>>49884270
To be fair, it could have swung the other way really easily if the game wasn't so generous. Dying in FW sucks, less so in stages since you're often chaining Wonder Stones, but -0.75P & 2 bombs per life is rough, especially as Marisa and her incredibly shit Master Spark. The fact that you can more or less always play a reasonably good shot past a few unlocks hides the stinkers pretty hard too, but they're there.
It's conditionally hard like UM, the pattern & stage difficulty is there, but it can get broken.