Rating Curve

My thesis for Future Funk was as follows: This level is the spiritual successor of High Life. To briefly summarize, I loved Future Funk because the level's infectious euphoria, how it progresses, and how firmly it embraces its inspirations and the point in time it was made in.

With that said, my Future Funk II thesis is as follows: This level feels like a sequel to Future Funk. My primary emotions surrounding Future Funk II were those of confusion and disappointment. This is the sequel to Future Funk? Yes, Future Funk II does do some things right. The backgrounds are really well-made and feel super naturally made despite being made before the addition of shaders. There are also some really creative and well-executed ideas, like the temple part with three floors and the double jump robot part. The problems with this level aren't that, it's that this level's entire premise, and what it leans on too much, is that it is the sequel to Future Funk.

It's hard to describe how exactly things went wrong. Was there something lost in communication? What did Jonathan think the most liked parts of Future Funk were? It feels like it was made by Jonathan in the sense that all of his building tropes and things unique to his levels are present in this level, but it doesn't feel like it was made by Jonathan since it feels like it misunderstands what made the original Future Funk work. This level feels like a watered down version of the concepts of Future Funk and they're diluted to the point where it feels like the inspirations that Future Funk wore proudly on its sleeves, Future Funk II actively tries to hide them. Instead of feeling like remakes of parts of High Life that never existed, they're remake parts of Future Funk that never existed. It doesn't hit the same. I don't feel as connected. Part of Future Funk's charm is that while it is still a very well-made level, especially for 2018, you can see that it is still rough around it's edges. It also has a very powerful progression (I went very in-detail in my Future Funk review about its progression). Future Funk II is way too well-polished and has a very weak progression by comparison. This is evident in the parts which directly reference parts of Future Funk.

For example, the cave part in Future Funk has rocky structuring and a mini cube that you need to learn when to time your jumps. It also helps start building up into the dual. Future Funk II references that part at 60% but it's just poorly executed. You transition into the part very poorly and it doesn't match the part of the song very well. It almost feels like a placeholder with how odd its placement in the level is. This is also a great example of being way too well-polished - the cave part in Future Funk's structuring is very crude around the edges and is a little hard to discern at times. It's all perfectly uniform in Future Funk II, and any semblance of a cave theme has been diluted to oblivion here. Not to mention there are jump indicators in this part so there is no challenge at all in playing it nor learning how to do the part, because you don't need to learn it (quick aside: Future Funk II has jump indicators everywhere while Future Funk is very sparing in its usage of jump indicators).

Another great example has to be the duals/the final stretch. Future Funk has its dual part from 62-70%, which gives the player some room to breathe between the dual and the finale and giving the level a stronger progression. Future Funk II has its duals from 82-89%, and they have no time to breathe before diving right into the final stretch. These are two major choke points back-to-back at the end of the level, and the player has no time to breathe or go through any other feelings during this part. It's just "gotta really focus" then "cool, gotta really focus again." The placement of the dual in the level is so poorly done, it almost feels like the inclusion of the dual was a tertiary idea as it just needed to be somewhere, and Jonathan happened to not build it anywhere earlier so he needed to insert it here before the finale. What made 99% in Future Funk so infamous and daunting was how the level starting winding down into its finishing blow at 96%. Future Funk II once again gives the player no time to breathe, and gives the player the 99% timing immediately after a choke point-ridden dual and finale. I should mention, 82-100% is full of inconsistent parts and awkward click patterns. While Future Funk is more overall with how it makes its difficulty, Future Funk II is a lot more focused on high CPS and funky click patterns. Future Funk II's duals also have jump indicators in places that make the learning the duals very easy and the dual is separated into 4 segments as opposed to being one continuous challenge, both of which make the dual less satisfying to have learned and consistent. All in all, the execution of the dual and the finale is botched on so many levels.

The last problem I have, which somehow doesn't sting as hard compared to my disappointment I laid out earlier, is that the gameplay just isn't very good. Future Funk II is somehow even more choke point-driven than its prequel. The second half of the first drop at 41% is ridiculously learny. At such a fast speed, I didn't have time to process all the gravity changes, I just brute forced the dual wave sequence until I had it memorized. The parts in the drop where you are teleporting frequently also has its gravity/size changes placed inside the teleportation portals instead of before/after them, and that's a location where I can't focus on them. Instead, I also just memorized what teleporters did what. Future Funk II also has the tendency to just throw the worst spam parts at you in awkward moments, like the H-block/red orb combos at 51% and the square orb-UFO transition sequence at 91%. I just did not have fun with these parts and most of my deaths were at dumb choke points like these.

TL;DR this level fails as a sequel, failing to reproduce the charm and what made the original Future Funk powerful to begin with, on top of just not being a fun level to play. I do not recommend this level.

This will be shorter review, as I don't have as much thoughts on this as I do some other levels I've reviewed. I'll also be comparing TLWH to True Values of Life (TVOL) a lot in this review as it's got a lot of similarities to that level.

I felt like this level suffers a lot of the same drawbacks as TVOL, albeit to a lesser extent. The biggest drawback to this level that it lacks any real progression and feels aimless at times, which is mainly caused by its song, Night Walk by Horsed, another ambient electronic track more meant to be listened to in the background of something else instead of being a central focus. Unlike Snowy Roads, the song of TVOL (also made by Horsed), there is at least a bit more going on in general throughout Night Walk and it is easier to build gameplay around.

TLWH can be repetitive at times with its designs and its gameplay, however it introduces enough things to keep the level somewhat fresh throughout, which cannot be said for TVOL. The design and gameplay of TLWH is also generally at just a higher caliber at all times than it ever is in TVOL (not saying a whole lot, this is a low bar to clear). TLWH is like TVOL where it fails in the song representation department, although not as brutally. There are a lot more things in TLWH that correspond with an element of Night Walk, and the backgrounds of TLWH generally have more muted color palettes to match with the bassy drones heard throughout Night Walk.

However, TLWH feels stretched for length at times, though not nearly as excruciatingly as TVOL. TLWH doesn't end at any major point in its song, it sorta just ends as its song continues for 5 more minutes. This is because TLWH ends really close to where the editor ends in GD. The level could go on longer if Renn decided to mod the game to make the editor even longer, but he doesn't because he doesn't need to. TLWH feels kinda unnecessarily long, but not as ludicrously as TVOL does. It's already long enough to be the longest rated level in GD, but not so absurdly long all of its flaws triple upon themselves.

If you are wanting to dip your toes more into beating the longest rated levels GD has to offer, I would recommend this level, but I don't feel that it is a must-do. It is so consistently easy throughout its runtime that I would go as far as to call it an entry-level easy demon. If you have hard demon+ skill level, I even bet you can even sightread this level.

TL;DR suffers a lot of similar problems as TVOL but to a lesser extent, still feels boring and stretched for length.