Cool game but it's a bit quirky in interesting ways.
My impressions on my first playthrough:
- Is Marisa's movement supposed to be that slippery?
- In the PoDD stage, after going for a few minutes Marisa seemed to go so fast she phased through hazards and souls... Had to restart. She really got too deep in the dreams lol.
On subsequent playthroughs Marisa was not on crack anymore, and I managed to beat the game. Turns out that it's a perfectly chill and casual game when It's not bugging.
It also turns out that the framerate affects the game. And for the first time ever in my life, the game seemed to be bugged when my monitor is set on 60 Hz instead of 144 Hz. Usually it's the other way around, my mind was blown.
There's something that is almost hypnotic about the infinite straight paths through the scenery.
Would have liked audio feedback for collecting and losing souls.
But good Eternal Shrine Maiden arrange.
Idk if the others noticed but we're literally travelling through the eras of Touhou.
- Animal Realm (today, also Animal Realm and Hell have been very big world building elements),
- Land of the Backdoor (Okina, a Gensokyo Sage who's been acting in the background, starts revealing herself in HSiFS and will influence the later titles),
- Dream World (DDC and LoLK, marking the start of the 2nd Modern era of games with a standardization of the Touhou games' bases - heavy world development involving the Dream World too),
- Forest at foot of Youkai Mountain (MoF, 1st game of the 1st Modern era, which brings a new engine to the Touhou games)
- Bamboo Forest of the Lost (IN, probably the flagship of the "Classic era" in terms of introducing beginners with a forgiving challenge, and featuring characters from the other two of the "Trilogy". That said, EoSD and PCB may as well be flagships in their own way.
- Probability Space Hypervessel from PoDD, from the PC-98 games, the "Retro era". Magnificent.