The "finish in 3 hours" achievement seemed possible, and the difficulty seemed interesting enough that I cranked it up. It totally transformed in my hands from a, fine, fairly mid exploratory platformer to a racing game. Suddenly those weird anomalies I limped my way through were tight puzzle to find the fastest route. The bosses became intense race courses whose tracks slowly dissolved. I threw myself into it with my whole voidussy and fell short by 5 minutes. So i did it again, and got the achievement :)

I think it's fascinating how the difficulty totally changed the game for me. Monsters weren't things to hunt down, but damage soaks only eliminated when you had time to spare. Shortcuts launch you across sections of the map as you race from anomaly to anomaly. Your health when you spend time exploring is easily supplemented by the troves of treasure in the nooks and crannies. But when you're on a time crunch, your health is suddenly limited by the genius decision to have each boss permanently slice away a bar, and you are forced to reckon with 1-2 slivers - which is fine! you shouldn't be taking hits anyway, and if you are, monster resets shouldn't be bothering you because killing them is a waste of time!

So this becomes one of the few games where I said "actually let's turn up the difficulty" as well as one of the games where I sat down and started a new game as soon as I finished the last. A memorable gem for me. (Still way too much dialogue, though, especially if you're trying to speed through!)