Neon White is extremely fun to play. Even if you are put off by the writing, the gameplay is so fun that it is worth trudging through the story. I will note that I did enjoy the dialogue, but, it doesn't take much to please me with a story. Although, the story does improve when things get more serious later on in the game so your mileage may vary. Another nitpick is that a majority of optional dialogue is not voiced. Back to the gameplay, it is an absolute blast to zoom through levels feeling like a bad ass as your adrenaline is pumping. The stellar soundtrack by Machine Girl does nothing but enhance this feeling. Neon White is an absolute must play for gameplay alone even if the writing puts you off.

certainly well worth playing for the whole, yknow, point of pure flow state speedrunning -- but I think even this aspect of the game gets old kind of fast. missions are fairly repetitive aesthetically for the first half and some weapons are more fun than others (with the rocket launcher making gift finding a pain). obviously anyone else will tell you about the cringe dialogue and I'm no exception but the story is so whatever anyway it really is OKAY to just ffwd everything. it's a good game that starts good and GETS good but the grind for gifts and ace medals gets frustrating fast and I actively gave up on going for every achievement realising the total bullshit of the ng+ rushes. you're telling me I have to play every level of the game back to back without dying? get fucked, absolutely lowering my score for this alone.

The game for speedrunners. The game feels extremely clean gameplay wise. There are rarely any situations where you are confused as to where to go next. The game presents a pretty simple premise and makes you intuitevely progress through the levels. Also it has some room for creating shortcuts. The characters are very charismatic though I feel like at some times the voice acting wasn't necessary. However it does at to the game. I didn't focus too much on the story but dialogues and overall world building of the game seem to be very well built and intriguing. Art is incredible. Also yandere bunny girl is always a win in my book.

absolutely one of the most fun games i've ever played. everything feels so good. the music is incredible and puts you in a trance to help you knock out repeated attempts at these levels. this is a game where level design is put front and center to the point where you NOTICE how good it is, because you have to. the game flaunts it - it wants to show you. this window? it's here because the fast way to do this is to not even enter this building but just fall past it, and shoot a rocket through the window to clip the two enemies in here. these enemies? skip them until the very end when a barrel explodes and destroys the platform they're standing on. and everything is so READABLE. even your first time through a level feels fast. you can play so much of the game on reflex, and you glide through the levels shooting enemies and using powers when it feels right, blasting through red barriers and scanning the screen for the next little miniobjective that you are always perfectly equipped to overcome. ultimate flow state game.

also the book of life is i think honestly the best-feeling button press in a videogame. it's so insanely powerful and the levels are still designed to accommodate it. the distances you cover in that chapter are absurd. and the music. thousand pound butterfly is perfect for getting you as wired as possible. i was giggling to myself between stages of that chapter. it's exhilarating.

Este juego es uno frustrante, no porque sea díficil, si no porque es un buen juego atrapado en un monton de parafernalia que no le hace ningún bien.
Es decir, el core del juego, la parte mecanica es una que me gusta mucho y esta muy bien pensada, las herramientas que da el juego más el incentivo de los niveles por conseguir las mejores puntuaciones es uno genial. No solo el juego te da eso, si que a través de estas herramientas te da espacio a generar tus propias rutas para reducir esos segundos demás, es casi una forma de expresión de los jugadores al encontrar nuevas formas para acelerar el paso pos los niveles, todo eso me encanta no por nada me obsesione con sacar primeros lugares en mi lista de amigos (no lo conseguí siempre).
El problema es que todo lo que rodea el juego es increíblemente mediocre a completamente insoportable, los personajes son lo que más destaca, se nota la inspiración en el anime pero no en el buen sentido si no que toma todos los topicos y objetificación femenina de este (en concreto ecchis o harem) para crear a sus personajes, tanto en diseño como en personalidades, interacciones e historia. Esto convierte al juego en una constante de crear situaciones incomodas, misoginas y pajeras.
No acaba ahí si no que todo el sistema de regalos del juego me parece una forma muy vaga de implementar coleccionables, el que estén me parece genial, incentivar la vuelta a los niveles para explorarlos de manera distinta a la habitual, pero su "uso" es increíblemente pobre, ya que generan un sistema de regalos para subir tus relaciones con los personajes, lo cual es una forma extremadamente mecanica y artificial para relacionartes con ellos, ya que fuera de este sistema no podes verlos fuera de su estricto rol en la historia, lo cual hace que tu familiaridad con ellas se vea reducida a un sistema puramente mecanica de desbloqueos, es torpe, aburrido e increíblemente artificial.

Más allá de eso la historia en si misma no es una que funcione muy bien, tiene todo este planteamiento sobre dios, los angeles, el perdón y el destino, pero no siento que realmente sepa llevar ninguno de estos temas sin caer profundamente en la simpleza más absoluta, cosas como que Green sea un villano caricaturesco le quitan mucho peso a mucho de lo que prentede la historia, hablar del perdón pero al mismo tiempo dando un antagonista sin más facetas que la psicotica, más allá de eso la misma no se mueve de manera interesante, si no que lo usa como motor para "justificar" el avance sin más, lo cual es una oportunidad desperdiciada enorme porque tiene temas y elementos muy interesantes que explorar pero decide quedarse en la vagueza más absoluta.

Y por último me gustaría comentar es como de la mitad en adelante el diseño de niveles empieza a decaer más y más, como comente al inicio algo que me gusta es el incentivo a la expresión de sus jugadores al moverse por los niveles, pero conforme avanza no solo los niveles se hacen más largos si no que el diseño de niveles empieza a ser mas restrictivo, empieza a permitir menos el uso de tus herramientas para crear nuevas rutas para forzar por las que ellos quieren que vayas, lo cual es increíblemente frustrante a muchos niveles, por suerte en el mundo final, el de la pagina se recupera la libertad aunque sea por unos cuantos niveles pero no hace menos pesado todo el resto de su trayecto hasta ahí.

Me gusto el juego, pero me frustra que fuera de su base el mismo decaíga por todos lados, y no deje a los jugadores moverse como realmente desean.

i’ve had a push and pull relationship with this game but i must say it did pull through at the end and i left it with a positive feeling overall.

i will say the speedrunning gameplay and platforming felt REALLY REALLY good and very satisfying to master most of the time.

i think pretty handily the most significant weakness of the game is how disconnected the storytelling through the actual written narrative and the gameplay are. in a game like sekiro, the separation between dramatic storytelling and mechanical storytelling in the game are practically nonexistent. noah caldwell gervais wrote about this in his really brilliant souls inheritors video, but the struggle and effort put towards completing the game creates the drama of the narrative.

however, in neon white, the gameplay feels totally disconnected from the story. they don’t even contrast or compare in interesting ways. it’s just so weird i haven’t seen anything like this before haha. the story itself is like an older 2000s anime exploring this pretty cool world of the afterlife and forgiveness. but the gameplay itself is like all about optimizing your tools and strengthening your skills to improve your speed. these two concepts are not at odds but not complementary either, they’re just so unrelated.

while i eventually found myself drawn at least to white and red, the game and the story just never seemed that cohesive or connected.

pondering between a 7 and 8 rn because the levels and gameplay are
exceptional.

So, I actually beat this game like a month ago but forgot to submit a review I think lol.
Anyways this game was way better then I was expecting it to be, both in it's story and gameplay. I went into the game with the mindset it had a pretty alright gameplay loop and a really bad story only to come out of it thinking the gameplay was great and that the story and characters were really fun to learn more about. Undeniably that story is one that's pretty generic in some ways along with a lot of camp, but in the end it feels like something I would of really liked watching on Toonami as a kid. The gameplay is great with it being a FPS focused around speedrunning levels and getting the best time possible with a good run of level usually being as short as 20-30 seconds. Honestly there is not a whole lot I personally have to say about it other then it feels good to control. Also it's really more of a puzzle game then it is a platformer, and I thought those puzzles were fun as hell. Finally I'll just say the OST for this game is absolutely amazing, Machine Girl knocked it out of the park with this one.
Overall, if you like FPS games focused around using your brain to speedrun through a level as fast as possible with a early toonami anime story to back that, I think you'll love this game.

As fun as Neon White could often be, I ended up being frustrated by it in equally frequent measures. To get it out of the way; Neon White is mostly super leet and epic to play the whole way through, especially if you respond well to its MLG pace along with its hype to always gotta go fast. The level designs are often epic baconsauce, stanning the speed you're pushed to go further and further with. Not only that, but it's addictive to go beyond being a n00b until you get the Ace medal on each level.

This is what makes some of the snoozefest (relative to the rest of the game) levels and boss fights especially rage-inducing when you come across them, reorienting the flow in a mid way. Along with some levels that felt real 💀 by reusing older challenges nearly beat-by-beat, mainly like around the middle third of the game, it feels like the design was stretched out a bit too much at 96 levels. But when most of it hits, it hits, excusing the lame stuff elsewhere in the game.

What doesn't hit is the cringe piled onto a perfectly good game. You play as the titular Neon White, a bad dude with amnesia who doesn't afraid of anything, forced to pwn demons to gain the privilege of temporarily staying in Heaven, running across Neon Yellow (your bro no homo), Neon Violet (the psycho e-girl who's also lol so randum xD) (the only one I responded positively to and I'd let her kill me), Neon Red (the tsundere baddie who's clearly into you), and Neon Green (the crazy murder dude that really makes you go "um... did he just do that???"). It's nearly-impossible to get invested in any of it despite the rare few Crowning Moments of Awesome. The often-hammy voice acting doesn't own, and wouldn't be much of an issue if the characters had dialog or writing worth giving a shit about.

Not only do they not, but there's even an insane amount of meme-filled, tongue-in-cheek, Joss Whedon-esque writing that plagues much of the interactions and story developments. It's weird, badly written, insufferable, and distracting. It comes off like a justification for the gameplay as well as the aesthetic, when I would much rather have just played these nearly 100 levels without the bad writing doing its best to make it harder to get through. Yes, it does let off the gas pedal with the memes and the like by around Chapter 7, nearly stopping altogether from the next one on. But it's almost too little too late with such a bad impression up until then. From top to bottom, the story, characterization, and overall writing simply needed to not be as bad as it was here in order to be compelling; no memes would have been a good start.

Thankfully, there is a part of the game that doesn't require you to play the story - the level rushes. Playing all of a character's themed levels (which at least do well to match the kind of personality each of the characters are), playing through all the story levels, or doing the same but with only the Dominion card (the rocket launcher card you unlock by the final third) back-to-back-to-back is its own thrill. Even the maddening Hell versions where any death means you must restart from the very beginning.

If you have skill issues like me however, not only is the difficulty curve on something like this immense, but you're probably somewhat worn out on the gameplay by this point. Especially when you also frequently run across the lesser levels in constantly restarting; that puts a damper on the excitement somewhat. Another irritating problem also highlights itself here, with the floaty airtime you get making it remarkably difficult to judge if you've overshot or not with a jump. Combine that with getting too close to a surface's edge meaning that the game simply won't register your jump at all, and a number of deaths will end up being extremely frustrating, especially in something as high-pressure as the Hell rushes.

Still, there is a good game in there. If you only look at the main crux of the game and most of its levels, there's a lot of fun to be had throughout its runtime, and you will definitely feel cool after racing through a level and getting an Ace medal. Even with some faults, it's pretty fun! It's just too bad it had to come with a story. There's a nice attempt buried within the writing, but none of it lands, which sucks, because it'd make coming back to the meat of the game more enticing. Still, what's there as far as the non-story side of it goes is rather good, so even though it's a wash for me, if you can stomach its cringe, you'll find plenty to like.

Mesmo ouvindo os comentários dos meus amigos, eu tentei dar uma chance para a história de Neon White e logo nos primeiros minutos de jogo já achei a trama fraca e os diálogos horrendos. Em contrapartida, a gameplay é completamente viciante. Eu coloquei em minha mente que só passava para a próxima fase se eu conseguisse pelo menos ouro e isso foi regra por (quase) toda duração do título. A maioria das fases é muito bem montada não só para ser o mais diferente possível da anterior e da seguinte, mas também para não deixar o jogador entrar no modo automático. Outras críticas ficam para todo seu layout, hiperssexualização das personagens femininas e suas atuações forçadas, mas eu consigo entender bem o motivo dele ter sido aclamado ano passado.

I loved this game, the entire thing is just self-indulgent fun with masterfully-crafted levels that make you feel like a speedrunner. Some lines were cring but it knows what it is & while nothing to write home about, it wraps up nicely and has it's moments, plus the gameloop is too fun for me to care. also it's OST is just great. I will one day return to get all red dev times and attempt the rush modes, but for now i'm extremely happy with my time with this game. and yes this game is the alt universe where spike spiegel ended up in heaven. Red best girl.