I'm not particularly shocked by the difficulty of most spells and the stage portions themselves. However, the nonspells are... wow. Seriously, wow. No breather room at all.
Here are my absurd number of retries per chapter on my second playthrough of the new mode (no bombs used)... Italics are nonspells, Bold are spells. Rest is stage portions.
Stage 1: 0, 2, 0, 5, 1, 2, 0, 1, 5, 4, 1
Stage 2: 1, 0, 0, 5, 1, 0, 3, 3, 12, 8, 1, 0
Stage 3: 1, 0, 24, 2, 10, 0, 0, 6, 1, 13, 0, 3, 59, 8
Megatopkek at the underlined ones. These freaking lasers.
I think this is a game I will never LNB, along UFO.