If you are a fan of challenging, high intensity boss battles, get this game . Does not matter if you've never heard of Touhou before, the gameplay and boss quality in this is superb. And even though it may look indimidating if you've not played a bullet hell before, the game is quite lenient in that department since you have a dash/flight with considerable i-frame window, the challenge is more on positioning, stamina management, and pattern solving.

Story is nothing to write home about but with a quite nice twist if youre aware of the series's characters that i personally find quite enjoyable , and its Touhou so the music is of course superb (a big fan of how the game treats vocals, using it quite sparingly to make it hit harder when you do get to hear them).

But gameplay is your primary reason for playing it here, the bosses and especially the challenge stage version of them are some of the best ive seen not just in this genre but in any games ive ever played. And the game knows it too, they implemented extra dialogue / story sequence if you manage to no hit (or god forbid, time out) the bosses, which is a neat acknowledgment of the player's effort, and coupled with the tight design of battles makes it very rewarding to deeply study the fights in this game.

There are spell cards which is basically skills you can use by spending a certain resource in the battle, some of them are very strong, to the point of being able to skip certain phase of the boss entirely. The tradeoff is that the resource needed for them are also tied to your normal attack power , so if youre using a big spell to skip a phase youre going to be weakened and need to build you power back in the next part, but its a really good tool if youre nervous about a certain pattern of the boss but can deal with the subsequent ones, and also has the added benefit being a good finisher if you save it for the last phase.

I think the game is very well-priced for the amount of content it has (7 bosses *2 (normal and challenge version) +1 final boss) which are all extremely polished and enganging ( both the penultimate and final bosses in particular I'd easily put in my top 20 bosses of all time). There's also a roguelike mode they added in an update, though i haven't tried it yet to kow how fun it is.

If you have any apprehension, there's a free prologue with 2 completely unique bosses you can try to get a fell for the combat. I think this game is woefully unknown for how amazing it is, so I hope it gets more recognition in the future, and I'm looking forward to any of the developer's future works

A very wonderful game, it can be very challenging, but this challenge is really fun and fair! I highly recommend the two DLCs, they are just as great as the main game and offer some very interesting and unique battles (Idol Koishi <3!!)

Player hitbox is too big to be fun. This problem first truly rears its head in the very first pattern of the Suika boss fight, where what looks like to be an easy 'just stand in the gaps' mechanic becomes an annoying exercise in frustration as you get hit by projectiles that shouldn't come close to hitting at all if the game respected its bullet hell roots.

EDIT: I beat the boss and am now enjoying myself again.