What do you like about Touhou?

[Choobaka]

What I love about Touhou Project is ANNOYING FINAL BOSSES!! EPIC DANMAKU ACTION!!!  :] :3

[Mimachiro]

For starters, the appeal of a series where the majority of the characters are pretty girls.

[CS]

Pretty patterns and colourful bullets LOLIES! Cute sadistic lolies out to kill you with colourful bullets in pretty patterns all over the screen that, upon contact, makes you go PICHUUUN~ But mainly the fact that they're all cute girls, like Genichiro said.

[Valantus]

How challenging the games can be, the pretty colorful danmaku bullets, the music, the cute girls, the story in each game...
...What don't I love about Touhou?

[shurcle]

The hats
The gameplay
The music
The characters (well most of them)
The ton of secondary content
The yukkuri (not so much anymore)
The other memes I forgot about
The rage
The alcohol
The fanbase (erm... somewhat)

[チソウ タイゼン]

I happen to enjoy the immense "run exe, click 'go,' wait four stages, DODGE RAIN" factor that the games have.
That, and it's at like the perfect difficulties for me.
Normal is easy, until the end, making it quite refreshing to play, Hard is fairly challenging, and I can get close to the end, Lunatic is nothing more than a timesink for less meaningful runs, but still surprises me with how far I can get (YUUGI FIGHT OH LORD), and Easy is there for me to exercise my scoring habits.

I'm not some weirdo, remotely capable of touching Ultra patches :<
Do not want.

[Marin The Magus]

The hats

This.

[ふねん1]

Oh, lots of things. Likeable characters, phenomenal music, an appealing atmosphere, but most of all the difficulty of the games (and to be more specific, the fact that the shooters are difficult single-player games, meaning I could get better on my own time).

[Alfred F. Jones]

The sheer scope of the stories in Gensokyo that ZUN allows his fans to explore to their heart's content.

And the hats.

[Zirene]

I like the fan base a lot. I can't think of another fan base that is as passionate about their game as Touhou fans. Some people take it too far, but I can't blame them, Touhou is amazing.

I love the amount of fan made anime, art, music, and games (danmakufu) that comes from the fans. I also love that ZUN doesn't seem to mind about these thing.

Besides the obvious bullet hell fun, the music is incredible.

Its still hard to believe that a game this well made and polished comes from one man, The ZUN.  /salute

[I have no name]

The music.

but mostly the fact that they're a legitimately challenging series of games that don't have to resort to cheap tricks to kill you (usually).  In the current day and age games are getting easier (generally), so it's nice to actually be challenged by some games.
The pretty colors don't hurt either.

[cujo2671]

The music, the quality of such a game; ZUN having such talent and doing this all by himself just inspires me. I wish I was as good as him (in fact, I've got a series of my own inspired by Touhou, but it's not even in the materialized production phase - just mere images in my head).

However, I find more delight in how he inspires his fans to explore their own creativity, so much that many fan games come out of it.

I don't like Touhou for the shmups, but the fact that the characters as a whole can be placed into any genre and actually work as a game character concept - this is why Touhou's captivated me.

[Nyarly]

Mostly it's the fact that most characters are girls and of course (and even more) the characters themselves, even though it takes a while for me to appreciate them. Then there is the massive amount of fanart and doujinshi, whether it's funny, cute, yuri or just so bad it's good (like some of Asatsuki Dou's stuff) . Then there is the music, but I needed some time until I could appreciate ZUN's style.

And then there are the games. Since I don't really like the genre I didn't expect too much, but the exciting gameplay really got me hooked and I play it more than any other shmup (series).

[Chronojet ⚙ Dragon]

Anyways, I like how every single character in the games is female. Except for probably the catfish.