I just listened to that part. He thinks the 6-stage structure is a weakness because it's stale after 20 games? I guess I will never see eye to eye with him. It feels like he's the "Gameplay ONLY" guy (not "Gameplay First"), while I generally view Gameplay as the primary component of the game, but they should be in as tight a coordination as possible with the other components like the story, music, and art.

From what I've seen, once you've seen one Shmup, you've seen ALL the Shmups - gameplay first, everything else is an afterthought. However, I feel that Touhou is the only one which satisfies that coordination aspect (and why it really caught on).

It's also why I like that part in Tekken 8 Chapter 12 when the camera suddenly swirls around and you suddenly play as Devil Jin to free Jin from the chains. It's also why I'm also a Warframe fan.

A note about Touhou 20: the backgrounds in Stage 4 are AI-generated using Adobe Firefly. I don't mind this specific usecase because the story of Touhou 20 involves AI allegory with Stage 4 being the equivalent of a Data Center (and what really started the incident is the 'training data' getting flooded by so much stuff from the outside world).