*Raises hand*
The second one was much, much easier than the first. I never did beat the first game, although I did get to the end, because a friend of mine showed me how he did it: use Jump & Slash on the third-to-last boss, die, repeat the whole last world to bring Jump & Slash to the second-to-last boss, repeat. I never played the third, but apparently the two different localizations are vastly different in difficulty, with one being the easiest of the three games and the other being on par with the first one.