POW is an incredibly disappointing sequel to me that tries to emulate of WOW but ultimately ends up degraded in every way.

WOW starts by immediately throwing you into a 3x speed blue pad corridor, it sets the high energy for the rest of the level where you will constantly be hitting orbs and bopping up and down to the beat which pow tries to recreate but it just doesn't work because it uses a much calmer song that lends itself to slower sweeping motions, but the level doesn't change to accommodate that. It offers nothing beyond the gameplay in WOW apart from poorer execution, particularly in the spam sections which were already the segments i liked least in WOW but the orb line things used here feel so much stiffer in comparison, no effort made to implement spam in an interesting way at all.

I find it a very strange decision that this level chooses to constrict itself to a binary purple and blue colour scheme, it's so so much less engaging than the hue and monochrome in WOW that produced very psychedelic and in parts eerie vibe. Most the designs in POW are also pretty cluttered not helped by the unnecessary shaders and camera controls sprinkled throughout when in WOW its structures were clearly defined and grounded, this is important at high speeds to ensure your level doesn't end up a blur. Another annoying thing is the random crystal cave theme popping in and out, it just feels disjointed, not going to commit to the theme? Then you may as well discard it.

hi i built in the original WOW level and I think that the part i made (31-45%) is easily the worst looking thing i made for any level

With that out of the way, I am really confused with the direction this level went. While I really like some references towards the original level (like WOW's basic click counter or simple block pad spam transitions taken straight out of WOW's predrop), I am simply confused by team's decision to stick to three main color hues of blues, purples and pinks when the original had all sorts of hues cycling throughout the level. Shoehorned crystal cave theme is also not something I entirely agree with. WOW did have some design choices featuring rock textures (in Chase's part) and sharp triangles (mine), but by no means was it level's main core identity (WOW having no strong visual theme had arguably helped it to be remembered as THE spam extreme). Not saying that the remake shouldn't have attempted to go for a new cool theme, but crystals with this color scheme make it for a homogenous and thus boring viewing experience and I think that's the main issue with the level.

Poorly aged from the day it was finished

The deco is totally homogenous. I don't think you can even reliably differentiate between parts. Deco wasn't WOW's strong suit either but at least there was some variation in color. Maybe wless was right. However the fact that the only good visual in this level is a lantern isn't the main reason why I hate this

The gameplay mindlessly follows the same sequence of events without any regard to the difference in song. Trigger is loud and intense for most of its playtime, so it fits perfectly with sharp turns and constant gravity changes. Meanwhile only a couple parts of Sound Chimera have similar energy (only one of which is used here) and it just feels wrong.

This is roughly the point in writing this review at which I realized why Thinking Space II's lack of sync ticks me off so much but that's irrelevant

Anyway, everything just feels so much slower. Oftentimes it literally is slower. I think the fact that WOW starts off with a series of blue pads at 3x speed to match a stream of beats and a vocal sample while POW starts off with a slow moving platform to match a single reversed cymbal really represents the core difference between these two levels, not to mention that WOW's intro was a 1-second masterpiece in setting the tone while POW's has been done a million times.

Overall pretty uninteresting. My problems with this level can be summed up as follows:

- this song is not suited to constant spam nearly as well as wow but they couldve just worked around this by altering the gimmick a bit and doing short bursts of spam rather than several long chain of 50+ input spam (they didnt)

- they didnt even use the spam gimmick for the part of the song that would work best with spam

- shaders feel taped on last-minute when 2.2 dropped

- 2.1-2.2 transitional era glow collab problems

Not as good as WoW obviously, but it is still a pretty cool level on its own. I'd give this higher, but a 6 will have to do. There's some things that heavily affect this level, and the issues are apparent.

this level is just pretty lame. the deco is boring and really fails in capturing what wow did imo. my least favorite thing about this level is the use of a cut version of the song which really annoys me because just USE THE FULL SONG! (please i dont want cut versions of songs in gd levels they are so boring :cry:) just a really boring and lame sequel that's incredibly unoriginal

As much as I want to like this level, I must admit that this ultimately falls flat in comparison to Wow. The deco really isn't anything special and the gameplay doesn't have the same charm that Wow did.

In stark contrast to other reviews, I will NOT tolerate any Sound Chimera slander