The graphics are definitely much improved over the previous game, the character portraits and artwork are very cute, and the music and backgrounds are also significantly better.
I find that not being able to shoot or bomb during your respawn iframes feels extremely bad. If you don't want the player to be able to damage the boss during your iframes, please just give the boss iframes instead, the feeling like I'm going to die again without being able to do anything about it is rather uncomfortable and not anything like other shmups or touhou games.
The respawn in place is also a little bit iffy with how some of the gimmicks work, and the death animation being that prominent and long also feels quite bad.
The item chain mechanic is fairly fun and satisfying when used, bombing freezing the chain is a little mean (but I sort of understand why it's this way).
Stage 1 is fine but a little dull if played repeatedly (needing to do this due to no continues).
Stage 2 (right path) is awesome and tons of fun, stage 2 (left path) has very strange telegraphs that don't feel like they properly communicate what's happening and kills you repeatedly, on top of other stage segments sometimes also happening on top of that - it's quite a bit overwhelming for Normal difficulty, and it's supposed to be the "safe" path? Perhaps the fox is just lying.
Stage 3 has an interesting gimmick but it feels really poorly taught to the player by the game, lots of information seems kind of meaningless and it's very hard to tell what's actually able to hit you in most attacks in the time you're given. The one that splits into grid squares stands out as the easiest to understand and dodge on first viewing. The colors are very nice, though.
Also, no continues makes it much more tedious to get to see and understand the gimmicks compared to other touhou games, as you have to go back to the start every time you're met with a gimmick that kills you by feeling poorly explained or telegraphed.
I really liked the character of stage 3, as well as the art gallery's background, it all feels very well done especially compared to the previous game's art
