IMO, it's not nearly as rough as it's made out to be. It's more akin to the old days when you'd learn how to play a game by really digging into it, going through a section and learning new tricks each time, picking up on more nuances, etc. But it's still nowhere near as bad as some of the old NES games and what have you, since you don't have to start over completely every time, just within certain areas. The overall difficulty is high in that you really need to be on your game, be aware as you play, and there are definitely some battles and individual situations that really are tough to beat, but the checkpoint system does a lot to mitigate the feeling of having to re-do too much.
It isn't for everybody, but the only person I know who actually hates it is Xessive. I've not met anyone else who didn't love it. Even if they didn't bask in the difficulty, they usually seemed to appreciate the design ethos and enjoyed the game for what it was.
At five bucks, man, just try it! It's a beautiful game, and if you steel yourself against that difficulty, get in that "I'm a badass" mindset before each time you play, and remind yourself that no game is ever quite perfectly balanced, you'll probably only find the difficulty to be a true bear on a couple of occasions, depending on the character you're playing (I can only think of 3 or maybe 4 instances in the entire game where I was actually frustrated, and I overcame all of them with a little elbow grease) and the rest will just be satisfying victory over a stiff and unyielding challenge. It's my game of the generation as well.
