It rebooted the series and its effect on me is whatever effect Touhou fan media has had, since the vast majority of that is based on post EoSD characters.

Wow, 20 years!! And I still haven't beat it.

>>2441
I owe a HUGE part of my life to the touhou project, I met my best friend through it and I owe my current livelyhood to it. Honestly it's scary as fuck to think how my life would have turned out without it.

As for EoSD itself, it's still one of if not the best game in the series, it still deserves its popularity, its character designs are iconic as fuck, music is top tier, there are no gimmicks to the gameplay and it still has some of the most beautiful attack patterns in the series, such as Meiling's bullets. I honestly believe if something like HSiFS was Touhou 6 the series simply wouldn't have been as popular.