Celeste Mods: Crystal Garden (v1.4) Golden Strawberry

i cannot describe how utterly miserable this was. out of all of the recent tier 1's that i have done, floating oil rig fcg was the only one i got mad at out of any of them. this blew that out of the water tenfold. this wasn't even me being angry, it was me being genuinely sad. i actually think this is easier than floating oil rig fcg by a little bit, but i put myself under way more pressure than anyone should ever put themselves under. i think a lot of people know my stance on hard list levels by now, but tldr, i really, REALLY, do not enjoy short precision maps. some are definitely better than others, but this one is especially horrid. since this description is already a lot longer than most of my yt descriptions, i might as well just go all in and explain what the fuss is about with this map.
THIS GOLDEN SUCKS. allow me to give you a rundown:
this map consists of 4 screens. the first one is relatively straightforward, or at least it would be if the kevin hit at 0:12 wasn't frame perfect. sure, this is infinitely retryable, but having to wait for this to finally line up sometimes takes so fucking long i could literally make toast, go outside, walk my dog and then binge watch three separate movies right after each other, and this fucking garbage pile of a section would still take longer. remember, this is at the start of the map, so you have to do this over and over again. actual joke.
the bumper jank after that is no help, they fuck you over seemingly at random even when lining up the bumper cycles, all of my deaths there felt uncontrollable and every time this map had the audacity to do that shit to me i genuinely wanted to commit arson on half of the milky way. but whatever, everything else is fine. room 2 is not fine. this is basically 90% of the difficulty, and the reason why this is a 3 star ranked map on hard list in the first place. the first section sucks, it's an awkward feather followed by a difficult but rather consistent demohyper input. then you get a bit of a break until you get to the part at 0:34. in my humble opinion, this is by far the most unfair part of the map. winning a coinflip fourteen times in a row is more skill based than passing this fucking miseryfest of a section. the first ultra is basically random every time, the bumper you have to hit after it is COMPLETE BULLSHIT and does whatever the fuck it wants. the next ultra would be simple since it is setup, if it wasn't for the fact that the quick jump+dash input at 0:35 felt like i was letting jesus take the wheel. you would need ordinal numbers to describe how many times i ran my sorry ass into that purple joke of an obstacle set, or just bonked on the crumble platform. after that, you're still not done because coming right up you have whatever in the living fuck that thing is supposed to be. this ultra is literally the least controllable thing ever, you need a very specific amount of speed for it to work and there are like ten different variables to it. completely stupid. driving a car with two of its wheels missing is more controllable than this thing. following all of that, you finally get a bit of a break (unless you choke stupidly which i did way too many times), until the kevin hit at 0:49. actual braindead input. you have to hit it early so it does not get stuck in the crumble block, and that leaves you dealing with spinners that are essentially right up your ass. maybe this is how gd acheron players feel when they have to pass 31, who knows. the ultra after is very chokeable, the last bumper is questionable albeit more manageable if you dash down. the ending technically has a 1/4 chance of dying to it since you can be teleported early. theoretically you can make this consistent, but thanks to the camera movement that happens when you collect the coin, every visual cue feels very weak and you're better off just taking your chances, because this shit doesn't have enough rng already. the start of room 3 is the worst offender of the screen, that reverse was ruining my life until i found that setup. the ending is spooky but there isn't much to say here. room 4 is just another bullshit way of ending it off. the beginning of it is really precise all around, the badeline fight is pure memory. but most notable of all is the cornerjump at 2:59. this might be the worst ending to a map i have seen in my life. FUCK this input, genuinely. i do not know if etpio was on xanax when he made that part, but jesus christ. i only died here once and hated it. this existing makes the last bumper sequence at the end just about the most terrifying thing to have graced this planet, since getting here requires you to win the lottery about three times over. i almost died to it, but thank the lord i didn't. i probably would have reached the character limit for this description otherwise.
to sum it up... yea, do not touch this map, ever. sorry etpio.
download link: brother have you READ the fucking paragraph i aint linking this shit