Neon White

The characters' dialogue is so grating I started skipping very soon after starting. "Snark snark snark snark snark snark." Please. No more. Then I got to the game part and I am disappointed in what 'overwhelmingly positive' means these days, there's just constant uninteresting writing that does not make me enthused or motivated. It's impossible to take this constant half-baked emotion seriously when it's just constantly snarking at every bad joke. The cat I almost liked, then the dialogue just kept going endlessly with the same snarking. And I wish the gameplay could redeem it, but no, it's so easy that I'm getting bored playing the levels. Not only are the levels plenty straight-forward in design with not much choice in which way to go, the devs even straight up just hand over visible hints on which way to go to get an ace time. I tried to find a way to turn it off to at least give myself SOMETHING to do by myself, but no. I've been feeling like I've just mindlessly pointed myself toward the next groups of enemies and just always automatically using the ability card I have. I would assume the game later starts to actually force me think more about how to move about at high speed, but after seeing the first boss fight those hopes were kinda shattered, especially since it's no different from the stages; "brain off, just follow the leader." Where is the 'game' 'bro?' Oh god now it's seeping into my brains. Which reminds me; why do I have to sit through the slow animations and awkward menus? I don't want to stare at a plushy spinning around the screen towards a character and be rewarded with more waste of time - if this game's story is this much complete drivel, then I at least want to skip every last moment of every last meandering slowdown to just get to the game part. This game's all about speedrunning, right? Why on earth would you keep slowing the action down like this? It's so pointless to watch the slow transitions that it becomes baffling why it's even there, and the constant gifting animations add up to enough seconds to make me not even wanna bother anymore, again. If you want a recommendation on something that has a story in the background that has some semblance of dignity, and extremely challenging speedrunning that actually forces you to micromanage your own movement, it'd be Cloudbuilt. That game is challenging starting from the very first level. Similarly SEUM at least made me really clinch times even if that has zero story to speak of. Actually let's just throw Cyber Hook out there as well since that too at least felt challenging to time fast. Why is Neon White popular? Why? This is slow and casual and annoying, why is that kind of game popular now?? Maybe I'll find out after playing all the way until the end, but after 3 hours I am definitely thumbing my expectations down. EDIT 1: I'll keep going as I get more bored; every single level's "route" is easy to figure out, and I'll tell you the secret right now: It's never inside buildings. Every time there's a building, there's some way to not be inside the building altogether and just chain enemies and go to the goal. Every time. At times I feel like I'm just going by the same yellow painted ledges every modern game does today when there's just zero mental capacity required to get to the goal even if you meander about a couple seconds. EDIT 2: I thought seeing the level "Apartment" that this is it, now there's some more freely hectic running and it's gonna be challenging to get the time, but no, of course it isn't, the path is completely obvious how you get the ace time, and even half-assing it the difference is almost four seconds. I am bored, so utterly, despicably bored, nothing you do in this game feels like you did anything, it just feels like I was pressing what I was supposed to, every time. Even if I keep going to the end my mind ain't going to change, it's Simon Says the entire time and it never stops being Simon Says, the main culprit being the big colorful cards that TELL YOU how to play, and the hints that TELL YOU how to play, and the very obvious level design that TELLS YOU HOW TO PLAY. It's like I'm not even playing anymore when the game just plays this garbage for me.