OK, I tried it out, and this is what I think.
EASY MODO is way easier than IN Easy. My only deaths were due to my over-aggressive play in the stage sections.
Normal is still quite easy, I managed to 1cc it with Raymoo on my second try - mind you, I'm no Touhou guru, and I haven't played for like two months. I'll move up to Hard once I've cleared Normal with all shot types.
Reimu's shot type might be good for beginners. It feels like IN Border Team without Ran homing in on the enemies when focused.
Marisa feels underpowered when unfocusing. Her lasers are no longer piercing, but she makes up for that with magic missiles which pack quite a punch. Master Spark is awkward, it can now be angled, but I can't figure out how. Also no item autocollection when bombing... meh.
Sanae's got UFO MarisaB's shot, but now it doesn't seem completely useless. I like it. Bomb is meh.
Youmu... well, she's weird at first. It's basically MarisaA from MoF. Charged slashes seem very powerful, but having to be pretty close to the enemies, or, even worse, bosses, kind of sucks. She does, however, feel more fun to use than MoF MarisaA.
The spirit system is way more fun than collecting those pesky UFO tokens flying around. It rewards taking huge risks, since the spirits tend to appear high up on the field near the POC and around bosses - I see scorerunners hugging them and taking advantage of Trance Mode when they have the chance.
Speaking of which, Trance is cool but impractical. Not being able to trigger it manually when the gauge isn't full prevents abusing it, which is fine by me, but also prevents using it any time it's needed the most, that is with green and purple spirits around. Learning optimal Trance activation timings is still feasible - I don't know how much of a penalty going PICHUN right before a planned Trance might be, I only hope it's possible to make up for such mistakes later. The game is also particularly stingy with extra resources this time around. Beginners might be penalized a little too much for dying and not capitalizing on good Trance opportunities. It might also prevent deathbombing with more than 1/3 of the gauge full - Trance won't activate with less than that. I wasn't able to test deathbombing, so I might be wrong about it. :derp:
It's a demo, though, things might change a little bit in the full version. I hope.
Meeting Yuyuko as a Stage 1 boss was unexpected and quite... boring gameplay-wise (I still haven't tried Hard and Lunatic, I hope the fight gets interesting). Kogasa... well, was not a surprise, as usual. She's fun to fight, though, at least on Normal.
As for Kyouko and Yoshika... they're unremarkable compared to, say, Nazrin, Kogasa, and even Ichirin. They lack those traits that make them stand out from the rest of the cast. Their danmaku are also meh. There's still hope for the other bosses, though.
Music is hit and miss. I love the menu song and all the stage themes bar none, but I can't say the same about the boss themes.
It might not be the best Touhou ever since Mountain of Faith, but I like this game a lot and I see myself playing the full version over and over as soon as I can get ahold of a copy.
Also, IF I SEE THAT FUCKING MIMA ONE MORE TIME
:getdown:
EDIT: fixed image macro. My site always acts stupid when it comes to linking images :derp:
