Catalyze 100% by Zaphkiel

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Thanks to everyone that has ever existed for existing and !special thanks! to myself for not ending my existence while playing this. Two years.

Guess what, it's my old arch enemy level. I had thought about so many different descriptions within the last two years, but no one seems to make sense to me now. So I'm just gonna write my description as I feel like right now.

I hadn't played this in a month or so, last time was in mid october 2022, so I came back to this level the ~20th time in my life, it was last friday, and I despite my best of november being 41, I randomly got 91. After that fail I got to the 2nd half ~80 more times within three days, on saturday got 90 and on sunday the last 93. The amount of times I had failed at 74 and 75 is ridiculous. I didn't record every death, but if I'd have to guess, I died at least 40 times at 74 and at least 50 times at 75%.

For some extremely stupid reason I had been developing a mindblock mindset on this level over the years. I still had the pain of november 2020 in my mind, when I wouldn't even be able to pass 61%. I had been playing this on and off ever since november 2020. You gotta know that I played this on 120Hz for around 30k attempts, and that was just so much worse. 2022 was the first time I used the 240Hz bypass on my 120Hz monitor.

But I'll try to explain why I ever started this in the first place, in november 2020 I hadn't beaten Zaphkiel yet, the Zaphkiel pass was in march 2021. I had just been annoyed about tons of people calling it harder than Zaphkiel even though Zaphkiel was higher on the list, so of course I wanted to beat it to call it easier. So I didn't want to beat it for fun, but just to get my terrible opinion into the world. And that was the reason why my mind wouldn't ever allow me to beat this for this long. It was like my mind was against myself, it knew beating something for the opinion only is not a good thing, so it punished me by mindblocking me.

However, I stopped caring about which one is harder a long time ago, I swear, in 2021 I was a fanatic "Zaphkiel harder than Catalyze" confused one. I would've physically fought an opponent in opinion over who was right, I was that blinded. And that extreme opinion would be the end of me.

What do I think now about gameplay?
Catalyze is better than Zaphkiel.
Zaphkiel is way more inconsistent and unfun than Catalyze.
Both are super inconsistent.
Which one is harder? I don't know.
Did I enjoy Catalyze?
I don't know. I played this for the period of such a long time that I can't remember. I remember the days of pain, when I genuinely wanted to kms, and I remember the days of fun, when it seemed to me like I was improving, and when the level improved me.

The worst days were those ones when I felt lost because I couldn't take it. Those were days when I felt like my mind was getting sucked into a black hole, destroyed and rebuilt again, to get destroyed over and over again. I don't want to ever get to that point again and I'm positive about that I won't get another abysmal experience that is comparable to the Zaphkiel series.

The Zaphkiel series is the end of me - it was the end of me, there has never been anything in my gaming career that was more the end of me than this. But still, it's not the end of me anymore, because now I ended it. I don't ever have to ever bear it ending me in the future.

I appreciate anyone who ever supported me while playing this, especially motivating comments.

I still have tons of fail compilations from this on my computer, that I never uploaded, maybe I will someday when I find the time and link them here in the description.

Song by @devinchincomposer
I do not care about the demonlist. (placement used to be here)
Date beaten: 27th of november 2022
Attempts: 35053
About 30000 on 120Hz, about 5000 on 240Hz (bypass).
11748 normal mode, 7731 new copy, 15574 old deleted copy.
Worst Fails:
93%x2
92%
91%x2
90%x2
ALOT of second half fails, out of which the most are not even recorded, ~150 fails past 60%.
chokepoints of the second half: 93%, 91%, 81%, 75%, 74%, 61%, 58%.

I didn't ever prepare for the case of beating this, so honestly I am completely clueless about what to do now. This had made me quit for several months. Might finish the Top 75 of the IDL, I don't know. World is weird now, there can't be a world of me having done the Zaphkiel series (lol?).

This might be my last extreme demon, or it might not. I'm not a clairvoyant, I can't estimate what my future me is gonna be up to.

menu-music: fripSide - save me again (+synth)