i personally don't have any issue with the controls since it's the same layout as WASD except slightly shifted; however i do have an issue with the difficulty.

in the first one although some areas were pretty strict with the timings almost everything was deterministic. you either do the jump exactly as needed or you fail, so it's all on you whether you make it or not.

for this one the sporadic enemy movements make it pretty much impossible to clear each level consistently.
the dark dragon enemies in particular are a pain, for multiple reasons.
using a sword is the best way to stun them, but unless you keep applying it the stun doesn't last nearly as long as needed, especially when you're surrounded (level 17 my beloathed).
even then there's a certain amount of endlag when you use it, but unfortunately their random movement patterns makes it so that sometimes they simply "walk around you" as you're trying to stun them with your sword, and they hit you from the back.
aside from that, i wish they weren't completely black because most of the levels they appear in also have a dark background which makes them difficult to see, adding to the annoyance.

i also can't handle the barrel enemies that you can only defeat by jumping on them.
i understand the idea is that sometimes they're used as moving obstacles that you can't remove and have to plan around, but honestly they're stuck in such narrow passages sometimes it's just not viable.
i ended up being forced to "cheese" some of them by enraging them with a charge shot just so i could dispatch them in a less precarious location on the level (i believe this wasn't possible in the first game?).
additional jank ensues, for obvious reasons.

spent a solid hour and a half playing this but eventually got stuck on critter catcher 2 (level 27) because i cannot figure out any way to get into the room in the bottom left without dying in the process (to clear the pillars to open the path to the exit).

level 17 (50 deaths) and level 26 (31 deaths) were particularly memorable for being overly unfair.
i also kind of dislike level 24 but that's just a me problem with the moving stars.

honestly i don't really have much constructive criticism this time because the game itself is solid, since it's based on the first one (which worked perfectly fine).
however i think the new mechanic ended up being detrimental for this kind of game (which requires extreme precision) due to their randomic patterns.
it ends up making it feel like the level design is lacking

EDIT: i've finally beaten the game. it changes entirely when you realize you can in fact defeat the blue enemies without jumping on them, if you hit them with 2 charged shots (the first one will only enrage them, and they're also immune to your sword).
the level immediately after is extremely painful because you cannot make a mistake due to the white dragon thing constantly chasing you, but at least it's not impossible.
also seems like the leaderboard saves your highest time (worst score) instead of your best one.

i don't even care how scuffed the last level is, i'm never doing that again lol:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlEckjVywFk

couple considerations after beating normal mode.
premise: ended up using items (1 heal, 1 extra turn, 2 revives) but none of them felt really necessary with the exceptions of revives. they were also all used on the same encounter (4-4) which is the main offender of the perceived "high difficulty".

i won't say whether the game is difficult or not, but the penultimate encounter on the last world (6 enemies that endlessly revive unless you defeat them all at once) was definitely a beast of its own; i think the main problem is how different the priorities change between this and the rest of the game.
on every other world your priority is to defeat at least a couple of enemies early, so you aren't overwhelmed by the damage output; you need to balance dealing enough damage to clear some of the board, while not dying in the process.
for the last world it's mostly "try to survive as long as possible and hope you have enough free turns with your mage".

the main problem imo is the abilites distribution. the only way to hit multiple enemies is with the bomb spell; incidentally, the only healing spell is also on the same character.
the knight smite upgrade also heals, but it can't be used effectively on the last world because it deals damage (can't be used freely due to having to manage enemies health), and also doesn't trigger unless it actually hits (and enemies are constantly stacking critical block).
you need to juggle your mage turns to either heal to stay alive, or using bomb to get through all the critical blocks that the enemies keep stacking on themselves.

the only way i found to make some headway was to constantly cycle heal on every character, simply to avoid getting stunned, and when i had most of my health topped off try to drop a bomb to clear some of the critical blocks.
this isn't consistent since the front enemies can dispell your status immunity, making you vulnerable to the back enemies that can stun you on the same turn, even after casting regen.
if your mage gets stunned two turns in a row, you pretty much need to have revives.
if those back enemies aren't trying to stun you, then they'll be stacking critical blocks on the rest of the enemies instead.
ended up spending more time on that single fight than the rest of the game because of how long it dragged on (took about half an hour)

another thing that feels somewhat poorly planned is rogue. attack up is fine, and weaken is great since it's good support both defensively and offensively when upgraded, on top of dealing damage.
however, i got absolutely no use out of jab because planning around bleed is more trouble than it's worth, and given the option i always opt for weaken over jab, if nothing else for the immediate extra damage.
the only reason i considered using jab at all was when i needed to manage enemies hp on the last world, and the damage from weaken was too high to keep them alive; though in the end i didn't use it at all in that instance either, because i was worried about bleed screwing me over.

additionally (dunno if intended or not), enemies critical block also prevents any additional effect from occurring aside from preventing the damage. this means that drawing aggro with pummel, healing with smite, weakening with weaken (and i guess bleed with jab) cannot occur unless you also deal damage with them. which might be somewhat of an issue, depending on how you want to tune the dififculty.

TL;DR i spent the first 3 worlds actively playing the game, then the last world was just.
- mage: cast regen costantly (not for health) so you don't get stunned every other turn (assuming you don't get dispelled).
- rogue: buff knight or weaken to remove crit blocks (or deal extra damage to high hp enemies)
- knight: smite to hopefully stay alive (pummel if the enemy hp is too low so you don't defeat them)

eventually buff mage and bomb to clear the wave. it's less about difficulty and more about the revive mechanic itself being overly polarizing, to the point it changes the gameplay entirely.
i have no idea if the last boss was even supposed to be difficult because after the previous fight my brain stopped thinking, so i literally kept cycling regen on every character every single turn and only used weaken+smite on the main head until it died.

there's no issue with the overall difficulty; the only change i would like to see is to replace the rogue jab attack; instead of a single target that inflicts bleed, have another low-damaging area attack so you don't bottleneck mage.
another thing that could be useful is to have the knight protect move also add status immunity (maybe instead of thorns? idk if it's good i didn't get any protect upgrades) just so you don't need to constantly spam regen every turn to prevent stun.

wanted to try out new items from the updates and i almost managed to screw myself over lol.
bedevilled blade is really upsetting to use because you need really high base dice to roll into it in the first place, and even then you're filling your discard with negative dice that barely have an use imo.

i also picked up 2 crow skulls (because bones are fairly strong since you can use them to fix failed rolls), except it ended up spiralling down because you can produce so many bones to the point it fills your entire bag, making it borderline impossible to play anymore due to being almost unable to draw any dice from your bag.
it would be nice if bone tokens worked like ghost dice, as in they expire when they're discarded.

i never understood the use for baba yaga's finger, safety pin and fish hook.
the first one is entirely outclassed by rabbit foot (lucky die is the single best item in the game; this is lucky die as a trinket) and one random reroll won't necessarily save you from a critical fail.
as for the other two, maybe i just don't get the benefit of them?
they pretty much only take up space in your bag, when you could draw more dice or a better item instead.
i understand the idea of not making every item overpowered (which explains why there's 2 types of crystal balls, one being weaker than the other) but honestly whenever i see either one of these, i'd rather skip than take them.

i like the new gambler's die balancing, since the negative chips can still have some use (at the very least, you can use them immediately after the roll that created them to "fix" it, in the worst case scenario), and they were a bit too strong before since you could just stack +tokens on any weapon's critical for massive damage lol.

EDIT: is blood blade supposed to be an extremely rare shop-only item or something? i've done dozens of runs going through as many equipment events as possible and i've seen all kinds of weapons EXCEPT the one i need. not even once

EDIT 2: blood blade IS a shop-only item, but it's not something you can "find".
its appearance is scripted, and the thing you need to "hover to find" is the REQUIREMENT for it to show up.
it's borderline impossible to get it accidentally in normal gameplay because its requirement is completely counter-intuitive to building an effective deck