trying to hit that one single tile you have left, or on the later boss fights, stuck between choosing to attack and inevitably lose a life or continue dodging bullets and never get a chance to attack. Speaking of which, though, I do think the boss fights are the best parts of this game. While the actual stages can range from inoffensive at best to mildly inconvenient and annoying at worst, I had by far the most fun against the bosses. Their fight themes are all great, and although the fact it's occasionally possible to get stuck faced with an onslaught of bullets it's literally impossible to dodge, the fact the game allows you to retry them as many times as you like does help in making them not too frustrating. They're also where the yin-yang orb gameplay is at its best for me, having to balance attacking and dodging (something that only really gets annoying against Sariel and Konngara and is quite a fun game of risk and reward up until that point) against a target that's big enough to be able to aim for with decent consistency, and without any obstructions to get in your way. Admittedly, I can't actually beat Sariel or Konngara, so the fact I don't like those fights could very well just be a skill issue on my end, but oh well. The rest of the game is... less good, admittedly. There's nothing really all that fun about trying to hit the tiles in the normal stages, nor are there any real decisions to be made, you just kind of keep going until you eventually win. The normal stages are all really easy, too, with the only difference between the early and later ones being that the later ones are all mildly more annoying, without really providing anything more in terms of an actual challenge. Thankfully, though, "mildly annoying" is the worst they ever get, and they're not bad enough to hugely detract from the overall experience. Overall, it's definitely an odd game, and one that definitely shows its age more than even the later PC-98 games that came after it, but at the very least worth going back to, if not for a look at where the series started then just for the honestly quite fun boss fights. Fuck Kikuri's first attack phase, though. The rest of her fight is quite fun, but that first phase can go die for all I care. At least I get to listen to Magic Mirror during it, though.

When I came up with it I was really into Joy Mech Fight, even more so than I am now, and the character I played at the time was called Star and had a kind of space theme going for him, so I wanted something relevant to that, and of the names I could come up with, Cosmic seemed the coolest to me. I couldn't come up with anything better elsewhere, so the name stuck even outside its original context, and although I've since moved on from Star to playing other characters, I still use him as a kind of mascot for myself in that community.

Definitely Suwako, I love the silly little googly eyes

So, recently I played Glory of Deep Skies (banger fangame btw, go play it), and without spoiling anything, it's possible to get locked out of certain endings in that game. So, I wanted to see the extra endings I got locked out of, and since my save has the extra stage unlocked, I didn't want to delete it, so I figured I'd just download it again. But when I went to click the download link on here, I got this warning from my browser, which I've never gotten from anything on here before. I decided to check a few other things, and yep, it's an issue there too. For GoDS specifically this wasn't really an issue, since I could just go to the official website and download it from there, but it still strikes me as weird. Is anyone else having this issue, or is it something on my end? Oh, and I'm aware Nitori's Workshop exists for this kind of stuff, but it seems like I can't post there for whatever reason (perhaps because I'm relatively new here), so this seems like the closest alternative.

Mine was actually Hisoutensoku, I ended up joining the game's discord accidentally but decided to stick around because I thought it looked cool. The first bullet hell I played was Mountain of Faith though, since I'd heard somewhere that it was a good one to start with (it was) and it had Aya who was my main in Soku. Still took me around 9 months to get around to playing MoF after Soku though.

These are both great songs, I don't have much more to add really