DarkTechno, that was actually pretty cool!
I know this is going to be a divisive map. A lot of people might hate it, but I personally found it refreshing! I went into this map thinking it was like the giant crawla hallways of version 1.09.4. But no! You were right: Every enemy placement was intentional. And the number of enemies starts off small and eventually mounts until you feel that eggman's entire warehouse was turned inside-out and dumped on top of the level. It gives the level a good difficulty curve and makes the player feel like they're making progress. Aquatic Hinote is only partly right. The community hates enemy spam maps, but mostly because they're often made without any thought. Your map radiates tons of thought at every turn. The most important part is this: you made sure the player was never ill-equipped to handle the hordes of enemies. Aquatic Hinote might have expected the map to play like an SRB2 level, but your map is designed to make you play differently. It's designed a bit more like the final level of an FPS. Rings are scarce, and more valuable than ever. You have to proceed with caution and think through how you progress a little bit. For example:
-In the first room with the crates, the player SHOULD NOT just blast their way in there willy-nilly. They should peek around corners and eliminate one enemy at a time. When was the last time I played a map that made me do that? Never!
-The elevator, which was arguably the hardest and most enemy-spammy part, was actually pretty kickass, because the elevator going down gives your jump an extra boost. This lets you freely avoid the sharps spinning on the floor, and you can bounce off the flying enemies to give yourself even more airtime. Plus, there are occasional rings that float up from the ground to give you some extra chance at survival.
Suggestion: please make the rings on the elevators long vertical columns. The way they currently are, there's no way for the player to anticipate the rings because they are invisible while under the elevator, and usually long gone gone once you realize there were any rings at all.
-The area with the two buttons and crates was also very well-thought out. The button platforms are raised above the ground quite a ways, so the player can avoid the chaos on the ground by jumping across the crates, provided that they're good enough at platforming.
-You can just run past all the enemies if you're good enough at dodging. This gives the whole map a sense of terrific urgency, as you have to make split-second decisions with the knowledge that a horde of badniks are at your tail (even if that's not true at all times).
Also the skybox was very well-made and felt connected to the level in a purposeful way. The moment you enter the level you know that the tower at the opposite end is your goal, and when you're on the way through the level, the windows tell you "where you are" in terms of the skybox. This is another great way of using skyboxes that I haven't quite seen put to use! To give your level an illusion of draw-distance that SRB2 couldn't possibly have :P
The music was also kickass and fit the level perfectly. Honestly I think it's the music that ties the whole experience together. It tells you simultaneously that you're somewhere mystical
and that you're in for a hell of a fight.
Things aren't all good though. Here are a few problems I found:
-The rings on the elevator should be easier to anticipate. I left a suggestion to help fix this above.
- You have several large staircases that don't behave like stairs (the player has to jump up one or more steps at a time). This is an easy fix. Just select all the sectors in the staircase and make them Sector Type 13: Ramp Sector. This will make it so that the player can pull him/herself up sectors that are twice as high as normal without jumping:
https://wiki.srb2.org/wiki/Ramp_Sector
All in all,
if you're gonna make an enemy spam level, then
this is how you make one! After playing dozens of similar-feeling-my-first-map-style levels that Sugoi is inevitably bound to have, yours will be a short sweet refresher. Don't follow the Aquatic Hinote's advice to make your level feel more like everyone else's. This one feels unique and it'll feel even better when it's sitting next to everyone else's samey maps. Some people might hate it JUST for being an enemy-spam map, but I think you did an excellent job. Nice work!