Updated version of the guide I made a year ago to show how to get the various endings in the mainline touhou games.
My personal recommendations are still the same as before: Imperishable Night is still the best game in the series for beginners, since not only is it one of the easiest, many of the characters that appear there appear semi-often in the series. Avoid playing Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, Undefined Fantastic Object, or Subterranean Animism as your first game, as these are considered the hardest games in the series. Games prior to Mountain of Faith allow you to set the number of starting lives, at the cost of a penalty to your total score. Though I should mention that Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (a common recommendation as a starting point by many) is a terrible place to start due to it being a very janky game.
The PC-98 games (Touhou 1-5) are for the PC-98 series of computers, and as such require an emulator to be played on modern computers. The early windows games (Touhou 6-9, though mostly Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil) may have some trouble running properly on modern computers.
Normally I would recommend playing the latest game in the series as a good start, however, Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost, while being a rather forgiving game (potentially even being the most forgiving game in the series), is also one of the split-screen versus games, and as such, plays different from other games in the series.
Most spinoff titles (such as the fighting games) lack penalties for using continues, or otherwise lack endings and/or are built around infinite retries on stages (the photo games, etc.). Similarly, PoDD & PoFV will still give the good endings even after using continues.
I still think the best manga/print work to start with is Forbidden Scrollery, however, all of the print works (aside from the hifuu cds and Dolls in Pseudo Paradise) require at least some knowledge of the setting and characters.
All Touhou Games, aside from the five PC-98 games, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Perfect Cherry Blossom, Imperishable Night, and most of the fighting game spinoffs apart from Antimony of Common Flowers, can be purchased on Steam.
Me: yeah I'm not really super into the hard, loud, kinda dischordant sort of music for casual listening I just find stuff like dubstep and hardbass kinda unpleasant in general
Also me: *aggressive headbanging to the Touhou 15.5: Antimony of Common Flowers version of "Night Falls ~ Evening Star"*
"I'll show you a world where we all suffer together!"
A fan-art of Shion I made after completing the story mode of Antimony of Common Flowers. Her getting serious was my favourite moment in the entire game. Luv her. ::)
Re listening to Antimony of Common Flowers' soundtrack and I gotta admit U2 Akiyama was COOKING with a lot of these tracks. Has a small variety of styles/genre to mix and match with, allowing each track to feel somewhat unique but still very similar to each other. There's also a lot of re-use of musical ideas in slightly different contexts. Leimotifs baybee!
There's also the remixes! The AoCF versions of The Ground's Color is Yellow and Kobito of the Shining Needle have me bopping my head. Then of course there's the remix of Night Falls ~ Evening Star which turns what is, in my opinion, the most forgettable Yukari track into what is possibly the craziest track in an OST for an official Touhou game. (Perhaps it gets edged out by 17.5's UN Owen Was Her remix. I'd need to relisten to that OST first to be sure)
What is your go-to fighting game, everyone has one right? Like you know either a mortal combat or street fighter kid of course theirs also many others (I'm a Tekken loveing dragon myself) but you can't deny the glory of smash bros that's a given too and their are probably other small scale stuff as well so what's your favorite?
Shuichi:Sonic Battle.
Miu:Fighting is Magic or Them Fighting Herds.
Hajime:Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3.
Natsumi:Indie Pogo, Smash Flash 2 and Mugen.
Makoto:Mugen too.
Junko:Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, Antimony Of Common Flowers and Mortal Kombat.