I want to summarize the plot of Urban Legend in Limbo. Spoilers.

Sumireko is a bored high school student in the outside world. Who happens to have psychic powers, but mostly she’s just a normal kid. She hears about Gensokyo somehow, thinks it’s super-cool, and tries to get inside. However, she’s only able to get her “shadow” inside normally. But she’s also somehow managed to gather Power Stones from around the world. These are basically rocks taken from various sacred places like Stonehenge and the Pyramids (this is a gameplay mechanic in multiplayer). Because they contain spiritual energy from the outside world (which otherwise lacks spiritual energy), they disrupt Gensokyo’s Barrier and naturally punch through it. Sumireko sends them into Gensokyo, and uses her shadow to start rumors that gathering them will grant wishes or whatever. They don’t actually grants wishes though. There are more than seven, but whenever seven are gathered they just boot whoever’s holding them outside of Gensokyo. Sumireko just wants to talk to the people booted out because she’s a bored high school student meeting magical people for the first time, but they always end up fighting for one reason or another.

Anyway, Kasen figures out what’s going on and wants to stop it, but she also has ulterior motives. She wants to go outside and “look for something”, which should ring some bells to people who’ve been following WaHH. So when Marisa gathers the balls, she decides that rather than risk the balls destroying the barrier entirely, she’s gonna punch a whole through it herself and send Marisa through to stop the culprit. After Marisa’s gone, she plans to head out herself and get her own business done.

But she gets caught by Mamizou, who uses magical anime inference powers and figures out Kasen’s entire scheme. She’s cool with it though, and comes up with her own idea to help. Sumireko’s plan is dangerous because it might destroy the barrier, but if all she wants is to get inside, then all they have to do is invite her in “properly”, ie: what’s normally called spiriting away. Go through the barrier naturally. Luckily for everyone involved, Mamizou happens to be in possession of Gensokyo’s own Power Stone (ie: a stone taken from the sacred place called Gensokyo), which lets her go through the barrier whenever she wants. Presumably this is the explanation for how she just waltzed right in during TD yet Kasen has to go through all this trouble.

Anyway, Mamizou tricks Sumireko by giving her a fake Gensokyo Power Stone that’s actually a tanuki in disguise. This way, they’ll know exactly when she tries to use it, and can make preparations for Sumireko’s arrival. Once she arrives, they basically set up the worst night ever where she gets chased by youkai acting as urban legends all night and begs to go home. Welcome to Gensokyo.



Meanwhile, Miko’s been approaching this problem from her own angle. First of all, whenever anyone gathers seven stones they punch a hole through the barrier and then scatter. Which means it’ll keep happening until she gathers all the stones (there are more than seven) and sends them all through at once. She learns by accident (through Futo’s route) that the stones won’t activate in Senkai, the alternate dimension where Miko built her palace, because they’re specifically designed to connect the outside world to Gensokyo. Anyway, she spends most of everyone else’s routes gathering them all and studying them.



After Sumireko’s worst night ever, she finds Miko waiting for her at the shrine and gets sent back to the outside world with all the balls. But she has one last trick up her sleeve, one Power Stone that’s different from the others. Stronger. If she unleashes that, then…

Final route, Reimu. She noticed something that no one else picked up on, not even Sumireko or Miko. One of the Power Stones isn’t from the outside world or Gensokyo. It’s from the Lunar Capital. Activating it wouldn’t connect the outside world to Gensokyo, it would connect one of those places to the somewhere else entirely, presumably the Lunar Capital. And that’s bad.

So she chases Sumireko outside to take her into “protective custody”. For her own good, that stone must never be activated. Sumireko, being a petulant teenager, doesn’t take kindly to this and decides to activate it and destroy the world (the human world), rather than get caught. Anyway, that doesn’t happen because you’re playing as Reimu.

In the end, they take the power stones from her and send her back with a slap on the wrist (because the other option, having her stay in Gensokyo for the rest of her life, would be too cruel to her family. Says Marisa). Anyway, for reasons that even the narrator seems confused about, Sumireko’s soul got stuck in Gensokyo so she appears there in her dreams, as an incorporeal dream projection. And she finds it so fun that she sleeps all day and will probably fail out of school. The end.

You should still play through the whole game anyway, when it’s translated, since it’s full of cool and fun character bits. Futo and Mokou are immortality-buddies, Mokou makes friends with Sumireko outside and then helps her out in Gensokyo, Shinmyoumaru repeatedly calls Futo a zombie, etc. Or maybe Mokou and Futo are just cool and fun… Anyway, I liked this game, even if the story is more complicated than usual. Or because of that?

