Firstly, you've got the visuals. Your eyes are the first things you'll use on mission-load, so it's appropriate to mention them here. The flag is situated right in the middle of a huge "eye".. a circle, suspended in mid-air by four supporting arms. This makes some caps hard.. and defense rather simplified... to a point.
Defense is interesting. It'll take a fairly good judge of a farmer's eye to take full usage of the flag "eye". I was able to get three spider turrets on the inside rim.. but a talented person could perhaps make that number four. With that presence, anyone coming in un-guarded would have the horrid experience of being within tracking range of four turrets at once.. and then the front-side ELF turret lying in wait as well. With a few judiciously placed landspikes on the surrounding terrain.. well, capping could be hell.
It's a good thing the offense can stay completely undetected all the way to the base if they want.. a round-about route provides so much hill cover that you can pop up anywhere near the base you choose: either side or behind. A well-used tactic is to surface, zoom in and target the offending guard turrets.. a few spinfusors, and they're gone. Of course, watch out for Defensive sniping.. that could be a pain.
The center area is a great place to hold down.. no capturable objectives, per sè, but if you can manage to create a small base (mobiles and such) you could gun down and trap any would-be enemy attackers.
The Playability of this map is really great. Not only is it fun, but it's a challenge, at the same time not being overly daunting to those who aren't "7334" yet.
The terrain and bases are mirrored, giving this map a complete 100 percent on the Balance category. Usually, balance between offense/defense is tipped, upsetting other maps.. but while Defending can make caps hard, a co-ordinated offense can so easily upset the most well-layed network.
Item Placement is just fine. Inventories are in your base (3 openings into the world for the structure) as soon as you go down a chute.. with the Generators situated inside the basement. Not too hard to get to.. but certainly not wide open.
Mechanics are a notch above "good".. everything about this map just seems to click.
No matter what you do, you are sure to find a nichè playing Os-Iris.. defense, offense.. base rape, base D. Sniping, Heavy Offense.. (skiable terrain!) ..it's all here, and wrapped up in a beautiful setting. Congratulations to the author on such a stunning piece of work.. it just doesn't get very much better than this!