I've played this game for something like hundreds of hours outside of steam, so the steam playtime I have for this game is very inaccurate. This game is almost perfect. Almost the only flaw this game has is its oppressive and abusive level of difficulty. Unless you make use of at least some of the tips that I'll provide in a later part of this review, you have only until the 4th or 5th floor before this game starts slapping you so hard that if you don't take the time to learn and make use of mostly every system and mechanic and advantage you can, you will lose hard, and it stays that way for pretty much the entire rest of the game. So please scroll down to a later part of this review to see my tips. Otherwise, dealing with the game's difficulty will require intense and thorough effort that most players will not realistically be willing to put in, and it continues, for pretty much the entire rest of the game, to require intense and thorough effort that most players will not realistically be willing to put in, which makes it even more unrealistic for most players to be willing to put up with it. However, the game is so good that even despite that, I still recommend it. This is almost the only overly difficult game in existence (out of a great many) that is so good that I'm still willing to recommend it despite it being overly difficult. You get, for example, so much content that it's at least twice as long as your average RPG, and probably longer than that considering that I think it lasts for literally hundreds of hours. You get 56 different highly customizable Touhou characters to play as and arrange into a team of 12 characters to take into battle, one that makes them synergize with each other. And as you go along, they get even more and more customizable! The game also runs on only 2 GB RAM quite well and very playably, and it runs flawlessly with 4 GB RAM. (The story and characterization at times leaves something to be desired though, but it's usually not so bad. It's also single player only, and CUBETYPE never bothers to put the game on sale anymore, but it's worth it!) You can deal with the game's oppressive and abusive difficulty much easier if you make use of this advice: 1. Use the best characters: Nitori, Aya, Renko. Put all your best offensive equipment on Nitori and give her the Maintenance skill (in the Learn Skills menu), put all her level up bonuses into Attack, and dump as much gold as you're willing to into increasing her Attack and Speed library levels. Use Aya to make Nitori get more turns (make sure Aya's Divine Grandson's Advent spell is max level in the Learn Skills menu). Use Renko (with her Maintenance skill and Charge spell at max level) to tank and buff your characters. 2. Use all your gems, jewels, and tomes on 1-2 characters, and if you want, training manuals too. The best character to do this to is Nitori, but if you want to you can use them on 1-2 other characters instead of Nitori and the effect will still be OP and there's no problem with it so do this to your most favorite 1-2 characters to make them OP! 3. When possible, instantly kill bosses using Yuyuko. She has the strongest instant kill effect in the game, so there are several different bosses that she can autokill. To maximize her instant kill chances, use Saigyouji Flawless Nirvana (it has the highest instant kill chance out of all her spells), level all of her spells to level 5, equip her with the Dark Determination Main Equip (Yuyuko's boss battle can drop this item), and use Yuyuko with Reisen after making sure Reisen has the Intense Vertigo skill learned. And much later, Reisen gets the Grand Vertigo skill which makes the chances even higher. Use Aya to let Yuyuko get an instant turn right at the start of the battle before the boss can do anything if needed. 4. ASAP, get 12 game overs to unlock Kasen. She's very good and you can get her at any point in the entire game, even before needing to win a single battle on the first floor. 5. ASAP, win 60 battles in a single dungeon dive to get an achievement that will give you a Wash Basin Set (powerful sub equipment). You can get this achievement at basically any point in the game, so you can get this item way before it would normally ever be available. Like say, for example, once you level up enough to adjust to the mobs in floor 2, you will probably be more than strong enough and have more than enough characters to do this by battling at the start of Floor 1 over and over. To make this way quicker and easier and faster, press the S key to make it so your next step will trigger a random encounter for sure. 6. Switch in characters like Chen, Momiji, and/or Mystia who have the Instant Attack skill, and then this skill will give the switched in character a turn instantly, so use that to switch back in the character you just switched out. This will let the character who you switched out and back in act again much sooner than before. Some particularly powerful moves, like Yuugi's Knockout in Three Steps, set the character's ATB/turn gauge to 0 or close to 0 after use, and for example if you use this tactic to switch Yuugi out and back in after she uses that skill, she'll be able to get another turn way quicker than she otherwise could. Use TP-boosting equipment to give the Instant Attack character more TP so they can do it more often. 7. When needed, overlevel. Often, this works well to alleviate the game's difficulty a lot. Whenever you do this, make sure Rinnosuke is in your front row (the 4 characters you take into battle) and make sure he has his Keen-eyed Shop Owner Saga skill maxed so you get more gold, because you're not just overlevelling your characters but you're also getting gold to overlevel their library levels in Patchy's library. Don't play on Hard Mode, it limits how much you can overlevel for a long time, which is a problem. Also, when you get access to the game's lowest floor, immediately get through the maze to get tons of exp and gold for free, and then dump crazy amounts of resources into Kaguya so she can clear the enemies on that floor so you can start grinding there right away with help from Kaguya's synergies and Aya, because the lowest floor is the best grinding spot in the game so once you can grind there you can overlevel a crazy amount very fast. 8. When needed, use the wiki. The game's wiki is very good. 9. If you really need to, let the game run until your playtime reaches 128 hours to get an achievement that gives you an Uruncel Blade, and since you can get this achievement at any point in the game you can get this super powerful equipment way before you normally would, using this achievement. I recommend putting this equipment on Nitori, but you can put it on mostly anyone and it will be very helpful. 10. This game has an unofficial fanmade save editor program. You can find it if you look it up. Use it. (Besides, this game takes WAY TOO LONG to give you some stuff like some of the character unlocks and any of the character awakenings and some of the subclasses, so it's only fair to save edit those in, especially on for example a second playthrough) If you use the save editor, note that you can give your characters all the skills you want by simply sending the character's remaining available skill points as far into the negative as you want, this won't cause you any penalties or problems at all. Cheat engine also works for the game if you rather use that. Don't feel bad for using any or all of these methods as much as you want. In the process, you're just fixing the game's main flaw. Don't listen to any of the mega tryhards who might dislike you for doing this stuff. Keep in mind you can choose how much or how little of my advice to use in order to customize the game's difficulty level to your liking. You don't have to use all my advice, you can just use some of it if you want, and you can just use only the specific parts of my advice that you want.