☆

Final Stage: Wow.

The stage itself is kinda plain (both stage 5 and 6 have rather boring background too) but it doesn't really matters because the final boss fight is amazing

Not that Mima or Yuka were bad bosses but i think they didn't stand out as particuraly special, here Shinki feels like a challenge you have never seen before and i think it's the combination between the animation and the action, with her tranformating and growing wings (even tho if she can fly without them?) as the fight gets harder and the amount of danmaku she throws at you gets bigger and harder to dodge

Shinki's wings also mark the first a Touhou final boss that get accessories during the fight, it's that cool

Defeating Shinki is hard but in a way you feel extremely satisfied once you do, and, if you ignore the many safespots (wtf ZUN), each attack is just lethal if you aren't used to them, the "cheeto" attack is still one of the worst things ever

The second-last "full power" attack is iconic and i'm glad it got re-used in TH12 like 10 years later, but i do hate how hard it is and i still haven't figured out how the hell you are supposed to dodge it, also i like that Shinki returns normal for the last attack, it's like the calm after the storm

Now, i didn't bring this up but all of TH games are buggy as HELL and in the worst way possible, but MS has a really a unique and infamous glitch: the insta Shinki death

For the unaware: during stage 4 if you defeat Yuki or Mai when their "cheeto" bullets are still on screen, those bullets will stay memorized only to be "reactivated" at the start of Shinki's boss battle (probably bc she also uses the same "cheeto" bullets ig?) killing you instantly, it's a really dumb glitch that can be easily avoided but it does unintentionally makes Shinji even more of an asshole so i kinda like it

Extra Stage: So here we finally are, the grand finale of Touhou PC98

I think it's pretty fair to say that, without any doubt, this is the best stage of all 5 games so far, starting with the stage itself, the presentation is great, love the "Alice in Wonderland" references in enemies like the Trump King miniboss and the cards that shoot bullets (ah, touhou) and, of course, the stage theme itself

The boss fight itself is excellent, love how each one of Alice's attacks has its own colorful danmaku and backgrounds, it almost looks like a Windows game without spellcards, basically, ZUN cooked, not much else to say here

My favorite attack is maybe the "red" one that resemble one of Sanae's spellcard in TH10, outside that it's probably the "purple" attack bc... it just looks neat, the only downsides is, again, the safespots but tbf who cares, Alice git gud

Stage 4: The background is the punishment for ever complaining about plain black background, i get it's going for an "ice lake" setting but that doesn't justifies even the bullets being of the same icey white color, it's not an hard stage once you get used to it but i think bad presentation make it the worse of all MS

The midstage boss is a recolor of Luize which is makes it the only time a main boss reappears as midboss in a later stage (outside of TH2 stage 4 midboss looking a tiny bad like Sariel), i guess that's Luize coming back for revenge?

As for the fight against Mai and Yuki, this one is pretty special, this marks the first battle with two bosses (outside of the double Yuka attack in TH4) and the only one so far where you are also the one to decide who to defeat first (the only other somewhat event to this is in TH6 letting you chose who attack between Mai and Satono... quite ironic names), also this follow the trend of Stage 4 being the one stage influenced by the player's choices

That aside, this fight is really good, like the contrast between the Yuki's red/fire broad bullets and Mai's blue/ice focused lasers bow they "switch" styles, if you don't count Yuka's flower motif (which won't even be fully expanded until the Windows games) this also marks the first enemies with a proper "elemental" theme

As for the individual fights i gotta say i find myself in the minority, Mai is way harder for me, i get why people find Yuki worse because she fires way more bullets but Mai's lasers and snowballs always get to me lol, love the aesthetic reflecting Yuki and Mai's moods but that's for the character section

Stage 5: decent second-last stage, it's probably the one that reflects the main boss' style the most in the game, with enemies throwing swords at you, it's also the first stage 5 to have a midboss, but outside that it's nothing special

Yumeko's boss fight is... interesting, once you figure that most of the fight is just sliding from left to right to left to right it becomes really easy, probably even more easy than Yuki and Mai, but if you aren't careful you risk to run right in her swords lol

And on the topic of swords, i like that Yumeko is the first enemy that actually throw her unlimited swords (even if they look like long knives tbqh) at you while Kongara and Meira just use theirs to shoot more bullets like... why