I like the cool fade-in and the powerful piano chords at the beginning. The nature sound effects were a nice touch, and the pacing is good as well. The drop at :45 is enjoyable, but you’re right about it being a tad over-compressed. What I really wanted to see out of this piece was a more fleshed-out structure, though. It doesn’t quite have the same narrative appeal of a full-length track. The rhythmic content is nice, but most of the harmonic content here is devoted to laying out the chord progression rather than having a truly dynamic melody, including the drop. Overall, you get high marks for production, sound design, atmosphere, and catchiness. Fleshing out the structure a bit and creating some more variety in the harmonic texture would help bring this piece to the next level, though. Keep at it, Dursope! :)

Mixing, mastering, and balance
1.75/2
Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety
.75/1.5
Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture
1.75/2
Instrumentation and sound design
1/1
Emotion, atmosphere, and catchiness
1.25/1.5
Originality and uniqueness
.5/1
Overall (how do the elements above interact?)
.5/1
Composite score
7.5/10

the drop isn't just a little overcompressed, it's totally blown out and clipping to shit, and that's regardless of the tone you wanted. the INTRO is overcompressed. i like abrasive and aggressive sound design but you need to build that sound into the signal before you hit the master instead of thrashing your entire mix as a crutch. there's a bunch of elements under the distorted bass sound that are obviously being drowned out and intermodulated instead of playing back as intended. the drums have lost all their impact because of how you decided to "master" it. also, the song isn't finished.

important notes on my NGUAC review process: https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1476427/18#bbspost26965604_post_text