My Favorite and Least Favorite Spell cards in Touhou 

I've always taken Keiki's final spell to be her absolutely panicking as an army of angry animal spirits crowd the battlefield. Her meticulous and artistic mindset completely collapses as she realizes "oh no, I'm about to *lose.* " It'd like she dug into her art supply box and started chucking everything in it behind her towards you in desperation that something randomly will take you out and turn the tide in her favor. To her, the human spirits in the garden she has worked so hard to protect, her mighty haniwa warriors loyally and valiantly fighting for her cause, Everything is sitting on Keiki's shoulders. And when you have this godly Shrine Maiden/Magician/Swordswoman backed by hundreds upon hundreds of spirits all calculation goes out the window as she almost literally begins sweating bullets. She can't afford to get overwhelmed, and that's all she can think beyond making her bullet patterns pretty, or fit her style. The only thing she cares about now is that you get hit by something, anything, and make the overwhelming danger stop. At least, that's just my interpretation. I have a rather heavy Keiki bias as you could guess

"Junko and her Basic Bitch Bullets"

I find it funny Junko is loved from a story perspective for the same reason she is hated for a gameplay perspective.

Chimata using her last spell with falling knives is about the trader expression "catching a falling knife" where you buy in a very desesperate way a crashing market. Just for this I really likes it, because I didn't expected it in the first place. Misumaru with her yin-yang balls? I HATE HERE I HATE HER I HATE HER SO MUCH (but doing a perfect normal flex was very satisfying, like doing middle fingers to the screen)

I disagreed with nearly every pick in this video, and I wasn’t a fan of the ufo, ddc, and junko hate, but it was still a great watch. I like how you focused more on subjective picks, as nearly every video on this site seems to always try and be objective

I love how in the LoLK part you just went like "I love this specific Junko spellcard, however everything else she has is terrible."

As someone who's favorite character is Koishi, I'm happy that her worst spell card is still good in of itself.

3:36 You're kinda meant to position yourself so that when the slowdown ends the remaining bullets are mostly moving away from you, revealing an opening. Trying to rush through the whole wave of bullets before the slowdown ends never really ends well, at least for me. I still find it one of the hardest spell cards though.

The funny thing about Junko's micro dodging gimmick is that even harder bullet hell shmups make use of that. Also I always thought focusing down Satono immediately was the strat for the Satono and Mai fights.

Haha, as someone who loves Junko's theming I found you putting the entirety of Junko (minus Lilies) as your least favorite spellcard really funny (in a good way!). And honestly with how much the Extra influences your viewpoint I really can't blame you. Most people I know think LoLK's extra is the worst extra in the series for multiple reasons (like a nonsensical difficulty curve), and Junko coming to contribute probably the worst patterns in the entire series doesn't help. I think Junko's maingame patterns are pretty creative considering the limitation (but I understand why people don't like them): bullets that tell you where you can avoid the lasers coming down, Lilies, finding a way out of a bullet maze before it collapses, rhythmically tapping instead of dodging normally, etc... She has very unique takes on danmaku not seen in the series before/often that makes her really stand out. But then she comes back in the Extra with 2 nons that are the same as her third non on Lunatic, 40+ seconds of extremely basic streaming that isn't hard to capture at all, and a single ring of dense big bullets that are intentionally trying to mislead you with their hitboxes (the glowy bullets you can barely see have a bigger hitbox than the bullets in front of them). Not to mention the final is a simple spiral + circle combination. What happened there?

I know that this is about individual spell cards but I just want to say that SA as a whole might have the most interesting and creative Spell Cards out of any Touhou game

Keiki's final spell is actually very creative. Though people tend to not notice it. Doesn't help that zun only used kunais.😅 It's like sculpting a pattern depending on when you transition to a next phase, resulting on a personalized route. It can be static if you want it to be.

Come to think of it, Junko is a being of hatred. Maybe that was the point? She's nothing but hatred and we end up hating her patterns as well?

One of my favorite things about "Lilies with Murderous Intent" is the way Junko moves throughout the Spell Card. She flies over to another spot, raises her arms and laughs, then shoots as the cycle repeats. I personally find the way the whole loop is animated really funny. She does that for multiple Spell Cards, actually, but Murderous Lilies makes it the most visible as a lot of them revolve around shooting glowing circles of bullets that obscure it partially.

"And it's all caused by Junko and her basic bitch bullets" Fucking ouch lmao

I haven't played a mainline Touhou game in a long time. I'd say my favorite spellcard from back when I did play was Kanako's "Mountain of Faith" spellcard. It was fun to dodge, it looked cool, it's name being the name of the game was neat and it was overall a great ending to my favorite mainline game. My least favorite was Sakuna's "You Grow Bigger" spellcard. I hated most of what DDC had thrown at me up to that point, so having the final boss change my hitbox and make me dodge a bunch of small kunai was what made me decide that I couldn't be bothered to try to 1cc 14.

Favourite is Byakurens Great Magic Devil's Recitation because of the callback to MS and Shinki. It also looks fantastic. Most disliked is probably Seija flipping the screen in her ones, it's just annoying to do.

Gonna be speaking a lot of MoF here, I have by far the most experience with it. In any run I do, Nitori's "Monster Cucumber (Normal)" takes the cake for the worst. It's not particularly hard, but I'm blind-sighted by the lasers about 50% of the time. I'm almost always punished for being ballsy by loosing a life right before they actually start to matter. It just feels insulting. As an honerable mention, remember how you said you really liked Sanae's pattern because it highlights how you've grown? Well, clearly I haven't grown enough, because I absolutely hate all of her star patterns. Skissue, maybe, but they basically amount to just bullet vomit, and it's not rare for me to reach her final spell with only one or two power left (which thankfully is easy enough).

My favorite Spell Card overall is "Storm on Mt. Ooe", just because I love the presentation of those gigantic bullets flying at you liked they're boulders being tossed around by the wind (or maybe Yuugi herself), and you having to dodge at high speeds. It's a really dynamic card and I like both the mental image the card conjures and the fact that it makes high speed dodging fun.

This makes me love Junko even more. You can say you're the best touhou player all you want until she humbled you and land your feet back on solid ground 😌

i love how we both have the same favorites in wbawc, smth about saki's spell is just so badass (also the fact that bullet density is much less under her encouraging you to read the spell's name)

There’s actually a mobile version of touhou that does the heal mechanic pretty well. They basically take touhou 6 to 16 and only use the boss fights. Now satori is probably my favorite in that game. She has a spell card where she spawns 4 hearts around her on the top of the screen that gradually heal her. You can destroy the hearts to cut off her healing and I thought it was really nice

I absolutely love Byakuren’s Devil Recitation, i only found out recently that it was a reference to pc98 but i already loved it before that. I just think its so fun to be weaving and swerving around more and more shit as it progresses and it looks beautiful too. in fact byakuren’s fight in general is like my favorite in the series, its just a perfect level of difficulty that i can handle and have fun with. I hate all of Orins spells fuck her

My favourite has to be Remilia Scarlet's "Scarlet Gensokyo", it's a beautifully designed attack and fits really well for the final spell card of the game (discounting extra stages and whatnot). Paired with Septette for the Dead Princess being one of my favourite themes in all of Touhou it is just amazing. My least favourite by far is Cirno's "Perfect Freeze", I don't hate Cirno but I have a personal grudge with this spell card. When I was just starting out on with Touhou I would get thrown off so much by the bullets stopping then starting to move. I know it's a skill issue but that has been the spell card I've died to the most whilst playing. If it weren't for Cirno's "Perfect Freeze", Flandre Scarlet's "Taboo "Kagome, Kagome"" would be here (Though I got there with the use of the practice mod and a full clear save, I have yet to actually get a 1CC for EoSD). I only played a handful of Touhou games, those being PCB, EoSD, IN, and MoF, however I've played EoSD the most and it's my most practiced game. Even though my favourite and least favourite spell cards I feel so vastly different on, I still love the game they are from and the series at a whole. One day I'll manage a 1CC clear of EoSD and maybe a lunatic clear (though that's going to take me forever)

My favourite Spell card has got to be the iconic Yukari's Boundary of Life and Death. It gotten me into the games seing GIL's no-vert pacifist (unfortunately likely cheated) run. I have definitely spent many attempts replicating this feat, but to no avail. Least favourite strangely is Remilia's Fitful Nightmare. I actually liked the side-games a lot more than the main games because I prefer the short spell card puzzles rather than the stages. But 1000 over runs on a spell card which I have yet to capture to this day, perhaps my opinion will change with a capture someday.

Junko's design is that she unapologetically tries to kill the player - contrary to pretty much every other boss in Touhou who just wants to fight you the normal way. While it's totally okay to dislike her for that, I do think that she is designed well around that idea. You have to remember that Junko doesn't know you're going to be attacking again and again either using pointdevice or by simply playing again from the start. In her mind you are just extremely good, hence why she already gives up before you even fight her. So she does what she thinks she has to in the two attempts she thinks she has, and that is to pull out every trick she has to kill you. Both lilies and her first spell in extra will almost certainly kill you in a blind run, both using very fast bullets aimed at the player. Lilies fires it's first shot at what we can assume to be the first possible frame that she's allowed to attack (hence why it arrives before the sound of the spell card starting hasn't even finished yet). "Simple Danmaku for Cornering a Trapped Rat" will also immediately kill you if you don't know what's coming, and even if you dodge it on reflex, if you didn't move slowly enough it will trap you as the name implies. And since those tricks don't (seem to) work, the other things Junko has left to actually kill you is to throw patterns at you which she knows require precise dodging or overload your ability to read patterns. Which is where her other attacks come from. So yes, they are a little boring and frustrating, but design wise it's on point. She doesn't care about entertaining you. She _wants you dead_ and will use every inch the spell card rules give her to do it. She's the embodiment of a person who cannot let go and must win in the end, hence why her being a divine spirit of pure anger is so fitting. And if you, the player, are also like that. (And if you play any multiplayer PVP game, you know plenty of those people exist). You will have a blast fighting her, I feel. I can totally see why her attacks aren't that fun to some if not most poeple. But I do thinks that's because her design doesn't appeal to you rather than it being designed poorly. And for the extra stage - It's pretty much implied that Junko is playing dirty by inserting herself into Hecatia's fight. Considering pretty much every protagonist calls her out for it. Which is just very much on point design wise as well. She's apparently not technically forbidden from doing so by the rules, so she does it, because she can, and she wants that inch to do what she desires to do. And well, she still thinks you are unbeatable because you beat her perfectly in the main game (from her PoV), so she have no reason to believe they are going hard on you now. And as a player that is kind of meant to be a realization moment, that if it wasn't for pointdevice (and you didn't play legacy), this is how hard it would have been. Luckily extra gives you a ton of lives to make up for that fact.

Tail fin slap is hilarious. Just imagine Reimu or Marisa taking a big fat fish tail upside the head.

I've never played before IN but Yukari's last word spell card is the most beautiful danmaku pattern I have ever seen

would love to see a list like this for the photography games & impossible spellcard, the really unique spellcards are such a highlight

Pristine Danmaku for Killing a Person is the best *named* spellcard in the franchise, and it is designed perfectly for its conscept. Actually playing it looks like a horific nightmare, but I respect the experiment.

Some of my favorites: UFO: "Vajra of Perfect Buddhism" by Shou. It's her hardest spellcard and I love how simple it is. The spinning lasers follow you, so you want to run away from them. But the further from them you go, the faster the speed of the lasers related to you become. All of this while you dodge a bunch of jellybeans she's throwing in all directions. Also, it's funny how she's known for curvy lasers but this one doesn't have it. IN: "Omoikane's device" by Eirin. It's fun to do it, the way it actually portraits a device leading you is nice and I just LOVE when it syncs with the trumpets section of the music. So iconic.

Started Touhou with HSiFS, and noticed the hatred for Mai and Satano. Didn't understand it then, but after playing through the series think I get it now. I struggled immensely with these two. Completed the Extra stage before I captured their cards. For me they were brutal teachers, but looking back they are a source of pride for eventually overcoming, and I remember them positively. Feel that a lot of preferences people might have result from when they started playing. I have less issues with being attacked from behind, or lasers due to my hours playing HSiFS, but struggle with other aspects many players find easy.

Massive astronomically huge W on the Junko take

Youmu is actually my favorite boss in the touhou series, it makes me feel like neo

8:04 this one actually surprised me a bit, as i always thought of it was one of, if not koishi's easiest spell card as my way of handling it was to just stay at the middle bottom and quickly rush through the gaps since as you can see it's quite slow and see-able(??) at the bottom, other than having to shift between left and right catching me off guard sometimes, i still find it to be quite a manageable spell card. i actually find it to be easier than release of the id tbh

My least favorite spell card is hooaka shitodo's samidare boiler after learning the gimmick its way easier but that doesn't change the fact that you have basically no warning on what to do, which is a pretty consistent theming around the lenen 1 spell cards lmao

Man, i LOVE the art you draw in the thumbnail so SO much. The way they holding the card!! AHHHH SO GOOD!!! Kinda reminds me of kamen rider W alot

Grimoire of ApreyFM is pretty good. Though I feel like his problems with some damage based Spellcards feeling repetitive could be mitigated with some dps characters. Though only some of them. I'd honestly like to hear Catipu1t's favorites too for a contrast since he religiously worships at the alter of dps.

Of the ones you mentioned i like master spark mostly because the league of legends creater of lux took inspiration from it and made it her ultimate changing the name to final spark

Very insteresting idea, I never thought about my favorites spellcards. If I have to choose, probably I'll go with the ones from de final bosses, since I tend to enjoy Touhou games more for the ambientation rather than the gameplay. Im agree that Raiko's spellcard you chose as the worst is very simple, but I love the feeling of hearing Pristine Beat while the screen starts shaking and I'm trying to survive, specially when I remember the first time seeing it. The same goes for the Keiki's one. I can not hate a spellcard that has Idolatrize World on the background

I think my favorite one, at least that comes to mind immediately, is Raiko's final spell card. Sure, it's loud, but I just really love the gimmick and how it mixes in with the song for the fight itself. As for dislikes, pretty much every single extra spell card from Kaguya sucks. That they directly attack your continues is even worse.

I'm personally a Mountain of Faith enjoyer, and I find Moriya Suwako's 'Froggy Braves the Wind and Rain' to be delightful. It's a bullet spam spellcard, sure, but I love the name, presentation, actual mechanics, and how it fits into Suwako's personality and the general atmosphere of the battle. Though I really enjoy Hijiri Byakuren's fight overall, Magic Milky Way is utterly incomprehensible to me and I dread it every time I play UFO. Honorable mention: I love the way Komeiji Satori's mechanic works, but I *HATE* Yukari's copied spells.

great upload as always you should do one of these for the camera games that'd be pretty funny

Watching this video made me want to get back into playing the games finally. Guess I'll go see about setting those games up.

i might have to make a confession... that Cephalic Plate strat might NOT be the most consistent strategy. you can do it with standard streaming and restreaming. the one-directional strategy is a great speedkill if she cooperates, but if she doesn't then haha. i still think it's a really good strategy for a 1cc, though, since you either kill it super quickly without issue or can just bomb if you realize she isn't cooperating. with the "more consistent" strategy, particularly when bombs are at play, restreaming introduces some unnecessarily risky situations. -still not a great card anyway- oops didn't even mention my favorite/least favorite! Favorite: Nue's Grudge Bow (especially the timeout phase) Least Favorite: Charged Yahoo (i am shocked and appalled by your placement)

i've given this question a lot of thought, and while i dont have an answer for each individual game, my favorite spell card in the series is easily kanako's final, divine virtue of wind god. or just VoWG. its pretty much what you just said for scarlet meister; i suck at it, but love trying it. and my goodness, EVERY capture of this card is hype as heck. if you've watched touhou world cup mountain of faith matches, you know just how exciting it is when the runners get a cap on it. kanako's theme also just goes perfectly well with it. my least favorite spell card is eirin's final. hourai elixir. its not just any timeout spell, its a 2 minute long timeout spell. the entire idea is that the pattern shifts between several different patterns throughout, but each and every one of these patterns are super boring, and only the final pattern is actually somewhat difficult. its also worth mentioning that the timer slows down during the final pattern. this means you have extra time to mess up in the last few seconds, and have effectively just wasted roughly 2 minutes due to how IN last spells work.

The one spell card I hate the most is Idola Diabolus but for a completely different reason. Because on both Hard and Lunatic you WILL NOT capture that spell, because getting the spirits and going Roaring Mode renders the spell capture bonus. That means you HAVE to hug the very bottom of the screen while a dense storm of kunai come at you, giving you so little chance at capturing the spell that you might as well give up. Junko's micro dodging is bad, so is Clownpiece and other bullshit bosses with insane patterns. But at LEAST they only have the pattern itself going against you so you KNOW you can capture it. With Idola Diabolus the main mechanic of the game itself goes against you alongside an already challanging pattern, and to this day it's the one pattern I have completely gave up on trying to capture.

Since this video is about the Mainline games, I wonder what this list would be for the Spinoffs (Including the Fighting Games). You have free content right there

Nice video, and interesting takes! My favorite spell is I think PDH because of it bringing a high level of difficulty while also remaining fair, the player is able to reasonably survive all possible situations on it. This is extremely difficult to pull off when making attacks like this. Also PDH is very bad if you try to cap it in pointdevice, don't do that big timewaste, practice from phase 3 with thprac. But other than this it's great. My least favorite is probably Nitori's midspell Hydro Camo, from a combination of boss movement rng affecting it way too much and ptsd from run resets of course.

15:10 LMAOOOO It’s really interesting hearing complaints and compliments on spell cards and patterns. I plan on making my own danmaku game one day and I’ll try keeping this ideas into account. I should probably also play more touhou… “Chronologically-ordered list of skill issues” LMAO

I haven't played through every Spell Card(though I have played most of the non-Extra ones in the mainline games at least), and I'm not really good at shmups, but I'll list a couple of my favorites so far. PC-98 - Haven't played these much(typical), and of course, there aren't any Spell Cards to rank in the first place. I like the way Meira summons bullets by sword slicing like Youmu, though I like watching it more than actually _playing_ through it. EoSD - Sakuya's Spell Cards in EoSD are awesome when they're in sync with the music. Though, part of my bias here is because I used keyed-out footage of "Manipulating Doll" for a Fairly Odd-Parents RU-vid Poop I made for this/my channel some time ago, and it was by far the best part of the whole YTP in my own opinion. PCB - This was the first game I played(I actually meant to play IN first, but got the numbers mixed up). Despite that, I don't really remember much that stuck out to me. I do kind of like Youmu's Spell Cards, actually; probably because I usually play on an evened-out Normal/Easy curve using thprac*, so I don't have too much trouble with it, but I find getting through the patterns on Bullet Time really satisfying. IN - I like Keine and Reisen's attacks. Some Stage 4 ones are too, though soured a bit by the infamous difficulty spike that occurs with nearly every Stage 4 in the series. Wriggle and Mystia also have fun Non-Spells, but not to actually play through for me. Personally, I like to destroy as many Familiars as possible, and as most of their Non-Spells almost fully rely on Familiars, watch as barely _any_ bullets even end up appearing. PoFV - I haven't played this one that much, though Eiki's stage is pretty cool, with how Lily and all the fairies dress up in matching dark outfits. Komachi(my favorite character) is also in there, which is awesome; I like her coin bullets. MoF - I agree that "Moses' Miracle" looks nice. Nitori's spells are interesting as well. SA - Haven't played this one much either, mainly because of how difficult it is, and I haven't gotten past even Stage 3 as of typing this. I'm sure I'll find my preference by more practicing. UFO - This one's also pretty difficult, and I kind of avoid it for that too, as I don't want to ruin my opinion of the Myouren Temple crew by how much their fights bother me. So, again, same thing as SA. TD - Everything from Chris McClain(get it? "TD"?)! Okay, really; I love Kyouko's gimmick, and Miko's spells are also quite exciting. DDC and onwards - Again, haven't played much of. I have played HSiFS for a little bit, but I like that one more for the Shot Type variety more than anything. Fighting spinoffs - All of Iku's Spells are cool. This _could_ be more character bias, but not exactly as I grew to like her _because_ of her fight rather than the other way around. When I make my mind, I will likely edit this comment accordingly. * - To elaborate on what I mean by this: I'd say I'm on Easy or Normal level, but nowadays I tend to use the Universal Practice Patch to go through each stage in order with individual settings. Basically, 1-4 on Normal, then 5-6 on Easy, and back to Normal for exceptions like Kanako's final spell(which has a harder Easy mode version on purpose). Essentially, a custom difficulty level with the skill-floor and skill-ceiling made closer to each other. It also allows for more resources and changing Shot Type midway through, of course, as well as accessing stages that are usually unavailable, like EoSD Stage 6's Easy mode and having either Stage 4 route available for every Team instead of just one.

Some of my favorites that weren't mentioned in the video are Resurrection Butterfly, Duplex Danmaku Barrier, Magicannon "Final Spark", Border of Wave and Particle (or Satori's version of one, if we're sticking to mainline games), Divine Virtue of Wind God, and Dream Catcher.

Fun video idea. I enjoyed watching. Tho I disagreed with many of the picks, I understand that’s coming for your own personal experience.

"My favorite spellcard in TH8 is master spark." Yuuka:"I agree." "Both my favorite and least favorite in TH11 come from Koishi." Koishi:"Yes." "Junko sucks." Everyone who is right:"Absolutely."

I am surprised you didn’t call out Clownpiece’s spellcards in LoLK

Very new to Touhou and only playing free fangames at the moment. Out of all the spellcards I've seen so far, I'd say Dream Logical World has my favourite ones. Specifically Kiseki and Aimi.

I always found Byakuren's Makai Butterfly spellcard to be super pretty and fun

My favourites are Astronomical entombing,Moses miracle,most of the endgame patterns from touhou 15,Great Magic Devil's Recitation,Subterranean sun and Yuuka Double master spark. My least favourites are the broken Doremy nons,Ellys floor tiles,(i know those are not spellcards but whatever)Score desire eater,Ying yang suffocation and Eternal meek

I'm probably pretty late on this, but I'd love to share mine! Best: Probably Royal Flare. It just looks so cool, even if I can never dodge it (I'm pretty sad with fast and dense ring of bullet and can never position myself correctly...and that's made worse by the fact they come at a diagonal) Worst: ...also royal flare lmao. my cap rate on royal flare is probably 1/999+ for all the reasons above, but I can never truly hate it, it's my first really hard hurdle on my Touhou adventure way back then and thus it holds a special place in my heart...

I found Takane's spell to be easy with enough practice (and the fact that the cyclone movements aren't as intimidating as you originally think). I like Tsukasa's final two spells in the extra, even if my capture rates on them aren't that great.

Pretty interesting list, i’ll give mine: EoSD fav: Clock that Ticks Away the Past = Scarlet Gensokyo. Scarlet Genso wins with theming and it’s generally cool, but i love the pattern in clock. It’s just great. Eosd Least fav: imaginary flower yumezuka. Just boring and weird Pcb fav: Saigyouji Paranirvana. Need I say more? It’s easily one of the coolest moments in touhou. Honorable mention is youmu’s Three Kons Seven Hakus. Prismriver finals also great PCB least fav: Can’t think of anything that great, but i’d probably agree with your pick IN fav: Eirin/Kaguya LW + Hourai Elixir. Three way tie but i love these two so much and the patterns are just great, the feeling is great. IN is my favourite so no shocker here Least fav: Honestly not a fan of that one reimu card that just shoots out a bunch of crap at high speed, i can’t remember the name well. The rest of reimu’s stuff is good, that one is just cheap, fitting for reimu. MOF fav: Divine Virtues of Wind God. It’s simply a very pleasing pattern, and dodging it is quite fun. Least fav: Kanako’s extra stage spellcards are pretty boring IMO, weird she shows up twice… SA fav: hard to pick between subterranean rose, supression “super ego” (lol) and terrifying hypnotism. They’re just great with theming, dodging, and how it looks in general.. SA least fav: Orin’s ghost wheels, you said it perfectly in the video UFO fav: Demon’s Recitation. I love pc98 so this is a easy pick for me, but aside from that i’d probaly pick kogasa’s final and the spinny one with shou (vajra of truth or something?) UFO least fav: idk probably one of ichirin’s cards TD fav: Honour the Avoidance of Defiance. Pretty epic spellcard i think is quite overlooked, and one which i think definitely takes the cake for me TD least fav: score desire eater, you said it best DDC fav: Pristine Beat. This spellcard just made me like raiko a lot DDc least fav: agree with you, always gave me a headache when i was running raiko LoLK fav: earth “rain falling in hell”, i can’t explain this one beyond “blue fireballs” and the concept being original imo LoLK least fav: the second clownpiece spellcard, gives me trauma. Somehow easier on lunatic than normal HSiFS fav: Okina’s first card. Kind of basic but cool HSiFS least fav: mai and satono, just as a whole WBaWC fav: idola diabolus. Complete disagree with you here, i think this is one of the best and most adrenaline pumping endings to a touhou game even if the pattern itsself is somewhat lacking WBaWC least fav: demon siege. I was considering putting inexhaustable hollow troops here for trauma but i like that spellcard’s concept. Urumi’s fight in general is just boring… UM fav: Chimata’s first spell is kind of silly with how it’s basically a timeout but i just think it’s neat, all of chimata’s spells are. Honourable mention is momoyo’s final spell because i like the name UM least fav: probably gotta agree with you, green cyclone is simply a bomb toll

Despite my neutrality-to-dislike and general not caring about almost all of UFO and its cast, I weirdly like a lot of the spell cards in it. "Devil's Recitation" is my single favorite spellcard in the whole series. The huge health bar, the progressive difficulty, the stages of adding elements, it all just does it for me. And that START with the lasers pushing Byakuren back? Soooo cool. Plus it references Shinki and PC98 in general, which is always a plus for me. And how could I not love Murasa's Drowning Sign "Sinkable Vortex"? It's literally the meme of Touhou players dodging raindrops. It's so much fun. For least favorite... I really like playing Subterranean Animism. EXCEPT FOR GHOST WHEELS. Ghost Wheels is right where it belongs, forgotten in Old Hell.

I'm pretty new to the series, and I'm playing Imperishable Night as my second game. I really do not like the way Marisa's Master Spark card shakes the screen, like you said about Land Percuss. Everything else about it is fun.

I've never thought to hard about a favorite, but I do have a clear least favorite. To preface; I'm not very good at Touhou, or shmups in general, despite my enjoyment of the series, so I've only cleared some of the games above easy difficulty. My proudest achievement was clearing LotLK on normal pointdevice mode, though that came at the cost of losing my sanity to practically all of Clownpiece's spell cards. While I think they are all really cool conceptually and visually, they were definitely very overwhelming for someone as bad at the series as myself. Dealing with all her spell cards preceded to give me the only stress headache I've had as a result from this series. I had to stop playing after beating her to go take some Aleve and lie down before resuming the playthrough the following day. For a long while afterwards, hearing her theme gave me anxiety.

Best: Every Byakuren spell card except magic milkyway fck that Worst: Kanako's last spell card in every difficulty, I lose like 5 lives to it every time

Currently on a grind with EoSD Hard and Extra, so I'll throw my top 3 liked and hated Liked 1.- Scarlet Sign "Scarlet Meister" - hard but feels very rewarding to catch it every time despite how dense it becomes sometimes 2.- Sun Sign "Royal Flare" - nice to look and when you have a routing it feels fun to navigate through 3.- Taboo "Lævateinn" - very fancy movements that teaches you how to approach spellcards besides just hugging the bottom and dodge Hated 1.- Taboo "Maze of Love" - everything that makes you spin is no good for me, mostly bias against anything that uses this mechanic 2.- Earth & Metal Sign "Emerald Megalith" - its just getting good RNG most of the time for a capture 3.- Conjuring "Eternal Meek" - feels like an absolute filler without any purpose at all, story aside

Mystia mentioned. Gotta like the video

What do you think of the pc98 attacks

Disagree on youmu’s card, I absolutely love youmu’s gimmick when it works correctly. That being said, I’ve had a lot of issues where idk if I just dropped frames or got hit at an inconvenient moment, but sometimes the timing of the pattern and the slowdown desynch, leaving you with not nearly enough time to react, and then slowdowns at parts that don’t warrant them. I wonder if you experienced that at all, since you didn’t mention it, but I found it to be pretty common in my own playthroughs.

Kogasa mentioned, gottta like the video

Am I the only one who likes Youmu's slowdown and Raiko's screen shake?

Personally I love many of the spellcard in DDC, lot of cool gimmicks imo :) One of my most hated spellcards though is Dragon Fish "Oarfish's Swimming Shot" from Double Spoiler, it's the only spellcard I've yet to beat on it with Aya lol

Subtrranean Animism has three of my favorite spell cars of the intire series, Subterranean Sun, Subterranean Rose and Philosophy of a hated person.

I love ghostwheels and needles of yore, as it combines both a pattern (well, selfmade, since the ghostwheels are aimed towards you) and raw dodging at the same time, and it's really satisfying to reach the gaps between ghostwheels in time despite the odds, as the needles swarm you like wasps. My most disliked spellcard from SA would be "shackles a criminal can't break (or whatever was it called)" as it just... exists. And in stage 3 as well? Are you serious? Also I'm biased towards Orin but I swear that's not important to my statement-

Me who absolutely adores Junko's gimmick: "Yeah..." That said, I 100% agree with Keiki's placement though. That's probably my least-favorite Spell Card in the entire franchise because I find underwhelmingly easy. The only Extra Stage I've beaten is EX Okina, so I'll always have a soft spot for Mai and Satono's EX Spells because I've practically got them committed to muscle-memory. I always find it fun to weave through that final Spell and rack up points. :P My favorite Card in the entire series is Futo's final(?) Spell from Ten Desires Normal Mode where you weave around the entire screen. In general, I think all of Futo's Spell Cards are consistent bangers.

you grow bigger has to be my least favourite spell card in the series, i dont think i need to explain why giving you a huge hitbox is not a good idea in a shmup also the entierty of keiki's kit on lunatic (honerable mention for lunatic impact) as for favourites nue's timeout, flandre's maze of love, okuu's subteranium sun and mamizou's monster school are really fun to dodge and thematicly i think blazing star and fantasy nature have really cool ideas

I actually really love Satono and Mai's last spell card, it's probably the best way to pull a dual boss as a perfect combination of spells

For Takane's spellcard it's better to focus on the giant glowing bullets.

My favourite is komeiji koishis release of the id. I like how it looks in gensokyo arena and sa. My least favorite is yuuka in general. All her attacks are hard as hell

I’ve always personally looked at Idola Diabolus as like, the closest a touhou game ever gets a cutscene finisher. You’ve beaten the boss, and now you just get to sit back and whale on the boss. Not a great spellcard, but a neat way to end a game where the plot hinges on the protagonist getting stuck in a battle between two evils. The beast gangs come together to pretty much just rig the fight in your favor.

I think Asprey doesn’t like junko’s spells, idk though Edit: Same with Mai and Satono, but it’s really hard to tell

Getting "mad" at the patterns is a core part of the Touhou experience. Never apologize for it.

You could do a similar video for fangames? Just to see what the comunity has to offer

I like almost all TH11 SA utsuho reiuji spellcards because of their real world concept+music+WARNING

2:49 *REIMU MOMENT*

I found Koishi’s Super Ego a lot easier to dodge by moving left and right between the hearts

A favourite that initially comes to mind is Atomic Fire: Uncontainable Nuclear Reactor. After literally making your way through hell to be met with blaring Klaxons and nuclear warnings. Honourable mention to Taboo: Four of a kind. Both are very biased favourites, but hey that’s what makes them my favourites

My favorite spell card is Futo’s final card. It looks soooo cooool

Yoshika is the person that plays hardcore stall in Pokémon

i wanna share my opinon regarding junko. it's a bit of a read, so, sorry if it kinda drags on too much. im pretty biased towards junko, so you should just take this as subjective. i actually really like junko's boss fight. im probably a minority on that, but i just enjoy her gimmick of purity, and how she breaks the spellcard rules by making cards intending to kill with no beauty whatsoever. she makes it clear that she is pure rage, and has no intentions of playing nice. i think how junko behaves in the extra stage fits just fine because it fits her gimmick. lilies of murderous intent and pristine lunacy are the cards that stick out to me as not really fitting her since the rest of her cards never cared about looking nice. if she began using completely different mechanics for no reason in the extra stage, it'd feel weird to me, like if patchouli knowledge's extra stage spellcards didn't revolve around her magical elements like in the main game. certain extra stage midbosses/bosses that appeared in the main game would have some different mechanics, but it was a result of the scenario calling for it. chen using her abilities as a shikigami instead of her normal strength, keine in her hakutaku form, the tsukumo sisters now working together, okina using her abilities as a secret god instead of taking advantage of the door on your back, etc. but in other instances, they remained relatively unchanged since the main story and are just using tougher spellcards, such as kutaka, satono and mai, or kanako. their mechanics still felt like it fits them, they're just tougher. junko is still angry regarding the incident, and she still wants to kill you, so nothing about her actual patterns would change that much other than it becoming more difficult since its the extra stage. i dont see her mechanics warranting a change for the extra stage if she is in a situation where she's relatively unchanged since the main story other than it just being for the sake of gameplay. i agree, though, that her mechanics were built around pointdevice, and then she's placed in a stage where that doesn't exist, so maybe zun should have allowed her to mellow out some in the extra stage and show off the more somber side of her character with more spell cards that focused on beauty that captures her sadness as a mother that lost her son instead of more cards filled with her hatred and her pure intentions to kill. it'd flesh out her character more, show she's now following the rules, and make for a more interesting-looking extra boss fight. you could also just argue that, while its a unique idea, it just doesn't fit in a game about beautiful patterns, though, since most of her spellcards are boring to look at. i just think junko's mechanics are really cool and how it fits with her story and character. other than what i just mentioned regarding her extra stage mechanics, i wouldn't really have her any other way personally. i love pretty much the entire cast of lolk and their spellcards, so yeah, im pretty biased in this opinion. these were just my thoughts. clownpiece's cards might be an exception, though. lol

I think if I had my favorites and least favorites (as a Normal players experience) I know I'm gonna get nailed on the wall for this but I do like Seijas spells mainly for the novelty of her gimmick but in practice it genuinely doesn't work at times on higher levels I'll give an honorable mention to Reimu in IN, I genuinely enjoy doing her boss fight in the game, it is probably why I would main Scarlet team just so I can do her fight Least favorites, man I could say the entirety of Clownpiece but then you reminded me of how awful Yoshikas healing spell is that yeah Yoshikas healing spell, very bad, don't do this again

Favourite: Illusionary dominance and basically every Nitori's card Least favourite: Everything from Yoshika

"Which ones I really did not" - This is gonna be Seija's flips right "I hate dodgeing bullets at a diagonal" - me too. UM is Diagnonals the game.

"Now, I know what you're thinking: 'it doesn't look that bad'" Me, shaking and crying:

(warning: I don't remember some spellcard names) I can pinpoint a third of your choices of hated cards to simply skill issue. However, it's justified, because those cards are heavy on rng. and oh boy where do **I** even begin with Junko... yeah, uninteresting boss ones that surprised me the most was Koishi's Super-Ego. I swear, if you asked such question to a random person who cleared SA they would probably respond with either DBDB, Cat's walk, Needles, UNR or Petaflare, all of them for exact same reason: ass rng. But **Super-Ego**? Koishi did give you a trauma, did she?.. Anyway, here's my favs and hated ones: EoSD: Icicle fall (Easy) / Eternal Meek one teaches you about existence of safespots. Other puts that to the most uninteresting extreme. Sakuya is giving it all to stop you, and yet you sit right below her with that "ok, and" PCB: Resurrection Butterfly / Maiden's Bunraku RB is such a cool "YOU THOUGHT" moment in the game, and serves as an intense climaxing end to the game. Meanwhile Alice midboss I hate because of a stupid bug that sometimes lets her immediately kill you before even activating a laser from her doll. honorable mention: Shikigami spellcards in extra and phantasm; I quite like how Chen simply goes back and forth, while Ran has some calculations in that she locks on your position couple times; both cards reflect the Yakumos' character in quite funny way IN: Hourai Elixir / Astronomical Entombing reasoning is quite the same as for RB: an intense moment at the end of the game to keep you on your toes. Can't really say the same for AE... unless you want to play as Youkai solo, this card is laughably easy and shall not be the "final" card of the FinalA stage. Eirin can't help Kaguya, if all she can do is shoot a single bubble every few seconds, damn it! Honorable mention: Honest Man's Death. Go watch a vid on my channel if you need context for this one. MoF: DVoWG/PWG who would've thought that two rng spellcards would be on complete opposite ends. I like DVoWG as a last spellcard of the game, also I like how on Easy and Normal is is called MoF, which is, well... yeah. But PWG is just a bad rng spellcard. yes, I know that PDH exists, but PWG is a forced timeout that cuts 30k from your PIV. Why? Because why the fuck not lmao. SA: Youkai Polygraph / BoWaP To add on the opinion in the video: if you're too close to the laser, it starts producing bullets at a much higher rate, as if your heartbeat intensified from grazing bullets. kinda cool, right? What's not cool is yet another safespot at someone's legs with the "ok, and" expression. UFO: Pendulum Guard/ Parasol Star Memories I find it a really cool mechanic: boss having a shield; it's not too bad, just route the card a little more, keeps you engaged even in stage 1. "Ok, and" honorable mention: whole Nue fight. After getting all world records in a fangame called "IKUSAAAAAAAN!" I grew a lot on Nue and her attacks. TD: Score Desire Eater / Full Moon Pompokolin Opinion complete opposite on the Yoshika's final, I have. I find it a really damn fun challenge to capture the card on the run as Sanae, I love aggressive gameplay in general. But Mamizou's final... this is the only instance where I hate the card on only *one* specific character, it being Youmu. If you happen to experience powerloss as Youmu, you'll get me, it's so sad to see yourself unable to reach the boss because you played badly in couple cards before. DDC: YGB/ Inchling's thorny path I LOVE YGB, it's one of the coolest cards in the entire series! you control large version of yourself, weaving through pretty sparse danmaku that would be laughably easy in any other situation. But I can't say the same for ITP. It's a card at which I admit to have skill issue. Not even Seija and control shift feels as bad as ugly micrododging that depending on rng could force you into WORSE micrododging just to deal with the boss faster. LoLK: Simple Danmaku for Cornering a Trapped Rat / Pristine Danmaku for Killing a Person oh wow, would you look at that, one card shows why Junko's fun and technical boss, other shows why she's a piece of rng micrododge garbage. If she's in the middle of the screen, somewhat low vertically and/or you didn't kill her before half of the timer has passed - say goodbye to your bombs and lives. honorable mention: Pristine Lunacy I like the way lasers spin and the card isn't as bad as others say. HSiFS: Surprise Spring / Cursed Torrential Rain honesly HSiFS is the game where I have the least amount of care for spellcards, because I never cared to cap them without releases. So yeah, I'm a big Lily White fan, and I find Nemuno's first spell boring, that's it. WBaWC: Linear Creature / Idola Diabolus Another game I'm not too invested in, sadly, primarily because I find it boring. But interestingly, those two cards are what I like and what I hate about WBaWC. Linear creature looks so cool when you bring Otter Hyper into it and start slicing the lasers apart! and it doesn't ruin the spell's difficulty despite you carrying OP hyper into it. But Idola Diabolus is complete opposite: you get spammed with hypers, making the spell really boring... UM: Kodoku Gourmet / Yin-Yang Divine Orbs the Momoyo's survival not only looks cool, but we've been playing touhou bingos with friends, amd one of the tiles needed you to die to a butterfly bullet in UM on a full run. Paint my surprise when I found out that it is the only attack in the game that uses a butterfly bullet. YYDO can go grab Dietz Nuts. Fuck new Yin-Yang orb hitboxes, another Skill Issue card. Bonus: Mushihime-Sama's Resplendent and Restless Life: OMG CAVE REFERENCE

THANK YOU! I CANNOT STAND TAKANE’S GREEN CYCLONE! I can never figure out how to do it without losing a life and I just don’t like Takane’s spell cards in general. (Which is probably why she’s my least favourite in UM) Some others I dislike are Parsee’s Green Eyed Monster, Clownpiece in general (obviously), Mai and Satono in general (fuck those two), Aunn’s Stray Dog’s Walk, Narumi’s Bullet Golem (I don’t like many of HSiFS’s spell cards actually) and All spell cards in UFO (I hate that game too, WBaWC is a billion times better) Some I do like are Misumaru’s Yin Yang Suffocation (I think Misumaru has a really fun boss fight), Seiran’s Speed Strike, Sannyo’s Komakusa of Massacre (I just like Sannyo in general) and all the spell cards WBaWC (I just love the game in general tbh, it’s my favourite Touhou game)

I like how he hates the extra stage theme for UFO so much that he just used kogasa's theme when he was talking about her spellcards in the extra stage lol Anyway some of my favourite spellcards are Koishi's final and Nue's timeout despite both of these cards absolutely destroying so many runs that I wanted to quit (I'm still amazed Asprey captured Nue's timeout first try) but I think they're two of the coolest looking spellcards ZUN has ever made, I also love Raiko's timeout as the notes make their own beat which is something I would love to see ZUN do more of ( Though I understand why ZUN may keep it unique to Raiko as it suits her character.)

As a relative rookie to this franchise who plays on Easy, I don't have a lot of experience, but some of my favorite spell cards are TH13's final card of the game, Miko's "Falling Stars on Divine Spirit Mausoleum" and one of TH17's final boss cards, Keiki's "Linear Shape 'Line-Shaped Sculpting Art'". I like them for the same reason: they look awesome, are fun to capture (or at least try to), and are challenging but not BS. For sure my two least favorite spell cards are TH08's "Spread Sign 'Invisible Full Moon'", owned by Reisen, and my absolute most hated spell card in the franchise, "Turnabout: Reverse Hierarchy", owned by Seija. These two suck for the same reason, they're not very exciting to look at and they are some of the most cheap attacks ever. Reisen's spell _will_ absolutely spawn a bullet on your face and kill you, and it won't even apologize. Seija's attacks that invert the game are well-known memes for a reason; how about we invert both left/right _and_ up/down? Inverting controls in a 1-hit-death bullet hell has got to go down as one of the stupidest design choices for the genre ever.

dunno about my least favorite, but i do know what my favorite spell card of all time is: Mokou's Forgiveness: Honest Man's Death. I used to HATE this card, I just couldn't figure out how it worked at all! Guaranteed deaths and bombs all around. However, when it finally clicked, it CLICKED alright. It's a spell that's both pretty to look at, and satisfying to capture. Nothing quite as fun as passing through a laser before the hitbox spawns in. It looks far more dangerous that it is, and I think it shows one of touhou's gameplay tips off very well: oftentimes, minimal but quick movements are better for dodging than large, sweeping movements.

whaaat i love the kogasa spell