YMMV / Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams

• Awesome Music: Plenty. Twisted Dreams heavily features Machinae Supremacy on the soundtrack.
  • Track 1, Cute Giana. Track 1, Punk Giana.
  • Track 2, Cute Giana. Track 2, Punk Giana.
  • Track 3, Cute Giana. Track 3, Punk Giana.
  • Track 4, Cute Giana. Track 4, Punk Giana.
  • Track 5, Cute Giana. Track 5, Punk Giana.
  • Boss Theme, Cute Giana. Boss Theme, Punk Giana.
  • Final Boss, Cute Giana. Final Boss, Punk Giana.
• Demonic Spiders: The Ghosts. They can and will catch an unaware player and can only be killed by pillars of light which can be pretty far. On later levels they may come in swarms.
• Even Better Sequel: Twisted Dreams takes everything that worked in DS and cranks it up to eleven, from level design and difficulty, to the soundtrack featuring the composers from first two games and Machinae Supremacy. It's been called one of the most original titles of its year, which is a far cry from the Mario clone that it once was.
• Growing the Beard: Twisted Dreams seems to be aiming for this. For one, it's not a simple run-and-jump Mario clone like it was in the past. Secondly, the level design and the music are both a far cry from the chipper, cute themes players were accustomed to in the previous titles.
• Pandering to the Base: The addition of the Easy mode as a lot of people were complaining, maybe rightfully, that the game was too difficult, which lead to:
• Scrappy Mechanic: The bubble gum doesn't show up until World 3, but the controls when inside the bubble are absolutely horrendous. Overlaps with Fake Difficulty and also applies to the DS game. Notably, when they added a tutorial, they specifically added several points where you use the bubble gum MUCH earlier.
• Surprise Difficulty: Many people are easily fooled by the cutesy art and the simplicity of the first levels and take this game to be easy, then comes the Difficulty Spike to impale them mercilessly.
• That One Achievement: As you would expect in a Nintendo Hard game.
  • Brilliant!. Earning Five Stars in every level, requires dying less than three times (five in some levels) and picking roughly 85~90% of the gems. Keep in mind that after 1-5 the rest of the entire game is made of Marathon Levels.
  • Harder than Quartz, Harder than Obsidian and Harder than Diamond. Awarded for beating worlds, not levels, one, two and three, respectively in Über Hardcore. Have in mind that dying once in Über Hardcore means Game Over and you'll get thrown to level ONE.
• That One Attack: The final boss' last phase. Gurglewocky will raise lava up the the middle of the screen while dropping several fireballs. In Normal difficult upwards you won't have a single stable point to stand on, as the platforms in the arena are of the crumbling type, and sticking to the wall is generally a very bad idea during this attack.
• That One Boss: Octor Freud, his erratic succession of attacks becomes faster and more dangerous every time he is damaged and his homing attack, which he uses his vulnerable point, can be difficult to dodge.
• That One Level:
  • 1-6, Amethyst Mines, might come as a shock to players as it is the first lengthy level, it is also when the game's difficulty raises considerable requiring precise jump timing and has an absurd amount of spikes with moving platforms gimmicks never presented before. To top the level is lair of the first boss, Hansel and Gretel.
  • 3-7, Boiling Springs, gets pretty nasty near the end where you have to float down a vertical corridor lined with fireball shooters and a part where you have to get from extremely narrow platform to extremely narrow platform above a moat of acid while deathtraps are orbitting said platforms. One false step and you can do the whole thing over again.