I have never played a Touhou...

[Zengeku3]

Not in this thread, far as I recall. Regardless, that's debatable. I've captured easy without much trouble, but I've yet to capture normal.

Well, its not bound to be the case for everyone but most people seem to have problems with the Easy card while having no problems with the Normal mode card.

I don't get playing for score (possibly an extension of my suckiness at shmups), and I'd rather rise to the challenge of 1ccing or perfecting. So I can only guess at the accuracy of the detailed posts defending the scoring aspects of Touhou (*cough* certain games therein). But I don't understand the criticisms of Touhou's difficulty. If the games are too easy and you're not interested in perfecting, not interested in scoring, or not intrigued by the given scoring system, then why multi-post? You're either not interested or it's beneath you, right?

Playing for score can be cool at times but it often requires a boatload of memorization of even easy stages to get a reasonable score and that's often time I either don't have or would rather spend on playing something else. Instead I, like you, prefer trying to 1cc stuff and perfect stuff. I enjoy playing Touhou's bosses but the reason you see me complaining here is that the stages are getting far too easy and too slow paced. This makes the trek towards another go against the boss a tedious hurdle that drives me insane. In addition, when you are a person who likes to perfect stuff, you prefer if the bosses are actually capable of putting up a fight.

The reason I haven't pulled the plug on this series is because of all the great content it has. What I'm complaining about here is the bad stuff.

[Illyrian]

Are you saying you don't like the obnoxious midi trumpets?

I actually think the extra stage boss music is pretty good for the record.

[Zengeku3]

ZUN's fetichistic attachment to those trumpets has fortunately become less apparent over the yes. I wonder though, which extra stage are you referring to?

[ncp]

ZUN still has a ton of trumpets, they just sound way better than they used to. Somewhere between 8 and 10 his trumpet sound changed drastically. 7 and 8 in particular suffer from some unbearable trumpet high notes (see: the 2nd Border of Life in 7 and both final boss tunes in 8). Starting with Mountain of Faith the trumpet sections have been fucking beautiful (see: Suwa Foughten Field from 10 and Cosmic Mind from 12).

[Bananamatic]

My mom shouted at me during Border of Life once. Can't disagree with her though.

Also, volume differences - compare phantasm stage theme and Necrofantasia. I always had to turn it up for the stage and back down for the boss.

[Deca]

I'm never going to understand why people enjoy touhou music. Unless it's improved immensely since Imperishable Night, it's abhorrent. I can't even call it boring or average, I've always found it to be offensively bad.

I'll admit I played a decent amount of PCB, and a little IN wayyy back when. Once I got into real shooters I never looked back, I just don't find them fun at all. Everything about them feels about twice as long as it needs to be, just drawn out stages and boss fights long enough to make esprade blush.

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

Give it another try. Listen to the PC-98 tracks, those are ZUN's golden years music wise.

[Deca]

I'm willing to give it a shot. I'll play pretty much anything at least once.

[Zengeku3]

Give it another try. Listen to the PC-98 tracks, those are ZUN's golden years music wise.

It was also back when ZUN could craft a boss you could kill in about a minute while still being hard as nails and fun. He's kinda lost that charm somewhat.

Well... there is only one of those fights and that's called Yumeko at max rank but damn! Oh and that music does really beat the everliving crap out of basically anything up to MoF at which point his trumpets finally starts shutting up a little. Well, they are still there but just not in all the bloody songs.

I'm never going to understand why people enjoy touhou music. Unless it's improved immensely since Imperishable Night, it's abhorrent. I can't even call it boring or average, I've always found it to be offensively bad.

I guess its a matter of musical preference. Though, there are cases of attempted rape of hearing capabilities in the early games i'll admit. The OST's got better later on. As did the stages. And the boss patterns. And everything really.

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

I'm willing to give it a shot. I'll play pretty much anything at least once.

I already listed the essentials on page 1. Feel free to skip out on PoDD, as much like Twinkle Star Spites, it is only good if you're playing it with a bro. First Touhou game is a nice change in pace as it's basically Sayo-Chan in Arkanoid. Quite a few other games are influenced by Taito, which is charming. UFO has the stage 5 boss shooting RayStorm-esque lasers at you, and stage 6 has Space Invaders patterned fairies.

Give it another try. Listen to the PC-98 tracks, those are ZUN's golden years music wise.

It was also back when ZUN could craft a boss you could kill in about a minute while still being hard as nails and fun. He's kinda lost that charm somewhat.

Well... there is only one of those fights and that's called Yumeko at max rank but damn!

Yumeko, along with Reimu and Elis demonstrate rather nicely that you don't need convoluted bullet patterns to make a boss difficult.

[Zengeku3]

Yumeko, along with Reimu and Elis demonstrate rather nicely that you don't need convoluted bullet patterns to make a boss difficult.

But you need the convoluted patterns to make things interesting though. It works for a single boss fight but not for an entire game. Reimu... i dunno, the graphics seems to be the biggest threat here.

Elis... she just demonstrates that anything becomes hard if just the game is bad enough.

[Hagane]

They are not my cup of tea, and I can't stand the absolutely awful graphics / artwork, but I don't think they are as terrible as some people say they are. Touhou fanboys are probably the main cause for the hate the games get.

[Illyrian]

ZUN's fetichistic attachment to those trumpets has fortunately become less apparent over the yes. I wonder though, which extra stage are you referring to?

The extra stage from Imperishible Night. The music that plays when you fight the boss who's name I now can't remember is awesome in my opinion.