Best Bullet Hell/Danmaku and why?

I’ve gotten myself stuck in a rabbit-hole of Touhou recently, I’ve been playing the games, jamming to the eurobeat, and even buying the fumos.

Which lead me to thinking….
Whats the best Bullet Hell/Danmaku game?
I haven’t played enough of them to really definitively know which game deserves the title of THE BEST

but if you think you know, lemme know, y’know?

Treasure's Radiant Silvergun and it's followup Ikaruga are some of the best bullet hell games you can play. Most of the games by Cave like the DonPachi series are good. Cave specializes in good bullet hell games. Capcom's 1900 series from the classic 1942 all the way up to 19XX are good. The Strikers series which is a different take on those games are good too. Speaking of Capcom, there is the Giga Wing series and Mars Matrix, very good bullet hell games. Progear another excellent game by Capcom. Neo-Geo's Ghost Pilots, which is their very good version of the 1900 games are good. The Darius series, especially the latest one. And of course the recent Returnal if you have a PS5 is a great modern, third person take on that concept. But it is a Rouge-like if that is a problem for you. Finally, the Raiden series, are really good, specially since they are still making new games in that series. Raiden V, is their latest.

Cave's shmups are generally great, with some exceptions. My favorite is Espgaluda II, which has great bullet patterns and pacing, cool mechanics (a bullet-slowing system that can be used to get out of tight spots but makes the bullets faster if you overdo it, and that can be used to spawn even more bullets if you want to go for a high score -- the scoring system is a bit complicated but there's a good explanation in the strategy subforum on the Shmups Forum) and fantastic aesthetics (gorgeous medieval/fantasy-themed sci-fi world where you fight superpowered people, tanks, mechanical dragons, ships propelled by energy wings and more while flying across war-torn towns, massive battleships, castles that reach into the sky etc., all accompanied by an energetic psytrance soundtrack).

I kinda went down the rabbit hole of this genre over the past couple years, I think it was mainly of the combination of a lot of Cave games getting re-releases (many by M2, which feels like the gold standard) and the Switch having a ton of games of this type. My previous experiences before that mainly amounted to playing a ton of Ikaruga on the Gamecube and Radiant Silvergun on Xbox.

I definitely can't tell you the best one, as I don't think I am a genre expert by any means, haha. I wish I had maybe a slightly better vocabulary for discussing the mechanics. I'll usually play a game for a bit just to try it out and get a handle on it, and then graduate to frantically Googling how some of the scoring systems and mechanics work when I don't find them super obvious.

But here's some I played recently that I enjoyed the most:

• Danmaku Unlimited 3: I know this isn't the only game to have a "Graze" system where you incur benefits by letting bullets get super close, but I really like the implementation here, and the bullet patterns support the mechanic pretty well.
• ESP Ra. De. : This is definitely my favorite of the recent Cave re-releases, this game rules.
• Crimzon Clover: World Explosion: This is not a Cave game, but is definitely inspired by it. If I had to pick a favorite shmup at the moment, it miiiight be this game. Super well made, easy to identify things on screen even thought it gets super hectic. great music. The big mechanic is something called the Break system which is very good at making you feel very powerful.
• A ton of Darius games got re-releases lately, I really enjoy G Darius and Darius Gaiden.
• Rolling Gunner: I think this is only on Switch at the moment, I really like this one though. It's a horizontal shooter where the main hook is controlling the direction that your gun shoots (e.g., locking it into place or not). I think it was designed by a former Cave employee.
• Natsuki Chronicles: This is another off the beaten path horizontal shooter I don't see mentioned at all but I really liked. It actually has a full fledged story mode where you unlock and upgrade a TON of weapons and ship customizations as you play. Another very neat thing is that all the bullets get their trajectories painted (And they pop more on the screen as the danger increases). It sounds like it would be info overload, but it is super well implemented and quite readable (and you can also just turn it off if you want, but I like the feature).

I'm playing Dangun Feveron (a Cave game that got an M2 port) and Deathsmiles I&II at the moment, they both seem pretty good. Dangun has a very goofy disco theme that I am into.

@icemael: Espgaluda 2 is like the only one of these types of games I have felt was just way too hard and overwhelming for me. Not sure if I wasn't utilizing some mechanics correctly or what. Even like halfway through the game, there were just...too many bullets.

@beard_of_zeus: I was trying to remember Deathsmiles, but yeah those magic girl shootemups are excellent and available on PC.

@beard_of_zeus: Yeah, it's a difficult game. It's been a while since I played it but I don't think I ever got further than the stage 4 boss. But I had an absolute blast every time!

@icemael: Okay, that makes me feel better at least lol

I was inspired to play some Crimson Clover this morning after mentioning it, yeah that game rules. It is somehow incredibly manic and totally manageable at the same time. I also played the Arrange mode for the first time and it is pretty interesting. The difficulty seems halfway between the novice and Arcade modes, but it also grafts a Gradius-like powerup mechanic onto the game where you have a changing row of upgrades to choose from.