I always love the feeling of coming to a game's sequel after just finishing its predecesor, and i'm Breezing through the beginner tutorial levels, theres a peace to it, after spending a long time solving that games hardest puzzles, the anticipation of seeing what this new instalment has to offer, its a feeling so few games provide, and so amazing when it does.
it can be done with 24 lives, and it involves in 1-3 riding on the back half of the body, and forcing it to move incrementally forward. its slow, and if you mess up at the end its infuriating, but it works, and it let me not have to deal with 5-2
the final boss is just too difficult. albeit i dont have all the upgrades, but its just not fun to me to spend 3-5 minutes getting to him, only to get to the third stage after another 5 minutes, and die due to a bullet hell of bull that i know i could avoid, were my gear strong enough to kill the cannons fast enough. it just takes far too much grinding to give you a reasonable chance against the final boss