The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil was the first game to come out in the Windows Era, the era where few PC-98 characters made it. By this game, the PC-98 members were confused like hell. “Why do Reimu and Marisa look different?” My theory is that Amusement Makers came up with the outfits in Shushou Gyoku, where Reimu and Marisa were EX bosses, and when ZUN bought the rights to R and M, he took the outfit with him.
Or maybe it’s just because HE came up with the outfit because they are older by now. I suppose.
The plot is basically “Oh shit, red mist everywhere, let’s go kick some ass.”
GRAPHICS
The graphics in Koumakyou (let’s just call it by the romanized name now) are interesting. Not too terrible, and not too superb. The cut-ins for everybody except Remi look very awkward to me, however, and I believe that is because of the amazing amount of white spaces. The white spaces are apparently supposed to count as hair shading or something, and that’s not how you do it unless your hair is a very light gray/pastel color.
The sprites for bosses look weird. They’re like crunched versions of the cut-ins. The nameless fairies look decent, and the kedama look like…kedama.
GAMEPLAY
The controls are just like every other Touhou shooter. Shift to focus, Z to fire, and X to bomb.
Unlike the PC-98 era, you can now autocollect, but only when in Full Power Mode.
EoSD was the only Windows Era game to NOT have a hitbox when focusing. You can fix that with the hitbox patch (just Google it, like hell I’m giving you a link), but the only problem is that the hitbox STAYS THERE ALL THE TIME instead of only appearing when you focus. Bawww.
ALL IN ALL
This game is very fun, however, I do NOT recommend this game to beginners. Go for Imperishable Night instead. I had so much trouble with this game when I first started. I had to always use continues because Patchy would kick my ass on normal. But now I have Extra beaten and unlocked, so whoop de doo.
