Favorite games thread!

Mountain of Faith. Because of the awesomeness of a shottype and waifu named MarisaC

Best: Undefined Fantastic Object, Mountain of Faith, Perfect Cherry Blossom
Good: Subterranean Animism, Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil
Meh: Ten Desires, Imperishable Night, Double Dealing Character

N/A: the PC-98s, spinoffs, Phantasmagoria of Flower View, Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom

Here is my list, I haven't playes the PC98, spinoffs, EoSD, DDC or LoLK as of yet.

1. IN
2. TD
3. SA
4. MoF
5. UFO
6. PCB
7. PoFV

I like them all though.

I remember doing this kinda thing on MoTK sometime before DDC was released... guessing my order didn't change a whole lot.

1. Fairy Wars

This game does almost everything the best. I mean, FW is just such an obvious best game ever to me and I will never understand what other people are thinking in regards to neglecting this game.

2. Shoot the Bullet

I don't necessarily think this game is "better" than some of the ones I'm putting it ahead of, but the bias is strong in this one. I played this game the most, and I've exhausted its possibilities to such an extent that it's impossible to give a fair assessment. A lot about this game is truly stupid at a high level, but thinking back, this game always fascinated me since the start, and somehow, it managed to keep me playing it and playing and doing the RNG optimization for hours and hours and hours on end.

9-6 is absolutely one of my favorite things in the whole series, despite the frustrating battle I've had with highscore on it.

3. Phantasmagoria of Flower View

Versus mode in this game is pure bliss, so fun. ElD, Cash, Zil, thank you so much for the games. It is so active, you have to think about so many things so fast and the decision making process just makes your head spin. It is so demanding, so great, and as if the versus play wasn't enough, the story mode has Eiki at the end, the greatest boss fight in all of videogames.

4. Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream

The bullets are faster in this and it seems like it'd be a really crazy and amazing versus game, but unfortunately because I've never gotten to play the versus mode, I can only rank it based on the story mode. Even considering only the story mode, this game is a masterpiece of frantic gameplay. It is also, however, very random and very frustrating, and totally bullshit. Still amazingly fun, and the character variety is really great!

5. Perfect Cherry Blossom

The atmosphere is awe-inspiring, the boss patterns are utterly beautiful and so very grazeable. The game system is perfect. A word that fits this game is cohesive, everything just works so well, it's kind of amazing. Why only 5th? Well, this game is obviously a masterpiece, but I can't really compare it to StB or the Phantasmagorias, so I put those higher by default since I played them more.

6. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

My first 2hu. "Nostalgia" describes this game better than any other 2hu for me. The major pluses are the boss patterns, hands down the best by far in ANY maingame, if you consider only dodging them. Patchouli is such an amazing boss, and Sakuya, Remi and Meiling are really fun too. The scoring system is very good. The music is my favorite in the series. ReimuB is one of the comfiest shot types. Negatives: Early game is slow and the RNG can be really frustrating if you're serious about this game.

7. Double Spoiler

Like with StB, I just have a natural bias toward photography touhou games I suppose. I actually have a LOT of problems with this game, but because it is a photography game I still really like it. So how well does this hold up compared to StB? Well, let's see, I think there's two major reason I like it less. One: scene quality. StB scenes are better on average, DS has more repeats, more gimmicks that aren't that fun, a LOT of safespots, more stalling... second is the random boss movement. In a game where it ranges from mildly important to extremely important that the boss moves correctly if you want to take a good photo, random boss movement is fucking stupid. In StB the randomness lied only in the vertical movement which ended up not mattering a whole lot. At least not compared to the shitfest that is DS movement! Although less important, as a sidenote, I do prefer the music and atmosphere in StB. Retrospective Kyoto is a fucking masterpiece. DS music is so-so.

So what does DS have that StB doesn't? Well, it has Hatate which really changes how the game is played, but also it has a much deeper system. More goes into taking good photos, and generally the game is harder if you want good photos. On the flip side, the game is actually easier if you don't care about photo quality thanks to the vertical shots.

8. Undefined Fantastic Object

This was my favorite game for a good while before I found my FW love. The music is among the finest in Touhou, the characters are likeable, the UFO system is very creative and pretty well implemented, bosses are really tough and pretty damn cool, and the shot type variety is probably the best in any of the maingames. I have two particular gripes with this game. 1. the grazing feels off. Grazing is a huge part of UFO but it just isn't fun in this game. 2. glowshit. This game was ZUN beginning his glowshit fetish, not only are many patterns needlessly hard to read because of glowy bullets, but try playing MarisaA for that extra bullshit factor. as a side gripe, but this is something that totally sucks if you want to get a high score, theres a small variance in when the summoned UFO leaves the screen... along with all the items... fuck!

9. Imperishable Night

The entire top 9 are just great games. The main appeal in this one is definitely the scoring system and the utter awesomeness of Youmu and the Scarlet Team. Stage routes are really cool although I don't really understand what goes into them. Bosses are mixed bag for me, the appeal lies mostly in scoring, most of the cool patterns in this game are purely aesthetic, the dodging is pretty bad tbh. Music is among my least favorites. Extra stage is awesome but the timers are too long.

10. Mountain of Faith

There's just a nice drive to this one and it feels like an above average Touhou game in many respects. The soundtrack isn't my favorite, but it's one of the better ones. Bosses are relatively fun to dodge, but at the same time, something's left to be desired here, mostly in terms of optimization, but the pattern designs lack a little something. I actually don't really care about VoWG. Stage portions are nice enough, the overall atmosphere is good, the scoring system works well although it isn't entirely to my taste, the shot type variety is ok, and... unfortunately, I do not like the extra stage. Overall it's a really good game, but not entirely to my taste.

11. Ten Desires

There's one reason I'm hesitant to put this game lower and that is the extra stage. Hands down one the absolute coolest extras in the series (nothing can touch FW's, but I really do love this stage)

However if you look solely at the main game you have probably the most disappointing windows game ever. The game moves forward at a snails pace, with some of the most boring stage designs. The bosses are boring and take way too long (Yuyuko WORST boss in the whole series maybe?) and rarely give you anything fun to do when you play for survival. The scoring is totally busted, I can actually see some appeal in it, but let's not kid ourselves here. Even the music is my least favorite, a handful of good tracks here and there, but considering this is Touhou which normally has great OSTs, it's a major disappointment.

12. Subterranean Animism

In terms of its music, characters, narrative and overall atmosphere... this is totally a winner and I can really appreciate SA. I'm just the type of player who cares more about gameplay and in that department I have very mixed feelings. The scoring system is cool if you look at Lunatic only, but is just too tedious on the lower difficulties, the bosses have a lot of interesting gimmicks, but often they're used in frustrating and/or boring ways. The power system is extremely annoying, if you're at low power the bosses take WAY too long and you may even be forced to timeout attacks. The life system also sucks, essentially giving you most lives for free but maybe awarding a little extra for playing it safe. You should be getting more lives for playing well, not for playing it safe! Stage designs are pretty weak. There's some really interesting grazing going on in stage 4, which is the only stage portion I think is well designed. Unfortunately Satori is just ZUN's excuse to not have to think of any new patterns, and to make matters worse, most of the patterns he remixed are worse in SA than in the previous games. The extra stage is pretty neat, actually. The shot type variety is very cool, but Marisa takes it up the ass. SA dodging has two keywords: Streaming and microtapping. not fun.

13. Mystic Square

Mm, I view this game similarly as I view SA in that I really like the game universe, atmosphere, etc, but whereas SA has some pretty kickass Lunatic scoring going on, this game has... well, it has Yumeko, a better boss than anything you find in SA, and hands down one of the cooler bosses you'll find in Touhou. I dunno, this game is fine, but doesn't really do all that much for me, and I actually don't know a whole lot about it either. The stages are slow, and the game really only gets awesome towards the end with the last 3 bosses. Maybe I'd place this higher if I had played it some more and learned more about it. I kinda enjoy the item collection which is like... pseudo-active I guess.

14. Double Dealing Character

Totally a mixed bag for me. I can appreciate some of the dodging going on and the rather interesting stage routes and POCing system, but other than that the scoring is largely bloated, making you waste your time spamming bombs on nonspells which really adds NOTHING interesting to the game. I think the main two thing that kills this game for me are first, the bosses. I don't like them very much, there's some okay patterns here or there, but mostly I think the bosses are pretty lame. Seija sugs dongs and Sukuna is kinda boring. Second, no grazing. OK, there is grazing, but it does almost nothing. Simply using a single bomb (and you get like a hundred of them lol) gives as much points as many thousands of graze, that's fucking bullshit! Music was a big step up from TD, but the extra stage isn't that interesting to me, so that's a major step down. Shot type balance is kinda hilarious.

15. Lotus Land Story

LLS, kinda like EoSD for babbies, right? scoring is pretty similar, but the game difficulty is way lower. I hardly played this game anything, but I think it's decent enough to not dislike at least.

16. Impossible Spellcard

Alright, this is probably the first game that I think is actually kinda bad. There's some enjoyable elements to it, but most of the scenes are fucking awful and the game system was totally a wasted opportunity to make something cool. The interface is horrible, the system is about grazing and canceling, but theres not even a fucking graze counter or cancel message! why is there no overall score like in the photo games? no-item isn't fun, and most of the items are worthless and you'd only use them for hell of it. The absolute worst thing about this game is easily just the low quality of the scenes. Most of the scenes are either garbage or just straight up repeats from previous games! Thumbs down!

17. Highly Responsive to Prayers

Gotta admit this game has something going for it. The idea is really cool, but in the end, the game amounts to little. Bomb2win pretty much. I played it only a few times in passing, so it fits to put it down here.

18. Story of Eastern Wonderland

Obviously the worst 2hu. The main appeal from what I can gather is the game atmosphere which differs a bit from the later installments, the game feels like something of an adventure, like the first stage it starts snowing halfway through the stage which just feels nice and homely. That's not to say the later games aren't adventure, but there's just something... charming and special here. It's not done particularly well, but there's at least ONE reason to try this game. The game's still shit though.

Okay, here we go.
Number 1

Double Dealing Character-
There's a lot of nosglatic bias to this one since this is the first Touhou game I played and well. There was a point where I couldn't get past Wakahasghime's first spellcard without dying or bombing, but now I finally 1cc'd the game. The music is really good aswell, which matters to me in a Touhou game. All the bosses in the game after the first stage boss have a gimmick, Sekibanki with her head, Kagerou and her non-lethal howls, (Okay, Benben and whatsherface doesn't have a gimmick but god awful music note bullets!) Seija has her screen flips (And I love hate her) And Shimnyoumaru's I'll Grow Bigger... Ugh, worst part of the game for me.
Number 2

Urban Legend in Limbo-
Okay, it's the newest fighting game in the series, it's literally been out for atleast two weeks now but it very quickly became one of my favourite Touhou games. Okay, I should mention after playing through Hopeless Masquerade recently, I finally realized why everyone hated it, stiff controls, lackluster cast of attacks (Nitori...) The only redeeming factor was the music... Well some of it. Flashfoward to Decemeber 2014 when the trial disc was released and we got a small teaser about the game. I idemenitally noted how the controls weren't as stiff and the fact we got Kasen as a playable character. So I played it once or twice and waited. And then we got another demo, mostly complete and finally...
We got the game and well, I quickly went and played Reimu's story and realized I had to go through all the stories, but Marisa was fun and the battles were much shorter but the game only took around fiveteen mintues for me to 1cc it. The selection of chararacters are the same from Hopeless Masquerade and I love all the new attacks they were given, and the new occult orb gimmick is miles better than the weather system... But I believe most of the credit goes to the new characters that was released (Shinmyoumaru, Kasen, Mokou and Sumireko.) I personally find Shinmyoumaru the best character for my sort of playstyle (Fast character that can hit hard.) I quickly learnt that the A.I. can be stupid when I began fighting online against real people who helped me improve.
Number 3

Impershiable Night-
Another shooter game for my 3rd favourite game. First of all, I believe that the game is a great way to get beginnners into Touhou, but I do feel like the easy mode is perphas too easy for me. (And I'm a noob, not some superplayer.) For example, I did a joke run with Youmu and Yuyuko on easy mode and I did it. But of course, the best shotype for beginners is Reimu and Yukari for the deathbomb timer being more forgiving.
(Yeah, that's all I've got.)

星>三>輝>風=紅>妖>地>永=神

Translation: Hard patterns and simple mechanics is typically my favorite things so UFO and FW starts up high. These two are cool although there's some things I don't like about them.

Nazrin tier:

UFO has long-ass non-spell timers that lead to them needlessly prolonging the game as players milk these patterns for graze. There's also some grazes on some of Ichirins non-spells that range from difficult to impossible and failure to perform them means that you don't get any points. UFO for the good players only.

GFW is cool but it lacks practice options which makes it a pain to learn more about for someone like me who usually has to try things a good number of times before i understand them. The game may be short but so is my patience-span and i'm more inclined to just play something else if I have to grind things to even get access to trying new techniques. However, what's here I really think is awesome. The stages proceed at a good pace and the bosses has some of the coolest attacks in the series. For players with good taste only.

High Tier:

DDC is a cool game but its also a bit of a mixed bag. I find that there's a good bunch of challenging patterns in this game that makes it fun to play and the stages turn pretty fun too with the 2x bonus system. The bombing for PIV thing comes off as a bit lame but I'm actually more turned off by Benben (for survival purposes) and Sukuna having some annoying attacks. Oddly enough, Seija doesn't really bug me that much but of course, playing ReimuA goes a long way to make that so. The highest scores in the game are claimed by SakuyaB but she's overall too hard to use for me.

MoF has a system that in concept is just up my alley. Simple and easy to understand and rewarding of good survivability. The problem is though, the game gets boring very fast. The difficulty of the patterns is really low, even on Lunatic mode and so, the scoring challenge becomes much more about not fucking up boring things during the stages. I have made efforts at learning the stage routes about two years ago but I found that they didn't really do anything to make the game more fun, simply more annoying. Having to wait for Minoriko to get her ass in position on Stage 1 so you can bomb her and get good faith going into stage 2 is the first warning light you'll encounter and having to bomb Momiji who I consider to be one of the more fun patterns in MoF doesn't really help matters either. However, its still my favorite game from my early playing years and I have a relatively good amount of hours on it so it still ranks fairly high. Really though, for a game system like this, you don't really get away with anything less than Dodonpachi 2nd loop tier difficulty or something. In fact, Dodonpachi is a much better game. Would probably play that instead if it wasn't so bloody long.

Medium Tier:

EoSD is a bit of a mixed bag. I don't really care much for the scoring mechanics in it and the stages are absurdly boring in a survival play setting. The bosses aren't even anything to write home about. Sure Patchouli and the books are difficult but I don't really find them very fun to do. I'm not finding myself enjoying this thing very much until Sakuya and Remilia but then it does really pick up. Two very cool and challenging fights and the only reason i don't consider this one a low tier game.

PCB is a badass game. It's not for me but I cannot disrespect it any longer unless i wish to troll certain someones. Yuusuke playing this is a glorious thing to watch and only a game with mechanics such as these would allow for such insanity to be the way to a great score. There's incredible scoring depth in this game as it has a very high skill ceiling that most people who plays this thing will not even get close to reaching. For me however, its not really an ideal game to play. I don't handle unfocused movement very well and I find the idea of hyper-timings to be off-putting which is also why things like Dodonpachi Daioujou fails to really woo me. It is nevertheless worth of great praise as a great game and so I put it here.

SA... Not really a favorite. It's a slow game but the scoring looks pretty good. I haven't really spent any time with it at all however so I can't really say if its any fun to play beyond some scrubby LNB runs. Its a nice entry level LNB i guess since it doesn't really take much skill to do. You just need to memorize the stages a bit and not fuck up the dodging too much. Not a trivial game per se but its really one of the easier ones. Idk, the music is really good and with both Koishi and Orin sitting here on the couch next to me in anticipation of what I have to say about their game, I guess its important that I put it somewhat high :3

Low Tier:

IN. This isn't an objectively bad game but I don't like it very much. It's okay for a bit casual play but it gets boring easily I find. I don't like the scoring in it, its way too much grazing of slow moving bullets and having to face Kaguya to get anything near a decent score is just game-breaking for me. I know its a well liked game but fuck that, we don't all have to like the same things. I'm not saying this game is garbage, but its not my style.

TD. The worst Touhou game pretty much. I probably play it more than IN because I find the survival a bit more appealing but the scoring is absolute jank. It's an unending streak of pressing X, X and C to bomb and trance shit while you do just about no dodging. I don't understand how this could ever be appealing to anyone. The extra stage however stands as one of the coolest things in Touhou where the scoring mechanics actually works as they were probably intended.

Top tier:
Imperishable Night ~ This is the one game I came to play more than any other Touhou. There's just so much to do in it, and I love that aspect.
Subterranean Animism ~ Who knows how many times I've attempted the Ex. The shots are most creative, dialogue is best, etc.
Urban Legend in Limbo ~ The one fighter I came to love most.

Good tier:
Perfect Cherry Blossom ~ First game bias. Yeah, that's about it.
Mountain of Faith ~ Fun patterns, Kanako is a boss. Yay.
Double Dealing Character ~ Fun, if a tad generous. If the resource system was nerfed, it would be best in the series in that regard.
Hopeless Masquerade ~ First Touhou Fighter I really got into. Sad Kanako isn't playable, though.
Undefined Fantastic Object and Ten Desires ~ I just didn't want to put them with the tier below them.

Idk tier:
The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil ~ Eh, never got the appeal of this entry. The fact I'm very bad at it doesn't help matters.
Great Fairy Wars
Shoot the Bullet/Double Spoiler
Touhou Hisoutensoku
Impossible Spell Card

Go away don't ever come back tier
Phantasmogoria of Flower View
Immaterial and Missing Power
Scarlet Weather Rhapsody

SA>DDC>PCB>=IN=MoF>PoFV>UFO>TD>EoSD

SA
It has a nice feel to it: atmosphere, cast, music, and I just like the patterns in this game. Scoring is very silly, and it's one of my most enjoyable games to see runs of (and even play sometimes). People might say it's not very challenging, and I would probably agree with that, but I actually like it that way, because it makes it one of the games I can just pick up and play without worrying if I'm even getting a clear. It is not without flaws, though; stage 1 is shit if you play for score, because after the already annoying stage you have to deal with Yamame giving you the finger and going straight down on her opener. And even tough the selection of shots is really good, it's awfully unbalanced.

DDC
I believe the reason I like this game is because it reminds me of when I started playing, patterns were colorful and difficult, and I would play them with a quirky shot. ReimuA is probably my favorite shot in all of Touhou, it has amazing power and chaining with the gohei is really fun (plus, it was funny seeing Needle Reimu being shit for once). Its flaws are pretty much those of SA, but way worse. I don't think I can defend this game, but I genuinely enjoy playing it. I just wish the A shots fought Yatsuhashi.

MoF/IN/PCB
these are games I just like, I can play them, and generally enjoy myself doing so, but I don't feel like there's much in particular that stands out to me, the last spell thing on IN is cool, but it mostly adds flavor to the fight, I don't find them all that interesting as actual patterns. I put PCB slightly higher because it has the best ending of any Touhou game to date.

PoFV
This one's a cute game, it's always different, so it's hard to get bored of it... on vs. I can't really get into netplay with this, and I find the main story to not be very enjoyable, for the same reason I don't like playing AIs on fighting games, they play literally perfectly and it's just endurance until said perfection is scripted to run out. It's a good game to build dodging skills with, though.

UFO
I want to dislike this game, it does a lot of things I hate: glowshit, bullets hitting you as a pattern clears, excessively RNG patterns, I don't agree with the UFO system, and the grazing (while very impressive to look at) it's pretty fucking stupid. But I just can't completely dislike it. There's a feeling of satisfaction when I'm playing well on UFO that I can't get from other games, it's just I usually can't tolerate this game for long enough to actually enjoy it.

TD
I can at least bring myself to play UFO, I find TD to be largely uninteresting, and I only play it when I really don't feel like playing anything else, the Extra stage is really good, but it doesn't save the game for me.

EoSD
I don't think this game is bad, but it feels very dated to me, I just can't enjoy this game in its original state, not to mention I can't even play it on my current laptop because of everything I have to do to get it to work.

StB/DS/ISC
Played them, didn't like them. Not my style.

FW
It's been so long since I played it, I don't think I can form an proper opinion about it

Komakyo and Kishinjo are my most liked. They appeal to me for survival and scoring.

Fumaroku is unlikable. For windows series only, I dislike Eiyasho.

The series has lots of enjoyable games. Even for my disliked games, I can say something nice about them, or enjoy playing them on occasion.