Change Of Scene is undeniably one of, if not the most influential trendsetter level in the game's history, and also probably the most polarising one. Personally I don't think this level alone is the crux of any issues; it's more so that it being hailed as The Best Level Of All Time gave rise to a new era where lots of creators, including underexperienced ones aimed to emulate its traits that not necessarily made it better, but rather more widely appealing and flashy to the growing percentage of GD's playerbase that were more receptive to said characteristics. While Change of Scene has indeed shed light on creating techniques that have benefitted the most skilled decorators can achieve with their work, a large portion of levels that try to walk in the footsteps of Change Of Scene fail to capture what made the original level good and only really copy what made it flashy instead, resulting in them turning out extremely mediocre at best, and downright horrendous at worst. Change Of Scene's impact on the creating scene has only really become more and more apparent over time, and I can't really blame anyone for this. After all, who doesn't want a slice of the fame that this level gave bli?

Overall, Change of Scene does some things semi-effectively and some things semi-ineffectively. The hyper-optimised nature of the designs make some of the parts feel rather flat and less intense than they could be, though the extent of this issue differs widely among parts. The parts also don't really interact with one another much either, being pretty isolated but this decision ironically does fit with the name of the level, albeit this very likely unintentional due to the name being generated by ChatGPT. The "bossfight" at the end also doesn't feel properly explained despite it appearing at the start of the level for a moment and just feels like a bit of a rushed addition in order to meet the deadline for the Discord Gauntlet Contest

While Change of Scene's weaknesses are apparent and have been talked about extensively, let's not forget that this level has pretty strong parts: namely the Wild West themed part which suffers the least from these issues. 49-60 is an effective tension and release structure in quite an unconventional way, with the release being rather mysterious and gloomy rather than a burst of energy. Change of Scene was also the level to popularise "Acts" in a level, which while could be more expanded on due to the independence of each part relative to one another, still feels natural, indeed fitting with its theming, unlike nearly all other levels that try to emulate this.

Change of Scene being somewhat incohesive, having few surface level flaws, and being pretty flashy brought up the argument that this level was just made for clicks and views while sacrificing the actual quality of the level. However, that is rather dismissive of the level's strengths and also blatantly disregards bli's own personal taste and what he wants to create matching the community's taste and preferences, which is totally fine thing to do. It's a shame that trendsetters can't be perfect all the time -- this being one of them. Change of Scene while being overzealous in attempting to break the limits of what is possible within Geometry Dash, still has good execution and some great ideas that back the level's hype up to some degree. (5.5)