i was getting my ass thoroughly beat by the sudden jump in difficulty in subterranean animism (really fun game though) so i figured i'd jump in and clear this one since it's of the era and i'd heard it was easy. and... easy, it definitely was. 1cc'd this on hard without too much headache over the course of two days of practice, which is really fast for me at a new touhou. i wouldn't call ten desires bad per se, but it's definitely my least favorite windows-era mainline touhou. honestly, i'd put it under one or two of the pc-98 games, too. i guess this one felt the least... fun or memorable to me? the designs and plot in this one felt very so-so in comparison to mountain of faith or what i've seen of animism and ufo. the soundtrack was one of the lesser ones too, with only the stage 6 boss' theme really sticking out to me. the game feels SUPER balanced towards reimu and sanae, but i will say youmu's gimmick is cool if impractical. worst aspect of this game is the spirit gauge, though. easily the most disruptive and redundant of all the gimmicks i've seen, and that INCLUDES the ufos, which i like more than most people. resources being limited drives little incentive to points beyond bragging rights. still, this is a windows-era touhou - they're good games pretty much by default. i still enjoyed this enough to 1cc and extra stage clear, but i don't really see myself coming back to this one all that much.