So. With the 1.01 update helping make the difficulty curve a little less sheer... I'd go so far as to say most of the maps are actually fun to play. ...Most. Three out of five isn't bad, right?
The cave's problems are clear and self-evident. It's too hard, too fast, considering you need to pay 1200 credits to be allowed to move around the map and use the shops. Maggots are too small, being extremely difficult to either see or shoot without an automatic weapon, and serve as roadbumps making kiting difficult. Flies come from all angles, are hard to hit, and will be the main thing damaging players during runs. Hunters show up way, way too fucking soon. And Musca... their H-Scene is bugged, causing their AI to fail and softlocking the player. This means the game is technically impossible to finish, by-the-by, as there's a milestone to take said H-scene to completion which cannot happen.
The Jungle... dear lord, the jungle. It's down to two enemies that make it impossible to have fun, Orcs and Mother FUCKING Trappers. Basically, Orcs take no damage except for brief windows after swinging and climbing ledges, making them NEED to be kited around the treetops to be killed, while Trappers... set traps. I know that sounds self-evident, but NO. They set traps. AT ALL TIMES. From the moment they spawn to the moment they die, no matter where they are and regardless of the player's position, they periodically put down a bear trap that guarantees a knockdown if stepped in regardless of health or stamina. While they can be shot to clear them... I just said you needed to kite Orcs through the treetops. When jumping down, it's a fifty-fifty that you'll land directly on a bear trap and be promptly grabbed by the orcs following you, or land relatively safely amidst a minefield of the fucking things. It's common to find Traps placed literally on the edges of platforms, and it's even possible for a Trapper to place a trap just far enough from a platform edge where it is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO DESTROY FROM BELOW and MUST be stepped in to be cleared.
If the Orc shields no longer covered their heads, it'd be a fair (if annoying) fight. If beartraps merely slowed the player and cut a bit of health, it would be a fair...ish fight. As it stands, one map is stupid easy, one map is broken easy, one map is technically fair but will quickly run into problems as spawning the fucking puppet is a slow death sentence, Railgun or not, and two maps are just absolutely horrible. To be fair, it is... possible, to do well at the Jungle, through practice and sheer luck, and it... might be possible to get gud at the Cave? Maybe? The point is two of the five maps are about ten times as difficult as the other three because this game clearly wasn't played by an actual player before it was released... which was obvious from 1.0's literally-go-fuck-yourself difficulty.
-Oh yeah, Bear Traps work through invuln. NO.
