Which Touhou Games Should We Get?

[Emuser]

PoDD
PoFV
IaMP

[WizardYuuka]

IN, MoF, and TD have playable Youmu so those.

[ebarrett]

The Highly Responsive to Prayers
Touhou Mother
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Patchcon: Defend the Library
MegaMari
Touhou Labyrinth

there were probably some other touhou games made but they weren't important

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

shoulda stuck with Bayonetta, I mean it has Marisa in it right

[ebarrett]

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

shoulda stuck with Bayonetta, I mean it has Marisa in it right

MGR:R has more playable Youmu than MoF tho

[BareKnuckleRoo]

MGR:R has more playable Youmu than MoF tho

Youmu was totally in Bayonetta too, she just had a motorcycle.

If this topic is being serious I'd totally buy:

Mystic Square
Mystic Square
Mystic Square

LLS and PoDD too I guess

[Ikazu-san]

Why exactly 3? Disk space?

Anyway, after my childhood trauma every game is 120% Touhou for me. I say, go with Crimzon Clover because Type I is Reimu, II is Marisa, and III being special guest fighter.

[cicada88]

Touhou is a lifestyle choice. All or none.

[SapphireDensetsu]

I'll just go ahead and say Imperishable Night. You're welcome.

--Sapphire

[ProjectAKo]

touhou 6, touhou 8, touhou 12

Not trolling. They have the best patterns and best music.

[SapphireDensetsu]

touhou 6, touhou 8, touhou 12

Not trolling. They have the best patterns and best music.

This person gets it. Just please please please remember to use vpatch if you're reviewing EoSD, otherwise the results won't be pretty.

--Sapphire

[pokemon123]

SA,MOF,IN SA is my favourite.


I think i'm going to get slaughtered for saying this but don't get UFO IMO.

[SapphireDensetsu]

touhou 6, touhou 8, touhou 12

Not trolling. They have the best patterns and best music.

This person gets it. Just please please please remember to use vpatch if you're reviewing EoSD, otherwise the results won't be pretty.

--Sapphire

Noted.

By not pretty I mean 3,4,5 frames of input lag added besides whatever input lag is already present on your setup.

--Sapphire

[Cagar]

Touhou 14
Touhou 10
Touhou 7

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I guess I should specify that anything on PC98 is out. Because of my distinct lack of PC98.

I really hope that someone will one day invent software that lets you play old computer or console games on new computers.

If your reviews are for people who already like shmups, they've probably all played the main Windows era games and focusing on the weirder, more experimental stuff like StB, PoDD and PoFV will be more interesting. If your reviews are for mainstream, you can at least show off LLS and say "hey look this is what that Bad Apple shit is from".

touhou 6, 8 & 12 - best music

ZUN developed a trumpet fetish after his chiptune days, made me sad.

[trap15]

The PC98 games are also quite rare and expensive (hundreds of USD). That should be a good enough reason to not try to buy them
Also PC98 emulation is bad. Quite bad.

[WizardYuuka]

The PC98 games are also quite rare and expensive (hundreds of USD).

Thousands of USD

[ProjectAKo]

touhou 6, touhou 8, touhou 12

Not trolling. They have the best patterns and best music.

Those were the ones I gravitated towards naturally... I looked into 7 too, though. Maybe I'll get those 4, haha

My problem with 7 is, the character speed is damn low. I can't stand slow ships. Also there's tons and tons of streaming in 7. Just sitting there tapping left or right for 5 minutes at a time isn't super interesting if you ask me. Stage 4 is just intolerable with it. At least touhou 6 had many many random patterns to keep me interested. But people seem to like th7 anyway so whatever.

[Shepardus]

Touhou 8 - This one's one of the most commonly recommended to beginners (it was my first Touhou game), and for good reason. Very polished and full-featured. Relatively complicated scoring mechanics but if you don't worry about them it's still easy to get into.

Touhou 11 - Great soundtrack, great bossfights, nuclear hell-raven.

Touhou 9.5/12.5 - Shoot the Bullet (9.5) is perhaps ZUN's most original game, feeling more like a puzzle game than a typical shmup. I personally don't like playing it that much but I like its originality and think any good sampling of the Touhou games should include at least one of the spinoffs (non-integer numbers). Double Spoiler (12.5) is basically Shoot the Bullet with different characters and bullet patterns.

-------------------------

Also worth considering IMO:

Touhou 7 - Also often-recommended to beginners along with Imperishable Night (8). IMO 8's the better game, though 7's characters and music seem to be featured more in fanworks (EoSD's the most popular in that regard though). On a side-note, its demo was my first exposure to bullet-hell, though Imperishable Night was the first full Touhou game I played.

Touhou 12 - Your mileage may vary on the UFO mechanic, but the bossfights are great, at least from stage 3 boss onwards (I don't really care much for the game before the stage 3 boss). That one spellcard with lasers rotating around a moving center-point can go die in a fire though.

Touhou 12.8 - Short (just three stages) but features cool mechanics (no pun intended) making it play quite a bit different from most Touhou games, though it's not quite as far a departure as Shoot the Bullet, without overstaying its welcome.

Touhou 14 - Beginner-friendly mechanics featuring the staples of the series (grazing, point item autocollection, etc.) and little else. Available through digital distribution via Playism so it's easy to obtain.

[CStarFlare]

The Yuyuko fight is one of the nicest-looking things in the series, IMO. The colors just work really well together. Imperishable Night, while probably my favorite Touhou, doesn't have anything comparable.

I'd say 7, 9, and 10. 7 because it's incredibly deep and interesting (and occasionally pretty), 9 because it's completely different type of game, and 10 because its system is a lot different than the others.

Just saw Shepardus' post - 9.5 is a really good one too. There's basically nothing else like it in the genre, except its direct sequel.

[Shepardus]

Agree with you on the Yuyuko fight, although I like IN more overall its final boss fight is one of the less memorable ones to me, even with the Last Words at the end. I also find the SA and UFO final boss fights very memorable (the former because WARNING and ridiculously huge bullets, the latter because of its music and overall tone, even though there's nothing objectively unique about it compared to other Touhou games).

I didn't include 10 because I'm still bitter about the one time it crashed on me after I cleared Normal for the first time and didn't unlock the extra stage because of it. But bugs aside it is pretty good, and if you're not a fan of graze-milking it's probably the one to go for as it's the only Windows main-series Touhou game that doesn't factor graze count into anything or even keep track of it.

Touhou is a lifestyle choice. All or none.

You must also watch Touhou hentai and fully embrace the inseparability of lolis and silly hats.

[Squire Grooktook]

I like 10 a lot. Great patterns, lots of rng, simple scoring, and easy to get into.

[To Far Away Times]

Touhou 6,7 and 8.

Touhou 6 isn't quite as polished as the other two, but the soundtrack is just incredible, the characters and stages are well done, and it has the best extra stage in the series. For lack of a better way to describe it, it has a lot of "heart" put into it.
Touhou 7 is probably the most popular game in the series and is just a great game all around.
Touhou 8 introduces some interesting mechanics, builds upon 7 and is also very highly recommended.

[Obscura]

IN is the best, followed by EoSD. PCB is a very distant third. The rest all suck.

[Squire Grooktook]

IN is the best, followed by EoSD. PCB is a very distant third. The rest all suck.

I don't really like IN or PCB at all. IN doesn't have as much rng (instant drawback), and the scoring systems in both games rub me the wrong way. PCB has some great bosses but IMO the ones in Eosd, Mountain of Faith, UFO, and even SA are as good and often better.

EOSD has great patterns and level design though imo. Makes up for it being very rough around the edges in some ways.

Mountain of Faith and UFO are best imo. Intuitive scoring systems, top notch and varied level design, rng all over the place, and some of the best boss patterns. The last pattern in MOF alone is one of the best patterns in shmup history imo.

[Obscura]

Heh, MoF is the one I'd usually label as by far the worst in the series; it's pointless for survival because lolbombeverythinglol and it's irritating to play for score because there's a ton of "sit at the top of the screen" in a game with no deadzones.

Raiden's powerup system is enough to make me rage, so having the entire game system work by "collecting color changing stuff" was enough to scare me away from UFO without ever playing it.

I don't understand how it's even possible to like SA's score system more than IN's, given that SA's literally doesn't work at Normal difficulty.

[Squire Grooktook]

Heh, MoF is the one I'd usually label as by far the worst in the series; it's pointless for survival because lolbombeverythinglol and it's irritating to play for score because there's a ton of "sit at the top of the screen" in a game with no deadzones.

Lunatic MOF is far from "bomb everything" when playing for survival. It's much, much, much easier to bomb/hyper spam through the first loop of Ddp DOJ than it is MOF. I'd say it's a pretty fair game for survival, since the bomb system lets you get pretty far but you'll definitely have to get good at 90% of stages 1-5 if you want to have a chance at stage 6.

Also an important thing to remember is that bombing reduces your power so spamming on the first few patterns of a boss = hardest pattern at the end lasts way longer. You can restore some of your power at the end of some patterns, but you definitely have to plan it and spamming will probably just get you into really scary situations. Oh and the last boss final pattern (best pattern ever btw) is immune to bombs. I 1cc'd the game on lunatic, and while I do still horribly suck at the game, I can at least confirm that "lolbombeverythinglol" isn't going to get you past stage 4 unless you can pull off some actual twitchy dodging.

For scoring try focusing on no-death, no-bombing everything. Death impacts your score heavily so if you can capture everything it will more than make up for dropping a few chains. I'd say don't worry too much about perfect chaining everything ("staying at the top of the screen all the time") till you can no death or no bomb the game.

Best game.

was enough to scare me away from UFO without ever playing it.

That's a nice basis to say a game sucks on

[Shepardus]

In MoF bombing during stages is pretty forgiving since you can get your power back very quickly most of the time, but during boss fights there's a lot less to replenish on so spamming too many bombs in a spellcard carries a lasting penalty, at least until you manage to get more powerups or die (as you'll gain up to 3.20 power from the dropped power items if you had less than that when you died). It's arguably a bit like Crimzon Clover in that way, in that you can technically use a ton of bombs but it may make it tougher to survive later when you actually need your bombs (in Crimzon Clover's case, each bomb costs more break gauge than the last so using too many makes them nearly as expensive as entering Break Mode).

[Sakurei]

Heh, MoF is the one I'd usually label as by far the worst in the series; it's pointless for survival because lolbombeverythinglol and it's irritating to play for score because there's a ton of "sit at the top of the screen" in a game with no deadzones.

Lunatic MOF is far from "bomb everything" when playing for survival. It's much, much, much easier to bomb/hyper spam through the first loop of Ddp DOJ than it is MOF. I'd say it's a pretty fair game for survival, since the bomb system lets you get pretty far but you'll definitely have to get good at 90% of stages 1-5 if you want to have a chance at stage 6.

Also an important thing to remember is that bombing reduces your power so spamming on the first few patterns of a boss = hardest pattern at the end lasts way longer. You can restore some of your power at the end of some patterns, but you definitely have to plan it and spamming will probably just get you into really scary situations. Oh and the last boss final pattern (best pattern ever btw) is immune to bombs. I 1cc'd the game on lunatic, and while I do still horribly suck at the game, I can at least confirm that "lolbombeverythinglol" isn't going to get you past stage 4 unless you can pull off some actual twitchy dodging.

For scoring try focusing on no-death, no-bombing everything. Death impacts your score heavily so if you can capture everything it will more than make up for dropping a few chains. I'd say don't worry too much about perfect chaining everything ("staying at the top of the screen all the time") till you can no death or no bomb the game.

Best game.

Are you fucking kidding me? Have you even played the game? MoF gives you so many bombs, you can bomb literally every boss pattern and still 1cc. Every_single_one. So yes, MoF survival is "bomb everything". You mention the power. Yes, that is true. Bomb uses your power, but not only do you get a free bomb from 5.00 to 4.00 (since the damage doesn't change!), but you usually also get the power right back then you bomb in a stage potion, like stage 5 for example. lolbombeverythinglol is going to get you the 1cc, denying that is dumb shit.

Have you ever watched a high scoring MoF replay? I assume you haven't, because MoF scores bomb a_lot for faith and items. They bomb so much, they might shoot less than they bomb! No missing the game is the most important thing, yes. But it is garbage tier route to play for NMNB and score at the same time. It is far better to bomb two or three spell cards than it is to capture everything and never bomb at all. Bombing is a huge part of MoF scoring and saying otherwise is plain misinformation and that isn't good when you advise a new player.

If you ask me, you should get PCB, IN and TD. They all have Youmu, so they're all good games. PCB is just a piece of art and IN is amazing. TD is super funny. Good games.

[Squire Grooktook]

Are you fucking kidding me? Have you even played the game? MoF gives you so many bombs, you can bomb literally every boss pattern and still 1cc. Every_single_one. So yes, MoF survival is "bomb everything". You mention the power. Yes, that is true. Bomb uses your power, but not only do you get a free bomb from 5.00 to 4.00 (since the damage doesn't change!), but you usually also get the power right back then you bomb in a stage potion, like stage 5 for example. lolbombeverythinglol is going to get you the 1cc, denying that is dumb shit.

I'm pretty shit at dodging, so even the copious number of bombs the game gave me simply wasn't enough for me to avoid dodging that gave me a real hard time. It took me a good 3 or so monthes to get the lunatic 1cc, and in order to avoid deaths on certain spell cards/stage portions, I would plan not to use bombs on preceding easier spell cards/stage portions in order to insure I had enough bombs and enough power to get through the harder parts safely. Maybe its a case of definition, but "lolbombeverythinglol" just doesn't sound accurate when the most bombs you can drop still leaves room for difficult dodging in between.

I mean I guess for some bosses, you could drop a bomb for every spell, but if your as bad as me you're still going to have do some dodging in between when the bomb ends and the spell ends, which is often enough to kill a run for me.

As for the scoring, I didn't intend to say that nm-nb was the best scoring, but since he says he hates staying at the top of the screen so much, work on that before learning any routes for optimal faith. It's not like you always have to go for score, especially if you hate the mechanic.

Have you ever watched a high scoring MoF replay? I assume you haven't, because MoF scores bomb a_lot for faith and items. They bomb so much, they might shoot less than they bomb! No missing the game is the most important thing, yes. But it is garbage tier route to play for NMNB and score at the same time. It is far better to bomb two or three spell cards than it is to capture everything and never bomb at all. Bombing is a huge part of MoF scoring and saying otherwise is plain misinformation and that isn't good when you advise a new player.

Hmmm, it's been a year. I read up on all the scoring tricks when I was playing, but I might have forgotten by now.