Rating Curve

Another main level copy getting rated, which absolutely boggles my mind.

Now, it is not the creator’s fault at all, because I’m sure he just made this purely as a joke. But I can’t understand why Robtop decided to rate this. He said he found it “funny”, which just sounds… so ridiculous. Then again, this is the same dude who rated How To Clutterfunk. I guess once every decade, Robtop will randomly decide to rate a copy of one of his own levels…

If you need any further proof that the GD community actively endorses pedophiles, here ya go.

Not sure how much of a hot take this is, but I actually think Spacelocked II is a better level than its predecessor. Nearly every aspect here is more polished than the latter.

The gameplay is not as awkward, and while its even more learny in exchange, this level still gets highly consistent, and I found it fairly enjoyable to learn as well, even despite the decoration being a bit overwhelming in parts like the dual. Speaking of that dual, while I died a lot there while practicing it, I managed to actually fluke past it from 53%, not dying to it a single time from 0! I think that just goes to show how consistent this level can get when you put in the time, its really satisfying to pull it all off. It does occasionally have an annoying timing (such as that cube jump at 15%), but my general consistency with the level more than made up for those.

The decoration is also of high quality! This is probably once of the last true Lazer/Manix styled levels of this era to be released, and man do I miss it a lot. Spacelocked II seems to nail this style better than most other levels. Its detailed, vibrant, colorful, full of energy, and the boss has a cooler, more expressive design. The boss even seems to have a better variety of attacks, addressing my nitpick from the first level. And despite being released back in 2017, I really don’t find it dated at all!

This is a great level to playthrough if you want to play something learny (and not flow based) that rewards with high consistency and has high quality decoration of an old, nostalgic style. Asides from the level ending with a lacking robot part once again to pad out the length, Spacelocked II is quite the spectacle.

A staple of the 2.0 era. Back in the day, this level was everywhere and constantly talked about, mainly for how epic of a bossfight this level contains. When 12 year old me first saw this, I was so unbelivably shocked. Though this level has not held up as much as I was hoping.

It mainly comes down to the gameplay here. While I couldn’t call it bad, it feels very weird for the most part. It’s learny focused, which I very much enjoy, but parts like the start of the drop and both duals have gameplay that feels kinda awkward to get down. However, they still get very consistent when you figure them out, so I can mostly forgive it. Also, the difficulty of the level drops so hard in the last 25%, it oddly becomes so much more straightforward and easy compared to the rest of the level, which necessairly isn’t a bad case here, but makes it feel a teeny tiny unbalanced, tho the balancing in this level is far from unbearable.

Visually speaking, it shines with the boss a lot, this didn’t become an icon of 2.0 for nothing after all. The design of the boss is very cool, and the animations on its attacks are very fluid. I also like the detail of its hands having indicators on them for each of its attacks, its a really nice visual touch. I guess the only thing I would like to see more is a bigger variety of attacks from the boss, but it is still very high quality, and some of the best looking to come from 2.0. The overall block design, while looking a bit empty for Lazer’s standards, still fits well, as it is primairly inspired by Deadlocked (I mean, why else does it have “locked” in its name lol). And it lets you take in the glory of that awesome boss even more.

If you can handle some weird parts in the gameplay and get consistent at them, I think this is a level worth experiencing. Despite not aging as well as I expected, its a good and enjoyable time imo.

The most aggressively “nothing burger” of a level I have ever played. Gameplay that puts you to sleep with how boring and uninspired it is, incredibly generic and dull song, and decoration is severely lacking. It’s really saying something when the most interesting part about the visuals is some blocks having text faces. Exciting, I know.

The level isn’t even long length! The last 15% is just a random auto section with absolutely NOTHING in it! It’s only there so the level can just barely qualify as long length in-game, so it could place in the Spike gauntlet. Contender for the worst gauntlet level ever.

La-la-la-lava ch-ch-ch-chicken Steve's Lava Chicken, yeah, it's tasty as hell Ooh, mamacita, now you're ringin' the bell Crispy and juicy, now you're havin' a snack Ooh, super spicy, it's a lava attack

The hardest (and also weakest level) in the XYZ trilogy imo.

This level sticks closer to X than Z for its gameplay and visuals, but the gameplay is much more jankier compared to the other two levels, the duals being the biggest example of this, and feeling unnecessairly learny in others. It also feels unbalanced with said janky parts, making this annoying to play from 0.

The visuals are also probably the weakest in the trilogy, as it mostly uses similar designs to X. It still has its charm, but also not as much, and the visuals in the parts that aren’t primairly taken from X look too empty/generic.

Subpar overall, but not awful.

Feels like a bit of a discount version of X to me, but I still like it.

With the gameplay being very similar to X, it still carries over a lot of its fun gameplay styles, and has a lot less transitions in exchange, though I feel a few parts are a bit worse to playthrough, such as the first ship, and this level has an odd screen crunch that makes the cubes a bit more annoying to do. But its still fun to do overall.

The decoration is also obviously very similar to X, though I still prefer that level’s visuals over this. This level just kinda looks uglier in comparison, but it by no means a bad looking level. Once again, my favorite part visually has to be the dual lol.

Also, why does this level end with such a philosophical quote? Not sure, but that’s also what makes it funnier.

A classic from the 2.0 era, one of the first levels to popularize the idea of flow levels.

The gameplay here is really fun for the most part, I feel TriAxis managed to get good spacing between most transitions, as it allows each part to breathe more and without having to worry about having a portal every half a second, which is what a lot of flow levels have done in recent years. And each part plays and flows well, asides from a few transitions (srsly, that mini wave into ship at 95% is kinda dumb).

The decoration here is also solid. While I don’t have much strong feelings about it, it definitely has its own charm, and fits with the type of gameplay this level goes for. Likely my favorite part visually is the dual part. Not sure exactly what it is, but I just like the rainbow pattern in contrast with the black background.

I would recommend playing this if you haven’t already, very fun when beating, and still holds up well today. One of the better aged 2.0 levels for sure.

A Nine Circles level that simply… exists, and thats the best compliment I can give it. The gameplay is as standard as you can get with a Nine Circles level, consisting of two memory based cubes and a wave, with each part being just fine, tho the wave has some annoying timings at the start of it and 53-56, but it’s still okay overall. A similar level of quality is reflected in its visuals as well, its heavily overshadowed by Problematic and Butterfly Effect

Not much else to say here. There’s nothing really here I despise that makes me discourage others from playing it, but also nothing I love which would make me actively encourage playing it.