I've spent quite a while on this one particular area (In Han Tani's Challenge difficulty), enough that I want to talk about the area as I have experienced it so far:
- Respawn point - this was an interesting / enjoyable puzzle.
- Alarm room - a constant source of frustration, until I discovered an easy way out. Unfortunately the area has a scripted ghost jar that appears in three different rooms (including the first room after the respawn point), and the third of those appearances is annoying enough that it's easier for me to just be consumed by the jar in this alarm room when I first encounter it.
- Eye stalk room - annoying, because there's no repeatable sequence that works every time. The straight shooter and lobbers trace my position (which is easy to work around), but the start time for the straight shooter is variable enough that my kickback after jump-slashing the eyes for the first time ends up with damage from a straight-shooter hit on occasions. The eye stalk movement is random and buggy, clipping through the walls and ending up on top of the walls from time to time. Jump slash is not predictable due to the random movement of the jars and the eye stalks, and sometimes I get damaged from the eye stalks even when jumping into them.
- Spider room - annoying. The large spider appears to have reasonably deterministic jump patterns, but the small spiders don't. The shots from the large spider occasionally clip through the boxes, which basically means that nowhere is completely safe from the shots, and the best way to block them is to avoid them completely (which is made more difficult from the random movement of the spiders and jars). As with the eye stalk room, jump-slashing is not predictably safe; it's often the case that I'll get hit in the air while facing the large spider in it's non-firing period, and have no idea why.
- Sniper garden - mostly fine. The bushes serve as a bit of randomness, but the only damage is from the snipers and ghost jar, all of which are deterministic trackers that follow my position with varying speeds, so it's easy enough to avoid that, as long as I'm not making stupid movements.
- Lobber room - Annoying, because the lobbers are not deterministic, the sight lines for the straight shooters leave only a couple of safe-ish spots, and I'm often down to only being able to take another 1-2 hits when I reach this room. This is the third appearance of the scripted ghost jar, and it's *really* frustrating, because it essentially removes the safe spots. When shifting from the safe spots to the lobbers, the sight lines of the straight shooters and the period between shots means that I can only hit the lobbers once (otherwise I get clobbered by the shooters), and need to avoid the shooters after returning to the safe spots.
- Sword shooter room - only really annoying because I'm usually at 1 hit remaining when I get to this room (if I get that far). Because all the movements are deterministic, it's just a skill check room.
- Slicing duck room - similar skill check issue. Not enough bullets to get rid of all the ducks, and I need some more practise at getting the angle right for hitting the ducks (i.e. without taking damage).
I haven't got further than that so far, and my motiviation for tackling this area is substantially lower because of how often the ghost jars pop out.
Summary: the combination of ghost jars, randomness and clipping bugs makes this area a lot more frustrating for me than I feel it should be.
