this level does a LOT with very little

Eon is an incredible work of art. The level, despite its 55 minute runtime, never fails to be visually interesting and (mostly) contains gameplay engaging enough to where the player should never gets bored. The way the level syncs (both gameplay and visuals wise) is immaculate; I couldn't imagine a better representation of the song myself.

The gameplay is 'unbalanced', in that most of the level is around 7 star difficulty, with a 5 minute long hard/insane demon at the end. In theory this is terrible design, but the way the level and song builds up to that ending makes it the perfect climax to a masterpiece of a level.

while some backgrounds are quite pretty, the end product is bland and frankly just boring. ever since i started holding this song in a somewhat high regard, it's felt to me that this level doesn't do anything to match it whatsoever. there's just not enough stuff on the screen at any time, and completely different parts of the song recieve nearly the same treatment

This is my favorite level ever, and it's not even close.

Before Eon, I thought I understood what I liked in GD well - I wasn't a fan of longer levels. My longest was Biru and while it was great, it was an exception. I did not enjoy most travel levels and I especially did not like True Values of Life. I found out about Eon because of Renn's showcase on YouTube in March and I thought "I'm probably going to hate this but I'll still see what it has to offer."

I immediately fell in love with the level, Just from watching it, I knew this would be an absolute gem. My main gripes with TVOL were that there was no progression, it was poorly optimized, and all the parts had way too much detail and still ended up ugly. Eon was the opposite of all of these things - one of the strongest progressions out of any GD level, and super simplistic yet charming and effective designs. I knew immediately I wanted to beat this as my first extreme demon.

I kinda struggled with it some, doing some practice runs but not really getting a whole lot of substantial progress. One day in April, however, I got 18% in the morning, which had me pretty excited, and then I fluked all the way to 60% later that night, which had me really hyped. Then progress came to a halt for a few more months. Occasionally I would play the level, get 60% again or some other death moderately far into the level, but not really any momentum playing the level. Throughout this time, however, I was intensely practicing the last 10% as I knew that was by far the most difficult part of the level and I wanted to make sure I had it to a tee.

In September, I knew I finally wanted to finish the level off. I did some more normal mode runs and quickly got 74%. I was now laser focused on getting this level done. The next day, not long after getting home from school, on September 6th, 2024, I fluked the level from fucking 74% and beat Eon as my first extreme demon. That was one hell of an afternoon. By far the most nervous I had ever gotten playing GD in my over 10 years of playing, and I'll talk more about how I felt at the last 10% later.

Even if Eon was not 55 minutes long, I would still enjoy it just because of its intense simplicity. Aside from the shader backgrounds, the level never gets too intricate with block designs, gameplay, or structuring, it just sticks to focusing on the gameplay the entire time and representing the song. Some people say Eon does not have great song representation, but I disagree. For how little is going on in the level design-wise, it's still has a lot of elements that go hand-in-hand with something that is going on with the song. Whether it be the background changing color to a synth or blocks pulsing to drums, there is always things going on with the song that don't get intrusive with the gameplay. Eon is very dynamic with its speeds and pacing and there are a lot of fast moments and slow moments that go with the song. Some of the more vibrant and lively sections are borderless and fast-paced, while the ambient, slower segments are darker and bordered. TVOL is what I would consider a complete failure of song representation just because of how little the song and the level go together, and it feels more like TVOL uses Snowy Roads just because it's long enough. Eon doesn't feel like that. Every part of the level acknowledges The Angel in some way, even if it is just with simple gestures.

There is still a lot of creativity to be found in Eon within its various backgrounds. It's a great example of an early 2.2 level, as it feels like Renn was using all of the different soundscapes The Angel has to offer to try out all of the cool new shader options that released in 2.2. Something that appears a lot throughout Eon but I find cool every time is how super intense chromatic glitch shaders are used to make static. It's these great, dynamic backgrounds that work really well with the more droney parts of the song while being super easy to set up. Eon also has moments where the split screen shader is used in more quiet parts to make the parts feel open, large, and atmospheric. If I had to pick one specific background to be my favorite, it would be the one at 97-98% for how it reuses almost every element seen so far to create something super intense for The Angel's climactic finale. This review is already going to be very long, and I only have 24 hours in my day so I'm not going to dissect each and every one but I encourage looking around in the editor, you will find a lot of cool stuff.

Eon's last 10%, man... this has to be one of the best level endings ever seen in GD. For the entire first 90% the dread of the ending is quietly looming in the back of the player's mind, and this dread really picks up at the organ segment right before. After the final organ chord, the level and the song undergo their harshest tone shifts. It's the hardest part of the level and the fastest part of the level, both in general speed and CPS. The Angel goes into a sort of final boss theme, with a super menacing bass and some DnB drums. At 96% the song and the level shift into an almost victory-like sound as you've passed the hardest part and you have one final part which is basically a nerve check. I went through about 9 different mind stages in just this last 10%. In order: "Holy shit, I'm here, let's do this." "Ok, I didn't die immediately, good." "I'm coming up on the hardest part, uh oh." "LET'S FUCKING BALL." "OH MY GOD, I PASSED THAT PART." "AM I GOING TO BEAT IT THIS ATTEMPT?" "I AM BECOMING GOD." "PLEASE DON'T DIE, PLEASE." (insert my reaction here). I don't think I am able to properly convey how it felt through text, even though I tried, I think it's just something you have to be there in the moment to describe. Point is, it's a fucking trip.

Beating Eon has changed my outlook completely for XXL levels and has turned them from being something I would avoid whenever I could to something I now actively seek out. It's not much of an increase in endurance, moreso it is a change in mindset. You need to mentally prepare yourself for the possibility of dying very far, you have to accept that attempts will be super long, you need to understand the hardest stretches of the level best and really hone in on practicing what is truly necessary. The fact that a level may be longer creates a sort of illusion that it will take far more time than a shorter level to beat, when in reality that is not the case. When a level of extreme length is compared to something that is supposedly the same difficulty but just standard length, they are suggesting beating those two levels are completions of equal achievement, and they both have similar amounts of difficulty just stretched over different amounts of time. Same ideology can be applied with how much time is spent playing these levels. A level as long as Eon will take you just as much time as any other extreme demon, from the very first attempt to the attempt you beat it. It's just how that time is spent which sets those two apart. For more traditional extremes, you will spend much more time practicing the level and getting runs that aren't from 0, while in Eon you will spend much more of your total time playing the level in runs from 0. At the end, the time spent on both levels should be roughly equal, regardless of what skill you are.

Another way Eon has changed me for the better was that it introduced me to one of, if not my favorite album of all time, Cacola - The Angel, The Demon,. When I watched Eon for the first time I also thought "Holy shit, this song is amazing, what?" and I was just completely floored by a song of such high caliber and emotion that manages to be interesting and progress in interesting ways for 55 minutes straight. I immediately fell in love with the song too, and then in June I got around to buying TATD on Bandcamp and listening to the album for the first time. TATD is one of only two times where an album has immediately reached through the sound dimension and touched my soul. It had felt like I had known the album for 9 years since I first saw Lit Fuse by Krazyman50 in 2016, and the album knew me for all that time, too. I ended up relistening to the album more and more, and I am willing to bet I have listened to TATD in full over 20 times since I first heard it. It is an album that has gotten me through so many of my worst days ever, an album I knew I could listen to at the end of the day when I can finally rest for a bit. I even got in on the first CD press for the album, bought the CD as soon as it was purchasable, while I was still in school that day, and it's my proudest CD in my collection. I couldn't be more grateful that Eon introduced me to album which helped me through so much.

I really need to wrap this review up but in case you want to go for Eon (which I will always recommend), my only piece of advice is this: practice the ever living hell out of 90-100%. Trying to get any other runs within in the level is a waste of your time since if you're paying attention the whole time, you can sufficiently learn the rest of the level in about 4 practice runs. 90-100% is the hardest part of the level and your nerves will be through the roof so you want to die there in normal mode as little as possible. I consider myself extraordinarily lucky for fluking the level, although I practiced 90-100% so damn hard I could get that individual run almost every other attempt. There is no such thing as overpracticing that part, all practice is good practice.

Safe travels.