10. Shoot the Bullet: An interesting experiment, sure, but something I hope ZUN never repeats. Aya's controls - specifically the third (terminally slow) movement speed when holding focus and fire - are hopelessly counter-intuitive to someone who's played the regular games a lot. It artificially increases the difficulty of the danmaku, and detracts from the enjoyment.
9. Phantasmagoria of Flower View: Despite being generally in favour of the concept of VS shooters, I just don't enjoy this game. What's the point in busting out an awesome attack against the Lunatic CPU when it easily dodges everything like a TAS'er, before getting hit by something semi-trivial?
8. Immaterial and Missing Power: I know some fighting purists like to argue at lengths about how IaMP is superior to SWR, but I'm not a fighting purist. This is a decent effort, but SWR is so much more enjoyable to play that I haven't returned to its predecessor since it was released.
7. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: The majority of the stage sections bore me to tears, and while the bosses are decent enough I still find this to be the least satisfactory of the 'core shooters' overall. The primitiveness of the game also bugs me a little, though the texture/hitbox patches rectify this somewhat.
6. Unidentified Fantastic Object: A couple of niggling issues stop me spending any real time with this, most notably the inability to settle on a main shot type (I'm finding ReimuB too weak now), the sheer misplaced difficulty of a number of attacks, and a feeling of being generally underwhelmed by both the aesthetics and the danmaku. Maybe I'll warm to it given more time.
5. Imperishable Night: Poor stage sections, but the bosses compensate by being generally enjoyable and varied in their attacks. Probably my least favourite game in terms of presentation and characters. Spell Practice and the variable stages are a nice touch though, and the Extra is one of the series' best.
4. Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (+UNL): More characters, more cards, more accessible, and generally more fun. I echo sentiments that some of the weather effects (you know which ones) can be a pain, but I'm willing to bear with them for the sake of the gameplay.
3. Mountain of Faith: A rarity in that I find it consistently entertaining from start to finish; it's one of the few games where I don't mind playing through the early stages. Has my favourite overall aesthetics, and some of the best stage sections of any of the games, though the bosses let things down somewhat. While in general they're some of the easiest of the series (when comparing Lunatics, at least), the difficulty of some of their attacks can be incredibly inconsistent at times.
2. Perfect Cherry Blossom: Combines quality stage segments with excellent boss fights, culminating in a superb climax with Yuyuko. Throw in excellent presentation on top of great danmaku and a solid scoring system, and you've got one of the best entries in the series. My only major criticism is that Reimu - who I use - doesn't handle nearly as well as the Reimu from MoF onwards. That said, the recent discovery of the Vsync patch could very possibly push this above SA.
1. Subterranean Animism: The opening stages are decent enough, but the real strength of this game lies in the second half; no entry in the series currently has a more entertaining Stages 4-6. Superb danmaku, great aesthetics and characters, and an explosive finale that has to go on record as being the most awe-inspiring battle in Touhou thus far. Also, not having to go above the PoC all the goddamn time is an absolute blessing.
