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.