Never even happened. I was having a psychotic break

Y'know with Tron there's at least the possibility that Funnygame could come back at some point, and he was already on the decline for years beforehand. But this? Zobros was already long dead before this came out. There's more of a sense of finality here. It's the official sequel to fucking Nine Circles for crying out loud, and that's what makes the failure of this level so much more painful.

I could go into detail about all the issues with the deco, the sync, and (most infamously) the gameplay, but quite frankly none of that matters when the whole vibe is off in a sequel to one of the best and most famous levels ever.

I always saw this level as a bit of a fancy extension, it's difficult to feel insulted by it with zobros' own involvement in the project. Out of all nine circles remakes out there I consider this to be the most faithful one, it doesnt follow the standard formula of "these rigid boxes is what defines the genre" and instead opts to give a semi-unique take on the original level's theme, which supposedly resembles some kind of Asian dungeon. There are some neat designs, the drop was made a lot less repetitive and the overall structuring was changed up to feel sharper and more threatening, the level seems to know what it's doing and yet it feels so underwhelming in the end. Aside from the random Chinese pop up windows at the wave there's very little effort made to communicate the intended aesthetic properly, the designs are about as cryptic as its predecessor, they're modernized just enough to look fresh but it never strictly improves upon anything. Especially the wave, intended to be the level's biggest spectacle, misses its mark in the remake, all its trippy feel is lost to a bunch of static pulses and bland bg elements. I respect what the level was going for, in the sea of meaningless parodies nine circles has received a solid remake could've highlighted its earnest qualities a bit more, but I believe this was a rather weak attempt at doing so

this gameplay is ass i wonder who made it…

checks notes

Zobros

An absolute atrocity. Insanely inconsistent and annoying gameplay littered throughout the level, with zero indication or care put into it at all, the level genuinely feels like it got 0 playtesting. So surely this means they worked really hard on the decoration right? Nope, they just took Nine Circles, which was already shot in the chest 43 times by all the spinoffs people made, and made it bald. Making the structures pulse is the simplest thing possible and whoever made the first part of the wave didn't seem to get the memo...