Started with EoSD Easy. Had no idea what the mechanics was, just knew Z was shoot and X was bomb - didn't even know the existence of a focus button, nor what the red and blue items were. Continued partway through stage 4, managed to 1cc Easy that same day after reading up on stuff on the Touhou Wiki.
Normal 1cc came a week later, and I remember being extremely frustrated at dying in the early stages.
Extra was over two weeks after that, and I used to plan out resource usages and routes in classes that I didn't like, and stay up til 5 AM pulling my hair out lolol
Needless to say, Extra was quite the shock after doing only Normal >A>
I didn't know how to recognize streamable patterns unless they were blatant, even less about turning (Flan 8th non-spell =0=), and gaps within the stream? (i.e. seeing both the stream AND individual bullets simultaneously) I only started recognizing THOSE earlier this year ROFL :getdown:
Went on to PCB Easy after all that, and the bullet density just completely bashed me over my head - had to continue on Yuyuko Easy, and this was after dealing with Flandre. Seriously, it's the MECHANIC that makes the game easy, (which, again, I didn't really understand even after reading up and until working through Extra/Phantasm) NOT the patterns. Compared to EoSD, PCB is a beast - at least on lower difficulties.