Rating Curve

Visually speaking this level is completely unremarkable. Its par for the course for levels from this era of the game, and does nothing to set itself apart. Where it actually shines is in the gameplay department. It's one of the easiest extreme demons in the game, and is a blast to play. The flow gameplay here works perfectly well and is quite fair too. For something that only took a day to beat, it was really engaging and enjoyable. If you want a fun easy extreme to do look into Precipitance.

Out of the TeamN2 trio, Artificial Ideology is by far the most forgotten, which led me to question why that is. It probably comes down to it not standing out as much as the prior two in difficulty or ideas. Even so, I thought it had some interesting gameplay gimmicks going for it. I haven't seen duals like the last part anywhere else after all. The visuals are good for the time, but don't really stand out nowadays. In terms of the gameplay, Knobbelboy did a fine job with making sure it's not buggy. Most of the level is actually pretty fun and satisfying to pull off. Like A Bizarre Phantasm, the ending is a rough chokepoint that got me several times from 0. If you're able to handle poor balancing, I'd actually recommend this one as the base gameplay is fairly fun. Just make sure to know what you're getting into beforehand with this or either of the other N2 levels.

Seeing this get rated after so many years was a very welcome surprise. It's selling point at the time of release was having 100 creators, and a lot of them are notable names. Due to how long the level was in development back then it serves as a sort of time capsule stretching between 2015 and 2018. Just through watching this level you can see updates and past creators go by in real time, which is something you can't say about many levels.

Stereo Demoness has a special place in my heart for being one of the earliest examples of stylized decoration in the game. MaJackO created some genuinely interesting art of swords, hands and monsters throughout this level that were ahead of their time. Decoration is scored with the time of creation taken into account. The gameplay in the nerfed rated version is certainly an acquired taste, and I doubt most would enjoy it as much as I did. It's very rough around the edges with awkward timings, straight fly and spam. I'll be scoring the gameplay lower because of the fact most wouldn't like it. Stereo Demoness also helped push the game forward in the difficulty aspect. as it was one of the first truly hard levels to be created and gained infamy to the players of its time. It's overall a neat little piece of this games early history, even if it didn't hold up too well in some regards.

Through The Gates is a lowkey guilty pleasure level to me. Despite it plainly being inconsistent in both gameplay and decoration, I'm just drawn to it for some reason. Some of the parts in this have visually held up very well, while others were substandard even for its time. Where it really appeals to me though is just how intimidating it is from a balancing standpoint. The ending chokepoint gives this level character that's otherwise been lost with playtesting teams being commonplace for levels of its difficulty nowadays. Even just from a viewing perspective it made the prospect of it being verified that much more interesting to follow.