About the bigger puzzles… the confusion gate 7 weight placement is totally reasonable. if you go by the tablets, you can narrow the chances to about 3 (if I remember right) and if you choose the wrong one, all you get is a lightning to the face and you can easily try again after moving away making the weights disappear. I found the hidden pedestal + invisible ladder things more unfair.

2012? A really tough cookie. I solved it, but it made me quit the game for a good while since I was stuck and couldn’t figure it out for a good long while. if I look back at how I finally cracked it, I believe I would’ve figured it out faster if I had paid more attention to details.

Mantras I don’t see a problem with those at all, what was so hard with them? Some of the placements for the tablets were easy to solve and others you could just “brute force”-search after you figured out the area order after first few. and the places where you had to chant them…well, I just tried every single room until I found the right one.

places where to bring the keyfairies weren’t really a must know to complete the game and once you brought them to a room where they were needed, they started to fly away from you to the point which they had to touch by themselves so to figure out where to bring them was just going to room, waiting for a bit to see if it goes somewhere, moving to other room etc. Annoying I admit, especially with the timer to resummoning was so damn long.

the woman statue riddle was more than enough tipped (after you actually found the statue) in several tablets, I have to admit that this was rather interesting riddle.

dance of life. This one pissed me off seriously. I found the tablet with the pictures of the dance, and where to do it, but nothing happened when I did it. what I did not know was the attacking part. how should I know that from the pictures? Also the god damn time stopping to kill the drillamajigs. I killed one in that room during time stop, but how would I know to kill 2? and the time isn’t that long to accidentally kill 2 unless you’re lucky. plus I tried killing several of them out of time stop and it didn’t work, so I figured that it doesn’t mean these things or I’m doing at the wrong place.

one last whine is about some of the rooms that are essential to completing the game like woman statue and tower of ruin jewel(which was kinda tipped in a picture, but it was unclear) hidden in a random wall you have to happen to find otherwise you’re stuck. Also, some things opening after beating a boss or after gaining a “quest item” such as the crystal skull with no indication where or what opened pissed me off. I had to search all the areas at least 10 times through during the run of the game to find IF I missed something.

I’m eagerly waiting for the wii version, even if it’s delayed, since it will let me play the game again, with a new experience.

Also,
BATS. My god.

Maybe it’s just me but I thought all of the puzzles were fine except maybe the “Controlling The Heavens” one, that was just complete guess work. The rest of the puzzles, though, I thought were all perfectly do-able provided you can memorize tablets(since a lot you find aren’t useful until much later) and be able to figure out what they mean. But what ever happens, as long as you don’t lose the sense of exploration and wander you get just from moving around the maps, and the sense of accomplishment when you complete something ridiculously hard, I think lowering the difficulty a bit is fine.

And as for the Hell Temple, I’m not one of the crazy people that say it was too easy, but I like the idea of making it harder. Frustrating as it may be, in reality it really is easy-ish. You go through most of the rooms probably upwards of 20 times, so naturally those rooms get a lot easier. And I’m hoping for an even more “amazing” treasure at the end, long as this one doesn’t make me want to gouge my eyes out afterward.

Speaking of which, I’ve heard rumors that Hell’s Sanctuary in the WiiWare version is going to be MUCH harder than the original version. I really hope that’s not true.

So long as “reducing the difficulty” doesn’t mean making the game about following a set of rigid instructions given to the player, then I think the game will be ok.

One big idea about the difficulty could be having more hints on where you can use certain items or where you can’t go until you have some. For example, once you get the Bronze Mirror you have up to 9 new places to go to, but no clue which one you need to visit first. Metroid: Zero Mission does this really well by occasionally having statues that give you a general idea of where your next upgrade is coming from, but letting you figure out how to get there (or even letting you sequence break past it!).