Wow, I’m glad we did this elimination. We have very different opinions.
The Citadel: 12
Stormcloud Temple: 8
The Dark Tower: 11
Ruins of Acaroth: 10
Rotten Forest: 11
Fungal Forest: 8
Bandit's Lair: 11
Ha'Kraj Plateau: 10
Pandaemonium: 11
Castle Blackburn: 12 (+1) - Legendary stage. It has some of my favorite music and enemies. Lord Blackburn is epic and quite the challenge as he should be. It has a great layout too.
Nazeru's Gates: 10
Temple of Saqra: 8
Emberspike Depths: 11
The Sunken Citadel: 12
Dusk Chateau: 11
Darklight Depths: 11
Gryphon Point: 8
The Unseelie Court: 10
Shrine of Elynie: 11
Beheader's Seat: 11 - He’s one of my favorite visual designs mostly for the concept of a one-headed Ettin. Also, like I said I really appreciate the ogre aesthetic.
Duredhel Outskirts: 11
Tainted Pit: 8
Bulgur’s Throne: 11
Jokull's Nest: 4
Denas's Castle: 9
Pond of the Sage: 11
The Ancient Ghosts: 5 (-2) - Yeah, I pretty much agree on the early downvotes on this one. The boss is fairly unimpressive, and this update as a whole left a bit of a bad taste IMO. It epitomizes some of the issues with Vengeance: such as easy difficulty, unnecessary stage specific elements (and even detrimental to game balance), and overall blandness in many enemies (some are pretty much repeats of enemies in previous installments). After all of that, it sounds like I’m really hating on the stage, but I’m not. It’s a decent stage; I'm just highlighting some flaws.