[Extreme Demon] Shotgun by SpinStudios
Okay... I'm gonna be totally honest, this wasn't my cup of tea. First off, this took me absolutely forever to beat for its difficulty, which wasn't fun (I'm pretty sure this took me more than half the time it took me to beat Nhelv from 0), and secondly, this is probably the most consistently awkward extreme I have ever played, barring maybe Heat Wave.
That being said, I don't hate this level, I never found myself really too frustrated playing from zero, and practicing this was honestly super fun! You get to the drop very quickly, which I always like to see, and the gameplay, when it is consistent, it's super satisfying to pull off.
When you first play most sections of this level, it all feels very smooth and honestly, very easy for an extreme. And for some people, I think it just stays that way and they beat this very quickly. Unfortunately, the roadblock for me came with consistency: I couldn't actually get consistent at the gameplay with this level because it all felt so incredibly awkward. There are a ton of problems regarding the visuals getting in the way of gameplay visibility, which I say about literally every glow level but it's still the case here, and every time I can't see my icon or can't clearly see the spikes, my input accuracy absolutely tanks, and even easy timings become much, much harder for me. And with this level has a LOT of that. Secondly, though there are pretty much no genuinely hard timings with this level, most of the timings just feel so unintuitive to me, and there are a ton of times I mistime an extremely easy timing just because I acted on my intuition instead of actually remembering where exactly to click, and this made the gameplay feel very random. And then add that on top of moving objects and partially invisible gameplay and you just have a bit of a nightmare in the mix. But anyway, let's go part by part:
Intro (0-17): The timings from 0-4 are super awkward but it's at the beginning so whatever. 4-11, however, got very consistent and plays pretty well.
Drop first half (17-57): The first section from 17-26 never got consistent. The wave at 19 is just horrendous, I honestly don't know why I could never get past it but I just couldn't, it looks and honestly is so easy but my consistency was just extremely on and off with this wave, and the two clicks required to pass it legitimately never made sense to me. I'm pretty sure my pass rate with this wave section was close to 50%. Again, it just felt, so, so awkward. Then you have the black orb at 24, which I think is bugged because sometimes I just die randomly on the top platform when I don't time it the way the level wants me to, it might be some movement thing, I have no clue. Next, you have 26-38, which is usually very consistent but sometimes I randomly lose consistency at the again awkward 29 wave which is annoying. Then you have a kind of stupid ship transition at 38 which depends on the way you hit the previous yellow orb, followed by another awkward transition into the wave where you're temporarily blinded right at the transition making the first click a blind timing. Honestly, the rest of the wave is pretty annoying sometimes too, I really hate that they made the trail disappear. 41-57 is probably the easiest part of the level but also one of the most awkward, it's just chock full of timings that don't flow super well together tied with partially obscured gameplay. The ship at 55 is also really irritating because some of the small spikes are hard to see while playing.
Drop second half (57-100): Definitely the harder half, you first have an absolutely impossible wave section that honestly would be OK if it was ruined by these random glow pillars that spawn in and obscure small bits of the wave and completely mess up my flow for whatever reason. The next cube is really easy, but again, the timings in it feel unintuitive, especially the 67 green orb. Then you have 69-77, which is also insanely difficult, mostly just because the first five or so clicks are INSANELY awkward before being followed by a tight wave corridor. 78-85 offers a short break, but then 85-100 is arguably one of the most awkward sections of the level. I had to pretty much force myself to memorize exactly how to do each timing here, I couldn't rely on intuition for anything, and some timings, such as the spider clicks at 87, still make no sense to me whatsoever. This section really sucked, and I guess I'm glad I only died here twice from zero.
So yeah, overall, this level is just insanely awkward. I can see this gameplay clicking for some people, and it clearly has from what I've seen, but for me, it was just a bunch of jumbled nonsense timings that didn't flow together whatsoever. But... it was fun in practice, and I don't think it's "objectively" bad, it just didn't work for me, so I still recommend those who are interested to give this one a shot.
Gameplay: 5.0/7
Deco: 2.6/3
Total: 7.6/10
Personal Difficulty: Very easy extreme demon (5A)