You also get 2.25 power back each time you die and .5 power with each spell kill. The game essentially rewards you for bombing your way through bosses.
It only took me a few hours to 1cc SA normal, whereas it took multiple sessions for me to do the same for UFO, and I had several months more shmupping experience for UFO than I did for SA. Of course, I was cheesing my way through them; I couldn't rightly say which is more difficult if you were actually trying to dodge things. Plus, in order to fairly compare difficulties, you have to know the games very well, and I'm betting that a lot of people didn't have more than passable competency when they got normal clears (I'm sure I didn't, anyway). So even a subjective comparison could be tricky.
For hard, though, I recently did a bombspam comparison of the two games and SA was slightly easier. There's more to learn in UFO's stages and there're more opportunities to die on them because of the ufo mechanic (even after learning the stages), but overall the difficulties are fairly close. For the curious:
SA,
UFO. I'm discontented about a lot of things in those runs, but I think they get the point across. Details are in the replay descriptions.
Saves you the effort of losing lives.
Hahaha... I love this phrasing. I'm using this in the future.
I'll list a few things to be on-topic. Over the past couple months...
SA hard: first 1cc, all shot types 1cc-ed.
UFO hard: same.
UFO hard: 3b0d Byakuren, topped off with my first cap of Flying Fantastica. Bombed Air Scroll because I hate glowing bullets, the last non because I'm lazy, and Purple shit because purple shit.
PoFV lunatic: 8/14 characters 1cc-ed. Got a legit clear with Yuuka(~) a few hours ago, which made me ecstatic. By legit, I mean that the AI ran into bullets each time in the final match (which ran 2:58), never getting trapped. I figure that if I can survive a hotdog onslaught with her, I can do it with anyone. At least with anyone who isn't named Sakuya (or possibly Komachi).