Kubinashi Recollection

很可愛，很溫馨，很有創意的作品。 解謎環節設計的環環相扣，有些關卡非常吃時機，想高分通關並不容易。

A lovely game that I will probably remember for a long time. Being a fan of puzzle games, and of Touhou, I immediately bought the game after learning about it from Surnist. After completing it, I think the game mostly shines thanks to its mechanics, difficulty and music. On top of the 3 main mechanics related to Sekibanki's head, each of the [spoiler]10[/spoiler] worlds brings one or two new environmental mechanics that is in most cases exclusive to that world, so you get both a variety of puzzles and also no "overdosing" in case you don't like one mechanic. I found the difficulty perfectly on point, although that's definitely subjective. Besides a few levels at the very beginning, even the levels introducing new game mechanics already offer some difficulty. I found myself struggling on several levels, but in the end nothing felt unfair and everything can be solved after enough thinking and planning. Music is amazing, both the soundtracks and SFX... with the exception of [spoiler]Outside World and its blocks switching[/spoiler] which stands as an interesting way to blur the separation between soundtrack and SFX but started to annoy me after an hour spent there. I wouldn't cite the story among the top reasons to purchase this game, but as a Touhou fan, I found it interesting, and it's accompanied with lovely art. The story features 15 or so Touhou characters. Each character introduction feels as satisfying as the first one, and none of them feel forced. Now, on the flip side, I should mention 2 sources of frustration I faced. I found the keyboard controls to be suboptimal. I got a bit of an awkward first impression after opening the game for the first time, spending a good 15 seconds to figure out how to start playing from the main menu. Pressing Enter doesn't do anything. It's the W key. Maybe a skill issue, my bad! Even during the actual levels, the only useful non-movement keys are W, X and C. I found myself pressing X by accident instead of C on many occasions. Without spoiling game play elements, doing this mistake pretty much always means you need to reset the level, which proved frustrating. Speaking of resetting levels, the ability to quickly reset at any time was very much appreciated. However I would have also appreciated some kind of rewind or save state feature. This becomes especially true closer to the last levels, where the "correct" sequence of actions to complete a level can take a few minutes, with little margin for mistakes. It doesn't feel right for a puzzle game that even after figuring out the correct plan, executing it can take several tries. With that said, I think the strong points vastly outweigh those two aspects, and I would definitely recommend the game.