Forgive me for quoting a months old post but I'd like to chime in on this as an SRW player as well
For starters, you have spellcards that make every boss fight a time attack (this tends not to matter in newer SRW games since you can dish out 200k-300k hp across 1 or 2 turns).
Post-moves are also King in GST because of Danmaku fields and Focus movement. Setting up your positions in SRW is piss easy when every unit is packing 6-8 movement, but here we're talking about 2-3 spaces, while attacks remain just as large in scope, with bosses usually being able to target 8 panels around them. It's ridiculously painful trying to use medics and resupply in the middle of a boss fight unless you use SCs because you can't easily move units in and out of the battle lines, same goes for Mystia's buffs, which I've found extremely useful but also put her in incredible danger even with a support defender. Also, even on normal it seems like supers have it really rough in Ei, as most bosses will deal somewhere in the range of 3000+ unless you cast Guard which always feels excessive in SP cost.
Someone said under me too, you'll usually have to sink SP for both strike and alert and that's just too much for bosses with 3 or more spellcards. If you want to pop Valor and its ridiculous cost (Zeal is even worse, since you pay for 2x the Alert, EN on top of 90 or 100 SP or whatever) you're just burning yourself out twice as fast. GST's early game (or rather, GST Kou) is absolute hell because of the lack of damage on everyone's part, low SP from being low level nor having their SCs, and for some fucking reason there's no resupplier, it makes every fight a war of attrition, Power gains also working like Classic SRW Will did too.
I've found Malice cannon to be... okay? for it's EN cost, especially considering Marisa and her ZZ level EN consumption, I didn't use Alice on my team though but maybe I will when I do a fresh playthrough of the game all the way starting from GST Kou, as much as I don't want to play Kou. Meanwhile, Reimu+Marisa's Rampage Ghost is actually heartbreaking on so many levels, though as an Ammo attack it's great for Marisa... but that range is just... ugh.
In any case, I agree with you, even if the closest I've played to classic SRW was SRW D and bits of Alpha Gaiden.
You consider it from the point of view of the SRW-player. We can compare a series MasouKishin with @series, but why? They have different nuances, even Banpresto adds some exclusive nuance/skill for the new part within the same series.
The GSW is almost no bonus conditions for the passage of the stage in the allotted time (in SRW this overwhelming condition) so that the range of action is not as important, you still think of a better enemy killing to create a favorable situation. Unlike other games are much more planning than direct rush, you need to first take a position around the boss, you can not just done him 1-2 round, if you play Hard but not Normal.
Set SP cost assumes that you are more likely to avoid the damage is Real-type and bet on them, graze expects receive damage in either case. Super-type somewhat weak here, I think they are designed to cover more than (1/2 really small)
The only controversial decision the developers I said to myself: AI on Hard begins to ignore characters with 0% hit chance. I understand that artillery units in all the series trying safely to attack (if they can), but behave passively - unnecessary complication.
