They didn't, they actually made it a lot easier than the original.
I have played them all and finished them all except the PSP version
I just had to give up on this game because it was just so difficult and not at all fun to play, I think this games sucks shit and is the WORST game in the entire series, the game just plain sucked and difficulty is absolutely ridiculous, they just went WAAAAAY over the fucking top with the difficulty this time
again so glad I didn't have to pay for this steaming turd of a game, it is just totally unplayable after a certain point
Oh and you know what REALLY pisses me off about this game too, is the fact they have so many god damn options when you die and the default option is not the one that continues you fro the last checkpoint
at least 4 times i was rushing through the menu and accidentally selected the wrong option and had to do the part over after it took me like 600 tries the first time, good thing I don't have a physical copy because i would have taken a hammer to it and smashed it to 1000 pieces by now