Recent reviews by a brick wall

Requires EA sign-in/launcher which is super buggy, don't support this awful practice

Letssssss gooooo new Touhou!!!!!!!!!

Absolutely amazing touhou fan game, definitely worth picking up. One part they did super well is the bullet pattern design. It's not just random spirals and rain of bullets, the patterns reflect the characters and the stage very well. For example, in one of Kogasa Tatara's attacks the bullets act like a tongue trying to lick you, as if the tongue from her umbrella is attacking you. You can really see the care and attention to detail that went into this game. It feels a little easier than other touhou games, but that's not really a problem for most people as you can just play on the next difficulty setting. It also allows unlimited retries so you are free to beat the game on lunatic with 400 retries if you want to see what that's like. (Not sure if using a retry changes the ending bc there's no english patch, really the only downside to this game) Overall it borrows very heavily from the touhou series in the music, spell cards, and obviously the characters, but it combines the elements it takes into a game that feels fresh and is a blast to play.

It's a pretty good fan game, but I would definitely play some the official Touhou games first as it's definitely not perfect. The movement feels a little slow. Not sure if it's lag, the actual movement speed or the acceleration, but it just doesn't feel quite as snappy as it should. Also everything on screen looks a little blurry, and it's not me or the resolution because the border and the menu look fine, I think it's just the art style. It's deceptively difficult, they give you a life piece on (I think) every successful spell card, yet somehow I always have basically none left on stage 6. That being said, a clear on easy isn't too hard.
Overall, it feels a little different from an in-series touhou so it's a nice change-up from that, but not my favorite either.

Really fun touhou fan game. The visual style is very nice IMO and makes it easy to see bullets. The boss design and music is great as well. It's fairly easy for a Touhou game, especially with the deathbomb window and availability of extra lives.

My first and favorite Touhou. Incredible music, the UFO mechanic is awesome (just don't get distracted chasing them). Thanks Zun!!!
(Real playtime is much higher)

Very fun, looks and sounds great. I find it to be pretty difficult on easy so maybe start with an earlier entry in the series if you are new to touhou.

Definitely top 3 in the touhou series for me. The challenging minute-long levels are a great change of pace from the 20-30 minutes required for an all clear in a typical Touhou game. Probably best to start with a different Touhou, like PCB, but it's a really good game for leaning the movement and precision needed for Normal difficulty and higher so it's great after you can clear a few other games on Easy. The satisfaction of beating a level with no items that appears to be completely unbeatable is on par with getting a clear of an entire Touhou game.

The actions don't really correspond to the beat, making the game purely visual. Because of this, the timing is overly lenient and there is little satisfaction in hitting a note with perfect timing like ddr. To make matters worse, there is no adjustable delay meaning your keyboard click will happen well before the game sound. It's fun, but they completely missed the mark in terms of a rhythm game.

Not recommended for the price, if you haven't played Nier and Dark Souls yet pick those up instead.

It feels like completely different teams made the combat and the writing, with no director or communication between them.

The combat is great; fast, responsive, the enemy difficulty feels right. The level design is fantastic with new areas looping back to old ones with shortcuts. The bosses are unique and feel difficult at first, though often die too easily. No surprise second phases with an extra health bar either The only weird part about the combat is the optional depths areas, where they act like normal enemies are bosses even though they are just normal enemies with no health: Epic music plays, companion comments on how hard this will be, 5 seconds later, "Greater lost defeated"...you mean that enemy type I've killed like 100 times? Okayyyy

The writing is just abysmal. The characters are very generic, the villains are obviously evil, the good guys discover the happy truth about their "dark" past. Everything is told, not shown, and told at least twice. Compared to dark souls where you have to unravel the mystery through secrets and inferences, the story is shoved down your throat. Compared to nier with its twists and tragedies, the story is predictable and bland. Instead of using the companion feature to reveal the story, your companions just comment on how you found an item, saw an enemy, or are low on healing. Meanwhile long cutscenes with dramatic piano music give you the actual story, with a few lines every 2+ minute cutscene, often not revealing anything you didn't already know. And there are over 50 of these cutscenes! If you do get this game, install on your SSD if you have one bc the loading times for these cutscenes are also quite long.

I think one of the great parts of anime is the intense weight of everything, Yet No good characters die unexpectedly or in a way that makes you care, there is no tension between good characters, no good characters become evil, some "evil" characters become good, everybody is saved from harm, everybody comes to terms with their past, all the truly evil characters die, the only "twists" are that you have to do a couple more things to finish the game.

It's the combat of a $60 game with the writing of a flash game, so you should pay $30 when it goes on sale.