Ok so just to make things clear I have full faith that my audience is civilized enough not to go off in the comments but **JUST IN CASE** I feel like this needs to be said. Yes I understand that this list is HIGHLY subjective and that we obviously will have different opinions on things, and that's 100% fine. Just because I personally didn't like a game doesn't mean that **you're** not allowed to like the game, nor am I devaluing you for liking it. Touhou is a great series with many different games, and each of those games cater to different people, and everyone is free to like and dislike whatever games they want :) But yeah just wanted to get this out there just in case people get really mad over in the comments section.
UM can have more satisfying and memorable patterns if you make deliberate challenges, Chimata's Blank Card run is notable but I really like just starting with 3 equipment, just getting Nazrins money each stage and seeing how much money I collect. All the same, I see what his point is, but with such ability to invent so many different challenges, can be very addictive. Anyway, it can make it feel like a whole new game if you ever want to try it with new eyes
I've been following your touhou journey since the beginning since UA-cam likes to recommend your videos. This is a decent list even if I heavily disagree with some placements. With that said, I noticed some misconceptions that are pretty common with normal level players. And I don't blame you really since in some games playing the game on a harder difficulty can be a completely different experience. Same with changing up shot types and such. I don't wanna make this comment too long so I will just recommend you to listen to my rambling videos on my channel if you have time as I put together my takes on touhou there plus I am sort of an intermediate player who has 1cc'd all games on lunatic(except UFO). You can listen to them while you do something else really but a few of them got demonstrations and such. Also my latest commentary video is ranking touhou games you might wanna watch that 👀 Lastly if you feel like you need more touhou I recommend 12.8 Great Fairy Wars. That game is considered by many to be an honorary mainline game for how great it is. I'd also recommend branching into arcade shmups/bullethells as these games are so well designed its hard to ignore if you love dodging them bullets.
I feel like an extra bonus for Subterranean Animism would be Satori's battle, who comes at you with different spellcards depending on the characters you picked, giving a fair share of replay value and encouraging players to use different combinations to see what she'll do.
The thing with Ten Desires is that the stages are all designed in such a way that every time there are resources on screen (bombs, lives) you can have enough trance meter to get them risk-free, though that requires proper routing and abusing speed-killing and chaining, which IMO is very fun. Though it is true the game is easier than others, which is probably to make gaining resources more manageable. Regarding UFO, i'm sure other people have already told you (maybe including me haha), but if you have a very hard time getting the UFOs, you can always use bombs while focusing on the green ones. It essentially trivializes 50% of a stage if you know what you're doing.
I think Touhou 8 is EASILY the most perfect Touhou game. Idk if its because its the first game I played, but I have literally replayed it so many times because every moment of the game is just so hard to complain about. Sure Stage 1 and 2 are a bit underwhelming but that can easily be said for most Touhou games. Touhou 8 feels like a perfectly tuned masterpiece that ZUN has yet to reproduce. The closest next I would say is Touhou 16. Though that's not to say I don't have some personal favorite like Perfect Cherry Blossom or Wily Beast And The Weakest Creature.
@ being short is good honestly. very well paced and has lots happening. I recommend learning how to score a bit as it's got one of my favorite touhou scoring systems. To add more I'm rn on dodonpachi daioujou and whenever I go for a run and reach final boss I feel like I played for 30mins when daioujou runs are just 20 minutes long.
@ Yeah you're right, it can be good. Though the experience for me feels too fast, ironically every game after that in my opinion has a problem with the stages being absurdly long lol
Imo the only bad take in here is UFO. I used to hate it until pretty recently when the UFO system just, clicked for me. I decided to route the UFOs and opt for a rainbow whenever i accidentally grabbed one for the screen clear, and the additional token it gives. Thinking of the UFOs as screen nukes instead of using them solely to collect resources really made me appreciate it a lot more.
UFO is the type of game that get more entertaining the more you play. I remember despising the UFO mechanic so much back in my Normal 1cc days I always saved that game for last, and I also intended to do that for Hard/Lunatic too. I had also believed for a long time that Lunatic UFO was league above my reach as the hardest Touhou game to do 1cc out there so I kept procastinating that game (along with SA, DDC and LoLK) for a whole year. Just November last year I was nostalgic of Byakuren's theme (which was my gateway to the wonderful Touhou world btw) so I booted the game again and pretended I got Rensenware lol. It might have something to do with my new experience with other shmups (especially my expertise in Ikaruga recently) but that moment was the first time I fully realized how perfectly polished was the game. Imo the complex of UFO's mechanic shone the brightest when you actually played the game as an actual shooter (as in actually focusing on the enemies on the screen, shoot only when necessary, and giving quick & accurate responses to multiple situations) instead of a bullet dodging game the series has always been cementing itself as. On the other hand, the current me totally agreed with the rating of UM. It's the polar opposite of UFO, in which the game gets gradually boring very fast compared to the other games due to how lacklusting is the card gimmick. It started out insanely fun the first time you experimented with many card combinations, but the more you played and the better you became, the more problems with the card gimmick you encountered. First of which a solid 80% chunk of the cards in the game either have miniscule effects or become a liability that affects nearly nothing to the gameplay. The second problem is how linear are the high-level plays of the game. LNN with cards is pretty easy with just Momoyo's card. LNN without cards is one of the worst Touhou experience you could get simply because of how pitifully weak you are without the DPS cards (even Sakuya who holds the most DPS still takes quite some time to just end a boss's phase & she's literally the hardest character to control in the game smh). Scoring suffers the most out of it as the general strategy for that game is just Mallet card + Sakuya's bomb + Byakuren card at certain sections & good bomb/bullet cancel cards rng, boring as hell. tl:dr UFO good for players who learned the game in-depth, bad for players who wanted unregulated freedom of the average Touhou Normal experience. Vice-versa for UM.
Fun list, good reasoning. I think the most surprising thing is the placement of TH11 and TH12-polar opposite placement! I don’t think they’re all that dissimilar but I do agree that the UFO mechanic can be very divisive. Guess some folks really do feel it ruins the game’s fun. Anyway, thanks for the vid. Congrats on the 1cc of every mainline/classic game too btw
I played All Touhou games (including 98 games) till 15 and I never touched Lunatic lol and I got 1CC in many CAVE titles such as ESPgaluda, Mushihimesama, and Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu. I'm currently working on 1cc'ing Futari at the moment
I come from watching all the th videos, Im happy to be here! edit: as I thought, SA would be your #1. I thought bout it when I remembered all the fangirling we had over utsuho on that video.
Great video, imo tho i feel like hsifs is sort of like PCB+, its more modern, the mechanic activating is within the players control and lives are gained from actual scoring so you are encouraged to engage with scoring rather than just collecting point items. Love your content!
"[HSIFS] patterns aren't super gimmicky aside from Okina's final and dancers" i hope you simply blocked black snowman out of memory because that thing is stupid as hell "hi wouldn't it be funny if you couldn't tell bullet apart until they come close to you lol"
UFO's at the bottom, I can die happy. Seriously though, great video, you gave good reasons for why you ranked things the way u did. Personally mine would be very much different since I'm a lover of gimmicks in this series
Number 1 imo is Touhou 7. It doesn't have the word "perfect" in the title for no reason. It's my comfort game even on hard. Glad to see 14 ranked fairly high though. It's by far the most underrated game and I always see it towards the bottom of rankings so I'm glad it was ranked decently high
Glad to see TH8 high up there. I'm incredibly biased but it is my favorite since it's the only mainline game where Yuyuko is playable (Hisoutensoku is still the GOAT though)
I found Touhou 10 so hard, Harder than most other Touhou games for me. Touhou 10 gave me my most embarrassing Touhou moment that being: Failing to 1CC the game with THE MARISA GLITCH, and not just once TWICE after which I gave up and skipped the game... (for now)
TH10 is already one of the best Touhou just for how good the music is And the gameplay is very forgiving too, aside TH8, it's the game with the longest deathbomb window, and unlike TH11 you get an extra power level to use bombs without sacrificing shot options damage
I remember when I 1cc'd Touhou 15 on Normal and was getting very used to the patterns. I thought: "maybe the higher difficulties won't be so hard after all". Fast forward to today and I still think that Lunatic is the absolute most nightmarish thing in this entire series and even stage 1 gives me trouble 😭 My favourite game would be Touhou 7 actually. The ost is my absolute favourite and the game has some of my favourite characters too. It's super satisfying to play and the patterns don't make me feel like I'm chocking on bullets on Lunatic while still being fair and challenging. And TWO extra stages? Yes please! And honestly, Touhou 12 is actually quite high on my list. You should only focus on collecting your UFO when there's not that many bullets on screen. It takes a while for them to leave so it's best to not immediatly try to collect them, because then it's kinda your fault for dying. It's fun to create a route that works for you, and figuring out a good strategy for resources is basically your key to success. It's the game that teaches you that dodging is your main objective and collecting resources should always come second. It actually made me perform better in TD too, because I'm not constantly focused on collecting all the spirits. And if you wanna be risky in Touhou 12, you can work on your quick reflex skills and zip trough those bullets to collect that thang! (or you can bomb too and collect green UFO's to get your bombs back) I love 12 for it's high challenge, and I believe it's a game that will make you a better bullet hell player in the long run.
As a Touhou 18 enjoyer (beat extra stage with all characters and fully cleared Hard Mode), I strongly disagree with your take on Touhou 18. While I dislike the design of stages 3, 4 and 5 because they are incredibly difficult if you've got no homing damage options, bosses never feel like you need to rely on the ability cards system in order to beat them, there is a special ending where you have to buy the blank card and fight Chimata Tenkyuu without cards. There are no ability cards that heavily impact the gameplay like in some other roguelikes, the integration of some of this cards feel more like mini-upgrades you can buy to be even more powerful, or some perks that can help you get higher scores, the only card I can say changes the way you play is Remilia's Vampire Fang, and it's an upgrade to an already existing playstyle named "shotgun". I understand that you may prefer simpler mechanics, but the game's "reliance" on its core mechanic does not hinder the enjoyment, in my opinion that's a good thing because it gives a lot of replayability. As for the difficulty, there are no spell cards that require you to use defensive ability cards and resources aren't heavily dependant on the cards that you choose (though, it's pretty much a skill issue if your problem is that you don't get enough bombs or lives), and to me this is one of the easier Touhou games, not comparable to SA or LoLK. All it takes to learn Touhou 18's mechanics is a brief moment of reading to see which card suits best either for your current situation or the playstyle you aim for, and that's what makes Touhou 18 so special for me, the fact that almost any combination of cards can be a valid playstyle; all-in survivability, full offense, taking all the extra shot options you want, or just trying to get higher scores. Also, seriously? Touhou 11 at first? I love that game, but pushing Touhou 18 all the way to bottom 2 because of its mechanics doesn't seem right because Touhou 11's mechanic is "don't die if you wanna get more lives". Touhou 11 has very memorable bosses, but I can't stand this Touhou 18 misstreatment.
Ok so just to make things clear I have full faith that my audience is civilized enough not to go off in the comments but **JUST IN CASE** I feel like this needs to be said.
Yes I understand that this list is HIGHLY subjective and that we obviously will have different opinions on things, and that's 100% fine. Just because I personally didn't like a game doesn't mean that **you're** not allowed to like the game, nor am I devaluing you for liking it. Touhou is a great series with many different games, and each of those games cater to different people, and everyone is free to like and dislike whatever games they want :)
But yeah just wanted to get this out there just in case people get really mad over in the comments section.
Spit yo shit, king
Seeing th18 so low hurts my soul but im happy to see th11 get some representation
So the reason as to why EoSD is high is because it's popular 💀
UM can have more satisfying and memorable patterns if you make deliberate challenges, Chimata's Blank Card run is notable but I really like just starting with 3 equipment, just getting Nazrins money each stage and seeing how much money I collect.
All the same, I see what his point is, but with such ability to invent so many different challenges, can be very addictive.
Anyway, it can make it feel like a whole new game if you ever want to try it with new eyes
I've been following your touhou journey since the beginning since UA-cam likes to recommend your videos. This is a decent list even if I heavily disagree with some placements. With that said, I noticed some misconceptions that are pretty common with normal level players. And I don't blame you really since in some games playing the game on a harder difficulty can be a completely different experience. Same with changing up shot types and such.
I don't wanna make this comment too long so I will just recommend you to listen to my rambling videos on my channel if you have time as I put together my takes on touhou there plus I am sort of an intermediate player who has 1cc'd all games on lunatic(except UFO). You can listen to them while you do something else really but a few of them got demonstrations and such. Also my latest commentary video is ranking touhou games you might wanna watch that 👀
Lastly if you feel like you need more touhou I recommend 12.8 Great Fairy Wars. That game is considered by many to be an honorary mainline game for how great it is. I'd also recommend branching into arcade shmups/bullethells as these games are so well designed its hard to ignore if you love dodging them bullets.
Crazy how amazing these games are when one person’s least favorite game can be someone else’s favorite game.
I’m of course talking UFO and me. Lol
I feel like an extra bonus for Subterranean Animism would be Satori's battle, who comes at you with different spellcards depending on the characters you picked, giving a fair share of replay value and encouraging players to use different combinations to see what she'll do.
Patchi, prismriver sisters, reimu/marisa, benben and not benben. Them all also change depending on your shoot type
ufo as the worst, closed tab
ufo has the best stage 6 🥲
offer me an objection
The thing with Ten Desires is that the stages are all designed in such a way that every time there are resources on screen (bombs, lives) you can have enough trance meter to get them risk-free, though that requires proper routing and abusing speed-killing and chaining, which IMO is very fun. Though it is true the game is easier than others, which is probably to make gaining resources more manageable.
Regarding UFO, i'm sure other people have already told you (maybe including me haha), but if you have a very hard time getting the UFOs, you can always use bombs while focusing on the green ones. It essentially trivializes 50% of a stage if you know what you're doing.
I love dodging Okuu's big balls of plasma. Touhou 11 is 100% my favorite Touhou game
I think Touhou 8 is EASILY the most perfect Touhou game. Idk if its because its the first game I played, but I have literally replayed it so many times because every moment of the game is just so hard to complain about. Sure Stage 1 and 2 are a bit underwhelming but that can easily be said for most Touhou games. Touhou 8 feels like a perfectly tuned masterpiece that ZUN has yet to reproduce. The closest next I would say is Touhou 16. Though that's not to say I don't have some personal favorite like Perfect Cherry Blossom or Wily Beast And The Weakest Creature.
I agree with touhou 8 being a masterpiece! another contender would be touhou 10 imo.
@@toribirb For me I kinda have a personal problem with it feeling kind of short. The music tho is just so good.
@ being short is good honestly. very well paced and has lots happening. I recommend learning how to score a bit as it's got one of my favorite touhou scoring systems. To add more I'm rn on dodonpachi daioujou and whenever I go for a run and reach final boss I feel like I played for 30mins when daioujou runs are just 20 minutes long.
@ Yeah you're right, it can be good. Though the experience for me feels too fast, ironically every game after that in my opinion has a problem with the stages being absurdly long lol
I love watching this man evolve from a Touhou noob to a true Touhou gamer
Imo the only bad take in here is UFO. I used to hate it until pretty recently when the UFO system just, clicked for me. I decided to route the UFOs and opt for a rainbow whenever i accidentally grabbed one for the screen clear, and the additional token it gives. Thinking of the UFOs as screen nukes instead of using them solely to collect resources really made me appreciate it a lot more.
I think th11 is my favorite game too. A hell of a lunatic 1cc but it's the most of "the more you learn the more you win"
UFO is the type of game that get more entertaining the more you play. I remember despising the UFO mechanic so much back in my Normal 1cc days I always saved that game for last, and I also intended to do that for Hard/Lunatic too. I had also believed for a long time that Lunatic UFO was league above my reach as the hardest Touhou game to do 1cc out there so I kept procastinating that game (along with SA, DDC and LoLK) for a whole year.
Just November last year I was nostalgic of Byakuren's theme (which was my gateway to the wonderful Touhou world btw) so I booted the game again and pretended I got Rensenware lol. It might have something to do with my new experience with other shmups (especially my expertise in Ikaruga recently) but that moment was the first time I fully realized how perfectly polished was the game. Imo the complex of UFO's mechanic shone the brightest when you actually played the game as an actual shooter (as in actually focusing on the enemies on the screen, shoot only when necessary, and giving quick & accurate responses to multiple situations) instead of a bullet dodging game the series has always been cementing itself as.
On the other hand, the current me totally agreed with the rating of UM. It's the polar opposite of UFO, in which the game gets gradually boring very fast compared to the other games due to how lacklusting is the card gimmick. It started out insanely fun the first time you experimented with many card combinations, but the more you played and the better you became, the more problems with the card gimmick you encountered.
First of which a solid 80% chunk of the cards in the game either have miniscule effects or become a liability that affects nearly nothing to the gameplay.
The second problem is how linear are the high-level plays of the game. LNN with cards is pretty easy with just Momoyo's card. LNN without cards is one of the worst Touhou experience you could get simply because of how pitifully weak you are without the DPS cards (even Sakuya who holds the most DPS still takes quite some time to just end a boss's phase & she's literally the hardest character to control in the game smh). Scoring suffers the most out of it as the general strategy for that game is just Mallet card + Sakuya's bomb + Byakuren card at certain sections & good bomb/bullet cancel cards rng, boring as hell.
tl:dr UFO good for players who learned the game in-depth, bad for players who wanted unregulated freedom of the average Touhou Normal experience. Vice-versa for UM.
I'm a simple man, I see patchy. I click
I'm gay
Fun list, good reasoning. I think the most surprising thing is the placement of TH11 and TH12-polar opposite placement! I don’t think they’re all that dissimilar but I do agree that the UFO mechanic can be very divisive. Guess some folks really do feel it ruins the game’s fun.
Anyway, thanks for the vid. Congrats on the 1cc of every mainline/classic game too btw
4:12 Touhou 18,5 and Len'en 4 sweating nervously
Guys do you think it's time to tell him about CAVE games or will it be too much for him?
Bro can't do lunatic and we are expecting him to 1cc Ketsui and Mushihimesama Futari already damn
I played All Touhou games (including 98 games) till 15 and I never touched Lunatic lol and I got 1CC in many CAVE titles such as ESPgaluda, Mushihimesama, and Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu. I'm currently working on 1cc'ing Futari at the moment
he's ready for inbachi trust
Damn thats crazy Touhou 12 is my absolute favorite game in the series 😭
Don't worry, it is the best touhou game.
Its a good thing I woke up at 1 am to find this
I come from watching all the th videos, Im happy to be here!
edit: as I thought, SA would be your #1. I thought bout it when I remembered all the fangirling we had over utsuho on that video.
Great video, imo tho i feel like hsifs is sort of like PCB+, its more modern, the mechanic activating is within the players control and lives are gained from actual scoring so you are encouraged to engage with scoring rather than just collecting point items. Love your content!
"[HSIFS] patterns aren't super gimmicky aside from Okina's final and dancers"
i hope you simply blocked black snowman out of memory because that thing is stupid as hell
"hi wouldn't it be funny if you couldn't tell bullet apart until they come close to you lol"
UFO's at the bottom, I can die happy. Seriously though, great video, you gave good reasons for why you ranked things the way u did. Personally mine would be very much different since I'm a lover of gimmicks in this series
this clownpiece slander will not be tolerated
even though i completely agree with you
Number 1 imo is Touhou 7. It doesn't have the word "perfect" in the title for no reason. It's my comfort game even on hard. Glad to see 14 ranked fairly high though. It's by far the most underrated game and I always see it towards the bottom of rankings so I'm glad it was ranked decently high
UFO Lunatic made me vommit
Glad to see TH8 high up there. I'm incredibly biased but it is my favorite since it's the only mainline game where Yuyuko is playable (Hisoutensoku is still the GOAT though)
YES MORE TOUHOU CONTENT
I found Touhou 10 so hard, Harder than most other Touhou games for me.
Touhou 10 gave me my most embarrassing Touhou moment that being: Failing to 1CC the game with THE MARISA GLITCH, and not just once TWICE after which I gave up and skipped the game... (for now)
It has an intense pace, but a fast and memorable game (≈21 minutes)
When will you start to play the not mainline(bad english sorry) touhou game like 9.5,12.5,12.8,14.3,16.5 and 18.5?
Still no PC98...
Nope th12 and th18 are fire ✌️
Anddd you lost me at ufo being last place
No PoDD...
0/10 list, mountain of faith is too low
top comment is gay
And whats so wrong about being gay?
@@dora.the.gay.explorer1324It's a bot
Ohh,bot with Romanian name,kinda depressing
Congratulations on coming out!
"Friendly fire will not be tolerated"
skill issue
TH10 not being bottom 1 should be a crime
otherwise i agree with your opinions
TH10 is already one of the best Touhou just for how good the music is
And the gameplay is very forgiving too, aside TH8, it's the game with the longest deathbomb window, and unlike TH11 you get an extra power level to use bombs without sacrificing shot options damage
I remember when I 1cc'd Touhou 15 on Normal and was getting very used to the patterns. I thought: "maybe the higher difficulties won't be so hard after all". Fast forward to today and I still think that Lunatic is the absolute most nightmarish thing in this entire series and even stage 1 gives me trouble 😭
My favourite game would be Touhou 7 actually. The ost is my absolute favourite and the game has some of my favourite characters too. It's super satisfying to play and the patterns don't make me feel like I'm chocking on bullets on Lunatic while still being fair and challenging. And TWO extra stages? Yes please!
And honestly, Touhou 12 is actually quite high on my list. You should only focus on collecting your UFO when there's not that many bullets on screen. It takes a while for them to leave so it's best to not immediatly try to collect them, because then it's kinda your fault for dying. It's fun to create a route that works for you, and figuring out a good strategy for resources is basically your key to success. It's the game that teaches you that dodging is your main objective and collecting resources should always come second. It actually made me perform better in TD too, because I'm not constantly focused on collecting all the spirits. And if you wanna be risky in Touhou 12, you can work on your quick reflex skills and zip trough those bullets to collect that thang! (or you can bomb too and collect green UFO's to get your bombs back) I love 12 for it's high challenge, and I believe it's a game that will make you a better bullet hell player in the long run.
As a Touhou 18 enjoyer (beat extra stage with all characters and fully cleared Hard Mode), I strongly disagree with your take on Touhou 18.
While I dislike the design of stages 3, 4 and 5 because they are incredibly difficult if you've got no homing damage options, bosses never feel like you need to rely on the ability cards system in order to beat them, there is a special ending where you have to buy the blank card and fight Chimata Tenkyuu without cards.
There are no ability cards that heavily impact the gameplay like in some other roguelikes, the integration of some of this cards feel more like mini-upgrades you can buy to be even more powerful, or some perks that can help you get higher scores, the only card I can say changes the way you play is Remilia's Vampire Fang, and it's an upgrade to an already existing playstyle named "shotgun".
I understand that you may prefer simpler mechanics, but the game's "reliance" on its core mechanic does not hinder the enjoyment, in my opinion that's a good thing because it gives a lot of replayability. As for the difficulty, there are no spell cards that require you to use defensive ability cards and resources aren't heavily dependant on the cards that you choose (though, it's pretty much a skill issue if your problem is that you don't get enough bombs or lives), and to me this is one of the easier Touhou games, not comparable to SA or LoLK.
All it takes to learn Touhou 18's mechanics is a brief moment of reading to see which card suits best either for your current situation or the playstyle you aim for, and that's what makes Touhou 18 so special for me, the fact that almost any combination of cards can be a valid playstyle; all-in survivability, full offense, taking all the extra shot options you want, or just trying to get higher scores.
Also, seriously? Touhou 11 at first? I love that game, but pushing Touhou 18 all the way to bottom 2 because of its mechanics doesn't seem right because Touhou 11's mechanic is "don't die if you wanna get more lives". Touhou 11 has very memorable bosses, but I can't stand this Touhou 18 misstreatment.