I had some time to kill yesterday, so I went ahead and wrote up my thoughts on another obscure game. Below, I discuss the original Labyrinth of Touhou.
A few notes should be made about how I'm evaluating in-game use here, given the variations in how LoT1 can be played. The game has a cast of 40 playable PCs overall. Of the 40 playable PCs, 14 are required recruits that cannot be missed in a normal playthrough of the game without glitches (glitches do allow you to skip one of them, not that you'd want to). 18 are optional PCs of varying recruitment difficulty. The remaining 8 PCs join in the aftergame.
On an initial runthrough of the game, these characters are all unlocked over time. However, on replays, you can choose to carry over some or all of the following from a clear file: your unlocked characters, your levels, your equipment, and your character upgrades. In practice, many LoT1 players carry over only the unlocked characters and nothing else for replays, allowing full party customization from the word go.
For the 14 required PCs, I will simply be rating them on their in-game use in a regular New Game run. This means that availability will be a factor in the rating.
For the 18 optional PCs, I will likewise simply rate them on their in-game use in a regular New Game run. This means that particularly annoying to unlock characters may lose points from their in-game use rating because of the annoyingness of the unlock.
For the 8 aftergame PCs, I will rate them on their in-game use in a regular New Game run
in the aftergame only.
Most PCs will have comments attached about things that differ in NG+ all-characters-unlocked runs. Without further ado...
The Required PCsReimu Hakurei: 9.5/10. She's available for the entire game from start to finish, and you would never want to remove her from the party; she's the only source of strong MT healing in the game, the only source of MT defensive buffing for 90% of the game, and she does decent (if not spectacular) damage for random clearing. She'd be a 10/10 if her damage was better. It's possible to beat the game without her, but she makes the game far easier by existing. Even in NG+, she remains clearly in the top 12 PCs in the game and should probably stay in the party from start to finish.
Marisa Kirisame: 5/10. Okay earlygame filler, but she should be one of the first characters to leave the party once you start getting extra PCs. She's good at random clearing, but her boss damage gets worse and worse over time, thanks to the fact that she's mono-element and her element, Mystic, is the most resisted element in the game by bosses and randoms alike. Master Spark also really does not do quite enough damage for its SP cost. She does get one last hurrah though as probably being your best source of Mystic damage against Rinnosuke. In NG+, you can probably just field one of her various replacements from the beginning rather than ever bothering with her. She might still see use there against Rinnosuke, but you might well just handle the Mystic phase with a non-elemental nuke like Nitori's too.
Remilia Scarlet: 8/10. She's your earlygame tank, and can hold her own in the role for the entire game if desired or if you miss the optional PCs. Her defense is still "good enough" for the most part when she's built offensively, and she probably should be built offensively so that her usefulness holds up better once the optional tanks are in play. Even if you build her defensively and ultimately replace her, though, she's one of the strongest earlygame PCs; lategame relative weakness doesn't severely detract from her use. Her main drawback is that her powerful self-buff requires either loading her equipment slots with status protection or carrying a status healer PC alongside her, and the best status healer PC is the one that's also a better tank than her. In NG+, she's not useful as a tank, and should always be built offensively if used; her overall offensive output isn't spectacular, but it is cheap, and thus she's still a great earlygame PC, so her use doesn't change a whole lot.
Sakuya Izayoi: 6/10. Cheap MT damage is great earlygame, but that doesn't stay hugely useful for long and her offense falls off hard as the game goes on and starts running into defense. She's good earlygame filler, and probably better than Marisa in the long run. MT Speed buffing is great but can be difficult to strategize around because it can do weird things to turn order; plus, the SP cost is prohibitively high before deep lategame to get much use out of it. Her NG+ use isn't too much different, since cheap MT is no less valuable there.
Patchouli Knowledge: 7/10. Earlygame filler that is still usable lategame, although she does fall off due to the combination of gameworst HP, gameworst defense, and gameworst speed. She's saved from complete irrelevance by having gamebest magic defense; even lategame she'll completely soak many magical attacks. She would be a good random sweeper if she had speed, but she doesn't, so she's really just best at nuking bosses, and since her boss nuke is non-elemental, she does this well. Probably best used with speed buffs from someone like Sakuya or Aya. NG+ probably makes her a little better since Aya is in play slightly earlier, though on the flip side she has to compete with Suwako sooner than usual.
Chen: 7/10. Cheap MT damage is great earlygame, and unlike Sakuya, her offense gets better and better as the game goes on and her speed growth starts running away from the pack. She's very one-note overall: use Kimontonkou, spam Flight of Idaten, then switch herself out before the boss gets a turn, because she'll probably die as soon as anything hits her. NG+ has no meaningful effect on her since she's fairly self-contained and was always an early recruit.
Cirno: 7/10. Cheap MT damage, earlygame, etc. Like Sakuya, her raw offense is okay at best and falls off over time, but she's decently fast and has a high success rate MT Paralyze (and powerful Speed debuffs) that keep her relevant long after her damage has gone down the toilet. Her damage may as well be nonexistent by deep lategame, but she's almost worth the party slot on the basis of the MT paralysis alone, since it can inflict the status regardless of whether she breaks defense or not, and it's resisted much less often than you might expect. She probably is not final boss material. She suffers quite a bit in NG+; Mystia is better at paralyzing randoms than she is, leaving her only the speed debuffs and lower SP costs to stand out on. As such, she could see earlygame use, but should probably give way to Mystia as soon as 80 SP attacks stop being prohibitively expensive and only come out when the Speed debuffs specifically are needed.
Youmu Konpaku: 6/10. Her SP costs are pretty much prohibitive in the early/midgame for the most part, although she makes a decent offensive tank against randoms. She gets better and better as the game progresses, and is probably the best source of Wind damage against Rinnosuke. Ultimately, she's a pretty good endgame PC but she blooms very, very late. Luckily, LoT1 is a game where you can let her sit on the bench until then and she'll still do reasonably okay. In NG+, she now has to compete with Kanako and Maribel for anti-Rinnosuke Wind damage, but is probably still the best of the three to field in that fight. She doesn't benefit from earlier availability by any means.
Alice Margatroid: 8/10. Modest attacker that can hit both defenses fairly well (she's better at hitting defense), has surprisingly decent durability for a damage-dealer (comparable to Reimu), and piles debuffs on her enemies. Her best boss-killing attack is fire element, which is a fairly good element to have, and she can fall back on Little Legion if needed for non-elemental offense. All-around solid PC that is pretty consistently useful throughout. Her SP costs are a little high for the part of the game before her normal join time, but overall NG+ doesn't change much for her.
Ran Yakumo: 9.5/10. Great random sweeping, great boss offense, and great endgame MT buffing that even buffs your back line (an ability completely unique to her). And she has decent durability on top of this package, at least on par with the likes of Wriggle. One of the best all-around PCs in the game and she's handed to you on a silver platter. Her SP costs are fairly high for the part of the game before her normal join time, but not enough to seriously hold her back more than most PCs; she performs reasonably okay in earlygame in NG+ as such.
Reisen Udongein Inaba: 5.5/10. A definite late-bloomer like Youmu, but she doesn't bloom as strongly as Youmu, either. Until you reach the endgame levels where she can spam Grand Patriot's Elixir several times and still have SP left to nuke with, she's basically only useful for the all-stat debuff on Discarder. Discarder is a pretty good trick against things vulnerable to debuffs though, so even before Elixir spam is viable, she's never truly bad. In NG+, you might think she has to compete with Maribel much earlier, but Maribel's SP costs are prohibitive for quite a while, so she can still see some use in the midgame.
Eirin Yagokoro: 3/10. She's a notably worse Alice that comes later. She'd be better if Hourai Elixir's unique effect actually worked properly, but unfortunately for her, it does not. Her biggest attack costs way too much SP for the damage it does. The only time she's likely to see play is a run in which the optional PCs are all intentionally skipped, and even then, only as filler until Yukari comes along. In NG+, she should sit on the bench the entire game unless you're doing some kind of bizarre draft run where you got badly screwed by the other participants, in which you could probably, with enough grinding, make her into a barely usable tank.
Yukari Yakumo: 10/10. Reimu variant who trades MT healing for MT Quick. It's as dumb as it sounds and I don't really need to say anything else. It's only practical in endgame and her personal offense is poor (worse than Reimu's), so she's not quite as dominating in NG+ before this trick becomes practical. In normal play, it's practical as soon as she's recruited. She's a deep lategame PC, but is usable and good immediately. The attack that depends on Ran and Chen in the front lines is strong, but too impractical to really ever use due to Chen's fragility. In NG+, she's probably best left benched until midgame, when the SP costs of her spells stop being prohibitive. Basically, she's pretty poor for the parts of the game before her usual join time due to lack of SP.
Rinnosuke Morichika: 7/10. The final PC recruited in the main game. He has overall very high stats, but his skillset is a bit subpar, and ultimately he's probably best played as a backup tank. World-Shaking Military Rule makes for a pretty decent panic button in endgame boss fights, but it's once-per-dungeon-trip. Like Yukari, he's mostly useless in NG+ before his usual join time due to lack of SP.
The Optional PCsHong Meiling: 9/10. She's an optional PC, though very difficult to miss. Probably the gamebest tank overall; she has extremely good HP and defense, and while her magic defense is subpar, her raw HP largely makes up for the deficiency, as does her ability to self-heal. She also provides good party utility by being able to cure status ailments, and she can do passable ST damage in randoms in a pinch. Like Reimu, the reason she doesn't get a 10 is because she doesn't do everything. She's incredibly easy to pick up, so skipping her is either foolish or a self-imposed challenge. In NG+, she can (and should) be in your party from start to finish.
Minoriko Aki: 8/10. Easily recruited optional PC. She's basically a worse Reimu - her offense is roughly similar (though of a different element), and her support and healing, while equally strong, are ST instead of MT. However, her support and healing are also far more SP-efficient and faster-acting than Reimu's. If you only NEED ST healing or buffing, it's much better to have Minoriko do it than Reimu, so using both of them is not redundant. That said, she also has survivability issues Reimu does not, which keep her from being higher rated. Worth noting that her offense is pretty close to ITD, although still not great even with that due to low bases. NG+ changes her little, as she was already available very early.
Rumia: 5/10. Easily recruited optional PC. She's basically Marisa that trades Master Spark and MT damage for some weak ITD and a very weak MT heal that removes debuffs. The latter can be an important niche in a couple boss fights. Her ST nuke is surprisingly powerful for its low SP cost. She has all of the same problems as Marisa, being mono-element Mystic, and Marisa is better than her against Rinnosuke. In aftergame, the MT heal starts to accelerate in power faster than your HP grows, and it ultimately becomes a pretty decent heal by the end of aftergame, possibly justifying using her over Reimu if you get the defensive buffing from Yukari instead. She has a little extra value in NG+ as a cheap ST nuker for the earlygame before her usual join, but otherwise doesn't change much.
Wriggle Nightbug: 7/10. Easily recruited optional PC. She's one of the best slot 2 offtanks for boss fights. Her raw offense is mostly bad, but her poison is very strong in the maingame and doesn't depend on her offensive stats, so pump her defenses. Building her offenses DOES make her a better random sweeper, but makes her much less safe to keep in against bosses as a slot 2 offtank. Sadly, in the aftergame, she very quickly falls off into complete uselessness.
NG+ doesn't change her much, either; she's viable from the start.
Yuugi Hoshiguma: 7.5/10. Optional PC, fairly hard to miss but somewhat tedious to recruit. Ultimately, though, you can't miss the requirement (it's 400 battles won, and you will easily get that well before endgame), so I didn't penalize her for it.. Anyway, she's a sidegrade to Remilia in randoms, and a physical powerhouse against bosses, if a fire element one. She's one of the better sources of Fire damage against Rinnosuke, possibly the best. Her lack of strong MT holds her usefulness back somewhat, since she doesn't sweep randoms very well. Obviously, NG+ benefits her by cutting out the recruitment, and she has low-cost options for earlygame.
Aya Shameimaru: 7/10. Easily recruited optional PC. She's basically a Sakuya variant who trades the MT speed buffing for much more efficient ST speed buffing (which tends to be just as useful) and notably better offense. She makes a great random sweeper for most of the maingame, but against bosses is largely relegated to buffing as her damage is fairly subpar in raw power. She's perfectly viable in earlygame in NG+.
Iku Nagae: 9.5/10. Easily recruited optional PC. She's a fairly decent random sweeper, but this isn't what gives her the high rating; the high rating comes from her having the single best offensive buff in the game while also having decent physical durability and gamebest magical durability. Built offensively, she's nowhere near as good of a magic tank and does merely "okay" damage, so she should probably go with the defensive build. The buff's one drawback (paralyze infliction) can be obviated with status resistance equips, and her attacks debuff enemy defense, so when combined with a party of strong physical attackers, she is an absurdly effective force multiplier. Should pretty much always be glued to your party once you get her, if playing optimally. She's perfectly viable in earlygame in NG+ for the most part, although the buff should probably be avoided before paralysis resistance is available unless you can use Meiling's turn to cure paralysis off.
Komachi Onozuka: 7/10. Relatively easily recruited optional PC. All of her attacks inflict ID at various success rates (the best being 75%) and she can also do MT debuffing and poison/paralyze as well. Her paralysis isn't as good as Cirno's, her poison isn't as good as Wriggle's, and her debuffs aren't as good as the specialists, but she's a pretty good all-in-one "Make the enemies suck" PC. Game-best HP, but game-worst defenses; she is probably best built as an attacker, not as an HP tank, as the latter role is only effective in a couple specific fights and Meiling can usually suffice. One of the better sources of Spirit damage against Rinnosuke; though not necessarily the best, she is the easiest of the good ones to get. In NG+, she can ID a fair number of earlygame bosses, since the developer didn't give any of the bosses recruited before she joins ID protection, and her ID isn't horribly expensive either, so even if you don't use her long-term, she trivializes basically every boss fight before 7F.
Suwako Moriya: 8/10. Easily recruited optional PC. She's basically Patchouli who trades away the magic durability to not have game-worst speed. She should be specced for physical attack, not magic, as her boss nuke is physical. Very fragile PC to everything, but so long as you switch her out before she can get smacked by anything, she does some of the highest damage ST nuking in the game. Best source of both Cold and Nature damage against Rinnosuke. Her MT is a little expensive for early game, but she can still ST earlygame fine, for NG+ usage.
Sanae Kochiya: 7/10. Fairly easily recruited optional PC. Overall, she's a Minoriko variant. Her attacks hit harder than Minoriko's at base, but lack the ITD component. Her heal is less powerful, slower and more expensive, but also removes status ailments and debuffs. Her buff is less powerful, slower and more expensive, but buffs all stats instead of just defense and magic defense. I consider it to be a losing trade on the whole, and she comes notably later than Minoriko, but she's still a good support PC. Her deficiencies relative to Minoriko do shrink as the game goes on, particularly in aftergame. She performs fairly well in earlygame in NG+, though SP economy on her healing can be a problem.
Nitori Kawashiro: 8/10. Annoying to recruit optional PC; it depends on running into specific random formations on certain floors. The recruit annoyance is worth about a full point loss to me. Anyway, she's the game's best damage dealer; PDLC99MW is the strongest attack in the game and is a lot cheaper than most of the things which come close to it, and it's even non-elemental, which is usually a net positive in this game. She backs it up with pretty good random sweeping, too. She's the one PC affected by the game version; in versions prior to 2.06, she loses around three to four points or so, as her big nuke does a little over a third less damage (which brings it down to being pretty mediocre), and she's probably not really worth using there. She performs perfectly well in NG+ from start to finish.
Tenshi Hinanawi: 7.5/10. Optional PC; loses a point for a mildly annoying recruitment process that involves the switch puzzles on 10-12F. Alongside Meiling, she's the other contender for gamebest tank; she sports notably higher defenses than Meiling but, oddly enough, combines them with a mildly below average HP pool. The net effect of this is that while she tends to just completely soak damage an awful lot of the time, she gets quickly shredded by things she doesn't soak and ITD in particular completely murders her when Meiling might survive on her HP pool. Instead of a self-heal, she can cap her defenses, and instead of curing ally status ailments, she can (attempt to) cancel enemy buffs. She's better than Meiling in some fights and overall probably worth getting despite the hassle. NG+ cuts out the recruitment, and her primary function doesn't depend on SP, so it obviously improves her use.
Fujiwara no Mokou: 3/10. Optional PC, mildly easy to recruit. That said... she's also a worse Alice that comes later. Honestly, she's probably worse than Eirin; the only thing she has better than Eirin is speed, and only barely. There's not much else to say about her. She would be a fairly skippable benchwarmer, if not for the fact that recruiting her is required for Kaguya (in fact, that's pretty much the entirety of her real in-game use). Which means that in NG+, she's a permanent benchwarmer.
Flandre Scarlet: 5/10. Optional PC, loses two points for being extremely annoying to recruit - it involves the switch puzzles and having high battle counts on the initial party members, many of whom have probably been dropped from the party by the time you get close to her. Also, you get no hints, so she's FAQ bait. If you DO recruit her, she's still not especially great in the main game due to her self-damaging property. Her primary utility is in the aftergame, where she drastically speeds up the process of grinding for the final superboss. NG+ doesn't change anything but the recruitment being gone, obviously.
Suika Ibuki: 6.5/10. Optional PC, fairly easy to recruit. She's a Yuugi variant, trading physical durability for magical durability (she still has better PDur than Yuugi has MDur) and with a wind element nuke instead of fire element. She's a good source of Wind damage against Rinnosuke, but may not be better than Youmu. Her self-buff is fantastic if you give her debuff resistance equips, and she can cure status ailments and the debuffs (however, she cannot do so without also removing buffs, so it's a mild double-edged sword). Like Yuugi, she's poor at random sweeping. She loses half a point compared to Yuugi for having a slightly slower leveling rate (and thus worse stats).
Yuyuko Saigyouji: 4/10. Optional PC, loses three points for her recruitment - it involves the switch puzzles and having high battle counts on a number of party members who are fairly unlikely to reach those counts, and you're given no hints so it's FAQ bait. If you recruit her, she's the best Spirit element attacker in the game, if horribly SP-inefficient, is equally good at ST ID as Komachi, and has the best MT ID in the game. She also delays enemy turns with some of her attacks, though this effect doesn't work as well against bosses, unfortunately. She's a very good PC if recruited (and her worth goes up in NG+ for this reason), but even so, is likely not worth the grind necessary to get. Obviously, NG+ removes the unlock requirement... but her SP costs are prohibitive until lategame anyway, so her worth only goes up so much.
Rin Kaenbyou: 3/10. Optional PC, loses four points for her recruitment. She's actually pretty good, with a very strong ST defense debuff, reasonably good MT damage and relatively high speed, plus Cat's Walk can be used for turn order manipulation. However, recruiting her requires recruiting Yuyuko. Thus, like Yuyuko, her worth goes up in NG+. Her SP costs are fairly high for earlygame, but become viable by midgame; as such, she improves significantly in NG+.
Kaguya Houraisan: 4.5/10. Optional PC, loses four points for her requirement - she requires Mokou, who sucks, and is also FAQ bait, requiring high battle counts on four PCs who are all fairly subpar. If you do get her, she's a very good PC, in large part because almost all of her attacks are completely ITD (and high power for ITD to boot), plus she has ST targetable Quick. She's held back by poor speed somewhat. NG+ improves her strongly, but her SP costs are prohibitive until midgame.
The Aftergame PCsRenko Usami: DNR. Her usefulness is binary - if the enemies are vulnerable to debuffs or paralysis, she's amazing, and if they're not, she's utterly useless, because she does literally nothing else (including damage). Her buff, while strong, has drawbacks that are largely worse than its benefits. She's better in maingame via NG+ than she is in aftergame, for all that she's mostly only useful against bosses vulnerable to debuff.
Maribel Hearn: 6.5/10. She's basically a better Reisen in all respects; if you fielded Reisen in your endgame party then Maribel makes a good replacement/upgrade for aftergame if you still want a similar PC. In NG+, her SP costs make her prohibitive to use until near the normal endgame anyway.
Utsuho Reiuji: 0/10. Probably gameworst PC, even if she weren't aftergame. Kaguya does everything she does better and comes earlier. Eternal benchwarmer. Equally irrelevant in NG+.
Kanako Yasaka: 8/10. She's basically a slightly better Alice, trading fire element for cold. She's less SP efficient, but by this stage of the game, SP efficiency is largely irrelevant anymore. If you're still using Alice, replacing her with Kanako is probably a good bet. Considerably worse in NG+ due to severe SP economy issues until lategame, but she does become the best source of cold damage against Rinnosuke.
Yuuka Kazami: 6.5/10. She's basically Marisa without most of Marisa's flaws. Notably, she has very high durability for a damage dealer, and one of her nukes also weakly heals the party, giving her a little utility. MT Master Spark is interesting but not that useful. In NG+, she has major SP issues until the lategame.
Mystia Lorelei: 7/10. Effectively replaces Cirno in the aftergame, doing basically all the same things but still having solid damage on the side. She's not as much of a buzzsaw as Chen but she contributes more to the randoms before the big Flandre grind. She shines in maingame from about the midgame on in NG+, and has some utility even in early game since her ST is cheap and strong.
Keine Kamishirasawa: 2.5/10. She's an okay random sweeper, and you might have cared about this if she were recruited 50 hours earlier or so. She would be a pretty great PC if she were an earlygame recruit, and the sequel - where she is - proves this. Here, though, she's just not really worth using. She's basically a notably worse Ran. The fairly cheap MT gives her a little early midgame utility in NG+, but other characters can do that just fine too.
Eiki Shiki Yamaxanadu: 8/10. She's basically a better Kaguya in general, but lacks the Quick. She's also horribly SP inefficient for random sweeping, but again, this late in the aftergame you don't really care (by the point you get Eiki, Flandre is probably your only random sweeper). SP issues make her essentially useless before endgame on NG+ (but she can function in pre-aftergame endgame).
