Wario Land II is a massive improvement over the first game in terms of cementing the series' identity. It's now leaning heavily into being a puzzle platformer, where getting hit by an enemy just means you lose some coins, get knocked back, and potentially get a status effect. This leads to a lot of really creative and exploratory level design that really impressed me out of the gate, I could not believe how much more unique this felt compared to the first game. As the game goes on I think there's a lot of frustration that comes up though, the controls are pretty stiff and there are a lot of segments that require precision platforming/timing that just don't feel great to fail at. Somehow I find it more frustrating to get knocked back by an enemy and have to redo a small portion of the level than if I died and had to start from a checkpoint like in the previous game. It leads to a lot of situations where I feel like I'm just beating my head against a puzzle that I know the solution to until I can execute it, which just doesn't work for me.