Oyster Man Stage Thoughts

This is a pretty tough level to comment on. Its first part is a homage to a genre I'm really not familiar with, so I don't know how to place it. I don't even know how to rate it just for myself - it's just kind of there, I guess. The difficulty is present, but surprisingly subdued, considering my complete lack of practice and dectilon's astounding abilities; in fact, a lot of it is solved by waiting around and doing nothing. Considering how slow you move, even with the (pretty limited, however) boost you get, I don't know how you would solve that. Certainly not by reducing the Marine's hitbox and adding more bullet spam. In the context of a Mega Man game, this does work - like a very similar stage, Needle Man's Doc Robot one, does - but it's just nothing special. I think. It doesn't wow me like it probably should is what I'm getting at. Feels like there is untapped potential, at least. Again, no complaints about the difficulty - seeing as I didn't nearly have as much trouble as I thought I would have - but it's again hard to say that that's okay, as I feel like it could definitely challenge me personally more. And it would maybe drive a more experienced person to sleep.
Coming off that angle, a problem is the stage's length, I think. As the first part goes by pretty slowly, and you still have two to go, that could really drain your energy. Just by time you have to spend in it, this must be one of the longest stages in the game so far - and it has quite a lot of instant-kill based difficulty. Overall, as I say in the video, I feel like the wave part could be completely excised (or rather, expanded on and moved somewhere else). It just doesn't fit all that well, thematically and gameplay-wise, and it would eliminate some of the length issues I feel the stage has. And on its own, it's just not that special either. The waves probably won't get you, it's the missiles that will, and you pretty much have to know they're coming, there's no way to avoid them by reflexes alone. Not cool, a total dick move in my opinion, and it just doesn't serve the rush rush wave is coming feel of the level at all. Having obstacles but easy jumps over platforms in water yes, but not this. Apart from them, it's indeed almost disgustingly easy, and just a waste of what could be a far cooler and tenser gimmick.
The final part, on the other hand, is pitch-perfect. A great lot of tension from the autoscroll, total jump control with generous enough platforms (compared to some iffy ones in Mega Manatee's fight), the missiles are placed very fairly without being a non-issue, and the MM1 assholes getting in the way just adds more urgency. They have the ideal health to be able to get a shot off, but not so much that they would require insane button mashing. Very, very well done and what is perfectly in line for a hard, but fair hack. Especially in contrast to the just-not-that-good aboveground section.