Touhou Project, Anyone else familiar with it? No? Options

[dittadulla]

The Touhou Project (東方プロジェクト) is a series of 2D (with 3D background) vertically-scrolling danmaku shooting games made by Team Shanghai Alice, with three fighting game spinoffs co-produced with Tasogare Frontier. They are similar to regular shooting games, but focus more on weaving through complex patterns containing anywhere from dozens to hundreds of bullets. Every game in the Touhou series is set in the fantasy land of Gensokyo, and the series is known for its huge cast of characters, well-developed storylines, and related materials such as music CDs, fan-made comics and animated videos made to the music.

The Touhou Wiki

I'd just like to point out that "Team Shanghai Alice" is just one man, ZUN.

Just to give you the idea of just how many danmaku you are supposed to be dodging, here are a couple of screenshots:


In most of the games, the playable (and therefore main) characters are Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame.

Reimu

"Reimu Hakurei is one of the main characters of the Touhou series, having appeared in almost every game in the series. As the sole maiden of the Hakurei Shrine, she is commonly called upon (or calls it upon herself) to investigate strange occurrences throughout the world."

Marisa

"Marisa Kirisame is a human, magician, and is one of the most important sub-characters of the series (according to series producer ZUN). Her personality is sometimes described as disagreeable, but in some other titles, straightforward. Either way she is a very self-confident person that likes to stick her nose into every trouble out of curiosity."

There is really SUCH a wide variety of characters that I'm not really going further into it until maybe later? IDK.

If you wanna know more, post! ^^

[AnnieBelle]

...Yeah you know I've heard of it.
I'll add info for you guys.
The first 5 Touhou games were made for the PC-98, which was a Japanese-only computer that went obsolete pretty fast.
Starting with the 6th game, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil/EoSD, the games now work on Windows computers. -w-

Here, time to introduce more characters. My forum set is Shikieiki Yamaxanadu; first name=Eiki, last name=Shiki, title=Yamaxanadu. She is the judge of the dead. Her ability is to judge things either as "black"/"evil", or "white"/"good".
She's the final boss of the ⑨th game, Phantasmagoria of Flower View/PoFV, which is the first Touhou game I ever played.

...⑨=baka=idiot=Cirno, by the way. Cirno is an ice fairy, the second stage boss of EoSD.

[dittadulla]

And let me fill you in on the Scarlet Devil Mansion:

Remilia Scarlet is the mistress of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, a 500-year-old vampire, Flandre Scarlet is 495 years old, vampire too, but she was locked up in the basement for most (or all) her lifespan, until EoSD. Sakuya (In my signature, even though her name is spelled wrong NOT on purpose OTL) is their maid, she throws knives and can stop time~ Pathouli Knowledge is a bookworm who basically lives in the library, Marisa often borrows her books and never returns them. Pathouli also claims her eyes have gotten worse but won't admit that it's due to too much reading in the dark. Hong Meiling (Often called China) is their chinese gatekeeper, isn't very good at her job but is awesome -w-

[MorriganAensland]

I know a bit about Touhou. Some of my friends are die-hard fans of it and I'm familiar with some of the memes surrounding the characters.

I may get into it at some point.

[AnnieBelle]

Alright so having officially played one of each type of the games, I've decided to add this to the topic because I...can? Yeah.

The shooting games are really hard if you don't have good reflexes. There's plenty of Easy Mode Mockery in the games, to the point where you can't even get a good ending if you play on easy mode. Normal mode isn't much harder, but the number of bullets on the screen almost doubles between it and easy mode. Hard and Lunatic, I must say I have never played farther than stage 1, because that is where I die. Having seen them though, I know that they appear quite impossible, but aren't too bad if you can read bullet patterns and know the exact size of your hitbox.

The fighting games, I'm sure are much easier to other people than they are to me, but that's just because my method in fighting games is still button-mashing and hope something cool happens. As fighting games are not my forte, I haven't gotten any of the endings for them. The art in the fighting games, though, is much better, because ZUN didn't draw for them. [See: Zombie Miko Reimu in MoF]

The two photography games [Shoot the Bullet and Double Spoiler] are theoretically easier than the shooting games in that Aya moves about quicker, and you don't have to shoot at anything. The thing that makes them hard, though, is that with each successful picture you take, the difficulty level of the danmaku climbs. By the fourth picture is usually hard/lunatic difficulty. A definite upside to these games is that you get much better at dodging thanks to the difficulty increase, not to mention you learn more spellcard patterns from different games without having to go out and buy/download all the games.

[MorriganAensland]

I gave game 6 a bit of a try yesterday, the Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil. It was fun and pretty hectic, but overall fun.

Due to my love of ice-themed girls who aren't named Icy, I'm already taking a liking to Cirno.

[dittadulla]

Are you playing EoSD on easy mode? Because then you should know that Cirno has a safe spot right in front of her in her spell card "Icicle Fall" xD

I also have that game~

[MorriganAensland]

I knew about the safe-spot under Cirno long before I played.

[dittadulla]

Yeah I knew beforehand too >_>

Just sayin'~

Anyway, how far have you made it yet? Just curious.

[MorriganAensland]

On easy mode, I've made it as far as Sakuya. I would have gotten even farther if I didn't rush to beat her and in the process get killed a bunch of times.

I've also heard that the main villains of Sinner in Blue or whatever it's called are very annoying and rage-inducing because they're from the Moon, are horribly racist, and get away with everything they do.

I naturally imagine them speaking like the Mooninites from Aqua Teen Hunger Force and being the Touhou equivalents.

[Asher Omega]

Bullet Hell.

I've got everything of Touhou, just because I'll be a bored person one of these days and I I'll play some. and they are fun. still can't get past some levels. but thats because I'm not very good at top down shmups.

[Teh_Exorcist]

That looks like a seizure waiting to happen.

[AnnieBelle]

Easy mode isn't as seizure-inducing as much as, say, hard or lunatic, but it does still get even more shiny-bullet-intense around stage 4. >>;;

[Asher Omega]

and there are more seizure inducing games out there. look for a game called Space Giraffe on XBLA. THAT'S seizure inducing.