New to... well... the whole thing. (Read 837 times)

[Acalia]

Hello everyone!

I'm Aiden. 24, College student. I'm pretty open to questions and what not, and I'm new to almost everything Touhou. Like I've seen some of the viral videos, and tried a game or two out, but that's about it. I keep seeing Touhou youtube vids too. I've played a little bit of Megamari, TH7 Perfect Cherry Blossom, and TH8 Imperishable Night.

I am a little confused at a few things though...

Is there any specific order that I should play TH1-13 games in? I'm not really caring about difficulty or needing to emulate it. I'm curious about the story/character development. I was thinking of finding a Touhou RPG, or reading some of the doujin, but I wasn't sure if they were uhh... "accurate" for lack of better word. Any suggestions on that?

Thanks in advance everyone ^_^

[PacheRii]

Welcome!

As to your question: there is no best order as to play what in, and the doujinshi are all fanon and the story of the Touhou games are rather standalone. In fact, the first few games are unlike the Touhou you see now!
I'll recommend Imperishable Night, as it is the easiest... though there isn't any order to play it in.

Well, the story of the first five games are hardly linked to the rest, and the "canon" story of the games are loosely linked to each other.

[LunaticFireEyes]

Hello, Aiden.

Nah, it doesn't really matter what order you play the games in, because all of the stories are pretty much independent of each other. Granted, it can be satisfying to see old bosses from other games appear in the newer ones, but in the end it doesn't matter too much. I suggest that you get comfortable with the game by sticking with IN and PCB, for now. They are pretty much the easiest games in the series, and they're really good, too. My favorite title is Subterranean Animism, but I will warn you... stay away from that one for a while. It's usually agreed to be the hardest game in the series.

Anyway, i'm a Touhou noob, too. I've been at it for two months now, myself.

[LunyRed]

Hello, Aiden! Welcome to Lunatic Red! Nice to meet you!

The people above me have answered your question about any specific order to play the games, so I hope those information should be helpful. One good Touhou RPG that I know of is Labyrinth of Touhou but the game itself is not canon, just like Megamari.

Well, we hope you enjoy your stay here in our forums!

[Acalia]

Oh sweet, thanks for the quick replies!

Here I was thinking there was some crazy order to play em in (or rather... start at 1 and work my way up or something). Good to hear that it doesn't really matter what I decide to tackle though, now I can enjoy a little bit of everything. Now that I know that the order doesn't really matter, I think I'll go on and beat IN first ^_^

[Genichiro]

More new people! Welcome to LR! Yep, there really isn't need to play the games in order. Only the most recent games are even somewhat connected to each other, but it's still hardly necessary to play the games in order. It's more fun to play them in the order you like! Find one you have fun playing, and stick with it! Have fun, and enjoy your stay~ :3

[ilianzo]

Welcome to LR.I am a new member myself,so I can't really help you with a lot of things,but I will try at least.As for the order of the games,I myself don't care that much and I think neither should you.Play whatever you feel like playing.For example I play SA the most,because it is my favourite,but I don't think it is the easiest x).Anyway I hope you will get to like this forum and that is about it from me.See you around the forum buddy.Oh one more thing!Tell us,which characters do you like the most ?

[kaossakana]

24 and in college? Dude we're college broskis!
I'm sakana, and i've been playing the game for about a year and a half now. The order doesn't matter, but i do recommend you try EoSD at some point. It's a little harder but I absolutely adore it. By far my favorite.

[captnowen]

Hello and welcome to Lunatic Red, where the light always shines and we drink sake every ZUNday. I hope, you will enjoy your time here.
Dig in!

Owen and out!

[Sakurei]

uh, the hardest game in the series in still SoEW. or possibly PoDD. (aka touhou 2 and 3)

from the windows series, UFO is still harder than SA and EoSD is on par, at least due to weird hitboxes and stuff. the easiest game is probably TD. due to the trance mechanic that lets you skip difficult spellcard. IN comes in second and PCB in third due to massive resources and the borders that can, if used clerverly, clear the screen on a tough pattern or something.

personally, I recommend to play a lot of Shoot the Bullet, Double Spoiler and Phantasmagoria on Flower View. not only do they belong to the best games (StB to a lesser extent, really. DS is much better), but they also teach you advanced techniques and raw dodging respectively.

if you just wanna dawdle around, UFO has some cool stuff to play in, even if it's tough. but my favorite is Mounatain of faith. MoF has cool bossfights, challenging stages and relatively good music (duh, tastes). Stage 4 in particular is great. I can only recomment you to start with this game if you care for nothing.

if you have any questions regarding the shooters (it doesn't matter if it's touhou 2, 3 or 13) feel free to ask me. I may not be a good player, but I know enough to help out.

[DDdreamer]

Oh, hey there and welcome to LR! Not gonna answer your question since that's been done already. xD
But yeah, I hope you'll enjoy your stay here. We're not all that active, but we're all a bunch of nice people, so I hope you won't mind! Don't forget to check out the christmas calendar I've made in the announcement section. :3

D3

[LunaticFireEyes]

Stage four of MoF can go die in a fire, =/ . Out of the games i've played (all of the non PC-98 ones), I personally find MoF to be the second or third most difficult, with SA being the most and TD being the second most difficult. But whatever. I don't really know anyone besides for like one person who has played the PC-98 games, so i'm not going to argue with you on that because I don't know enough about those games...

[Sakurei]

well, for statistics, I can tell you that I know all of 3 people who were able to beat Story of Eastern Wonderland on Lunatic difficulty. There might be more people I know, but don't know that they managed, but I know of 3. That would be Zil, Jaimers and Nindetodonut (Zillionbrain, Jaimers91 on yotuube. I don't think nindentodonut has an account there). Maybe Naut, kefit, T and nereid did it, too. I don't know. but all of them are good enough to do world record runs, and T and nereid even have some; and Zil boasts a world record for SoEW extra, if I am not mistaken. they're really good. and that's all the people I can think of. for TH02

for PoDD (phasmagoria of dim.dream) the list looks similar. hell, it's basically the same with mabe 2 more people on it. so yeah, I can safely say those two games are much harder than SA or UFO - games even I managed to 1cc.

MoF appears difficult due to the few lives you get. But you have a powerful bomb to make up for it. it's similar with TD, just more extreme. the trance lets you outright skip every spell you choose to use it in (with the exception of the last couple spells. they have too many HP to COMPLETELY skip).
also, the aya bossfight is pure dope. only few boss are as cool as that.

[sapphire475gs, aka Saphyr]

Welcome, Aiden... wow, I hear that name is taking off! It might be the new John one of these days.

Stay away from Fairy Wars until you've had a go at EoSD, PCB, and PoFV (especially PoFV as Cirno)... but otherwise, there's little character development to speak of in the games themselves.

MoF through TD (including Hisoutensoku) has been one incident inducing the next, pretty much... so if you want plot, that will probably account for it. Otherwise, it's to the prints with you!

Doujin I could recommend (all to be found in the pools of danbooru): "Tag Dream", "200 Yojana in a Flash", "Cirno and Reimu's 1-2-3", "Shitenno", and "Nitori Gets Caught in the Flow". Also, anything from "imizu (nitro unknown)" the artist... they are violent and/but hilarious.

Enjoy your stay, and do as you wish concerning the games!

[kaossakana]

ummm....i can beat SoEW on Lunatic. Do you mean beating SoEW on Lunatic without using a continue? But even that doesn't seem hard. I've played it quite a bit and it honestly doesn't seem that hard. The patterns are pretty easy, you just have to deal with not having a focus button.