Actually you can Auto Collect in IN, it just depends on the character (if you're the Witch team, Marisa already auto collects; the rest of the teams require you to focus to make it work). It's not 100% the same but it still works just as well.
I agree that IN and MoF are pretty easy compared to EoSD. That's pretty much why I think that if you can get EoSD down now; you won't have to worry about going back to it when you go to the other games, and also if you can get EoSD then the next few games should be a cinch. That's just my opinion though.
I know, I was just being nitpicky, I'm sorry.
And I absolutely agree about what you're saying here (though I find PCB even easier than IN but I have HUGE problems with Marisa and Kaguya that are born from my irrational fear of tons of multi colored bullets, the fourth stage of PCB scared me to death as well but I eventually learned how to deal with it), but still I find EoSD really fascinating, both for its simple mechanics and the OST and the cast, they may be the most iconic of the whole serie.
Well scoring is pretty important for surviving since you get extra lives every 20 million points and each life comes with 3 bombs. But yeah I think I'll just stick it out.
I'm anticipating getting to IN though, seems like it has some pretty cool systems.
Mh according to the wiki an extend is granted at 10, 20, 40, and 60 million points, and if I remember correctly it's not really that hard to hit the 60 million mark if you play moderately well, at least in Normal. No need to do strange things like mad grazing, milking the boss attacks or timing the killing blow just to maximize the number of bullets on screen.
Though I was talking about the games after EoSD, where the scoring mechanics can be largely ignored if you just aim for survival (PCB, MoF) or you just need to know a tiny subset of them (IN), and the only game that tie scores to extends is MoF.
I'm just saying that when trying to do a 1cc it's better to focus on staying alive and aiming for the safest spot than trying to maximize your score and taking risks, the games are made in such a way that they don't penalize you if you're just trying to play safe.