I beat Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze's main story in a day, dying around 30 times, whereas it'll have taken me two days to beat Sonic Lost World's main story, and I've died over 70 times with 2 gameovers, this before even beating the final level. Does this mean Sonic is actually the harder game despite what I had heard people saying about the difficulty in Tropical Freeze? Or does this mean Sonic is unbalanced n broken? The whole "everything insta kills you" in the later half of the game could be seen as unfair, but also as just a sharper difficulty spike. I dob't know, what are yal's thoughts on this!?

More difficult? No.
More unfair? Yes.

Sonic is just trial and error at its worst...

Tropical Freeze is an amazing 2D platformer, and, for me, Sonic is an unfair game with clumsy controls and, also, a poor copy of Mario Galaxy. The difficulty in Tropical Feeze is way more balanced, and it's not a cakewalk.

I guess what I'm really asking is what determines whether something is difficult or unfair.

Not unfair or harder. It's a good game witch some challenge but it's far easier than DK. It's a different game that in general is faster paced. It's easier just different but if you directly compare the two you are making it harder on yourself.

Uh it has to be one or the other lol. Also I had 99 lives by the third Island and half of my deaths came from the rocket barrel levels with their awful controls so I would definitely say DK is easier if we're gonna assume Sonic is difficult. It helps that Dixie's midair jump can be used anytime you go airborne versus Sonic's midair jump only usuable after jumping or hitting a spring. Dixie's Kong pow and the green balloons also help keep you from dying, while rings shields and even invincibility wont save you from Sonic's many insta death hazards.

SLW is a good game but it has many issues and flaws. Difficulty isn't one of the things it gets right.

Sonic lost world has got unfair difficulty spikes here and there which let it down but overall it's still good. DKTF is a great example of tough but fair gameplay.

A lot of Sonic Lost Worlds levels are quite easy but you have a number of very noticeable exceptions. Especially as you get close to the end.

Many of the tricky moments in DKTF actually have a red balloon nearby to collect. This means you can stop your lives counter ticking down. Lives don't actually mean much in DKTF.

Did you collect everything? Did you do the temple stages?

I would say factors such as control, enemy placement, checkpoints, mechanics, etc.

For example, in Tropical Freeze, the controls are very precise and everything is very polished so whenever I fuck up I feel like it's my fault. In Sonic Lost World, the control is very finicky and hard to predict, so I feel like the game is to blame for a lot of my deaths.