99 | Mob Choir

The map is an absolute must-play (or view, in the no notes lightshow)  for any Mob Psycho fan, but is any extremely creative display for any player to enjoy

Full disclosure here, I'm a pretty big Mob Psycho fan. With that, seeing someone attempt to translate an already very creative animated opening into 3D space with the magic of Noodle Extensions and Chroma was exciting from the moment I saw it. It was definitely a large undertaking, but I'm happy to say the mapper nailed it, for the most part.

My biggest issue with this map comes in the form of readability. I would say I'm a fairly average player, so I'm definitely not in the upper echelon of players that can confidently read 22 NJS. I understand that such a high NJS probably came about as a result of the walls, but I really had no clue what was going on. All the blocks were flying by me so fast, I had 0 chance at hitting a good portion of them. I gave this map about 10 tries on the expert difficulty, and I was still not able to pass, although I did come down from ~30 bailouts, to 5.

Compounding with the issue of a too high NJS were notes popping out of walls right in front of me. When the walls crossed over the playing field, particularly in the beginning with the dense and frequent city buildings, I could not see the notes until they were whipping by. I really appreciated the effect of the walls being directly in front of you, but it made for very poor readability for lower skilled players with minimal sight-reading skills, and slower reactions times. I wish a different solution had been found.

Nonetheless, I still really enjoyed the experience. When I could read the patterns, it flowed well and felt appropriate to the song. There was nothing too fancy, but the walls were meant to be the star of the show, and so it worked out into a good balance.

Oh man, though, the WALLS. Translating 2D into 3D can not have been easy, but the effect is incredible. The explosions of colour, Mob's eyes, the city. Everything, really. I have seen some cool wall maps before, but never such a fantastic homage with such intricate details in all of its objects. There are a couple walls that were a little disconcerting, however. The lines at 0:10 that came directly at you felt like they were going to 'stab' you, and the spam at the end of the map was borderline uncomfortable, just like very strobe-y lights. Because of those, I would drop the Level Quality down to 4.5, but that isn't possible. 4 doesn't seem fair for such minor issues, so I'll round it up to 5, but those issues are present.

Luckily, this map does come with a No Notes version, for those of us that aren't super speedy. For higher skilled players, this map comes highly recommended. I'm so excited to see what's next for thelittlewiseowl moving forwards. Well done, thelittlewiseowl!