challenging

[1eleven]

Aquaria is to hard, just the way i like i relish the challenge nothing beats the sense of accomplishment when you finally beat the boss you have been dieing too for the past  half hour to an hour (totally serious) So that leads in to my question do you prefer a nice easy quiet relaxing game or do you prefer late nite corpse runs. Thoughts?

[False.Genesis]

Easy games are for wimps. 
But personally, i found Aquaria was rather easy and relaxing, compared to other games i had played in the past - specifically some on NES, many on SNES (super metroid speed runs/glitch runs, anyone? ), and especially recently, Hammerfight.
Must have played the latter one for a couple of hours straight, just because it was so challenging. But boy was this cool. First time i had to finetune my mouse settings for a game.

Back to Aquaria:
If i recall correctly, as an example, i died only once against the final boss in his last form, because i wanted to show off (clear case of self-0wn3d).

Oh and, i'm used to link to this pic to underline my point

So, what about you? Are ye rather casual, or hardcore?
'Cuz i get the feeling that nowadays, casual gamers are overtaking. Too bad.

[1eleven]

Not casual perse just unskilled. I didn't start playing games till older and even then i had little money to buy games so I didn't get to play many of the older games, so I am more used to the more modern difficulty of games then the older ones. In short I am just a newbie.

[FrancesF]

I, by contrast, have never been able to beat the final boss in his last form.    Beating the bosses, although very satisfying, is not why I love Aquaria so much.  (And have spent almost the whole past year working on a mod.)  But you have to beat the bosses to get all the goodies in the game, so it kept me trying.  And some of them have such cool puzzles and effects...