One of the few games I'm glad I went for platinum, or else the score would have been slightly lower. The game gets better and more challenging bit by bit, there isn't really a part where I can say "This game starts for real here", no, progression is smooth, and there isn't a difficult spike unless you explore the areas out of order. I thought the difficulty was overrated and it kinda is, it feels slightly above average for the most part (since you also get better bit by bit), but as I said, it gets harder and better over time, and when you get closer and closer to the end or even better, closer to getting the Platinum/all achievements/100%/whatever, oh boy... You're gonna have your ass kicked in a good way. Absolute greatness.