Going into it, I'd been told it was a turning point mechanically for the next several games. I knew vaguely about idea of Power-Bombing, I quickly found out they changed the continue system, and generally I was told it was among the easier Touhous.
That last point was uh. not my experience for the first playthrough.
I mentioned in my post about 9, I've been playing these games in a discord group, which has been... a choice on my part, considering I'm not exactly attractive when I'm on tilt, but it's been fun showing the series to at least one person who knows absolutely nothing about it. So there's kind of a baseline of feeling Embarrassed when I start eating shit for no reason, 'cause literally Girls Are Watching, and until one of those friends was cool enough to literally patch out Bad Endings for me, it basically meant I never got to show off the actual endings in voice and I'd have to post about them in retrospect, which was a little awkward.
So... Touhou 10: Fuujinroku ~ Mountain of Faith changed the way continues work, where now instead of immediately picking back up where you left off with 2 lives and 3 bombs or whatever, you go back to the start of the stage with 2 lives and 4 power (max 5, bombs cost 1). This basically takes the regular Touhou play experience of 'get walled by something you're bad at and practice it until you fix that', and enforces it. You no longer get the first playthrough Exhibition Match where you get to see every spell card, get fucked over on your blind run, take notes for what kicked your ass especially hard, and take it into Spell Practice (or thprac if you're chill like that) on your own time. Basically, the game is asking for not just an understanding of each spell card, but it kind of asks for a pretty clean final run, actually. Two lives is not a lot, and losing power for each bomb is actually kind of a harsh penalty, even if theoretically you get more over the course of a run if you're willing to burn bombs on Every Little Thing You Hate, Preemptively. But I mean. I don't like doing that unless I've completely given up hope, I like at least trying to respect stuff even if I'm bad at it.
Thus, the resulting New Player Experience for Mountain of Faith for me was uh. Getting stonewalled by Stage 4 and Kanako for literally an hour, basically spending the whole time deafened so I can concentrate, with everyone worrying for just How Upset I might've been getting on the other end, because I would start crashing into enemies if I died before reaching Kanako, because why wouldn't I if I've already continued, there's now no use in continuing a run if I waste my only two lives before my actual problem points in a given boss fight, this is the environment engendered by infinite continues at the cost of resetting the stage. It kind of didn't end up being a great time.
Then, uh, I queued up as Marisa type C. Not type B, not the one with the bug that makes her overpowered; I purposefully picked the funky one where you hold focus to place a stationary flamethrower basically.
and got this 1CC in like 2 runs.
In fact this is the first time I've gotten a 1CC same night as starting the game since, like... Lotus Land Story. You know, Touhou 4. On PC98.
So I guess, like. Despite all my complaining, this style of gameplay definitely worked on me? Like yeah no I do in fact have an understanding of every spellcard in this game's six stages now. But uh, the thing is... personally I kind of liked being able to slamfuck a messy first run through to an ending, and then doing spell practice against the hard parts on my own time? And like, yeah, I'm in a uniquely bad position there because it means I have to feel embarrassed while people watch my learning process, but I think even without that, I would like this continue system less just because it makes it less trivial to See The Rest Of The Game if I blow an attempt.
It's like... I respect ZUN for wanting to be experimental, and changing things up, but he changed up several key variables at once, and I think the end result is a game that isn't... actually that hard to complete, but is also kind of engineered to make a bad first impression on the blind playthrough. As much as Stage 4 is a 'first impression' I guess. Holy shit, why is Stage 4 harder than anything that comes after it. Why is Stage 4 harder than most Extra stages I've tried so far. Why's it like this.
I dunno. I've heard this isn't the case forever, so hopefully I'll survive until then...? Oh well. At least Sanae's a really fun and cool fight. Also basically every song fucks in this one, compared to the past couple having at least a few that are kinda forgettable. That's nice.