Best Touhou for beginner shmup player?

[Rambo]

I'm new thsi genre. I heard Touhou is a good series for shmup. Should I start with a Tohou game and if so which one? If not Tohou then what other game? I'm a beginner.

[Repugnant Human]

th10 (Mountain of Faith) is the best. Best music, best art style, BEST BOMBING MECHANICS. Currently available here, on steam as well

th07 (Perfect Cherry Blossom) should be fine too. Very smooth difficulty curve and cherry barrier is good addition for newcomers

[Groen90]

The general opinion is that Touhou is overall on the easier side of shmups so I guess it is indeed a good place to start, though difficulty varies a lot even between Touhou titles. Definitely avoid Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom for now since that's objectively the hardest one by far.
Once again according to general opinion, you'll see most people tell you that Touhou 8, 10, 13, 14 and 16 are all good places to start, doesn't really matter which one though if I were you I'd start with the ones with no special gimmicks, so as to not risk picking up the habit of depending on them. If you consider that too, the choice shrinks to just 8, 10 and 14. You can't buy 8 here on Steam, so if you don't care about getting it in other ways the choice shrinks again.


Also of note is this thing which is targeted to beginners specifically, though it has nothing to do with Touhou:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1173940/Barrage_Musical__Basic_Danmaku_Tutorial/

[Fatih]

Dunno why people recommend 7 when that game feels like a very long marathon, and 10 when Power-based bombing was lame and thankfully short-lived. For completely beginner lurkers, I recommend 8, 13, 14 16 and definitely this game, but it really doesn't matter what you start with.

[zeroxx]

Originally posted by American Rambo:

I'm new thsi genre. I heard Touhou is a good series for shmup. Should I start with a Tohou game and if so which one? If not Tohou then what other game? I'm a beginner.

This game. But your gonna have to realise the further back we go to TH10- vsync and TH6 needs to have some tricks to run in windows 10. I would stick with this 14 hard but good. 8's good but not available on steam. But maybe getting it other means might see if it's for you and not for you.

[Repugnant Human]

Originally posted by Fatih:

Dunno why people recommend 7 when that game feels like a very long marathon, and 10 when Power-based bombing was lame and thankfully short-lived. For completely beginner lurkers, I recommend 8, 13, 14 16 and definitely this game, but it really doesn't matter what you start with.

th07 isn't more of exhausting marathon than th08. The later has obtained it's reputation of the beginner-friendly game mostly due to the ease of death bombing. Otherwise it's very exhausting game where player has one more phase for each boss (or even 5 for one of the final bosses); much denser bullet patterns; and two notoriously hard 4th stage bosses

Using your power to bomb also is not more lame than any other system. It forces player to manage resources and find solutions to challenging parts of a game instead of mere stacking bombs to skip such. Being able to stack 5 bombs per each power gauge in th10 is what let player bomb at least once without loosing DPS. This is one of the reasons behind recommending MoF to inexperienced players and one of the reasons why th10 is more forgiving than th11 or extra stage of th16

[Fatih]

Originally posted by Repugnant Human:

It forces player to manage resources and find solutions to challenging parts of a game instead of mere stacking bombs to skip such. Being able to stack 5 bombs per each power gauge in th10 is what let player bomb at least once without loosing DPS.

It's just a different type of resource management. It's not magically better than the others especially when it was a 2-game case where the others don't rely on it - issue comes from when you DO bomb under P5 because you will be cucked from doing damage especially lategame or extra. It's not fun for scrubs because they *will* spam bomb when it's available and then won't be able to clutch to prevent a life loss. But of course at the end of the day it doesn't really matter who plays what first as long as it isn't lolk

[Repugnant Human]

It's better bc it's the only good example of full-fledged power management though :V
In other entries decrease of power value mainly occurs only wen player looses a life. I.e. a situation that a player should try to avoid by all costs. There is either no trade offs or a chance of such is very slim and rudimentary (something like letting power items to drop enough to collect a lot at once without much concern about missing some in DDC or just one power-consuming skill in UM)

The system of MoF also is not bad for noobs at all. Avoiding of getting cucked is what makes people git gut instead of spamming bombs

[FireShark]

Best shmup for beginners on Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1175190/Natsuki_Chronicles/

[zeroxx]

Originally posted by FireShark:

Best shmup for beginners on Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1175190/Natsuki_Chronicles/

Thanks man will give them a try. I hadn't added that companies games to my list. Honestly our community is small and kinda niche. So I enjoy finding SHUMPs.

[Fentanyl Sentinel]

Originally posted by American Rambo:

I'm new thsi genre. I heard Touhou is a good series for shmup. Should I start with a Tohou game and if so which one? If not Tohou then what other game? I'm a beginner.

as a beginner i'm playing windows era in order, so i'm starting with Touhou 6

[Catratio]

I've always been surprised to see Imperishable Night (TH8) mentioned as the easiest by so many people. For me it was one of the more difficult ones, and for sure the hardest to 1cc between 6-10. Overall the stages aren't too bad, but there's a huge difficulty spike in stage 4 with the boss fight that is very exhausting and always eats up a lot of my resources. It's mentally draining and I'd say it's even harder than the final boss. Stage 5 is actually pretty easy after having gone through that, but not being able to continue at all on stage 6B makes it very hard to practice. Getting there with just a life or two left, then dying early to the boss and having to re-do the whole game just for a chance to try again. Not being able to credit feed the last stage just to unlock it for practice is rough, but the continue system overall is very strict. If you don't score well enough early on (which beginners won't) you can have more continues available but the game ends anyway because the timer hit 5:00 AM. I know people say the ability to save yourself by using 2 bombs on death makes up for it, and with Barrier Team at least the window for that is very long, but if you're getting hit so much that you need to rely on this mechanic that just tells me the game isn't really that easy to begin with. Plus doing so wastes twice your bombs, so it's better to just use them pre-emptively like you would in any other Touhou and not depend so much on IN's larger deathbomb window.

For easiest I think EoSD (6), PCB (7), and MoF (10) were all pretty lenient. TH6 doesn't have bullet patterns that are too dense (for the most part) and you can credit feed your way through to the end to unlock the stages for practice so you're ready for when you do your real run. The game didn't get hard until stages 5 and 6, and after a couple days of practice on each my 1cc run came pretty fast.

TH7 gives you cherry shields which can take one hit for you, but counters it by having much more dense bullet arrays. It took less tries to 1cc than the rest so I guess technically it was the easiest for me, though it didn't feel like it for some reason.

TH10's stages are all pretty easy and you can rack up a bunch of lives, but it also has a tough continue system where you must re-start the stage you died on from the start. The hardest part of the game is the final boss so this makes reaching her just that much harder. Ideally you want to do well enough on the first 5 levels so you reach the end with enough lives in stock to plow through it. The new bomb system helps keep you alive since power-ups are pretty plentiful so just bomb the hectic parts and a minute or so later you'll be back at full power to bomb some more.

If I had to pick just one I'd say 10, but that's also in large part because I like the aesthetic of autumn and the music. EoSD is at least as good because of the music and vampire theme. Both were around the same difficulty for me. 7 is easy for the free shields, though you don't control when they come up, and Sakuya A gets one extra bomb per life which helps, but I though it was more stressful due to more bullets on screen. All are great though. Like any Touhou, the character and load-out you pick can greatly affect difficulty. My ratings were based on just Normal mode too.

[TemmieNeko]

th8 for newcomers.

1cc and " playable learnign curves " are two different things.
th8 to ease into the series. if you wanan 1cc ( means clear on 1 credit ) that's up to you, but i douibt the OP has this in mind, since theyre asking for EASIER games lol.
1cc isnt easy in ANY game, let alone one you have no prior experience in

[mldb88]

For older games, I’d recommend th6,7,10 for beginners (most aren’t on steam but a reimagining of 6/7 are in the fantastic danmaku festival games, which are slightly harder but more polished than the originals). For the newer ones, hidden star and wily beast aren’t too bad, but each come with their own gimmicky mechanics. Lastly, avoid legacy of lunatic kingdom and subterranean. Unconnected marketeers is towards the harder side in terms of patterns but the item system helps a lot to mitigate the challenge (be ready to have the wiki up to see what all the items do though).

[レミにゃん]

Check out some of the fangames too for easier learning.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1351170/__Servants_of_Harvest_Wish/

A very lenient death bomb (pressing X right as you are hit to negate death with a bomb) and most of the dodging teaches you streaming (leading aimed shots steady in one direction.)

And this one's free so no worries about buyer's remorse.

[Asbestos]

It really just depends on what you're looking to get into. If you're looking to get into other shmups, I would probably recommend Touhou 10 ~ Mountain of Faith. Not only is it probably one of the most basic games in the series, but it's also relatively easy (not to mention there's a pretty easy glitch that lets you just melt enemies if you're ever stuck).

If you're interested in learning more about the Touhou franchise and its characters, lore, etc., I would definitely look into Touhou 8 ~ Imperishable Night. While it's not on Steam, it's both easy, and it introduces several prominent characters that are fan favorites throughout the series.