Went for 100% on replay; i.e., got all the Ace medals (and surprised myself with a few red ones too), completed all the gift challenges and sidequests, and against my better judgment, I even read all the dialogue. I left this run-through of Neon White with new appreciation and new frustrations in roughly equal measure, with intersections between the two that'd take an essay to unravel, or maybe a three-hour YouTube video called "Neon White: An Exhaustive Critique" or some bullshit. I'll save that for round 3.

Gameplay and level design so good that its "flaws" could be more aptly called "imperfections"; the devs occasionally err on the side of traversability over polish (meaning bits of level geometry that help with gift challenges can gum up normal runs), some of the chain reactions built into levels aren't usefully telegraphed, and there are a few "where do I go now?" moments that feel like imprecise design rather than intentional mini-puzzles. (It gets particularly annoying when exploding barrels shoot you up into the empty sky, with no clear indication which direction you're supposed to turn afterward.) But on the whole, this is a game I've been waiting my whole life to play, or at least the decade and change since mastering League of Evil on my old iPod Touch in high school. As someone who can barely hold his own even in the rare FPS games I enjoy, I aced every level apart from most of the 11th chapter, and that's only because I know for a fact I'm going to optimize the shit out of those levels over countless hours of trial and error. I cannot wait to play even more of this game.

However, I must confess I skipped every single cutscene as soon as I realized the dialogue was going to be Like That for the whole game. Every single one.