Rating Curve

I can see why the spontaneity of both the decoration (a sequence of various radial patterns) and the gameplay (an improvisational mess of pads, orbs, and portals) would elicit praise of its freeform beauty. I can see some of that beauty shine through the cracks, but the constraints of the 1.9 editor leave the level looking like a textureless, colorless blob that plays more like a buggy auto than a level where the player actually has agency over their path. Mostly just a failed experiment, but at least it's something new?

basically perfect gameplay I had a beyond amazing time beating this

I will come back and write about the decoration and conception later

Ultimately, how much you like this level is going to depend on how charming you find it, and admittedly there are a lot of moments where I can truly feel the passion that went into this level. The execution is unmistakably amateur, but every time the chorus rolls around with a brand new transition and the soaring pop-metal vocal melody, I kind of fall into the rhythm of the level.

It's mostly the space in between and around the level where I have reservations. At this point, reusing styles and parts from a creator's previous levels is kind of a trope--if you want to make a big, emotional level about moving towards the future, you have to rehash the past. But here, it just feels like a choice that should've been avoided, partly because I think Sergi's decoration is interesting mostly in its unpredictability and seeing NO MORE roll back around just kind of made me roll my eyes, and partly because I don't think the truly angsty themes in his previous levels are really worth revisiting. NO MORE and What Remains of Me are really, really difficult for me to digest because they are overwhelmingly overwrought, and I'm glad that this level moves away from the emphasis on despair and self-pity and towards something seemingly much more hopeful and intent on growth.

A lot of the intermediary parts stand out negatively in other ways, like the part about a third of the way in that flashbangs the player multiple time, entirely obscuring the level, or the ending part with the very roughly built scenic view and plain black text--okay, can we talk about text? Lyrics are now a staple in Sergidash levels, and not for the betterment of them either. The lyrics are treated with such emphasis in his levels that they serve as block design, air deco, and effects all at different points, usually using a font already built into the game or some simple creation. For a detail that is so prominent, they seem to have very little care put into them, rarely fitting in cohesively with the part (probably the closest we get in this level is the green electric text in the grey part early on, I thought that looked kinda interesting). The other issue I take with the use of lyrics in his levels is that they already feel so dependent on their songs that writing the lyrics out only exponentiates that feeling. Using lyrics as a decoration in this way feels like an admission of guilt, like the entire vision for the level is standing on the shoulders of the song that you chose when really they should serve to elevate each other. This style lives and dies by creativity, and I just don't feel like the parts outside of the choruses and maybe the "stand up and fight" section live up to it.

Speaking of the "stand up and fight" section, while I don't think it visually looks all that great, it's definitely is effective in conveying a sense of persistence and triumph. If there's one thing I can consistently praise this level on, it's that it is able to honestly convey emotion, even if it might lack subtlety at (all) times.

My final note is that beating this level definitely allowed me to see more of the good in it, partly because I enjoyed the gameplay for being a pretty interestingly balanced XL level, which is just kind of my jam, but also because being in the level just allowed me to attach myself more. It's too easy to get caught up in hating something sometimes when it's just a video on your screen, so taking the hour to just immerse myself in it definitely made me more sympathetic. I might not like the level, but I can respect honest-to-god self expression, and if Sergi continues in this direction I'd be thrilled for him and anyone who loves his levels. have fun all

you stand against the end of all reviews in hyper and bolus

I like the way it bounce

Review soon (for sure) (not lying)

When I beat this level I thought it was pretty fantastic, but in retrospect I missed how brilliant it really is. Jino makes a lot of really bold choices, from the color scheme, the precise and technical gameplay, and the final quarter of the level exploding in intensity. I wish the first three quarters were a bit more balanced in difficulty but the fact the finale is the easiest part while ramping up the ante to such an extent is so impressive--really, all of the gameplay is super impressive in this level, and the fact it balances chaos and near-constant timings with playability is insane--I'm inclined to call it some of the best gameplay in the entire game. I really appreciate all the little details in this level that bring it to life: nods to rhythm games, like the top of the swingcopter, all of the transition parts actually having gameplay and contributing to the flow of the level, the fuckin "jump!" sign in the last part, and a ton of small effects throughout that really showcase the care that went into this.

The level is pretty damn bad but it really just packs in a solid six of the most iconic bits in any level ever (predrop cube dual into ship, BYE BYE into the drop ship, orb layered ball, ball/cube dual, 8joh, final maze) and that's being conservative. I can't decide if it's genius level design or it's just been so hamfisted into the collective consciousness, but either way I feel like it's gotta be doing something right.

Has an energy and creativity to it that ZeroSR just never uses otherwise for whatever reason?? This level has so many cool ideas and bold choices in it that I can forgive the majority of its flaws, which just include a few weaker, less original parts and some lacking intensity in segments of the drop. I honestly don't know why he continues to pump out bland, desaturated design levels--they don't flatter his gameplay, which is often actually pretty good, and they certainly don't showcase any of the positive qualities of this level. Maybe it's the result of Arclia, who also chooses to build very bland levels despite serious artistic talent. Both of their levels also have awful cosmetic shader dressings that degrade the decoration even further. Anyways, this level is clearly very inspired by ilrell, but definitely has enough personality to stand on its own. I just wish Zero continued to hone and personalize this style instead of allowing himself to stagnate (his parts in Protoflicker and Twenty Four are also amazing, seriously, where did that guy go??).

Just does everything right. Every part has a creative structure or design, varying from "oh, that's cool" to "this is absolutely brilliant" all placed over a black background and composed with splotches of pink and white. I love the contrast between the minimal, static designs and the over-the-top, trashy pop; not only is it a really creative and unexpected way to represent the song, it conveys the unique mid-2010s tumblr and forum aesthetic.

Unrelated, but this is the 2nd hardest level I've beaten in one attempt

A tenuous defense of Ocular Miracle:

I don't think it's fair to say that this level has no merit. In fact, for the time, it's a level with quite a lot of individual merits that is weighed down heavily by only a few flaws. For starters, the argument that this level is incohesive has never really rang true with me--sure, it's not perfectly themed, but the notions of technology, sky, and space are there, and it would be difficult to argue it doesn't match the song. In this way, it surpasses a lot of levels of its era, but this is about where my defense ends.

The two largest flaws, in my eyes, are products of the time in which it was built. Firstly, this level has a lot of gameplay that is either inconsistent, unbalanced, incoherent--okay, you get the idea. I've only actually beaten Reverie, but for how fun the first half of that part is the second half fails in so many ways, and it's probably just because playtesting wasn't standard at the time. For a level with such ambitious and complex gameplay, that pretty much guarantees failure (though a lot of old levels are fun despite or because of their failings).

And while the lack of playtesting might be a non-issue for a lot of people, I don't think it's possible to look past the issue of optimization. One of the funniest relics of this level is "Memory Leak" by gecko, which based its decoration on a visual bug that was caused by Ocular Miracle overloading the game's data on some devices and rendering the majority of textures completely black. Since the level is quite literally unplayable on many devices, the various leaders of the project decided to split it into three and upload them all on different accounts so they could share the wealth of creator points. Of course, this level would have been hell to optimize, but it's still just a miserable fate for the project and it cemented this level's legacy as little more than an ambitious lag machine.