Rating Curve

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.

It has been a couple of months since I beaten this level, and I’m still not entirely sure how to feel about it.

I have played Acu a little bit on and off for about 4 years now, but last year was when I decided to lock in and actually try to beat it without really caring about any other levels.

First is the decoration. Despite being released almost 5 years ago, it’s aged quite well. Nothing thats groundbreaking, but still very flashy and full of life. And while the idea of a modern deco and/or joyful themed extreme demon is definitely a sleeper choice nowadays, it was actually a pretty novel concept back then, likely being the first of its kind to do both. It also could’ve very well been the most enjoyable extreme in the game when it first dropped, given how awful earlier extremes tended to be. This level more or less shown that extremes can have intriguing decoration and gameplay, instead of just being made hard for the sake of it. Speaking of which…

Let’s discuss my experience. When I was practicing the level in the editor, it was very fun! The drop gameplay was consistent and very satisfying to get down, my favorite part being the dual at 45% up to around 63%. There seemed to be almost no hiccups for me practicing, as I even made some nice progress, including 35, 63-100, and 28-70, meaning I basically had the level in 3 runs. After getting runs like these, I figured I was ready to start playing from 0.

And so, I began. And that right there, is when the cracks immediately made themselves known. Enter, the predrop. Good lord, this predrop infuriated me. It felt so much harder than the rest of the level. I really despise it when levels have frontloaded balancing, it can feel draining and hopeless trying to make any progress on them, and even when you do pass those parts, I still get very nervous afterwards, because one death means I have to sit through the frontloaded slog. This especially elevates any dumb deaths I make afterward to a newfound level of frustration.

Acu was certainly no exception to this, but it had it worse than most other frontloaded levels I played to this point, because I soon realized that the drop had some wack chokepoints that I can’t understand HOW they made it past playtesting. The chokepoints I’m specifically referring to are the waves at 27/29%, and the wave at 68%, the latter of which is quite possibly the most notorious part of the level.

While I did make solid progress on this level, the best of my attempts being 71 THREE times (srsly fuck that wave), I was raging a lot. These wave chokepoints, combined with the irritating predrop, made this level a nightmare for me to play, and I honestly lost a ton of desire to play it because of how poorly built it felt at times. And that’s what happened, I stopped playing around the first week of august last year, especially since I had to lock in for uni at the time (yes, I had uni classes over the summer 😭)

But then, a couple of days after I finished my summer semester, I wanted to lock in for a day and play the level again. When I first did, I was able to de-rust my consistency on the level, but not only that, there some other things that happened and greatly helped with my experience.

The biggest one was regarding the predrop, where I got more consistent at it, and realized its not the whole predrop thats bad, more like the whole first 10% of the level, as once I got past that mini wave in the predrop, it seemed to be smooth sailing from there, rarely dying in the rest of the predrop.

Next, I did a run of 27-100 TWICE!!! It was crazy how I did this quickly, and because I wanted to practice those waves at 27/29% even more, I decided to do some runs in the middle of the predrop. AND DID A RUN FROM 9-100%!!! My consistency was nuts at this point, so the next thing to do was play from 0 again!

And within 5 mins, while I got my fourth death at the dreaded 71%… I FLUKED THE LEVEL FROM 71%!!! I was so blown away when this happened, but of course I was also very happy and relieved. I still can’t fathom that I pulled it off, even all of these months later.

It was all essentially one roller coaster of ups and downs with this level, where I was highly consistent, but then vey frustrated, and seemed to get even more consistent in the end after a bit of a break with the level. I guess the moral of the story here is to try and let the level grow on you as you stick with it, as you can never know what kinds of consistency and crazy feats you can pull off with it. Just keep in mind that the predrop will likely take more time than the drop to get more consistent at, so be sure to practice the timings as much as possible. But yea, in conclusion, it was a very mixed experience with the level. If you can tolerate a couple of weirdly placed chokepoints, you can do this as a first extreme. Otherwise, if you can’t seem to get the chokepoints down, perhaps you should play something else more balanced. One thing though, is that you certainly can’t call this a dull experience, with anything flatout boring, and I think that’s where Acu best excels as, especially given its upbeat theme.

Clubstep, but with all blocks replaced by invisible blocks. Nuff said.