Working with sound effects for accurate beat blocks is definitely a wiser method. I am aware that you have to keep at least one beat block always on the screen, but that's undoubtedly better than the cost of using no power-ups or checkpoint in a level. I tried to make a level using Musical Madness from Donkey Kong Country Returns once, and was upset when I realized how easily the music stops synchronizing with the events. It's just better using sound effects for this job. But for the following review, I'll be willing to look over this issue.
I unfortunately have to admit that I'm not a big fan of this level's gameplay. While it's impressive how many various patterns, kinds and gimmicks with beat blocks you used in this level, sometimes it wasn't thought-out really well. I do appreciate how much work you put into this level. I could see that, and that's what you don't see everyday. I do actually like beat block levels, where you always have to plan your move slowly and carefully, get in panic and try to find a solution, discover new and creative patterns as you progress, but it's a difficult job to succeed in that, in both; variation and fairness. You did do a good job in variation though, so I don't blame you about the fairness too much. But it does need to be improved a little bit in terms of gameplay. But before I point out what exactly I do consider as gameplay issues in this level, I'm going to start off with the level's design and visuals.
This level is designed quite well. The first part isn't linear, which is always a good thing, and the latter parts are keeping the level interesting with their innovation. This level has a great amount of clever gimmicks, there is a lot of variation to this level. The graphic choice is nice. I don't remember seeing this tileset before, but considering you see wood quite a lot in athletic levels, it does fit. I think this level is quite poorly decorated though. There isn't much variation, and there is just so less of it. I see you placed less in order to prevent lag, but I sincerely doubt 50% more background objects of the current amount would would cause heavy lag. The main cause of lag anyway is the overall amount of blocks, too much and fast animation in a screen, extreme amount of custom graphics (especially npcs or player), huge sizables, or infinitely moving layers. This level meets none of those criteria. I don't want to offend anyone with this, but if you play this level and your computer/laptop causes lag in this, it's likely unsuitable for SMBX. Also, a minor cut-off I noticed:
I also am not fond of how most of the dragon coins were placed. I would only consider the third and fourth one as well placed dragon coins. The first and second one weren't a too dramatic issue though. The problem with the first one is that you just have to take too much time for it. The problem with the second one, is that it's irritating how you see that the screen would still scroll down and don't know if there's a solid ground or not, especially because the beat blocks were placed quite weirdly. The fifth one was placed in a miserable way. You need such a good timing to obtain it, and that's not worth it. Remember, one dragon coin has the value of one fifth 1-up. You should place them as simply as possible, so that they aren't hard to obtain, but you still have to take a few extra seconds for each. I always considered dragon coins as presents for taking some special time for them, but for the fifth dragon coin, there is no smbx present you could give. Nothing would justify its difficulty, except maybe a star that you get after collecting all five dragon coins, but a 1-up isn't enough with that. So you might want to consider other placements for some dragon coins. Good job with the third and fourth one though.
E: The debugger says there are seven dragon coins. I found the sixth one. That one has a good placement as well.
But the placement of other npcs is quite decent. The enemies were never placed unfairly, but always placed so they are a nice little obstacles. The goomba in the warp 3/4 area is placed in a strange way though. He'll go inside the one block gap with the beat block blockade, and when that blockades appears, the goomba is glitches away, which is just weird. I also think you should place some coins in section 2, in a way that makes you recognize faster that the section actually wraps. In section four, when you come out of the pipe, the player is walking on the air for some weird way. You should always have solid ground below the pipe entrances/exits. I also don't comprehend why the pipes in section 4 are suddenly super mario world pipes. It is probably because you wanted to make it possible to distinguish the real pipes from the "beat pipes", but they don't fit at all. Also, the red "beat pipes" are still super mario bros 3 pipes. I think you should either use smb3 colored smw pipes, or regular smb3 pipes, or smb3 pipes with a slightly different color tone. I also consider it as completely redundant to hide the star at the end. Another issue with the music timing is, each time the music ends and starts again, the timing gets more and more inaccurate. Also, you shouldn't put the smb3 fgo wooden things above smb3 falling platforms. Many people do it for some reason that I probably won't understand, but once the platform falls, it leaves a cut-off there.
My main two issues with the beat blocks are the following ones. First one, in section 2, when the "beat sizable blocks" appear the first time, you have to do a jump from the red block to the blue block. The timing was okay, but the ceiling at the right side makes it incredibly tricky to do the jump correctly. I did need some time to do get past that part. In section four, there is a part where there's only a two-block-distance from the ground to the ceiling, which makes that part unnecessarily difficult. It's mainly the beginning and the end of that part, though. Those two are my main issues.
This level has a lot of potential. It's really well designed and has a lot of variable beat block patterns. It does do a lot of things wrong, though, but a lot of those things are a quick fix. Fixing the gameplay would definitely boost the score of this level up a lot, because that's where its main issue is. I'm going to give this level a 7 out of 10. I'll make sure to play your updated version if you do one. Oh, and if you plan on doing a second beat block level, try a sound-based one next time. You can also search inspiration in Rhythm Road from Chad. But otherwise, good job on this one! =P
.
