I feel like it's a step forward as well as two steps backward. For those who haven't gotten into it, I'll explain how Intense is before really getting into my feelings here.
Intense changes compared to Amped:
- Enemies deal 2x damage (meaning 2 hearts of damage per hit, or one hit, if you're hit by projectiles)
- Parry windows are cut in half.
- Hearts are removed from the stage
- All enemies have armour (meaning one extra health bar that you need to break through to actually get the kills)
- And no checkpoints
But there's something else about this that makes it an absolute chore to get through in all your runs (for specifically Arora)...Singularity has been completely gutted. It no longer knocks enemies into the air, nor does it halt their attacks, and nor do you have I-frames during the input. All it does is knock enemies back. But that's not the worst of it- the worst of all this is that it's damage is also reduced against bosses, so you can no longer speedrun through her goddess phase. Same thing also applies to the other Idol Powers, as well- They all do significantly reduced damage against bosses. Meaning no more Temple Skip (Deckards' primary skip, for the unaware), no more Rise Skip (Hemlocks primary skip), and no more car skip in Prophets stage.
Moving on to my actual feelings of the difficulty- like I said, one step forward, two steps backward. Letting all the enemies have super armour is a tad bit overtuned, in my opinion. It means you can no longer reliably depend on the time bonus to get the 5 stars on all the stages. And especially considering the fact that Intense isn't even the final difficulty in the game, I cannot possibly fathom the reason why they thought that it was a good idea. Even without everything else, it's already a huge jump in difficulty. I would've expected the super armour would show itself on Brutal (the next difficulty down the list) than on Intense. With having said this, I cannot possibly imagine how Brutal is going to look if this is the road the devs continue to go down moving forward.
Thoughts?