Ugh. The first time I played, the drawbridge was up when I tried to leave the castle; I shouldn't have bothered restarting. Buggy as all heck, slow unskippable dialogue, tedious and repetitive combat and minigames, and the humor that was funny in small doses just grates over the course of a long and interminable game.
I really like this game, but the CtF AI hasn't improved much from Raze 2. I just spent 45 min going from level 37 to 42 on Challenge 11 because of my teammates' refusal to join me in flaghunting, and when they did, parading the flag around the map while enemies took potshots at them.
An easy way to make it more difficult would have been to only get gifts above the previous maximum when replaying levels. Of course the price of upgrades would need to be scaled down appropriately.
When someone has repeatedly tried to silence the game, a loud Russian broadcast is profoundly aggravating. And when it's the most memorable part of the game, you've squandered whatever goodwill your inventive gameplay generated.