One of the better games in the Touhou series by far. Has a fun mechanic where you play two characters instead of one, triggered by being focused or unfocused. This alone both adds a lot of replayability, and notably good writing for a Touhou game. In my opinion Zun's writing really does excel when he has two protagonists bickering alongside trying to solve an incident, and there's plenty of funny snippets in the dialogue to reflect this.

The game itself is a bit difficult, and will have a bit of a learning curve for those unfamiliar with the game specific mechanics. But once you get past that, it's a good time.

This game has a fair amount of resources [more than fair, depending on who you ask] and there's two possible final bosses to fight, for a bit more fun!

Has some characters that are my favorite in the franchise, along with some great themes. Definitely worth playing.

i was getting really frustrated with the stages in this until when i learned about the enemies that eat bullets when they die and then it just became my favorite so far???

i love the Mario Kart Double Dash mechanic and seeing the teams interact with the characters is really really fun. it's also extremely beautiful i'm glad ZUN paid all due respects to the moon.

also nevermind what i said in the last Touhou review i'm Kaguya Houraisan have been for all this time now

Corny as it may be, I feel that the best way I have to describe the experience of a playthrough of this game to be... a work of art. Now, I don't exactly mean the common expression of "what a work of art!", but moreso the way it invokes emotions out of the player with artistic expressions.

I've tried my best to pour my thoughts on the individual aspects of Imperishable Night out into words for this review, but I've then come to the conclusion that the only way to do justice to the experience is to actually sit down and play the game through. The visuals, the music, the gameplay, the characters, even the simple narrative that unfolds through the six plus one stages all form something that genuinely feels greater than the sum of its parts.

going from MoF to this was some serious whiplash. now i have so many anime women to choose from! now there's different stage bosses! there's like a time/hour system and youkai meter that doesn't make any sense, but i didn't really care too much cause this game wasn't too hard.

it IS cool though. like the long-ass reimu/marisa fight alone brings this up to 4 stars, and the variety of characters is pretty sick too. overall it's a lot meatier of a game than other touhous (if that makes sense), and has the unique boss fights and gimmicks to back it up. i'm definitely not resilient enough to sink 500 hours into it to beat it on lunatic, but i really enjoyed this one.

Definitely the most beginner friendly of the first few Windows Touhou games. I'd 100% recommend this as a starting point for new players. Most patterns are on the slow and dense side which both makes them a lot more about figuring out how to dodge them rather than split-second reaction time, and forces new players to get used to the small hitboxes. There are several spell cards which feel designed to showcase certain elements that players should make use of, like Mystia limiting your visibility and necessitating the use of the enemy marker, or how Reisen forces you to adapt to predicting bullet movements. The spell card practice mode is very welcome and as someone who has sunk hours into just the Hall of Gods from Hollow Knight it feels like it's there specifically to target me. It's a small thing but the music not restarting between attempts also makes practicing a lot more enjoyable. This game also has the most beginner friendly progression system, since you can continue and still get a good-ish ending, even if the true endings are still locked behind 1CCing. As far as pure quality this game also offers a great soundtrack, some of the most creative and cool bullet patterns in the series up to this point, and a surprising amount of challenging unlockable content for completionists.