Whoa, 2 hours to go past the first boss? God, you suck
I have indeed felt much more challenge in this game than in the SNES version, but not as much as to entitle it as "insanely difficult"
But hell, yeah, this game is already one of the best I have played in my history, and one of my TOP 3 games for sure.
and as I said many times before, this game is well worth to get a GameCube even if it's only for it