I like the mapping style, but there are some issues that need to be adressed imo:
[General]
The hitsound volume bothers me, it's consistent throughout the whole song even though it gets significantly louder throughout. At the beginning the hitsounds are way too noisy, at the end they could be a little bit louder than they are. Would be nice if you can make a progression of volume here.
You need to find a way to silence the slider ticks. If you don't want to get rid of the silenced sliderslides, atleast use green lines to reduce the ticks' volumes drastically, because they sound really noisy at the moment and most of them don't land on any beats in the song. This applies to:
> 00:37:048 (1) - on Cyllinus's (maybe this one could be resolved by ending the slider at 00:37:408 - )
> The entirety of Bronze and Silver.
The mapset's coherency is kinda ruined by the unthemed guest difficulties, since your mapping style is so themed, but whatever.
[Challenger]
00:37:888 (1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,6,7) - In this section, the rhythm is questionable as the 3/4-sounds are sometimes ignored and other sounds have been overmapped instead. I get the intention of increasing density throughout the map but here it seems to have increased at the wrong places, especially since notes have been ignored that have been followed before.
(Examples: 00:38:968 - ignored, 00:39:088 (5) - overmapped, 00:40:888 - ignored, 00:41:008 (5) - overmapped, etc)
00:53:248 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,2,3,4,5,6,7) - The 1/4-patterns in this section are very questionable, too. The circle patterns are very hard to play and they don't fit into the progression of the map, because it seems like the difficulty is supposed to increase consistantly, so why is this section more difficult than anything until 01:54:688 - ? Moreover, the rhythms are overmapped even though the music is still pretty similar to the previous section. I'd recommend to remap this section more closely to the previous one, just increasing the intensity a little bit.
02:16:168 (2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3) - 02:31:528 (2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3) - Those patterns play super unintuitively. Even though the aesthetics and structure are similar to other 1/4-patterns around here, the flow is completely different. They can't be played with circular movement, because the spacings are way too big for that, so instead the players need to snap to these circles, which is much more intuitive with zig-zag-movement (as it has been used throughout the rest of the kiais) than with these hexagon-movements.
Obviously they aren't supposed to play smoothly, but I still think they are way too much of a difficulty-spike and contrast the rest of the map way too much, even though the song isn't significantly different here to call for such a pattern. A pattern with sharper angles, like on the Master difficulty, would improve this a lot imo.
02:40:288 (1,2) - Weird to decision to follow those sounds, as you've ignored them during the spinner where they were still more intense. Ending the spinner at the white tick, and having a single circle at the end, like on the Gold difficulty, would fit the music better here. Same applies for the Master difficulty.
[Silver]
There are a lot of sections on this difficulty that feel disconnected from the song, because you decide to simplify the rhythm to follow white ticks entirely, while the music has the strong beats on the 3/4-rhythms throughout the song. It might seem easier to play than using more complicated rhythms, however in reality it will throw people off because the rhythm isn't really connected with the song:
00:07:168 (1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2) - This section feels fine, because the slider heads and tails are mapped to beats in the song, however you really need to reduce the volume of the slider ticks as I already mentioned in General.
00:22:528 (1,2,3,4,1,2,1,2,3,4,1,2) - This section doesn't feel fine, however. There are no instruments besides the 3/4-rhythms and the strings, so it would feel much better to actually follow that. What about rhythms like this
http://puu.sh/u1O55/d540fdc035.jpg or
http://puu.sh/u1O66/4efa6d1d12.jpg ? 00:35:968 (2) - is fine imo because it creates a proper transition to the next section, leaving a little break, and it follows the strings.
00:37:888 (1,2,3,4,1,2,3,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4) - Same applies to those sections. I would recommend to increase density gradually while following the background and strings properly.
01:08:608 (1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6) - This is good!
01:23:968 (1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6) - This feels alright, because the music is already hinting at the beat that will exist soon, that makes mapping on white ticks fitting. However, it would still feel a little bit better to have these rhythms instead:
http://puu.sh/u1One/2f62b9e084.jpgRest of the map feels fine, however it is ironic you chose to follow only the 3/4-instruments in the chorus, even though there is an actual beat present, while you ignored them before, lol.
[Bronze]
I love how the density progresses in this difficulty, from very low to relatively high! However, it's sad that you chose to follow the imaginary white tick notes again up until 01:08:608 - , because the rest of the map is really well made rhythmically.
The problem are these 2/1-circle patterns 00:15:808 (1,2,3) - 00:23:488 (1,2,3,1,2) - 00:31:168 (1,2,3) - etc, because every circle on beat 3 doesn't follow a note in the music. Actually the solutions I suggest would be:
> 00:07:168 (1,1,2,3,1) - Since you have such an extremely low density in this section anyway, maybe you could keep the rhythm completely at 4/1? Which would mean deleting the circles on beat 3.
> 00:23:488 (1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,1,2,3,1,1,2,3,1,1,2,3,4,1,1,2,3) - For these sections, having these rhythms
http://puu.sh/u1P4c/d033bbd15e.jpg would work well, aka moving the circles from beat 3 to the previous red tick. They are slightly more complicated, but fit to the song (and the mapping of the higher difficulties) much better. It would be a good idea to introduce these rhythms with sliders first, in case you apply them.