Despite being one of the hardest games in the franchise, I also found this game being one of my all time favorites.
In my opinion this game features some of the better writing in the series. like Imperishable Night, there's a character tagging along with your pc [albeit less directly here] and your dialogue reflects that. The characters play off each other well, and it makes for more entertaining interactions overall.
This games ost is one of the better ones, and the characters are great. The spellcards can be rather brutal, and patterns are quite dense.
Like Mountain of Faith, this game has a different bombing system. Rather than bombs being their own resource, they are tied to power. I find that this game is a bit less forgiving than MoF when it comes to the amount of bombs you can use, which adds to the difficulty factor. It can be easy to fall for the trap of struggling with a spell card, bombing to survive, doing less damage because you bombed, and then needing to bomb again due to pressure. Additionally, you have to be on top of collecting your life pieces, which are obtained by surviving spell cards. As long as you make sure to do so, you have a good amount of lives, however! [Though due to the overall difficulty of the game, it may be hard to keep them.]
This game is a very easy one to recommend, but make sure you already have some experience with touhou or other shmups first!
In my opinion this game features some of the better writing in the series. like Imperishable Night, there's a character tagging along with your pc [albeit less directly here] and your dialogue reflects that. The characters play off each other well, and it makes for more entertaining interactions overall.
This games ost is one of the better ones, and the characters are great. The spellcards can be rather brutal, and patterns are quite dense.
Like Mountain of Faith, this game has a different bombing system. Rather than bombs being their own resource, they are tied to power. I find that this game is a bit less forgiving than MoF when it comes to the amount of bombs you can use, which adds to the difficulty factor. It can be easy to fall for the trap of struggling with a spell card, bombing to survive, doing less damage because you bombed, and then needing to bomb again due to pressure. Additionally, you have to be on top of collecting your life pieces, which are obtained by surviving spell cards. As long as you make sure to do so, you have a good amount of lives, however! [Though due to the overall difficulty of the game, it may be hard to keep them.]
This game is a very easy one to recommend, but make sure you already have some experience with touhou or other shmups first!