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Now that I've beaten the game, gotten all red ace medals, and finished White's Hell Rush, I feel I can give this game a comprehensive review.
Neon white is a first person time trial speedrunning game. Its movement is less parkour and more movement/arena shooter; the controls are simple (no crouch, wall run, ledge grab, sprint, aim down sights etc., it's JUST moving and shooting). The games it reminds me most of is Dustforce and Track/Shootmania in some capacity. You fight mostly stationary enemies in a path that you must clear out before finishing the level, and your goal is to set better times with a friend/global leaderboard to measure against - the main gimmick of Neon White however is that alongside its relatively simple movement are ability cards that function as weapons and "discard" abilities, tossing the weapon for a powerful movement option such as an extra jump, dash, bomb that you can use to clear multiple enemies and/or jump using the blast, etc. I'll get more into it below, but that's the gist of how the game works.
I want to give one caveat, as I've talked with a friend who didn't like the game as much as I did due to having different expectations and I think it's fair to point out up front: This game is much more focused on its movement and time trial aspect than it is a true first person shooter. While it uses a specific style of movement system as a base, and while shooting is part of the game, it is not the focus of the game; you do not fight complex enemies or end up in any bullet hell situations, it's very much a refined take on FPS movement where the focus of "movement shooter" is skewed far more in favor of "movement". You still have to have some skill with aiming, but only at stationary targets along a path. I think if you go into this game expecting a true FPS game and less of a time trial race type game, you'll be a bit disappointed.
Alright, so I'll just sum up all of the details I like about this game: first and foremost, it fits squarely in the "easy to learn, hard to master" type of time-trial gameplay I like, its mechanics are incredibly simple, its movement is not bogged down by secondary options, and you have a base speed that gets modified by only a single terrain type that makes you run, and card abilities. Enemies have very clear and distinct designs, always drop the same type of card, and cards are color coded and tutorialized in such a way that their function both as a weapon and ability are intuitive - you can typically determine what you are meant to do next simply based on the enemies coming up and the cards you acquire. Even when mistakes occur, very often the immediate reaction is "I know what to do there next time". The demon enemies and cards are easy to identify from a distance and contrast the scenery nicely.
The depth provided to you with the way card pickups work is nice, there's a lot of interesting and clever ways of optimizing your route in levels. A bronze medal is awarded for times of a slow paced cold read, silvers are sloppy but adequate, golds typically indicate a good performance taking the "intended" route, and ace medals are (usually) strictly for players who optimize their route enough to take into account most of the cleverly placed higher-risk shortcuts. As such, better times are not simply a matter of mechanical execution at a higher level, but also clever routing and use of your cards requiring a little more thought beyond the obvious path forward.
This game also has a decent sense of progression and reward: for each medal earned within a level, you are given access to things like your player ghost to improve against, a level hint indicator showing where faster routes are, and the leaderboards. Each level contains an additional hidden secret which gives you fun extra character dialogue and bonus levels. The overall pacing and difficulty curve is smooth and well done, both in story and level progression, these aspects work well in complimenting one another. I think it's an incredibly well designed game that is friendly to any type of player, since your main opponent is yourself. If you just want to clear the game, that will likely be possible as the game eases you into its mechanics and the barrier between zones is fairly easy to overcome. However, if you're the kind of player who wants to set records and spend hours optimizing routes on individual levels, this game also welcome that.
To make a quick note of other stuff I liked:
1. The voice acting is solid.
2. The music is incredible.
3. I like the art style, both in the character art and level design, which is quite simple but legible and while it may not be incredibly graphics intensive gorgeously detailed stuff, it fits a cohesive and nice aesthetic that values gameplay legibility over graphics (appropriate, considering this game runs on the Switch).
A few things I am mostly positive toward with some mild indifference:
1. The story is alright, it's paced well and adequate, I like some characters more than others though. It was engaging but there were a few elements that left a weird impression, mostly that I wasn't fully convinced by some of the morality/conclusions that I think I could have sided with if I had been made to care more about some of the characters. I liked a handful of lines regarding some of this game's main story themes and some character moments were genuinely touching, but they were mixed in with some stuff I just wasn't fully convinced by. I don't really want to spoil it, I'll just say it wavers between charming and interesting vs. lightly awkward and kinda just... a tad bit annoyingly horny? It is at least mostly tonally consistent, they do give time for serious moments to have their place.
2. The UI is pretty good for the most part, and thankfully some parts I didn't like were improved in a patch, but if there's one remaining nitpick it's mostly in the way the level select is laid out and navigated with a mouse, requiring a scroll when I think it could have been fit all onto one screen.
3. The sidequest levels aren't as good as main level missions, but they're okay. Not terrible, but they're a little extra gimmicky and are 50/50 on whether they have a satisfying flow or not, in ways that main level missions feel much more tightly designed.
4. End game level design becomes a bit messier, but I consider this a positive. It's cool that some levels are easier to bust wide open and cheese, but you can definitely notice that earlier levels with more restrictive movement options were tested far more and account for a lot of cheese that the final set just doesn't because it provides you with tools that basically just break the conventions of the game (in cool ways, to be fair). Later levels are also typically more generous with their (normal) ace times.
I don't really have any complaints, but here's a few features I wish existed:
1. Being able to see red ace times after completing the game would be helpful.
2. This game could definitely be improved by being able to download other people's ghost data to race against.
3. This is an absolutely absurd ask that I don't expect from the devs at all, but this game would be sick with a level editor/creator. I'm honestly incredibly hopeful for a modding scene to grow for this game, I want to see some absurd Neon White Kaizo kinda stuff.
Anyway TL;DR:
Great game, possibly my GotY. Incredibly fun, accessible, challenging, and well designed speed game that I have almost no complaints about other than incredibly mild things surrounding the core gameplay that don't really affect my opinion on the main experience at all. Would recommend to pretty much anyone who likes the sound of this game other than with the caveat mentioned above that you should go into this game without a false impression about how much of a FPS game it really is - and even then you'll probably enjoy it even if it's not exactly what you wanted. For me, it was that and more!