I agree, deserto orbital base is the best level I ever made. And the reason is simple: the tileset allows for massive versatility and originality in the level design.

That access violation in the boss level is annoying but unintentional. It's also the reason why I made the warning a bit more prominent in the ep5 download... there is no way to fix it unless JJ2 itself is fixed.

Overall there are 8 points in the episode where you can save safely guaranteed (cutscenes or transition levels).

As for the difficulty level, it's definitely not for everyone. If it's so much that you hated it, well I'm sorry to hear that. However, playing on easy mode probably won't make you like it more. In fact, you should just not play it at all. Play something you enjoy instead: there's no reason to put yourself through a several-hours long episode if you know you don't like it.

I thought the last episode should the most challenging and varied one, though. And easy mode does help a bit (but the death pits will still get you). If you're dying due to falling, easy isn't going to change a lot. What easy mode adds is carrots (about double the amount). Funny thing is quite a few people criticized ep4 for being too easy. You can't please everyone, I guess. It's a good idea to play the other episodes and get used to those.