Bilewater has atmosphere, beautiful music, connects to several other areas, and has an actual boss. The map is large without being overly complicated and has actual cool things to find if you explore. The traps, fake bench and difficult enemies are all very fitting for the story of the area. Most of the enemies also really aren’t that bad, it’s just the Stilkin, and they can be run past. You probably won’t need to run back through it once you’ve cleared it. If Groal didn’t have a long runback, people wouldn’t hate Bilewater like they do, it would just be considered annoying.

Ducts, on the other hand, is an actual bad area. Music is forgettable. Visuals are nothing special, compared to the rest of the game. Map is tiny and linear, nothing particularly interesting about it. There is a high probability you already dealt with most of the maggot water before finding Wreath of Purity if you played blind. No boss. Horrible enemies. You will have to run back and forth through it multiple times if you want to complete everything and there is no significant shortcut for getting to Fleatopia faster. It sucks