Touhou Kouryudou ~ Unconnected Marketeers.

im bad, like terribly bad, but im still having fun. i dont think other games achieved that.

this one has the Polycule of Evil Women (TM) in it
i wanna drown tsukasa in a toilet she is literally the worst i'm so glad she appears in th19 as well. i love that pathetic little conwoman.
the god of gay rainbow capitalism is the final boss. what isn't to love?

The card system makes it real fun + lets you play it more meaning MORE FUN!!!!!!
9/10
biased because I suck (ignore my review time)

Probably the most replayable touhou game due to the cards system

In Unconnected Marketeers the implementation of ability cards adds a ton of new ways of approaching a run, which is really good for replayability. The soundtrack is really nice (specially sannyo's and Tenkiu's themes) and the characters are charming as always (except misumaru, Jesus what an awful bossfight)

A bit unconventional but pretty solid entry.
Let's address the elephant in the room first - card mechanics. In this game you get to choose between one and three cards before the run that modifies your shot, give you abilities activated by separate button or just gives some passive effect. Every time you beat a boss you get another card and if it's one you haven't seen before you unlock it permanently to choose from at the beginning. That gives the game a bit of a grinding mechanic as you for a while might pick sub-optimal cards for your run just to unlock them. Which is not that great. Memorizing routes is also a bit annoying as you never really know what kind of card setup you will have for most of the stages, which will change how long will spellcards last, how fast you will kill enemies and such.
On the other hand - each run can feel quite fresh and you can end up with some really broken builds if luck is on your sides. Theorycrafting best possible starting build is also pretty fun and it can produce interesting results.
At the end you'll either love it or hate it. Or just accept it for what it is, I think it works fine aside from occasional frustration when every stage you get is nothing but pure garbage cards that you can't really do anything with.
Aside from that - difficulty is alright, feels a bit higher than usual on it's own due to the fact proper card build can break the game anyway, but before you can figure that out it might take a while for your first 1cc. Shottype balancing is... not the greatest. Again. Marisa got the short end of a stick. *Again*. Reimu and Sanae absolutely dominate the field with high DPS and homing shots. Marisa has same DPS as Reimu, with no homing and worst spellcard in the game. Sakuya in the meantime is highly technical character that can be pretty good with high skill, but you can just pick Sanae and turn your brain off for same effect so why bother.
Music is interesting. It's not as good as other entries, I maybe really liked one track, rest are alright but nothing outside of the norm. However some of the tracks are really catchy, even if I don't fancy them that much they stay in your memory for a while so ZUN did something good there I dunno.
Ultimately while I haven't wrote that much good about this game, gameplay is king and gameplay here is quite addictive as you'll be encouraged to try new run over and over again because maaaaybe this time you'll roll some insane card build that'll let you breeze through entire game. So yeah it gets a recommendation because despite some issues I still really enjoyed my time with the game.

Surprised at how much I enjoyed this game. Most modern Touhou game i've played and always heard mixed opinions on it, and there are notable gripes, but it's overall really good. The stages are a lot harder than anticipated and stages 3-5 can cause spell use or lives lost. If you've played some other games in the series you can really notice quite a few patterns or ideas get completely reused in this game though, which could make things easier for you or disappointing. Losing a life will take away any extra bombs you collected which makes them more worth using in a way to keep most resources on you, and power feels really scarce in this game so staying alive feels extra vital. My biggest gripe is that bosses WON'T STOP MOVING. Every boss in this game will move around in a somewhat random pattern constantly, and much more than other games. They don't move a small amount and it's very notable so at times you can focus on trying to not get hit only for a boss to move away from you and not take damage, wasting time and lowering score if you eventually capture a spell. The general difficulty can be heavily toyed with because of this game's ability card mechanic. They all offer varying benefits depending on what you feel you might need to manage a 1cc. Although I wanted to try my best to use as little as possible, Okina's card especially became vital to getting my way through some stage segments and even capture spells. Building strategy around certain cards is really fun and adds a unique aspect for the series. The music in this game is absolutely phenomenal and really underappreciated to me. Nearly every part of this game has a great or memorable track in it, with Perpetual Snow of Komakusa Blossoms being my favorite stage theme in the series, and Where is That Bustling Marketplace Now ~Immemorial Marketeers being my favorite piece by Zun, and some stages as a whole such as 5 or the extra being very well done. The characters are varying in how great they are in this game though. Some characters just aren't that interesting like Misumaru, some unpopular like Mike, some I want to see get pelted with bricks like Tsukasa, but some I really like and find memorable such as Chimata. The extra stage feels way longer than others and can be a bit obnoxious but Momoyo's fight is really good, feels unique and a pain at times but doable, although Nue is still the best in that category. Has Immemorial Marketeers/10