Reviews from

in the past


knew I was deep into touhou when the most hype moment of a game I played this year was seeing aya from shoot the bullet show up as the boss of stage 4

bomb mechanic is iffy (as it often is) and I miss grazing, but everything else here's lovely so it's hard to complain. there's a celebratory whimsy and playfulness that's above and beyond even perfect cherry blossom; the kind of joyful bombast that just feels cozy and makes it easy to sink into effortlessly

the bosses are as good as ever, the backgrounds and portraits are better than ever, and the soundtrack might be the best one yet, but what stands out most to me is how much zun's honed his talent for giving even the smallest, faintest moments their own charming flourishes. little swerves like hina's introduction or nitori fleeing from her own initial midboss encounter before it starts are delightful, and tracing the lines as the series gets more and more confident with conveying personality thru mechanical and structural means has been an absolute pleasure; nearly every frame of a character's presence — thru danmaku, dialogue, or lack thereof — being used to fullest effect by this point, leveraging elegant, iterative design perfectly

it's time to admit zun's the most accomplished auteur in the medium and it's not even close

Pretty standard fare. The cast has its mainstays but is generally weaker than surrounding entries'. Mostly pretty comparatively tame (at least from what I remember of the previous games) until Kanako who's really annoying. Overall, kind of a step down from the trilogy comprised of Touhou 6-8. I do like that there are infinite continues now, though.

Touhou Fuujinroku: Mountain of Faith or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

I can't elaborate further, but I think this is Ben Shapiro's favorite Touhou.

I took count of how many times I lost to Kanako and her Mountain of Faith spellcard which ended all those 1cc runs. It was 69.


If you're new to bullethells and possibly looking to get into touhou (and possibly dislike the gameplay of 6 as a starter,) then this is the game for you. Probably the easiest game in the series with mostly easy bosses, free bombs, and a new and friendly continue system. That isn't to say this game doesn't have its own challenges with some stages or bosses, namely stage 4 and Kanako's Final Spellcard. Overall, fun game and good entry point.

SANAE UOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 😭😭😭😭

There isn't really a lot to talk about here, as Touhou 10 pretty much follows the strong series stapes of really good boss bullet patterns, excellent soundtrack, and a general amount of heart and charm.

The new faith system is the highlight here, having to balance power as both your bullet spread and your bombs makes decisions a lot more interesting. Getting out of bullet hell jail now has more risks to it in terms of damage output (bar Marisa-B's INSANE level 3) and in general it's more limited to keep yourself safe.

That being said, 10's a bit too easy. While I haven't 1cc'd it yet (won't take long, i'm really only having difficulty with the last stage), in general the first few stages are disgustingly simple in spread and approach that every run really just begins at stage 4. It continues to have ZUN's kusoge approach to difficulty pacing and ramping up design in this way, and I keep going into these thinking "man i kinda wish there was a stage skip." It ruins the purpose of a 1cc i guess, but it's so easy to rack up score and miss hits even on the harder difficulty that signing up to sleep through half the game effectively is a bit of an ask.

Still, pretty good.

It says a lot about the society we live in when we see articles about how technology is great and the money is spent on shopping in some ungodly ugly MMO instead of making Sanae Kochiya real

For some reason I just could not get a good handle of any of the spells and I felt uncomfortable with each one. I'm not sure if it's the new engine, or the fact that all bosses have some sort of laser attack or any other reason. I dabbled in the other games before fully committing to this one and I think it's cause of those reasons.

It's not as majestic as PCB or as impactful story-wise (at least emotionally, lore-wise, it's very important).

It's also infinitely harder and for me, more frustrating for some reason (I didn't get frustrated at all when I played PCB but Kanako was a little frustrating). Don't listen to anyone who says to start with this one, please start with PCB instead, it's much more managable.

Aya is a menace who claims she'd go easy on you and it's a complete lie. What other game has a stage 4 boss with a survival card? At least Sanae is easier than Youmu though she still trips me up sometimes (though compared to the rest of the cast, she's a bit of a pushover). Kanako is one of the hardest bosses in any game I've ever played in my entire life. Right out of the gate, she's hard and only gets harder. She has some bullshit cards (the jellybeans) but overall, she's decently fair but she demands skills and playstyles that are hard to execute properly (swapping between focus and unfocus on a dime).

But still a great game of course. Amazing soundtrack, great characters, unique artstyle different from the other games. It's nice and it serves its purpose as the start of the later windows games well. It has a good tone and setting and it introduces new characters that become a mainstay. It expands the lore and setting, setting the basis for the next 2 or 3 games. The backgrounds are so beautiful that they're honestly distracting but in a good way.

The new bomb mechanic is pretty fun too, makes bombs really strong which saved my ass so often.

Though, when I finished PCB, I wanted more, I played it again and beat it another time. When i finished MoF, I was relieved to be done. I'm not really sure what that means.

If I see Yuyuko in my dreams, I see Kanako in my nightmares.

The gameplay is a little basic but nothing is wrong with that because the shooting good. The music I thought wasn't that great at first but really grew on me over the years and I love most of the tracks now.

It also gives us best girl Sanae that is a miracle.

A great Touhou game; not much to say aside from that it's a fun addition to the series with some great stages and fantastic music, but almost every installment has these things. Unfortunately, the lives system isn't great. It forces you into playing with only 3 lives, and continues to boot you back to the beginning of the level rather than where you were, but you get an infinite amount. This sometimes numbs some parts, particularly the final stage, which is much harder than the rest of this game. But aside from how hard the final stage is? This installment is fantastic in every other aspect.

least bullshit of the touhou games

me when sanae: but u have to..be my girlfriend!! snickers nefariously /thinks to self/ 'man, if this works, I'll get this cute girl to be my girlfriend and i'll ride the cool roller coasters! c'mon, luck be a lady tonight!' crosses fingers and gulps s-so.. adjusts collar and looks firmly what do you say to my proposal? waits patiently

Touhou's second Windows Era trilogy starts off quite strong with Mountain of Faith. While the game is mechanically simple, it runs pretty far with Touhou's basic ideas by having some of the best bullet patterns and especially pacing in the series thus far. The gameplay has had some changes still-- the way the continue system works is better than the previous games (an infinite amount; must restart the stage when using one) and encourages having a more intimate knowledge of the stage, which is great. However, I'm not a big fan of the bombs in MoF. They're too good and easy to abuse. Could've been done better.

The thing that puts this game above the others for me as a whole though is the presentation. It is consistently incredibly strong: the backgrounds are pleasing, the soundtrack is easily my favorite in the series to date, and the cast of characters rivals even Touhou 6's. Their sense of identity is very strong and while the series has always been good at this, it feels more realized than usual in this case. I particularly love Kanako, her concept as a greedy god is raw as hell.

All in all, game's great and I'm quite excited to see how Subterranean Animism will follow it up.

eu ainda prefiro as vibes de Perfect Cherry Blossom e Imperishable Night mas não dá pra negar que esse é um dos pontos mais icônicos da série, quase ao nível de Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. eu conhecia uma boa parte das personagens e de suas músicas por pura osmose vinda do meus contatos com a fanbase. mas eu senti um pouco de falta da energia mais... rústica que os Touhous anteriores tinham, até mesmo em algo tão complexo como o 8º jogo da série. Esse é o primeiro Touhou que eu não sinto completa vontade de chegar ao final antes de partir para o próximo (cheguei na chefe final pelo menos), o que tudo bem inclusive.

Mountain of Faith ainda é um triunfo audiovisual interativo: a trilha sonora e os padrões de balas continuam espetaculares como sempre, as garotas novas que vão ser mais relevantes nos jogos futuros são ótimas adições ao elenco e a engine nova esbanja efeitos visuais muito bonitos durante as batalhas. mas eu realmente não gosto das mudanças do sistema de bombas e continues desse aqui. eu prefiro ser arremessada pro menu principal depois de morrer do que repetir a fase final só com duas miseráveis vidinhas, e fazer com que o uso de bombas diminua o poder do seu ataque normal é tryhard demais, até para os padrões dessa série. alias, antes você podia escolher a quantidade de vidas que você começa (com uma diminuição no seu score em números acima de 2) mas removeram isso também, talvez para não entrar em conflito com a nova maneira que os continues funcionam (para evitar por exemplo que você recomece a última fase com 6 vidas mesmo chegando nela com apenas 1).

mas a questão da energia presente nessa nova era da série ainda é a coisa que mais mexe comigo. eu fiquei matutando um pouco sobre isso e a minha namorada comparou esse sentimento meu como uma fã de punk ouvindo uma música pop punk, onde parte da estética mais bruta é substituída por algo mais sofisticado, mas que talvez tenha perdido parte da identidade presente no gênero. acho que faz sentido. apesar de que isso tecnicamente me torna uma Touhou boomer. tudo bem. eu também sou uma Morrowind boomer. eu ainda vou tentar os seguintes, tenho tempo para me acostumar

pra concluir esse jogo me fez perceber que eu não sou normal a respeito da Aya Shameimaru.

quero beber a cerveja que o ZUN tava bebendo quando fez a última spell card da kanako

finally getting back around to my touhou adventures when i need a break from all the visual novel-ing. mountain of faith is another absolute gem from the one-man team shanghai alice, and as far as presentation goes, zun is almost at his absolute best here. the aesthetics, soundtrack and visual appeal of the fights has driven a lot of my favoritism with the touhou series thus far, and that's a good deal of the reason why mountain of faith sits second only behind perfect cherry blossom for me so far. where titles like the aforementioned cherry blossom or imperishable night went for very rustic or spiritual aesthetics in their design, mountain of faith bursts with psychedelic color with moments like the bright red leaves of stage three giving way to the cool browns and blues of its river brook backdrop just wowwing... enough to get you caught in danmaku your first few goes around. and this HAS to be the best soundtrack yet, bar none. "romantic fall" blows the first stage competition out of the water, but "the gensokyo the gods once loved", "fall of fall", "youkai mountain", and the debut of sanae to "faith is for the transient people"... jesus christ. it's zun at full power, track after track.

maybe it's the fact that i was playing on hard, but one of my few complaints with mountain of faith is how heavily i felt it goaded me into using bombs, particularly during the kanako fight. there's nothing wrong with using bombs, and in a pinch i'll throw one out if i have to, but i generally like the feeling of knowing i can get through even the toughest 1cc runs bombless if i play my cards right. maybe i need more practice, but it felt like there were more times than normal for me in a touhou game where the solution to a predicament during a spell card was a bomb. but if that's the biggest complaint i have about the game, then it's hardly anything to get too hung up over. mountain of faith gives me a lot of hope for this new generation of touhou - excited to see how zun follows this one up.

So this is the one. The start of Modern Touhou. All the games before this kicked ass but this time around there was a new engine and a little bit of a soft reboot on mechanics. This is a pretty good starter Touhou! The only mechanical thing I hate is the switch from limited credits to "unlimited continues but you have to restart the level." It encourages you to slam your face against the final level with only two lives trying to get a bad ending clear. Take it from me, restart and get there with a bigger stock of lives.

Even the manual for this one has ZUN being wistful about how all the things he loves about classic arcade games are considered evil now (By now I mean 2007 when this came out). The man likes tough and complex shooty games. So as a result the story this time is both the closest thing to normal in the Windows games yet, and a metaphor for being an indie game dev. It is literally "what if a shrine maiden could sell out?"

Kanako, a god from the outside world (Based on an actual Shinto shrine near where ZUN lives but that isn't overly important) is getting bummed out because people don't believe in gods anymore, thus reducing the faith she gains and therefore her power. So she decides to airlift her whole-ass shrine to Gensokyo and get youkai to be her followers instead. Also, she gains faith through playing which is left vague, so I choose to believe she was holding regular paintball tournaments.

Being dumb as shit, she decides to take over Reimu's run-down shrine and thinks it'd be doing her a favor, but it would actually destroy the barrier around Gensokyo and destroy the entire point of moving in the first place, so the two playable characters leave to solve the problem by beating up a goddess and being an asshole to everyone they meet on the way.

The setting for the game is largely outside during the autumn this time, and the graphics are much improved, so things get legitimately very pretty for a shooter with this level of tech. Later on you get some enemies popping out of a waterfall and such, which is more complexity than previous games, and the music is very mellow and outdoorsy. All the stage themes bar none are very memorable bangers even before you get to the bosses.

Speaking of those, even the first couple of jokers stay on-theme this time as you fight some minor gods of harvests and misfortune, and then a kappa and tengu boss as you ascend the mountain itself. Aside from the first two, every one of them is a super memorable and popular character that everyone loves. Sanae the rival shrine maiden is probably my favorite Touhou though she doesn’t really start getting good until next game. I do think of her in this game as being like, the normal person who is working for the giant awful company that Kanako represents.

Even though you win, the rules of fighting in Touhou mean that you can't actually get rid of an invading god, so Reimu decides she wants to learn to live in harmony with Kanako and let her have the youkai of the mountain as followers. This decision to try and be friends will immediately backfire hilariously in the next game.

The extra stage has you going back to the shrine to find the other god, Suwako, who used to rule a country she'd built until Kanako invaded and stole the shrine from her. Now she does all the actual work and Kanako does the marketing. Suwako is one of my favorite extra bosses in the series, with a nice level of difficulty.

What really gets me here is that for once we have a repeating theme of these characters fighting against being supplanted by something newer and larger than themselves. Kanako specifically points out that Brands and media conglomerates have replaced the gods, she colonized Suwako in the same way and she tries to do it to Reimu to kick off the plot. She's just slightly sympathetic while also being the most straightforwardly evil person in the series so far. And that's how it is! You can avoid selling out, but you can't actually upend the entire system on your own! It's not that this indie shmup is like going all in on anti-capitalism directly or anything, but the preoccupation with old ways of living and how modernity has obliterated them is only going to intensify from here.

The game-play is a lot more smoother than previous entries, where moving around actually feels pretty clean and faster which is a massive step up from the previous entries in the series leaving a very good first impression for the second windows era of Touhou Project. The patterns are a lot more consistent and varied unlike previous entries, the visuals are cleaner and easier to look at, being beautiful yet not distracting, and it clearly has a consistent theme, using a lot of warmer colors to represent autumn which I really enjoy. I also have to compliment the pacing of the game, the transition between each stage is much more smoother, with none of them feeling too long nor too short.

Something that makes this game stand above many others besides the presentation though, is its very wonderful and memorable cast of characters. Each character is full of personality and their own personal identity, whether that be the confident and nerdy Sanae Kochiya or the greedy yet formal Kanako Yasaka, this cast of characters might be the third or fourth most memorable cast of characters yet.

Overall, I believe this is one of the more stronger Touhou games to come out and that I highly recommend this game for beginners just because of how much easier it is to play, and how memorable each character is in this game.

I tried my best but Kanako is simply unreasonable.


this was my first touhou game, and omg it was really fun, i honestly got a bit spoiled on how fast i can deathbomb but that aside

super good music, fairly challenging, honestly i really liked the mechanic of switching characters.
just liked it and enjoyed it a lot overall

While I appreciate the game giving you unlimited continues, a lot of other options and mechanics have been removed. Stage 4 is absolutely brutal and the boss of Stage 6 has patterns that are downright cruel.

This game busts my balls like nothing else I've ever played. I still haven't managed to 1CC this on even the Easy mode; best I've managed was getting Reimus Bad Ending (ending No. 8). I may come back to this another day, but I kind of doubt it.

The music is fuckin' immaculate and the game IS fun, I'm just bad at videogames.

Пока зачистил на изи на 1СС с первой попытки, лол.

Мне довольно трудно докапаться до игр в серии Тохоу. Почти каждая часть, в которую я играю, так или иначе, приносит тонну удовольствия. Будь то музыка или геймплей или даже корявый, но забавный арт-стайл спрайтов - радует всё.
Эта часть не стала исключением.
Управление теперь более гладкое, паттерны пуль всё такие же хаотичные, но менее рандомные (этот момент под вопросом, но по крайне мере я знал откуда меня атакуют и умирал в основном по своей вине, а не из-за того, что микро-пуля слилась со стальными и после прострелила мне коленную чашечку).
Я так понял, что это ребут серии, но за сюжетом я не слежу в этих играх, поэтому пофиг.
Думаю, что это хорошая часть, чтобы познакомиться с этой серией игр.