So far, I'm playing the game and its not like its completely OMG HARD. But I am having a bit of trouble trying to get a couple star coins. The thing I am finding with the game however is, while I can see that the game definitely has an increased difficulty over any recent 2D Mario, such as NSMB DS, it seems to have a lot of that difficulty based on a sort of 'cheap' way.
When I say that, I mean it comes at the expense of making the player memorize the path ahead, and not exactly based on skill or 'timing'. Take level 3-2. You have tons of Spikes throwing spiky balls at you, not unlike in Mario 3. But unlike in Mario 3, now the balls bounce on the ground and the guys seem to aim the balls directly at you. Well, obviously you just compensate for this, but as a veteran of Mario games, its your instinct to try to jump over the spiky balls to avoid them. This leads to a lot of running and making the screen move....which then causes more enemies to spawn, which then immediately causes a chain reaction of more spiky balls heading your way. And on some areas of the level, there's even platforms you have to jump on that causes the enemies you throw their projectiles at you when you can't even see them.
Its stuff like this that kind of makes you realize that the game IS as hard as the developers said the game was going to be. But not quite in the 'old school' way based on creative tricks from the level design that cause you to slide under a thwamp wrong. More in a repetitive annoying way that purposefully trap you between two enemies and get you killed.
Six upcoming games you should look into:
