Touhou

Not only am I covering two games at once this time, they're also both from the famous series called Touhou. I grabbed English patches for the Steam versions, and played Hidden Star in Four Seasons, which was the first official Touhou game to release on Steam back in 2017 (To clarify, it released on Steam before any other Touhou games. There have later been even earlier Touhou games released on Steam.), as well as Unconnected Marketeers, which is the 2nd latest one.
The reason for clumping them together is because they're extremely similar, and because I wanted to also talk about the history somewhat.

The first Touhou game was released in 1997. I wouldn't go as far as to say it was one of the first bullet hell games, but there weren't many made before that. Since then over thirty official Touhou games have been released (a few of which have been fighting games, but mostly bullet hells), not to mention all the fan games, other fan works, and I think it even got an anime? My personal favorites are the OSTs of all the games, which I don't seem to ever get tired of listening, even not having played the games. It's a bit daunting to go play something like that. What if it doesn't live up to my expectations?

I realized I don't actually have a lot to say about the gameplay itself. Touhou has probably defined a good chunk of how bullet hell games play, but I feel like it hasn't changed much itself. (Might be a false claim, I've only briefly watched videos of gameplay of the earlier games.) Dodge the bullets, shoot enemies, collect falling stuff to get points / level up your weapon / charge your bombs. Collecting stuff higher up the screen is generally worth more. And if you're in trouble, use a bomb to clear the screen and deal a lot of damage to any enemies. There's usually one extra gimmick which changes per game and helps you clear the bullets sometimes. It's really nothing special, and honestly, I felt kind of disappointed.
Of course, it's not all about the complexity. It could be fun to just challenge myself with these core concepts. Touhou is certainly plenty difficult, probably more so at the higher end than most other bullet hells, but that peak has never really interested me. Much like games that focus on speedrunning, I don't get a lot of enjoyment over perfecting my technique, and am instead satisfied to just get through everything at a slightly above average difficulty. That seems to take around 6 hours for one game, which I think is rather little.
No, what bothers me more is the lack of quality of life features I've come to expect. Most importantly, mouse controls. A keyboard is nowhere near as precise as a mouse can be, and I can not fathom how this still hasn't been implemented. I would have also liked things like indicators at the bottom of the screen to see where the enemies are, and better bullet contrast with the background at times. On a personal level, I just don't see anything about the gameplay I could recommend. It's not bad, but it just feels so average and minimal. Perhaps it's been quantity over quality all along.

As an afterthought, I suppose Touhou has gained its popularity through the world / characters, the music, and maybe the higher ends of difficulty. But I heard that the mechanics and gameplay have never been Touhou's strong suite, even in the early years. The earliest bullet hell I can name is Jamestown, which is from 2011, and that definitely had more to do. I think I played some Flash ones at least a couple years earlier, and, as far as memory serves, those too had better gameplay. And Bullet Heaven 2 still reigns as my favorite bullet hell, and the one I'd recommend to people if they asked me. (The first one was good too.)