This isn't a "git gud" thing, either. The Glacier has no business being the first level of a run. With no powerups yet, nearly every enemy has multiple stages, shoots multiple tears, plus dealing with sliding and freezing? It's horrendously unbalanced and basically runs turn into either "die in the Glacier" or "win the whole thing." The bosses are absurd in the same way, spitting out smaller enemies and firing tears that split into more tears, and it's so visually busy half the time I just get lost trying to find my own damn character. And on top of that Dante is an inherently difficult character to play thanks to essentially walling off activated items in order to be able to shoot in a given direction with your familiar, whose tears ALSO have that distance modifier. It's a complete kitchen sink ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that all happens in the FIRST LEVEL. Building UP to Glacier would make sense since its difficulty level is so far above the rest, but just starting off with Glacier is ridiculous.

It's kind of a problem with this mod in general. Yeah there's great ideas but there's no concept of restraint with them. Like the devs never went "hm, maybe this is too much." So much of it needs to be scaled back. Animations are so complex they're distracting, the heat/light makes it hard to see clearly since colors are all over the place, most of the powerups are so finicky as to be pointless. I really want to like this mod since it's ambitious and adds so much, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ there's just no way to do it. Instead of being "hooray here's more content" it's a whole bunch of "ha HA now the game is a pain in the ass!"