The game has a huge difficulty ramp because the game actually intends to give you infinite retries -during- a 1cc attempt, limited only by an extremely tiny power loss per death. This is... interesting balance :V
You could think of it as a story-based ISC with only one item. That's sort of how it feels like to play it, anyway. You're given the Ultramarine medicine to jump back in time on death... and at that previous point in time, you hadn't yet used the item, so you can use it again, making it OMGWTFHAX levels of broken from everyone's point of view. Basically, this time
you're the one using an impossible spell card.
But it's justified plot-wise against something as threatening as Lunarians, which have been told in manga to be way beyond our protagonists' skill level otherwise.
It's really fresh and memorable, and I appreciate it more the more I keep playing. I wasn't expecting ZUN to make something this conceptual for a main game, but it
is the 20th anniversary after all. It could as well have been a Phantasmagoria game.
Since Pointdevice is the main mode this time, I wonder what the 1cc requirements will be? Surely a perfect No Deaths run is too cruel?
Ah, good point. Maybe the good ending is the only ending, with no fail condition other than giving up in frustration..? I mean, having limited lives in Pointdevice "after all" feels like it'd defeat the point.
(Also, think about what a bad ending would imply anyway. The protagonists being dead and Lunarians "purifying" all life in Gensokyo sounds too harsh for Touhou.)