With Bombs I'm usually dying with nothing left in the chamber.
Like Satori suggested, maybe you could try out some fangames to calm your nerves? "Riverbed Soul Saver" could be fitting, since it drops resources en masse, you've got an extra large auto-collection radius and you get extra lives and bombs in no time. Or "Book of Star Mythology", a very recent release. Both contain really broken powerful shottypes with which you can charge through the games with ease.
Thing is I just am like "Just say Not to OC Do Not Steal".
What's the point?
Let's ignore gameplay mechanics that you dislike for now. There are enough Touhou games such that you can ignore the ones you dislike entirely. I assume you apply the same strategy to Megaman games.
You've identified problem areas, like Reimu's teleporting, which cause you to be miserable. A solution to satisfaction is to overcome these problem areas, one at a time. Every challenge you overcome is an accomplishment to be proud of.
What other problem areas are you facing? The players in this forum are very willing to help.
Also, watching gameplay videos on YouTube is more helpful than you would expect.
The Youtube watches I've found is the complete opposite as they approach things different enough from me to make it utterly worthless.
And it's Seija's curving/reverse curving shots. Not sure if it's proximity based but they always seem to do the direction flip right into me when I'm predicting them the other way.
You say you were drawn in by other aspects of the fandom, but you still seem pretty set on improving yourself on the games themselves. And again, how come you feel you need to win to the point of depression? It's okay if you don't succeed in a run; in spite of the memes, very few actual players these days judge a Touhou fan based on their skill level. It's okay if you play on easy mode, and it's okay if you don't like every aspect of every game. However, you do seem to have a desire to improve yourself, so what should you do?
In my humble opinion, you seem a little fixated on the idea that any scoring system requiring adaptation is the source of your frustrations. While it is true that I speak as a lunatic player, I feel there is fundamentally no difference to how we approach the score systems. As someone who doesn't like scoring, I don't really make much of an effort to adapt to them. To use DDC as an example, I never plan bombs in order to get a 2.0 multiplier and free life fragment; I just head to the PoC when it's convenient. In LoLK, I only graze to the extent that it's complementary to survival and my own preferred playing style. However, this still usually gives me adequate resources, even if it's far less than what I could potentially get.
If you truly hate the score systems as much as you say you do, then I think your efforts would be better directed at getting better at the patterns themselves, rather than focusing on gaining enough resources to tank everything. While it's true that is a valid strategy, if the effort is making you miserable, then you should try another route - one which lets you focus on what you find fun. As you get better at each individual segment, think about how many resources you need, and focus only on getting enough, instead of doing everything optimally. That's my recommendation, at least. If nothing else, you'll find yourself restarting a lot less often due to messing up a risky scoring maneuver.
And the only reason is that this is pretty much my only connection to doing anything actually Touhou related. The reason to keep going is to actually show I'm not utter garbage at everything.
This just becomes rote memorization which is just the opposite of fun.
To say that MoF bombs are either weak or don't clear any bullets would be saying Alice's bombs in Imperishable Night is good for damage, or that either of Reimu/Suika and Marisa/Patchouli in SA can clear bullets effectively.
Regarding what nintendonut mentioned just above: it sounds more like if the intended way intrudes on a survival level, that causes frustration for you. But, is it right to expect to play along every shmup's rules in the same way? Certainly, we can't expect to play any of the Touhou games like you might play Ikaruga, Jamestown without Vaunt, CAVE games without hypers, or KAMUI without using any of the lightning weapons, or Hellsinker and all of its "oddities".
Though, it doesn't seem like we agree about that.
Since this Reimu conversation keeps continuing, I suppose a major factor is: Magic Team or Scarlet Team? I guarantee you that Remilia's shot is far better at damaging Reimu's nonspells than Alice's doll laser, but if you're adamant on using Magic then have you considered using Malice to damage the innumerable familiars at once?
With MoF bombs you need to be right in the face of the boss which makes it more than useless. If a bomb doesn't actually go the full screen length it's garbage
And I don't touch any of those games mentioned. No interest in them at all.
I usually run Magic Team. And usually it's just Alice to ignore the familiars and just let it time out. It's just a really bad drag.
You complain about DDC forcing you to go to the item collection point, yet:
EoSD and MoF use score-extends. You're going to need to collect items, preferably with the POC, in order to reach all possible score-extends.
PCB and IN use item-number extends. You're also going to need to collect items with the POC.
DDC also gives you resources on capturing spell cards. Speaking of spell cards, always make it a habit to POC after a spell card, no matter the outcome. Doesn't matter the game, you have enough time to do it on any.
The POC is almost always good. Obviously you shouldn't get greedy but POCing at whatever opportunity is largely encouraged, even as a survival player.
You also don't need to be "good" to get lives in any game. I'm an utter shit kid at the games and I still routinely manage to get enough lives to barely clear most of the games on hard difficulty (and a few on lunatic). And trust me, the titles mentioned do give plenty of lives even if you're bad at the game. You just need to take every opportunity you can to get lives and bombs.
Also, the fact that you're talking about disliking aspects about mechanics that aren't even true genuinely pisses me off. MoF bombs useless, seriously?
Most of SA bombs (ReimuB, ReimuC, MarisaA, MarisaB) require you to plant it in front of their face. Planned bombs are important here. You get power back so it's not as punishing to use bombs.
You complain about grazing in LoLK. But streaming is a very good way to dodge bullets and you graze lots of bullets this way. Also, since you're playing on a lower difficulty, it's much easier to "hug" bullets to get graze items per bullet. Especially if you play as Reisen and use her shield bomb, which makes grazing even easier and also allows you to take 3 hits per bomb.
TD actually doesn't give as many lives as other games. You can get a total of 7 lives (5 extends) and a large number of bombs through trance. With proper routing you can even get an 8th life, but no more than that. TD basically requires you to abuse trance hypers as well as bombing spell cards for even more trance, then using trance on life pieces to double the amount you get.
UFO routes are largely static. If you play in a similar way, expect to get tokens the same way. UFO tokens are not random at all, the same enemies drop the same tokens and they fly around in similar ways.
Watch a bunch of replays and examine what they are doing. People aren't going to take you seriously if you continue to not listen to advice and state things that aren't true whatsoever.
If you want some simple 1cc's, play some fangames. A lot of them have much more generous systems and usually contain shot types that trivialize the game.
Streaming is just saying Eat bullets to the face even when Focused Reimu. Hugging shots is just saying "Zelinko go ram the shots! Enjoy losing lives due to this asinine gimmick"
Looking at later on in LoLK there really isn't a point. Especially considering it's just painfully bad looking later on. And Clownpeice having forced movement style cards sucks. At least Futo's rotation cards are nice slow and not having many shots showing up.
With SA I run Reimu A/Marisa C so those bombs don't have range requirements.
UFO's a game I've pretty much written off along with LoLK. With DDC If there's a way to figure out if it's direction is fixed on Seiga's screen rotation is that or not will determine if it's in the "Don't bother even playing" catagory. She's pretty much "Bomb this boss as it's just not fun in the slightest."
TD's an easy game so the amount of lives isn't as noticed.
Also with IN/PCB style collection you don't really need to hit POC as much as you'd think just grab them normally.
1cc list in order
Imperishable Night - Magic Team (Easy)
Imperishable Night - Border Team (Easy)
Phantasmagoria of Flower View - Youmu (Easy)
Mountain of Faith - Marisa B (Easy)
Imperishable Night - Scarlet Team (Easy)
Ten Desires - Reimu (Easy)
Ten Desires - Sanae (Easy)
Phantasmagoria of Flower View - Mystia (Easy)
Phantasmagoria of Flower View - Yuuka (Easy)
Perfect Cherry Blossom - Sakuya A (Easy)
Ten Desires - Marisa (Easy)
Phantasmaoria of Dim Dream - Marisa (Easy) (1st Shot)
Lotus Land Story - Marisa A (Easy) (1st Shot)
Phantasmagoria of Flower View - Reimu (Easy)
Phantasmagoria of Flower View - Komachi (Easy)
Subterranian Animism - Reimu A (Easy)
