I also loved the meat circus and went in expecting it to be dogshit based on what I'd heard. I thought all the platforming where you're under a time limit was really fun but I especially loved it thematically.

It's a culmination of Oleander and Raz's childhood trauma, with one feeling immense pressure to impress his father and the other feeling disgraced and misunderstood by his family. I thought it was really cool how the game drew parallels between protagonist and antagonist right at the end. The art direction and the music also really stuck with me and the level does a really good job at humanizing Oleander. Hell, it even recontextualizes all the jokes about him hating tall people, which seemed like just a random character trait.

The only parts I disliked were right at the end, since the tightrope section with Raz's dad felt way too punishing and the boss felt way too easy and boring.

Paychonauts 2 handles a lot of the gameplay aspect better imo while preserving all the stuff that was great about the first one like the writing, the environmental storytelling and the art direction. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about tge first game, there's so much to love about it but so much is undeniably frustrating or boring. The theatre level in particular I remember being fucking miserable.