PDP Guide Part 1: Opening to First Inn

First off, I just want to cite my sources a bit here.
English translations are from the Touhou Puppet Play Forums, and a bit of information regarding where to go in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost and such is from Maidens of the Kaleidoscope. Both have been working on compiling information and the Puppet Play Forums are the ones doing the translating. I would not have any idea where I was going if I wasn't following that particular thread on Maidens of the Kaleidoscope, although I'm too shy to actually create an account...

Anyway, I though this guide might be of use to some people, especially since, at the time of writing this there is no translation for most of the dialogue in the game, so a lot is guesswork if you don't know Japanese.
I would like to note that I do not know Japanese at all, and so I am just guessing most of the time.

An English translation patch is available from the Touhou Puppet Play Forums, specifically in this thread. There's slightly more clear instructions available from this Reddit thread. Scroll down to "Mimatheghost"'s question about how to use "beat" (the patching program).
This patch will require a legitimate version of the game that is fully updated. I find the best place to get the updates is this website. Reason being that they have all the patches you need laid out easily. Basically, with the fresh game, you need to install patch 1.10, then 1.20, THEN 1.34. And you need to have patch 1.34 to do the English patch.
Also, I cannot stress it enough that you should save copies of your original, unaltered .dat files because you will need them if you want to ever patch your game again!


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You begin the game talking to Yukari, who will allow you to select your gender and name, of course. Abnormally for Touhou related things, there actually are males in this game besides Rinnosuke!
As a little note, by the way, whenever a Yes/No box comes up, the top option is Yes and the bottom is No. I'm just adding this here because it isn't translated yet at the time of writing this.
Whenever you can name something, you just type it in and press the Enter key twice to accept. Backspace can be used to get out of the naming interface.

You will gain control of your character on a bus. Exit the bus and walk forward towards the Hakurei Shrine.

At the Shrine, it is important to speak with everyone. There is a woman in pink to your immediate left. To the right and up a bit is a man, and then to the left of him and up a bit is another woman. Now, make your way behind the Shrine to the left. Talk to Maribel and Renko up there. Go back in front of the Shrine and make your way to right, where you'll see a man with glasses. Speaking with him will allow you to choose your Starter Puppet.
Any Touhou character is available as a Starter. The only exceptions are the Catfish and Genjii. Also, you cannot have just Mimichan or Unzan as a Puppet, they are combined with Ruukoto and Ichirin respectively.
I am going to go with Momiji Inubashiri this time around.

Now, continue along the path to the right of the glasses man. When you enter the next area, if you do not see a tiny Yukari in front of you that runs off, then please go back to the Shrine and try talking to everyone again. Sometimes it takes a couple tries for her to appear. I find that not skipping through the dialogue quickly helps, and make sure that you spoke with both Renko and Maribel. Talk to glasses guy again just to be sure, too.
The area itself is rather linear. Just continue through the grass, and then up and to the left. From there, it's a rather clear path to a set of two stairs. Go down the steps to the right, and you'll see the tiny Yukari again.
The music will change. Go back up the steps again and you'll see some grass shake. Your character will automatically walk over, and your Starter will pop up and look at you. Marisa will then come running over and lend you her Puppet to fight the Starter. Don't worry about trying to capture it, just attack it and when it gets to low enough HP, the fight will end.

In combat, with the current translation, below every move name and next to the type you will see BP and SP. The number beside BP is the skill's Power, and the SP is the equivalent of Pokémon's PP. So, this Marisa has two Dream-type attacks, both with 55 BP and 35 SP. When you get the Starter's HP into the red, the battle will end and the Starter will join you.

Marisa will bring you to the Hakurei Shrine, which looks a bit better than it did before. Next, you'll be talking to Sanae. After the conversation is over, speak with Marisa, who will challenge you to a battle.
Marisa can be a bit tricky depending on your Starter, so don't sweat it if she beats you. The outcome has no bearing on anything. You may notice that you have a Skill with no BP. Don't use that right now. It's a stat-raising move, and will also waste a turn in this case. This fight is a fight of "Who can hit first." 
After winning or losing against Marisa, she'll leave, and you'll be back to talking with Sanae. After you're done talking to her, leave the room. You'll now be in a room with a hallway. The doorway next to the one you left is where you'll find a bed to heal in and an Akyuu (Akyuu works like Pokémon's PC).
Leave this area and head down the path out of the Hakurei Shrine area, and you'll be stopped by Sanae, who will give you 10 Seal Threads. Thread allows you to seal Puppets, allowing you to use them. She will also give you a Puppet Box, which basically allows you to use Akyuu Storage whenever you see those little Akyuus.
Head down the steps and out of the area until you see some grass. You're going to be here for a bit, since the level curve is rather high in this game. This isn't a game you can breeze through.
This is also a great time to explain how Seal Thread works.
As an example, I have my little level 5 Momiji here, and I am fighting a level 2 Chen. First, what I will do is weaken it. Next, go to your Bag and go over to the Battle pocket (the blue one). Now, use the Seal Thread. It does miss sometimes; just try again if it does. After the seal is on the Puppet, you want to knock it out. Unlike in Pokémon, the Puppet does not have to be weakened in order to capture it. You simply have to have a seal on it when you knock it out in order to capture it. The reason why we are weakening it right now is because Seals only last for 1-3 turns, so you want to knock it out quickly once you get the seal on it. If, later on, you are confident you can 1-shot it, feel free to seal it before attacking at all.
Congratulations, you just Sealed your first Puppet! Some more things about combat:
All Puppets in your team will gain exp and PP after every battle. I'll go into PP in the second part of the guide, but it's basically the currency that you use to stat train, learn skills, and switch your ability with. Whenever you Seal a Puppet, they enter your team with full HP, so don't worry about having a team of knocked out Puppets early on. Finally, wild Puppets sometimes drop items when killed. These items go into your Tools pocket (red). Most of these can be sold for money (trainers do not give money when defeated), although there is an exception to that rule. I'll go into that later as well.

Anyway, in this area you can find Chen, Daiyousei, Sukuna, and Nazrin. I recommend Sealing all of them and getting your starter to level 8 or so. It might take a bit to find Sukuna as she's rare, but she's pretty good, so it might be worth it. If you need to heal, head back to the Hakurei Shrine and lie in that bed near Akyuu. You can save by pressing the S Key and going over to the little bookmark icon.

You may notice around level 7 or so that the exp-gain screen says that your Starter has gained a new skill. This is where PP comes into play. If you press the S key and go to Puppets, then select your Starter and click Edit (4th button down when you press Z on them), then a new screen will come up which will allow you to spend your PP.
Along the top of the screen you will see a number. This is the amount of PP you have. For example, my Momiji has 16 PP available to spend. As I said earlier, you gain PP whenever you defeat a Puppet. These can be used to Reinforce Stats (option 1), Acquire Skills (option 2), and Ability Change (Option 3). Option 4 is Style Change but that is only available at level 30 and does not cost PP.
Each Skill has a PP cost to learn. For example, my Momiji can learn a 60 Power Steel-type skill, but it will cost 4 PP to do so. If you already have 4 skills you will have to choose one to remove, but you can always re-learn it at any time through this menu.
For Stats, you can have 64 PP total in any one stat, and you can only use 130 PP total to reinforce stats. This equals about two max stats + 2 spare points, or you can spread them around a bit. The stats are in this order: HP, Focus Attack, Focus Defense, Spread Attack, Spread Defense, and Speed. Generally, you will want an attack stat maxed (generally, whichever is higher, although there are exceptions, but I don't know them). Most of the time you will also want points in speed, unless the Puppet is going to be hopelessly slow either way (like Yoshika Miyako). Until things come out about the exact stat distributions per-style, then it may be a decent idea to not invest stats until 30, although I'm not sure how well that would work out.
Either way, you can reset stats end-game, so don't worry about it too much. Remember, that you are just adding a bonus. You will still gain stats, it's just that the ones you reinforce will be higher than they would be naturally.

Once your starter is level 8, you should be able to continue on without too much trouble. Don't worry about leveling your others, as they should level up a bit on their own. Mine were all level 6 by the time Momiji hit 8.
Head left when you're ready out of this area. Eventually, you will see a man. He is a trainer, more specifically a Novice Puppeteer named Yuiichi. He sends out a level 4 Nazrin, which shouldn't be difficult for most Puppets.
Past him, you will see a grassy area. Head down through there and pick up the Yin Yang Orb containing a Fuji Rice Cookie. Then head back up to the left. There is a female Novice Puppeteer (Sachie) with a level 4 Lily. Also not hard.
Finally, you will come across a building with some people walking around. The translation calls this a Resting Place, but that sounds too funeral-ey to me, so I'm going to refer to it as an Inn. It functions as a place to heal and restock your items.

Inside the Inn, there are three things of importance. The first is the lady in blue next to the Akyuu. She will heal your Puppets. The woman beside her sells healing items. The man in blue to the left of the desk sells Seals.
Please note that the second option in his dialogue allows you to sell items for money. Anything in your Tools tab aside from Magical Fragments are good to sell. For example, I have 1 Handheld Console, 6 Watches, and 5 Magical Fragments, so I can sell off the Console and Watches, but I want to keep the Fragments.
After you sell some stuff, you can buy some more Seal Thread for 200 each. The item that costs 350 is Rosary Beads, which act as Repels. You don't need them yet though.

And that's where I'll end this part of the guide because this page is lagging due to too much text. I'll add it's link to the main Puppet Dance Performance page on the sidebar.

Link to Part 2!