[Extreme Demon] Nhelv by SrGuillester
Oops, I have to rewrite this description because I accidentally deleted my old one. Also, I changed my icon colors because I wanted my wave to be more visible.
But... new hardest! And by a decent margin too, I'll be honest, ConFusion was a level I was very, very happy to beat (because it was amazing) but it was relatively obscure and it just didn't feel like a new hardest, it kind of just felt like a random extreme I beat that ended up being a new hardest. But this... this is different.
This level just has the grandeur and scale of a "hardest" demon, despite it almost falling off pointercrate at this point. I am incredibly happy to call this my hardest, and I really put in the effort for it, amassing 24.1k attempts and 37.5 hours of total playtime, something that is (goofily enough) only rivaled by Deadlocked. Unfortunately, my experience playing this level wasn't the best, especially from zero.
The first twenty or so hours of me playing this was just dedicated to me learning each part of the level. Being Nhelv, this part ended up taking up more than half the playtime and also about 18k attempts alone. After this, it was time to actually start doing runs, and for this part I dedicated about 7-8 hours, starting from 57-100, before working back to 37-100, 29-100, and then finally, 16-100. After I got 16-100, I decided that (after a bit more practice of the first 16%), I'd start playing from zero. And then, the last hours were dedicated to beating this from zero, six of which were actually in normal mode, spread across four days. This was easily the most excruciating part of the playing experience for me. But really, all told, six hours isn't really that long to spend playing from zero for a new hardest, I'm happy it didn't take much longer because it totally could have with worse luck.
My whole experience practicing this and learning the level was honestly fine, it was exhausting and could occasionally be frustrating given how hard most of the level is to follow, but it was all kind of a standard learning process. Doing runs wasn't too bad either, again, occasionally frustrating, but I was able to push out decent runs pretty consistently, even though at this point, I will say I was getting kind of sick of playing this, and my hands were as well. The nightmare began when I began playing from zero.
I'll go into more detail down below in my pastebin about gameplay specifics, but the awfulness of playing this level from zero really boiled down to having to play the first 16%. The first 9% is just boring, sluggish gameplay that you have to sit through on every attempt (and it is looooong), and 9-16 was by far the least consistent section of the level for me, there would be times when I'd die there 10-15 times without getting past it once. It felt so on and off for me and it made the level INSANELY frustrating to play. This level is also wildly stressful to play, for one, it's 2.5 minutes long, and long levels are just always inherently stressful, but it's also balanced in a way that makes dying to the end repeatedly all the more painful. And the gameplay is just super awkward, consistency with most sections of this level was on and off and it just resulted in me being blocked at certain percentages for long stretches of time, just waiting to get over the hurdle and gaining a bout of consistency. One came to me on my third day, when I got 81 and 86 pretty much back to back, before losing it again for the next hour, and then today, I got 85 and 70 pretty much back to back, before beating it very soon after. In fact, if you listen to my click recording, you can see me complaining about my 70 death at the very beginning since it just happened a few attempts back. But yeah, this nature just made the level inherently very frustrating to play, so overall, my experience from zero was honestly pretty negative, and I think the gameplay just in general isn't extremely fun, it's very awkward, kinda buggy, and way too difficult to follow at times.
Here will be my rundown of the whole level: https://pastebin.com/cY4F2bFX
But, I want to conclude on a positive note. This is the first demon that I feel really pushed my skill limit and it really does feel like a true accomplishment beating a level of this scale and of this difficulty, and I feel that I've earned it every step of the way because this... level... is... HARD. And having this legendary level as a new hardest is just awesome. Despite my issues with the gameplay, this is without a doubt one of my favorite extremes on the demonlist, and possibly one of my favorites in the game. It just has this daunting, epic, and intimidating but also somewhat legendary vibe to it, dienid and notlsa (especially) did an insane job of turning this into what it is, and I'm so happy to have experienced it in its full glory. Definitely one of a kind.
Gameplay: 5.2/7
Deco: 2.9/3
Total: 8.1/10
Personal difficulty: Difficult extreme demon (5F)
Clicks: • Nhelv by SrGuillester clicks