Mountain of Faith

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Mountain of Faith: A Short Easy-to-Understand Overview

Mountain of Faith is a 2007 bullet-hell shooter in the Touhou Project, made by Team Shanghai Alice. It’s the tenth main game in the series and uses vertical scrolling. It first came out at Comiket 72 in August 2007 and was released on Steam in June 2020.

Gameplay
- You play as Reimu Hakurei or Marisa Kirisame. Each character has three shot types, but both share the same spell card.
- The game is always played with the screen moving upward. You dodge enemy bullets, shoot enemies, and fight bosses that appear twice in each stage.
- A key change is how spell cards work: when you use a spell card, it costs one point of your shot power (up to a maximum of five). You can regain power by collecting power items.
- Mountain of Faith introduces the Faith system. A Faith counter on-screen shows how many points you’ll gain from items and certain actions. The counter slowly goes down over time, but defeating enemies and collecting items can keep it steady.
- There’s a green Faith Point item that restores faith. Players can also leave messages for future playthroughs using a hint file, which can be set to auto-warn about dangerous spots or edited with personal notes.

Story
- In autumn, the Hakurei Shrine’s faith is dropping. A stranger appears, claiming to represent a mountain god and tells Reimu to close the shrine, which she refuses because the shrine protects the land from the Outside World.
- Reimu and Marisa climb Youkai Mountain to confront the new shrine, Moriya Shrine. They meet Sanae Kotiya, the messenger who urged them to shut down the Hakurei Shrine, and Kanako Yasaka, the goddess of the mountain who wants to gather all faith.
- Reimu fights Kanako, who eventually agrees to live more peacefully with the tengu and kappa. In the Extra Stage, the duo learns of a true god at Moriya Shrine, Suwako Moriya, who invites them to play.
- ZUN explained that the Mountain of Faith story isn’t fully resolved on its own, leaving loose ends for future games to pick up.

Development and design
- After Imperishable Night, ZUN wanted three Touhou games for Windows. He wasn’t sure Mountain of Faith would happen in 2006 due to his other work, but the growing popularity of Touhou led to its creation.
- The story draws on Suwa myths that ZUN knew from childhood. He wanted a simpler, more basic gameplay style, so he started fresh rather than copying earlier games.
- Mountain of Faith didn’t include the Spell Practice mode from earlier titles, and it shifted away from using unique boss spell cards. It was developed with ideas from the Shoot the Bullet project, emphasizing a new, streamlined approach.

Reception and impact
- The game is known for its difficulty. Some reviewers noted that while bullet patterns are tougher, the patterns themselves are shorter, making it possible to survive longer.
- It’s often described as spellcard-centric and encourages players to use bombing strategies to reach bosses.
- The game’s theme and setting helped attract fans to real-world places tied to the story. In Suwa, Nagano, tourists visited shrines and museums connected to the game, boosting local interest and tourism.

Overall, Mountain of Faith marked a fresh start for Touhou with a focus on core shooting action, a new faith-based scoring system, and a story that left room for future installments.