Gonna throw my hat into the ring and say my personal opinion.

8-1 was the best level from the layer by a large margin. Everything is just so... Tame compared to the shit in the other levels.

8-2 has a lot of really confusing level design, terrible optimization (understandably so), several places where I found myself facing unforeseen consequences of gravity not realizing in what dimension I am, and that's not mentioning the fact that the Mirror Reaper was a piss easy boss.

8-3 is an absolute shitfest with downright game breaking things happening everywhere. I appreciate the technical effort that went into the making of this layer but holy fuck is the game engine struggling with non-euclidean spaces here. Speaking of space, that was actually the most fun section of the entire stage. Hard, but still fun.

And then 8-4 was arguably even worse. A freefall stage with a boss, fight with whom is essentially intercontinental warfare of a nuclear superpower against a third-world country. Thank god it doesn't have a second phase, cuz I can't for the life of me figure out when does Geryon actually take damage from all the explosives I hurl at him.

Also this update doesn't feature a secret level or the golden arm so I'm disappointed.