im a bit of an unreasonable spectator because everytime i look at one of these nostalgia core levels i expect myself to both be able to recognize atleast a decent amount of references listed while also having them be transformative enough they wont just be lazy copy and paste. yet when they are near-identical decorations i just end up thinking that the level is lazy. damascus in theory hit that middle ground well enough but i ended up not caring anyway. im starting to think i might just not like this kind of concept in practice

some parts do look pretty good here but for the most part while i can technically pinpoint a majority of the references i dont really feel a connection towards most of them. dzeser even admitted that a couple parts werent even referencing anything at all and was kept because they looked good (??) i can kind of recognize the rest but most of them are still different in ways that doesnt give me evocations of the original level. maybe a remake or something

also this thing is damn hard and really weirdly balanced and not at all thoroughly playtested. so inconsistent and unfun to play and the only saving grace is that its pretty easy to learn for a top 50

I think a lot about Smoke's part here- it's so cool to see the evolution of the Plasma Pulse series, where you enter the teleport portal for Plasma Pulse II, an indicator that the series was making the transition to 2.0, before that sick transition of a quick blackout to Plasma Pulse III, representing the shift to the darker palette and bump in difficulty from insane to extreme demon, followed by the phasing opacities transitioning to Plasma Pulse Finale, a representation of a series past its prime, struggling to hold itself together under its ambition.

As for the rest of the level, I don't really care for it. It's just not a very good level- I wish they just copied the decoration one to one instead of remaking the decoration. I think the concept is really cool but I think it just was executed poorly.