Touhou

[octagon]

I love the slow streaming segments in PCB.
And the pre-boss troll barrages still often make me waste a bomb.

[Agent of Dread]

I love Imperishable Night.
Except when I lose a grand seven lives to the stage 3 boss. xD"

EDIT: Caught Nightbug's Last Spell, still lost an unholy amount of lives to Little Kirawashima, DAT VS REIMU.
Watch my replay, tell me why I'm dumb and how bad I am at stage 3, explain this Youkai/Human + Time business.

http://www.mediafire.com/?b8sajz730xn9l17

[octagon]

Just try to get through, bomb Keine if necessary, and then do some spell practice. I love Imperishable Night, even though I usually play a lot of it for a few days, become sick of the game and stop touching it for a few weeks.

My current favourite Touhou game, though, has to be UFO, even though I only finished it on easy mode so far. I no longer hate the UFOs themselves, the sky atmosphere is gorgeous, and Makai is just the best thing ever. I love dodging the foghorn things that force you to go up and the two pagoda spellcards. And Sanae B is ridiculously fun to play as.

[Shade]

I dislike Imperishable Night. Every spellcard gets stupidly high lengths of initial armor, turning almost every card in the game into some abomination of a survival card. I hate survival cards.
It also has the densest spellcards ever, to the point where even on Normal you cannot get past them without memorizing the perfect solution to some of them.

I also dislike UFO because Byakuren is a b*tch and abruptly stops every successful run ever. Even at MAX lives.

So I'll just continue to play Ten Desires, Subterranean Animism and Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (although the resource starvation here is annoying).

[Agent of Dread]

I don't read enough into it to bother fussing about that. I just like dodging bullets and getting points.
Nobody explained the Youkai stuff, by the way. x)

[Shade]

The phantom gauge determines what you get Time points for. At 80% or more, you get time points for grazing (only during boss fights, however), while at -80% or less, you get time points simply for hitting things with your shot.
Basically, your phantom gauge rises whenever you're in focus mode, and falls whenever you're unfocused. This encourages unfocused play during the stages themselves, as this is the only way to get Time points there, whereas during boss fights focus mode is usually preferable, but there it ultimately comes down to your playstyle and preference.
Bombing immediately shifts the gauge to 100% of whatever mode you're currently in, whereas using your Last Spell does exactly the opposite.

Point items also are worth twice their actual value when collected at -80% phantom gauge or less.

Time points increase the value of point items, earn you extra continues if you meet the requirement for any given stage, and allow you to challenge the stage boss's Last Spell if you met the stage's requirement and are playing at Normal or above.
In other words, they're very important for scoring.

IN's scoring mechanic being so ludicrously complicated is another reason why I dislike that particular game.

[octagon]

IN has the densest spellcards? How about Grey Thaumaturgy and that other pentagram spell Sanae uses in MoF?

Subterranean Animism keeps screwing me up. I had a few easy perfect runs until stage 5, but well... I don't think I need to say anything about DAMN CAT or the suicide wisps, and I can't get used to Utsuho's horrible erratic suns, so I usually get hit by Petit Flare, waste all my bombs on Fixed Star and die soon after.

[Shade]

IN has the densest spellcards? How about Grey Thaumaturgy and that other pentagram spell Sanae uses in MoF?

They're dense, but not as dense as IN's. Besides, they have simple patterns (unlike all of IN's spells) and you have millions of bombs.

Subterranean Animism keeps screwing me up. I had a few easy perfect runs until stage 5, but well... I don't think I need to say anything about DAMN CAT or the suicide wisps, and I can't get used to Utsuho's horrible erratic suns, so I usually get hit by Petit Flare, waste all my bombs on Fixed Star and die soon after.

Rin is hard until you know the trick, and Utsuho is challenging even when you know the trick to her spells.
Rin's ghost spells (you know, where she summons a bunch of zombie fairies to chase you) are honestly easier to just time out if you don't need the life piece that badly.

As for Utsuho, Petit/Mega/Giga/Peta Flare is hard because it's so random, but her hardest card is easily her semi-final one (the one where you're in the center between two huge suns). The others are fairly doable, you just need to have good concentration and stamina.

[Agent of Dread]

Kinda worrying how I've already become used to the perma-POC-collection Marisa and Alice get in IN. It causes problems in the other games. xD

[Shade]

Well, Th10 and the later games all have the POC automatically enabled for all characters, so it's only really a "problem" for EoSD and PCB.

[Agent of Dread]

Also, in regards to a much earlier comment by Octagon about how PCB had much worse art:
What.

[octagon]

I can't get over those double chins, the eyes of varying size, and the sloppy colouring

[Agent of Dread]

But... dat hatless Marisa! The gorgeous stage art!

[octagon]

I was just talking about the portraits... For some reason, I tend to consider backgrounds, character sprites and bullets a separate thing. I agree, the backgrounds are gorgeous.

[Agent of Dread]

So many awesome Touhou wallpapers... nowhere near enough that are high enough resolution. ;__;