YMMV / Touhou Seirensen ~ Undefined Fantastic Object

• Fan Nickname: Nue's Ball of Light Transformation, which acts as the midboss of Stages 4 and 6, has been fittingly named "Nueball" by fans.
• Goddamned Boss: Nue as the Stage 4 midboss. Her patterns aren't very difficult, but if you do get hit, she will drop a bomb item instead of a 1-Up item, causing many players to find her more stressful and annoying than she would otherwise be.
• Good Bad Bugs: Marisa-A. At max power, each of her lasers has more damage when unfocused than when focused to compensate for how far apart they spread out while unfocused. However, because damage is not recalculated when you focus or unfocus, you can start shooting while unfocused, wait at least a split-second and then focus, and the lasers will retain their increased unfocus damage while focused, until you stop shooting. With this glitch, Marisa-A becomes the highest damage shot type in the game, surpassing even Reimu-A.
• It Was His Sled: Nue's identity isn't revealed until the Extra Stage, as she only appears in her Ball of Light Transformation during the main story. However, due to how ubiquitous she quickly became both in fandom and in the series itself, even reappearing in the next main series game, everyone knows about her already when first going into the game.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Marisa-B just isn't very good at anything. Her damage output is pitifully low, her bomb is too short and doesn't even have invincible frames right after it ends, her gimmick of shooting backwards is not that useful, and while her shot has wide range, its stage utility is held back by its own low damage, and Sanae-B does it better anyway due to her Splash Damage. And since it's a Marisa shot type, you also have to deal with the large hitbox this game gave her.
  • While Reimu-B and Sanae-A are okay in the main story, they're often considered subpar in the Extra Stage. Not only is Kogasa an exceptionally difficult Extra Stage midboss against whom higher damage shot types like Reimu-A and Marisa-A fare better, but homing shots actually work against you during the fight with Nue, where in her UFO summoning spells, of which she has four, your homing shots will prioritize going after the UFOs instead of hitting the boss, making those spells more of a pain to get through.
• Memetic Loser: Shou is notable for being one of the most unfortunate characters in the series. Not only did the fandom latch on to her losing her pagoda to the point her being a klutz became her defining trait in the fandom, but as the years went on she became extremely Out of Focus among both the Myouren Temple Cast Herd and other stage 5 bosses. This came to a head with Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost making Nazrin and Orin playable, the former leaving Shou as one of only two members of her Cast Herd (the other being the still more prominent Nue) to remain unplayable while the latter made her the only Windows-era stage 5 boss up through Seija to remain unplayable.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Blue UFOs offer virtually no benefit in strictly survival playthroughs (besides clearing bullets when destroyed, which all summoned UFOs do) and are only useful in scoring. However, it is common by the end of Stage 6 to only have blue tokens left in the field, which led to survival players summoning the "Blue UFO For Good Luck".
  • Ichirin's nonspells are very easy, but her Spell Cards are tough. However, said Spell Cards are also effectively carried out by Unzan, which led to the meme that he's the real boss while "Ichirin is just Unzan's hitbox".
• Scrappy Mechanic: This game heralds the return of more classic features, such as the separate bomb bar and character-unique spell cards, but the UFO mechanic for this game proves annoying to many players, especially since using said mechanic is the only really effective way to gain more power, bombs, points, and lives. Some enemies will release a small UFO when killed, and gathering three small UFOs of specific colors will summon a big one, which then drops resources when destroyed. But these things will bounce all over the battlefield, making collecting them a pain in later stages. Further, there are color-changing UFOs which can change color just before you collect it, which is very annoying because the unwanted UFO will stay in your UFO line until you either use it for a big UFO you don't care about, or pick up three more of the color you actually wanted.
• Signature Scene: Great Magic "Devil's Recitation", Byakuren's fourth spell. Many fans consider it one of the most beautiful patterns in the series, and its striking resemblance to Shinki's penultimate phase from Mystic Square has only added to its status as iconic.
• That One Attack: As this is arguably the hardest game in the franchise, it shares a page with the rest of the series.
• That One Boss: Given the game's difficulty, it shares a page with the rest of the series.

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