Rating Curve

Fun gameplay. Not the most sightreadable, especially during the drop, but it's still fun. The designs weren't particularly breathtaking, but some of the effects were fun.

Super fun and sightreadable level. The visuals are pretty cool too; I know that effect in the ship part was probably fairly simple to make, but it looked super cool to me.

First things first, the intro cutscene is way too long. It should've either been skipped or had gameplay instead. Other than that, though, this is a very good-looking level with decently fun gameplay. The only other flaw I can find with this level is that the part with the lasers has a gravity portal that looks like it kills you. Besides all that, it's cool.

For the most part, the effects are stunning. The UFO part in the first half, though, feels a little empty to me. Like, it doesn't feel like there's much of anything going on. And on top of that, the gameplay has a couple rough spots, particularly in the drop; there's a blind transition into a wave part that can kill you pretty quickly if you're not prepared, and a lot of the level after that just feels like a glorified cutscene. This could have been a really great level, but it kinda falls short.

Pretty cool level overall. The UFO part felt particularly unique and fun; I loved that it requires you to look back and forth at both sides of the screen. It's not perfect, though; the wave part with the butterfly is harder to read on low detail, and the freeroam part at the end felt kinda underwhelming to me.

Great visuals. Just about everything fits the overall theme and the song well. Some slightly questionable gameplay decisions, but still pretty fun overall.

For the most part, this is a fun level. The gameplay is fun, it looks good, and it just overall feels like a great finale to the event.

One problem, though. Optimization. Most of the level runs perfectly fine, but the Duckstep part will not run better than 30 FPS, and since it's a UFO part with nowhere to land, that makes it a lot harder than it's supposed to be. Turning on LDM does not fix the lag. And since it's so deep into the level, you lose about a minute and a half of progress when you die because your clicks register a quarter of a second later than they're supposed to. All this ultimately hampers my enjoyment of it somewhat, but other than that, it's a really good level.

Honestly, it feels unfinished. It feels like Xender Game had wanted to make this a bigger and more polished project, and considering the circumstances this was uploaded in, I suspect that may be the case.

What's there is pretty good, though. The first part feels a little empty, but it does get more detailed as it progresses. And the gameplay is fun, too. It goes with the song pretty well. The only thing is that the ending feels a little abrupt. It stops right before the drop, and there's very little gameplay leading up to it. Ultimately, I wish it was a little more polished.

In any case, I hope Xender Game knows that their work has made thousands and thousands, if not millions of people happy.

Typically, when a level is described as "meant to be watched rather than played", the level in question is a demon. This level is Not A Demon. And it kinda forces you to "watch rather than play" it, seeing as about half of it has either no gameplay or barely any gameplay. Importantly, these parts happen to be the drops — ordinarily, these would be the most gameplay-intensive parts of a level, so the complete or near-complete lack of gameplay in these parts is just disappointing. Frankly, I don't see that connot offers you any real incentive to play this level rather than just watch a showcase of it like this one; as such, this is my least favorite level from the NCS x GD collab by a decent margin. Doesn't matter how clean the visuals look if you don't put any thought into the gameplay.

This was such a fun level to rebeat. Balancing isn't perfect, but I don't actually think that really matters. What does matter is that the gameplay itself feels like a perfect match for the song. The floaty air-based gameplay during the second part before the beat comes in, the switch to more grounded gameplay after the beat comes in, the ascension during the buildup towards actually bouncing across the skyline during the drop, it all just feels like perfect song representation. Even the camera pulses during the drop feel completely natural. Just a really great experience all around. So what if some parts feel like they could belong in a 6-star?