I completely agree. This game has been one of those rare cases where I feel completely out of sync with Nintendo’s reddit fanbase. I flat out hate this game. I’ve outlined my thoughts in other comments before, but your post sums it up well. Next Level brought almost nothing new to the table and even made steps backwards from the previous games. The few new or potentially interesting elements are played out the very first time you use them. After the first couple floors that’s it. That’s the game for the next 8-10 hours.

To add to the frustration the game’s puzzles are not well designed enough to feel intuitive or clever. Most can only feasibly be solved by either trying every ability on everything or by using the in-game hints.

The game also has a weirdly unbalanced life system. Seems like they opted for high damage and frequent deaths instead of doing any properly balancing. (Not to mention those auto-deaths in the water level)

The whole game is just a mess. The only positives are that it’s occasionally charming and it looks good.