Touhou

Interesting suggestions. I would say Imperishable Night, but make sure you put it on Easy.

Playing on easy goes for any Touhou game if you're not used to it.

I find DDC more gimmicky than PCB, due to how you get lives.

IN is relatively easy, even with the switching mechanic. It might teach you to bomb too late, though.

PCB is harder, but straight-forward.

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Well, it took me a while to notice that you build up the cherry metre on PCB faster unfocused than focused, which is a pretty major mechanic in that game.

It's why Christmas tree Marisa gets cherry borders virtually all the time.

edited 6th Jul '16 6:57:45 AM by joergenjetsam

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Aha , the classic question. Darnit, just a while ago, I came to a conclusion on which games were ideal for newcomers, based on my observations of Blind Let's Plays... should have saved it somewhere, forgot all of it

But! From my memory, Double Dealing Character and Ten Desires should be the best, I think? Definitely not the worst choices, at least. Imperishable Night, too!

And yes, like the others said: if it's your first time, PLAY ON EASY. DO NOT be fooled into some sense of perceived failure of masculinity or nonsense like that. Normal will destroy you. Also: Read the controls. Use BOMBS all the time.

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—

...you know, I think that look works for that guy. Like it. Also: The Clown Girl Cosplayer in the ZUN Picture looks great, too.

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I strongly disagree, at least if you're trying to get into the series. Easy and bomb fests create terrible habits. It's harder to improve when you don't have Normal battles. (And Easy won't actually make it easier for you anyway, it just removes some bullets. You're still going to hit them.) Do bomb sometimes, but try to actually learn how to dodge.:) Expect to move as little as possible so as to barely graze all the bullets that will be aimed right at your position. You're often much safer than you feel, so if you learn to trust that, you should be fine.

edited 6th Jul '16 4:39:10 PM by JustShortByProxy

If you can't beat Easy, there's no point in trying to improve through Normal. I guess maybe it depends on your baseline, but when I was first starting I found Easy to be pretty hard. If your goal is only to "improve" in some abstract sense, then there's no reason to play anything but Lunatic, but I'd imagine that would quickly become frustrating for most people. Making some tangible progress is helpful for morale.

I'll admit that IN might give bad deathbombing habits (regardless of difficulty), but I would definitely start on Easy first unless you're already a STG veteran. That said, I have noticed some interesting occasions where seeing a pattern on Normal can make it easier on Easy simply because you can better understand the overall shape of it, so maybe watch replays on Normal?

Edit: Also, bomb-fests are literally how you beat the game, so I don't see a problem with that at all.

edited 6th Jul '16 4:42:01 PM by Clarste

It's a question of dependency. Depend too much on bombs and you run out, and you'll fail. By learning to dodge on your own, and creating good habits, you'll survive much longer.:) The only game I'd recommend ever playing on Easy mode is Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, honestly, the one game where those few less bullets actually make a world of difference. (The only difference there seems to be from Normal to Easy is like 30 percent less bullets. I know from experience those 30 percent aren't going to guarantee anything.)

edited 6th Jul '16 4:46:59 PM by JustShortByProxy

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Gameplay and Story Segregation?

Are you a library bitch? Are you some random lake loiterer? Are you, dare I ask, Lily White?

Heart of Stone

As a person who plays on Normal (ie: I'm sastisfied when I can 1cc the game on Normal), I can say that Easy feels significantly easier than Normal, and also lets me actually see all the stages which is nice. I feel like forcing myself to play on Normal would have just caused me to give up on the games without ever seeing anything past stage 4, ever. That's just me though.

Also, I personally bomb less often than I need to naturally, and need to force myself to bomb more. While I'm sure this varies person to person, I have literally never seen someone asking for advice on one of these games and found that they were bombing too often, so I think my situation is the more common one.

edited 6th Jul '16 4:54:01 PM by Clarste

Literally the only time where I think overbombing would be a problem is in LoLK's pointdevice mode.

Heart of Stone

I'm a library, that's for sure. But no, I'm Sumire. ヘ(￣ω￣ヘ) Oh well, guess it's to each their own. I'm generally performing better when I don't bomb much. I looks for patterns, and bombing kinda screws them up. And yeah, Point Device is the mode where you save up on all the bombs.

edited 6th Jul '16 4:57:14 PM by JustShortByProxy

The only Touhou game I've actually played is DDC, and there, I usually play on Easy. I only have a single 1cc to my name, but I also don't play it very often. Most of my deaths come from either stumbling into a bullet I wasn't paying enough attention to notice, or waiting too long to bomb. There have been a lot of times where the realization that I need to bomb came a split second too late for me to act on it.

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There are 'ways' to 'tone' down the difficulty..... I would recommend that you don't if not out of pride, then out of improvement.

edited 6th Jul '16 5:39:42 PM by GAP

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Patchouli and Lily White are awesome. Just sayin'.

Concerning bombing, if you have a bomb, that you won't retain if you die, and you die without using it, you've made a mistake. I'd rather die because I don't have any bombs left than because I wanted to save it for when I really needed, but I actually really needed it just then.

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Asterism is talking about midbosses that don't have any spellcards. The "library bitch" is presumably Koakuma.

That's what I assumed. And you don't get any midbossier than Lily White.

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@Just Short By Proxy: I will have to join Clarste in disagreeing with you Clarste is absolutely correct in everything he states, and I have seen literally dozens of Blind Touhou LPs on YT which prove my following points:

When you are playing a Touhou Game for the VERY first time (which is what the original question was about), the only thing that matters is whether or not you will get scared off the entire series in those first couple of minutes. A first time player has ZERO interest in the long-term-betterment of his shooter skillz and whether or not he is stifling that by playing on Easy. No, what I have seen from first-time-players, on Normal, is screaming horror at how horrifically hard this game is, followed by running out of continues on Stage two or three (...which, admittedly, also happened on EASY with several of them, but at least it was a bit more forgiving, and the chance of a ragequit was reduced by a small percentage bcause of it).

And that was what my play-on-Easy-and-spam-bombs-advice was all about: trying my hardest to make this potential new Touhou Player NOT ragequit this "impossible, I-wanna-be-the-guy-tier-bull$%§&" game (and yes, that seems to be the perception of Bullet Hell in general among non-shooter players), and instead have as relaxed and pleasant of a first experience as possible. Any kind of becoming-better-at-the-game and challenging harder difficulties can come waaaay later, after the new player has beaten Easy (and, judging from the videos, that alone will probably take a long time).

(Also fully agree with Mr. Duck about bomb usage!)

"Mystia is a former German nun“ -Clarste //// "[...]collectively, we have the power to destroy the Aki sandwich" -Clarste

My first ever Touhou game is PCB and that game is what I would recommend to new players since, besides the cherry thing gimmick that I never noticed, it's a pretty simple game and the patterns aren't crazy hard until the 4th stage. Though I did get destroyed by Chen (stage 2) on my first ever run.

Plus, it's got good title screen music.

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One important thing about the Cherry Border gimmick is that it never hurts, only helps. If you don't know how it works then it's just a free bomb every so often.

The thing about PCB is that it's on the harder side and the easy mode really isn't. I'm in the MoF & DDC camp on this topic

I'd probably only recommend PCB as a first game to people who're decent gamers in the first place. If you have decent coordination and reflexes, and you're good at picking up new games, it's a good start. Solid and simple mechanics, with no tricks you have to pay attention to. As mentioned, the border only helps, and while a certain style of gameplay makes it somewhat more frequent, the difference probably isn't immediately noticeable for beginners anyway, so it has little effect on behaviour.

If you aren't as good of a gamer, IN is a better choice. The generous death bombing time gives a better chance to pick it up in the first place, and the switching mechanic teaches you to use both focused and unfocused modes. Failing to bomb and using focus are two of the most common mistakes I've seen.

DDC encourages you to go to the top of the screen. That's a very bad place to be (or travel to and from) if you're not a good player. That's probably the main reason I wouldn't recommend that game for newbies.

MoF I just never liked to play.

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