>>1546209you dont really need to play the games, but if you do, i recommend starting with:
embodiment of scarlet devil, perfect cherry blossom, imperishable night, mountain of faith, subterranean animism, legacy of lunatic kingdom
these ones have lots of the more popular characters youve probably been introduced to via osmosis
get a translation patch, havent played in ages but i remember thcrap being good
you really dont need to bother with the mainline games though, if you dont like shmup games you can just watch an english playthrough and just read the dialogue to get a better idea of the "canon" behaviour of the characters
although, canon hardly matters since like 95% of touhou's cool stuff is made up by the fans
speaking of which, check out some touhou fangames and spinoffs. antimony of common flowers is an official fighting game and is pretty casual, you can just have fun with it
luna nights and disappearing of gensokyo are good, servants of harvest wish is free on steam and a shmup if you want to see if you like it before either investing money or looking into a potentially sketchy free download
