As someone who plays DanKagu casually, it's actually very fun. I may be biased, as I do enjoy mobile rhythm games, but DanKagu is definitely alot less p2w compared to Lost Word.
Compared to Bandori, DanKagu doesn't make you use your boosts. Meaning, you can play for an infinite amount of time. Of course, If you don't boost you'll get next to nothing, but if you only really care about full combos and stuff that's not a problem. Boosts also don't affect how many daily fragments you get, or the rewards you get from completing what I assume are "Goals" of sorts for songs (I don't know Japanese, but the stuff you get for full comboing a song or getting a certain rank). Meaning, even if you don't use any of your boosts you still get the full amount of items you would normally get from those.
The... Gacha rates aren't very good from my experience, But I don't usually have good luck with those things so I do have some sort of bias. You don't really NEED cards however, as they're really just there to boost your score or restore health. They are also alot less generous with rainbow crystals (or whatever they're called, the things you use to pull for cards). Then again, it would probably help to do the overworld stuff (i don't know what it's called but you just collect materials and build areas from Touhou like the Hakurei Shrine and stuff).
Still, DanKagu's great if you just want to play casually. Hopefully they do get a global release though.
I suppose in a way, yes. The only gatcha you have is the one for cards, and that's about it. Those cards, besides allowing you to get better scores and songs and stuff, aren't really necessary. You also have heroines as well, which you get fragments to level up. These fragments are either created with some rainbow looking puzzle piece, or received through things like the daily fragments you get for songs and events. The gacha system is still prevalent, but not as much as Lost Word. There probably is a power creep with cards, but honestly it's not noticeable unless you're into like, getting top scores and leaderboards for events.
