I have easily put hundreds of hours into this game before it was on Steam and is my most played Touhou game by far.

Despite shmups in general being quite difficult to get into, this game is very accessible in my opinion. For survival there aren't any complicated mechanics you need to know to get far in the game and just comes down to dodging using unfocus and focus as well as bombing. The resources compared to other Touhou games and especially other shmups are plentiful as each unit of power you have (up to 5) gives you a bomb and the game gives you a lot of power very quickly compared to Subterranean Animism which has a similar system. You also will lose barely any power on death, if any, making it so you don't snowball into losing all your lives upon losing one since you didn't have enough power.

Scoring revolves around a 'Faith' meter in the bottom left which determines the maximum value of point items. When the bar below the value diminishes, you use a bomb or lose a life, the value will drop. To keep the bar from diminishing you can collect green star items (which also increase the value) or point items to completely fill the bar as well as power items and enemy kills to partially refill the bar. Clearing bullets after a spell card or from a bomb will also increase the value and refill the bar depending on how many bullets were cleared. While some of the life extends you will get are score based, scoring knowledge isn't required to get them and you'll most likely get them just by playing normally.

The most prominent issue with the game is the limited ability to practice specific parts as well as having to complete a stage before you can practice it. This makes the late game particularly frustrating when you're going for a first clear since you won't be able to practice it nearly as much as the early stages. Fortunately, there are many fanmade patches for the game made to make practice easier such as allow you to go to specific patterns and practice stages you haven't completed yet. Most of these can be found on Maribel Hearn's site (just searching that should make it come up). You should generally get the most out of the vpatch (allows vsync and can decrease input delay) and universal practice patches which also work for most other Touhou games if you need them.

I would really love to see more people get into this game. It can be a smooth entry into the series if you haven't played one yet and scales in difficulty enough that you can potentially get a lot out of it if you end up enjoying the gameplay.

I have easily put hundreds of hours into this game before it was on Steam and is my most played Touhou game by far. Despite shmups in general being quite difficult to get into, this game is very accessible in my opinion. For survival there aren't any complicated mechanics you need to know to get far in the game and just comes down to dodging using unfocus and focus as well as bombing. The resources compared to other Touhou games and especially other shmups are plentiful as each unit of power you have (up to 5) gives you a bomb and the game gives you a lot of power very quickly compared to Subterranean Animism which has a similar system. You also will lose barely any power on death, if any, making it so you don't snowball into losing all your lives upon losing one since you didn't have enough power. Scoring revolves around a 'Faith' meter in the bottom left which determines the maximum value of point items. When the bar below the value diminishes, you use a bomb or lose a life, the value will drop. To keep the bar from diminishing you can collect green star items (which also increase the value) or point items to completely fill the bar as well as power items and enemy kills to partially refill the bar. Clearing bullets after a spell card or from a bomb will also increase the value and refill the bar depending on how many bullets were cleared. While some of the life extends you will get are score based, scoring knowledge isn't required to get them and you'll most likely get them just by playing normally. The most prominent issue with the game is the limited ability to practice specific parts as well as having to complete a stage before you can practice it. This makes the late game particularly frustrating when you're going for a first clear since you won't be able to practice it nearly as much as the early stages. Fortunately, there are many fanmade patches for the game made to make practice easier such as allow you to go to specific patterns and practice stages you haven't completed yet. Most of these can be found on Maribel Hearn's site (just searching that should make it come up). You should generally get the most out of the vpatch (allows vsync and can decrease input delay) and universal practice patches which also work for most other Touhou games if you need them. I would really love to see more people get into this game. It can be a smooth entry into the series if you haven't played one yet and scales in difficulty enough that you can potentially get a lot out of it if you end up enjoying the gameplay.