I can appreciate that this was ZUN's first game, developed entirely in his free time, but man this game sucks. Playing this feels like the prototype for a concept you'd make before realizing that the concept isn't fun. The Ying-yang orb probably killed me at least 5 times more than any bullets did. The game is also a bit of an eyesore, there's a copious amount of dithering on almost everything, which I suspect is from bit-crushing images with higher color depth? Either way it doesn't look good. The only saving grace of this game is having unlimited continues and no content being locked behind 1CCing it besides the ending cutscene (though why you'd want to play more of this I have no idea). If you're getting into Touhou and want to see where the series started, just play like 5 minutes of this or watch a playthrough before skipping to Story of Eastern Wonderland.

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.

I was worried going into this game that I wouldn't like it coming off of Imperishable Night and hoo boy was I right. To be clear right off the bat, this is a good game. The soundtrack is great as always, the writing is charming, the backgrounds look great, and overall this is still a quality package. If you played this as your first Touhou game I can absolutely see why you would like it, but for me, I'm too spoiled by earlier games.

Too many features are missing compared to IN. I get that this was made in a new engine so ZUN is pretty much starting from scratch here, but the fact that we're starting from scratch in the gameplay department really sucks. I wasn't optimistic about spell practice being in any game after IN but I'm still disappointed to see it missing. The playable roster has been reduced down to just Reimu and Marisa, albiet with three shot types each compared to the previous norm of two, but focused shots have returned to EoSD style as opposed to in PCB where focused shots behaved differently. You can no longer choose your starting lives which just feels like a bizarre choice to me, since the games were challenging enough as they were, and you got a score penalty for using more than 3 anyway, so I don't really see why we needed to remove the feature? Continues start the stage over which I think is fine but again I can't help but feel like I'm getting nerfed by it. Bombs are tied to power which is a fine idea in concept but it's just not that fun in execution since bombs should make the game easier, and lowering your power by using one just doesn't feel like a worthwhile tradeoff when simply dying gives you back almost all of your power. Grazing is gone for some reason, the particle effect is still there but it doesn't seem to have any actual purpose.

There are almost certainly even more things I forgot to mention but this is just a death by ten thousand paper cuts, none of these changes would be too bad on their own and if you haven't played an earlier game then you wouldn't even notice them, but to have them all piled on at once like this it just makes this game feel like a downgrade. I'm open to returning to this game in the future but for the time being I'd rather just move on.

Attempting to seriously review every game I've played #6:
Mah Jong is the first of two Japan-exclusive games released for the Famicom a few months after it launched. The choice not to bring this game to the west makes a lot of sense, as Mahjong is a game with fairly niche appeal outside of East Asia.

This is a competent Riichi Mahjong sim, though it only pits you against a single computer controlled opponent, as opposed to the traditional 3 and 4 player games. The lack of multiplayer is a shame but makes sense given how impractical it would be.

My biggest complaint with this game is how slow it feels compared to other Riichi Mahjong games I've played. Ironically, this is a result of how short rounds are, with the number of tiles you can discard before the round ends being so low that over half of your rounds will likely end in a draw, which results in the round being entirely pointless. This means games can stretch on for upwards of 30 minutes or more, and I've seen the round counter go as high as 12 in a single game. I imagine the game would've benefited from adapting the ruleset more to fit the 2 player format, as in 3 player Mahjong where some tiles are removed from play.

Otherwise though this is a serviceable enough sim for the time, though there really isn't much reason for anyone to return to it. Just play Mahjong Soul or Tenhou.