Rating Curve

Most of this level is pretty decent. It looks very 2.0, but some parts do still look genuinely good, in my opinion. The deco is definitely where this level shines, though, because it starts with a 12-second cutscene (by my estimation) and has several fairly annoying choke points on top of that. The choke points themselves aren't necessarily bad in and of themselves, but they are definitely made bad by the fact that you have to wait 12 seconds minimum before you can do anything again.

Not Zoroa's best work, in my opinion. Theming feels a little weak, and I don't know that the dark aesthetic matches this particular song. The gameplay is fine, for the most part; the tower section is unique, I'll grant, but a lot of the gameplay honestly feels kinda weak as well. The ship parts toward the end particularly stand out to me in this regard; you just hold and release at the appropriate times. Even the song itself feels kinda weak; I'm sure there exist better and more thematically appropriate songs to use in a level themed around catface emoticons. It's like Zoroa got the idea to make this level and then just threw a bunch of stuff together without really thinking about how it should all fit together.

The deco in this level looks pretty good. A little bit unorganized — there doesn't seem to be any specific direction the level is progressing in, although part of that may be because the song feels the same way — but each individual part looks pretty cool. The gameplay, on the other hand, is about as balanced as the arm of a trebuchet that is in the process of launching its payload at the second half of the level. A lot of the first half is so easy as to be boring, whereas the second half has a lot of gameplay that is either really hard to read (an explicit memory part followed immediately by a part that may as well be memory because the things you're supposed to avoid are marked by gray background deco against a field of colored background deco, which is particularly hard to read when the gameplay itself is an asymmetrical dual) or just plain feels inconsistent. If the gameplay were better, maybe this'd be rate-worthy; as it stands, though, it's just not a fun experience.

Pretty good for a first level. That being said, there are some issues. The gameplay is mostly pretty inoffensive; not particularly good (and the song choice doesn't particularly help it, either), but not explicitly unfun or annoying. The deco ranges from somewhat strange-looking to actually pretty good, except some parts kind of obscure the gameplay by making it invisible until you're about to get to it. I can see why it wasn't quite good enough to get rated, but it still goes that this was a great deal better than my first level.

This could've been a great level. It's got a pretty song, nice theming, and (mostly) good gameplay. There's a couple glaring flaws, though. Firstly, the transitions. The vast majority of the transitions are some variant on a fade to black, which makes everything feel less connected. (Some of them kinda work, but some of them should probably have been something more fluid instead, like the transition into the drop.) A couple of them, though, just throw you directly into gameplay. I was able to react to most of them, but there was one that I did die to. What frustrates and puzzles me more, though, is the LDM optimization. The level doesn't run particularly well (for me) on full detail, so I had to use the LDM. When you turn on low detail, some parts are simplified so much as to become unrateworthy, while others (most notably the last two parts, which amplifies this problem even more) are still laggy enough to impact the difficulty of the gameplay. I died way too many times past 93% because of this, and it severely hampered my enjoyment. If it hadn't been for that, I would've had much better things to say about this level.

The gameplay starts off strong, but vastly diminishes in quality as the level progresses. Too much of it feels way too slow, especially the drop, and it doesn't have anywhere near enough drop. The deco is okay, but very generic.

Not a huge fan of the gameplay. Firstly, it's rather hard to sightread, which isn't always a bad thing, except that this level is evidently supposed to be a 7-star. Additionally, it doesn't do a great job representing the song. The drop does not need to be 4x speed in the first half like that; driving rhythmic growls like what the song has would work better with 2x or maybe 3x speed. The deco is also a little lacking in that regard — you'd think a song called "Cryolite" would bring to mind a cool color palette with more blues and greens, but this level starts off with a warm color palette. Maybe I just had really high expectations for a level using a song by one of my favorite artists, but I really wish this level worked with the song a little better.

Some of the gameplay feels a little weird, but it's pretty fun overall, and I'd say the atmosphere matches the song quite well.

Deco isn't too notable, and there are several instances of blind or buggy gameplay.