The defining achievement of Neon White seems to be turning people with no speedrunning or highscore-chasing ambitions around to do just that. That's certainly the case with me.
I didn't chase for the global leaderboards, shaving off milliseconds, but I made it a mission to get every Ace medal and collectible in every level, because doing that is less of a challenge to perfectly take each corner but instead distinct puzzle solving of how to use the tools available to you to get to a seemingly unreachable spot or solve the alternative path that is highlighted in the built-in hint system.
The reason why I was striving for the completion of every challenge is the excellent game feel and fantastic soundtrack, effortlessly putting you into a flow state within seconds. You also quickly learn that you can rely on the game being fair to you, gradually increasing the intensity but never forcing you to beat your head against a wall or requiring pixel perfect precision.
The writing I unfortunately didn't care for at all, it is -very much- woven out of internet culture, memes and tropes and while it combined with the voice acting probably evokes a semi ironic nostalgia for beloved english anime dubs, it certainly failed to make me care for the characters at all and the little vignettes that you unlock by collecting gifts in the levels felt hollow and pointless for the most part unfortunately.
This would normally be a bigger deal breaker for me than it actually ended up being, just because of the strength of all the surrounding elements. It is just so unbelievably fun and I can't help but love Neon White in its entirety because of that.