The Excuse Plot is that a Negative Space Wedgie appears over the Scarlet Devil Manor; and everyone in Gensokyo leaps to blame either Reimu or Yukari; the two people tied to boundaries. There's actually one other person heavily tied to boundaries in the series. Intent to do...something, anything about it, everyone rushes in and starts firing first and asking questions later. In other words, another day in Gensokyo.
The original game features 20 floors to explore and up to 32 characters to recruit. The Plus Disk expansion added another 10 bonus floors filled with even more challenging battles, as well as 8 additional characters. The Special Disk that was released later includes both the original content and the Plus Disk, and aside from a few gameplay tweaks, its most notable contributions are a new soundtrack and the option to use customized character portraits.
The game's story isn't particularly innovative or deep, but no one would expect it to be, given how often characters break the fourth wall. Still, there is a surprisingly large amount of depth to be found in the game; it's merely concentrated in its battle system. The game uses an action gauge similar to that of many earlier Final Fantasy games, with each character taking turns selecting abilities from a unique list of 2-5 spells. While individual characters may not possess many spells on their own, the player has access to up to 12 characters at a time, with 4 characters in the active party and 8 waiting in reserve to be swapped in at will. Making judicious switches while micromanaging each characters' active gauge is key to achieving victory against the game's many challenging boss fights.
For more information, check out the game's wiki page
on the main Touhou Wiki.
A sequel to this game, Labyrinth of Touhou 2, was released in 2013 during Summer Comiket 84. It retains the similar humor but more elements from dungeon crawlers, such as passive skills and item crafting. A Plus Disk was made around the end of 2016, and was translated in early 2019. An updated version containing both the main game and Plus Disk, dubbed Gensokyo and the Heaven Piercing Tree, was released on Steam on August 23, 2021, with an official English localization released on October 13 that year.
A third game, Labyrinth of Touhou 3, has been announced and is currently in development, though very little else is known, and there's no clear release date yet.
Labyrinth of Touhou 1 contains examples of:
- Absurdly High Level Cap: You can beat the main game easily in the low 100s. The last boss of the Plus Disk will probably require a level of 500+. The actual level cap is far, far higher than that.
- Actually Four Mooks: There are some enemies that have their sprites literally stacked on top of each other, preventing you from seeing just how many there are (although you can still target them). Beware when it looks likes there's only one foe present.
- A.I. Roulette: Some bosses use this, but there are several that have defined patterns. Exploiting these patterns is a major part of the game's strategy.
- Always Accurate Attack: Everything, due to the evasion mechanic being entirely nonfunctional. One of this game's most distinguishing features is that despite completely removing the ability to dodge (in a Touhou game, no less) and despite some characters clearly being built with relative evasion in mind and the spellcards clearly designed with accuracy-damage-cost tradeoffs in mind, the game still balances.
- Arbitrary Head Count Limit: You can only take up to 12 characters into the labyrinth at a time, and only 4 of these can fight at a time. The remaining 8 are left to recharge their SP in battle over time.
- Barrier Change Boss: The Serpent of Chaos changes its elemental resistances every turn.
- Suwako changes from having high defense to high mind and vice versa every so often.
- Rinnosuke changes his elemental resistance with every different form, as well.
- Barrier Warrior: Reimu. She has some decent offensive spells under her sleeves, but she also has some defensive spells like Exorcising Border and Great Hakurei Barrier that gives her a supporting role in your team.
- Begin with a Finisher: Yuyuko has a nasty tendency to open the fight with Saigyouji Flawless Nirvana, a massive teamwide nuke that also carries a high chance of Instant Death, should you neglect your Death resist while gearing to tank the actual damage.
- BFG: Nitori's Megawatt Linear Gun. Notable for being significantly buffed in the Special Disk, almost to the point of being a
Game-Breaker. - Big Bad: Zigzagged. First, all signs point to Yukari being responsible for the Spacial Rift. Then the Eintei Trio seem to be at the heart. Then we're back to Yukari. Then its learned that Rinnosuke is the mastermind as part of his plan to remake Gensokyo. And then it turns out the true "villain" is actually Maribel.
- Black Mage: Plenty of examples. Marisa and Patchouli are the first two to join your party.
- Bonus Dungeon: Floors 21-30, in the Plus Disk. At this point there isn't even an Excuse Plot to explain why you're doing it, which gets mentioned multiple times. In particular, the lack of an Excuse Plot is actually the reason Eiki Shiki attacks you.
- Boring, but Practical: Remilia, one of the first characters you get, only has two spellcards in the entire game, and neither are flashy. However, she's still all-around solid.
- Boss Battle
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Almost every enemy on the 20th and 30th floors. And then there's Nitori before that, although you get a proper boss fight later.
- Boss Rush: Unlocked on the 20th floor. And there's a LOT of bosses.
- Climax Boss: On the 16th and 18th floors.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: Averted for much of the game. Many bosses are vulnerable to either paralysis or status debuffs, and almost none have resistance to poison. Several of the earliest bosses aren't even immune to instant death. Of course, you shouldn't have access to instant death spells at that point, but on a New Game Plus...
- Degraded Boss: All the enemies on the 30th floor are nothing more than souped up party members that were previously fought as bosses.
- Dual Boss: The Hibachi Twins. One is immune to physical attacks, the other to magical attacks. In addition, when one is killed, the other gains a massive health restore and will break out the best attacks it has.
- Final Boss: Maribel.
- Flunky Boss: The second fight against St. Elmo's Fire and Reisen.
- Marathon Boss: Rinnosuke who has no less than 8 forms, most of which can heal if he switches before you kill them.
- Recurring Boss Template: Alice and Maribel will have 3 summons that is a physical attacker, a magical attacker, and a supporter.
- Sequential Boss: Orin.
- Superboss: The Bloodstained Seals, the Version 2 bosses, and the new bosses added in the Plus Disk.
- True Final Boss: *** WINNER ***.
- Turns Red: Very common among many later bosses. Most will gain extremely powerful, party-wiping attacks when low on health. Many boss parties will become a lot tougher if you defeat their teammate.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: For most players, either Youmu or Alice.
- Bragging Rights Award: The Regalia, dropped randomly by the True Final Boss of the game which doesn't even gain the distinction of being the strongest piece of equipment in the game, despite providing a sizeable bonus to both defensive stats.
- The Cameo: In the Plus Disk, one of the Optional Bosses is YHVH!
- The Bloodstained Seal Bosses are cameos from other Bullet Hell and Rogue Like Series.
- Character Portrait: Of varying qualities. The Special Disk allows you to use your own custom portraits.
- Character Select Forcing: While not impossible, it becomes a lot harder to defeat Eiki if you don't use Komachi as a tank, since only she is likely to have enough HP to not be instantly killed by Last Judgement.
- Class Change Level Reset: True for all the bosses that you recruit. Thank goodness for Leaked Experience (you still have to spend the points on levels and distribute their level bonuses).
- Continuity Nod: Rinnosuke really does have the "Scarlet Gold Sword" aka the Kusanagi. It was in a bunch of "scrap magic metal" that Marisa gave him in Curiosities of Lotus Asia to work on her Mini-Hakkero.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: What will happen should you try to take on one of the Bloodstained Seal Bosses when you can first get to them. The Final Boss of the Plus Disc will do this should he feel like it.
- Cosmetic Award: Zigzagged, the stars you gain for certain milestones in the game (collecting equipment and completing the Boss Rush) seem like this at first but are actually necessary for progression in the Plus Disc. The final star gained from beating *** WINNER *** however, serves no purpose other than to let others know that you have completed the game.
- Damage Over Time: Wriggle specializes in this, possessing the best poison spells in the game.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Invoked. Akyu tells Reimu and Marisa that they and their party can die over and over without penalty so long as they keep saving. This kinda disturbs them.
- In practice, averted as you have to reload your game upon losing.
- Death or Glory Attack: Flandre's Laveatein will probably result in a Game Over if it doesn't outright kill the enemy.
- Defeat Means Playable: Lampshaded in one instance when it doesn't happen. Otherwise played straight to the point where, outside of your initial party, you can count the characters you recruit by simply talking to them once on one hand.
- Drop-In Nemesis: Triggering too many of a certain cutscenenote will cause a boss battle against a boss that not only is a bit of a Puzzle Boss, but also has more life than the boss of the next floor.
- Dump Stat: Due to the evasion mechanic of the game being bugged, it's pointless to raise your EVA stat. Most characters have another stat (usually STR or MAG) that they can safely ignore as well.
- Dungeon Crawling: The majority of the game will have you exploring dungeons created by the rift that opened up in Gensokyo.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Fire/Ice. Nature/Wind. Spirit/Mystic. If it strong against one element, chances are it is weak against its opposite. Rinnosuke takes this up to eleven with his elemental forms.
- Endgame+: Even without counting the Plus Disk, there's still the Bloodstained Seals and Version 2 bosses in the first 20 floors.
- Endless Game: Each time you defeat the Final Boss of the Plus Disk, he'll just respawn with higher stats until you've beaten him 255 times. He'll still respawn, but with no increase.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: On the bottom-left corner of the screen. It goes up with each step.
- Excuse Plot: Big portal shows up in Gensokyo. Let's go exploring!
- Expansion Pack: The Plus Disc adds ten new floors to tackle, more recruitable characters, more items to collect, and new bosses to challenge.
- Extended Gameplay: Possibly longer than the main game.
- Fake Longevity: Some see the 30th floor as this.
- Fetch Quest: Required to recruit Aya and Suika, although both will join without a fight afterwards.
- Fragile Speedster: Chen takes this to the extreme. Can attack several times as often as most other characters, but has the durability of wet tissue paper.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Rinnosuke.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Quite a few boss fights have nothing to do with the plot.
- Glass Cannon: Chen, who combines this with Fragile Speedster. Not only does she have paper-thin defense to begin with, but her primary self-buff spell lowers them as far as they can go, in exchange for maximizing her attack.
- Gradual Regeneration: Characters in reserve will slowly recover HP and SP each turn.
- Guide Dang It!: A few scenes require certain characters to finish enough battles in your active party to trigger their flags. Of course, this number is hidden, and a few flags require characters you may not use often. For instance, the first such scene in the game requires Rumia to have 150 "battle points".
- Harmless Freezing: Minoriko is found frozen in a block of ice by Cirno on floor 2. She has to be taken to a certain spot on floor 1 to be thawed out - Sakuya notes that if they just break the ice, it'll be like a horror movie.
- Healing Spring: There are two on the 5th floor. One of them is actually a spring of sake.
- It's All Upstairs From Here: Progressing through the game's dungeon has your party always advancing upwards through stairs to reach the higher levels.
- Jack of All Stats: Keine, the definition of average.
- Justified Save Point: Akyu records your adventures to save your game.
- Late Character Syndrome: Some of the Plus Disk characters suffer from this, but that's what New Game Plus is for.
- Lazy Backup: Many of the characters you recruit will just be chilling back in Gensokyo, doing who-knows-what.
- You lose the game if your four active characters are defeated, even if you have eight other characters to take their place. Of course, because you can switch them in mid-battle, the only reason this should happen is if you couldn't have possibly won anyway. Unless, of course, your four active characters are ludicrously under leveled compared to your backup.
- Leaked Experience: All characters not in your party will still receive 80% of any experience points earned. This includes characters that have yet to be recruited.
- Lightning Bruiser: Rinnosuke, hampered mostly by late join time. Remilia is one that you get right from the start.
- Locked Door: The infamous fail-safe locks of the 10-12th floor maze.
- Mana Burn: Yukari's much-hated Djinn Storm, which drains all SP from all active AND reserve characters. If your party relies heavily on SP-intensive spells, you can expect to be stonewalled for quite a while as your reserve forces try to recover (unless Yukari kills / forces a switch-out on an active party member, of course).
- There's also Destroy Magic, which only hits your active party but does damage, and a single-target version that also inflicts PAR.
- Magikarp Power: Due to how stat growths work in this game, some characters start off weak but become far more effective in the late game. For example, Rumia's Demarcation barely heals any HP at first, but her MAG growth will eventually grow faster than your party's HP, thus turning her into a solid healer in the post-game. Reisen may seem mediocre when first recruited, but becomes a powerhouse later on when she has enough SP to keep herself fully buffed with Grand Patriot's Elixir.
- Mighty Glacier: Yuugi and Youmu.
- New Game Plus: Clearing the 30th floor lets you carry over characters, skill points, and equipment to a new game. As expected, the latter two would completely demolish the difficulty curve.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Most of the names of the enemies/Non-Touhou character bosses. There's a reason why the Final Boss of the Plus Disc is named *** WINNER ***: the guy never, ever gave up, no matter how many times he has his butt handed to him.
- Nintendo Hard: When Chen is able to complete demolish you in the span of a few seconds, you know the game isn't for the faint of heart.
- Non-Elemental: In the late Plus Disk, when you can outfit your whole team with strong elemental resisting gear, these become the most dangerous attacks in the game. Some of your own nonelemental attacks are quite powerful in their own respect.
- Ominous Latin Chanting: Maribel's Special Disk theme.
- Overly Long Name: The first Bloodstained Seal boss is named "Master Light Wings Close Range Support Cruel Battle Mecha E.V.D." (The translated name is too long to fit on the screen, as lampshaded by Marisa.) In Japanese, this name consists of twelve kanji (besides the E.V.D. part, standing for Evaccaneer DOOM) which is nothing short of extreme. It's also serious Schmuck Bait if you decide to fight it as soon as you can reach it: on the first floor.
- Palette Swap: Par for the course for a JRPG. Enemies you fought earlier comes back stronger and different color palettes.
- Piñata Enemy: Liliths on the 27th floor.
- Power Incontinence: Maribel starts being able to create boundaries like Yukari can. As she can't control it, this is what created the Mysterious Space. It is implied by her 'exit' quote after she's recruited that she still has issues with this.
- Randomly Drops: To proceed beyond a certain point in the Plus Disk, you must first collect several random drops from the 20th floor. The drop rate is maddeningly low, although it was raised in the Special Disk.
- Sequence Breaking: Notable in that if you do a certain event out of order on the 1st floor, you can find a secret but otherwise unremarkable boss. The characters will snark to no end about why you shouldn't sequence break.
- Shout-Out: Where to begin? There's so many, the translation patch for v3.01 comes with a rather large text file which does nothing BUT list the shout outs. In fact, there's a page for shout outs from both this game and its sequel.
- Squishy Wizard: Patchouli. Highest SP, Magic, and Mind growth, lowest HP, Speed, and Defense.
- Status Buff: Extremely effective in this game for both the player and for enemies, and should never be underestimated.
- Status-Buff Dispel: Tenshi's Sword of Rapture.
- Status Effects: Notable in that many bosses are not immune to one or more, making them quite effective in some situations.
- Stock Video Game Puzzle
- Control Room Puzzle: Several, but the 13th floor is the best example.
- Magical Mystery Doors: The teleporters on the 7th and 17th floors.
- Stone Wall: Tenshi is all about this trope. When set up properly, there are quite a few bosses that can't even scratch her. Only thing she fears is defense-ignoring attacks due to her low HP. Komachi is the opposite having tons of HP but no real defense, meaning she can tank such attacks but you'd need a Eirin's 50% max HP spell to heal her well. Meiling is a nice in-between of those two extremes and if built up right, she can handle most attacks in the game whether they ignore defense or not.
- Support Party Member: Several characters can arguably play this role, but by far the most dedicated one is Renko.
- Title Drop: The name of the 20th floor.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Yuugi's Knockout in Three Steps, when used as an enemy. The v1 form does 6000 damage, when the tank, if using a team that can fight her ASAP, might have 1500 HP. Her v3 form is easily capable of 1 million damage.
- The attack "Scourge" is often always this. It does around 200,000 damage when used on the 20th floor by Diamond Knights and one of the final boss's summons, easily enough to kill anyone several times over at that point. When used by the first 30F boss, it can do around 2 million damage when your best tanks are probably only rocking a few hundred thousand HP. By checking the translated database, you also discover that Scourge carries 100% DTH chance, the strongest Silence in the game and the strongest PAR in the game, with the second strongest being Remilia's Curse of Vlad Tepes. (Scourge's PAR lasts almost double the time of the already absurdly long PAR effect of Remilia's Curse.) The game will not allow you to survive this attack.
- Total Party Kill: If you're not prepared for boss battles, this will happen. Even if you're prepared it may happen anyways. It's that kind of game.
- Unblockable Attack: Many of the most dangerous bosses possess attacks that ignore DEF or MND. A few of your characters also have these.
- The most powerful one of these is Eiki Shiki's Last Judgement attack. It deals 666% of her attack stat to anything. No matter how high the DEF or MND of the target, or—in the case of the 30F bosses—whether they're completely impervious to attacks or not, they will take 666% of Eiki Shiki's ATK in damage. On top of ignoring all defense stats, it's non-elemental so there is literally no way to reduce the damage short of debuffing her attack stat.
- Updated Re-release: Labyrinth of Touhou Special Disc has all of the content of the base game and its expansion, along with adding a new soundtrack, customized character portraits, the ability to sell duplicates of items in exchange for skill points, and few other bugfixes and adjustments.
- Upgrade Artifact: Rinnosuke gives a lot of Magi Babble about their sudden empowerment, but it's really due to his sword. This becomes a plot point in the sequel.
- Useless Useful Spell: Chen's Soaring Guardian God might sound awesome with its +100% EVA. Too bad that EVA doesn't work at all.
- The Wandering You: The dungeons have you control a chibified Reimu wandering around a seemingly empty area, with an encounter percentage rising for every step you take to let you know when the enemies will attack.
- We Cannot Go On Without You: Oddly enough, you get a Game Over so long as your active party is wiped out, even if you've still got 8 characters ready in your reserve party.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Rinnosuke
- White Mage: Minoriko is the most dedicated at the role, but Reimu, Sanae, Eirin, and possibly even Rumia can also play the part.
- This is part of the reason why Meiling's an effective tank - not only can she heal herself for a significant amount of her HP (if using an attack build), she can also heal others... not for much, mind, but she is the first character who can remove status effects - and that's the main reason Healer ever gets used.
Labyrinth of Touhou 2 contains examples of:
- Absurdly High Level Cap: To a MUCH greater degree than the first game. The strongest boss with a static level in the game is at Level 12,800 (in Plus Disk, that is), and the Infinity Corridor in Plus Disk has bosses that can go even higher than that.
- Achievement System: Accessible via Keine's School along with the bestiary. A player can obtain money, equipment, and even stat boosting items that would otherwise be a Random Drop from bosses through this system.
- Always Accurate Attack: Now that evasion actually works, only a few spellcards like Sakuya's Soul Sculpture are this.
- A Taste of Power: Early on, you can engage a level 32 boss fight (at a time where you won't even have a level half as high). Luckily, you get two high levelled party members, Yukari and Yuyuko, to deal with it. Later subverted, when Ame-no-Murakumo reveals itself to be the Big Bad, and Yukari, Yuyuko, Byakuren, and Eiki are curb-stomped by ''it''.
- Art Shift: A different artist handled the character art in this sequel.
- Super-Deformed: Most of the boss sprites look rather chibi. The exceptions are the sprites for Yuuka and Eiki Shiki, which were taken from the first game's Plus Disk and thus fall under a different style.
- Big Bad: Unlike the last game, it's a little more straightforward this time. It appears to be Tenshi at first, but then it turns out to be the Ame-no-Murakumo, otherwise known as Rinnosuke's Scarlet Gold Sword from the first game.
- And the reason for this? The Yamata-no-Orochi is trying to break in and is siphoning spirits from underground, and the Ame-no-Murakumo was trying to stop this by itself.
- Boss Rush: One of the challenges in the post-base-game is one of these, at the levels they were at before, excluding the final boss and cases of Defeat Means Friendship. Beating it summons Enhanced versions of those bosses throughout the Labyrinth, and beating those leads to fights with the final bosses of the first game (which need to be beaten to obtain the final two base-game recruits) as well as an Enhanced Boss Rush.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Tenshi and Iku. Especially Tenshi. Especially the crazy.
- Futo and Miko wind up this way in the Plus Disk. Especially Futo.
- Canon Discontinuity: None of the characters acknowledge the events of the original Touhou Labyrinth; even when Renko and Maribel appear in the post-game content, it's treated as a first encounter.
- Casting a Shadow: Dark element.
- Cast Herd: Several characters have skills that make them stronger if you put their respective herds on the front line (or in the case of Marisa/Alice, in the reserve.)
- The Plus Disk allows those skills to work even if said groups are in the reserve.
- Continuity Nod: Rinnosuke really does have the "Scarlet Gold Sword" aka the Kusanagi/Ama-no-murakumo and it gets stolen before the game starts. The details are explained in the intro but with Reimu, Marisa and Keine being surprised by him having such a weapon.
- Rinnosuke's past working for Marisa's father is also brought up in the intro as well as Marisa's dislike of her father.
- Crutch Character: Kasen can come off as this due to how you recruit her (losing 12 fights). Unlike most examples, she is able to keep up with the party through the game.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Getting defeated in battle just puts you back into Gensokyo without any penalty, or allows you to retry on the spot against bosses. Do it 12 times and you'll get Kasen to join.
- Defeat Means Playable: Youmu, Komachi, Hina, Yuugi, Alice, Iku, Ran, Remilia, Sakuya, Tenshi, Flandre, Yuyuko, Yuuka, Yukari, and Eiki (plus Mamizou, Futo, and Toyosatomimi in Plus Disk) all join this way, and most of them are mandatory encounters.
- Defeat Means Friendship: In Tenshi's case, she happily joins the crew after she loses; invoking this trope and saying that she was Brainwashed and Crazy but freed now. The team mutters that it was More than Mind Control but don't stop her.
- Depower: Rinnosuke's been brought down to about what you'd expect a normal shopkeeper to be. The fact that the sword he used in the first game is now the Big Bad might have something to do with this.
- However, in the Plus Disk, you can elect to give him back his old moveset with the Blessing of Murakumo subclass (or put it on another character).
- His Shadow in the Plus Disk is also relatively normal, but an Optional Boss late in the postgame is basically the fight against him in the original game.
- Ditto Fighter: Satori can use any spellcard owned by any other frontliner, albeit at an increased price.
- Dual Wielding: Tenshi wields both her sword of Hisouten and the Ame-no-Murakumo during their boss fights.
- Endgame+: Even without counting the Plus Disk, there's still a Boss Rush and everything it unlocks, and "Extra" sections of previous floors that lead to four Harder Than Hard Optional Bosses.
- Foreshadowing: The magatama and mirror. If you know your Japanese lore, you can probably guess that the sword is going to be a boss too.
- Glass Cannon: The Gambler subclass increases damage dealt and taken alike. Of course it's an excellent choice for characters that can't take a hit to begin with.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Parsee and Udonge.
- Gradual Regeneration: Just as in the first game(recover HP and MP while in reserve), and there are skills that certain characters have that increase said rate of recovery or allow for HP or MP recovery per turn.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: Rather often. The first Tenshi fight still requires you to stay alive for ten of her attacks (And you can still try to win).
- Infinity +1 Sword: The Ame-no-Murakumo. Who is also the Big Bad and the Final Boss, and an Optional Boss in the Plus Disk. You get it back as an equippable item if you beat its Optional Boss enhanced form. This is the second-to-last achievement in the base game.
- Last Chance Hit Point: The "Guts" skill, which a few characters have, grants a 50% chance of this, as long as the character has enough TP.
- Leaked Experience: The "Motivated Heart" skill lets characters in the back rows benefit more from this.
- Magikarp Power: Downplayed by Rinnosuke. He has the best stat growth skills in the game, but being a pure supporter with a weak healing spell and weak single-target stat buff spell doesn't do him a lot of good. His defensive stats, his passive attack and magic debuff, and his Effective Formation Change skill make him a durable and effective switcher though.
- Although he can be given a subclass that grants him attack spells, thus playing this trope straight.
- Mutually Exclusive Party Members: Two instances, both Downplayed. First you have to choose between Kaguya/Eirin and Mokou/Reisen on F5note , and later you get to pick between Kanako and Suwako on F10. You still get to recruit the other party members later[[note]]Kaguya/Mokou on F10, Eirin/Reisen on F11, and [[spoiler:Kanako/Suwako on F12[/note].
- Non-Elemental: Replaced by the Physical element (which can also be resisted).
- Which is then played straight by the Void element, which is used by Maribel.
- Optional Boss: In the base game, after defeating the Final Boss, "Extra" paths open up that lead to four Harder Than Hard encounters in addition to a Boss Rush and all of the bosses subsequently unlocked by beating the Rush.
- Optional Party Member: Some characters are recruited through sidequests and thus are not necessary in order to make progress in the base game, such as Kogasa and Rumia. However, accessing the Plus Disk floors requires recruiting all of the base-game roster, excluding the final two locked behind post-base-game Optional Bosses.
- Recurring Boss: Tenshi, three times. She really doesn't know when to give up.
- Climax Boss: The third battle.
- The Shield Avatar and Magic Avatar both show up twice, once each on the 12th floor and once each on the 20th floor.
- Resurrective Immortality: Mokou can revive anytime she's killed, provided she has enough TP and the RNG doesn't hate her, which makes her an excellent tank against bosses who like to one-hit kill your tanks with either the Death-status or massive damage. Strangely enough, Kaguya doesn't share this ability. In Plus Disk, the final recruitable character, Akyuu also has this ability, though unlike Mokou's, she keeps her ATB on revival, and she revives at full hp instead of 33%, though this comes at the cost of a slightly lower revive chance (81% as opposed to Mokou's 90%) and a much higher TP Cost (15 TP cost as opposed to Mokou's 6 TP cost)
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The name of a skill possessed by Chen that reduces the TP used by the party to escape from battle.
- Shout-Out: There's a whole page dedicated to them, shared with its predecessor.
- Status Buff: Enhancers specialize in these.
- Some chracters have passive skills that buff themselves and/or their allies under various conditions.
- Status Effects: The game adds Shock (halves target's ATB), Heavy (lower's enemies' defense and speed, prevents allies from switching out), and Terror (debuffs enemies, drain allies' MP each time they get a turn). Toxicologists specialize in status effects, and some characters even benefit from these being on enemies (or allies).
- Support Party Member: Almost everybody has at least one skill that buffs party members or debuffs enemies actively or passively. And if they don't, there's always subclasses that make them into this.
- The One Guy: Rinnosuke
- Non-Action Guy: He's a pure supporter, if a sturdy one.
- Title Drop: On the 20th floor, just like the last game. Plus Disk title drops the entire series on Floor 26. Respectively, the names are "The Great Tree that Pierces the Heavens" for 20F, and "Labyrinth of Touhou- Signalling the Great Tree's Finale" for 26F.
- White Mage: Same characters as the first game, plus Rinnosuke and anybody with the Healer or Enhancer subclasses.
