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Friday, July 8, 2016

Touhou Corner: Mountain of Faith

Touhou Fuujinroku (lit. 'Wind God Chronicles') ~ Mountain of Faith (東方風神録 ~ Mountain of Faith) is the 10th main-line title in the Touhou series, as well as the first game in the so-called '2nd Windows Generation'. It was launched during Comiket 72 on August 17, 2007.

This game's story starts during the Autumn season, in a year where less and less faith to the Hakurei Shrine's goddess was pledged by all creatures. One day, a mysterious person threatens Reimu's safety to be in danger if she doesn't close the shrine, leading her to tell the event to Marisa. The day after, the heroine chosen by the player will go investigating the Youkai Mountain in order to find the threat's origins, up to discover a never-seen-before shrine on its top. As explained by Sanae Kochiya, its shrine maiden, the newly-placed Moriya Shrine was originally located in the real world but had to leave due to the humans' progressive lack of faith; Kanako Yasaka, its new protector god, has moved the shrine to Gensokyo in order to gather more faith from its inhabitants and it's up to the chosen heroine to restore the balance.

Mountain of Faith returns to the series' staple of having a small handful of selectable characters, with Reimu and Marisa having three different attack schemes each, with personalized satellite upgrades to be collected instead of personal bomb shots. The scoring system of the game is based on the Faith system, relying on a gauge that is drained after a set of time not hitting characters/collecting items and depletes the bonus scoring of the game if empty.

After the release of 2005's Shoot the Bullet spin-off, ZUN was uncertain about him continuing to make more games for the series and took an undefined period of hiatus. He waited a few seasons to see if the Touhou series' fandom would die out for the hiatus, but the continued support for the series made him working on the 10th main game under a new built-from-scratch engine. Due to Mountain of Faith's story and system being based on past/present relationships in Gensokyo and the Suwa mythology, its musical score was leaning more on the Japanesque side of the composing spectrum, as to evoke nostalgic feelings in the player (such as for the game itself!)

Most of the MoF made their way to both arcade and console public entries in the Taiko no Tatsujin series, while also including one Reitasai-exclusive track in the mix.

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-Mountain of Faith songs-



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