I am super conflicted on this level.

When I saw the first preview of the level on Bli's channel, I was completely blown away at what I was seeing. I was really into levels that had unbelievable levels of object efficiency and that preview was no exception. In addition, I thought the theming was really good for that preview with the whole media coming to life stuff. These are pretty huge positives that I still agree with today.

I do have quite a few issues with this level though. The first and most obvious being that this level feels incredibly rushed. While being rushed is understandable given this level had a deadline, it's not exactly an excuse for me to ignore the level's clear drop in quality. Toward the end of the level, there are a ton of reused assets, there are long sections where nothing happens, many parts feel empty, and it all feels slapped together. This is especially egregious considering the song implies that the finale of the level is supposed to be super epic and climactic. As a result, the level absolutely crawls toward the end wall and it leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. Another issue I have with this level is it tries to have some kind of narrative with the smiling guy but it completely falls on its face. There is no progression to the narrative whatsoever and it just feels like another attention grabber.

The gameplay is nothing special, but PLEASE DO NOT MAKE LIGHT SPAM LIKE THIS A GAMEPLAY ELEMENT IN YOUR LEVEL. There is absolutely no thought that goes into performing it which makes these sections profoundly boring to play. Removed Submission is the only level that has done spam well.

Yea, I know I sound like a normie for saying this level is a masterpiece and one of the best levels in the game… but how could I not? I’ll admit I’m partially biased towards this level, as it is somewhat inspired by Rayman Legends, which is a game I love a lot, but besides that, this level is a masterclass in pretty much each category.

This level showed such an insane amount of quality when it first dropped almost 2 years ago (damn time flies), and it still continues to impress this day.

The whole “theatrical” theme this level goes for is really cool, as it is divided into different acts, all with visually stunning environments, my favorites being the “video game” and “simulation” parts . What makes this even cooler is at the beginning, you can choose to keep it in theatrical, or bring it to life through your imagination, making everything look more real. I personally prefer the theatrical route slightly more since it is a bit more creative, mainly with how it themes each act (i.e. video game part has a video game UI while it doesn’t in the other route), but the other route is still high quality. The level has such a dramatic and intense vibe going on throughout, while also managing to stay surprisingly cohesive. Best part about all of this is that Bli managed to do all of this in under 80K OBJECTS, I cannot stress just how monumental that was when I first found out about it.

The gameplay is also extremely well made, it is very sightreadable, hardly has any bad timings, and just has a lot of variety to stick out and make each part a lot more memorable. It is generally very well polished, with not a single bad part coming to mind!

I guess my only nitpick is that the ending following the fake ending sort of feels like filler given how its decoration looks, but it still has fun gameplay so i can kinda forgive it.

So yea, this level is a masterpiece all around. Kinda sad to see some people start switching up on it, likely because of how popular it became, but I’ll still always highly respect it. And I think this is a level GD really needed at the time, it came out in an era where GD feel so stagnant in the levels that came out, felt like most people just wanted to make the same old stuff and nothing actuslly interesting.

beethoven meganeko remix bro song of the century

this level def feels like a theatre play, with all the different acts and the mode that allows you to bring the stage to life. it's just that these acts don't really feel like they come together cohesively at all. they do look VERY pretty standalone though, i def like this more than some of blis later work. this would be a 6 for me but holy jump indicators bro