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.
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.