YMMV / Touhou Reiiden ~ Highly Responsive to Prayers

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Due to the lack of official information on the characters (other than Reimu and Mima, who reappear in later works), this happens a lot:
  • What exactly is Shingyoku? The most common interpretations are that it's either a manifestation of the Hakurei god, or the spirits of Reimu's parents, making sure she is ready to wield the yin-yang orb and take on whatever lies in Hell or Makai.
  • The lightning connecting YuugenMagan's eyes draws an anthropomorphic figure in the center. Opinions differ as to whether the humanoid is just an illusion, or the real YuugenMagan, who is controlling the eyes.
  • Most fans believe Konngara is an oni, but a few think Konngara might be a ghost or other kind of spirit due to the boss's sprite diffusing below the torso, with the horn being considered as actually a bloody spike indicating how Konngara died. A few others think Konngara might be a hybrid of both.
• Anticlimax Boss: Konngara's attacks don't fill the screen as heavily as you would expect for a final boss - even on Lunatic, some of the attacks have clear gaps in them. This is in comparison to the previous Hell boss, who has many attacks that are more in line with the later games and thus are harder to read (and whose hitbox is notoriously tiny), or the other final boss - Sariel, who starts with one of the few truly random attacks in the game, on top of the many attacks that require you to keep moving around (as well as faking you out by having phase two unlike Konngara).
• Broken Base: Most Touhou fans either like the unique gameplay concept and cut the game some slack because it was the first in the series; find the game to have aged too poorly for their taste due to the rough around the edges physics, That One Boss and/or That One Level; or simply aren't interested because it's not a Shoot 'Em Up.
• Common Knowledge: Some fans mistakenly believe that Theme of Eastern Story, the series's main theme, originated as an unused track from this game. The misconception comes from the fact Theme of Eastern Story is included as a bonus track in Akyu's Untouched Score, a re-release collection of the PC-98 soundtracks, in Volume 5, the one containing this game's soundtrack. In reality, the track was specially made for the Untouched Score. The actual earliest recognizable form of Theme of Eastern Story is Init, the boot up jingle of Lotus Land Story and Mystic Square.
• Epileptic Trees: A common theory is that Konngara is the last member of the Big Four of the Mountain, a group of oni whose known members are Suika, Yuugi and Kasen, with the fourth yet to be revealed.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Although the game considers it a good ending, one ending has a Ying-Yang orb turn into some Armless Biped. Which proceeds to wreck Reimu's shrine, with the illustration stating it appears to be enjoying it. Yes, that really happens in that ending.
• Fan Nickname: Reimu's overhead kick is called the chilena by Spanish-speaking players, due to its resemblance to football's iconic "bicycle kick" (or in Spanish, chilena).
• Fanon Discontinuity: Because the endings make no sense, fans tend to disregard them completely. Even ignoring the Soft Reboot from PC-98 to Windows, fans don't bother acknowledging this game's endings in relation to the rest of the PC-98 Era either.
• Game-Breaker: The "spirit strike", equivalent of bombs in this game, is incredibly broken; proper use of them makes the game noticeably easier. This is due to three things: a) they do not damage bosses unless you're on your last life b) the targets in main stages are worth the more, the more you hit without the orb hitting the ground. Since they hit the entire screen, using them at the beginning of a stage can rack up points fast (though how much depends, since the counter will still get reset if the orb hits the ground, and which tiles it hits is completely random) c) you keep them between deaths and get one extra, meaning dying at bosses doesn't hinder much as you get more of them to rack up lives back in the main stages.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Most players consider the Makai route to be harder than the Hell route. Fast forward to Perfect Cherry Blossom and Sakuya seems to agree, as she tells Yukari that "Hell is not as scary as Makai".
• Memetic Troll: The yin-yang orb. Among fans of this game, the orb is often characterized as having a mind of its own and has gained a notorious reputation for repeatedly hitting Reimu, getting stuck in weird places due to the game's rough around the edges physics and just generally never going where the player wants it to.
• Nintendo Hard: This game can be found incredibly hard even by experienced Touhou players, mainly because it's an entirely different genre from the rest of the series, but also due to difficult elements within the game itself. You can only damage enemies with the yin-yang orb, or with bombs when you're on your last life. Said orb is tricky to control, and you also have to deal with Bullet Hell from bosses while continuing to knock the orb around and avoiding getting hit by it yourself. Furthermore, there is no vertical movement in this game, so enemy danmaku needs to be dodged entirely through horizontal movement (albeit this is mitigated by the fact that most bullets can be deleted or deflected by the yin-yang orb and by some of the player's moves).
• Scrappy Mechanic: The fact that one of the two inputs for bombing is to simultaneously press Z, left and right. It's possible to misinput a bomb while trying to shoot amulets while performing slides and flip kicks all in quick succession, which has ruined many an attempt to do a No Bomb clear of the game, or simply wasted resources, with players wishing bombing only had its other input (pressing Z and X simultaneously twice in rapid succession).
• That One Attack: See the series' page.
• That One Boss: Shares a page with the rest of the series.
• That One Level: Stage 18 on Hell route. All tiles are on left side, while the orb starts on right side that is filled with bumpers... and separated from tiles by a large wall. It's likely you'll spend a good amount of time just getting the ball out of bumpers and then making sure it doesn't get stuck there again. While bombs break the game in general, this is the one stage in the game where not using bombs makes the stage that much more annoying (especially on Lunatic, where the tiles will shoot back at you).