Rating Curve

Extreme Demon #5!

Probably my most uninteresting extreme to date, honestly. The only reason I even went for this was because it's a ship (and kind of wave) carried entry extreme, so I knew I could beat it quickly. I was right, as I only took 995 attempts to complete it.

That being said, I think it's a decent level! The gameplay is nothing to really write home about, as it's a mixture of some fun parts balanced out by some awkward bullshit that got kind of annoying. In particular, I found the spider clicks in the middle to be really difficult to gauge at times, although that's probably just a skill issue on my end. I also found the sections of gameplay where you had to click one specific orb in a stream of fakes (such as at 55 and 60) to be quite annoying and finnicky as well, mostly due to how 2.2 changed orb priority to make that style of gameplay much more awkward. Other than that, the gameplay here is perfectly serviceable, and even decently enjoyable if you're good at ship and wave.

The decoration is also nothing super special in the grand scheme of things, but I actually like it quite a bit. I know I'm in the minority here, as most people seem to not really enjoy sillow's visual style, but I've personally had an appreciation for it's simplicity and effectiveness ever since I first heard about him. It is still fairly basic, though.

Overall, a decent level that I highly recommend for anyone looking to transition from insane to extreme demons. At the very least, it will get you better at ship and wave and get you used to hard levels that are carried by those two gamemodes, which happens quite often in this tier of difficulty.

Obviously a comedically large nostalgia bomb for anyone who has been playing this game for a while. That being said, I don't think the rose-tinted glasses are working as well on this level as they do for other levels in it's category of "nostalgic peak", or whatever its called. Honest to god, the gameplay is incredibly boring and uninteresting, it just kind of happens. That's not to say its particularly BAD, its just not very imaginative at all to me. You know that one scene from baki where he's cooking and eating meals made out of air? Yeah, that's basically what the gameplay in this is like.

I largely feel the same way about the decoration, but the visual at least gets bonus points for the fact that it is genuinely pretty thematic. I especially like the dark cube bits. They're sparse, but it works in favor of the atmosphere in my opinion.

Overall, not bad, but maybe wasn't as deserving of it's iconic status as a lot of people seem to think. At least to me.

My first extreme and one that I frankly think gets a little too much hate. I'm not saying it's the greatest thing in the world, but the average gameplay score here would have you believe it was some hidden bass cave sequel.

For one thing, the deco is pretty great. There's a clear and consistent theme and it's executed well throughout the whole level, not much more to say on that front. It's a shame that it's incredibly poorly optimized requires almost everyone to play a horrendous looking LDM. As I said before, the gameplay is not as bad in my eyes as everyone seems to say that it is, but I will admit that it's a pretty uninteresting nothing burger of odd timings and random chokepoints. I actually didn't have much issue with any of the chokepoints in this level, but I can easily see how they would get annoying. At the same time, I honestly have a bit of a soft spot for simplistic gameplay like this, so I'm bound to like it more than most players. Overall, not great, but certainly not as a bad as other reviews would have you believe.