I just finished the first game at the weekend, having played it in fits and spurts over the past couple of years. IT was so impressive, that I immediately started the Definitive Edition afterwards and played through about 50% of it just yesterday. The visuals and music and overall presentation are sublime, and the controls are so good and so fluid that it's a joy just to move around.
By far the biggest problem though, is the difficulty of the chase sequences. They are simply not balanced at all, and a real source of frustration. I mean Christ! The game actually tells you how many times you died and respawned during the playthrough and in 12 hours of overall play I died 874 times. Now, I'm not completely shit at videogames, but that's ridiculous. I know that you respawn instantly, but that number blew my mind. I died over 150 times on the last chase in the lava with the bird alone. Fucking ridiculous. I must've died 300+ times on the Ginzo tree.
The window of failure during the chase sequences is literally less than 1 second. It's fucking nuts! I get what they were going for with the whole 'by the skin of your teeth' style of escape. But c'mon! Jesus, I was going fucking nuts playing the game and they'd better fix it in the sequel.