Touhou 1: Highly Responsive to Prayers
Platform Played On: PC-98 (Emulation)
ABOUT
Highly Responsive to Prayers is the first Touhou game in the series. Basically, this game is actually an "Arkanoid" clone and it's Zun's first game alongside Touhou 2 that he had released (Apparently, I kinda got that information from a youtube video)
STORY
Basically in the game, The story is quite Non Existant. However, In the original copies of the game, It included a text document that briefly details the story. Basically, Reimu's shrine was destroyed and she is on a journey to defeat whoever destroyed the shrine. Though, Because she isn't strong, She has to user her Ying Yang ball in order to help her defeat enemies. Depending on what direction you take later in the stages will depend on what Ending you will get. Though you can certainly get the regular bad ending on each one. Basically the Good Ending is if you go the Makai route and defeat the main boss the ending has it to where a fairy pops out of the Ying Yang ball, The other ending apparently is where a strange creature actually destroy parts of the Shrine. But the general bad ending? Yeah the Ying Yang orb fucking explodes into a black hole, eating cunk of the world.
GAMEPLAY
So as I stated in the About section, This game is more of an Arkanoid kind of game, Though you must hit the ball and flip all of the cards over and when the boss battles happen you hit the ball towards the boss to attack it. Reimu also can shoot her cards (IK I will get flak for saying Cards as I can't remember their actual name), they actually have no effect when trying to fight the Bosses but they are useful for hitting the ball around and even hitting Enemy attacks when you have the pellets being shot back at you. Reimu also has a slide kick attack and a move where she waves her wand around to hit the ball in a more melee style way. Reimu also has these Seizure enducing Bombs that she can use that can help flip all the cards on the screen or do damage to the bosses themselves. There isn't really any power up stuff from what I can recall, there is the whole P balls that fall down but they seem just for score more than anything else. There's a total of 20 stages and 4 bosses to fight and depending on what route you go to will have different stages and bosses. Lastly, This game is VERY forgiving, If you die and lose all your lives, You can restart that specific stage though take note that Game Overing will lead to the bad ending.
MUSIC
Soooo... This is Music from PC-98 which is quite different from your avarage NES/SNES or whatever at the time, I think the Music gets the job done. There's quite good tracks in here but I think remixes could do them justice. I will say that the later games tracks in PC-98 gets better imo.
FINAL THOUGHTS
To put it simple, It's kinda fun. I had a bit of an Unfair advantage as PC-98 emulation was being VERY laggy to me, Though I know if I played this game at the normal speed it would kick my ass hard. Either way, I did have my enjoyment for 40 minutes of playing this game, It's not that long so you can beat it. But as I said, It's aight but not amazing. Some of the boss designs in this game are VERY weird to your usual Touhou bosses like how the final boss is nothing like you'd ever see in any other touhou game.