Interesting points. I guess it's mostly a question of what you're used to: I'd already mostly got the hang of the timing of the old "border of life and death" mechanic, so the added visual cues have never been of much use to me, and the fact that last spells use two bombs at once doesn't seem worth the increased damage.supersupersuperguy said:
What you say about the versatility of the teams also made me realise that I've only really been considering bosses. In terms of the actual stages, IN's 4 & 5 were relatively mild; (especially given how nightmarish PCB's 4 was) so much so that the advantage of having two dramatically different shot types was something that never really occurred to me- I tend to keep the shift key held down for pretty much the entire duration of the boss fights, and they were what I was really having to focus on (pun not intended). Well, that and I've been almost exclusively playing as Team Scarlet: Remilia's incredibly useful familiar combined with her high focused speed means that the only reason I ever switch to Sakuya is to collect the prizes.
As for Keine, the fact that she has a wider array of tricks up her sleeve (like aimed clusters of oversized projectiles and criss-crossing patterns of lasers backed up by waves of bullets) in addition to non-spellcard patterns that arguably rival Meiling and Alice's last couple of attacks makes it seem like she is at least intended to be harder. It certainly worked on me, but then I could be in the minority for all I know.
