"Ikaruga sucks b/c memorization asdfghasfh"
Hey, that just happens to be
true. Ikaruga is mostly a memorizationfest at higher difficulties, if you want to pick an example of a good non-Touhou shmup pick DDP/DOJ or something. Anyway, on-topic:
1. Along with Donut and Baity, I've taken a great liking to HRtP and don't think it's a bad game.
2. I have very bad contrast sensitivity, and thus attacks that some people will find trivial like EX-Chen/Midboss Ran's noncard, or Hell's Tokamak become extremely difficult for me. This reaches absolutely stupid levels in UFO stage 2, where Kogasa's second noncard is basically a guaranteed autobomb for because I
cannot see the bullets at all.3. I extremely dislike playing for score, I find it one of the most boring things in the world.
4. I very much hate PCB Extra/Phantasm and any Extra stage post-IN. PCB Extra/Phantasm has a decent bossfight preceded by quite likely the worst stage portion in the series, and from MoF onwards ZUN seems to be designing the Extra stages the day before release while even more drunk than usual, or something. Which is how we get MoF Extra and SA Extra, both of which I find extremely boring.
5. One that I don't think is special, but that got a lot of "what" when I mentioned it in IRC: I vastly prefer Youkai Mountain ~ Mysterious Mountain to Wind God Girl...in fact I don't really like the latter song at all. (inb4 Kilgarage). My music tastes in general are a bit odd, my favourite songs are Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke and Suwa Foughten Field, while tied for last place is Hartmann and Lunatic Princess.
6. I also play non-Touhou shooters, but only vertical and danmaku in style...so mostly Cave and some other doujin shmups like Hellsinker, really.
7. I don't care for a good chunk of the fanon at all, have read very few touhou doujins, and think IOSYS should burn in everlasting hellfire for gross crimes against music.
8. I find Optical Camouflage Lunatic (Nitori Midboss) absolutely trivial, have a near-100% capture rate on it, and have absolutely no idea what everyone else is complaining about regarding it being a difficult attack.
9. Conversely, my history on micrododging messes such as Secretly Inherited Art of Danmaku is usually something like 1/20 or 1/40 or something. Prolonged micrododging in a very tight space is very much not my strong suit, or something that I actually
like, for that matter.
10. Finally, I think VoWG Lunatic is the best spellcard pattern ZUN has ever created in the series.
1. IMO, Orin is objectively the best boss fight that ZUN has ever designed.
This isn't all that uncommon, really, I know more than one person who holds this opinion. For that matter, this would be my opinion as well if Zombie Fairy didn't suck so damn much.