Labyrinth of Touhou 2. Disclaimer that I've only been as far up as Floor 17, so it's only covering most of the maingame, things may change at 19-20.
Reimu Hakurei: Reimu very much fills the role she did in LoT1. That is to say, while she can contribute damage early on (and the ability to hit both defenses helps), her main role later into the game is to make sure the party does not god damned die to the next oncoming full-party nuke the boss is inevitably leveling their way. She can also help protect you from Spirit damage in particular, reducing it for the whole party by up to 30%. Between the best multitarget healing in the game and the partywide defense buff, I'm giving her a solid 8/10. It's overkill at times, but god damn is it nice to be handed the good full-party heal.
Marisa Kirisame: Marisa, on the other hand, is very much the definition of an earlygame unit who falls off later. It's not just that she's a mono-Mystic character, since she gets some ways to work around that like Sheer Force, but that she also has no access to defense-piercing, something that is very necessary in the later game with the flood of enemies who have significantly high Mind. Master Spark is big and impressive, but it falls off somewhere around Floor 9, due to that comparably lacking defense penetration. She's fast, at least, but not much else, and she falls off a damn cliff. I give her a solid 5/10.
Rinnosuke Morichika: It's not really fair to judge Rinnosuke by the metric of other characters; on his own, he has a rainbow buff and a small heal. His real benefit once you start getting party members is to hang in the back and give you increased money and item drop rates, and he is...convenient. He also gets better stat boosts than anyone else, natively, and this can lead to some optimization with subclasses, possibly, but it's going to be a hell of a time getting there. He pulls double duty on money and items, and the former absolutely helps as you build characters up. Using one of the eight reserve slots on him during exploration isn't that much of a hassle, but kick his ass out the second a bossfight comes up. 6/10.
Keine Kamishirasawa: Keine...is serviceable starting out, being able to hit both defenses of an enemy group. In a bossfight, though, she is almost always guaranteed to be in the role of buffer, since she lacks anything in her skillset with any real punch. Lowish delays help, though, and she's got the best party-wide attack buffing in the entire game, so I don't have problems there. Plus Disk tries to give her more offensive functionality when she gets done buffing with History Accumulation, but you need absolutely stupid amounts of SP to actually max it out, and it's not as much of a fix on its own. Still feels like a good 6.5/10.
Momiji Inubashiri: Momiji is your first tank, with a bent on speed and offensive support. She's got solid attack stats for a tank, and the best raw defense in the game. The key here being raw; she needs help to buff it, and...the farther in you get, the more her set of passives wears on her. She gets a strong passive accuracy buff, species advantage versus flyers, and the ability to ignore buffs, alongside being able to act immediately upon being swapped in. However, Floor 12 is roughly the last place she's useful, and she falls off sharply after that, between a flood of magic-focused bosses and no real way to keep up. A pity because I really do like her design. 5/10
Youmu Konpaku: Youmu is...a bit confused in her build. She doesn't know whether she wants to be a bulky attacker or a hit-and-run specialist, and her kit seems to fight itself. Dexterity, Desperation, and Regen read as her wanting to stay in, while Meikyo and Sword Spirit support a hit-and-run style. Her costs relative to her MP do not help one bit, though she does have reasonable physical coverage. 5/10, I honestly didn't touch her after I got Yuugi.
Kogasa Tatara: Surprise! Probably your first status specialist, and likely one of the better ones in lategame. Kogasa's whole kit largely is built around Terror; inflicting it and abusing enemies who've been hit with it. Sheer Force helps a lot for that, and she gets sustain between Troubled Forgotten Item and the Umbrella skills from Plus Disk. She has to pick one, but it's solid. Sheer Force also means she is an extremely solid pick for the Toxicologist subclass, since cutting enemy resists by a third can lead to some magic, and the extra skills she gets there all add statuses she doesn't get. 6/10 normally, I can see her jumping up to 7/10 with Toxicologist.
Rumia: I'm going to be brutally honest. Rumia feels like she absolutely stomps Marisa's ass in single-target nuking, and this is in spite of having generally worse stats across the board. Moonlight Ray is way too good of a spell for its cost and delay, to the point that Rumia easily keeps pace with one of our main heroines despite being so much farther behind. Her other two spells are situational, but they're situations that come up more and more as the game goes on; Dark Side of the Moon is one of a rare few true ITD spells - for the same cost as Moonlight Ray, even - and Demarcation is a multitarget heal that trades potency for clearing debuffs. Though frankly, it being a multitarget heal at all is impressive in its own right. Youkai's Knowledge and Piercing Attack only seal the deal for her, especially in the first half. 6.5/10, if she had better stats she'd easily be hitting an 8/10.
Cirno: Cirno only really has one job. She has always only had one job. It is, however, a very good job: speed debuffing. As anybody here knows, speed manipulation is king, and Cirno is extremely good at kneecapping an enemy's speed. She...also does cold damage but off of ho-hum stats and largely unremarkable formulas. She's honestly not even expected to do anything after she's done her job; it shows, too. She even has a trait that lets her just place an unresistable speed debuff on everyone when she gets killed. And she will get killed. I don't even think the flood of cold-weak enemies in floors 13-15 really help her case for damage, you have better options for cold damage at that point, but her speed debuffing is second to none. 6/10.
Minoriko Aki: Minoriko is best described as Reimu-Lite. She's got offensive spells of two varieties, a heal, and a defense buff. Just that the former are Nature-element rather than Spirit, and her buffs and healing are single-target. That's not a bad thing, though; she's way more efficient as long as she's not using Warm Colour Harvest, which will bottom her MP out in two uses. Offensively, she's amazing against Komachi, and on floors 4-6, where the vast majority of enemies are weak to Nature element. Offensively, she's better than Reimu in fights where the boss is going to spend most of their time hammering on one person, and she's guaranteed to be your first source of regular Nature damage. And like Reimu, the damage falls off later, but the support doesn't. 7/10
Komachi Onozuka: Komachi has an extremely poor track record in her playable incarnations across, and as someone who unironically mained her in Hisouten, I honestly feel bad for the girl. Thankfully, this may be her best incarnation yet. She retains her sponge tank archetype from LoT1, but the important thing here is that she gets a lot more going for her than a massive bloated HP score. The Shinigami's Work cranks her death rates up to where they're reliable in the vast majority of random encounters (handy for the second half of the game where you start running into enemies that you need piercing or ID to dispose of), Regeneration Ability gives her some more durability in long fights, and Edokko God of Death lets her get some solid hits in in return. Especially if the other guy killed someone else or used an attack with an ID rider. She's never really pivotal to a fight, but she has very seldom been dead weight. I'm giving her a 7/10, easy.
Chen: Chen reprises her role from the original almost perfectly. High speed, near-nonexistent cooldowns, frail as hell, but now taken to further extremes. Chen gets the same Accelerate skill that Momiji possesses, and can leverage it better courtesy of Kimon only having 500 delay and Flight of Idaten having 1200. Yakumo Clan means that when Ran and Yukari join in, she gets up to a 32% bonus. And lastly, Instant Attack lets her instantly act when she is brought out of the backline, allowing the assault to continue faster and longer. She still is largely dependent on Kimontonkou for defense penetration given her poor attack stat, which means she struggles more and more as she gets later in. You generally need to know which fights to bring her in for. 6/10.
Nitori Kawashiro: Nitori on the surface is terrible outside of Super Scope 3D having some of the highest stat mods in the game, even after being nerfed in Plus Disk. This also doesn't matter because Maintenance is the single best passive skill in the game. Double stat bonuses from all equipment means she is able to punch well above her weight class, and she only gets stronger the further in you get. I honestly have nothing else I feel I need to say. Easy 8/10.
Parsee Mizuhashi: Parsee's effectiveness is practically binary in nature. If she's unable to land Terror, she's only going to be mediocre at best. If, and if she can, however, Jealousy of Kind and Lovely does absolutely preposterous damage output, and if you can land it on multiple targets, you can see a screen full of 4-5 digit numbers. Parsee also has a large number of damage buffs; Final Blow lets her hit targets afflicted with Terror even harder, Jealousy Manipulation lets her hard-counter enemy debuffers or follow up your own debuffing even harder, and Flames of Jealousy is a strong Dark damage boost. I think the dev realized this, too, because everything worth landing Terror on becomes an absolute nightmare to land Terror on, to the point that you may as well not try unless you're running both Reisen and Kogasa to dedicate your entire party to landing Terror. And if that doesn't happen, then she instead runs into massive walls of Dark resist. I absolutely enjoy her, she has been good, but with how she falls off, unless she catches back up in the very endgame I can't in good faith give her more than a 5/10.
Wriggle Nightbug: Wriggle is a lot like Cirno, a one-trick pony. That trick, in this case, being poison. And to be fair, that poison is accurate and long-lasting. Comet on Earth, her main infliction skill, inflicts 40,000 ticks of poison. This is a lot. Unfortunately, this is about all she can do, and I see poison come up as an option less and less as the game goes on. Poison can't kill and Wriggle's own attack stats are terrible. She gets poison and paralysis counters as well, and you could make a case for her tricks letting her synergize with Remilia, but that's stretching. I have to give her a 4/10.
Kaguya Houraisan: Hooo boy. Kaguya is tough to place because you have two places where you could get her, as with the next entry, and it is a rather sadistic choice. Kaguya has one major trick up her sleeve compared to any other mages, and only one: Royal People of the Moon. In exchange for a 75% chance to lose 1 MP a turn, she gets the ability to ignore 90% of her targets' defenses in her spells. This is more notable the later in you get, where more and more magically hard targets pop up, especially in fights. The drawbacks to her are not minor, though. She's slow, she's frail (even with good elemental affinities all around), and her MP recovery is some of the worst in the game, meaning that if someone pops her with Destroy Magic (or god forbid, the spell formerly known as Djinn Storm), she is useless for the rest of the fight. Her magic comes in three varieties but her biggest spell is Spirit element, though 316.84% MAG vs. 8.9% MND is a pretty big nuke. There's only a couple of targets this is relevant for before F10, however. I'm going to give her a 6.5/10.
Fujiwara no Mokou: Probably the better choice of the two feuding girls from IN, Mokou is at first glance a nondescript but competent attacker. This is an easy mistake to make, as Resurrection lets her have durability that is completely disconnected from her HP score. It has, at max rank, a 90% chance to proc every time her HP hits 0 and only costs 5 TP. And that TP score can go well over 30, giving her something along the lines of seven lives. Keep her from getting knocked back down when she gets up, and she can regen 20% max HP a turn. She's as good at fire damage as Utsuho down to having Blazing, so no need to run the two at the same time. The guts-tanking is still so good that it can absolutely trivialize a hilarious number of finishers and boss gimmicks, and the majority of things on floors 7-9 are weak to Fire or Wind. 8/10, easy.
Aya Shameimaru: oh holy fucking shit what. No, really. Aya is unfairly good here for an obvious reason. Gensokyo's Fastest Lessons gives her a guaranteed free turn at the start of the fight. She's already one of the fastest in the game, so the majority of fights start with her just triple-turning because she popped anything other than Divine Grandson's Advent and so has her delay anywhere from 5400 to 7500 rather than the 5000 that all the plebs have to contend with. Speaking of, Sarutahiko's Guidance is a haste spell on an extremely short cooldown, and Divine Grandson's Advent is Quick. She could do no damage and still be stupidly good off of this, but no, she actually can do okay damage as well, while being faster than Chen. 9/10, easily the most useful character in the game. Only reason I can't give her higher is because she can't entirely carry the party throughout the game, but I am finding very, very few reasons to not let her have one of your slots.
Mystia Lorelei: So...I've honestly never tried using her. You'll likely get her late in the second stratum unless you're good at taking down FOEs as they come in the earlygame, and by then her numbers come off as...okay. Her passives largely revolve around Silence, but her one Silence inflictor has 9500 delay, even with a not terrible MP cost. She comes off as a generalized status-slinger, which can be useful in and of itself at least, and Paralysis is always nice to have around in Poison Moth's Dark Dance. She does okayish damage, but being able to throw around three ailments at respectable rates is her real boon. Also she gets Instant Attack for the shenanigans related to that. 6/10, one of these should be able to stick most of the time.
Kasen Ibaraki: It takes twelve wipes to recruit her, so you are likely getting her probably somewhere within the second stratum. Saying that, it's honestly worth pancaking yourself on the Floor 2 FOE or something twelve times just to recruit her faster. She's jacked in general. Solid stats all around, good attacks that hit reasonably hard and have good infliction rates across three elements and two statuses, and a self-buff that is a slightly worse Grand Patriot's Elixir make her an absolute monster to bring along, and she even scales reasonably well, albeit at the cost of having less than great MP recovery compared to how quickly she burns through it. Also her passives are kind of awkward and scattershot outside of Fighting Spirit, I guess that's an issue. If I have to nitpick her active set, it'd be that Echo of the Nine Forest Gods is saddled with compensation for multitarget when Kasen's a bossfighter like the rest of the oni. Still worth a 7.5/10.
Nazrin: I won't hold the event reqs involving her against her (that's for someone else). I can, however, say that I really don't like her setup. Nazrin is designed for a very specific type of farming where instead of sitting in the backline like Rinnosuke, she is meant to be out in front. But she's geared with nothing but single target spells that I have found often struggled to kill what they hit. Even if they do, she's burning through a lot of MP in short order if you get Extra Steps because the spells are all single-target, and she doesn't really have much outside of that. 4/10 and I feel like I'm being nice. At least Wriggle had a hypothetical use in bossfights.
Hina Kagiyama: Hina is extremely gimmicky. But god damn, that gimmick can pay off against the right targets or with the right party. Whatever you do, don't get her any debuff resist. She wants to get all of that misfortune for herself, after she spreads it herself with Misfortune God's Biorhythm. So she can then turn around and either ride the high of treating them as buffs of double magnitude, or use them to fuel Pain Flow for more utterly preposterous damage. Get party members who either are resistant to debuffs, or don't care about them in one way or another, and she can pull some absolute bullshit - and debuffs are far less often resisted than other status. I have trouble fitting her into parties but I absolutely respect the strats she can pull off in the best way. 7/10.
Rin Kaenbyou: I've tried to use her. I really have. And to my frustration, Rin has only really felt "okay" in practice. Semi-composite attacker with good speed and the ability to leverage Extra Attack (which is notable; EA can proc multiple times on the same action since it checks not only for the initiating attack, but for every extra attack procced by it), but she basically needs Extra Attack for any of the rider effects on her skills to reliably proc against neutral, nevermind actual resists. She's very much an auxiliary attacker in practice, meant to focus down enemies who've been statused or otherwise handle formation juggling. You could probably get more out of her with her cast synergy skill, since those delays running at a 32% stat bonus can lead to some good stuff, but her specific synergy gets...awkward. More on that later. 5/10, though i may be rating her low. May need a second run to really get a good viewpoint on her.
Utsuho Reiuji: Okuu here is, in short, the mage for people who don't want to actually care about elements. Utsuho gets Sheer Force alongside some Kaguya-level near-ITD in Giga Flare, which means she is always getting something out of that spell. And compared to Kaguya, she packs better bulk and speed. Definitely a winning trade. And if you didn't take Mokou, she's going to be your first major fire-using character, which means she performs amazingly in stratum 3. Fire damage comes and goes with the stratum, but Giga Flare is evergreen. Intense Nuclear Reaction and Hell's Tokamak have their sub-uses (self-buffing with the former, MND debuffing with the latter), but in general she is there to nuke, and there's enough resistant bosses going forward that I can appreciate this. 7/10
Satori Komeiji: Satori will take a bit to wrap one's head around. Her gimmick is unique, as she's got almost a mime-style build going on. Spellcard Recollection is the core of her kit, and it lets her use any other native spell (read: not subclass) that any of her allies possesses. The trap here is to look at that, look at the ATK/MAG split, and try to build her at being able to do anything. Don't do that. Instead, you want to build her based on the party you're running, in two regards. First of all, Trauma Recollection is a straight up boost to hitting weaknesses that stacks with the element boosters. If you're on a second attempt at a boss or otherwise know what you're up against, bring her in and optimize her the best you can do what your desired attacker is doing, she'll behave as a force multiplier. The second is to look at all those high-powered spells running off of poor stats, or by individuals who won't have the offenses to back it up due to role. Moonlight Ray, Mountain Breaker, and World Creation Press are all easy routes to high damage with her, as are the likes of Chen's skillset. Or grabbing high-power MAG attacks off of physical attackers who aren't expected to build MAG. Or Jealousy of Kind and Lovely running off of better ATK. The point is, Satori is a remarkable force multiplier for your party. Don't try to make her do everything, just make her do one thing well. 7/10.
Yuugi Hoshiguma: I'll spare the gushing, since Yuugi is probably one of my favorite Touhou characters to begin with. Really, there's not much that needs to be said though. Second highest ATK in the entire cast. Enough bulk to take hits. Knockout in Three Steps has one of the best ATK to DEF ratios even with the problems it has. Between its bases, Yuugi's own raw stats, and her passive skills. Adamant Helix gives her a scaling damage bonus up to 66% based on her lost HP (have fun with punishing any HP-to-1 attacks), Ruinous Super Strength is a flat-out 30% physical damage boost, and Last Fortress is amazing as long as you keep her alive through a bossfight where everyone else is dropping. Hell, Supernatural Phenomenon hitting weakness will crush just about as hard as Ki3S under the right circumstances. One of the best attackers in the game if you ask me, the sheer damage she puts out is disgusting, even if she starts having some more survivability problems later on because of the flood of magic-oriented bosses. 8/10, easily.
Hong Meiling: People who are familiar with LoT1 are probably expecting her to be a tank. And to an extent some of her traits do play into that; between Natural and Gatekeeper's Duty. But then you look into things like Brilliant Light Gem being some Chen-level bullshit, or how Mountain Breaker is basically Knockout in Three Steps with only 5200 delay instead of 10000, an accuracy bonus rather than a penalty, and less than half the cost. An offensively-built Meiling is a thing of absolute nightmares. And even if you don't, Satori can just yank those spells for herself because they have similar ATK values and only one of the two is going to be expected to tank in any capacity. I can't really give her any less than an 8/10.
Alice Margatroid: I'm docking her a point for how god damned infuriating her recruitment bossfight is. Alice isn't the greatest when it comes to raw magical power, but she's very much a finesse pick. This is the first character since Reimu we've had who can reliably hit both defenses with the same offensive stat, which means that there is very little she can't do. Hell, Enhanced Doll Mobility and Doll Guard give her even more bullshit all around. 6.5/10.
Patchouli Knowledge: Patch is a study of extremes. Best magic stat in the game, a whole array of wide-area nukes running off of that magic stat. Oh, and Silent Selene. Grand Incantation is something she shares with Reimu that lets those nukes hit even harder, and she can gain extremely high elemental resistance from whichever spell she deigns to cast. Girl of Knowledge and Shade is an improved version of Sheer Force at that. Her downsides? Slow, frail, and can't really do much about high defenses herself if she can't overpower them with a big enough MAG score. Not to my taste, but I imagine there's some people who would enjoy her. Not sure I'd give her more than a 6.5/10 though.
Eirin Yagokoro: Eirin is...what do I even say about her. People of the Moon lets her get some defense penetration at least, but her actual noteworthy skill is Healing Limit Break. Which basically means she is going to be locked to the Healer subclass because her only native heal is a fixed 50% mHP restore. Hourai Elixir at least does also cure all ailments and debuffs, but she needs subclasses to take advantage of her overhealing trait on people not named Komachi, and that's...all that stands out. And Healer's class skill is single-target anyway. I guess she gets debuffs as well, but she's going to be compared to the next entry on that, and she's...not great. Okay, I'll give her that Astronomical Entombing gives the best Heavy status in the game and she's got a competent MAG score, there. Kneejerking 4.5/10, probably 5.5/10 with Healer. I've never really found myself wanting to use her, though.
Reisen Udongein Inaba: Mokou keeps winning. If you pick Mokou on floor 5, you get her on Floor 7 instead of Eirin, and she's honestly better than Eirin in most ways that matter. Higher speed, better costs and delays, and perhaps most important here: Intense Vertigo. This just passively cuts all enemy resistances by 20%, and enables other ailment-users to do their work. Discarder is also a solid debuff infliction option: enemies have split debuff resistances by type, so having the rainbow debuff makes sure something sticks. Intense Vertigo's the real winner here, though, since ailment and debuff resistance come up more often the later in you get. Don't expect too much else out of her, but it's an amazing feature that nobody else gets. Oh yeah, and when she gets the MP to afford it, Grand Patriot's Elixir is still one of the best stat buffs in the game. 6.5/10
Sanae Kochiya: Sanae's probably best seen as a counterpoint to Reimu. Reimu focuses on offensive flexibility across defenses and partywide defensive support, whereas Sanae has slightly better elemental diversity and more powerful single-target support. Honestly, advantage Reimu; while Sanae has Power of the Living God to boost Spirit damage, she's not the main one to be able to take advantage of it; Spirit is not an element generally known for particularly high-power attacks, and by lategame, you generally want to ensure everyone's survivability, rather than go full FGO and crank up one person to the heavens. Still, the rainbow buff is real solid if you can throw it down on someone. 7/10.
Iku Nagae: Holy shit, Iku has a rather comprehensive package going on here. Good speed, Elekiter Dragon Palace hits disgustingly hard, and between Flexibility and her own affinities, she can self-buff without suffering the drawbacks. Those aren't the main draw here, though. Hagoromo Like Sky, one of her passives, is the real draw, and changes her from a Wind-element offensive buffer/defensive debuffer specialist to a Mystic-element blender. Changing her basic attacks from essentially 100% MAG-50% MND to 140% MAG-10% MND is almost unfair, especially with Sorcerer giving the option of jumping that up even further for the paltry cost of 1 MP per attack. Considering basic attacks run off of 3000 delay instead of 5000, Iku will generally proceed to shred everything. Oh, and Magic Counter exists too. Magic damage becomes more common as the game goes on, so you will in fact see this come up a lot. 8/10.
Suika Ibuki: I think it's just a hard and fast rule in LoT that you'll be damn good if you're an oni, and Suika is no exception. She'll drain your money for the first nine floors to get her recruitment items, but she's in fact worth it, particularly in the lategame where she can start tanking through magic attacks reasonably well. Gathering and Dissipating is a lost cause, but Throwing Mt. Togakushi is another strong Nature attack off of deceptively low delay, and Throwing Atlas is one of the strongest Wind attacks in the entire game. Art of Segaki Binding...exists, but it's got a rather vicious status cocktail to delay an enemy while you do setup or recuperate. Free-Spirited Oni is an inverted Adamant Helix based on the target's health than the attacker's, but the two bigger strengths in Suika's kit are Fog Labyrinth and Art of Oni Binding. The latter gives a free chance of Paralysis every time Suika gets a turn, and while the strength is low, the added delays add up. The former is a 20% accuracy and evasion buff for the entire party, and evasion is an extremely valid tactic for lategame survival. Suika's never quite going to hit Yuugi levels of damage, but she doesn't need to. 7.5/10.
Ran Yakumo: Ran here is a general all-rounder, and in a vacuum, presumably a straight upgrade to Keine. Trades defense for speed, better MP economy, three elements available, and Soaring En no Ozuno is a solid option to hit physical defenses with. The buffs are comparable, but while Keine gets a secondary self-buff as of Plus Disk, Ran can instead buff the backline. This is deceptively good, as buffs do *not* decay on backline party members. Even at double cost for the spells and half efficacy for the backliners, this is solid if you can afford the patience to do so. The only thing I can say against her in this is that bosses may not be willing to give her the time to juice everyone up, so you'll probably be running Reimu alongside her to keep the buffing line alive while you prep everyone else to drop nukes. 7/10.
Remilia Scarlet: Remilia is the embodiment of...solving your problems by throwing a giant pile of stats at them. She has precisely one offensive spellcard to her name. Fortunately, Spear the Gungnir is serviceable enough between its speed, power, and accuracy bonus. The real draw to her is that she has extremely high marks in every stat that is not Magic and MP. The latter of which she is fairly efficient on anyway, and the former of which she doesn't use unless you force her to via subclasses. High speed, high defenses in both categories, good ATK, and these all compound with Majesty and its automatic 6% buff to all stats every turn she gets. However, her simplicity is also her problem, as she only has the one spellcard, and is thus mono-physical. Curse of Vlad Tepes is a self-buff that is, unless you bring the likes of Eirin, Sanae, or Meiling along, more of a problem than it's worth. 7/10, you could definitely do much worse.
Sakuya Izayoi: And here...is much worse. Sakuya ate some hell with the Plus Disc's nerfing of Extra Attack, but frankly a lot of her skills are...unimpressive, and the only real use I've largely gotten out of her was clearing out random enemies while exploring. She's not even great at that. Aya outdoes her speed buffing despite only being single-target, and Jack the Ludo Bile is both way overpriced and inefficient for what it is. Don't bother bringing her for bosses. 4.5/10, and that .5 is out of pity because Sakuya doesn't deserve to be put on the same exact rung as Nazrin.
Kanako Yasaka: Floor 10 brings you round two of the Kaguya vs. Mokou choice, albeit without another linked pair, this time between Sanae's two goddesses. And to be quite honest, Kanako is by far the better of the two picks. She's not just tanky for a mage, she is tanky, period. Majesty adds on top of that. Sky Creation means she does monopolize your fourth slot over someone who could probably use the targeting reduction, but it's a 32% damage boost. Like Alice, Kanako targets both defenses with one stat, and has all-around solid spell options; Beautiful Spring like Suiga is one of the stronger Cold spells in the game and it has a fairly short cooldown at that. 7.5/10, definitely one of the best general-use mages out there.
Suwako Moriya: Suwako is a super-frail double-stat attacker. And if this were a different game, she'd be really good within that niche. Unfortunately, Labyrinth of Touhou is a game that rewards hyperspecialization as far as stats go, so Suwako has the option of doing everything terribly, or locking herself out of one half of her skillset (or making Satori use it). She's going to be constrained to a hit-and-run style if she wants to get the most out of her setup considering she gets a 24% damage bonus from being in Slot 1, and I suppose for what it is worth, Froggy Power lets her get extra Nature damage. In practice, though, I'd rather just load up on oni. Moriya's Iron Ring is probably the actual best thing she brings to the table; faster than average delay, and one of the better Paralyzes in the entire game, but paralyze-locking bosses is typically not a common strat. I guess you could use her magic options for trash clearing, but...eh, she hasn't impressed me for the most part. 6/10.
Tenshi Hinanawi: Tenshi is the last proper tank you get, and she takes it to an extreme. Unlike Momiji and Meiling with their more balanced approaches, Mokou throwing extra lives at the problem, and Komachi going all in on HP, Tenshi goes to the extreme and goes high on both DEF and MND, doing her best to re-enact every "No Damage" hit from GBA Fire Emblem. Anything that does punch through will put her down in short order. Fortunately, she does her best to make that difficult; Free from Worldly Thoughts just cuts physical attacks by another 30%, and Enduring Celestial gives her a free 33% DEF and MND buff at the start of battle, no matter where she is in the formation. Contrary to her defensive focus, she has some notable use in her spells, most notably Sword of Hisou, which has a dispel effect boosted to 80% by Sword of Hisou's Owner - the single best counter to when bosses stack buffs, and this happens enough in the following floors to be worth it. World Creation Press, on the other hand, is likely better off grabbed by Satori unless you're building her offensively and working her support with Iku. 7/10 overall.
Flandre Scarlet: Loses two points for recruitment alone: you need 300 BP with all the other SDM characters, 30 FOEs down (which means deliberate backtracking), and 60 achievements to even get to her recruitment fight. Which...is honestly not too bad compared to a couple of the ones who come up. Flandre herself is...a bit of a mean joke in NG if you ask me. Her damage is monstrous, especially running off of her high stats, but it all comes with notable drawbacks; Forbidden Fruit and Laevateinn both eat MP from your other party members as well as reducing their ATB, while Starbow Break instead deletes 40% of Flandre's maximum HP. Smoldering Madness is the one upside she gives the party, giving them an 8% ATK buff whenever she gets a turn, and good luck making Vampiric Wrath work, ever, without her getting reduced into a fine paste. Probably the worst part is just that her elements of choice are of questionable use once you enter the first stratum after she joins. 4/10, though if the final stratum is better about any of these, she may recover comparably.
Yuyuko Saigyouji: Yuyuko takes Komachi's instant death specialization and takes it up to eleven. Reasonably strong magic in Spirit and Dark aside, her real boon is just that her instant death rates start at 33% and go all the way up to 108% base. However, and this is probably a controversial opinion here: I don't think her trades are good for this. Komachi's death is good enough, while she is remarkably bulky and fast. Yuyuko, on the other hand, has to deal with the usual mage problems of being slow and frail. Still, anything without Death immunity will more likely fall than not, and Gelatinous Cubes and the like crumple fairly quickly to ID. Not sure I'd bring her to bossfights unless I really needed strong Spirit magic, 6/10.
Yuuka Kazami: Yuuka is getting two points docked off for her recruitment being obnoxiously byzantine; needing BP from four characters, two of whom are only the most tenuously connected is already nasty enough. Yuuka herself has an impressive statline herself, with high marks in just about every stat except Mind and Speed. While she has three spells, all three of them have their uses (and Flower Shot is perhaps one of the single most economical spells in the game), and the combination of Extra Attack, Majesty, and Encounter with a Strong Foe (which will proc on every instance of Extra Attack as well) means she will punch way higher than her skill bases suggest. However, not only is she slow, but she has the unfortunate luck of being in the part of the game where major bosses either resist magic or nature, leading to her just giving a lackluster performance overall, and she just leaves a feeling of disappointment overall 3.5/10.
Yukari Yakumo: Yukari is...frankly quite difficult to talk about because she is the master of edgecase bullshit and weird shenanigans. Running a Kanako-lite setup statwise, Yukari is bulky and reasonably strong on magic, but slow. She can offer defensive party support if Reimu is busy healing (or just double up on DEF/MND buffs with her, it's literally the same damn spell in practice). She helps mono-focused tanks, well, tank better with Border of Power and Magic if you're willing to sink in the twenty-four skillpoints to use it. She also has a panic button in the form of Yukari's Spiriting Away that instantly gives the rest of the party a turn; strong, but say goodbye to any of her MP. Shikigami Ran Yakumo+ is possibly one of the single strongest spells in the game (576% MAG - 120% DEF), but if you want to actually leverage it you may as well go in on the Yakumo Clan synergy skill; it requires both Ran and Chen up front with her. She's got good elements for where she joins and a defense-piercing option, though, so I think I'll give her a 6.5. She's good, but you have to play to those edgecases.
Byakuren Hijiri: So I know Byakuren's got her fans here but I'm going to have to start out docking her two points for recruitment. One of the four items is based on a random drop (though I did get sufficiently lost in F14 that it dropped anyway) and the other three require a shitload of BP with Nazrin. You know how I feel about Nazrin. Onto Byakuren herself...she's good, but feels geared towards postgame in particular. Her passives are all regen/auto-buffing options that cost 18 SP apiece to juice that stat (or restore HP) by 12% a turn. Majesty on steroids, really. She can build for magic, but frankly it's better to pretend Magic Milky Way is just a debuff spell and focus on ATK with her. And to her credit, Skanda's Legs and Master of the Trichiliocosm are lightning-fast, especially with the speed buff the former gives. Star Sword Apologetics comes with its own debuffs and is a composite. Duplicating Chant...got nerfed in Plus Disk alongside the rest of her kit. She used to be broken, but now is simply good. 5/10
Eiki Shiki, Yamaxanadu: Two points off for recruitment. Komachi is good enough and comes early enough that it's not that hard to get 400 BP with her, but requiring seventy two achievements is a god damned war crime. Shiki's statline plays at wanting to be a hybrid, but as anyone knows at that point in this game, you don't do that. Either build her for crowd-clearing with Trial of the Ten Kings, or Spirit-element single-target ITD with Last Judgment. Wandering Sin is there for the disgusting status cocktail it gives. Cleansed Crystal Mirror does shore up her defenses a bit more than they appear, but Eiki still has mediocre durability and the combination of poor speed and some of the worst spread of delays possible. True ITD off of an actually good attack stat is good at least, but she will need a lot of babysitting. Can't give her more than 4/10 here, sadly.
