>>50122931
I don't think FW is that difficult, especially with the tools at your disposal, as you said. People don't consider LLS hard because of its death rings, people shouldn't consider FW hard for the pyramid midbosses (MASSIVE stretch for the sake of giving an example, FW has difficult parts besides these two midbosses). Touhou opinions as a whole are a bit of a poisoned well from many factors, whether its the dismissing of newer entries on principle, and this hierarchy of opinions where the top playerbase's opinion is borderline gospel.
Back to FW, I don't really have that good of a read on opinions about it besides seeming more positive than anything since LoLK. It's a mixed bag for me, with it shining the most in its varied stages and the Wonder Stones & combo system encouraging proactive play. It can feel a litttle heavy on the sucker punches especially if you're trying to PoC, a few tells like what PCB Stage 2 does could have helped, but that aside, the variety is much appreciated. On the other hand, there is a lot of missed potential in the stones, the balancing of shot types, and the game's lack of incentive to switch away from their favorite build is unfortunate. Even UM which has clearly broken cards & useless ones at least had characters different enough to justify experimenting. Sakuya's DPS made her a great fit for centipede builds, Sanae's more for bomb cheese.
I can't speak for other places but there seems to have been, in my eyes, a fairly big shift on opinions about HSiFS. I see a lot more positivity about it these days. I think it shines in player expression with the season releases and the only scoring for extends system in the series that isn't braindead easy to get everything for. Yes, sometimes, there is a spell or two that are just "lol I press season release and I win" but I think summing up the game to that is very reductive.