If I see one more person call the UFO system "unfair" then I will personally come to your house and force you to 1CC this game. It is now clear to me that ZUN made Touhou 13 piss easy out of spite alone.

Anyway, Touhou 12's pretty good. It's much more ambitious than its Second Windows Era predecessors with... mixed results. Touhou 10 and 11 are better games overall, but 12 hits pretty hard when it isn't pulling its punches.

Obviously, I like the UFO system. In terms of "gimmicks," they are probably the best system mechanics ZUN has ever made up to this point. Their implementation into the game encourages a lot of fundamental shoot 'em up skills: taking control of the middle of the screen, offensive bombing, smart stage routing, that kind of stuff. All of which is great! The "unfairness" complaint becomes very silly when you spend enough time in TH12 to understand that UFO's are basically entirely deterministic. Everything about their spawn conditions is static. The major difference between each run is you, the player, and when you shoot the UFO fairies down. Plus, TH12 is actually very generous with its resources, too. You can screw up quite a few UFO match-3s before things start to become problematic. It's not a perfect system--- I think it makes scoreplay too linear, and those same blue UFOs that give you points being useless for survival feel incongruent with the rest of the system. But if I--a colorblind dude--can enjoy the gimmick, then it's probably pretty chill.

The actual spellcards are where I find TH12 to be weak, though. There's some pretty cool stuff in this game. Unzan and his hitbox are awesome and I'm particularly fond of the calm and calculated way Shou's fight functions as if you're really fighting a (Buddhist) tiger. But otherwise this game's kinda boring with it, IDK. I don't have much to say about most of the other fights: they're solid but not special. This is especially damning for Byakuren who the game sets up as a bigger deal than she feels like she is, unfortunately.

The presentation in TH12 is similarly simple, but I think the game leverages it way better. The first half of the game spent in Gensoyko's skies gives the world good texture, (ala Touhou 10) and the descent into Makai is genuinely hype. I locked in immediately when I heard Fires of Hokkai play for the first time. It's easy to see why people thought this would lead into more PC-98 content returning. To treat this area from it with so much respect and then to do nothing with it would be such a tease...

Like I started with, Touhou 12's pretty good. Not my favorite game in the series-- I'm not even sure if it holds a candle to 11, honestly. But it's a fun time, and clearly shows how ZUN has improved since the early 2000s.

"The gameplay theme there is 'hated danmaku for hated people'.
The game is about characters society hates, and they hate you.
Fuck you." - my friend Funbus

Touhou 10 was the series' audiovisual blossom. It was the most mystical a Touhou game ever felt, the most personality Gensokyo as an entity had ever had up to that point. Subterranean Animism had a very difficult game to follow up. Despite the odds, it delivers an incredibly meaningful addition to both Touhou's mythos and game design.

Game design wise, Touhou 11 is simply the best playing game in the series. While every game up to this point is designed well, SA is designed impeccably. The patterns get interesting early, and they stay interesting for the entire game. There is no "it gets real at Stage 4" here-- lose your focus and the game will pounce on your vulnerability like a goddamn predator. I wouldn't have it any other way. MoF can eat its heart out here.

Presentationally, this entry is almost, if it not more rich in content than its predecessor. Revolving around what is now an abandoned Hell, SA has some of the best tone setting thus far. While the soundtrack fails to compete with the juggernaut that is 10's, it's a very emotional OST. It's as if what was being used to describe Gensokyo as a world has been condensed in size to instead define Former Hell, which again, gives it incredible identity. SA also has one of the strongest cast lists in the series-- you can't go wrong with Yuugi's just toying with the protagonists (her sake NOT EVEN DROP) or Satori being a shrewd little prick who clearly loves what makes others hate her.

TH11 is awesome. When I 1CC'd this game my computer began to get very hot and it felt like Okuu was really burning me to death. This one might've always been destined to be my favorite because I somehow got the world's most awesome ludonarrative experience packaged in with the best game in the series.

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

There's something relaxing about booting up the game, and jumping into a run without a care in the world. No routing, no resource management, no spellcard practice, just good old-fashioned random dodgin' and shootin'.

That is, until Stage 7 and onwards, where the game slaps you in face and ridicules you for your SHEER naiveté, thinking you could play an entirely random STG without consequences. Some days, you'll barely stumble through Aya/Medicine and Komachi with 2-3 lives intact, and then you'll be greeted by Eiki and her literal TAS evasive abilities. And as she jumps in, out, and WITHIN reality to weave though WALLS of bullets, she'll make sure to send you patterns that would make Remilia blush. Oh, and did I mention that the first round is essentially unwinnable? God help you if you didn't bring an extra life.

Of course, on other days she and the rest of them will be nice and turn off the ultra-instinct after two minutes. Such is the nature of PoFV.

recently i took one of those online personality quizzes (this one was about what emotions you create art from) which i usually enjoy because it's a way to feel seen and heard and connect with complete strangers even if the quiz wasn't really well-thought at all. but this one was and the result i got both shocked me and at the same time it didn't. that's because at some level i always knew about my discontent, it's not one of those things i'm gonna be talking about a lot and it's not even fully related to my gender experience, it's just something that i knew and that i don't think other people knew. that's what shocked me, that this was even a possible result at all. these things don't really have to do with the state my life is in, i'm pretty happy right now! but i also have no idea where this discontent comes from. seems to just be some inner thing that probably doesn't have a good explanation. maybe i just dislike reality as a concept.

i think ZUN does too. of course this comes just from my observations, i have never read an interview with the man and i could be completely off-mark. i hope i am because this is a bit of a cursed existence i wouldn't wish on anyone else. but ZUN very clearly created a world within our world. if i didn't hate analogies i'd say gensokyo is simply a fictional manifestation of his mind, a barrier against the outside world.

god i hate that i'm psychoanalyzing him this sucks, but i think there's merit in what he created, a fantasy world that still exists in ours. while he doesn't get too heavy into the themes he wants to portray in each game, as they mostly have a dream-like feeling or are retellings of other stories or is mostly just making these characters come to life, i'd be lying if I didn't think Phantasmagoria of Flower View wasn't his first step into trying to talk about human condition in a more focused way. in this game, which is a versus game funnily enough, there's no threat, there is no culprit, there's just someone at the end who likes to lecture others so they try to be better people. no, the whole "incident" in this game is something happening outside Gensokyo, in our world, as a very clear mass death event just happened and spirits are flooding their home world. the characters keep driving home the point that this is something that happens every 60 years, which would make 60 years into the past from this game the 1945 nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II. what i think ZUN was trying to say here is that no matter how divorced we are from reality, we still live in it, and that affects our fictional worlds too. we or our fictional population liking it or not. in this case, it didn't make much of a difference for the people of Gensokyo, but i'm pretty sure it did for their creator. some people think this was in response to a shock from the 2004 tsunami, but honestly i wouldn't dare to try to comprehend what was going through ZUN's mind at the time. i just think that i feel a kindred spirit in him and that seeing a fantasy world get affected by the events of our reality to be incredibly sobering and unique, even with all the meta narrative going around us i don't think i've ever seen anything done this delicately.