Hm.
Hmmm...
Hrrrrrrm...
Ok, before we get to rest of the critique, I want to get some things out of the way:
I don't know if it is just me, but both when trying to play stage 3 in practice and when I play stage in the regular game all the bullet graphics become muddy abominations of their former selves for some reason.
Pictures of this will be attached to the post.
So, now that we have got this out of the way, the general criticism:
1. You have a high number of incredibly cheap moments. Enemies spawning at the bottom of or two thirds down the screen who instantly figher high-to-mid-tempo danmaku are the worst offenders here.
2. The dificulty is way off. The earlier stages are pretty much just as difficult as the latter ones in terms of danmaku, they only don't last as long.
3. The majority of your attacks have no timer given, meaning that they cannot be timed out and will go on forever unless shot, even nonspells, and the majority of your spellcards all have the same name "Creation Sign - Bonds of Life".
4. Sound effects are your friend. Not only do they improve the atmosphere, but sometimes the use of sound cues can turn utterly cheapness into a playable spellcard.
5. Many attacks have semi-safe spots. Some other attacks are just plain random or have other factors that make them unfair; see also point #1.
6. Many attacks have way too little life, some are even not getting their bullets close to the player before they're shot down.
7. On several spots in the stages, you have enemies that do not leave the field after they shot all their danmaku at points where you used WaitForZeroEnemy.
8. On the matter of spell card design: What Onthenet said.
Now to the specific criticism:
Stage 5 is a concept stage, and its general quality suffers badly from this. You have way too similar stuff repeated several times: A small number of fairies which simply get streamed, a non-card which is just a spiral of monochrome bullets or bullet lines, a spell that consists of the enemy moving randomly about the entire field while shooting a specific kind of danmaku from a circle around him (the random movement also makes the spell cards quite luckbased, especially the green and yellow ones). Rinse, repeat. The purple spell card is a breath of fresh air, but it is also again quite random. The final attack of the stage is alright, but way too little a payoff for the stage that goes before it.
My suggestion: reduce the randomness of the spellcards and change the non-cards to something else entirely.
I'd cover more stuff, but I've got to do other stuff now and the project is just too huge for me to go in depth for every stage, sorry.
Overall, there are tons of stuff that needs to be fixed. To me, right now, the entire game is little-to-no fun at all.
