When You See It

This level is strange, partially for the better, mostly for the worse. There's clearly a unique and creative vision in here, the backgrounds and designs are great, but it's so screwed up and poorly executed in ways that just baffle the mind to the point that I really can't support this level.

The sync is awful. Occasionally it'll have nice click sync, but that just makes the random extra jumps in the click sync parts extra painful to see. The non-click sync parts completely ignore the song and have zero visual sync to make up for it. AT MOST some pulses. If you told me this was built with the sound off I'd believe you.

Then you get stuff like a bar saying "TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN!" when you go near it, which like... ??? The text itself just sounds stupid, but even beyond that initial reaction, think about it for a moment. Why is that there? To let you know the big glowing laser can kill you? In an Extreme Demon you'll be practicing a lot beforehand?

And y'know what the worst part is? That's not even the worst piece of text in the level! No, at the 2nd drop, the climax of both the song and level, nearly 4 minutes in, the gameplay suddenly just stops. Giant glowing text saying "ALL WILL BE ONE" pops in and kills any excitement before just disappearing, and the gameplay continues on as if nothing happened. What's the point? Why would you ruin the most intense part of the level by adding in a cutscene segment instead of continuing the gameplay? It doesn't even pulse to the music! It's awful, and all of this is on top of the rest of the 2nd drop's issues. Janky attempt at making a vertical wave part, which sucks even given this was made in 2.1. The sync is nonexistent as always, but it hurts even worse with the last most intense note being unsynced. What was going on here

I’m sorry, I’m just really not a fan of how it looks.

I think there comes a certain level or type of roughness where it can hurt a level more than it helps it. Blue Suns Zenith feels unpolished not in the sense that it's messy, but rather that it's underdeveloped. I would be fine with this but unfortunately said lack of development does heavily limit how imposing this level could truly feel. This issue is most salient in the middle portion where the song rapidly progresses through different levels of intensity while the level remains stagnant. The strongest parts in this are definitely the beginning which serves as a pretty great buildup with an unfortunately mediocre payoff, and ones of the later parts with the player ascending while there's a sort of blue energy sphere in the background which is also a great precursor to a better but still just okay climax

I love this level cause it really shows you don't have to give a fuck about GD creation norms and you can still get a feature.