Night Sky

Monstrously difficult. Punishingly so. The problem with RA2 was how uneven the difficulty was. If you were flying any kind of ship, the difficulty varied unpredictably. Taking out a wing of TIE fighters when you're in a heavy B Wing with a wingleader, not so hard. Neither was stealing the Corellia Star back from the Empire.

Now the stealth TIE fighters, totally different ball game. Not like TIE Defenders, but about equal to TIE Advanced. 

The blaster fights were Always hard. Getting Rookie One out of the first Imperial base? Not casual game play, but doable with discipline and attention. The sewers level? Murder, every time. Never gets easy.

The level with the Millenium Falcon type ship?  

Yes, the Correllia Star. The Empire boards in and kills the crew, but not before sending out a distress signal. You and your wing leader receive that message but are ambushed by TIE fighters. You fight through them. Your wingleader is killed and you crash land on the planet where the imperials took the ship. Rookie One shoots his way to the ship and escapes via some mines. The game is jarring to play because of the captured images. That never really was a common way of making games, though Rebel Assault was by no means unique. Once you get used to it, the first two or three levels become easy. 

The level where you learn to fly a TIE fighter is almost impossible. I was mystified how hard that level was. 

There's another mine later and you're flying X Wings with Rascal Wing, that's harder, but not mercilessly so.